 Okay, Mr. Marshall. My computer says 632. You do have a quorum. Amherst media is in the house. Your attendees are coming on in and I think you are good to go. All right, thanks, Pam. Welcome. Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of February 1, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst planning board, I am calling this meeting to order at 633. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media. Minutes are being taken. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022 and extended again by the state legislature on July 16 of 2022. This planning board meeting, including public hearings, will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting. Or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the Zoom link at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so, for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and return to mute. Bruce called him. Tom Long. Present. Andrew McDougal. Present. I, Doug Marshall, am present. Janet McGowan. Here. We know that Johanna Newman will be late, so we'll try to note the time that she arrives. Car in winter. Here. Thank you all. Members, if technical issues arise, we may need to pause to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to re-mute yourself. The general public. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Members can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. So the first item on our agenda this evening is a discussion of minutes and hopefully approval of the minutes and the minutes that we had in the packet this evening. For this evening are the minutes from our first meeting in January. I believe that was January 4th. So planning board members. Do you, does anyone have any comments on those minutes? And if not, I would be happy to entertain a motion to approve them as drafted. Janet, Bruce, your second for Janet. I was, I thought they were excellent and I was going to move that we accept the minutes. Okay. Bruce, you are muted. I will second that motion. All right, we have a motion on the floor and it's been seconded. I'll go to a vote. I'll ask one more time. Does anybody have any comments they want to make. All right, Andrew. Mine's super minor and I'm fine if we don't want to put it in, but there was a reference to the height of the Arbor Bites in there. That's 15 feet. And I think I was trying to remember whether they said they would actually keep them trimmed at a lower height, but it's, it's like 10 to 15 feet. I think there is like a difference in terms of appearance as you're coming down that, that, that road if it's, you know, one story or one and a half stories. So maybe we can just amend it to 10 to 15 feet and if somebody remembers whether there was a comment about it being trimmed. You know, we put that in, but it's not that big a deal to me. Okay. Chris. I think they said they were going to choose a species that didn't grow taller than 15 feet. That was my memory. No, that was mine as well. Okay, that's fair enough. All right. So does that part of the minutes need to be edited. I mean that species is like 10 to 15 feet. If you with, you know, we can put that in there, but again, okay, not going to fight for Chris, were you all right with that. Okay. All right. So, the folks who made the motion and seconded. Are you okay with that friendly amendment? Yes. Yes, I remember exactly as Andrew and I noted that when I was reading the minutes to but I like, let's go. It was 10 to 15 and they it's reported this 15. I didn't think it was critical, but I would prefer them lower. So 10 to 15 is good for me. Okay. Yes, I defer to other people's memories. Okay. All right, good. Then ready to vote. Bruce. I approve. And Tom approved. Andrew. I, Janet. I do not see Johanna yet. So she's absent. And Karen. Approve. And I'm going to prove as well. So that's six in favor and one absence. Great. So now we can go on to the second item on the agenda. It's now 640. And we will have public comment. Are there any members of the public that would like to make a comment? And just a reminder, these are, it should not be a comment about. The proposed zoning amendments that we're going to be discussing this evening. Mr. Marshall, would you like, how many minutes? Why don't we do three minutes? All right, I see Darcy Dumont had her hand up first. I'm going to go ahead and bring her over. Hello Darcy. If you could give us your name and your street address. And you have three minutes. Hi. Good evening. My name is Darcy Dumont. I live on pond view drive and Amherst. And my comment is just a general comment. The pond view drive is one of the few low to moderately priced neighborhoods left and Amherst. And for the time being, it's, it's still a gem. It's one of the most diverse neighborhoods in town in terms of being interracial. With families living here from a multitude of countries, getting to know each other as neighbors and sending their kids to school. I've been here since 1995 and my two kids went to school at Crocker farm and graduated from ARPS. My neighborhood is unique in that it was built in the late 60s and early 70s as so-called starter homes. But the, in fact, morphed into one where folks stayed until the late 60s. And we have a group on my street, which is fondly referred to as the grand doms of pond view drive, who've lived here since the 70s and brought their kids up together. Some of them living in the original, as original owners of their homes. Thus it's with great horror that the neighborhood is being threatened by developers and profiteers seeking to buy up. The neighborhood is now being sold to students. We're being bombarded by mailings and phone calls from outfits who offer to pay us cash for our homes. Not worry about even cleaning our homes out or whatever they think will convince us to sell. And this has now increased the number of homes in the neighborhood rented to students. I now have one next door and two others within view. The neighborhood and that it's simply subtracts from the number of families that participate in and care about the schools in the neighborhood. My experiences that rentals are maintained by landlords who can't see all the trash left next to the garbage cans and the mess left on the lawns after parties. Or when seven cars attempt to park off street overnight. The residents of those houses don't interact with their neighbors and don't contribute to the family neighborhood. Because they're usually there for no longer than one or two years at the most. And there's no enforcement that I can see of the four person per home rule. Our priority in my opinion should be retaining our existing low to moderate price single family neighborhoods for Amherst families, including those who are looking to become first time homeowners and for our own town staff. If we don't, we'll lose our precious, highly diverse family neighborhoods that are so special. And then so many love. Thank you. Thank you, Darcy. All right. And the second. Hand I see is from Ira Brick. You can bring Ira over. Ira, please give us your name and your street address. Hi, I'm Ira Brick to 55 strong street. If you knew that the majority of our community doesn't want what would happen if you remove the need for permitting on duplexes, triplexes and townhouses. Would you still so boldly make such hugely consequential changes in our zoning. If you knew that the deregulation would open precarious flood gates. So many more neighborhoods becoming overwhelmed with student rental housing. So many more owner occupied homes becoming student rentals. So many more UMass faculty and staff families retirees professionals unable to attain housing in Amherst. Would you still make that risky decision. If you knew that there was no end of demand for housing in Amherst and that our delicate and deteriorating roads and infrastructure. As well as our strained public safety staff cannot afford the additional burden. Would you be so confident of the road you're taking us all down. Would you please consider doing more of what Amherst is doing less and less. Listen to the concerns and perspectives of the community where you live and not pursue a path with so many unknowns and unintended consequences. In conclusion, do not relax the requirements to get permits, have hearings and keep a butters informed. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Are there any more members of the public that would like to speak at this time. Okay. I don't see any. I think right of Brown now is when I usually read the names of the people who attend. As as attendees public come public attendees. So I see in addition to Darcy. And Ira, I see Elizabeth Veerling. Hilda Greenbaum. Gene Hardy. Jennifer Tau. Mandy Joe Hanneke. Mario de Pellis. Ham Rooney. Patricia D'Angeles. All right. And I think it was while Ira was reading that I saw. That Johanna has now joined us. So that was right about. 645. Looks like my. Max headroom. Having technical problems. Oh my goodness. You're back. Okay. Okay. Boy, that was pretty interesting. At least on my end, the video was pretty wild. Okay. So thank you. Johanna for joining us. All right. The time is 647 and we'll go to the third item on the agenda, which is the proposed zoning amendments. Mostly around article three. I think that's a pretty good one. Okay. So the second item is the reconverted dwellings. And we have Mandy Joe and Pat D'Angeles. Town counselors here to present. To us this evening. Welcome Mandy. Joe and. And Pat. All right. Thank you. Let me. There we go. participate as she is able today. So I will be doing most of the presentation. I'm going to share my screen so that you can see everything and bear with me. Okay, you should be able to see it now. Yes. Thank you for having us today for a further discussion and presentation on our proposed zoning revisions to duplex. We're going to be talking about sub dividable dwellings and sub dividable dwellings which isn't mentioned on this slide. We hope we can answer some questions and have a nice discussion today. As we mentioned last week, the defining principles and our goals in proposing these revisions include equity in housing, addressing the housing crisis, improving sustainability and creating more logic in our use table for housing. In equity and housing, we are aiming to eliminate exclusionary zoning policies in town. The exclusionary single family home zoning policy in towns we want more residential dwellings to be permitted through non hearing building commissioner building permit issuances. We want to treat owner occupied duplexes the same as single family homes. We want to address our housing crisis. We know that doing nothing doesn't address the housing crisis. I saw a, a statistic or a chart today when I was browsing the mass housing partnership website and their data town resources that showed that in the last decade or so we have basically built apartments that house five or more dwelling units on a site or single family homes. We have not built three family homes, we have not built four family homes and we have not built duplexes. We have a town that is full of single family homes, and five or more dwelling units on a parcel. And we are hoping to encourage the building of more than just those two types of dwelling units through these zoning changes. And so that's that as the goals as, as they are. Just a brief subject on a brief summary of the permitting types there are four permitting pathways in town one of which I wouldn't even describe as a pathway because it's a no. If on the use table it says no you can't build it in that zone. We're going to talk mainly about site plan review and special permits today, those both come with public hearings they both come with a butter notices. The difference mainly in them are whether special permits are discretionary and the site plan reviews are essentially a by right with limited ability to say no to the permit. I want us to think about as we go through this what what that difference means with a discretionary permit under special permit, it means that in that zoning district. We aren't sure whether that use that proposed use is appropriate in all places of that zoning district it may be appropriate in some, it may be suitable for some areas but it may not be suitable for other areas and therefore we want our permit granting authority to be able to say you know what it's not suitable where you've proposed it we're not going to grant it with a site plan review permitting pathway. We're not saying that that use is appropriate in all areas of that zoning district. And but but we want some input into building design citing things like that that you guys did last week as an example at the old hot pot zone. A yes is by right with just as long as you meet all of the conditions the building commissioner will issue a building permit. So this is a summary of the residential zones just to remind us what our zones mean. Our RG is our highest density zone and we go all the way down to a low density low density zone. What does high density mean what does low density mean low density in general is up to about five units per acre high density is about 17 units per acre medium density is about 10 units per acre. Do those zones match this. Yes. In fact they, they tend to fall into the medium and low density zones at all and this is based on our dimensional table that maxes out maxes maxes out our dwelling units per acre. And so we just want to keep that in mind that no matter what we permit in a zone for residential uses in these residential zones you can't have more than for example 10 dwelling units on an acre in the general dimensional table does not allow for more than that at its maximum. And in low density it doesn't allow more than four units per acre but in, in example, to start a building unit for dwelling unit in say the low density you need two acres to build the first one so in actuality to get to four, you need almost three acres of land. There's an issue with the RO and RLD because in the use table they're in the same category. And so when we talk about what how we want to what kind of permitting pathway we want. We need to think about how, while something may not be appropriate in the RLD zone at all. If we're not appropriate, even in some parts of the RO, we can't put a no in there, because then we're not allowed to put it in any of the RO, because they're in the same column. It's a quirk of our columns in the use table in section three, but that's how it is. Well, we went through this and we looked at stuff and we asked ourselves questions is a is a use appropriate in that zone, is it always appropriate in that zone should it always be appropriate in that zone, or is it only appropriate in some areas so those are some of the questions we were asking ourselves, and we came to the conclusion ourselves that most residential uses at least the ones we're talking about today are appropriate in most residential zones, and therefore should we have a use plan reviews, or even a yes depending on what they are. The other thing is that special permits are discretionary so they don't have to be granted, which means that builders are reluctant to come into Amherst and ask for them so we get less applications when there's a special permit required, and it provides an opportunity to a builder. It also drives up costs slightly more than a site plan review would because it takes longer to get through. I've included an example in here and I can talk more about that. If there are questions later, but if we're trying to lower housing costs if we're trying to create more housing. Our goal is to create pathways that speed up the permitting of that housing because the longer it takes to get a permit the more the house in the end is going to cost to either rent or purchase because of the costs that went into building it. And so, creating less costs on that front end to get to that occupancy permit will lower the costs of housing. So let's talk about what we're planning on doing. So with duplexes. This is what a duplex looks like these are all pictures from our town of duplexes. They are two dwelling units either vertically or horizontally side by side and they each have to have a separate entrance. So that's what we're talking about when we're talking about duplexes in the zoning districts that are in the business zoning district we're proposing one change to non owner occupied duplexes and that is moving it from special permit to site plan review. And that would then match the owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes permitting pathway in that business neighborhood district. And basically what we said was well if owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes are always appropriate and always suitable for the business neighborhood district. So as a non owner occupied duplex, it will still require a public hearing and all of that. And it actually max matches the mixed use building zoning, permitting pathway for that to in the residential zones. We are proposing a number of changes for owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes we are proposing to get to permit them under a yes. The only other residential, the only other yeses in the entire zoning bylaw right now are one family detached dwellings and conservation and forestry uses it was actually on that table about the different permitting pathways. There are very few straight out yeses in our zoning bylaw and one family attached dwelling is one of them and that is actually what we talk about when we talk about single family only zoning that is exclusionary that the only building you can build zone that does not require a public hearing is a single family home. Every other type of residential use is excluded from the privilege that a single family home has. And we are trying to create that privilege by adding owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes to the yes category. We believe that owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes should be treated very similarly to single family homes in this manner. We have actually tried to match particularly with owner occupied duplexes if you remember our ADU bylaw, and that we just passed that has accessory dwelling units as an accessory use requires just a building permit there are no public hearings anymore related to creating an ADU which is to dwelling units on a single property one of which must be owner occupied so we looked at that and said well that's essentially an owner had duplex although it might look differently. The uses basically the same so owner occupied duplexes should be yeses in our bylaw affordable duplexes have generally been treated the same as owner occupied duplexes so we made them a yes to where we are proposing to make them a yes. Non owner occupied duplexes again we believe they are suitable for all residential zones, but we want a little more control over them we want management plans we want other things we want a board to be looking at these to make sure that they are managed properly, and that they have all the, all the correct conditions. And so we're suggesting a site plan review, instead of a special permit, I will talk about those SPRs that are in parentheses later on duplex conditions. They would all what what we've put into the bylaw as a proposal is that they would all have to have an exterior footprint compatible with single family dwellings owner occupied an affordable duplexes would need a deed restriction. On that to to have that and that actually complies and is is similar to the adu bylaw that we just passed in the adu conditions that adus have to have a deed restriction so we've kept that in here for owner occupied duplexes we've put in no other conditions because we are trying to treat them as similarly to single family homes as possible, and single family homes have no other conditions in order to build other than complying with the bylaw. Affordable duplexes and non owner occupied duplexes would have very similar conditions to adus all of them, and potentially even more management plans, rental permitting compliance street numbering compliance dark skylighting decisions all of that would be required for both of them. And in addition to that for non owner occupied duplexes we've proposed a professional management requirement to try plexes. This is a new category in the bylaw so we'll be talking a little bit more expansively about where what we're proposing, but what is a triplex. We've proposed a definition since it would be a new use category it needs a definition of three dwelling units arranged vertically one above the other and two of those dwelling units must share an entrance at ground level. And that is our proposal for it. Right now that type of triplex is considered an apartment. We have not proposed a triplex to include three dwelling units side by side on a horizontal sort of attachment, because that's considered a town home right now, and we are planning on keeping that considered a town home. These pictures, by the way are of triplex is in Amherst. We need to talk about all the zoning districts because it's a new use category and so we are proposing that they not be allowed in the calm office park light industrial PRP and FPC zones that is income in in accordance with not just duplexes and single family homes but also apartments which are what they are considered right now. We are a business districts what I consider a business districts. Right now, they are all accepted in all business districts they're permitted under special permit, because they are considered apartments. We are actually proposing to not allow triplexes in the bgbl and bvc zone, because those are more businessy, and we want higher density in those zones and we want to preference mixed use buildings and retail in those zones. We are proposing a site plan review use permitting pathway in the bn district to match the owner occupied duplex and affordable duplex current pathways. The proposed non owner occupied duplex pathway and some of the other non and the mixed use building pathway that is currently there. In the residential districts in the RF we're proposing to know that matches pretty much every other use residential use in the RF district. Other districts were proposing site plan review this would match the non owner occupied duplex proposal that we have and and recognize that we believe that a triplex a three family dwelling is appropriate for all areas of these zoning districts. An example of how much land would be required if a triplex was built in each of these zones we've included in in here for example in our lowest density zone, you would need two and a half acres to put those three dwelling units on that piece of land. In our highest density zone or our G zone, you would need just over four tenths of an acre, and it fluctuates in between that in our RO zone you would need 1.25 acres. So, because we believe they are suitable in all areas, we are proposing site plan review. As you can see since they're considered apartments right now they're allowed to be built in the RBC by site plan review. The conditions basically mirror the conditions of non owner occupied duplexes that we've proposed the management plans multiple types of management plans you can see them here design guidelines. We have an ARP area and again exterior appearance and footprint compatible with single family dwellings. These match many of the adu requirements that don't even need a public hearing to build an adu and they match most of our require the conditions that we've put into the non owner occupied duplex requirements. Because this is a new use category this, we are proposing revisions to other sections of the zoning bylaw. If we add triplexes as a use category we are requesting that triplexes be added to the permitted uses for cluster developments planned unit residential developments open space developments and non conforming lots. Those are the summary of where the word and triplexes would be added to those sections. Townhouses. So this is three to 10 dwelling units per hour definition in the bylaw, and they each have to have a separate private entrance on the ground level again I've tried to pull pictures of what I believe our townhouses in town. It's, it's a hard to find under our under our GIS system anything actually permitted as a townhouse but I've tried to pull items that I believe are to give you an idea of what a townhouse might look like. In the business districts, we are proposing changes to all the business districts, but in two different directions. So right now townhouses are permitted. The pathway is a site plan review in the BG and a special permit in all the other business districts BLB VC and BN, we're proposing to switch those. We're proposing to go to special permit in the BG and site plan review and the BLB VC and BN. If you remember, a year, about two years ago now I believe for a year and a half ago. Council changed apartments from site plan review to special permit in the BG because we want to favor mixed use buildings and retail type developments and uses in our densest general business district and so we believe that a townhouse is since it is does not include any business uses in it should be discretionary in those in that district instead of by right because we want to a townhouse does not promote the business use in the business general district. It would match what we did with apartments to preference mixed use buildings over apartments and townhouses in the BLB VC and BN. We are proposing site plan review because we believe that townhouses one of our denser ways of putting residential uses in areas and in a way that creates a transitional area from a dense residential dense business to less dense residential should be referenced in business areas that are meant to be transitional or more neighborhood like, and therefore we believe that site plan review is the appropriate permitting pathway for these areas for townhouses which can have three to 10 units. In the RVC and RN districts, two different types of plans in the RVC and RG remember those are our medium to high medium high density areas were proposing site plan review again. These are supposed to be the areas of town that are closest to business closest to commercial closest to those types of uses that have a more. Higher residential use townhouses have that higher residential use they are we believe appropriate in all those areas up to that building that is up to 10 units per building. But in the RN zone. We are proposing a special permit, because we believe they are suitable in some of the RN zone. I'll talk about this more later but many of our apartment complexes are located in the RN zone it isn't it is a zone that is in a various sets of locations located near some village centers but also has a lot of apartment complexes and therefore a townhouse in those areas that are entirely appropriate, but in other areas of the RN zone it may not be appropriate and so there we go back to that needing a discretionary review where a permitting body can say you know what that townhouse house is not appropriate in that area but it is appropriate in a different part of the area. In the RO and RL district we're also proposing a special permit as the general permit again for the same reason. While a townhouse may not ever be appropriate in the RLD district we don't know you'd have to look at it, but there's one column for both RLD and RO. I can say that in parts of the RO district a townhouse type development may be appropriate, the know that is currently in the zoning bylaw is an inappropriate categorization and permit pathway, a special permit becomes the appropriate pathway. In a partial townhomes can be as low as three dwelling units and three dwelling units in the RO district may be entirely appropriate on a parcel of land, especially in a parcel that is close to a village center I've shown you one of the RO districts in that one of the areas of town that is included in the RO district that is essentially adjacent to a village center. Other parts of town that are in the RO district include Amherst Woods. And again there are parts of Amherst Woods in that area that it may be appropriate to build a three unit townhome or a four unit townhome. But if it's a no as it currently is now you can't do it. And so we believe a discretionary approval by the ZBA would be the appropriate pathway for townhouses in the RO RLD district for some references to sizes. You would need 4.25 acres in the RLD to build a 10 unit townhouse building, you would need two and a half acres to build a three unit townhouse building, and in the RO you'd need 1.25 acres to build a three unit townhouse building, just to give you some ideas of what type of lot sizes you need for the types under our dimensional table. The conditions were not proposing very many changes to the conditions that are currently in the bylaw. The only changes are at the request of the building commissioner who has asked that we replace the permit granting board or special permit granting authority with permit granting authority or building commissioner as applicable so that's all we've done for the townhouse conditions or all we're proposing converted dwellings. What are converted dwellings well they are a building that already exists that already has a residential unit in it that is going to be converted to house more residential units. And when that conversion happens there are already limits on how much new construction can happen with that. The fact that if you are creating a new dwelling unit that dwelling unit cannot be housed solely in new construction it must be housed, at least partially in a building that already exists. There are other conditions that are important to remember as we talk about converted dwellings, and they are that in the BGBL and BVC districts you cannot exceed six dwelling units for converted dwelling. And in all of our residential districts you cannot exceed for dwelling units in those districts when you are converting a building to a more dwelling units so keep that in mind as we talk about the permitting pathways. The goals of, you know, what do we achieve by this use category which is more of a building category I would say than a use category and it achieves the infill development we want from our master plan creating some density without new construction. It diversifies our housing types it can convert a single family home to a two family or three family or a four family in a residential area, creating potentially income diversity in neighborhoods and some types of lower cost housing potentially, and it's climate climate supportive. In the business areas of town we're proposing in the BL BVC and BN to allow converted dwellings by site plan review, we already allow them by site plan review in the BG, and our feeling is that if it's appropriate in, if it's appropriate to convert a dwelling to residential units in the BG that's supposed to be our commercial sort of zone for businesses and retail, then it's entirely appropriate and all the areas of BL BVC and BN to have a converted dwelling. And so the site plan review is the permitting pathway that should apply. Instead of special permit. In the two densest residential zones those nearest our business zones. We also believe that going up to a going to a site plan review is the appropriate pathway again you, you're limited to a max of four dwelling units. And these are supposed to be our most dense units dense areas of residential building, and therefore it. We believe that and we stand by the fact that we believe that for units is an entirely appropriate use in these most dense areas of our town in terms of what their stated density should be under the definitions in the zoning by law. Our own district were also proposing site plan review for these areas. And this is a district as I stated before that has Brittany manner it has the brook it has colonial village it has Alpine Commons it has puffed in village it has brandy wine. Despite the fact that, as you see on this use chart apartments technically aren't allowed. But this is a district that houses most of our apartment buildings. And so, if we're going to have a district that houses many of our apartment buildings in town. We should allow townhouses and converted dwellings to create those neighborhoods that aren't just apartment buildings or single family homes to create those neighborhoods that have income diversity that have housing choice diversity in terms of what type of housing you want to have and doing that by site plan review is is the best chance we have of creating that type of housing diversity. In the RO and RLD districts we're also proposing site plan review. Again, there's a max of four RO and RLD what do we have in these districts. We have Amherst Woods, we have Orchard Valley, we have Long Meadow Drive, we also have this district is also adjacent to some of our planned unit residential developments such as Pulpit Hill Road co housing and Applewood community. The maximum of four dwelling units allowed on a converted dwelling and remembering that this is a building that already exists. Adding that infill makes a lot of sense to us so we believe a site plan review is the appropriate permitting pathway. For conditions I'm not going to go through all of these I just want to touch on a few things here. The management plan and landscape plans were proposing deleting not because they're not necessary, but because those requirements are redundant, given the requirement we've added that all conditions for the closest eventual use apply. So as I stated before converted dwelling isn't really a use it's more of a building technique right you've already got a building there, and now you're going to potentially add more housing within that building. And so that building may go from a single family home to actually the equivalent of a duplex or meet the definition of a duplex when it's finished. It does it should have to comply with all of the conditions of duplexes. That makes sense to us it seems logical and so if it's going to be converted to say a duplex, either the ad you or the duplex conditions should apply. And if it's not going to be on our occupied the non owner occupied duplex conditions should apply. The conditions require management plans. If it's going to be before five or six units depending on where it is well then it's an apartment building, potentially a town home, but more likely considered an apartment building and all the apartment building conditions should be there. And if those are applied management plans are required and therefore restating that management plans are required is just duplicative and we're trying to eliminate that duplicativeness. We have the minimum open space requirements in the RL RO we've we've proposed to leading them not because they're not necessary, or a good thing but because given the dimensional requirements and our dimensional table that requires a maximum lot of storage that in those districts would require would result in open space that is well above the thousand square foot per unit that some of them are required under this. It, it's in that sense it becomes not necessary because our dimensional table already builds in those open space requirements so again, deleting repetitive and duplicative things that are covered other elsewhere in the bylaw. We're requiring public sewer connections for conversions resulting in four or more units to. So, what is that aquifer recharge protection district and all those parentheses in the use table. So, our aquifer recharge protect protection district is an overlay district in South Amherst that protects our Lawrence swamp aquifer and the water supply wells that are located within the Lawrence swamp portions of Amherst woods are in it portions of stagecoach stagecoach road holster odor in it portions of they wrote are in it I had split it up in two so you could see it a little better. At one time, there wasn't really sewer connections in these areas of town but now with Amherst woods having sewer been added to the Amherst woods area, we have areas of town that now have sewer connections and therefore are better able at buildings on those lots to be able to protect the Lawrence swap by being required to connect to sewer. So with that, we thought it was good to revisit that aquifer recharge protection protection district zoning for dwelling units. We are still proposing that townhouses not be allowed in those areas. They currently aren't allowed and we are proposing to keep that the same converted dwellings were proposing a special permit, because we need to make sure that the aquifer is protected and four or five or six. I'm not sure there's any business sections of that that could build a converted dwelling but if there are four or five or six. We need to make sure that they are connected to sewer, and we need that discretion to say you know even if you're connected to sewer even if this it's really not appropriate to be putting it so close to our aquifer. We're saying a site plan review is appropriate that those uses are not much more intense than a single family dwelling when thinking about protecting an aquifer by making sure that they're on sewer or making sure that the septic system is large enough right now. One family dwellings are allowed whether or not they're on sewer or septic. In fact, affordable duplexes are allowed by special permit in these areas. And so we're just proposing that that get moved to site plan review because we believe it can happen. I've highlighted here hostels that are allowed by special permit here just so you can understand how many beds a hostel is allowed to have that could go in this aquifer recharge district under special permit just to give you an idea of how triplexes duplexes and all relate to the hostile sort of bed count. Subdividable dwellings. I do not have much to say on this, because we are deleting it because the building commissioner recommended deleting it and so he knew we were making these proposals and said hey if you're going to do that. Could you please propose deleting subdividable dwellings it has only been used one time since it was enacted. And he made the recommendation so we followed his recommendation and have proposed deleting it. Thank you for now. If there are any questions we'd love to hear your questions feedback and concerns thank you so much for sitting through the length of that presentation. All right, thank you Mandy Joe and Pat. First I would just want to say this is, you know you've obviously spent a lot of time on this, and it's a bold proposal in the context of the town and the politics. Thank you for stirring the pot a bit. And I'm sure you already realized that there's all kinds of people that have comments on this. So my, I want to start by asking. A year ago we got the solar moratorium proposal from town council, and we, we, we deliberated about it without really proposing any changes we kind of did an up or down. You know, do we recommend it as received from town council or not. Can you still hear me. Okay, I'm seeing my video. Just going crazy all the time so I'm going to just turn that off for a while. But anyway, I guess my first question is, is it your. Will you be open to the planning board proposing changes to this and recommending it with changes, rather than limiting ourselves to an up or down on what you've given us. The short answer is yes, we would like to be involved in those discussions obviously. But yeah, we understand this is very bold, and that you guys are keepers of the master plan and have your own ideas and we definitely want to have a conversation with you where we may be open. We are open to potential changes. But we'd like to have that as a sort of a collaborative conversation more than just do this type thing, but yes. Okay, thank you. All right. So with that. I think the board. I'm assuming that Pat doesn't want to say anything at this point. We're trying to limit your energy tonight. So I'm going to go ahead and thank you for your time and also for being patient with me. Okay. All right, so why don't we go ahead and entertain questions and at least questions from the board, we might want to hold comments maybe later, but Andrew, why don't you start you've got your hand up. Thanks Doug. I'm going to hand it to you and Pat for this presentation I echo everything Doug said, I, I would just add this was like an incredibly logical approach to doing things like I really was impressed by by how that was sort of carried through in your proposal in terms of just the idea of residential uses should be allowed in residential areas, right, like, I think you did a great job of summarizing that. And I think on paper there's there's actually, I mean I've got some minor questions, but there's, there's not a lot actually that I, that I dispute or have concerns about in terms of the spirit of this but one of the things we talked about last week and I'd love to on is, how would you respond to folks who feel that, you know, these, these proposals might in sense more non on your owner occupied kind of investments. And then developing housing which, which ends up being scooped up at above market rents by, you know, people who are able to pay that most notably students. I think that's that's what I've been hearing from folks is that in spirit it's great in practice, it might actually not solve the problem might exacerbate a problem of having affordable housing for folks. We don't know what it'll do right in zoning is a is a goal right and our goal is to promote opportunities to build housing you'll notice that we did not include non on our occupied duplexes as the yes. We put that as a site plan review that was a specific choice that of the only things that would be an absolute yes without without public hearings would be owner occupied duplexes by deed restriction the same that we did with ad use recently that this board promoted and and supported and affordable duplexes which when we looked at the use table and when we looked at how we were treating them in our property by law were treated nearly identical to owner occupied uses. Those are things that could go just to the building inspector, and those would promote the things that we talk about wanting to promote housing opportunities for home ownership housing opportunities for low income individuals because those affordable duplexes would have a deed restriction to be on the affordable housing inventory of the state housing inventory. So that we're asking you the planning board to be the main permit granting authority and most of this stuff we believe you can do your job well, and that some of that may be able to potentially lower some housing costs we don't know the investors or any other builder or owner in town will do with these. I think that's the best I can do right now. We'll take your question and see if we can come up with some other answers and maybe some some information beyond that. Okay yeah I mean, I appreciate that I would say that it would be worth the research in the effort because I think that is maybe what what folks are wrestling with is just, is it actually going to do what we think it's going to do. And then I'll just close again with kind of how Doug led and I love the bold proposal. Incredibly logical I love what you're trying to do and you know I hope we continue these conversations. All right, thank you Andrew. Bruce looks like you got your hand up next. I think Karen had her hand up before me. Well, I yeah for a while she was up. Karen, would you like to go next. Okay. Thank you. Thank you manager. Thank you Pat. I've got a few comments but I'll hold those for the moment I see ducks gone. I'm not gone. The question that springs to mind for the moment. And it may be a question for Chris, but it could be either of you. Chris Christine Brescher, where we seem to be shifting a fair amount of work from the zoning board to the planning board, and because. I'm just wondering, just, has, has there been any consideration to whether this board is going to have its evenings extended even later, because we get loaded with a dose of, you know, a noticeable increase in, in workload. Is that so being a concern. Is that being thought about asked. You're you're asking me and Joe in terms of crafting this bylaw change. I'm asking Chris actually anybody who because as I see this there's a lot of work that's being shifted from the zoning board to the planning board. I mean, we meet, you know, three to four, well, in the, in the six months that I've been on like the only speak from that. I didn't know whether that's an answer but anyway it seems that we're already pretty busy. And my concern is, has this anybody know whether this is going to make a life miserable for the planning board. Chris, do you want to comment on that or Mandy Joe even, you know, I mean, certainly, it could make it worse. Chris, yeah, I see your hand. Well, I haven't really considered that question but I would say it is going to put more work on the planning board. And that would just have to be absorbed. And I've thought as I've been reviewing this proposal is that it doesn't have to come all at once. It could be phased and there may be aspects of it that you want to try first, and see how they work. And then if they work well, move on to the next phase and so that might give us a better sense of how much work is being transferred from the zoning board of appeals to the planning board, just a suggestion. Okay, Chris. I guess the other thing that occurred to me is if we were really concerned about that we could make some more things yeses, and they would just go straight to construction. Bruce, what. I'm going to keep them. Right. Just the way it is. It is. I'm not necessarily advocating that I'm just curious at this point. And I have another question, but I'll, I'll go ahead first you've got the floor. Okay, Karen. So this is such a thorough and a detailed proposal and I applaud you. I, it took me hours and hours and hours to study and I can just imagine the time it took you to formulate it and to, and I applaud the effort and the motivation. And I think this issue is so complex that I, it's a little bit what Chris said, I think we should go forward in small increments assessing each change, really separately, because each change has its own repercussions, and which we may not yet do. And I think it's important to listen to those that are going to be affected in each case, both the developers and the residents. So, you know, you can't get your head, there were certain elements that I thought, yes, that sounds really reasonable, but I do think that all those elements also have their own people and we're hearing more and the residents are very frustrated if those that are affected can't really weigh in on things. Now, so I propose that this has to be very incremental that's one of my biggest concerns and the other concern, because repercussions are things as the person Darcy said, it's very hard to assess ahead of time, who's going to take advantage of loosening of restrictions, and we are basically in danger of really losing a lot of residents and diversity, simply because we haven't got we haven't yet discussed safeguards that are going to be in place to protect us from the financial pressures of investors being able to milk student rentals, and just be able to get everybody out of the market in even a duplex you can have an occupied duplex developer or an investor from out of town will buy it at a price that nobody else can afford, and put a lot of students in that's that's a problem and I would like, I actually think we need to have a huge conversation. When it comes up again and again, you see it everywhere, you see neighborhoods that are be that are deteriorating so that the town is no longer the place that we want walkable bikeable liveable with little children that are going to fill our schools, because there's a lot of risk pressures. So I was think we really need to talk about safeguards. First, before we loosen a lot of restrictions so that we prevent that safeguards such as having a different property tax structure as they do in Cambridge for owner occupied or perhaps a limit on the amount of student rentals you can have in a block because it's not that students are bad but when they're in the majority they drive up out other people, not just financially, but just because the kind of litter the noise the kind of sort of just, you know, run down atmosphere that often comes, I would like to ask if any of you have gone on a Sunday morning through the neighborhood in Allen Street, and seen how disgusting it is it's a part of Lord litter beer bottles, and you can only imagine what it was like on Saturday night so any family with little children, they can afford to live there perhaps but they're not going to, and those safeguards are something that we need to talk about, I think first. Alright, thanks Karen. Tom. Thanks manager, I think I agree with a lot of what was said already so I'm not going to spend too much time on I do think this is really complex in the sense that there are a lot of variables here and I find it hard to be like to offer a thumbs up across the board. There's also a lot of other implications where if we want certain outcomes that simply changing something from an SP to an SPR is not going to actually get that result without some other changes in the bylaws. So I think there's other things that we need to be considered in this process. And then I think one of the other things that should should be studied is adjacencies and I know you've done some work on that where you know what's next to a village center etc. So when I look when I when I think about this on a map. Are we potentially creating large swasser zones that can become all 234 by family houses, because of certain kinds of adjacencies can are we creating a kind of tendency in certain zones to have more of than other, if we're not seeing it on a map, and we're just seeing certain zones I think certain areas of our town, lend themselves certain kinds of uses that we may or may not want versus other parts and so I'm not sure if this is just a straight up. RG versus RBC, I think there might actually be specific places where these are more appropriate and less appropriate and I think we need to see some adjacencies to know, or to see this in context to see this mapped out a little bit, whether there are examples, whether they're, you know, maps to show us what's changing here, you know, from one, one SP to SPR. So I guess that said, I don't necessarily have a specific problem as of yet, but I feel like there's still a lot of questions that I have about it, because I don't see all the facts and I don't see all the additional considerations that could actually make this work the way you want it to agree with the goals, and I agree with a lot of what's going on. I just don't necessarily see it all adding up just yet. So, this is my thoughts. Okay, thanks Tom. All right, I just, Janet. I am interested in everybody's comments and I agree with a lot of what people are saying. So, I just have, you know, I have a million questions about the specifics but I don't know that this is the meeting for it. But, you know, I think if the goal is to create moderate housing for moderate income people and families, or moderately, people with moderate incomes who don't have families, or create some, you know, places for people to have a multi unit house. I think it's going to be, I think there's, there's a bunch of issues to me is will that happen. And we're in a college town and I feel like this proposal sort of forgets that 70% or so of the people in our community are students. And there's a supercharged kind of student housing market that the prices are just, you know, be like astronomical what people are paying now. I mean it kind of beats Boston some of the new apartment buildings. We do see investors in, you know, neighborhoods like mine buying up houses. I see properties on the MLS as investors take note. And letting them convert those kind of properties to multi family housing. It's going to be multi student housing when people are paying 850 up to 1500 per, per bed, not necessarily even a bedroom. And so, you know, developers are maximizing their investment, and they're not looking to build a cheap duplex effect. In fact, I doubt any affordable duplexes I don't know if any have been built in the last bunch of years. There was a no hoe developer who bought a lot in a, you know, sort of a regular neighborhood and built to $600,000 condos that were in a duplex and sold them. So in that market, how do you get your goal. And I'd be interested in seeing like looking at other college towns that have managed to create space for sort of regular folk and I hear from UMass professors that they can't get faculty to come here because the housing is too expensive staff can't afford to live here. So I think the impacts of student housing will be greatest in the neighborhoods that are the most diverse in terms of ethnicity, income, you know, I know lots of the small kind of 60s housing developments in South Amherst have been turning. So North Amherst is, you know, that's all, you know, they're kind of gone and so I don't think we're protecting or helping the groups of people we want to. I think the expensive neighborhoods with kind of expensive housing are going to be the least likely to convert. And so I think that, you know, sometimes you want to treat everything the same, and it hasn't it has different impact in reality, as millions of years of civil rights law have showed us. So the other question I had is, and I asked this always with zoning changes. What was the purpose of this, you know, when we look at the, the use chart, and we look at the permitting pathways we look at the protections for how the designs will look and we look at the extra 1000 square feet per unit. Why did town meeting vote that why did the planning department vote, you know, support that. Why did the select board say yes and so what's the history behind that because surely the zoning Board of Appeals is doing something it was asked to do something for a reason. And I'd love to know those reasons and you know you could say well this is a random chart it's illogical, but it's really not people made decisions. Hundreds of people made this decision and they were. So I'd like to know the history of why why pick SP over SPR versus the building commissioner in these different types of housing. And then the other question I always ask is what does maximum build that look like. And so when you talk about 10 how townhouses being built on a property. You know, in RO or RLD or RN, people might consolidate lots and build 10 townhouses. We can wave height requirements we can add stories. What will that look like and what is the impact on the neighborhood in RO and RLD you're trying to protect sensitive lands wetlands, you know, natural areas farm lands. We're going to have 40 people living in 10 townhouses next to a farm because that's a lot of conflict in terms of use its noise. It's lights, it's going to have impacts on wildlife. So, you know, let's get some pictures of what this would look like in an RN, or an RLD or RO and think, Oh, that's what we want. And actually kind of what we asked this the zoning board of appeals to do. We're asked to do is to look at what someone's proposing. And I think both boards put a lot of time and effort into landscaping plans how it fits how it looks. So sometimes you might think this is crazy picky but we're trying to make it look better. I think the boards are really doing similar work and so I'm not quite sure why shifting from one board to the other is good. I definitely think dropping design guidelines and increasing density without a big conversation is not good. So, those are kind of like big, kind of big issues but I do have lots of questions about very specific things that I will spare us for right now. Thank you, Janet. Thank you, Bruce. I see your hand again. Yes, I had a lot of comments but I wasn't. But now we're into the commentary. The very first thing that crops up with me, many Joe and Pat is one of your stated goals is that this will help achieve affordability. And it really, my question to myself was, how does changing the bylaw in these ways contribute to increasing affordability. And, and, and, but I think I know the answer to that in that that is that it won't and it doesn't, because there's a saturated market here. And all of the concerns that have been expressed related to student doctor patients and their effect on neighborhoods and I see it too next to my daughter's house people parking on their lawns it's a real real problem. I, I see what you're doing I understand it makes sense to me in many ways, particularly the idea of turning the by right giving the by right requirement of possibilities to duplexes and affordable do under occupied and affordable duplexes. But it seems to me to achieve this goal of more affordable and more neighbor housing. The, this, this change, or these changes to the bylaw would need to be accompanied by some additional changes, or not even changes but newly enacted requirements along the lines that Karen was suggesting that will. I mean the idea of, if it's possible I suppose it is to increase the property tax payments for properties that are occupied by non family renters would seem to be a good idea because in order to keep the neighborhoods that grow. So I think we're going to need a lot more john Thompson's the, who I guess is the person that town hall who looks after the rental housing among other things. And, and john's already overwhelmed. I think we know that. And, and how do we pay for more. And, and well the answer from to my point of view is from my point of view is that the, the, the, the types of housing that are generating the need for the john Thompson should pay for the john Thompson so there should be some kind of supplementary additional or complimentary enactments here that would offset the problems or the unintended consequences but it would seem to me to be the obvious consequences of of some of these I don't think by right duplexes and affordable duplexes are, are in this category, but before you go down the charts through maybe some of this and then into townhouses in certain places, I think it's clear that there are going to be consequences that are that we should be paying attention to if we, if we move with this kind of expansion or change or easing of the permit. So the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Particularly in the non owner occupied categories here, I think we should be thinking of complimentary additional bylaws to safeguard against what would seem to me to be the obvious quote unquote unintended consequences. And I do like the idea of phased adoption because that would allow this to happen because some of this stuff would seem to be obvious or not obvious but worthy. So for example that in Pine Street co housing here where I live, where achieved a whole lot of duplexes by special permit 30 years ago. Every time we want to add to the building or do something and we do quite a lot because we're an industrious bunch of people here. We do trouble the zoning board, because once you've got a special permit, you're tied to it in certain ways, so by rights, permitting of duplexes would make my life a lot of our life here a lot easier and then we'll make the lives of the people who live in them so we can benefit really that that that attaches to making them by right so I'm, I'm supportive of the first couple of rows of this, absolutely. And then it gets a little more concerning as we go down in, and I think it needs to be complimented in the way I just mentioned. Thank you for the moment. Thank you. I do understand that this is a huge amount of work and, and then when you stick your head up and pop it through a hole, there's going to be people like me who think, oh, that's a good target for my rotten tomato so let's have a shot, and I really don't want to be like that but I do have these concerns and I think there, I am not alone here. All right, thanks Bruce. Mandy I see your hand you probably have wanted to respond maybe or comment on some of Bruce's comments. I would like to respond to some of the comments, particularly around the tax proposals and the inspector issue to sort of give the planning board an update on some of where that work where the council is doing some of that work for the last couple of years that the council has actually looked at that owner occupied exemption in the tax rate and has concluded that it would do more harm, but it would not. It would not achieve the goals people hope it would achieve when looking at what the tax assessors the assessors office produces for the council for that. It would increase by a large margin the taxes on non owner occupied parcels, including all of the apartment complexes, as well as everything else to a extent that the rents in all of those non owner occupied parcels would probably increase politically above the high rents they are now so that it would actually make it more unaffordable to rent in town than it already is, which would not necessarily accomplish a goal of creating more affordable housing so the council has actually declined to do that the last two years that's not to say it would not. That's not to say it will always make that same decision but the last couple of years it has declined to apply an owner occupied exemption to the tax, to the tax rate as for inspectors and all of those other issues related to quiet enjoyment around housing and neighborhoods. The Community Resources Committee has been working for the past year on redoing and revamping the rental registration bylaw. And it has recently added with a referral from the council the public, the nuisance house bylaw which we are renaming the public nuisance bylaw. Bylawing it is almost complete to refer back to the council for action and possible recommendation in a way that we hope as a CRC one of the goals is to address the issues regarding disruptions of quiet enjoyment and neighborhoods through the rental public nuisance bylaws, including the raising and charging of fees for the rental permitting process that would allow the increase in the number of inspectors in town in a way that would allow us to move from a solely urban inspection system to a more proactive inspection system so that work is ongoing so that's sort of a, I wanted to let the planning board know about that work because it's been mentioned a couple times here that the council is addressing that type of that that particular part of the issues we as a town have been having and is attempting to address some of that through the rental permitting bylaw and the work the CRC is doing with that bylaw. So I just wanted to mention some of that. Thank you. Thank you Mandy Joe. Next hand and by the way I see four board members with comment with hands raised so sounds like we'll have a good long conversation tonight. Janet you are next. I think, I think Tom was talking about this but I'm not sure I don't want to put words in his mouth. I think one of the issues is, you know, regardless of where the zoning district is, you know, putting more density or allowing more density in different zoning districts or, you know, depending on where in the town will have different impacts. And so one of the concerns I had with this was sprawl. It's like if there are, you know, many more multi unit houses in all parts of town or townhouses. You know, that is sprawl that's traffic on the road that's, you know, kind of what we've all been fighting against and it's also what the master plan is trying to fight against which is calling for density in village centers and town center. And when you add density, which this will is to have strict design standards to make sure it's respecting the historic look. And it says that like a million times and I can send you these different memos that I kind of summarize that it also the master plan and also the housing market study. Tell us or ask us to address the question of student housing and they see the impacts of student housing on neighborhoods is very potentially negative thing and I think we do have to address that. Another question I had which I picked up this very large complicated proposal is, you know, many Joe you're the chair of the CRC like, it would make sense to me that you would bring that to the CRC, and have people work through it and do the research that we've been asking for is there a reason why you didn't work through the committee or, you know, is the CRC going to do an impacts analysis and a build out. And I kind of go through things, things by things I'd be happy to work on that too but it's, you know, it's such a massive proposal I just wondered why you didn't bring it to your committee. I am the chair of CRC and I have been for a while but that chairmanship is never guaranteed but I came into my term. It's a goal of making a proposal regarding duplexes when I talked to counselor de Angelis and actually counselor Miller who was not on CRC about my thoughts regarding increasing housing in town. They wanted to work with me on this and and we were working on it for a while. In that time CRC has been referred the rental permitting through work that a number of us counselors were doing in a similar manner to what Pat I and Michelle were doing with this proposal. When that was brought to the council early on it was referred to CRC zoning is a little interesting because we haven't quite figured out how that works within the state law that requires hearings within certain amounts of time. I would say that's that's one little hiccup in whether CRC through a proposal by a counselor can work with without the state law zoning requirements hearing requirements kicking in immediately. I'm going to CRC just like it's a planning board now for the hearing and recommendation and as chair I will be scheduling I believe on February 16 our first look at this matter will will happen as CRC. For it, I expect a collaborative process there to just like I responded to Doug's initial question of, we would like a collaboration. You know, the council is still in a new wish form of government we're still trying to figure out as counselors and as planning board and as CRC how legislative matters work when counselors have ideas and want to make proposals we're allowed to do that and I just want to thank Angelis and I and at one point counselor Miller, we're making this proposal counselor Miller had to withdraw from her sponsorship. For her own reasons and so here we are and I'm hoping we can have that collaborative discussion not just with the planning board but with CRC. I'm going to throw in, we're also going to be meeting with housing trust because we feel like this is would also impact affordable housing in Amherst. And so we're really trying to find a way to create a sense of flow between all these committees so that we can create the best zoning changes that will really support the development of new housing in Amherst that addresses, you know that that limits socio economic segregation and stuff which we have had consistently in this town for years. And that's enough said right now. Okay, thanks Pat and thanks Mandy. Janet are you set for the moment, can we go to Bruce. No I appreciate that I really do believe in the mixed neighborhoods and you know I feel like I live in one and I want to make sure that continues and spreads, but so. Okay, thank you Janet. Bruce you are next. I just want to pitch a little further on this notion of some kind of tax elevated tax on non owner occupied particularly student non family occupied housing. I didn't watch or I'm not familiar with the council's celebration on that matter manager but it would seem to me that what you reported would be exactly what you would want to have that you put a slightly higher tax on to that site that category of the rental, if you just simply added on to the existing rental yes the rates, the rental does go up it becomes more than the market can bear the rentals are therefore reduced the investors cannot get quite so much out of their houses. Or they don't capitalize to the same extent and therefore as a direct consequence of that the they don't pay as much for the houses and therefore people who want to buy them are not so easily bit out of the market so I would say what the council's reasons for not doing this would be the exact opposite of what they should be thinking here. Because it should have exactly the consequence that I just reported I mean logically we don't really know these things but from a simple economic standpoint that would seem to be the outcome and that's what we're trying to achieve. All right, Bruce I got to say I think one of the collateral's of that situation is that rents would go up for people who may not be able to afford them. And that seems to be what Mandy Joe was saying was undesirable from the council's point of view. You mean that it would be more difficult for students to. Yeah, or anyone. No, because the, because the, the tax increase would not relate to unrelated to related business. I think probably I should give it a witness for the moment but I can, I can, I can refine my argument better on this, what I think it's trying to do. Okay, my hand down yesterday. Okay, thanks. Karen you are next. I'm going to say the same thing that Bruce was because what we have to what we have to brainstorm. All of us that we all want the same thing we want diverse affordable mixed use downtown I agree it should be denser. I like a lot of the ideas in the proposal, but we have to find a way that owners that are are buying a house can compete with other people that are going to divide it up and rent it out as hard as for as high prices as possible. We charge those investors a lot of money and they raise the rent, their units are going to be out of the market so to speak people will go to the others. And what what we want is to make it not so much more desirable to be an investor to come in and buy something that that nobody else can compete. There has to be a solution for that. There somehow has the free market is not safeguarding us. So to make it easier and easier to dissect and build apartments and then have this be more and more of a market where investors come in and milk it. Maybe that's a free market kind of thing but you're going to lose. You're going to lose this town and that you once it's gone it's gone. You can see other university towns where the students have taken over and even if you want to live in town. It's just kind of slummy gone are the flower beds gone are the individual people that care a lot gone are the fact you're not going to have children there. So we have to find those safeguards. And, you know, have you thought what besides raising the price for non owner occupies. What, what other solutions are there that you thought of, perhaps. Okay, car and I think if some, you know if you have ideas will want to hear those two. Tom, you are next. Thanks, I'll be brief. I think I'm trying to try to get to the bottom of this notion of affordable housing and whether we're talking about capital a or lowercase a affordable housing. I guess I have a question about. I understand the argument you're putting forth about how we get to affordable housing by streamlining the process and taking out expenses and that makes the cost of those units unit production cheaper and so on. But I think, you know when it comes to this notion of, you know, economic and cultural diversity. You know I think there are a lot of questions that come out about whether or not the zoning amendment went far enough that we already had about affordable housing that was focused primarily on one kind of building. If we want to bring diversity and affordable housing of any kind. I think we need to have another amendment that actually addresses, maybe triplexes maybe there's a responsibility to be able to do that and maybe the town subsidizes that but I don't think you're going to get it just by streamlining the process I don't think it's going to achieve those goals you have unless there's something more substantial, they're able to put in place which is some kind of amendment some kind of subsidies and some kind of support by the actual town of Amherst to make to make those things happen to put this diversity of housing types into these neighborhoods and make them actually affordable rather than just making them more student housing or work. Upper upper middle class housing so so I think we need to find a way to piggyback some other kinds of amendments for strategies on top of this. And like I said I don't think this is going to go far enough to get you where you want to go without something else changing within what we're doing here in Amherst. Okay, thank you Tom. Mandy and Pat I saw your hands during the last couple of people. And some of them went up and some of them went down. So Pat your hand is up at the moment why don't if you want to try to limit what I say my working class background is rising. One of the things that I keep hearing from many, many people is students, students, students rental the development it's going to it's going to skyrocket the cost. I have lists of people that I work with on in the Amherst mobile market, who are renting apartments and Amherst, and every one of the ways that we I'm trying to figure out polite ways to say some of this. Basically, it seems to me that we are forgetting that all renters are not students. They are not. And for unrelated family members can be living together. For unrelated people can be living together who are not students. And every time I hear this. Well, we're, you know, put it on the developer put her on developer. And, and I think they can probably afford it but where it's going to go to keep their income going their income sorry is on the tenants who are in need. I'm really tired of losing people like Glenison her family or your honey or, you know, we need to broaden our attitude about who a renter is. And yes, do we know any of what we're creating is going to work magically the way Mandy and I would like it. No, but what we have has been generated by the bylaws and zoning limitations that we have. Making a risk around changing some of the exclusionary zoning which is really what this is trying to address really does open up the possibility for young families because they're building smaller and they're sharing and they're taking up less land. Friends of ours who built a duplex in Pelham, many years ago, and they raised their children there. Their children have graduated and gone out into the world and now they're aging in place in the home that these two families came together on their own and said we want to buy this land, and we want to build this duplex, because that made it affordable for them. So there, you know, we talk about so many things but let's not lose some of the benefits that would come environmentally and economically for making some of these changes. Of course it's a risk, doing nothing, keeping it as it is is a bigger risk. Thank you. I need medication soon. Thanks for sticking with us. All right, I don't see any more hands at the moment so I'll just mention some of the comments and questions that I had. First I was, and the first this is just kind of wondering, you know, would it make sense for us to talk about splitting, adding a column to our chart and splitting the RO and the RLD. And I was also struck that we don't actually have a multifamily residential zone. Our, our density zone in town is RG, single family. I mean that seems ridiculous to me. And, you know, in a town where do we have a lot of students and they're perfectly happy to live in multifamily buildings. Maybe we ought to have some, you know, have a an apartment zone or whatever we want to call it. Mandy I have a specific question about the deed restrictions for affordable duplex and owner occupied duplex. What actual restriction would you be proposing. And how would it be, what's the mechanism for creating it if it's if it's not through a board or a hearing. There you go. The, the language we've put in the proposal is the exact language that went into the ADU section of the bylaw. So, whatever we used for the ADU is the language we've put in for this, except we changed the language slightly for the affordable one in terms of what the deed restriction would need to be which is on a state housing inventory instead of owner occupancy. But the language itself matches the language in the accessory dwelling part of the accessory uses section of our bylaw which I think is article five, if I've got the zoning article right on accessory uses. And so I believe it's just something that needs to be recorded in the registry of deeds at the Hampshire County registry of deeds and that's part of the language. And so it would need to be recorded and proven or the, or the use permit would be pulled. Okay, so Chris or Nate, who originates that deed restriction language. Where is it. It's in the ADU section of the bylaw. And it is required in order for the building commissioner to grant a building permit to build an ADU. Does the applicant draft it or do the applicant draft it but we also have a template. And Rob more has that template and he's used it a number of times and he feels that it works pretty well. He developed it but he, you know, passed it by our attorneys and so it's working well so far. Okay. All right. So what about triplexes. Say I have a duplex with one unit on top of the other one. And I want to add another unit next door. Is that a true a triplex or not, if it's not vertically stacked, what is a three unit building with one on top of the other and one next door. Is that an apartment. It would be an apartment because you have to have at least four units. And if you're adding something like that it would be considered a converted dwelling under our table and then Rob as the building commissioner would make a determination under our proposal. Is that converted dwelling more closely related to a town home or a triplex. So figuring out which conditions would apply in that sense, but if it's already exists, it would be a converted dwelling if it's a new building. If I am channeling Rob correctly he would look at that and make a determination as to whether it's more closely related to a town home or a triplex definition because we don't have a zoning bylaw that if it's not covered he can't do it if it's not covered. He matches it to the closest use. I think it would depend on whether there is a shared entrance or whether there are three separate entrances. Okay, that's good. Yep. And then where do row houses fit into our zoning. Are they allowed at all. I mean, you know, if we had a 10 family or a 10 unit townhouse. But it was actually split where, you know, each person wanted to own each unit. Is that even allow. Chris. We don't consider ownership in our zoning bylaw ownership is a separate thing so if each person wanted to own a unit I think it would be a condominium, but that would be dealt with outside of the zoning bylaw. Okay. Obviously we would need to change the dimensional requirements to allow you to actually own your land under your building and not make it condo just make it an individual row house you own. All right. Well, I guess the only other thing I'll say at the moment is kind of in contrast to Bruce who said he liked the first couple of rows. I think I like the first couple of columns. And I think the reason is, I'm, I think like Janet mentioned, increasing the density along in in the downtown and village centers is something I'm very interested in. I'm less interested, and in fact, probably not necessarily supportive of increasing density in outlying areas that are that are far from major roads that probably have a bus route on them. Because I'm not interested really in creating more property owners who have to rely on a private vehicle to get to live their lives. So if I were to, you know, be consulted about how we might phase it in, I might say, you know, we would do it in village centers do it downtown, maybe within 1000 feet of a major road. And some, you know, within a distance somebody could walk to a bus line, and then hold off or maybe never increase the allowances in outlying areas. So I don't see any more hands at the moment. I know this is not a public hearing, but we have nine public attendees and I just wanted to give them a chance to make a brief comment. So, Pam, why don't we set the clocks for two minutes, and I got a lot of pushback last time on one minute, and several people ran over so we will allow public comment for two minutes. Before we do that I see Pat your hand so why don't you make your call. Well I really respect public comment I am going to leave the meeting. I can't keep doing this. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Okay, I see one hand from the public. Hilda Greenbaum over. Hilda, give us your name, give us your address as always. I'm 298 Montague road in North Amherst, and I have a bunch of comments that I've made they may not be in any particular logical order because they sort of follow the discussion here. I'm going to start I think with editorial and yesterday's globe about Governor Healy is really pushing hard she and also Mayor will embossed and pushing really hard for finding housing for people that are homeless as well as middle income people. And I agree with Karen and with Bruce and and others who said we really need to bring the middle class back here, especially if you want to improve our schools back to the way we were we need more school kids, and in the high school particularly so I'm speaking from my more than 60 years of knowing the real estate market in this town. And also my six years as an assessor and my eight years as a zoning board member. Some of the things I would like to say is that you, when you come up here to the area we're all on septic which limits the density because you got to have enough room for the septic fields for each unit, or bigger ones if it's more than I think septic systems sizes are based on the number of bedrooms number of people who can live in the house so that's one issue when they are all up here, and I don't know how many people are around town water either up here and I roll an RLD, but you also have to have a certain sense between the water supply and the and the subjects and stuff. One of the reasons that we don't have a lot of townhouses being built. People are willing to build duplexes but townhouses you start running into building code issues that make it very expensive. I know my son is building duplexes I say why don't you put three costs should not not that much more he says oh yeah I got to put in sprinkler systems and think and I perhaps more expensive. But I know particularly this the sprinkle systems are very expensive so people have not gone that route and certain neighborhoods also have covenants that don't allow. More than one unit on a property cluster developments for some reason was put into the bylaw while I was a town meeting number many years ago. We have very few clusters we have Stanley Street that I can think of Stanley Street was built as affordable housing, and I, as far as I know that's the only one but that was to save open space and get more, more density in town. My experience as an as as a zoning board member but the first unit, the first case that I was on was with Chris way back, probably 15 years ago or more for a duplex on Henry Street that was being built with money that came from you and it was like a, at that time, competition or whatever you call it among architects who's going to come up for class maybe I don't know. And then send a Jones gave the land and I think, but we had long discussions about that duplex and and there were various people who were going to do it but it never happened. One of the other things that I have learned about the owner occupied duplexes is that we had several cases of people who had owner occupied duplexes and there is no market people will not buy that with that restriction in the in the deed that it can only be owner occupied. And, and I have been following the zoning Board of Appeals. For the envy over the past couple of years, and they have been giving special permits for non owner occupied duplexes for things that were previously owner occupied so that doesn't seem to be the market there for the kind of housing that you guys are proposing. Okay, you'll do your way over your time so try to wrap it up. Yeah, I guess my last sentence getting back to what the governor was saying is that the, the editorial from from governor he lee is that she's going to go stop looking at people should stop looking at state on the land. And Doug brought up the whole issue of frat park frat park was a bus from the beginning and there was a big hunk of parcel where, where, you know, multi use multi family housings will be allowed. And so that might be a thing to look at a rezoning. There's a frat park over there that a bus multi family housing where where is Pratt Park, Pratt fraternity sorority park over in Olympia drive. Yeah, it was a bus from the beginning it never happened. And, and so now you've got Olympia, Olympia Oaks and and the Olympia apartments. And if the rest of that parcel it isn't UMass land could very easily be, you know, quadruplexes and sixes, I own sixes and people really like them. Okay, thank you. That's the quick stuff that I said wasn't in any order. Okay. So did we touch on all your points. That's all that's all. Okay. Thanks for coming up following along here. Okay, I don't see any other comments from the public. So, board members we are going to need to figure out how to narrow this down and come up with a recommendation about something. Whether it's about what has been proposed or whether it's about a what's proposed with some mod modifications that we can all agree on. I think at some point, it probably would be good for some of us to show up with actual proposed modifications that we would support. We'll see you in our next next meeting or the next time this is on our agenda. And, you know, I know certain people have asked for more research or drawings or those kinds of things. And unless I'm mistaken, we don't really have the resources to produce that information. And so board members may need to decide whether they can support anything without that kind of additional information, or unless they can generate it themselves. Okay, I see three hands from board members. Bruce, you've got their first. Oh, I was just noting that Dorothy Pam had popped a hand up. Oh, you started talking. Okay, look, everybody's putting their hands up. I don't know. Yeah, we've got a lot of that's your job. Okay, thank you, Bruce. Before we go back to the public. Chris, you had your hand up. Yes, I wanted to note that the planning department is proposing to advertise a public hearing for this project or for this proposal on March 1. And so that's within the timeframe that Mandy Joe described to me. She said that the public hearing needs to start within 65 days of referral. March 15 is the outside date and if it snows that day who knows anyway so we're going to advertise for March 1. But that means you would still have an opportunity to talk about this again. On February 15 if you wanted to right now we don't have any, anything scheduled for February 15, I believe unless Pam has knowledge of something. But anyway, so that's, that's what we're proposing March 15 public hearing, and you could talk about this again on February 15. Okay, great. Chris, I thought we were saying a March one public, I'm sorry March one March, March one public hearing February 15 potential discussion of this again. Right. Okay. I'm going to go back to the public and let them speak their peace and I did let Hilda go well past the two minute mark. I see four hands from the public at the moment. And Hilda you probably already got six minutes so I think everybody can try to keep their comments succinct that would be great. Let's start with Dorothy Pam. Name and address as always Dorothy Pam 229 Amity Street. Well I have a couple of comments. This would proposal would increase taxes from apart buildings that we need and we like getting more taxes. And then the town could have more money to use on subsidizing affordable housing which we are kind of doing, but what gets left out of the course is the moderate income people and workforce housing, which many of you have mentioned tonight. That's the real problem I see right now. And I can see that the proposal is working at trying to do something about that. But I'm, I don't think that as it is now it could do that. Basically I'm just going to give you a couple of images of things that you know you know the story about the camel that puts his nose in the tent, and it really doesn't bother anybody. Okay, so then it doesn't matter if the camel puts his head in a little bit further and this goes on. And it's every little bit is really not that much of a change it's just a little bit of a change, but after a while that camel has basically taken over the tent, and there's no room for anybody else. It's kind of like what I would call there's a lot of logic in this proposal, but some of it is what I would call seducers logic I mean, if you let him do that then why not me. I mean you did this, so why can't I do that. And bit by bit, because there was a lot of it. This will be just like this group that can do that so why can't this one do it. And the more you do that, then there's why have any rules at all just have let people do what they want to do, which is used to have zoning is, you know, they didn't have zoning in the old days. But I just don't want us to be and this is my last image that frog in the pot, where the water is raised bit by bit and not by that much each time, but the end of it, it's a dead frog. And that's I think what Karen is mentioning. The changes have experienced that their town got to a point where it couldn't come back, because they let things happen which each one of them seemed reasonable or okay or not too big or not too bad, but then you add them all up, and you've made too many changes. So, thank you. Okay, thank you Pam or Dorothy I'm sorry. So, Hilda had a fair amount of time earlier so why don't we go to Mario and Janet, and then we'll come back to held it. So, let's go to Mario next hello Mario DePillis, if you give us your name and your address. Hi, my name is Mario DePillis, the 27 Gaylord Street and downtown Amherst. And I mean downtown. I mean, I forget which the zoning area that is general. I'm a South prospect. And I have students on to the east of me and single families on to the west of me I'm right on the border. People. I've lived here since my family moved here. It was about 1962. And I've seen the neighborhood change my parents decided to build and live in an urban area rather than moving to South Amherst or a one of the outlying areas it was a conscious choice to support an urban lifestyle. And it has been less and less tenable. As the town has chosen to discriminate against residents who are not students, people who fall out who don't have the the income of the students supported by their, their, their families. Their families cannot compete and they have to move out. So I think in the other thing is that the, this proposal is good in, in theory, but it is really ignoring the problems that are driving the students to take over and driving the families and the less fortunate lower income people out. So, simply cannot compete with the students. And until you solve that problem, you cannot build your way out of the problem. So I think that's the first problem we have to address. And I see I'm being counted down, and I thank you for your time. All right, and thank you for your comments. Janet Keller. Janet, name and address. You have two minutes. Janet Keller. I live at on pulpit Hill Road in North Amherst. Thank you for the opportunity to build on this conversation. And I do want to build on it and state that that is really important. People talked about maps and pictures of of to build a solid foundation when we're building places for people. And one of the things that has struck me about our conversations is the zoning discussions. Get into the nitty gritty of, of the details of the regulation, and it seems like the people, the places for people gets left out of that conversation so I'm saying a big yes to maps. I'm saying a big yes to pictures of what this stuff would look like who would live there, and an analysis of the impacts to the land and water resources that the people and the critters who already live there and the vegetation that we're going to depend on more and more as the climate changes more rapidly. And we've seen that this winter. So I, I more dense places need more services, they create more pollution. And we've left that out of the conversation and so we can write these rules. Without taking those into account and I beg you for more analysis pictures and maps so that we can and and analysis of the impacts of a given regulation so we can see what it will do to people and Well, I'm on the topic. Bruce mentioned someone mentioned a butter is notices, the people who are going to be impacted by these changes should have the courtesy and the respect of of being notified so they can respond to changes and comment on what it will do to their everyday lives and their economic well being. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Miss Keller. Hilda, come on back. Let's try to keep it to two minutes. Two things to impact statements that you really need to think about, because one, what would be the impact on historic districts particularly Emily Dickinson which is be in, or very close to be in. It's not a big money maker for this town it brings in tourism and we don't want to muck that one up so you need to look at the impact of these owning changes on both both local historic districts that we have. And the second thing I want to say that nobody's been thinking about us. Most of the downtown and the older areas of town where you want to put these houses are non conforming in terms of lot size side to set back and things like that. Is that going to be allowed by right or by special permit that really needs to go to the zoning board of appeals. So those are just two things I wanted to add. Thank you, Hilda. Okay, that's that was the last raised hand from the public and Karen thanks for your patience you're on. So basically, this is a very sweeping huge proposal, and it had to be because it gives us. I mean that's the purpose of changing things overall, but I propose that now it has to get chopped up into segments, so that we can really analyze what will be done to the best of our ability and listen to the people that are involved, meaning the residents themselves, and also, maybe I don't know how you get the people that would build that that just open it up. In other words, let's do it piecemeal. Okay. Thank you, Karen Andrew. Thanks Doug. Yeah, I'll jump on with current said, and maybe a little step further would be perhaps at our next meeting we could devote our attention to how we might phase this. You know this this has kind of a boil the ocean type of component to it where we could spend a lot of time on specific topics but maybe we could just focus on, you know, what would be the first priority and and that might make it kind of the most efficacious conversation. My, my vote for the. You think you could come back with your idea for where you would start. Yeah, I would be happy to. Okay. I'm obviously all of us might think about that too. Johanna welcome to the conversation. Thanks I've been here the whole time listening. Yeah, it's been synthesizing my thoughts and first of all I just really want to thank Mandy Joe and Pat, and everyone else that they've involved for what is clearly about load of work. I thought the articulation of the goals was really good. And I agree with those goals. I also think that it's really important to acknowledge that the status quo isn't working. I think we know that our zoning has not, or zoning has been broken for a while, and neighborhoods are already being hollowed out, housing costs are already high. People are already being forced out of town or choosing not to live here. And so if we don't act, those trends are likely to continue. And I think the idea of doing something. And I think the approach that's put forward is really thoughtful. I think it is logical. And I actually appreciate how comprehensive it is. So some people are saying oh we have to slice it up and just do one piece at a time. I actually appreciate the comprehensive nature of it, and feel like it's a comprehensive nudge. It's not a comprehensive leap, but a comprehensive nudge. And hopefully it moves the needle. I think in the past couple of years we are finally generating some housing downtown and in village centers, but my guess is that there's still just a huge backlog and that's why we're not, you know why we're continuing to see high prices and look at just a lot of demand. And I appreciate the focus on the transitional neighborhoods in the proposal. So, like Doug, I'm a little bit concerned about adding density in the outlying parts of town. I think our master plan is very clear that we want to direct density downtown and we want to direct density to our village centers and create a total transportation option so people aren't reliant on cars. So if there was, if there was like as we tackle it. My proposal would be that we start by seeing if we can get on the same page about the kind of areas of higher density and prioritize those. That's what I got. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. So, I'm trying to, I'm trying to figure out how to, how we can talk about this because I don't, I feel like on one hand we really don't have a really granular, we haven't discussed at a granular level, each of these things. You know, each of the, you know, like the presentation was very comprehensive but it's not, there's a lot of detail. I have questions about or questions about choices that were made. And how did, how do we discuss that. And so we could discuss all that, or we could chop it up or, and how do we collaborate with CRC. Part of my feeling is maybe not with the March 1 deadline for a public hearing because that's the hearing for the public to hear about the proposal and we get their thoughts. And I'm not sure we're going to collect our thoughts that well the next meeting. And so I would just wonder if we can push it from March 1 hearing date to March 15 to kind of work on it more. I do have a mid-February meeting before March 1. Yeah, and so I maybe, you know, maybe one thing I could do is just send out like a list of all my, you know, thoughts so people could brood on them or ignore them as they choose. One thing I had thought was like, let's maybe invite some ZBA members in because there's this idea that somehow the ZBA is blocking or not letting all the density that sits on the ground. So a lot of, we have a town that's not zoned for single family housing it's zoned for everybody it's zoned for, you know, four units per acre five units per acre, at a minimum most of the neighborhoods. And the question is why can't we get to that and seems like oh the ZBA is stopping that. I don't quite understand that argument I don't really get it and I wonder if the ZBA would have, you know, some perspectives on this. Like they're saying no to too many things like in my impressions I say no to hardly anything. And so, and I don't see that what they do is that different from what we do. And so I'm just kind of wondering if we can invite someone from the ZBA to come talk to us or look at this or have thoughts at the next meeting. Maybe your hand pop up while Janet was talking maybe you have a thought about that. Well the ZBA is asking for a presentation about this and on February 9, I'm going to give them kind of a summary of what is being proposed we're going to include the packet that you received tonight into the ZBA packet for next Thursday, February 9. On February 16, Mandy and I believe Pat will accompany her are coming to make their presentation to the ZBA like they made tonight. So, until the ZBA becomes familiar with what's being proposed. It's probably not useful to ask for their input, but after that, you could ask for their input about what they think about this. I just wanted to let you know that Chris, is it your impression that ZBA has been turning down a lot of proposals that would increase density. CBA grants, I think more than 95% of the requests that come to them. You know, every once in a while. It becomes clear that they're not going to approve something and someone will withdraw the application but that is relatively rare so ZBA usually tries to work with applicants to put on the appropriate types of conditions that will make whatever it is be suitable for the location. So, Janet, I'm not sure where you, I mean what you're talking about with respect to ZBA, turning a lot of things down. I thought Mandy Joe presented, you know, getting a special permit as an impediment in a long process and expensive and that, you know, the, it certainly discourages people from proposing things in areas where a special permit is required. I mean, do we know that. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think anecdotally I think Chris and Nate maybe have said they get calls from developers and when they hear that a special permit is required for whatever the particular project is. That's enough to say, you know, thank you very much and move on to the next town. Yeah, but it seems to me just in my, I don't know if it's four years now on this board there's been a lot of duplexes and applications to the ZBA and you know when it's like when Chris and Pam bring them to us and say do you want to know more about it. It just, all of those have gone through, except for I think one. And I don't know the reasons for that one. So it'd be good to maybe have them come in in March then and talk to us, because, you know, I think we're, I see them as fairly parallel tracks in terms of applications and the requirements and the standards. You know, in the mood to say no or say yes, I mean some of us in the mood to say no, but you know, it's, I don't, I don't see how this that will tip the process towards unlocking the current zoning which is very progressive and we're going to I think a rare town in Massachusetts is how much density we allow and I don't know what the reasons for people not doing it. Some people probably in our end probably don't want to build a triple X or four convert their house to four units but they can. So what's holding them back. Chris your hand is up again or still up. I just wanted to point out to people that if we open a public hearing on March 1 that doesn't mean you're going to close the public hearing and make a recommendation on March 1. So you have an opportunity to, you know, think more about this hear more about it discuss it and then you can continue your public hearing to date certain in the future when you feel like you're going to have more information or you could plan to have a plan to invite ZBA members to come and testify. At a public hearing session, but the public hearing doesn't have to end on March 1. I think you all know that but I just wanted to point that out. Okay, great. Okay, so let's see I don't see any more board hands. I see one hand from the public. Jennifer town. Why don't we bring her over Jennifer if you can make your comments in two minutes or less and give us your name and address. Thank you Jennifer town 259 Lincoln Avenue. I really just had a question when following up, and I appreciate you're letting me speak since you finished public comment but what Janet had asked about the special permit, and Chris might be able to verify this. I had heard that sometimes if someone wants to open a restaurant or another maybe business downtown downtown, they've been a little scared off by the special permit but I'm not aware of any developer you know someone who would want to build a townhouse. And I would think even a triplex of being scared off by the special permitting process I mean it since since most of those special permits have been for housing for students this is where that demand is so I don't know that like, I think you the you know they went before the ZBA, it was a much better project after the community, the surrounding neighborhood really appreciated some of what came out of the ZBA hearings as the developer was, you know felt like they had come to a good, agreement with the community but I don't think they were going to go build those townhouses in Pelham or Leverett I mean there's a reason why housing development is they want to build an Amherst because this is where the university and the students are and I don't believe. I don't know if that's the case that there is any history of a developer deciding not to build an Amherst, because they have to get a special permit, and it does a lot to protect the surrounding neighborhoods and again I don't. I would wonder if anybody has not built, you know a townhouse or apartment because of the special permit. Thank you. All right. That was the last hand I see at the moment, and it's 847 we're well over our eight o'clock target for a break. So, maybe we should table this topic for tonight and take a break and then we'll come back to the next item on our agenda. Under under old business. So, unless anybody wants to raise their hand and object I think we should take a break and thank you Mandy Joe for your preparation your presentation I got to say there were a lot of things in that presentation that I think. I think, you know we're just good primers on our bill on our code on our zoning bylaw, so you know, keep don't don't don't discard that after we're done with this particular conversation. And so, thank you for having us. Yes. All right, the time is 847 will take a five minute break. Let's all come back at 852 853. All right I'm seeing the clock at 853 so if you are hiding behind your camera without it on. Please turn it back on so we know that you are back in attendance. So, if you are in your shot. You are the two that are remaining. I'm back. All right, your honor. That leaves Janet. Hello Janet. All right, looks like Janice back so our board is reassembled. Now is 855 and we'll continue with our agenda item for his old business items not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance. Chris and Pam, do we have any old business. I don't think we have any old business. Nope. Okay. All right moving on to new business. What we have on the agenda is planning for housing growth. A discussion about when we might get together. This is a follow up to the conversation we had at the end of the last meeting about meeting together in person around a map and talking about areas in town where we thought maybe the zoning could be increased. Let's say. So this is a conversation about schedule. And Chris, I think you had looked into when the town room was available. And when someone might be able to record the meeting as to make sure we were in compliance with the open meeting. So what were your findings. Pam has looked into when the town room would be available. I asked her to look at Tuesdays because you had suggested Tuesdays Doug. So she came up with four Tuesdays that would be possible to be in the town room. I didn't look into whether anybody could record the meeting that night because I'm assuming if Amherst media can't record it, we can always record it. The, you know, a recorder that we have that we used to use in the old days. People would be able to come into the room just like they used to be in the old days. So I thought we would try to establish a date. We could determine if Amherst media can be there. But I think we need to establish a date first. So Pam, what, what doesn't Pam tell us the dates that she has tentatively reserved the town room. I did. So I chose for Tuesday. That would be the opposite week of meeting. So let's see. February, it was February 7 next Tuesday, or February the 21st. I reserved it in March. Seven, the 21st. So February seven and 21, and March seven and 21. Absolutely right. That's right. Okay, I heard you right. So I guess board members are those, you know, do Tuesdays work for you. I sort of threw that out last time, not really realizing you guys would fixate on that date of the week. It does tend to work for me, but can I, can I see a thumbs up, maybe do Tuesdays generally work. Are we generally talking about evenings. Yeah, this would be like, you know, we'd meet at say seven to nine in the town room, something like that. So I'm not hearing any objections. Bruce, I see your hand. Yes, I'm going to be in the Bahamas for the last for March. So I can't do the last two, but I can do the first two, and I can do. I can do similar Tuesdays are good. I can do April or May. Okay. You know, I don't have any idea whether this is going to be a one off meeting or whether we ought to be planning on a series. I guess it's good to reserve the room. Should we, you know, I mean, I guess in terms of preparations. February 7 sounds pretty soon. I guess I was imagining we'd have like a couple of easels and one of them would have, you know, a big map of the town with zoning districts. And the other one might have a flip chart that we could just make notes on. So maybe we would want to have a computer present that we could look at Google Street view if we wanted to look at, you know, some part of town we were talking about at street level. And, you know, or check out some other website, whether it's the town zoning or, you know, something else. Maybe some trace paper that we could put over the map and then just use a marker or two to, you know, mark up the things we're talking about or the different proposals or those kinds of things. So, Chris, does that is all of that kind of stuff around in in the town hall or not. I think it is yeah, it would probably take us a while to assemble it so. It would take us too soon. Should we try February 21 and just do one meeting before Bruce goes off to the Bahamas. That would be my preference and I would really love it if Nate were able to be there and I wonder if Nate could tell us whether he's able to be there on February 21. Big, big, big intake on breath there Nate. You know, I was, I've been trying to schedule a public hearing for that evening but I think it's going to get pushed off to the 23rd so the 21st works. Okay. Andrew I see your. Yeah, thanks Doug, I was going to say, most of what you said. I think the seventh is too early. I would recommend if we can that we'd have on that screen, I have like a GIS user be able to have like our pro up or something like that. So we could get a little bit more detailed in terms of the amount of information we can look at so I don't know. Nate, if you're, or Chris if either of you are comfortable at that level or not or if there's somebody else on staff who is. I was going to have that in my computer, for sure. But I think that that would make for a more useful conversation as we really try to hone in on on specific zones. What's your scenario planning. If you brought your computer. Is there wireless Chris in the town hall that Andrew could connect to and be accessing the GIS. There is wireless yeah we have the GIS viewer that we can use. Is that useful or did you have something else in mind for GIS Andrew. It could be. Yeah, I mean I think it depends on. Again, who's available. I think like if you've got a power user who is competent and Mark pro, then you know we could do some, some more querying I imagine a fair amount of this analysis might be to let's query some parcels that meet certain criteria, and that that would be that would be something that's more easily managed through the desktop software. I might be able to help with some of that. It kind of depends on what is available in the data that's online which is, which is what I take a look at now. I think it may be easier to use like the native data you have but in any situation I would definitely say, you know, the 20 the 21st of February is the earliest unless you know there's a room big enough in the Bahamas for us. Well, and Johanna put in the text that she's going to be that school vacation week. And she's going to be out of town that week. I guess that's, you know, the question of whether we should proceed without Johanna or should we think about the week before like the night before our next meeting and do two nights in a row. I think you guys should go without me, and I'll hop on when I get back. Okay. So quickly Andrew we don't, we don't have, you know, ArcGIS other than just on our desktop so there's no way to have it in the town room. You know it's a we have it just a you know, local computer license so unless we're going to drag a computer in and hook it all up that's not really you know we'd have to do those kind of searches so those are parameters, you know we can discuss at the meeting we can write them down and then generate maps or things afterward. I can, you know, I can see why you know we used to have some, some of that available in our staff GIS viewer so we could choose properties over a half an acre or between a half an acre and an acre or things like that but I think we may have eliminated some of those just because they weren't used very much and so, you know if we think that's important we can at least, I can take a look and see what we have available just through the, you know, the staff web GIS. Would there be, you know, if Andrew, you know, brainstormed his, the queries that he kind of imagine and sent them to you guys, would it be the kind of thing we you could generate a, you know, a town life townwide map of some of that stuff beforehand that we could then put on a screen. I'm sorry, just maybe it may make more sense to have this be more than one meeting, and then we just collect that information in the first meeting. Okay. I would say for one thing Nate is very, what should I say stretched now, because he hasn't a few things that are coming along with deadlines. So, you know, producing a lot of work for the 21st is going to be challenging. Right, I mean, you know, the hope with this was that this would be the board just getting together for a conversation and generating whatever information it needed itself. And I certainly wasn't trying to further burden the staff. So, okay, so why don't we try why don't we put February 21 on the calendars and, you know, you know, I'm sorry that you are not able to make it. And we can talk to our IT department about getting large maps, and we'll have to figure out what those need to be. Maybe we'll have a side conversation with you Doug about your ideas. Okay. Yeah, I mean, you know I have the little 11 by 17 of the zoning map. You know I figured if we blew that up to, you know, three feet by four feet and hung it off of an easel that would give us something to look at. You know, I have that map. I'm sorry. I got lost in the GIS search but I have a map like that that Chris and Pam made for me years ago so I can bring it up. That's big. It's very big. I can, I can unroll it now. It's, it covers a good size table it's good to look at. But Chris I'm happy to talk with you more about that. Okay. You know, I've, what I mentioned, you know, just earlier is kind of what I had on my mind. So you only mentioned zoning map and a flip chart. Yeah. That's all I mentioned. And the easels. I mean, you know, a way to hang it up. Yeah, vertical so that we can stand around and look at it. It's a really big map. It probably can't fit on one of our easels. It'll probably have to go on a table. So we'd all have to gather around the table. Yeah, well, let's do it. It's just a little harder for the people, the other people in the room to see what we're pointing at. Maybe they could come and join us around the table. Okay. And Doug, just quickly, I mean, you're talking about, you're talking about more dense housing. You're talking about something that they say like UTAC suggested or the comprehensive housing market study where there's, you know, like larger multifamily structures, right? Or not, you know, is it any, is it anything? Or are you really kind of focusing on one type of, or, you know, a certain type of density or housing? I mean, the, the ideas that I had sort of said I was interested in sharing were toward the larger scale. But, you know, I mean, we've obviously got the proposal from Mandy Joe and Pat that's at the smaller scale. And, you know, maybe I don't know if the conversation will go there. But, you know, I was hoping there might be some areas in town we could up zone without getting a lot of that maybe didn't have a lot of owner occupied dwellings already. And, you know, might not get a lot of a butter pushback. And, but would allow, you know, an increase in the supply of housing. Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, I think, you know, like I said, I think, you know, UTAC and the housing study in a number of places, I don't know, you know, have recommended that. I mean, you know, this housing study said we need 4,000 to 5,000 beds to kind of start to even the playing field for student demand. Right. So I'm, you know, I mean, that that's actually the problem we have is that, you know, every, I mean, it is kind of a truism that the more housing you have, it's likely to start bringing rents down, but the problem we have is we're so far behind on getting to parody that we're going to have to build units for quite a while before rents actually start to stabilize because of the demand that's just pent up. Okay, Janet, your hand. Um, yes, I was going to say that, um, Nate, I hate to ask you this, but if you could update that chart on the units that have been built and I think the ones that come on. I have a chart of all the units built since 2010. I just recently updated it with what I could find and Chris gave me a few of the properties that I couldn't find. So, you know, I have that and I can send it to Chris to share with everybody. Because we were on target for the housing market study, not the market study the production plan to two years ago and I know there's a bunch of units coming on this year. I also have some a handout I found from Rhea Chow about kind of density that looks good and how to kind of mix it into kind of neighborhoods and I can make copies of that. There's a lot of my scroll on it so I'll try to delete that. And then, you know, maybe some village design kind of things to look at so I could circulate that around I've been collecting them from different parts of the planning community and things like that to think about, like how it looks I think is important to people. Okay. All right, so I think we've covered that topic. February 21 on our calendars that'll be an in person meeting. First one in a couple of years. All right. Time is 911. Moving on to item six. Do we have any form a and our subdivision applications. We do not know. Okay. Upcoming ZBA applications. We may know about a couple of them. But I don't think the applications have actually been submitted yet have they Nate. No, I mean we're, you know, there's a few, you know, there's a converted dwelling in town a few for duplexes. You know, a lot of them are some of them are modifying previous permits to change some conditions, but nothing's, you know, everything's kind of waiting. It'll probably all come in next week, but they're all imminent, but nothing submitted yet. Okay. Next item SPP SPR and SUV applications. I don't think so. Are there any Pam. Nothing new that I'm aware of Chris. No. Okay. All right. We're on to committee and liaison reports. We have a minor valley planning commission. I can report that. Chris has connected with the PV. PC and they will accept a letter from me on town letter hat. You know, notifying them that we have nominated Bruce to be our representative. So I need to write that and send it off. I'll send it to Chris or maybe directly to them and copy Chris. So we'll try to do that in the next week or so. Bruce, I assume you don't have an actual update on PVPC. Okay. All right. Well, the end is in sight. You're going to have to start reporting soon. Just before you go off to the Bahamas or Bermuda or whatever. Andy. Yeah, we haven't met. We were drafting the report for town council. I think yesterday or today was a deadline for revisions. I'm not sure when that when that letter is going out, but that's the only update that I have. Okay, Tom DRB. No meeting since last meeting. All right, Janet solar bylaw. We met and we talked about the solar survey. And then also a sec, a small section of the solar bylaw, and I can't remember what section it was because I think I just wrote some comments in the definition section I can't remember. Chris was it. What was this, I'm blanking. It's monitoring and maintenance. Like management. And then this week we're having a talk with Aaron Jake's is coming in the wetlands administrator to talk about groundwater recharge and wetlands and solar panels and things like that. When you say you refer to the solar bylaw, do you have a draft. We have two sections, I think, or three now Chris. I think we have three, three or four. Yeah. But it's nothing, it's nothing that's ready to present to the planning board yet. Okay. And Chris CRC anything you want to share. I haven't been attending CRC meetings. They're still working on the rental registration modifications. And as many Joe said, that's still in the works. Okay, so I don't think they're working on too much else. All right. Next item is report of the chair. I think the only thing I wanted to say was to remind everybody we got an email from Chris about the conflict of interest law. The need for us to do that and get that finished in order to stay in good standing on the board. I think there was, there might have been a, there might have been a deadline or at least a request that we do it by sometime in February but you know just put it on your to do list. I see your, I'm sorry, Chris. I just wanted to note that it has been difficult to get into that program. I tried as soon as I emailed you and I had a lot of trouble and the town clerk has told me that since then things seem to have been resolved. So if you had trouble, you know, a week ago, try again. If you continue to have trouble, we'll have to let the town clerk know. Okay. Bruce, I see your hand. Chris, I did this very recently, maybe four months ago. I don't know whether it was for this or for the historic district commission but I, you don't have to keep doing it like at the January of every year or so do you. We've been having to do it every year. Chris. You have to do it every two years. And on the off year you just have to acknowledge that you've received some documentation from them about a summary, but they've, they've changed the way they're doing it now. And they're doing it all online and the state is running it instead of the town clerks running it so it's a little different. But my guess is that since you did it so recently Bruce that you wouldn't need to do it again, but I can check with the town clerk. I didn't know I did it online. Okay, well it sounds like. Chris, if you can check and let, let Bruce know. That's really all I had. Chris, anything on from report of staff. I would just say that we have been interviewing people to fill the two empty slots that we have in our department and we have some good candidates so we're continuing to interview and we're hoping that we can find someone to help us out. And I'm pleased with the candidates that we have. Good well we hope you get some help soon. There we are. Unless anybody has anything else. Time is 918 and we can adjourn. Thank you all. Good night.