 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise v's and generous donations from viewers like you Based on governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law GL chapter 30 a section 20 and signed Thursday March 12th, 2020 this planning board meeting He's being held virtually using the zoom platform. My name is Jack gem seek and as the chair of the Amherst planning board I am calling this meeting to order at 6 30 p.m This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst media live stream minutes are being taken as normal Board members, I will take a roll call when I call your name and meet yourself answer affirmatively And then please place yourself back on you Maria chow Here I'm long here Andrew McDougal. Sorry Doug Marshall Janet McGowan here Johanna Newman And myself present So board members if technical difficulties arise We may need to pause temporarily to correct the problem and then continue the meeting if you do have technical issues Please let Pam know Discussion may be suspended but while a technique get technical issue Is addressed in the minutes will note if this occurred, please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment and So and Okay 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 the general public comment period If you wish to make a comment during the public comment period You must join the meeting via the zoom teleconference link. This link is shown on the slide before us and And the link it's also on the list on the meeting agenda that you can grab from the from the website And Please indicate if you wish to make a comment by clicking the raised hand Button when the public comment is solicited if you have joined zoom meeting is your telephone Please indicate you wish you make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone when called on Please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished Residents can express their views for up to three minutes and at the discretion of the chair If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds or a lot of time their participation will be disconnected from the meeting So we have the agenda in front of us and Again, this is a we We have some special Special Events today both good and bad. So a lot's on our mind collective mind And it's just I think reason I think all of us would like to not you know go too long into the evening here just looking at the The the schedule, I think you know Amherst Hills subdivision shouldn't take too long You know the chapter 40 are and and zoning priorities are probably our our main focus So maybe you know, we can do you know 30 minutes each of those and then I think Then we have the the zoning lighting review and then in new business We have the comprehensive comprehensive housing policy. So a lot of these items. I think we need to do additional work on but I think No, we definitely want to focus on the 40 are and zoning priorities With that said we can look to review the minutes from November 18th and Is anyone want to make a motion? Regarding the minutes they move to accept the minutes Okay, Janet second Andrew that was Andrew second. Okay. Any discussion? I see none Okay. Yeah, I think you did a great job Pam. Thank you So we'll do a roll call here Maria Tom Andrew Doug I Janet Johanna if and myself approve so seven zero so top of the old business is to Have Chris Brestrup introduce us to Amherst Hills subdivision. I feel some of the members here Probably need a little bit of background on this and I don't think a decision is going to be made tonight on this but Chris can you Introduce this and do we have anyone in the in the in the audience that needs to be pulled in on this? I wonder Public comment Did I skip over that? Yeah Um Public comment on things that are not on the agenda, right? Yeah So a Jim Jim master Alexis has his hand up, but I know that I thought that was with the Guardian Miss Hills. So I mean we can ask him okay Looks like there's no public comment on things that are not on the agenda and Mr. Master Alexis has a comment probably on the first thing that is on the agenda Yeah, so we can bring him in You also have Pam Rooney's hand up now. So now I'm not sure are we doing general comment or Amherst, right? Well, let me clear with Jim He has been enabled to speak. Oh Jim can you hear us? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes? Yes Mr. Sharon, I'll I'll either speak briefly now or I don't know if you're a lot would allow me to speak after you talk after Miss Breastrup talk. Well, I think you're gonna speak with regard Amherst Hills, correct, which is on the agenda So we'll just you just stay put don't go anywhere and let's That's Pam as Pam Rooney. Yes. That's fine. Thank you. Okay Hi, Pam Rooney 42 Cottage Street again, just trying to figure out if we are talking public comment Agenda or if we should wait for item B or item C or item D to speak It's on other items That are not on the agenda Okay, then I'll not speak now. Thank you Okay, we'll be soliciting comments on the individual items. Thank you Um So old business Amherst Hills the subdivision Considering a request from the developer for release from notice By the building commissioner requesting that he refrained from issuing building permits for certain lots so Chris if you want to give a little bit of a background on this for the for the new board members That would be great Okay, that's good. I gave a little bit of a summary on this since of September But you may Have forgotten some of those things because a lot of you were new at that time So I just thought I'd run down Kind of a summary of the Amherst Hills subdivision and where we are with it right now So the subdivision has been under development since the early 90s. It I think initially was permitted sometime in the 80s And it's been very slow to develop There was an economic downturn in 2008 that lasted a number of years. So that kind of slowed it down another thing happened was that it's developer Doug Cole who was You know one of the owners of tofino and also coal construction passed away shortly after 2008 I think it might have been 2009 or 2010 and then after that Doug's successors had kind of a difficult time pulling things together. So so things had a very slow start The roadway was begun in the early 2000s and the roadway was constructed In pieces But the top coat was not installed on any of those parts and it deteriorated over the years The developer who is now tofino associates and has been tofino associates Would like the town to take the roadway and I that means that the town would adopt the roadway as a public way and then the town would be responsible for maintaining the roadway and Flowing it and everything and this was the intention at the time that the subdivision was permitted I believe that the residents are very eager to have the town take the roadway as well so over the years the town has had a policy of Recommending not installing the top coat on a road until most of the houses are built And this is because the town doesn't want heavy equipment that's used to build the houses to travel over the top course course of a subdivision road and this works well for small developments that are fairly quickly Developed such as the Vista terrace one in South Amherst that you're familiar with Which you have had a review last spring of that and then recently Released by the last lot on that subdivision, but on this particular subdivision Amherst Hills has taken a long time to complete and So the base course deteriorated over time and The residents of Amherst Hills came to the planning board last fall fall of 2019 And said, you know, this is really a problem We understand from the DPW that they're reluctant to plow the road in the winter of 2019 2020 so the planning board really Kind of dug in and decided to try to do something about it and we consulted our town attorney and at the time all I believe all of the lots except those on the cul-de-sac of Lyndon Hill, Lyndon Ridge Road had been released but At the time the the residents were asking the planning board to rescind the release of some of the lots But with the advice of the town attorney the planning board Took a different route and issued a letter to the building commissioner Which was filed at the registry of deeds Requesting that the building commissioner not issue building permits for certain lots that had not been built upon Until action was taken to fix or complete the roadway There were complications that the developer had with the conservation commission which caused delays and other things There's also a lawsuit between the developer and the residents to which we are not really privy but those things Turn out not to have too much relevance right now in what you're being asked to do Since we've asked talk the developer has finished the work on the roadways themselves the pavement and Themselves, and they've spent spent over four hundred thousand dollars on that work I think I saw an estimate of four hundred and forty thousand dollars that they've spent and the town engineer says that the roadways have been completed to his satisfaction however, there's still work off the roadways and I think a lot of it has to do with either sidewalks or Drainage that still needs to be completed and this work is related to the subdivision road So the town engineer has given us a list of those items and has given us an estimate of about $230,000 to complete that work The town has a three-party agreement among the town of Amherst Greenfield Savings Bank and the developer to hold about $289,000 as security to guarantee that the work will be completed. So this $289,000 That Greenfield Savings Bank is is holding Is more than the amount that the developer that the town says wouldn't be needed to complete the Off-road work that's associated with the subdivision road So the attorney for the developer has requested that the planning board Release the lots that are currently being held under this notice that was filed at the registry Allowing the developer to develop or sell those lots We just received this request. I think it was December 23rd. So that was right before the holidays. So it was Even though it's been two weeks since then it just seems like a flash in the pan So we just received that that request Meanwhile the attorney for the residents Mark Tanner, I think I forwarded his communications to you So he's with Bacon Wilson, which is the same firm as our Our acquaintance Tom Reedy just to point that out to you. Anyway, he Mr. Tanner Is representing the residents and he's requested that changes be made to the three-party agreement But the residents aren't party to the three-party agreement He's just making suggestions and recommendations as to how to Tighten up this agreement so that it would be Or That that it would satisfy the needs of the residents and I haven't had time to review these requested changes With our town attorney joel bard from kp law And I haven't really had time to talk to him about the release of the lots and how That release relates to the money that's being held by greenfield savings bank So I think it appears that the planning board would be able to release the lots based on having the sum of about $289,000 insecurity But I really need to talk to joel bard about this and figure out Are there changes that need to be made to the three-party agreement and and how do we document this transaction so So I think we're moving towards releasing the lots, but we want to make sure that we do it correctly with our town attorney's advice and So that's what I have to say for right now and I'm going to get in touch with joel about this In the next few days and I hope to have a little bit better more clear recommendation from for you By the time we meet again, which would be january 20th But at this time I would not recommend that you release the lots that you vote to release the lots tonight Thank you chris I'd like to recognize janet I I would agree with you christine because I when I read the three-party agreement the performance agreement I had questions about What are the obligations like what did it cover and it seemed like Parts of it said it was just narrowly covering the roads and then Parts of it said the obligation seemed to mean broader like you know part of the subdivision permit And something called the attached schedule of values, which I didn't have and so I feel a little nervous about relying on the performance agreement without understanding What it really covers and the language did seem sort of loosey-goosey and kind of going back and forth So I could send my thoughts on that to you or joel But I did feel very nervous about just relying on that when I wasn't quite sure what the agreement was covering um And then I suggest something How about it janet and I have a conversation on the telephone about this because I think um, you know, there there is There are some reasonable questions about the performance agreement We have a performance agreement in place which you've received in your packet, but then you received another Um Recommended changes to the performance agreement that are suggested by the resident's attorney So i'm not clear about what the role of the resident's attorney is in this in this whole thing And I don't know if joel bard is going to Um, you recommend that we take the resident's attorney's suggestions and incorporate them into the agreement I know that the Attorney for the developer Is not willing to take all of those changes and However, he is willing to extend the date of completion. So he's told me this is michael pill Who represents the developer? He's told me that he's willing to extend the date of the agreement But he's not willing to um make any of the other changes So I think it would be worthwhile for janet Janet's an attorney and me to have a conversation about this And then I'll talk to joel and then I can get back to the board about this whole thing So I think that's a great idea. I have I also have a question Um, because this sounds a little complicated to adjust the agreement and and also we're in between bickering parties and things like that Which is never that much fun, but doable um If there's just you know the sidewalks and a few storm drains and they put them in And everything's over right and so is is there a chance that You know the developer, you know come spring is able to put those in and then we all just kind of Release everybody and say goodbye and You know wish everybody well and I am quite frustrated I think I left a message for you of like we have actually never seen anyone from tofino No one's ever come talk to us or mr. Pill has never come in and that's a question We could just ask him right now. It's like how close are you to getting this done? You know, you know If you're really close and you're going to do it in april then let's just do that and you know Just finish the work and you know, it's it's been a strange process of never having The developer or his attorney here and we We we know we kind of talk about this a lot and make a little step and never really Get a back and forth. So I would love to see mr. Pill or Um, someone from tofino come in but I we could continue this kind of odd process Um, but if they're close to being done and it's you know, probably going to be less than 200,000 Maybe that's the faster way for us to go than having everybody negotiate. So those are just thoughts Doug Oh, sorry. Did you have something to add chris? You know, I tend to agree with janet. Um, I'm not sure how Important it is to act quickly on this on the part of the developer how Much on the brink he is of not being able to do anything if we don't release the lot So I need to talk to him although you probably would like to hear from him as well So there's more information that needs to be gathered about this whole thing and I'm uncomfortable taking the the recommendations of the residents attorney To change an agreement to which the residents are not a party Um, so I tend to think that janet may be correct and leave the agreement the way it is And see what work can be done in the next six months, but that's not a that's not a Thought that's been really well thought out so That's that's all I have to say right now Um, I quick question chris did the town does the town get compensated somehow within this? you know when at some point with regard to The agreement and and us having you know to have town council review it and and that sort of thing No, no, okay All right dawg Yeah, I had one one question for chris which was um When jason skeels is emailed to you transmitting his estimate of The scope of work and the two hundred and thirty thousand dollar cost Uh, he noted that it was difficult to see exactly what needed to be done because the snow was covering the ground um, I would like to Basically request that you talk to him and see whether it would be worth him Going back out now that the ground is pretty much clear And uh double checking his scope Mm-hmm I will do that. Thank you andrew Thanks jack. Yeah, I was just Suspecting that maybe you know the urgency here is just this is a great time to sell A house and hammer so I don't know. I mean I I agree with everything that janet said and hopefully At some point in the future we can get to fino to to come and make that case because this does seem a little Ridiculous at this point Chris were you going to say something? I wanted to answer a question that dug asked me via email And his question to me was it looks like the turning for the residence is Not suggesting that any lots be released and I wanted to clarify that The agreement lists certain lots on one of the Beginning pages that are actually on the cul-de-sac of wind image road So on page Two of the agreement About a third of the way down the page. It says covenant contract as guaranteed for observations So so those lots 12 13 14 15 16 17 and 18 Those are on a roadway a piece of roadway that is not Has not been built that may never get built And therefore those would be held as part of the covenant contract The lots that are asked that they're asking to be released are Um Well, I can't remember where exactly that's noted, but essentially they're asking that all the lots be released except for those Lots that are held in the covenant contract under paragraph four. So that's my answer to dubbs question Any other comments from the board seen on so Again the the project proponent doesn't have a representative here, uh, but I believe jim Master lexus can speak at this time Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Oh, thank you, mr. Chairman. Um, thank you for letting me speak here today and um I know today's a sad and troubling day in american history and the troubles of our neighborhood subdivision here I you know pale in comparison to what's going on. So i'm going to be very brief. I promise you here um I just want to kind of hit a few points here from what i've heard tonight The subdivision is an older subdivision. I've lived here for 15 years. Okay, we moved in in 2015 and we really need and the town really needs to Influence the developer to finish the work now the reason why our lawyer put together that proposal Is and for those of you that don't know me. I'm a lawyer. I've been a lawyer for 30 years I'm That doesn't mean anything here, but in reading that three-party agreement the um, that's the document that's currently known commonly known as a three-party agreement There's a real question and mrs. McGowan hit the nail on the head. There's a real question as to whether The three-party agreement would cover the remaining 200 000 230 000 dollars worth of work and by the way Just so the members of the board just so we're clear that 230 000 dollars worth of work is required In the definitive plan which was passed by a previous planning board when the subdivision was approved So all that work that remains is our things that the developer is required to do so the If you have a and I I think it's necessary for Anyone on the board here to talk to your town council your town attorney Mr. Bear to talk about our edits on the agreement because what our edits on the agreement again We're not party to the agreement all our edits do is to ensure that The work is done The 230 000 dollars of work is done because it would be the only security on the project because to be clear The planning board already released the lots We came before the board and said Take back the lots and rescind that Because that the roads need to be reconstructed And attorney baird and this is a letter that was in your packet Attorney baird said that the planning board could in fact Resin the release of the lots or they had a choice Which is fine to do what you did put a moratorium on building permits and sewer hookups And that really is the only meaningful security that exists Existed and in my view, that's why the roads were reconstructed and that's why tofino did the work and by the way Thank you for making the point that we are the only people that have showed up at these meetings We live here. This is a very important issue for us so Tofino did the work and the roads are fixed and they're very well done according to the town engineer. They look great We appreciate that but if the moratoriums are lifted Before the agreement is amended. There's a real question on whether that Agreement covers the remaining work. I think it's it would be fine for me If you kept the moratoriums on and said to the developer Finish the work by april 1st And i'm just picking that date out of the air in our edits We gave them the date of september 1st just to be reasonable. We didn't want to push And be unreasonable, but if they can do the work earlier And the moratoriums can stay on and they can finish the work then you can take them off and Everything will be fine. And I just want to make one more point The residents in the neighborhood we didn't sue anybody they sued us Because and christine breast strip is correct when she says only the base layer of the road Was done. They sued us Saying that we had the obligation To reconstruct the road bring in the big milling machines, which they did go down to the earth and repave the road That's ridiculous. We are not developers and we in no way agreed to do that. So they're suing us and what we want The planning board's obligations here with all due respect is to ensure that the developer does the work A number of us a number of us have lived here 15 14 13 years How long does it have to take for a subdivision to be completed or the work that's required To be completed and I know there have been some Awful things that happened and Doug Cole was a great guy. Okay But this project has to be completed and I would urge the planning board not to do anything That removes the security that's necessary on this project that ensures the developer do the work and you know The the planning board sits and represents the town But the town is the people here and we're the people here and we really need you to help us Because we're not a party to the three party agreement And all we're looking for is adequate security. So the work is done. If the work is done quicker, that's fine Um, and I want to remind the member. This is the last thing I'll say I want to remind the members of the board. I know that they did a lot of work recently And you know, there's been some talk although we want them to recoup their investment There are there are 67 lots in this neighborhood To fino about the entire Entire 67 lots out of bankruptcy for $425,000 Okay, and if you've ever been up to my neighborhood a lot in this neighborhood goes for about 175 to 200 thousand dollars It's a beautiful neighborhood They've made their money back hand over fist. It's time now to do the work Please make sure there's adequate security on this project and thank you very much As you always have for listening to me when I've come before you. Thank you Thank you, Jim Any other comments from the public I don't see any hands raised Um, christy have any final comments Um, just that I'm I'm gonna have a conversation with janet on the phone about this and then I'm gonna call joel bard And I also want to talk to the building commissioner. Um, and so next time we meet I'm hoping that I'll have more information or you know, some kind of recommendation for you to move forward But my recommendation now is not to release the lots tonight Okay, do we need a vote on that or No, no, okay No, no other comments by the board. Okay so, um We can move on to the next uh item, which is the chapter chapter 40 are um We're going to discuss our comments uh on the latest draft and review of the crc comments and You know, I your minutes again, I have to compliment you pan. They're they're really good and helpful uh on this We did get into it, but I think some of the board members have dove in further and we can you know discuss that This evening again, we don't want to have a long meeting this evening. Um, so I suspect that we're going to push this You know one more to one more meeting if if if not more because it's There's a lot of things a lot of satellite issues kind of going around in this but um Might know my my thoughts were that we would be able to at least make a recommendation and concept about You know a portion of the proposal Uh with with amendments, uh, or the entirety of it You know would would you know receives our our approval um, but I think The next item's owning priorities is something that we need to to talk about That is more urgent is my understanding from Talking to chris prior to this meeting. Uh, that's what that's what town council is looking for us for that so we will um Talk about 40 are and I uh, I guess um Again, I know some of you might have done some research. So I I'd love to hear um, you know additional thoughts In my understanding is the developer is This is me the the consultants are waiting for our final comments before they finalize Their their report Right chris and do you have anything else to add chris? I just like to say that yes the consultants are willing to take final comments And then they would like to wrap this up um, and I think my recommendation would be to If you wish to make some kind of recommendation, maybe not tonight, but maybe next time you discuss this about whether you You like the 40 our concept in general Obviously, there are changes that would need to be made to this proposal In order to bring it to town council if you were to decide to do that there's also talk about the potential for Doing a similar thing over in east amherst, which given the fact that the town is acquiring Land on belcher town road for affordable housing That's going to promote more development in that area. So it may make sense to Not do the 40 are in the downtown but to do it in east amherst instead The other thing is that we have a long list of zoning Amendments that the town council is asking the planning department and the planning board to work on and some of those Are not Necessarily compatible with 40 are I don't know if you want me to go into detail about that But one of the thing well, I won't go into any detail about that but my recommendation is To wrap up this project either tonight or two weeks from now or a month from now give the Consultants your final comments. They can package it up Give us the final product and then Turn our focus to the zoning priorities that the town council has asked us to work on and then At some point in the future go back to 40 are and say Is this A good thing. Do we want to do this? Where do we want to do it? Maybe we want to do it in east amherst then we ask for money to Maybe hire these same consultants to look at east amherst But I don't feel like we're ready to say wholeheartedly This is the package that we want and this is the package that we want to do in downtown Amherst. That's just my my thought about the matter Okay, let's hear from the board jenna I'm not sure this this is almost at a point of a point of order I'm actually kind of confused because I thought we already got their final product and um I had this, you know, because they've be written it a few times And I thought we got that already and then it was kind of put into our hands And then I thought at the last meeting we decided that Rhea and and dug had sort of volunteered to take it and to work on it And I I I was sort of surprised to see down the agenda here because I thought like oh, maybe dug and rhea making a presentation But then I thought maybe you would you'd show it to us first. So I'm kind of lost in the process and then So I don't so that so first question Wasn't that a final report already? And then What was it that dug and rhea agreed to do and then I also think um And this is hard not to go sliding into the next agenda item is that um Most of the 40 r would probably be most active in parts of the bl which the zoning priorities You know, one of the things is sort of a some serious changes to the bl And also it just looks like these things don't mesh and so but just number one and two would be good for me Like didn't we get a final report or their final work? And then what was it that dug and rhea agreed to do? I'm kind of I just I'm a little lost so Yeah, well dug is up has his hand up so he can speak to that perhaps okay, so I My perspective pretty closely matches janets Uh, at least in terms of what she said there Uh, I thought we had pretty much gotten the final product from the consultants and um I and maria had volunteered to Take a close look at it and do some work on it last time so over the holiday I did take a Probably a day and a half and look at the language and start uh start to look at the The physical parameters as well as just how the How the package is formatted. Um, I I've always been a little bit Uh Unhappy with the way it was written. It seemed a lot looser and squishy than uh, what I Think I that a proper bylaw ought to be it ought to be pretty black and white so that If I put on my architect hat or my developer hat Uh, I don't have a lot of room to you know, uh You know things are pretty black and white and I'm not going to be Uh making trying to get through loopholes. So, um, I am not complete with what I was doing um I uh You know, I think I've had conversations with maria and with uh jack that I You know, and even my my comments to the board. I was most supportive of the provisions in the bl Uh less supportive of the downtown area, but I'm I'm trying to just look at the whole thing Um, and then we can either enact the or recommend the whole thing or just recommend part Um, I guess the last thing I'll say is Similar to what chris was saying Uh, the fact that these other recommended zoning changes have come To us from crc and town council Um has started to feel to me like we have a lot of different balls in the air um You know earlier on Actually before christmas when maria and I started to dive in I and she were talking about trying to do some 3d modeling to show What exists now in the zoning versus what 40 are might permit and um But now, you know, if you take a particular parcel you'd have to do What exists now what 40 are would would allow And what half a dozen different zoning changes would individually do and then You know, whatever combinations of those that you might imagine would end up getting approved so I I welcome, uh chris's recommendation that we Uh let the consultants finish up, you know from my point of view chris could just tell them Thank you for the Uh, I think it was november 10th product that they gave us And, uh, you know go on to your next job So You know, I think it is in our hands, but you know I think that's all i'll say for right now Actually, I will mention that We have talked to chris about asking the consultants for their 3d Computer model that they use to generate the renderings that they did show to us Um, they uh sounded like they were willing to give us to give that to us But their their cad guru was on You know on on holiday or or away when we were asking so they needed to get him back before they could send it to us Um, we also had a little bit of a talk with I think it was ben breger in the planning department about generating a base That would include uh property lines and roads, but also some grading Um, it sounded like that could be a time consuming effort So we thought we'd see what the consultants sent Before we asked planning staff to spend any time on it Um, so that's that's my report. Um, I I think maria ought to give give her report Thank you Doug maria um Yeah, so I um, I tried to carve out some time over the holidays only managed a couple hours And what I had hoped to do is more two-dimensional study where um I compared literally the november 10th proposal to existing zoning not to like all these new um zoning priority options and just see where the delta was between What we can do now versus what the consultants proposed and I only got to the heights I haven't gotten to the setbacks yet the front setbacks. Um So I thought that was worth just the study because just studying the heights has already been pretty enlightening as far as realizing How it adds and takes away Um, I guess what I prefer is to get right into the next agenda item since that ties into this very deeply and um, not go too much further in the 40 r because I agree with all the balls in the air. Does it make sense to put our energies there when You know count up when crc has the three month priority list that um A lot of these are very exciting to me. So if I were to put, you know, whatever little time I have I I think I'd rather Maybe focus on things that our elected officials have, you know, finally given us as priorities We've been waiting for two or three years now. I think So, um, so yeah, I did start to do a few studies, but um, I think before the holidays Doug and I had really broad visions for what we could get done and then Uh, the weekend rolled around and I just sort of panicked and quickly did a diagram. But um, yeah, I'm excited about If we could get to the next agenda item that would be fantastic. So it's not really much of a report other than Just comment Yeah, I'd have to say that, you know, town council has has moved Quickly on this and it has kind of changed the landscape for us all. So I definitely agree with with Everything everybody has said Janet. Do you have Another comment? Um, this is on the idea of having the consultants do the CAD work. Um, and hopefully for free um, if they're if they are gonna Give us the the the 3d modeling. Um, I would like them I I'd like to see north pleasant street showing five story buildings on both sides on The narrow the street, you know, they showed it on a four lane street like if they could They showed four stories on one side and if they could show us five story buildings on both sides of north pleasant accurately done I think that would be really helpful to us in terms of what we're visualizing Um, and then on triangle street, you know, four story buildings tapering down to three Um across from Kendrick place, which is five stories on, you know, the very narrow triangle street So that would be a great visual to have because the pictures they were showing weren't exactly what was in their final um The final draft and not, you know So I thought that if they can do that visual with their CAD person and nobody else has to The other thing I want to say is I didn't really expect to see 40 hour back You know after a two-eco holiday break, so I don't I don't want anyone to feel guilty Like I was expecting to see this come up later with Maria and Doug, but I agree that it's It doesn't seem easy to do with the other zoning priorities. So Thank you, uh chris So I wanted to say that um, we weren't expecting that the consultants would do Further work or that they would do any 3d modeling for us. I think what Doug and Maria were looking for was just the base material from which the Consultants did their work, you know And then Doug and Maria would Then take that and do more work with it So we're we're not expecting the consultants to do anything else except I was imagining that planning board members might Come back with comments like well instead of having a you know, five foot side setback against These buildings that you should have a 15 foot side setback Things like that details like that, but it it appears that You know, it's it's going to be a lot of work to even do those things even look at it to the point where You know On cottage street, you would prefer to have a 15 foot setback against the residential buildings, but on You know, Halleck street, you would prefer not to so My feeling is unless until we're really serious about Proposing this it's probably not worth it to put that level of effort into the 40 are And I think we should just Tell the consultants, okay We're done So give us your final whatever you're going to give us and then we'll be happy with that along with Giving us What the things that maria and Doug asked for so that if we want to go back to this in the future We can do that. Does that make sense? Yeah, I also like uh rob crowner suggestions with regard to You know, if we're going to do additional work just focus it on a subset Which is mainly the bl between prospect and north pleasant Just to simplify things because there's a lot of other As proposed there's a lot of Issues and I'm just I think rob suggestions were pretty good and I guess if we're going to re you know revisit it I I would suggest we just look at a a portion of the proposed 40 are for downtown Just my suggestion. So, uh, Andrew Thanks jack Um, I just I know you mentioned this chris and apologies for we're not keeping track of it But I was I was very intrigued by the possibility of east amherst What we're saying though is consultants this go around just wrap up which is purely focused on Downtown and then if we want to pursue east amherst That's something that we would negotiate as a separate body work. That's right Okay, and do we have do we have funding to be able to do that? I know that's just given the fact that we've Uh, we've got the the purchase and sale agreement for the property on belch down road like Is that something that that could happen in calendar year? or At what point might we be able to to bring on the consultant to help with that if if we decide we want to Look more deeply into east amherst May I answer that jack? Yeah, but I think with andrew being on the cpa committee It might be good for him to kind of you know, what has happened in that regard what happened with this belcher town road proposal and what what is what is it exactly? Oh, so yeah, it was um, essentially it was brought to us The timing was extremely awkward, uh, and that they the um We were essentially the middle of a negotiation to purchase this property on uh, I think it was 132 belch down road It's a couple of adjacent properties that could be used for um adding affordable housing within the cpa mandate And so we uh as a as a committee unanimously supported the prospective moving forward with this we had allocated up to $800,000 for the purchase of that which We ended up not needing quite as much which is which is great, but this is an opportunity for Uh for us to add I want to say the number is 40 affordable housing units is what rob crowner thinks that we'd be able to put on the location um It is right near the east, you know, if folks are aware it's It's kind of across the street from cumberland farms on your way out to belcher town It's walking distance to the to the to the traffic light there It is, you know, it's it's it's proposed and really sort of complimentary to the To the opportunity that we have at the the the library there at the library site as well. So Two potential opportunities to build residential density Um around a village center, uh bringing in affordable housing as well Uh, it it's really it's like checking all of the boxes for things that we would like to do as a town It's consistent with um our master plan vision. So I accepted we should all be Really excited about um for us to have as an opportunity and and if there is the ability to be able to leverage 40 are um to help with the overall economics of that to help with the um, you know The speed of making this happen getting a developer on On board to develop the site which we don't have right now. I think that's that's That's all something that we should really Be seriously thinking about So so my question just to chris or andrew is is this property to be purchased by the town with the monies and then With the developer does the developer Purchase the land and do the development or does amherst? retain the land and the developers like leasing it or What's the model for this type of of thing? Yeah, actually a great question chris. I'm not sure if you have an answer to that I don't think that's been worked out yet. Nate mulloy is in the attendees and he may have um more information about this Nate has been following this project with um with dave zomek and the building commissioner and I believe he has also been following the project through cpa and finance committee, etc Um, so he may have more information, but I think that those things haven't been worked out The idea is that we the town would like to put this property And the property at the east street school, uh, they'd like to package them together in an rfp um and have developers give proposals for Developing affordable housing in both of those sites and I don't know if it would be completely affordable housing or if it would be partially affordable housing But both of the developments would have to be A 40 b project which is different from 40 r 40 b is more like what we saw at 132 north hampton road where You have to go through the zoning board of appeals and get a comprehensive permit in order to do the work And so the the way the 40 r would compliment compliment this whole thing is that it could Potentially open up other properties or make other properties in the east amherst village center more attractive and You know all of a sudden we'll start to get some kind of You know critical mass Of things happening in east amherst and I think that would be that would be a good thing And this is something janet's been talking about this for a long time ever since we started talking about 40 r She she was kind of pointing at east amherst and saying I think that's where it should happen not downtown So You know it's interesting how these things come to pass But now that we've learned we've learned so much about what is 40 r and how does it work? And now I think you know we can Pivot a little bit to say oh we think it would work better over there than where it's currently being proposed We haven't definitely made that decision But um, it seems like we're kind of moving in that direction. So Does that make sense? Thanks for clarifying chris Thank you, uh maria um This was a really timely conversation because I'm a little torn about you know sort of walking away from the 40 r downtown because the one thing it did do was provide affordable housing which even if we fixed fixed vl It doesn't necessarily You know bring that element into downtown, which is something I thought this four yard You know did a lot of things and one of the big things was that affordable housing Component so um, you know the rfb is really exciting now Take a couple of years to process to develop and then a couple years Before construction so you know you're five years out again I feel like the urgency of what mr. Hornick was bringing to us Shouldn't be lost as far as you know, we need more affordable housing and especially downtown. So I'm a little torn about, you know Not having the 40 r be sort of one of our priorities as a planning board, but I think um given all the like Doug was saying all the balls up in the air Maybe it's something that we just have to keep on our back burner somehow Excellent point. Marie. I I agree. I mean, I just We need housing in the worst way. Um, Doug Yeah, I guess uh one comment I'd make in response to maria's comment um It was my it's bit. I had a little bit of back and forth with chris breastrupt about uh Different things at one point and she was saying that uh, if we if we did start to get housing Um I think chris correct me if i'm wrong. I thought if we started to get housing on the bl uh because we would be adding units to to uh property that currently doesn't have units That it could conceivably kick in The inclusionary zoning portion of our bylaw So we could end up with some affordable housing through regular As of, you know, regular zoning rather than 40 are So we so, you know, we could end up with some affordable housing Even without 40 are I guess Do you want me to answer that check? Yes, please Yes, so it depends on what's proposed if you propose something that requires a special permit either for the use or for um a dimensional modification then a certain dimensional modifications then you would be um Required to uh have affordable units just like Barry roberts down on university drive in that um 70 university drive. He was required to have Four affordable units in there because he needed a special permit for some dimensional modification So the same thing could happen in the bl district. So I think that's what um, we were talking about Um, so I just wanted to say one more thing, which is something that I've just realized I think I realized it over the weekend the list of um zoning amendments that the town council wants us to work on if the bl were added to uh footnote b Which is kind of an You know esoteric thing to say because I don't know if everybody knows what I'm talking about But it would take away the requirement for lot area for um dwelling units in the bl and therefore the bl would become more like The bg district in terms of how many dwelling units you can fit in a in a box In the bg you can build your box however big you can get it based on the dimensional requirements And however many units you can fit in that box you can go ahead and do it So if we If we connect the bl district with footnote b the same thing is going to be true in the bl which means that The the current differential that we have between how many units can you put on a property? In our existing zoning and how many units can you put on it in 40 r? It sort of goes away To a large extent and so the the attraction of the money that the state would give us for that differential Either disappears or becomes less So the so there are three aspects of 40 r that are attractive One is it provides affordable housing well four maybe one is it it gives you more density it provides affordable housing it's got design guidelines and I don't know what the fourth oh this the money from the state So the money from the state would kind of either go away or become much less You'd still have the other three things affordable housing design guidelines and density but I just wanted to get that out there because That is a little bit of a Conflict or I don't know something that just came up reasons why 40 r and the changes that we're thinking about making That are being asked by the town council May not you know fit together as well as we want them to so like My recommendation is work on the zoning priorities that the town council is asking us to do Which is again something that janet Brought up like why don't we fix the underlying zoning? She brought this up a few weeks ago fix the underlying zoning and then maybe you don't need 40 r. So Anyway, I'm kind of going in that direction So I'm not sure what the question was that I was trying to answer but Did what I have to say Whatever you said was was uh, it was interesting. Uh, so janna has one comment, but I'm just I'm thinking from 40 r from the developers perspective the You know, they're And I guess this is for inclusionary zoning Uh, developments as well, but the 40 r In and of itself Doesn't really provide the developer much more and so incentive except that they get it have a larger building more efficient in terms of construction and size And that sort of thing correct Okay, so, um janna So I I I don't want to do this now, but can we do like a bl clinic at some point where we just spend I don't know like um Just like a special meeting just to talk about you know What people perceive as the problems in the bl because I think there's like four options on the table for how to fix it But the bl isn't just downtown. There's like a little piece on um root nine near um fort river Collision and there's another piece in university drive And I don't think there's a is there a fourth one floating around is that is that just it? But I just think it's like It's a weird zoning thing There's problems with it and I can see like four options for fixing and like fixing the underlying problems You know, I think we could change it to be bl which is more flexible getting rid of footnote adding bl to footnote b And then just changing the dimensions in the bl to make it sort of fit better You know, and so I wonder if we could just focus on that for a couple of hours in a special meeting or You know a special meeting of the zoning subcommittee in the planning board just to like hone in on it because it's hard in this Kind of meeting to really understand You got to kind of look at it and look at pictures and then your head hurts and you have to kind of talk about it a lot So that's my plea It seems like we're kind of deferring This to the crc town council anyway because they've already kind of moved ahead and I'd suggest that we just kind of wait and see You know what the directive is from the from our town government As far as what? well with regard to the zoning priorities and the and and the suggested changes that they Uh that they just recently came out with I think they've given them to us and they want us to work on them. Well, that won't work on them. That's our next topic All right, so we've uh, so at this point we're just going to recommend the account the consultants to wrap up the report and and I don't I guess we're not going to You know, I think the zoning priorities is or will be taking precedent for the immediate future And do you want to make a statement about whether you think? 40 r is a good thing in Concept and it may be appropriate in Yeah, I mean just I mean going looking at our minutes from the previous meeting. It seems like we're we're somewhat on board uh, I don't know um I'm I'm good with it in concept. I don't know how you word that um but You could say you're good with it in concept, but it needs further exploration and you need to figure out exactly where it should go something like that Yeah, and I think we're supportive of of addressing the housing crisis in in town. I think every, you know, I thought that was a common theme um Well, you don't have to make a statement about 40 r. I can just call a consultant and say we've talked about it a lot Let's wrap it up and you know, we'll get back to it sometime in the future I feel like we've put enough work into it. They just be nice to kind of give a feedback to the crc um With how we feel on it, but I defer to the other You know members on the board on on what? What we should do um Doug Yeah, I I I guess I'm I was I was gonna Respond to something that chris said in response Or uh earlier. I think 40 r also gives the developer a slightly more streamlined process for getting permitting so in addition to Some of the other things that I think either you or uh chris were saying about the advantages I wanted to add that to the conversation okay, um I guess in terms of where I stand with 40 r at the moment um I think I'm I think chris is phrasing that we thought it needed more exploration seems right um You know not only for maria and me to explore kind of what we think of what the proposal was in downtown, but Whether, you know, I think the wider conversation about whether downtown is the right place to do it Is a good one, especially in light of the east amherst potential development opportunity Um one thing that I did uh come across over the holidays when I was looking at it was that The state department of housing and community development dchd Has to approve those the the bylaw when we initially Adopt it But I realized but I believe I read that if we ever decided we wanted to abandon the bylaw They would also have to approve that And I have a A strong aversion to Entangling alliances that I can't extract myself from So that gave me pause Uh, especially downtown, you know where We could be tied in perpetuity to something that may outlive its usefulness so, um That's just a few thoughts, but but uh, you know right now I think we're better off Saying, you know, if we have to make a statement. I think something kind of That we've we're looking we've looked at it closely. We think more exploration is needed, but we're not Rejecting it outright is probably where I would where I would end up Thank you. Uh, your honor Thanks jack. Um, it's a really interesting conversation I think to some extent The interest in 40 are stemmed from You know just a need and a desire to advance the vision of the master plan and You know to some extent it's a it's just a means to an end and I think a lot of us thought oh well, this seems like a good mechanism to You know Get affordable housing leverage state money get the density get some Standards in place get the transitional zoning like there are a lot of things that are in the 40 r package that kind of make you nod and say Yeah, that's what our community wants But now I think with the you know with this more comprehensive set of zoning priority that are You know, we're gonna have Assuming it moves forward again gets adopted will affect more than just 18 acres of our town, but actually I don't know a line the overall zoning by-law for our town with the fold of the plan It seems like that's another means to That we're working for and is potentially I know there's part of me that's like wow, that's that's a much bigger thing to chew on and if like if it Doesn't move forward or gets, you know, held up in the process, then we've we've lost time And I am aware of the time we've already lost in some ways. So I'm caught, you know, nervous about that delay, but But if there's momentum behind a larger zoning thing And I I also see the value of the, you know, the east Amherst village center project and So I think I support this although I too spent several hours digging into the 40 r proposal, but I'll consider that just helpful and work May I ask, uh, Johanna, did you have comments that you wanted to Send to me to send to the consultant I sent you some I think I like that I can Receive them or if they got buried in your inbox. Yes, they may have I I wasn't here for part of the time between the two holidays and before the holiday. So, um I may have missed your comments I'll I'll resend it just to put it at the top of your inbox chris. Thanks Hey, Johanna, you seem you're like cut your audio and video seem a little uh Uh-oh, are they dodgy body dodgy? That's a good word Just so you know For me anyway, it cut out Okay, thank you. Sorry. I know Tom Sure, I just um, I just wanted to piggyback I was listening to dug and agreeing with with pretty much everything Doug was saying as well as Johanna I think, you know, all along I felt like no matter what we did looking at the 40 r Why I encouraged us to look at it and to spend time with it Is I think there's a lot of work that was put into it and a lot of research a lot of time And that there's something we can learn from it and whether we deploy 40 r as it is Or that we take tactics and elements of that and deploy that through You know our own updating of our bylaws in different ways or attacking some of these elements that The crc has passed down to us I think it's a learning opportunity and whether we need more design guidelines or whether we need To adjust zoning and a bl in accordance with certain things in order to get, you know Higher density or low income housing or whatever it is that we need. I think we learned a lot We heard from the public. Um, we aired this and we got some feedback So I think that you know the putting it out there was a really great opportunity for us to learn Um, and so no matter what whether we apply this to another location as a group Or whether we take facets of it and try to find ways to deploy it I think it was a useful exercise. I mean, I learned a lot and I have some comments I'll send them over to you chris as well via email But I think it was very it was very helpful to know that this work was Was tested and supported and and that we can actually learn from it So I'd like to us to keep an open mind about it as a document and maybe not the roadmap to fix all our problems But as an opportunity to at least take away something that can help us address some of the issues that we have in our own town Thank you, tom. Actually you reminded me why, you know, we kind of picked this up again because of those design guidelines they came up where We're we're illuminating for me and if they were illuminating for you. That's that's even better I'll be in an architect, but so Good points, Andrew Yes, it's kind of losing my train of thought everybody. I was just nodding my head with everybody In the spirit of moving things along if yeah, I like the idea of us having a bit more of a Formal declaration. I think it is chris origin word of it like if if you'd like emotion to do that I would be happy to do that Uh Or if we just want to move forward. I'm also fine with that as well I'm good with the formal decoration if if then we have Um, yeah, I think it's a good idea. I mean, I think it's I think it's kind of an important thing for us to Have that that clear voice. So Um Does chris want to we do you've been jotting notes or one of the board members? Uh, when to take a crack at it Um I would I would nominate either chris or dug to do that since um, they were both very articulate in their comments So I think what I said was that um You support the idea of 40 are in concept However, you realize that there are um a lot of details that would need to be worked out And that you're not sure that the downtown is the right location for 40 are that you would like to explore um another location perhaps east dammer spillage and um That you that you feel it it was a worthwhile um Endeavour to study 40 are something like that. I would I would say the entirety of downtown Being appropriate. Okay is I don't quite understand that jack I mean You know, we're talking downtown. It's just the the entire scope of it They had was might have been a little overreaching I think because you know, there were Areas, you know pointed out by crc, you know by the post office and up on triangle street that were just That probably needed more work than than other areas So that's why I just clarified that As proposed and its entirety may not be appropriate is The geographic scope of it. Yeah need to be refined Yeah Do you have maybe pam has written down what we say? Well, I have written down that the planning board supports the idea of chapter 40 are in concept Then I missed a little something um And then I have explore another location which is possibly the east amherst um And then over here on the side I wrote Um the geographic scope so chris help me out here. Let's let's put it together Well, I think if we are going to consider downtown there are a lot of details that need to be worked out and geographic scope is one of them and dimensional requirements is one and refining design guidelines is one So can we lump that into some words like Further exploration deeper exploration I've got all this on a recording So well, I have it recorded too Um, but even still when I go to actually write it into the minutes We're going to have all the we're going to meet we're going to meet in two weeks If we just want to make a simple proposal Based on the input. Let's just do it then. I mean it's uh um sure and it may be I don't know what can be done via email, but we can send you comments and iron something out, but sorry sorry to put you on the spot there chris For this but that we do need to move on to the zoning priorities. Mr. Marshall has his hand raised. Yes, okay And then and then there's someone in the audience that has uh, their hand up too Yeah, I had I just wanted to Remind everybody that Pam Rooney is One of our participants at the moment And I think she wanted to talk about 40 r before we move on to the next agenda item Okay, pam and then there's also janet keller. I see so pam um If you have any comments you'd like to offer at this time Pam Rooney Hi, fam Hi, I didn't realize I was even on Thank you I say and thank you Doug for um recognizing me. I wasn't expecting to speak on 40 r But I would I would agree that as it's currently written. It's a very rough document and would need it A lot of work to make it usable. I think one of the things that also needs to happen Is as there's any conversation about the changes or modification or reapplication in some other part of town That there also needs to be robust public comment and input So that's that's generally, you know, if you were planning to go ahead with this Right and say yes, we we want to recommend to adopt it And and recommend it to the crc I would have to say gosh, you know You you you should have been saying some some vital public input on this final draft. So um I think your wording tonight was great. Let's just set it aside. We know it's it's one tool out of many and Probably the downtown is not the place for it. So thank you Great. Thank you pam Janet Oh, no, uh, this is janet keller. Sorry um Hey janet Hi um I don't I don't know if I'm out of order here Um, but when you were talking about bl I just happened to have um In front of me Chris's February 26 2016 memo um And I was intrigued by the fact that I hadn't realized He talks about the different um bl zones Um, so anyway, it's it's a terrific Five page piece of work um, and um, so I just wanted to go back to janet mcgallon's suggestion of doing a A clinic on bl um, and That you already have a very excellent Little overview of it by christine that she did On february 26 2016 that would be extremely useful for orienting people because it can be pretty complex So that that's it. Thanks. Thank you So, um So I think so the 40 r will keep it very brief. We will make it a An item for the next meeting Just keep it very brief just so we can make that that That recognition motion Okay, so, um I think we can move on to the zoning priorities and Chris would you like to introduce this? Yeah, so um if I can find my She Maybe pam could bring up that um motion shoot Yes, that the town council voted on the other night Okay, so the um crc has been working on um trying to figure out what What their zoning priorities are and they've taken input from the planning board and from the planning department and from members of the town council and They came up with a list of Items that they think are their zoning priorities, so they presented them to the Um town council first they presented them on December 21st And they had a robust discussion about them and they presented them again And voting was postponed until this past Monday night And on Monday they again had a robust discussion about these priorities and I think they talked for two hours um Kathy shane introduced an alternative motion which um Would have uh Would have what should I say? Um, it was very thorough and very um It would have been a lot of work It required well it asked for a lot of studies of alternatives Um for the different things that are being proposed here um Anyway, uh what they finally decided on was this list that pam I think can bring up now. Can you bring that list up pam? You've got it. Um, can you see it? I have it up I can see the link to it, but I can't see the list Really? Oh no Well everyone received it in an email recently so Do you have a pdf version pam? Yeah, uh, and I linked to it um in my in my power point. So let me just Why is it doing that? Could that nobody could see it? Nope I guess his hand up does he want to ask a question can you can you see it now? Yes, yes, okay All right, so they broke these things down um based on information that the planning department had given them about um How long various things would take to do? and it's Kind of interesting because when I was thinking about this I was thinking that How long would each individual thing take to do and they kind of grabbed onto it and said oh You said that all of these things would take three months to do So let's put them all together and see if you can do them in three months So that's that's what's going on here. Um, the town council is going to be Interested in working on zoning in the early part of the year and then they have a kind of Well, they then they have to focus on the budget So they're going to be focusing on the budget in the later part of the spring And through the early part of the summer. So they wanted to get Ideas from us about zoning before march 15th So they could work on them before they have to throw their energy towards the budget and then realizing that People are going way over the summer. They said well, you can give us the second bunch of things By september 1st So that's what's going on here. So they they made a motion to ask The town manager to present zoning amendments that reflect these different ideas to the town council by these two dates and so the town manager reach Reaches down to the planning department And asks the planning department to work on these things and obviously the planning department works with the planning board So i'm bringing these things to you. They will also be Discussed at the crc and you may decide that you want to have some joint meetings with the crc on some of these items But um, I can I can go through them with you and give you a brief description of what these things are So the first thing is one of the things that we've been talking about which is this Adding the bl district to footnote b. So what that means is Taking away the lot area requirement for a dwelling unit in the bl zoning district This is pretty complicated. Um, it is described in that memo that um, I wrote back in 2016 there are a number of issues with it that need to be resolved and one of the issues is Which bl district are we talking about? So back a number of years ago when jonathan tucker was work was here and was working on zoning amendments He came up with a zoning amendment that would Just restrict this to the bl districts that are adjacent to the downtown And so that includes the bl district north of triangle street The bl district that's west of north pleasant street and the bl district that's Along south prospect street So that may be what we decide to do on the other hand we may decide to include the other bl districts which include university drive and there's one in uh By the railroad tracks along dickinson street and I Think that's it but um It may not be but anyway, so it's a complicated issue But it the idea is that currently the bl district is not friendly to residential development even though it's right adjacent to downtown and sometimes it's a buffer zone between downtown and the residential the general residents district It really is not friendly to building new housing there There's a lot of existing housing there, but you couldn't really build what exists today There because the zoning wouldn't allow it. So that's what's up with the bl district um footnote a has to do with allowing The planning board or the zoning board of appeals to grant a special permit to modify dimensional modifications dimensional requirements, excuse me. So if you look at the dimensional table Um, I don't have the dimensional table here But if you go to section six of the zoning bylaw and look at the dimensional table table three Which is towards the end of the zoning bylaw You'll see that a lot of things a lot of dimensional requirements in there have this little footnote a attached to them and um, if you turn the page and you read about footnote a it says authorizes the uh planning The permit granting authority or the special permit granting authority to grant a special permit to modify these dimensional requirements and in this case Um, we're suggesting adding maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage to those To that footnote a The next it's footnote b The first one is footnote b And the second bullet is footnote a okay. Thank you Hey here, um, I got another question. Um So I in my packet we have the december 21st 2020 memo That is that is a report and then what's on the screen here? What's on the screen on the screen is the motion that the town council voted on and it should be pretty similar to the um december 21st memo The name of move things around a bit. I'm not sure. Okay I did send this to you in an email, but you may not have gotten it until uh, I I'm behind two days on my email. Sorry Right, but this does pretty much track that december 21 memo In the sense that the content is the same This is kind of a shorthand version of what's in that december 21 memo. Okay Okay, thanks So the third one is uh, propose a revised Supplemental dwelling unit by-law. So that's what sdu stands for supplemental dwelling unit and this was proposed it was a it was um Some an idea that michael burt was that came up with and we all thought it was a good idea And the planning board actually proposed it to town meeting in the spring of 2018 But that was after the uh vote to go to the charter form of government And town meeting was very leery about passing Substantial zoning by-laws. Um given the fact that the town council was going to come into being A few months later. So That it didn't receive um Two-thirds vote and some people voted against it or abstained because they thought the town council Should be involved in making this decision and it shouldn't be made by town meeting But I think many people thought it was a good idea. The idea was to allow Supplemental dwelling units that would be larger than 800 square feet that they could go up to a thousand square feet Um, and that was as a result of conversations that we've had with people who are trying to build these things and they say 800 square feet is really too small if I'm going to live there with my husband There's no room to move around. We can't have a second bedroom The hallways are too narrow, etc. So so that's what that's about The demolition delay by-law is section 13 of the zoning by-law and it has to do with um the historical commission review of historical buildings that are over 50 years old that are either fully or partially going to be demolished proposed for demolishment and um There have been a lot of questions and comments and concerns about the existing demolition delay by-law The one of which is is this really zoning or should this be in the general by-law and so the current um Proposal is to take it out of zoning and put it into the general by-law and the historical commission has been working with planning department staff on Exactly how this would be worded so that that will be coming to you and the reason that the planning board is involved is because Any change to the zoning by-law requires planning board Or planning board recommendation to town council So even though this is proposed to come out of the zoning by-law you have to Make a recommendation Do you think it's a good idea for it to come out of the zoning by-law and then town council would vote to put it into the general by-law? um the next thing Right, I'm sorry. Could I interrupt here jack do you mind? No Could we go back to the second change about footnote a to maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage because Does that I had two questions like could you explain what that means like is there any limit? to the lot coverage Or the building coverage and does that apply to every zoning district? We kind of like segue don't weigh from that really quickly. So I was just could you run back on that? The second the adding footnote a to max so footnote a is already attached to maximum building coverage in certain districts such as the general residence district the um village center residents fraternity residents general business districts business village center and business neighborhood So it's already there for those districts maximum lot coverage is also allowed to be modified in the fraternity residential fraternity district the general business district and the business neighborhood district so the proposal here is to extend that allowance to other districts and Maybe it would be all of them or maybe it would just be one or two more We haven't really looked at this carefully enough, but there seems to be a Desire and the part of some CRC members to look into this they think that it's a problem that There isn't that allowance to grant the special permit To modify the lot coverage and building coverage for other zoning districts So take a look at the dimensional table table three and you'll see, you know, tiny little they're really superscripts they're not footnotes, but superscript a Attached to certain dimensions and you'll see where we already allow this And then the conversation will come up. Well, if we already allow it in those places, where should we allow it? Should we allow it in more places? Have to talk about that because that's something that at least The CRC was interested in doing Is that answer your question? Yeah Okay Okay, so the next one is work with the council to begin the conversation on housing types expansion In preparation for meeting the september 1 2021 priorities below so that has to do with some of the things that We started to talk about in the zoning subcommittee like allowing Duplexes in more locations and allowing triplexes in more locations and perhaps not restricting some of our residential zoning districts to single-family dwellings, you know to to actually allow Duplexes or triplexes by right if their owner occupied so the idea here is to Begin the conversation about that not wait until september 1 to begin that conversation Um, and we've started to have that conversation in the planning board and then zoning subcommittee, but we haven't really Done it fully maria had some ideas about that When we were in the zoning subcommittee, she had I forget what it was called, but she had this wonderful image of Working from you know one type of housing to other types of housing in a kind of continuum And how you know, you wouldn't want to put a 20-story apartment building next to a single-family house But if you had some transition of different sizes of houses as they moved towards the larger houses Maybe that would make sense. So I think this is kind of an extension of that conversation The next one is apartment buildings allow them in more zoning districts by site plan review I think right now they're only allowed by site plan review in the business general zoning district So consider allowing them in other zoning districts By site plan review right now there as I said, they're allowed by special permit in other zoning districts But only in the business general district by site plan review And the next one is remove footnote m and footnote m is Something that was put in place probably I'm going to guess 20 years ago or more um when the spruce ridge townhouse development on high street was being proposed and the neighbors were very adamantly opposed to it and They decided I'm not sure if footnote m actually ended up applying to that Development or not, but it was kind of an outgrowth of that development I think that people now think of spruce ridge as being a You know, okay, they don't seem to be bothered by it but back then they were very concerned about it So footnote m requires that instead of having 2,500 square feet For additional dwelling units in the rg zoning district you have to have 12,000 square feet for the first For the first dwelling unit and then you have to have 20 500 square feet for this for more whatever you add to that first But um, if it's an apartment or a townhouse Footnote m says that you have to have 4,000 square feet instead of 2,500. So the idea is to um Go back to the 2,500 and not require the 4,000 square feet And that seems to be something that would help to promote Development in the rg zoning district The next one is revise apartments definitions So the apartments definition says that an apartment building can't contain any more than 24 units And the other thing it says is that you can't have more than 50 of the units be of any one type And what the result of that is is that people propose mixed-use buildings And mixed-use buildings are not defined. So you could say well, you should add a definition for mixed-use buildings into this list and I agree with that but So people build proposed mixed-use buildings you can have an infinite number of Dwelling units in a mixed-use building as long as you have some Section of it as something that's not residential and it could be pretty small We've had instances where The mixed-use portion of a mixed-use building ends up being something like 200 square feet So and the rest of it is is uh dwelling units. So it's sort of Um, I don't know it bothers people that you have to kind of Create A use that you didn't really want to put there in the first place In order to call your your building a mixed-use building instead of just calling in an apartment building And that has to do with the limitation on How many units you can have in the building and the fact that you can only have 50 of them be of any one type In a mixed-use building. They can be they can be all one type. They can be all studios They could be all four bedrooms. There's no restriction on it So anyway, this is looking at the apartment's definition of figuring how to how to fix it so that it works better Um, I hardly think anybody builds apartments in more except in outlying districts I think they're building one down at either south point or the boulders And they recently built one in um on belcher town road to replace a building that got burned down Um, do you want to move on to the september one? Items or have you kind of had it? We can go to the september one next time uh I guess as a is is a september one, uh included in the december 21st memo Yes, I might as well I'm I'm good with it. I don't know if there's any other opinions The board but all right, so the dimensional regulations in the rg and rbc districts have to do with the fact that we have a lot of Lots In the rg district. I'm not sure. I haven't really looked at rbc very carefully that in rg a lot of lots including Lots of you know people who are on the town council Um are undersized um, the requirement is that you have 12,000 square feet of lot area and 100 feet of frontage in the rg zoning district I think um Steve schreiber's lot is smaller in lot area and smaller in frontage And he's recognized that facts and and there are other lots in the rg district that are also non conforming in that way. There are also lots there that have like You know 190 feet of frontage But they can't be divided into two because they don't have 200 feet of frontage So the idea here is look at the dimensions That are required in the rg district and think about how they could be modified to allow more Development to occur there more infill to occur and I think You know if done properly if it's got design guidelines and it's You know a decent looking building that fits in with the character of the neighborhood people might be amenable to that so So that's what that's about Lowing bearing barriers to development of duplexes and triplexes That is connected with this thing that I talked about before Work with the council to begin a conversation on housing types. So Do we want to allow duplexes and triplexes in more areas that are currently allowed? We don't even have a Unit or a use that is called a triplex. We have Single family. We have duplexes and then we have apartments or townhouses Apartments in townhouses can have three units But it's not specifically spelled out. So the idea is maybe We would like to allow triplexes in Other zoning districts like perhaps rn rn is kind of a typical single family Zoning district. I live in the rn district and it's almost all single family houses But should we if we need more housing should we allow? duplexes and triplexes to exist in the rn and perhaps some other Residential districts as well. And I think the idea here is that they would be owner occupied We currently allow owner occupied duplexes in the rg zoning district With a site plan review and should we also allow that to occur in other zoning districts People would be reluctant to have these be Investor houses where there's an absentee landlord for obvious reasons but If you have an owner who lives there and is you know Carefully monitoring what goes on in the other units. Maybe it's a good idea The next one is frontage regulations for residential zones So that relates to the dimensional regulations in the rg and rvc, which we've already talked about The next one is look at appropriateness of the use table for our for vc village centers And this is something that darky pam has brought up a number of times, which is that well you allow Residences to be more densely packed in the residential village center Zoning district, but you don't allow any Services there you allow them in the bvc the business village center, but you don't allow them in rvc So should we consider allowing some small? services to be located in rvc and Probably we should but we haven't really looked at it very carefully The next thing is transportation issues, which You know the planning board really doesn't have a lot to do with transportation You talk about it when applications come before you you talk about you know, whether there's bus service or whether there's bike Stands and how much parking there is and that kind of thing but It is something that the that the town council would like to look at in more depth and I'm not sure exactly how they're thinking of approaching this but They're asking for help from the planning department and planning board for any ideas that people might have to resolve some of our transportation issues and the last thing is That we have $40,000 that was appropriated back in 2013 And the purpose of that appropriation was to work on zoning In the downtown and what we then called the gateway area and the gateway area is the area between Kendrick park and UMass essentially it's the area along north pleasant street Where mercy house is and there are a number of fraternity houses there, but um So the money was appropriated for the zoning for that area and for downtown But we think we can use that money to work on form-based zoning related to downtown And people keep talking about form-based zoning and design guidelines So if we can use that $40,000 to get help with that issue just like north hampton is getting help from Dodson flinker associates on on their form-based zoning for Florence You know, we think that would be a good use of that money So that's my rundown on the things that we are being asked to work on well, uh, I must say chris it Your work, uh, I know janet or excuse me mandy The memos from mandy and and crc, but it has your Your imprint all over and and it's quite impressive this document. So You You've been doing a lot here. So Well, it's over the years the planning board and the planning department have been working on these things And it would be nice if some of them would come to pass Yeah, no, um, and I have to personally I have not Gone through it thoroughly but at this point should we have a Discussion to get others. Uh, I see andrew's hands up Thanks jack This I mean this memo you understood this memo is astounding like going through this Was really eye-opening and and helped me understand Exactly what we're trying to accomplish. So I I echo the kudos there. I was just curious what is the What is the product? For mark 15th is the idea that you would have new language Drafted for each of these so we'd have like formal language ready to to approve The idea is that we would present formal language and analysis and idea of impact to the town council and then they Take it and they say oh Yes, we think these might be good ideas now Here planning board go back and refine them and hear CRC go back and refine them or they say Go hold a public hearing. We're not sure what they're going to say. They want the the draft or the You know the written material and the backup and why we should do this and what the impact would be Given to them by March 15th. This may be more than we can Manage we hope that we'll be able to manage most of it but We'll see And I think starting on January 20th is when I I hoped to begin To introduce some of these things to you Okay, so and that was kind of my next question then so You will be as you are working through and making these these recommendations. You're going to share them with us get feedback from us Okay, yeah, love it. I mean, I think these are really Excellent topics to be tackling and I think really timely so Sounds great Thank you, Andrew Janet so I That was my question. I have a question similar to Andrews, which is About next steps and the process and who does what and so CRC is going to do a deeper impacts analysis They have this policy called community impact review and At the CRC meeting or not the last town council meeting but the one before that Many, joe haneke said that they didn't do that deeper analysis of like impacts on You know different parts of our community and so Um, that was my understanding that they're going to do a deeper analysis now that they have more specific items to focus on And then at the town council there was um, Lynn Gricemer had said there's going to be a very robust public process but there was no real specifications about it and so So and so I'm I was kind of wondering like what are the next steps and you know, who does what and you know You know getting CR CRC's more deeper analysis Were they just checking with different parts of the community and look at economic impacts or impacts on historical buildings or Different neighborhoods and economic levels and things like that Um, so I just I kind of trying to figure out what the next steps and what we do Um, I also think it's great to look at this whole list together because you know As I kind of have pointed out is if we did a few of things on this list The bl would have a footnote on every dimension and so then You know, what does that look like and so I think that what we could bring to the or the planning department planning board Is kind of like looking at how all these things work together or kind of, you know Work off other parts of the bylaw And to figure out like what will buildings look like in the bl You know, if these changes are made or what would you know, if there's no maximum lot coverage In rn like how big can the building get or how much lot coverage could there be And what does that look like on a specific lot and then what does it look like over time? and um, so that kind of analysis I think You know is kind of what we could bring to the table since we're more familiar with the bylaw and Um, could do some of those CAD designs and things like that Um, so that that was one idea. Um, but you know, so These are a lot of changes and they're going to kind of work off each other But are we going to be doing that? At you know, every planning board meeting spending an hour or two on that or are we going to add meetings because it looks like a pretty heavy lift but to do so Those are all great questions, and I don't think that I have answers for them tonight Also a schedule look Chris with regard to upcoming you know I mean it doesn't I haven't heard you mention too many Large items coming our way in the next month or two, but I am not aware of of Applications coming our way, but I know people have been working on things out there in the hinterlands and So I expect that there will be applications, especially as we start to come out of covet and out of this winter of you know stress So I think we're going to have to be working on these things alongside Working on our normal applications and things things that come to us like amherst hills and you know It's going to be a lot of work. I acknowledge that We've been asked to do this so you know, I'm willing to jump in with both feet, but There may be a limit, you know, and we may not be able to get all these things to town council by the 15th of March, which is only what One two two months and one week away I think when they originally set the date of March 15th, we were back in December It was December 16th or 21st And then, you know, it was kind of three months till March, but now it's only Two months and a little bit too much. So it's a heavy lift And there's a lot to do and I acknowledge what Janet said about A lot of the analysis that It needs to be done whether we do all of that or whether CRC does some of that That has yet to be seen I don't think that's been completely worked out. We certainly would do our normal Type of analysis like we did the last time the BL district came up It did come up as a proposal before town meeting and I think it was the spring of 2016 But we hadn't had time to study it well enough. So we pulled it pull it back But we have a lot of material to describe what it's all about and some of these other things we have Material as well. So not all of them are starting from scratch Many of them, you know, we do have Starting documents, but it is it is a lot of work to do. Yep Can I can I also um, I know that I think we were talking about this last spring. I can't remember But you know, we have a lot of people really interested in zoning in Amherst and I think that's true everywhere you go and um So is how do we you know one role we could do is making sure the public is informed on what is being worked on and getting sort of input from them and I think Christine Gray Mullins Maria you have to actually help me because I think we were talking about this in the zoning subcommittee about putting like On the web page what we're working on is am I making this up or I can't remember Christine Gray Mullins was talking about like making the our web page more interactive about what we're working on And this is a lot of stuff at once and I know we had a you know The town council got a huge amount of comments of people And so I wonder if That could happen like we could activate a web page. I think you've done that for specific projects Um, but a way that people know what the planning board is working on or the crc is working on And they have a way to post comments or send input I mean, I hate to add to the workload, but I remember we were talking about this I think in zoning subcommittee maybe at the planning board. I can't remember Maria, do you remember this or Um, maybe I should ask Christine Gray Mullins because she was very excited by the idea I think it's when we were talking about master plan update About a way to involve the public It was specifically about the master plan. That's it. Okay We may be able to do something like that. We may be able to put some kind of a comment Um section on our On our web page. I am not that familiar with how the web page works Pam is the web guru in the planning department Um And also Nate and Nate is on this call. I think but um, anyway, we can talk about that and Potentially come up with a way of working it out. We do post our packets So people have access to what it is we're working on How to draw attention to that is another question And So we can we can talk about that planning department staff meetings. We have staff meetings every Tuesday morning. So That's something that we can Think about and think about how we could make that work All right, we got I think Doug had his hand up for a while now Doug Yeah, um I guess I I just kind of wanted to say that I viewed the vote of town council on Monday Not necessarily that they were endorsing all of these items But in a more neutral sense that they were supporting Uh planning department and crc Taking a close look at them and coming back with an analysis of what each one Would would result in So that in a sense it's sort of calling the question On all these ideas that have been bouncing around for years In the planning board and some of which that are in the planning department and some of which that came out of various consultant reports And have never really kind of come to a vote So this was a way for CRC to recommend that we Finally just take a good look at them Bang them into shape that seems like the best shape we can make And then give them to town council to either vote up or vote down And then we can all move on Having learned Some of the politics about each one and where the town council stands on it So I am I'm delighted that these are finally getting this kind of examination Um, I hope that the analysis that chris and nate and the rest of the planning Staff do Whether it's nominally for planning board or crc. I think Our planning staff is going to do most of the work I hope that there is a fair amount of Graphic analysis that Illustrates the implications Um, you know chris the the memo that you did back in 2016 Which it was really, you know, it's very illuminated but You never really get a picture of You know, here's the size of the building on a parcel that you end up with as opposed to the sort of dry numbers of setbacks and heights and theoretical units So i'm hoping that there is Some some graphic sketches that that describe massing and That's kind of thing in relation to parcel boundaries So i'll stop there. It's good. We have some good people here in the department who can do that Thank you, Doug. I'm rhea Yeah, I I agree with what Doug was just saying when I you know read sort of the What is this called? sample response from lin where This vote is literally just it's not adopting anything. It's literally just for study to begin an issuing study and I have to say I think maybe only jack you and I were around back when we still had town meeting or we were writing these Are these things called articles planning? board articles where we would have a recommendation a background and purpose the mechanics of Exactly what we would change in the bylaw the benefits the risks and the process of you know, how we voted as a planning board and This memo does the majority of that. I think exactly what's left is the analysis and um yeah, if you know if CRC feels like the zoning subcommittee If we bring in more members from the planning board to dive in if we can help divvy up the sort of study and analysis of this in any way. Um, I don't know if that happens with a joint meeting or if They go ahead and take first stabs at things. They're more passionate about but um, you know I'm literally looking at the supplemental dwelling unit Article that's already written. Um And I I actually had graphics for this already prepared So there's actually a lot of work like chris said that has already been done that we can just pull out from the past Years and um refine a little more to sort of I guess what we're doing instead of presenting to town meeting We're presenting to town council and then through those meetings public are able to come and attend and Um, you know put in their two cents or even on websites. I think you know a lot of people email and put comments down so There's a lot of opportunity for um input and so I I yeah, I'd love to know how Literally the next steps of uh, you know, the CRC wants to handle these first three months priority items whether it makes sense to Try to reconfigure the zoning subcommittee with um either new members Or people who anyone who's interested in the playing board. Um, I know it's a subcommittee of the playing board so we're not supposed to bring members from the public but um Like Janet said, there are a lot of people out there with a lot of really good historical knowledge and zoning. Um Passion about zoning strangely, so I don't know if there's a way to you know, just pull on people as different topics come up maybe that are more um, they're more familiar with or they can help out with more but um Yeah, I feel like this is exactly what I've been waiting for for three years now is um, you know, what should be study And so I really appreciate this and um, I don't know if maybe Uh at the next planning board meeting if um CRC members can come and are ready to just You know, literally say what next steps are which items they are going to sort of start on what you said, Chris January 20th And work with the planning department on and whether the zoning subcommittee or planning board can take on any of the particular items as well So, uh, Chris, you have your hand up, but I'm wondering, you know, maybe should we schedule the the joint meeting with CRC? Or not the 20th, but the the meeting after As we we've got a meeting with um the town council on the 20th um, and you're Gentlemen from uh pvpc dug hall. Yes going to come and present information about Recovering the economy from the COVID-19 Problems So we've got that going on on the choice. I think the meeting after that Uh, you know have the joint meeting with CRC. Is that is that too soon or February 3rd joint, yeah Yeah, we could do that To discuss these um issues that are be that are yes, and we'll have time next meeting To further discuss this and then um And I like um, if I can speak Yes, I like no, I recognize you I like maria's idea of bringing the zoning subcommittee back together and that ties into what janet was saying about Studying the bl district and having some understanding of what's going on with the bl district. So I think this could really work well if janet maria were still willing to serve on the zoning subcommittee and I would Be there to help them and then maybe some other Planning board member might want to join you don't have to have another planning board member, but um, you could And we would post meetings and just you know talk about these things and work on these things So those were like we they were previously like on a tuesday They had been um initially they were on the same night as planning board Only earlier, but then that got into being like, you know, seven hours of meetings and yeah Exhausting, so we switched it to tuesday And perhaps that would be a good time to do it I think that that's a good idea to Kind of We kind of have a mission now Also, we I think we were posting as joint planning board zoning subcommittee meetings because sometimes there were more than three members Yeah, so because I think I think it'd be great to have more people on So should I be in touch with janet and maria about appropriate time For these meetings and is there anybody else who might like to join us I mean, I'm I'm sure you know a lot of us would like to try to be there and then Is it an issue if there's a quorum? Doug has his hand up. Yes, Doug We add dug to the mix Yeah, I just raised my hand because I think I'd probably want to join that subcommittee I had a separate comment, which I'll give whenever we're Ready Okay That sounds great. Doug. Thank you um Andrew Yeah, I'd also be interested in participating that I'll schedule our next meeting for our first meeting for next tuesday Okay um and tom Yeah, I was going to say that I'm willing to to participate in that in whatever capacity is needed as well. So Um, I'm happy to jump on and work through that So so what uh chris will happens if you know, we have a quorum At a zoning subcommittee. Well, that's what um someone was at janet It was just saying if we post them as joint planning board and zoning subcommittee meetings then it's okay if Planning board shows up. Okay. Pam would have to Help me to schedule these as zoom meetings, but then um She could She wouldn't necessarily have to stay through the whole thing. Um, I would probably need help in sharing screens and sharing graphics and things like that because I'm not as good at that as panace, but Um, other people could could help Maria is probably really good at that. Maybe janet is too and So anyway, nice. This is great. Um, Doug You know, I was just going to say it's it's my assumption that if Whatever came to council by march 15th that would Anything that they endorsed that would be the beginning of Entering the flow chart that was done back in the fall. Yeah Uh, where you know, it it comes down to planning board planning board has a public hearing CRC has their public hearing. Maybe they're joint. Maybe they're not but At that point at the beginning of the flow chart. That's where There are several opportunities for public Uh You know public input on the proposals That's correct. Um, so I guess I'm not really clear whether between now and march 15th other than The opportunities that are in our regular planning meetings planning board meetings Whether we need to be scheduling other opportunities for public input I think that's going to be A challenge, especially if we're having zoning subcommittee meetings too But the public would be welcome to come to zoning subcommittee meetings as attendees and then, you know Whoever is the chair of that zoning subcommittee? I think maria is the chair of the zoning subcommittee Um, and then she could choose to recognize people or not depending on what we're talking about But that would be a and and even you know after we go through the flow chart Some items could be rejected by town council based on the public input And then get resurrected and Changed in some way to make them more palatable With another with another round Yep, so I yeah, I guess I I'm kind of hoping I kind of hoped that was your answer So that we could work In a focused way between now and march 15th Without a lot of public input not to exclude it But with the assurance that there will be A number of opportunities for public input After we've got something We endorse To recommend to council Yeah, I I I agreed to I mean it's just sort of like, you know, we're like we're in a consulting mode We got to do our work and then it We'll be getting input. I think via the the process that is in place, but Janet so I think um I think that The people would feel like It was kind of already the answer has already been chosen and baked if we waited till later But I also think we could get around The issue if we had this website and so we could just be Here are these, you know, the five things we're looking at or I guess there's 12 And, you know, we can just say, you know, meeting on this send your comments in, you know One thing I've learned since I've moved to amorous is that there's an astonishing amount of people who are like retired planners And um, you know, I feel like every, you know, so there's, you know, so you know, and then, you know To get input from people and I think um, it's one thing to have people to come to a meeting I don't know how we do a zoom zoning subcommittee But um, I think that I wouldn't want to lose the input from the public During this next few months because, you know, people are going to feel like I think christine, you said yourself It's like if we get rid of single family zoning in echo hill echo hill is going to people are going to really react to that I think it'd be best to Get that idea early hear people's reactions and do the fine tuning and come to town council with a good proposal You know, um, we don't really have single family zoning in any district if you can fit your adu in And people don't know that so that could be you know, someone saying that and maybe someone types back and said hey Check out this thing because you know, and I'd be happy to work on that because I just think there's a lot of good ideas and good input and we don't want to go too far with something That is going to be the buzz saw You know, because it doesn't help anybody on and stuff So I think if we did this sort of more interactive website where people go to and know what's going on Having them look for a packet like even I have trouble finding out what's in our packet at times and stuff like that So I think that's too much and I you know, we have a you know, probably You know 80 people were you know Wanted more time to give input and know more about these things and so Let's bring them into the process as you know kind of colleagues and stuff like that You know, so I would I would think the website might help You know, create a good way of interaction without taking up a huge amount of time So So Janet, I uh, just a comment about a lot of people that are planners in town. I I I question that um I'm not a planner But I think a lot of people become Um acquainted with it and and and and just by learning uh, no enough to be dangerous sort of thing Uh, I would say that there is an enormous amount of retired academics in town. Yes, that is a true statement. I think but I've run into so many retired planners Actually, so people are happy to help Yes, so do we need a vote for the the reconstitution of the zoning subcommittee or I think that's just I think we're just waking up Make it up waking up, but you could um take a vote to a point Who tom and andrew and dug To the zoning subcommittee if you wanted to that seems reasonable. I mean you've got you've already got maria and yeah They were voted in you know a year ago Okay, um, but you might want to take a vote to nominate tom and andrew and dug to okay Um a motion for that, please I also see maria's hand and tom's hand I moved to nominate maria tom long dug marshal and Who is the third sorry andrew andrew mcdougal all to the zoning subcommittee Any seconds I will Jack second, okay Any discussion We can do a roll call Um tom long has his hand. Oh tom. Sorry Tom tom we can't hear you you're on mute Thank you. Sorry. I had a question and comment more for um maria and janet and maybe chris is the size of the committee An issue for you in terms of being productive What I don't want is for all of us to jump on this committee and make it harder for you to do your work um, I'd like for it to be something that you're Able to divvy out more work and therefore spread the burden across more people But um, I've also been on committees where the bigger they get the harder it is to To manage and work so you two being um already appointed. I'd be interested in your Insider feedback on how how many people you think is reasonable To work with and whether it's problematic to nominate these additional people. That's all so maria yeah, so Um, I was gonna actually comment on a previous question about how public can be involved and what we normally did for the zoning We figure out the agenda, you know, once we know what the priorities are that we're working on We post that and a lot of people come out of the woodwork because they see something They're passionate about like inclusionary zoning like we had 12 people in the room once and then some other mixed-use buildings and two people who have been You know on select board in the past showed up So a lot of people will come if they see an item they are interested in on the agenda So i'm not sure we necessarily need the extra web page idea right now, but we could see how that works as far as members um The more the merrier it didn't feel like it was like we were just talking in circles We were literally, you know, we had agenda items. We would say right. Um, we're studying supplemental dwelling units um And we've discussed a little bit as far as like impacts and ideas for how we can Make changes and then we would just literally volunteer someone would say i'll write a report or i'll Come up with some data or i'll do a little research on what an adjacent town is doing So it's great because we can divvy up, you know And it's not like next meeting you have an answer We just keep you know meeting after meeting sort of turning through the research for the particular items And it really helps to have more people because it's you know more opposing There's more devils advocates kind of way. So we're really testing the ideas, you know in real time So it's a real working group. It's not one where we're just sort of you know filling the air with more and more words We're literally uh, we came up with quite a few reports and I have to say The previous zoning subcommittee was notorious for that. They actually wrote a lot of the articles themselves and um Not the previous one previous to me Did that not the one I was in for the last three years. So Um, we'll rely a lot on the planning staff to help us, you know make it You know the clear and logical But we do rely on the members to actually do a lot of the homework and help out on research So that's not all the staff to do I hope that is true chris that you didn't feel like you guys were doing most of the work and we just showed up No, no, no, no. Well, also maybe what we do is like assign people like okay You handle these two ideas and collect information and present them and people could send you and you know what I mean? Like we can you know and and then they you know You can have like your two pet zoning bylaw changes and work, you know carry them through or something Right, right. Yeah, like I I carried like you had inclusionary zoning gen. I had the missing middle and I think David levin seen had Mixed use building so everyone just sort of picked something that we're really interested in And just went with it and we would talk about it in detail every week or every other week So in terms of the flow there, it's fine. You don't have to come to every meeting. It's just you know, everyone's working and busy So There is no like we're not holding you to you know have this done by next meeting. It was really like a working group Also zoom can take notes for us Okay, yeah It can give a transcript It's not a So maria, do you feel like there needs to be like limits in terms of you know in terms of The you know public input there like a three-minute thing Yeah Yeah, well as the chair I would call on people to speak so it wasn't like I mean there were times where I Couldn't control it. You know like marianne adams was there and she's very you know She's got long-winded points, but she made her points and so I did have to do a lot of wrangling But um, it's much more informal than the planning board meetings. I have to say I feel like playing border Like one at a time and always speak in in turn with zoom it Maybe we unmute the members, but the attendees are muted and then I can call on them one at a time, but that really we're not I'm not calling on the other members to speak or just sort of Just all talking, you know, okay It's a it's a funner environment. I have to say I mean not that this isn't fun Doug you had your hand up you're good though or Well, I I I was just gonna say to maria She mentioned the format of the reports that were done that Listed the proposal the implications the pros the cons or whatever And I've never seen one of those so at least those of us who are interested in joining that subcommittee Or I guess now that we've been officially voted on to it now those of us that are on the committee Uh, if you could just send us or maybe through chris Uh, so we don't run a foul of open meeting law. We still got to vote. We still got to vote for melody Well, anyway, if you could send us one of the a couple of those reports just to So we see kind of what the product was that sounded like an interesting and useful model for a template. Yep, sure So I do see a hand up in the in the public there, uh, the attendees and that's what p.m. Rooney sharing hold on Hi, good night Hi I'm very very glad to hear you all talking about the details that you're working on because Finally getting into the details Uh, you began to see why there are a number of folks that were quite concerned in the community When some of these changes are discussed, so I'm really delighted that you're starting to look at them holistically um I'm I'm also happy to hear that there is Not an expectation that you all are going to be developing or the staff is going to be developing. Um Zoning amendments for the town council to vote on on mark around march 4 15 I'm hearing from some of you say well, that's the beginning of the public process Then the town council will decide if they want us to explore them further That was definitely not my my understanding. I I was hearing them say we really want Things back on our desk for voting. So I would be I would be I would appreciate some clarification of the true process and public involvement So even, you know thinking about How much of the work Will end up on pristine restrooms and the planning staff death I guess I looked to the planning board. I would I would charge the planning board to be the arbiters of zoning uh I feel like you will be the ones that need to weigh the priorities and the changes not just the mechanics of each thing But really how they support the master plan goals So clearly the CRC felt that the Priorities that they laid out support very much housing and housing diversity goals But I want to remind us all that there are other master plan goals that were not quoted by the crc And those are that that we are we should create design standards that ensure new development Is in accordance with existing neighborhood character And also guiding new housing growth so as to minimize impact on emmer small town character So I think that really plays to the planning board strength of Be able to see that big picture and again not just to look at the mechanics of each of each article um I think the the other topic that came up tonight, which is for you are I would say, you know I would I would encourage you I'd urge you to think of these things Um comprehensively the footnote a the footnote b in combination Is a very different b than just footnote a or b so I look forward to the zoning subcommittee conversation and perhaps I can help for I can anyway. Thank you and I'm really glad you're delving into the details Thank you. I don't see any other comments from the public. So let's just do this vote quickly With regard to the three new members Tom Andrew and Doug Maria Yes Tom Hi Andrew Hi Doug Hi Janet Hi Johanna Hi And myself I um, I think We can move on chris uh Yeah, you concur Yep, I do Okay, so uh now Uh, the next one is this zoning particular zoning bylaw there Um review criteria criteria and design guidelines section 11.2417 regarding minimizing intrusion of lighting review and discussion And uh, I suppose jannah you would want to You know, can I'm happy to move that to a next meeting And that'd be wonderful. I know I know because I'm actually kind of tired after my Emotional trauma of this afternoon. Yeah, I think they're taking them the electoral College vote is going on right now Yeah, maybe I could do is write up my notes in a more comprehensive way And send it out and then we could talk about it. Yeah, I don't have any paper on it I know there are some emails, but yeah, I could I can I can put that together and then We'll just do it like at next meeting or something. So and I think a little earlier So we don't get kicked off again, but I do think we have other stuff and so yeah, that'd be great. Thank you So chris you take note of that Okay Topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting for old business. I have no topics. Nope Um, I I'm wondering we did bring up a few things. I I hate to prolong the meeting But just hit these really quick. Uh, the the thing with bruce karson rithigar to the Yeah, owner occupied thing. Whatever happened. Did that did we resolve that or What happened there? No, we haven't resolved it. That's another Um zoning amendment that you could consider working on we have We have like Three tracks of zoning amendments that we're working on we have the track that is the crc What the crc voted on and presented to you We have the track that the building commissioner is working on which is a more comprehensive recodification and fixing of problems and then we have all of these things that The planning department knows we have to work on among which are What you just mentioned jack but included in that is flood maps and xyz things So three tracks what we've been focusing on tonight is the crc track The bruce karson thing I would put into the planning department list of things that need to be worked on And we're probably not going to get to that Soon but we will get to it eventually Did sounds like a nice matrix you could make up in that regard And you could put it on the website Mr. Marshall is really good at that It's a high opportunity to manage our website and then um, and the I don't know if this is old business. Oh spring street. We're just kind of I don't know if you ever About to rob more about what's going on with that development So I know here's what I know. I know that Archipelago and the contractors seem to have parted ways That's one thing I've been I have I don't know if I've pulled that out of the air or what but I heard that somewhere um, second thing is jenice barbaret wrote um a memo to the town council with regard to something that they were talking about and she Mentioned that she thinks archipelago has been bought out by a different entity Which may be a large a much larger entity So I think archipelago is in transition right now I think they're interested in doing work in amherst, but they may be part of a larger organization going forward and So I'm sure that that organization is going to help them figure out What they're going to do with spring street. I don't have any inside information except those things that I just said okay Speaking archipelago that they I I saw something where the sorority building next to Hmm, what's the bill? What's the development right next door? Yeah, Olympia Olympia place They bought the sorority building there and I think they have some idea of Doing something similar to Olympia place, but I haven't seen any Plans I haven't spoken with them about that. I just kind of know about that by osmosis because Information floats around here and I pick it up And the other thing is just that what the master plan implementation committee is this kind of We need to put that On the on hold while we do these zoning priority Things I would think Well master plan implementation committee has never been formed Oh, Doug and I worked on Pulling out the master plan matrix and I still have work to do on that Okay, I think that Doug and I and and you all Decided that that was probably not a high priority at this point. Okay Filling out that matrix that that could wait In fact Doug. I think said maybe we report, you know Every few months or every six months. I don't remember exactly what he said, but his suggestion made sense to me that that wasn't something that We needed to spend a lot of time on now although we've done a lot of work on it I need to go back and fill in some things that I haven't filled in But the planning board probably won't revisit it for a while. Okay. I there's just you know, those are just a few things that come underneath the old business category that we're bouncing around in my head Okay, uh new business we have the comprehensive housing policy um That crc provided Looks like it's pretty much borrows from john hornick's earlier Affordable housing Uh document it's it's it's a good one. It's a you know something that we have to Discuss and I just don't know that we have the bandwidth right now if we have, you know, two months to go through these uh You know the zoning Issues that we've discussed but we we wanted to so we're just kind of introducing it. I understand chris. I mean you take this I Here's what I think um the the crc is working on this and they have Worked on pieces of it and I've given you their latest version, which I think is dated sometime in December is that right? And they're going to continue to work on it so people who are interested in this Can tune in to crc meetings And I will keep asking mandy joe to send me their latest version but You can I don't think I sent the latest version to you until the last few days like maybe I sent it On monday, so you probably haven't had time to really read it so we can put it back on the agenda for The 20th or the 3rd of february or something like that Perhaps crc will have done more work on it by then but by then you may have time to Absorb what they've done to date Yeah, and I think we decided we're just going to provide individual comments to crc versus I mean we'll discuss it but We were not going to but provide a uniform planning board You know recommendation it was just going to be more efficient just for each of the planning board members To provide comments as they saw fit To provide those to crc or to give them to me and then I will give them to you but we're but individually not not collectively as a You know uniform recommendations sort of thing. Yeah So everybody, you know, you're free to to look at that housing policy and and provide chris with your comments and And she will direct it to the crc I think janet had a comment about that Oh, i'm sorry janet So um the crc wanted like the planning board's input on the policy But I I was really unclear about when they wanted it From the meeting from like a few weeks ago But I do think it'd be great for people to make comments and I went and looked at the master plan section on housing and then also The housing market study which is filled with like intense data But the beginning of it is some really good summaries So I could send that out to people because it really talks it talks about something I think the policy mixes which is that the university is like the driver of housing demand and that the the market study and You know, it's like the housing policy doesn't talk about the demand created by university And also doesn't really talk about the impact a few things They're sort of missing that are in the master plan and and things like that. So I I actually kind of Could send people like these sections just to read because I think it's a good background But um, I think I think they were looking for comments from the planning board But I wasn't in all these different boards, but I wasn't exactly sure when they wanted it. Yeah, I'm not either I'm not either So I think it's still a work in progress for them and they don't have a Complete picture yet and my impression was once they have it complete then they'll ask for comments, but Maybe they can use comments along the way too. Yeah, I can't remember how they came They were talking about all of that and I can't remember how it landed. So Yeah, so I as I was part of uh, they had the zba myself and uh, the the cpac So they had representatives from the the various committees boards that might have an interest in this and they and so it's it's on our plate, but Chris just let us know, you know, if you know of a timeline I haven't heard of a timeline. Okay So is there any other discussion that do you think we need? uh on this other than No, just please read it and send me your comments Okay So new business topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting for new business Nothing. I don't have any Okay I would say new one thing, uh, that uh, Doug Marshall uh presented was looking at our zoning and looking at existing our existing development and matching where there's non-compliance With the existing zoning versus what's built in it and uh, and he had a came across some examples Well, Doug once you explain it, but it you know, it graphically really illustrates how dysfunctional our zonings You know bylaws can be with regard to what we have Yeah, I I found somewhere on the web and I had found It might have been with the One of the metropolitan planning district websites of one of the organizations outside of Boston Had done a little brochure That was entitled Something like impossible neighborhoods illegal neighborhoods illegal neighborhoods So if you google illegal neighborhoods Massachusetts, you may you probably can find this right away or I can send you another link to it Um, but they did it but basically they were they took a number of very desirable pleasant walkable neighborhoods that existed in towns around Boston and Demonstrated that basically none of that development met the current zoning in those neighborhoods So it's kind of like people earlier mentioned steve schreiber's house Uh, and the fact that it couldn't be built today on the lot that he has because his lot is too small And I think the lot coverage and setbacks are probably illegal, too Um, it was it was a way so I had I had sent that link to chris and said um You know, it might be useful for Somebody on the planning staff if they had nothing else to do Uh an intern to do a similar analysis of some of our neighborhoods Uh, such as the street that that steve schreiber lives on if you wanted to start somewhere to to to sort of demonstrate that If we wanted to perpetuate that kind of street, we would need to change the zoning to allow it So that's That's what that was about. You know what I dug. I think I think someone this would be a great project For you mast dude as an intern with it as a gis study um, because I I know you're a bit you're you're loaded chris, but uh Let's let's let's think about that. Maybe we can get Have an intern do it because that's what it is. I mean, it's a it's a just a gis effort. So It's actually something we've been thinking of doing for a long time Yeah, in fact, we're thinking have been thinking for years of dividing the rg district into um into pieces Because the rg district on lincoln af is completely different from the rg district That is represented by cosby street and best in af and it's just the rg district is kind of a crazy amalgam of Giant houses on giant properties and tiny little houses on tiny lots that don't meet the zoning. So Sometime we should grapple with that and figure out rg1 rg2 rg3 and make sense of it all make Zoning that matches what's already there So illegal neighborhoods is the topic I think I have that I can send I think I can send that to you No And um jack mr. Long is trying to show you something. Oh, yes. Okay. What is it? CRC report is a chart that describes how All of the members of the council Um, all of their houses are too large for their lots Um, and it talks about how That on the zoning does not describe the character of the neighborhood. So it's essentially doing what you're talking about Yeah, one particular group of people. It's on page 19. I got it. Okay That's hilarious. It's interesting interesting to read and probably something that I think dug as you're pointing out What are the characteristics of the neighborhoods we want? and Maybe our zoning doesn't quite reflect that. I think this is one good example and there's maybe more So I think that is a really positive exercise to be explored Interesting. Thank you Um, so on to Um, miss mcgowan has her hand up as well. Sorry janet Okay, I just wanted to jump in and I was you know, if you've ever been to marble head You know how unbelievably beautiful that town is and it probably would not fit its current zoning And so I think that to me speaks really strongly to the need for really strong design guidelines like I think if it's looks really attractive You know, you might be less upset less concerned about how close to something is to the street or next to the house next door Or how much of the lot it takes up and things like that. And so I think you know I really think that the design standards need to be really part of increasing densification because If it looks good people aren't going to be at obsessed with upset with it And also the master plan says that like 15 or 20 Like strong design guidelines with increased density And I think we can get greater housing density if it looks good And then we have to contend with the issue of undergraduates and neighborhoods and kind of work on that too So I do really think that some of the most beautiful places like beacon hill in boston that you just kind of weep at And you love would never get built now and you know, but if you could recreate that good look like What is it see something florida seaside florida? You know very dense very close to the street and beautiful and people really want to live there So I think that that to me is really I mean I I would look to everybody and you know all the architects and people on the planning board to like If we make it look good and make sure it looks good people and it's not like a box somewhere I think people would be much happier about neighbors being a little houses being a little closer and Cottages in the backyard and stuff like that. So that's my pitch. I will Okay, thank you um on to the next section is uh Form a anr subdivision applications. I'm happy to report. We have no anr's tonight. Alrighty upcoming zba applications I'm happy to report. There is nothing new Oh And upcoming spp sprs scb applications so far. We don't have any upcoming No All right on to the planning board committee and lia zon reports findir vanney planning commission I have nothing on the cpa And i'm happy to report that we didn't meet and I have nothing either um Very good and dug on the ag commission Uh only to report that I am now officially a member of the ag commission You know having done all the paperwork with town hall And you changed your background now to like a museum thing versus your ag Oh, well, you know when uh when spring comes, maybe I'll get back outside Okay Jack can we go back to your pvpc report and would you like to say One or two sentences about mr. Hall and what he's okay. So yeah, so the Yeah, the presentation, um That will be provided. It's going to be a joint Meeting with well, it depends how many town counselors or they are If they have a quorum, it'll be a joint meeting But they're town council is invited to join us and this fellow dug hall who I think lives in amherst Is a real good data analysis and planner and so he did, you know Studies on the impact of coven and and all the trends and you know the closure of businesses And it kind of projected what ramifications there are Currently and then you know in the near future and what might be down the road and it was it was pretty Um, it was pretty eye-opening um And I just think it just gets you thinking about You know what's a downtown without you know without businesses You know that that have been shuttered because of this this the economic trauma Uh And I just I'm just hoping that you know we we can all collectively kind of get some insight From his presentation. It's solid. It's it's not too long And it can promote a little discussion afterward and You know that's that's pretty much yet Thanks And um the design review board tom No no updates this week Okay and then we have uh So a new subcommittee which word I talked about Uh report of the chair. I don't really have anything Report of staff happy new year Happy new year In adjourned at 9 20