 We are recording. Okay, welcome everybody. I'm gonna call this meeting of CRC to order. The President Grissomar has designated me to chair the meeting until you elect a chair. So I'm gonna get us started. First, I'm gonna say pursuant to state law that suspended provisions of the open meeting law were allowed to hold this meeting virtually. I'll go around and check that everyone can hear and be heard and then we'll get started. Mandy. Present. Jennifer. Present. Afrika, okay. Present. Pam. Present. Pat. Present. And Dave, you're here with us. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Tina. All right, our first order of business is electing a chair. So we're gonna do this similar to the way we did the election of the president. I'll open the floor for nominations. Nominees will be able to accept their nomination or not. If there are no further nominations, then I'll take a comment, a short comment from the nominees speaking to their nomination and then comments from other committee members and then we'll move to a vote. So we're open for nominations. I nominate, whoop. No, Pat, you go. I would like to nominate Pam Rooney for chair. Pam, do you accept the nomination? Yeah, thank you. Are there any further nominations? Seeing none, I'm going to look for a motion. Unless there are further comments. Was Pat gonna do this? No, no, go Jen. Okay, to call me. Did you wanna make a comment? Are you speaking to me or to Jen? Jennifer, did you wanna make a comment? No, I was gonna make a motion. Okay, are there any comments? Seeing none, Jennifer, please go ahead. I move to elect Pam Rooney, Pam Rooney as chair of CRC for this. I'll back here. And I don't know how to raise my hand. So I don't have anything to say other than I'm gonna shout out when I wanna say something, I guess. That works. Fricka, did you have a comment? Okay. I was testing my raising hand function. Okay, great. It works. Okay, so we'll move to the vote. Pat? Aye. Fricka? Aye. Pam? Aye. Jennifer? Aye. And Mandy? Aye. It's unanimous, congratulations, Pam. Thank you. I'm gonna hand things over to you for the election of the vice chair. All right. And I wanna first just simply say thanks to Mandy, both for her leadership and for her help in transition of knowledge and also just being so organized. It's a really hard act to follow, but you've laid out a really good structure for the organization and for the information. And I know if I have questions, I can call you. So thank you. I would like to have folks nominate any nominations for vice chair. Mandy? I have no idea whether she'll accept but I nominate Pat. Why? I couldn't hear her answer. If there are, is there anybody else, I'm not sure I'm gonna accept it, maybe. Is there anybody else to be nominated? Hello? I'm not singing here. I don't hear anyone. All right. Jennifer, I'm gonna come after you. Yes, I'll accept. I'm crazy as I am. Any other nominations? We'll get to know each other, but... Any other nominations? Rebecca. I see no other hand. So we'll, I'm looking for... Pat, do you wanna say anything? Just that you're reluctant? No. I don't wanna say anything. Would survive. I was not... Would you say that again? Did we lose Pat? I wasn't, I had no idea. What? No, I thought we lost you. Okay. Okay, I'm just gonna be quiet because it's hard for me to figure out what's going on. But go ahead, keep going. Are there any other nominations? You can self-nominate. Jennifer, would you be interested in running as vice chair? So I think Pat would be a terrific vice chair. I don't know if this is kosher, but Pat, I'm happy to, when things get assigned to you, work with you on that. Pat and I, Pat, chair at GOL. How about, yeah. I tried to be helpful. So if... How about you take it on? Take on the co-chair. I mean, the vice chair, whatever it's called. I'm happy not to be involved in that. But I will be if nobody else, but so Jen, I'd rather you actually do it. Okay. I mean, I'm not... If somebody else wants to do it, I'm not seeking it out, but I will do it if nobody wants to do it. Or if nobody has it, whatever. I feel like I want to be a helpful counselor, but I'm not actually seeking it out. Mandy? I'll try a couple of different nominations here and we'll see who accepts. I've got another thing. First, Freca Ete. Freca, do you accept? Excuse me. Thank you very much, Mandy. I don't accept the ownership that I will nominate Jennifer Taub. Jennifer, do you accept? I accept, but again, if anybody else, Pat? No. That's not how it works. I withdraw my nomination that I had no idea was going to happen. I withdraw. Let's do Jen. So, Athena, just for the record here, do we go around and people say the name of the person they would like? And that accounts for the vote or do we have to say all those in favor of so-and-so and you count two votes or three votes or whatever? Seeing as there was only one, only one nominee for the chair, I skipped the everybody say who they want and just moved right to a motion. So it's up to you. I think that saved a minute or two if you wanna just seek a motion. We have a motion on the floor to nominate. There's not a motion yet, but you can seek a motion. I make a motion to nominate Jennifer Taub as vice chair. Is there a second? Second. Let's go around. Mandy Jo. Aye. Second. Aye. Pat D'Angelo. Aye. Jennifer Taub. Reluctant, aye, but yes. And Pam Rooney, yeah. It is unanimous. Thank you. That is the first order of business. Second order of business is setting a regular meeting time for the CRC. I'm gonna look directly at Freke and say, what does your schedule typically look like? We, the others members of this committee have been or made themselves available this time of day. On Thursdays, typically does that work for you or is there a better time that would work for you? And we can adjust for sure. In terms of, thanks for accommodating me. In terms of time, Tuesdays and Thursdays work, I think Tuesdays actually work better but it would have to be a bit later. So for example, I am working on campus right now. I am in the office and I'd prefer to be somewhere else in having this kind of meeting. So. What time is more appropriate for you? I bill would be 530 upwards. So that would put a meeting on roughly 530 to 730, which is immediately, directly over most people's dinner hours. What do folks think about that? And I, that's difficult for me. I could do 630 to 830 or seven to nine. Pat. Yeah. I'm in the studio till 430 and I need time after that. So six, I guess six, I guess I could do six to eight also. But I can, Tuesdays, okay. Okay. Jennifer, you have your hand up. Yeah, Tuesdays is actually better for me because of TSOs meeting at Thursdays right after CRC. I'd rather meet on Tuesdays also. I think maybe 630 would be better, 630 or seven for the public. So it's after dinner. Quickly, I'm sorry to interject. The other committees meeting times will also likely change because of new members. So I don't think TSO will stay Thursdays, but I think it will likely be GOL and CRC that are Tuesdays and Thursdays in the evening. So I think if you get in and do Tuesday, then GOL will likely pick Thursday or vice versa. And the other concern with Thursdays any earlier is ZBA meetings. So if there are staff who you expect to be at CRC meetings who will also be at ZBA meetings, then because CRC had been meeting earlier, they were able to attend CRC before moving to ZBA. So if you meet right during ZBA meetings, we might not be able to expect staff at the same time or we'll have to alternate weeks with ZBA. Thank you. Okay. Actually, later is better. So I was sleeping for joy, seeing that we were thinking about seven, that 630, that works way better for me. Thank you. 630 works. 630 on Tuesday. On Tuesday, yeah. Mandy, Joe? 630 on Tuesday would be fine with me. Okay. I'm hearing consensus that- Actually- Oops, go ahead. Let me ask Athena, you just polled for finance for Tuesdays. I think your latest poll time was two? Do you expect that polling to go any later than two? Okay. I just wanted to make sure if she pushes that later that it wouldn't run into a 630 on Tuesday, but 630 on Tuesdays is fine if finance is not polling later than 2 p.m. And if I can jump in again, Fricka, just to let you know, it looks like if CRC is Tuesday at 630, then GOI will likely be Thursday evening, maybe around the same time. I sent down a poll for GOI. Just letting you know. Jennifer? Yeah, I was just wondering if, so could they be every other week? So I don't know if that's preferable. If CRC meets it Tuesday one week, then GOI wouldn't be till Thursday the next week, if that's what people prefer. And then you're not meeting old nights. You know, we're not having, I think it would be hard if there was a council meeting and then CRC and if the same members are on GOL, that's three meetings at night a week. Well, Fricka and I are both on GOL and CRC. So I do not wish to do a four or five hour meeting. I can't do that. So I quit on Tuesday. That just, without a break, I can't do that just physically. No, we wouldn't do CRC and GOL back to back. Oh, so like if CRC were on the 16th day, then GOL would be on the 23rd, something like that. I don't know that GOL is gonna pick Tuesday rather than Thursday, but what I can try and do when I'm working with chairs to set the calendars is do a council meeting Monday, GOL Thursday, and then the next week, CRC Tuesday, so that you don't have council meeting late Monday, CRC later in the evening, Tuesday, and GOL, so I can try and break things up a little bit. But like I said, I need to wait and see what GOL decides for their schedule and the other committees and then I'll work with the chairs to set the calendars for each committee. But anticipating that, that's what it will likely be. I can space things out, so it's not all in one week. And there may be- That would be helpful, thank you. Do we need a motion to lock this in or can we just come to consensus? Sounds like there's consensus, but- Right, so I am hearing that Tuesdays work well for everybody still. It means that I don't, we're not saying the semester, but I'm getting too busy to sing anyway. So Tuesdays it will be and I'm, it sounds like 630 is a reasonable time. So it doesn't go too late. Any objection? Yeah, and in terms of people, I'm sorry. I can't see anything, so in terms of 630, if we do public comment, say at seven, then it's easier for people who may be having dinner so that we don't start with public comment. Does that make sense? I don't know. Yep, we can feel that out. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think people are generally used to attending meetings in the evening rather than during the day. Okay, so Tuesdays at 630, 630 to 830, and we will rely on Athena to try to set up the initial schedule anyway to try to bring some balance in the kinds of meetings each week between JOEL, CRC and council. Athena. Mandy, please let Mandy go ahead. Go ahead, Mandy. I was just gonna say, should we set at least our next one without knowing the schedule? She beat me to the punch. Like, are we gonna, there's a council meeting the 22nd, right? But not one the 29th, if we don't wanna do it right after a council meeting, January happens to have five Tuesdays. Maybe we'd be looking at the 16th, the 23rd or the 30th and the 16th we actually can't do. Because of meeting those times. So the 23rd or the 30th, so I think it would depend on whether people wanna be right after this council meeting or the week there isn't one. If we went to the 30th, which is the last Tuesday of January, and then to the 13th, we will probably bump into problems on the 27th of February, which follows a council meeting, but then we're okay the March 12th and March 26th. So I'm guessing that because the council schedule alternates so much, that we should probably try to be consistent in our, essentially every other way. Yeah. I would like to start on the 23rd. I have a workshop I'm attending on the 16th from six to eight. What about the 30th? I can do the 30th, the 23rd or the 30th. I wonder if we just wanna set the next one and then we'll know when all the other committees are meeting and if Athena's willing to sort of try and figure out reasonable schedules amongst the four committees based on what times they pick, it might be good to for now go to the, pick either the 23rd or 30th and then by then all the other three committees will have met and Athena might have a better idea of whether we aim for one and three or two and four or a flat every other or something. It might end up meaning we have one, January to February is two weeks in a row or something. I think I would weigh in on the 30th because we haven't gotten to the next agenda or the future items, but I know that there is some interest in having a conversation with landlords and managers and that might give some time for- Another one, we've already had one. I understand. We've been asked to have another one before we actually vote. Does anyone have an objection to the 30th is the first meeting? I think the 30th makes sense. A lot of folks are gonna be away over the weekend of the 19th, 20th and then we have, as soon as everybody gets back, there's a council meeting and it feels like that would ramp up to put it in between Jennifer. Yeah, I mean, the 30th is good for me. I'm wondering with ZBA, what is, if I could just be reminded of our timing. ZBA is Thursdays. Right, no, but when is that person? Is he already off? The vacancy's already open. Yeah. So that will be one of our first items. Don't push that off a little longer. Okay, anybody object to the 30th for next meeting? Okay. So, Alina, if we could set that up for the 30th and then it looks like if we could pencil in the 13th of February, that too might be nice just in case we wanna set up precedent, we could pencil it in before anybody else gets it. I'll have a draft schedule of meeting dates for you on the 30th. Terrific, thank you so much. That'd be very helpful. I won't be attending meetings probably until May. So I'll work with Dave or another staff member to make sure you get your meetings kicked off and until then. Great, thank you very much. I have on the agenda, on the draft agenda that was put together very nicely by the former chair for this purpose working with Athena. Item number four is discussion items. Item number five is general public comment. I think I would like to go to public comment first because there are three attendees in the audience and sort of take care of that first before we discuss next items and et cetera. So I am going to reach out to the audience. Actually, Pat DeAngeles is one of the audience members. So, sorry, I loved you with that. If there is anyone in the audience who would like to make a public comment on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC, you're welcome to express your views for the three minutes. We look forward to hearing from you. Any hands in the audience? I don't see hands being raised. I'm guessing that there are no public comments. So we will go to the next item, which is discussion items. And in my mind, that sort of is in the same ballpark as next agenda item. We have no minute. We have, do we have any announcement? So now we do come to next agenda preview. And as we talked about at the end of last term, we have still a number of big items on the plate. We have rental registration, rental regulations, fee structures, solar by-law came to us at the very end of last year. And first and foremost, ZBA appointments. Any thoughts, comments about ZBA? We have the other items. The opportunity which we should review at the next meeting is just conform that the ZBA interview questions are appropriate still, that we adopt or we adopt selection criteria and also identify the full of candidates. Andy? So yeah, I think we need to have the ZBA openings on the next agenda to make recommendations. And I would suggest we put the rental registration, by-law, regulations, fee structure on the next agenda, either as a landlord discussion, if you as chair decide that's the way to go or as a continuing review of the package. Maybe it could be a combination of conversation and review package depending on how long the conversation goes. Any other, any other, let me see if I have any other notes on, I think one of the things that might be helpful for, okay, ETA would be sort of the summary of those elements, those items that are on our site with the CRC right now. And I'd be happy to address the ZBA topic if someone else would like to talk about rental registration and the work that's going on there. This committee is the group that interviews, select or makes recommendations to the council on people to fill positions on the ZBA, the zoning board of appeals and the planning board. And right now we have a number of vacancies on ZBA and they look to us, they are dependent on us for filling those positions so that they can do their work efficiently. Right now there are, there is one full member they can see and one associate members they can see. By next June, all of the one year appointments will end and need to be replaced or refilled and one full member will need to be replaced or refilled. So there's a lot of potential turnover on that board. And again, they are reliant on us to get our work done so that they have a full complement of staff or members. The same goes with planning board but that's not quite as urgent because there are no vacancies right now on the planning board. There are some people that come off their end of their time at the end of our fiscal year and we will need to have some new people in place for next fiscal year. Jennifer. I just wanted to add that somebody of a member of the ZBA had to withdraw and that's why we have this urgency sort of midterm. Yes, it's the terms end. They start with the fiscal year, correct? But somebody had to leave at the end of last year and that's why we have the vacancy now. Everybody wanna give an overview of rental registration? You want me to? So rental registration has been, oh gosh, almost two years now. So Ate, you're the new member of this committee. The other four of us are actually continuing on and as a five member committee, we were referred in early 2022 to basically look at and potentially redraft the rental registration permitting bylaw. And in August of 2023, the CRC voted a recommendation to the council on a bylaw. The council took it up and referred portions of that to finance and to GOL, different portions. There's three segments of it right now. There's a bylaw, there's now regulations and there's fees to charge for the permits. And in August, the fees were referred to finance and the bylaw and regulations were referred to GOL for their review for clarity, consistency and actionability. GOL made its return in hell no October to the council after review with a vote. Finance sent stuff back to CRC. CRC sent stuff back to finance, finance finished and sent stuff to the council in late November. The council had its first review reading of the bylaw and the package in early December, late November, something like that. The council received a lot of comments from the Amherst Landlords Association and the individual landlords in Amherst with concerns about the bylaw. And in December, the council referred back to CRC the whole package to look at and councilor submitted comments on that package. And in December, CRC had one review, one meeting left when that referral came through and started that review of the councilor comments and the landlord association's comments. And so we're at the end of a two year process working through those comments and any changes desired or requested by those comments and discussing all of that. We have had extensive help from our inspection services department, Rob Mora, who will probably be at future meetings when the item's back on the agenda. That's a brief, brief overview of where it is, I would say. Thank you. I appreciate you volunteering to do that. So it's been a long process. It was a bylaw upgrade that was sponsored by four different counselors. So there was a lot of interest and support for upgrading the current permitting process and the current permitting system. So we are refining it, we are getting feedback and we have been asked for one more opportunity from the landlord's land owners association to consider their thoughts in the process. And sounds like that may be something that we would schedule for the 30th as one opportunity for a conversation or discussion, perhaps on some of the last items that seem to be sticking points for them. Jennifer. Yeah, and I just a quick historical overview for Freke is in 2013, Amherst, when we had town meeting passed the first residential rental property bylaw. So that was when we first began having a system of having to obtain rental permits to rent property. So after 10 years, we was getting to be 10 years in 2022, we thought it was a good time to look at what was working and what maybe needed to be strengthened. So that's how it came about. Freke, any questions at the, excuse me. So, excuse me. Thank you, Mandy and for everyone for the overview. I have tons of questions, but none that I could raise now, but what you've said will be helpful in rereading what I'd read because, for example, Mandy had mentioned that with three sections. And so I noticed that in the packet and I was wondering where that came from. So now that makes more sense for me. And in the packet are multiple copies of all of the items. So if you, in the SharePoint you have access, I think now to the SharePoint folder for CRC and within that, and for the meeting today, in fact, there's something like there must be more than 20 items. Many of them are duplicative. Some are just a Word document and then the other being a PDF, but it does generally lump them into the general bylaw, the regulations, the chart for fee schedules, fee schedule recommendations. So if you have any questions, let me know or let Mandy know that she was the one that sort of populated that folder. Please just ask. And if you're trying to figure out what is the most recent or any of that, just ask. But this might be good because it'll give you another week or so to come up to speed on that. Jennifer. No, we did look at what is done in other towns, particularly university towns in Massachusetts and in other states. And when it came to like the fee structure, there seemed to be as well, and inspections, there seemed to be as many ways as of deciding how you were gonna do the fee structure, how frequently you were gonna have inspections, how many units in a larger building you might inspect. We saw that for as many towns as have rental permitting, there's as many different ways of structuring, of having the fee structure in the inspections. And we did, it was then referred to finance to actually suggest the act, the fees. We gave, recommended what we thought structures that might work and then we looked to finance to actually come up with the amount. So none of that is kind of, we're still working on that, but just to give you kind of a context for how we came up with all this that we did. And if, I don't know if it's helpful, we could go back and look at some of the other, I think we may have in the file some of the other towns that we referred to or some of the research, if that's helpful for you to look at as well. The other item that is in the packet for, that was in our packet today includes all of the solar bylaw information that has been passed to us. And again, that was passed to referred to CRC at the very end of the past December. And I'm thinking that that's not gonna be on the agenda for the 30th. It's another whole topic. And I think one of the first things that we will wanna do is to just talk about how to structure the public input and the feedback from town staff on how to start getting our heads around and understanding it. Any other, any other, Jennifer? You're muted. Muted. I'm sorry. The solar bylaws due to all of us, we haven't looked at that before. And I need a crash course. Any other- I can send out some readings. Go ahead Pat. I can send this Pat, thank you, I'm sorry. I can send out some readings around from state reports and stuff in state decisions about solar bylaws and stuff. So we have some kind of background. I can get that over the next couple of days and out to people. Thank you. Great. And if they're, I'm looking to Manny Jo, if Pat can send us all of that background information, it might also at some point be added to a packet as information perhaps. Yeah. You can add it to a packet if you'd like. Probably the first one when solar, when you finally put solar on the agenda. Yeah. Yeah, some of the reading is dense. So it'll take some time to work on. Right. Thank you. That would be very helpful. Any other future agenda items that at least want to get brought up? I just want to mention the only other carryover item we haven't mentioned is the nuisance house bylaw, which is now called the nuisance property bylaw. It was also referred, I don't know, like originally referred, what's the date? A long time ago, right? June of 2022. And CRC has been working on drafts of that and continues that conversation. Kind of related to rental registration, but not totally related to rental registration. But the draft is in process still. Thank you. Yeah. I always think of it as part of that package, but it's not really good. Good. I think we have completed our short meeting and have established a meeting date. We have a chair, a vice chair and it's great to see everybody back. And we have a lot of work. We have a lot of work this coming year. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. If nobody, any, there are no items in case it was in 48 hours. So I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 516. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye.