 Seeing that we have a quorum of the council, we are going to call this meeting together. This is actually two things, and I'll explain the first one in a moment, but the second one is why many of you are here, which is predominantly to have, quote, a briefing on the master plan, which we will have following our first event. And our first event is actually to welcome and to swear in our new town clerk. And somebody said to me, well, why am I swearing in a town clerk? And that's because the town clerk usually swears in everybody else. So we would like to welcome you and your family and friends who've joined us for this very special occasion. Shavina, before I'm going to come out and talk with you, we're going to have Paul introduce you. Thank you, Madam President. So I am very pleased to introduce you all into the public to Shavina Martin, who is our new town clerk. She started a week ago and has already hit the ground running. She comes from the city of Springfield, and we're honored to have the deputy city clerk of Springfield with us today. To honor who is Shavina's former boss. And Springfield has become sort of the cradle of clerks, it seems like. They seem to be creating clerks and training them, and then they go off into different places and carry the good work that the city of Springfield's been doing. So we're really honored to have Shavina with us. She's served as an election specialist in Springfield for six years. She oversaw hundreds, I'm not even going to guess the number of election workers, because Springfield's a little bit bigger than Amherst is. And she also oversaw the, worked with the complete count committee, which is a vital interest to Amherst as we are the ninth most difficult community in the Commonwealth to count. She, as one of the things that she really brings with us is her interest and willingness and eagerness to reach out into all different communities, to engage them in the electoral process. And every other way to participate in the town government. She speaks Spanish, and I'll say fluently, because she's a heck of a lot better than me, but she says functionally, but I think that she's very good growing up in a neighborhood where, if you didn't speak Spanish, you didn't get to eat, I don't think. So I'm really proud to have Shavina with us, welcome her friends and family. And I also want to thank Suadette especially, who is the assistant town clerk. And was the acting town clerk for the time in between Margaret's departure. She carried the office and did a tremendous amount of work along with Athena, who was wearing many hats at that time. And we also have in the back of the room, Amber Martin, no relation. But we have a preponderance of Martin's now in the clerk's office. Amber Martin is our new assistant in the town clerk's office. So they're all here to watch Shavina. Make sure she gets sworn in because, and Shavina's done a tremendous job already of creating a welcoming atmosphere in the clerk's office, so I'm really proud of the work she's already done in one short week. Do you want to say anything? First, I'd like to thank God for the opportunity, and I want to thank the council for approving my appointment. I am grateful to Suadette and for Amber for the work that they have been doing in the office. I'm grateful to my Springfield family, who is here with me on tonight and who are the foundation to the professionalism that I bring to the town of Amherst, and I look forward to joining the family and getting to know the Amherst family and Amherst getting to know me. Shavina Martin. Do you solemnly swear or affirm to faithfully and impartially perform all duties incumbent on you by your appointment as town clerk for the town of Amherst? I do. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. I'd now like to ask Dave Zomac, Christine Restrup, to come forward. There you are. So we're going to spend between now and hopefully a few minutes before 6 o'clock, having the opportunity to have a presentation and some questions you might like to ask about the master plan for Amherst. And when we're finished with that, at 6 o'clock, we will actually go into a public forum, at which point we really do encourage you to make all kinds of statements and so forth because public forums are really an opportunity for the council to hear from you. And so let me just start by saying a couple of previous things and then go on to this. The master plan is something that we have had a great deal of input on for a while. And we've been using it and it guides zoning. And so when we look at the master plan, we are not looking at zoning. We are looking at something that guides zoning. So the charter requires that once a year, the council holds a public forum on the master plan. And it also requires that at some point, and we have not decided when, that the council actually accept the master plan. This was something that has not been done in the past by town meeting or previous legislative bodies. So we are going to go ahead and David, have you introduce the next 50 minutes? And Chris, thank you for doing all the work you've done to get here. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much for the opportunity to address the council this evening. I just had a couple of opening remarks. I'm joined tonight by Christine Breastrup, our planning director who will do most of the presentation. Just for those people watching at home or watching in the audience, there should, and of course for the council, there should not be any new information shared tonight. By and large, this is a very similar presentation to the one you saw earlier this year. Christine may have updated a few of the slides, but this is information that has been out there publicly for some months. Just a few opening, additional opening remarks. First we welcome your input and feedback on the master plan tonight and in the weeks and months ahead. And of course that also goes for those folks sitting behind us here and the general public. Chris does a wonderful job and her staff in planning of outreach and being receptive to input on any number of things. But we welcome your input as we move forward in the new year in 2020. We want to recognize the role of the planning board, the community resources committee and the council in any considerations of this important document. My staff and I believe that fundamentally the 2010 master plan is a strong document that accurately reflects our community values. A tremendous, as Lynn said, a tremendous amount of work went into the master plan some years ago and there are members of the master plan committee in this room here tonight. Hundreds of people participated in creating the original master plan from 2010. We believe that with modest additions to better reflect some of the changes that have happened in AMR since 2010 and more accurately those things that might reflect the need for modest updates such as in affordable housing and sustainability. Those are two of the areas that we've identified where the master plan could use a little help but by and large it does not need to be completely rewritten. In fact with the 2020 census right around the corner it makes sense from our standpoint to wait for that critical new data and look ahead to a more comprehensive review of the document in 2025 or so. Finally, a master plan should tell us some simple things. What do we want and where should it go and what we don't want and where we don't want things to go. So we believe we have a strong foundation in the current document. We look for your feedback and input tonight. We look for feedback and input from the community and we welcome and will support the planning board of the CRC and the council as you move forward with the master plan and ultimately some zoning work that we hope to do in the coming years. Thank you. Thank you. Chris. Good evening. I'm Chris Brestrup planning director and I'm very pleased to be here tonight. I believe there are some members of the planning board who were with me. I can't see behind me but I know I did see some of them come in. So please raise your hand if you're from the planning board. I know David Levinstein is here and probably the chair. Yes. Christine Gray-Mullen and also far over here. Janet. Janet McGowan is our newest planning board member. So I'm very pleased to be joined by these planning board members. So as David said, we did give a presentation on the master plan in May. And this is a little bit revised from that presentation. But I hope that you will benefit from hearing some of this information again. So let's see how do I operate this? Does that do I tell Athena when I want to go ahead? Yes. Okay. So next slide please. So what is a master plan? A master plan is a community's general long term blueprint for its future. It guides regulatory changes such as zoning bylaws and things like that, land use policies, budgeting decisions and other aspects of the community decision making process. It helps direct decision making on the community's long term physical development over a period of decades. And this is an important factor. It's a dynamic document. It's the beginning and not the end of a process. Next. So what does the law say about a master plan? A master plan is required of cities and towns by mass general law chapter 41, section 81D. Amherst's master plan was adopted by the planning board in February of 2010. The master plan recommends that our master plan be updated at least every five years. The Amherst home rule charter requires the adoption of a new master plan by town council every 20 years. So that would put this one at about 2030. Best practice is generally to at least review it and update it about every five to 10 years. Next. So this master plan was the first master plan that Amherst had in the last 40 years. We did have an effort at creating a master plan back in the 70s. And I'll talk about that in a minute. It was based on extensive public input in the form of community forums. And you can see a picture of everybody gathered here in the high school cafeteria. Working groups, targeted outreach and a number of community surveys. Well, we did send out to about 600 households randomly selected a survey and asked their opinion about things. The input was based on research on the community's existing conditions and anticipated trends for the future. The master plan represents Amherst's best effort to balance competing interests of a diverse population. And I think that's important because we each have our own view of what how we would like Amherst to be. But there are a lot of different people in town and we want to balance all of the needs of those people. This master plan addresses the complex and intertwined issues that face the community now and in the future. So the history of the master plan, it started in the early 70s. The select committee on goals was established sometime around 1971. And they worked for a couple of years and came up with what we call the SCOG plan. And that's kind of an unfortunate term, but it does represent a good effort at trying to figure out what do we want to do as far as planning for Amherst. And you can see this conceptual plan that's the one on the left up there in black and white is the plan that the SCOG plan came up with. It's a conceptual plan for developing in Amherst and it is kind of a precursor, I would say, to what our master plan says today. We wanted to focus development in the downtown, which is that rectangle in the middle. And the village centers, which are those circles scattered around town, and we wanted to preserve outlying lands. And I think Amherst has done a really good job with that. If you drive up and down northeast street and southeast street, you see the wonderful beautiful landscape that we've managed to preserve. But in order to still have development, we had to put development somewhere. So we're putting it in the downtown and the village centers. So there was a visioning process led by Walt Kudnowski, who is the founder of the Conway School of Landscape Design in the late 90s. The Comprehensive Planning Committee was formed then and the Amherst Visions Report was issued. And the Visions Report really focused mostly on the downtown. So I think that's online and you're welcome to read it. If you can't find it online, email me and I'll help you find it. So the Comprehensive Planning Committee and the Planning Board worked with a UMass landscape architecture and regional planning studio and worked on a village boundaries and open space preservation strategies report. And that you see illustrated over on the right in the colors. And they focused mostly on the North Amherst Village Center, the downtown and East Amherst, and the Pomeroy Lane Intersection. Strangely enough, they didn't really consider Atkins Corner. I'm not sure why, but that was done in the early 2000s, I believe. And then the beginnings of the master plan were in the mid-2000s, around 2004-2005. Town meeting voted to appropriate $20,000, and we used that $20,000 to hire a consultant to help us figure out what is a master plan. What do we want to have for the scope of work and how much is it going to cost? So they came up with a scope of work and a rough estimate for how much it would cost. So in the fall of 2005, a special town meeting voted $65,000 to start working on the master plan. And we issued an RFP. Next slide. So continuing the history of the master plan, in 2006, we got really serious and we started a process called Planning Amherst Together. A consultant was chosen. Annual town meeting voted an additional $135,000 for the master plan, so we had a total of about $200,000. And the consultant and staff gathered data on existing conditions and trends. And a lot of this information is on our website. In 2007, Planning Amherst Together held public idea gatherings. And I'm sure that a lot of you participated in those. We looked at maps and we stuck stickers on the maps about what we liked and what we didn't like. We looked at images and we made choices and did a lot of work all together. And you can see an image of us working together on this on the right there. So the first draft of the master plan was really produced in late 2007. And then in 2008, the master plan subcommittee of the planning board started reviewing and editing it. And in 2010, we held a public forum on a draft master plan. And in February of 2010, the planning board voted to adopt it. What is in the master plan? The master plan is really governed by state law to a large extent. There are certain requirements that you need to cover. So this is a list of the chapters in the master plan. There's a chapter on goals and policies. There's a chapter on land use. And it's interesting because people tend to think of the master plan as being all about land use. But it's really not. It's really about all of these other topics as well. Demographics and housing. Who lives here and what kind of housing do they need? Economic development. We talked a lot about economic development in this time period because I think Emerson was going through some rocky times in terms of financial stability. Natural and cultural resources. Open space and recreation. Services and facilities and that includes the schools and the DPW and the fire and police. Transportation and circulation and that's a really important one. And then implementation. So the master plan is organized. First of all, it talks about key directions. Where do we want to go with our town? The first key direction is maintain Amherst's existing community character. Then we wanted to encourage vitality in the downtown and village centers. Balance land preservation objectives with more intensive development. Provide housing that meets the needs of all residents. Provide community services to meet the needs of all residents. Diversify and expand the economic base. Again, that was a very important topic at that time. It still is, but probably more so back then. Enhanced town-gown relations. And I think we've come a long way with that. And promote an ethic of sustainable environmental energy practices in all town activities. So those are some pretty important key directions. All the sections of the master plan are organized in a way that each section has a goal. And under the goal are objectives. And under each objective are a list of strategies. How do we get there? So I'm using the land use section as an example here. So the goal of the land use section is that we would have a sustainable, attractive town with a viable mixed use downtown and active village centers that are well connected with livable and diverse neighborhoods and campuses. And interwoven with protected open space, natural resources and active farmland. I think that's still a really good goal. And under that goal, one of the objectives was to create vital downtown and village centers that are walkable, attractive and efficient. Again, getting down to the nitty gritty. How do we do that? One of the strategies is to change zoning to allow denser residential occupancy near existing services and public transit. In terms of what does the master plan say, I'm going to run through some of the things that the master plan says about each of these topics that we listed as chapter headings. In the land use chapter, we talk about directing future development to existing built up areas and trying to save the areas that are undeveloped. Preserving key undeveloped lands is the next one. Protecting key farmland and farming in Amherst. I think we all care about that a lot. Guide new housing growth while minimizing impact on open space and small town rural character. And honor the historic and cultural character and beauty of neighborhoods. And I think we've done a really good job with that with the local historic districts that we've established. In terms of demographics and housing, we wanted to encourage a greater mix of housing types, sizes and prices serving a wider range of income levels. Preserve and expand the number of affordable and moderately priced rental units and housing stock. Encourage production of housing in an environmentally sound manner. Improve housing and services for people who are homeless. That's still something that we're struggling with. Build and sustain the town's capacity for regulatory oversight of Amherst's housing stock. And we've done a good job with that in the inspection services department and the rental registration bylaw. In terms of economic development, we wanted to support sustainable growth of existing businesses and attract new ones. Support relocalization of the Amherst economy. And that means trying to buy local food and deal with local merchants, get your car fixed at the local gas station, et cetera. And improve the regulatory environment to encourage business development. I think we've done a lot with that on the second floor helping people to get their permits in a more clear manner. In terms of natural and cultural resources, we wanted to promote preservation, appreciation, and sustainable use of our historical and cultural resources. And even back then we were talking about applying the principles of environmental sustainability town-wide. So here you've got images of two installations. One is, I believe, on the left, the solar array at Hampshire College. And the other one is the Hampshire College admissions building, which also has a solar array on the roof. And it's a living building. So those are two good examples. Open space and recreation, we wanted to improve the economic viability of the farm community within Amherst and provide a supply of accessible, well-maintained recreational facilities that meet the changing needs of our community. And we have been working on upgrading the recreational facilities and we have a master plan for the community field area by the high school. In terms of services, deliver high quality public safety services, deliver high quality education, anticipate plan and budget for large projects, strengthen partnerships with the colleges and universities, and improve coordination of services and facilities. And we've done a lot with that as well. Transportation and circulation, that's a difficult one to deal with. Actively promote alternative methods of transportation. I think we've done a pretty good job with that. We've promoted bicycle use and we have the bike share downtown and elsewhere in town. We were trying to improve the sidewalk so people can walk to where they want to go. Provide adequate public parking to support existing and desired new development in the downtown and elsewhere. That's certainly a topic that we've been talking a lot about recently. And pursue funding strategies for achieving transportation goals. Next, in terms of implementation, we wanted to provide sufficient resources to implement the master plan. Initially there was supposed to be a master plan implementation committee that was going to be established. And that was never really established but we have made wide strides in implementing the master plan nonetheless. We wanted to involve a wide variety of stakeholders in the implementation and I think we are trying to do that. Maybe not as successfully but we're trying. And require concurrence with the master plan and that means that whenever we write something like a zoning bylaw or subdivision regulations or whatever we try to make sure that it is concurrent with the master plan and that we actually make that kind of a statement. So what have we accomplished since adopting the master plan and how have we implemented the master plan's objectives and strategies? And I'm going to focus on affordable housing here because I know that that's something that people really care about. So we have made great strides in affordable housing. The housing goal from the master plan was to provide a mix of housing that meets the physical needs of and is affordable to the broadest possible spectrum of our community and minimizes the impact on the environment. And in this picture you see main street housing on the top right which is 11 units of really lovely looking housing right along Main Street. And in the bottom picture you see Olympia Oaks which is 42 units of affordable housing up in North Amherst. It's sort of hidden down at the end of Olympia Drive but it's really a beautiful development if you go and drive through it. So you can turn to the next slide. So what is affordable housing? It's really a term that's recognized by the state and it essentially says housing that is available to people who make 80% or less of area median income. The income is based on the Springfield Metropolitan Statistical Area. It can be either rental or ownership. And in order to be an affordable housing establishment or unit or development it has to have rents or the cost of the house has to take no more than 30% of the income of people who need this housing. So for an example for a family of four the income limit at 80% of area median income is around $70,950. So that's not much to keep a family of four. How do we get affordable housing? Well one way we get it is to preserve existing units. Back in the old days when we were establishing affordable housing some of them had, they had some sort of limitation on them where they could, their affordability could expire after 30 or 40 years. And so we were able to help beacon communities to buy rolling green and maintain the affordable units there. We're very pleased with that. We also have developer driven affordable housing. The beacon communities project up in North Amherst which we call North Square is an example of that. In this picture here you see Habitat for Humanity built a duplex on North Pleasant or excuse me East Pleasant Street. There's another duplex on North Pleasant Street that Habitat built and the town was supportive of that. Town role in affordable housing includes the zoning bylaw. We facilitate when someone wants to build affordable housing we do what we can to help them. We provide funding in the form of Community Preservation Act funds. We have a tax incentive that we offer and beacon communities to take advantage of that for their North Square project. We have grants that we can find. Permitting is a big topic with affordable housing. So the second floor planning and conservation and inspection services helps with that. And sometimes we provide land. We give the land to affordable housing projects. The need for affordable housing is very great. It's stated in the master plan and the housing production plan which is an effort to try to figure out how many affordable units should we be providing. We also had a comprehensive housing market study done. This is all since 2010. And we have a lot of need for housing of different types for different household sizes, range of income levels, and different types of units and housing. Affordable housing is funded through, as I said, Community Preservation Act, state and federal funds, quasi-public subsidizing agencies, lots of different sources. There's a fellow in the planning department who's really knowledgeable about this. And he helps us to figure out how to fund affordable housing. Here are two current projects that were just recently finished. North Square at the Mill District is on the left. Actually, North Square isn't quite finished. The first building that you see there, that sort of tanish building, has been finished. But the ones on the right are still under construction. So we have 130 total units and 26 affordable units in that development. The development on the right is university housing on University Drive. I call it university housing because it's on University Drive. But not necessarily all of the people who live there are associated with the university. But it's a well-designed building that has 36 units and four affordable units. That was a product of our inclusionary zoning bylaw. Then we're also looking at the East Street School to provide affordable housing. And I think we did issue an RFP and got a response. And now we're working on that. So we're hoping that the East Street School will become a site for affordable housing. The Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust has been very active holding lots of meetings and trying to promote the opportunity for affordable housing. In terms of land use, so I was focused on housing there. I'm going to focus on land use now. In terms of land use, since 2010, we've really done quite a lot. We have drafted a zoning bylaw that includes amendments for mixed use buildings, dimensional modifications, business use of homes. And that was a bylaw that was primarily written by the building commissioner because he understood that people were having a hard time dealing with the zoning bylaw as it was. We've supported the university drive rezoning, which resulted in this building at the top of the slide here. We have, in terms of infrastructure improvements, rebuilt and repaired downtown sidewalks and crosswalks, designed and built around about in downtown, designed and currently are building a main street housing sidewalk project. Actually, that's been finished, I think, as it's been finished. So this is a little bit outdated. I didn't catch this. Constructing the Mill Street Bridge. We did finish constructing the Mill Street Bridge. We also worked on the zoning bylaw to allow marijuana to be sold both medically and recreationally in town. And some of the zoning bylaws were changed to allow taller buildings, which you see down in the right-hand corner there. We hired, so in terms of economic development, what have we done? We hired an economic development director, and we began to draft an economic development plan. We partnered with Pioneer Valley Planning Commission on part of that plan, and we are collaborating with the bid and the chamber on maintaining the vibrancy of downtown Amherst. In terms of transportation, you can see people eagerly talking about the bicycle and pedestrian network here in this lower right slide. We also had an Amherst transportation plan done, and it was finally adopted by the planning board in 2015. We've done a lot in terms of transportation. We adopted a complete streets policy about a year ago. We hired Nelson Nygaard to work on phase two of the parking plan. I'm not reading all of these, but you can see that we've done a lot in terms of transportation. On West Bay Road, we are working on sidewalks. And East Hadley Road, we got some community development block grant funds to fund improvements to transportation there, to build a multi-use path. In terms of natural and cultural resources, we've worked with the bid and others to establish a cultural district, which is in the slide on the upper right. We've used CPAC funds to preserve historic buildings, which is down on the lower right. You can see that we helped with rebuilding the steeple on the Jewish Community Center. We worked with the Kestrel Land Trust to protect agricultural lands. We purchased the Epstein property. Mr. Zomek was very instrumental in that. It's a lot of land down in South Amherst across from Atkins Market, and it includes a beautiful pond. And we used CPAC grants to preserve the North Amherst Community Farmhouse. In terms of open space and recreation, we completed the Community Field Master Plan, which I told you about previously. We updated the open space and recreation plan and submitted it to the state, and it's been accepted. We are working on purchasing of land for conservation and preservation, and I'm sure that you are familiar with that. We worked on purchasing APRs, and there was a big APR recently purchased, mostly with state funds, but some town funds on Southeast Street. And we designed and funded the modernization of Graf Park, and you can see that in the lower right here. We're hoping that Graf Park will come online soon, probably this spring. So services and facilities. We've worked with DPW and the fire department to plan for new facilities for them. We've worked with the Jones Library to plan for renovation and addition of their building. We've worked with the school department to plan for a new elementary school. The DPW and others prepared an issue, a sewer extension master plan. The town has contributed CDBG funds, community development block grant funds for the new survival center. So that's the building you see in the upper right. And the town has adopted a net zero energy bylaw for municipal building. So there's a lot of accomplishments that we've had. What are we continuing to work on as a community? We've got lots of irons in the fire. We're trying to adequately address homelessness and the need for more affordable housing. We're working on repairing aging, existing infrastructure, including roads, bridges and sidewalks. And I'm sure those of you who travel station road know all about that. We are working on constructing new sidewalks and bicycle lanes, creating a comprehensive plan to address the four new large capital projects. The fire, the DPW, the Jones Library and the school. We're working on updating the zoning bylaw. We're working with the colleges and university and unshared community goals. We're applying the principles of environmental sustainability townwide. And we're working with the planning board and town council to review the master plan, which is what we're doing tonight. So, I think now would be a good time to talk about questions, comments, concerns and what you think about the master plan. So I'm going to use this, I'm going to use this time to first ask the council if they have comments or questions. And when we begin and if we have time, then we will move on to audience, but really the opportunity for audience statements, which we totally, completely welcome and have set aside at least an hour for if not more, if you want to stay. We will begin that at seven, if not before. So council six, I'm sorry, six o'clock, seven o'clock is when the League of Women Voters has their candidates for them. So, councillors, yes, Dorothy. Kathy. Dorothy's pointing to me, thank you, Dorothy. Chris, I have a question as you think about the master plan and then where there's a good concept, but something stops us from moving all the way to implementation as you might think about it. And I'll give one thing that's kind of doubly linked to me. If we talk about a walkable and lively downtown and trying to bring people downtown, I think of it about that is the buildings need to be moved back from the street a bit to create public space. We need to worry about the width of a sidewalk. So if we're graced with a sidewalk as wide as Hastings, that's great, but what if we have a little sidewalk, like the one around one East Pleasant? Do we just live with it? And when I open up the zoning law, it's silent on some of these things. So that it's a barrier from what we're thinking about and implementing it. And when I look at the transportation plan, so my other one would be we have a complete street, we want alternative forms of transportation, bike lanes, walking lanes. And then if we allow a very large development to go in and the example would be Coles Road, and it's built near a narrow sidewalk that's on a narrow street. Once it's built, the street can never be wider and we can't put a bike lane in. And the bus plus the car plus the bike can't all go on that road. So I'm thinking of the linkages that if you really wanted the street, we can't take the street that used to have a horse and a carriage on it and think of a lot more people. So the extent to which you already have the tools in your toolbox to say no, you can't do that unless we change the following or where we'll have to change something that'll allow you in the planning department to say we want a development, but here are the conditions under which we want you to play. So those are my two where the concept's a good one, but then in action you look at some things, say wait, it just didn't happen here and we made it, if anything, never going to happen because of what we built. Chris. So I don't know if you want me to respond to comments and questions as they come up or do you want to just hear from people? Let me ask the council if there's other questions that are statements similar to what Kathy has already discussed. Dorothy. I was immersing myself into some of the papers and reports that have been made over the last number of years and every one of them has a general statement. I was looking in my bag to see if I brought the right one, but I didn't. That talks about preserving the cultural center or the small town feeling or something about preserving something about the old time Amherst. And that's one of the things that I'm very nervous about. I've seen some of our recent construction has not done that, yet we do want change. I mean, for example, I was reading all of the stuff about how we can do affordable housing in those small ways by just having a very simple inclusionary bylaw that just says 15% of the housing will be affordable. And then if we did that, you could have affordable housing sprinkled amongst all kinds of housing. And it would be simple and people would understand what it was. There's also statements about preserving some of the residential neighborhoods and particularly relates to, in terms of the university and we've been really dealing with trying to help house students, which has been a major task that we have been working on and trying to cooperate with. That seems to be an area of difficulty. So I'm just thinking if we could move more quickly in making some of these changes to the zoning bylaw to put in across the board, inclusionary zoning, and then it talks in that there were very details about giving density bonuses or adding height. So, you know, there was making some change, making some adaptation of how things look, but still in keeping the character of the town, keeping the buildings further back from the sidewalk, but making it possible for a developer to include those affordable units and make their profit. Are there other comments particularly in this area? Andy, I'm sorry, I thought you were pointing to George. Unlike me. Yeah, I appreciate both of the prior comments from my fellow counselors. What it strikes me as, and when you speak to this, you can come back to it maybe a little bit, but at times because we were so comprehensive in what we developed in our master plan, there are provisions that almost seem in conflict with each other. You put economic development and transportation goals and they can run counter to some of the preservation of the historic nature of the town and some of the other goals. And so, how does a plan work when you have goals that seemingly come in conflict and how do we proceed to make sense of them? Okay, let's pause, go ahead, George. Just have questions about affordable housing in general. I don't know if that's the time now we can wait. Let's wait on affordable housing and have Chris respond to any of the issues that have been raised here. I think in terms of Ms. Shane's comments regarding buildings being stepped back from the street and buildings being sort of constraining a street, I think we've learned some things from buildings that have been built recently. We have a long list of zoning amendments that we would like to start working on and those include reconsideration of setback requirements, particularly with regard to places where the sidewalk is very narrow. I think it makes a lot of sense to have buildings come right up to the property line on the west side of South Pleasant Street where we have Hastings and a nice wide sidewalk but in other places where the sidewalk is narrower, I think we need to rethink our setbacks. So those are all things that the planning department is aware of and I think the planning board is aware of and we're looking forward to an opportunity to working with the CRC and Town Council on some zoning changes that will help those situations. Let's see what else. Ms. Pam talked about preserving the cultural center and small town feeling of town. So I would say that the current developments are primarily located in parts of town that don't have that small town nice character. We think of the downtown Hastings, the town Common, town Hall as kind of being the cultural center of town. The new developments are mostly happening in areas where the buildings have deteriorated, there are large parking lots and so we're not really replacing anything that was in my mind very charming and I think keeping that in mind, the new development is happening north of the downtown, the north end of downtown, but we really are preserving the beautiful charming parts of our downtown. I think the small affordable developments is a really good idea. One thing we run into is that people who develop these affordable developments tell us that they can't get funding for anything that's less than about 40 units and even that is kind of small and Beacon communities has pretty much told us they can't develop anything less than 75 units, so we're really relying on Valley CDC, even Valley CDC, with their development on North Hampton Road. It's only 28 units, but I think they're gonna struggle to get financing for that unless they can pair it with some other developments somewhere else. So those are kind of practical aspects of this and we do work with Habitat for Humanity and they've done a great job of developing two duplexes in town, one with the help of the Amherst Community Land Trust buying the land and giving it to them. So we're trying to use all the different mechanisms that we can, but I appreciate your comments. And thinking about inclusionary zoning, I think that's one of the intentions of the zoning subcommittee to look at inclusionary zoning and see how it can be made stronger, but we have actually achieved quite a number of units using the inclusionary zoning. Mr. Steinberg mentioned, let's see, goals that run counter to each other and I think that is a product of not having gone far enough with our master plan. I have the land use policy map over here and you can see that in some cases the area that is thought about for more development overlaps with areas that are thought about for preservation and we really need to get down to the nitty gritty and start thinking about actual areas of town which we didn't have an opportunity to do during that master planning process. We hope to have that opportunity when we study village centers a little more carefully. So some of those conflicts will be resolved. Some of them may not be resolved. It might just be inherent in the planning process that we will have some conflicts like these. So I think that's my response. I just wanna point one clarification. The, in addition to the council and the community resources committee, it's also very much to be in partnership with the planning board and the planning board is in fact the ones that oversee the additional development of master plan. So I'm glad you said that. I just always think of the planning board as, you know, I'm kind of interconnected with the planning board so I forget to mention them sometimes. Are there other questions? Cause we're going to wanna make sure we have about a five minute break before we actually start the public forum. Dorothy, I mean Darcy. Darcy. Endorse Dave's statement that one of the things that probably needs to be updated more than anything else is just sustainability. And that's especially because the Energy and Climate Action Committee are about to bring forward some goals for the town and they fall pretty much in the categories in which the master plan is organized. So I'm, and they'll eventually be providing specific recommendations with the Climate Action Plan. So I think a lot of that should really be integrated into the master plan in the different areas. I know the current master plan says something like we will follow the sustainability requirements of the 2005 Climate Action Plan but that's not the same as actually putting the specific recommendations in each of the sections that we're gonna be looking at including transportation, buildings, energy use, land use and so on. All of those areas are going to be looked at for some means of climate action coming up. So I just wanted to say that that we shouldn't be siloing all of our, our different committees doing different things we need to integrate. Into one, into the master plan. Right. For the purposes of just information, the Sierra, the Climate Action Committee is going to be bringing forth its goals, recommended goals to the council on November 18th at our meeting beginning at 6.30. George, you had a question. Actually I got a couple of initiatives of time that really relate to affordable housing. The first has to do with how a community determines it goes about determining what percentage of its housing stock should fit the state's definition of affordable housing. State's definition is 80% or below AMI. How does the community determine what percentage of its housing stock should fall in that category? Right now we exceed the state's 10% that's to our benefit, to our credit but is there a rule of thumb? How does the community decide what its affordable housing stock should look like vis-a-vis the larger picture? And that's the second question which is I'm wondering what we can do or what we do do to help those who are not within that 80% or below average, the people who are within the 80 to 100% AMI, what are some of the things that a community can do to assist them? Because to me it seems affordable housing is much more than just the issue of how the state defines it. I'm also concerned about senior housing and what might call loosely retirement housing with an aging community. What we can do, what we are doing to see if we can promote that. And finally, if the chair will bear with me, the president will bear with me, the idea of stabilizing neighborhoods. We just had a public meeting with the folks on Grandwood Drive. They're dealing with a number of homes that have become student rentals. And while I think most of these homes usually in many neighborhoods go fine, there's been some issues there. There are a couple of homes that are for sale on that street right now. And I'm wondering what a community can do to help stabilize neighborhoods when that sort of thing happens. Are we basically helpless? We're basically at the mercy of what the market determines. So there's four things that I'm not saying you need to answer them tonight, but they're questions that are really percolating in my mind, especially as we look forward to creating an affordable housing policy as a council and as a town. So those are the questions I have. Chris. Yes. Maybe if I could, if you wouldn't mind, I could take the last question first and then hand it off to Chris. So in terms of stabilizing neighborhoods, that's a complex equation. I will say that I think Amherst has done very good work over the last eight to 10 years, particularly since we passed the rental registration since some meeting passed the rental registration bylaw. But it goes deeper than that. We've really established a very strong working team going back to and broke down some of the silos that historically occur in many municipalities between and among inspection services, planning, zoning, the fire department, the police department. And we really have now a very interdisciplinary approach to working with and working on some of those trouble spots we have in town. And I give great credit to our fire department, our police department, and even the university in creating a position or two that work very closely with our police department and our inspection services department to go out and actually do neighborhood outreach to some of those challenging rental properties that are out there. I think the situation closest to the university, say on the southern edge of the university, those neighborhoods I believe have seen improvement in quality of life over the last six to eight years since the town, the university have applied resources to trying to do more outreach and really address some of those problem homes, problem rentals, and even worked with landlords on upkeep, on reoccurring challenges having to do with parties, et cetera. So I think we've done quite a bit. And in fact, what we're seeing in town is actually fewer homes going to rentals than they did six or eight years ago. What we can do more proactively out there with regard to homes being on the market, that's a little bit more challenging. I'm not sure if Chris has any ideas on that. I really don't have any real bright ideas on that piece, but I think we're doing a lot better than we were. We can always improve that situation, but I think our team is working effectively to try to address some of those quality of life issues out there. Okay, Chris, was there any final comments you would like to make at this time? And then I just wanna say we're going to officially adjourn this meeting and then go into the public forum. And we wanna make sure that not only the counselors that might still have comments that they want to make do that, but also, most importantly, this is time for here to hear from the audience. So Chris, any final comments on this? I look forward to working with you in the future to review and update the master plan. I think it's gonna be a very interesting process. The town is different now than it was in 2010. So I'm looking forward to that, thank you. I need to hear a motion to adjourn this meeting and immediately at six o'clock we will adjourn. We will call to order the public forum. Is there a motion to adjourn? I move to adjourn. A second. All those in favor say aye and raise your hand. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Okay. So at six o'clock we have planned if we need to to have a very brief summary of the presentation already given. However, I'm observing that the audience is pretty stable from the original presentation. And so rather than take time with that, when we convene next, we'll just go right on to the public forum aspect. Okay. All right. So again, given that we have a quorum of the council president, we're going to call the public forum on the master plan as required by the charter to order at five minutes at six o' five. So let me just mention a couple ground rules. First of all, if you're going to speak, I need to recognize you. And when you do come up to speak, you need to come up here to this mic and you need to sign in with all of your information. And that helps us keep good minutes. Second of all, and we'll get to that point in a moment, public forums by definition have to have 50% of the time is spent in the council, if you will, listening to what the public has to say. So after our first very awkward public forum where there was only 15 people in the room, and that was counting several people's spouses and significant others, we actually went back to the charter commission members and said, well, what did you really think? And they came back and we agreed, we haven't written this, it's not changing the charter, but that we can actually have dialogue. So it's not just you saying something and we sit here and go, duh, it's you might ask a question and if we have the ability to answer it, we actually will put forward every effort to try to answer that question. And that's considered part of the dialogue. So with that in mind, again, I'm going to observe that the audience has not really changed. And so I think that for those of you that were here for the first hour, which was the primer on the master plan, we were going to do a brief presentation. I'm going to suggest we don't need to do that. But before we start with public comment, I would like to offer any other counselors who have any comments. They would like to make regarding the master plan to do so at this time. Shalini. So there are many excellent strategies in the master plan and I would love to see a big Excel sheet of what has been done and what has yet to be done. I think that would be really helpful for the town council to work with our policies, what we need to focus on. And the second thing I was wondering is the breakup of the land of which, and I was wondering if that's up to date. So it says that the land patterns with the residential is 23% of the land is used for residential. 18% is agriculture and conservation is 18%. Higher ed institutions are 16%. And 3.6% land is for commercial, retail or industrial use. So I was wondering if that's the latest figures. And also when it says 3.6% land is for commercial, has that already been developed? Or is that, what is left for, what is developable at this point? And then the other thing is this adds up to 78.6%. So what is the 21.4%? Chris. So those numbers are old. Those are from the mid 2000s and those need to be updated at some point. I think that when you talk about 3.6% for commercial, that can mean a lot of different things. For instance, there's land on University Drive that has one story buildings and large parking lots. So you could ask yourself, have those properties been developed to the full extent that they could be developed? So there are a lot of properties that are, perhaps you would use the term underdeveloped that have potential for something to happen. So I'm just offering that because if the land area is limited, you might consider that something could be built that's taller, that could provide more space for commercial activities. Additional comments or questions from the council? Alyssa. I just wanted to provide a tiny bit of full disclosure on my part in that I worked on the master plan via the comprehensive planning committee from 2000 to 2006. And the last three of those years were as chair of a committee that included up to 27 members. So you think 13's hard. 27 that each had strong opinions. So that was 27 members at meetings, not counting the working groups that you saw pictures of and heard described and participating in the different types of public forums, some of which did indeed have food, translation, childcare. We did a lot with over $200,000 and many, many, many hours. I just wanna be clear that as we are each offering our own little pent up sort of, here's what we wanna tell you about the master plan. This town council does not by any stretch of the imagination see the master plan or the various opportunities within it with one lens or one viewpoint. So one person's setback is not another's. There's no right sidewalk when you're talking about current buildings and conditions. And the reason we don't have a flat percentage of inclusionary zoning right now isn't because the people elected prior to you didn't think it was a good idea. It's because we were told no one would develop downtown if we had that. Well, now we've developed downtown, we don't have that maybe we can get inclusionary zoning and some additional things that we want. So those things did come through the master plan and we have continued to work on them. And so I'm finally asking that with planning board staff and the planning board that's appointed work together with the full council on what you're planning to do before that census data comes up because just working through the CRC or just letting the president know may not be sufficient to keep us all posted, maybe have something in the town managers report that tells us where you guys are at and what you're working on would be really helpful because then we can get people to go to you and then we can also know what's happening. Okay, thank you. Are there any other comments from counselors? I just have a process question. Yes. We've gotten a few comments by mail to the whole council and I'm wondering where are they available to the public? We can make them available as part of the minutes to this meeting, but Athena, how do we do that? I'll add them to the packet materials. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'll make sure you have them all. Are there other comments from the council? All right, so how many people would like to make public comment? And that's for starters. So let me suggest that you target your comments to no more than three minutes. Andy is my timekeeper. He uses his phone to do that. And what did you... He said pulse. Yeah, pulse, right, thank you. And if I need to give you a warning, I'll try to do it something like this and be kind about it, but I really ask that you keep your comments or end our questions to three minutes. So show of hands again and we'll begin by... Let's start in the back. Andy. I'm Andy Churchill. Thank you. I was chair of the charter commission and we put this in the charter, so I'm very relieved to find that I'm not the only person here. And thank you for having this. My question is basically, I don't have a statement, I just have a question that it was, you folks stated that this happened in, this was approved in 2010 and the town has changed quite a bit since then. So I was wondering if you could summarize for us how you think the town has changed and how that might affect the master plan in the future. Well, obviously the town has changed in terms of development that we've seen. Prior to 2010, there really wasn't any development in the downtown. I think the first building that was, that people really noticed was the building that's behind Judy's. So that was built in 2010 and after that, other buildings came along and different things happened in the downtown. Excuse me. The other thing that's changed is that our demographics have changed. We have an older population here now than we had in 2010. We have fewer school children. There's been more development in outlying areas. I was just up in the Emmers-Tills subdivision and that was only started in about 2004. So a lot of new houses have come online up in there and there must have been other changes that don't come to mind right now but I think it's mostly population and development that we've seen. And also the economics of Amherst are much better than they were in the mid-2000s. Yes, David. I think I'd just like to add just a couple of things to answer Andy's question. One is I think the realization to go with the development that we've seen is the realization that we have protected a lot of land for agriculture and open space and as I've said at many public meetings I think that acquisition program is slowing and should be slowing and we should begin to transition to a more of a management and enhancement mode and I think I've been consistent on that. I would also add to Chris's comments that I think we have recognized that we don't have a housing problem in town, an affordable housing problem. We have an affordable housing crisis and we need to address that and put more resources toward that. Back in 2010, probably most of the people in this room were really not talking about global climate change that much. We might have been working in our little silos but today global climate change dominates municipal, state, and some federal conversations. So I think those are really important changes in our community that need to be addressed as we move forward. So thank you. Again, Hans, please come forward. We'd like you to come forward and sign in. I'm sorry. That's fine. Mr. Backelman will give you the mic. Oh, I have to record it for Amherst media. Well, that's good. My question has to do with design and develop. Oh, my name and address is Dick Bentley, 24 North Prospect Street, Amherst, Massachusetts. And oh, yeah, you got that. My question has to do with design, development, and the aesthetics of it. I understand that the planning board recently approved a project that the design review board had not recommended by a four-to-one margin that they continue. The design review board said no by a four-to-one margin and yet the planning commission said yes. What kind of let's call it aesthetic judgment will be called up as these projects go forward? Will the design review board have any kind of influence? Will people care about the architecture that's being built? How could a planning board approve a project that the design review board thinks is awful? End of question. Thank you. In order to make sure that we don't keep asking staff to respond individually to each question, I'm going to ask if there's other questions along the same lines or statements with regard to role of planning board, role of design review board, et cetera. Yes, please come forward. Please state your name and where you live. Janet Keller and I live in North Amherst. Okay. And before that I spent a lot of time working in the state of Rhode Island doing planning and environmental planning and energy planning. So I find all of this enormous interest. So it happens to be the case that I wrote to the town this afternoon, suggesting that you expand the authority of the design review board and that you do that in two ways, that you expand the authority to apply to village centers and as well as downtown and that you require permitting bodies to consider the DRB recommendations and to include their findings regarding the design review board's recommendations in writing the conditions for approval for permits. And I think that would help a lot. I really do. And I've got some other comments but if you want to stay on topic, I'll go back to my seat. Why don't you go on with your other comments at this time? Sure. Okay. So a lot of what I had to say earlier was continue what you're doing. Continue, I think that emphasis on reuse of the developed sites. I think it's a key way to make use of sites that are already disturbed and to take the pressure off green fields. So I hope that that continues as do I hope that you continue to promote adaptive reuse of historic property so that they live and that they have changes that are appropriate for them, maybe expansions like was done with the building that Amherst College renovated downtown. I would like you to see, to see you adopt the New Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissioners recommendations and bylaws for buffer zones and riparian corridors for the areas along rivers and streams. And they just put that out on June 6, 2019. And I'd love to see those written again into the planning bylaw, the zoning bylaw and be part of conditions so that we have, we often hear, well, these things are protected, but let's make it stick by making sure it gets into those conditions in those sessions when the permissions are being given because that's the time for us to make sure it happens. We need you to wrap up. And finally, I could keep on going, but finally on the heights, one thing that I've seen that has worked well is to step back the height so that if you're going to raise the height overall, one of the things we've done in other places I've been is to make the front part a little shorter than the next and the next. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Okay, we're gonna go back to any other comments regarding design review board planning board. Okay, then, hold on, I've got one back here. Do you want me, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see that. Okay, thank you. Chris, do you want me to respond about design review board? So the design review board is an advisory committee or an advisory board. They advise the planning board and the zoning board of appeals. There's nothing in the bylaw that says that the zoning board of appeals or the planning board need to necessarily follow the recommendations of the design review board. That may be something that you wanna add at some point, but that's not in the bylaw right now. I think the planning board is pretty careful and in the past, they've had up to three architects on the board at a time back in 2018. They had three architects on the board, so they do take aesthetics and architectural design into consideration. And I think that they took the DRB's comments to heart, but they determined that they would decide in another direction. Okay, excuse me. We don't welcome that. Thank you. Hi, Elisa Campbell. I live at 27 Pine Grove and all this sounds very familiar to me because I first got involved in town government in the mid-70s. SCOG is a name I remember fondly actually. It seems to me that the point that was raised earlier about general goals, which when actually we try to apply them, they can be in conflict is a very important part of this issue that we're dealing with and actually getting down to specifics at individual places. It can be very difficult because someone can cite, oh, we wanted to preserve the farmland or we wanted to have affordable housing, but you can't do both in the same place. I think it would also be very useful for all of us who are not builders to have a real world understanding of first of all state laws, what the subdivision law says people are allowed to do and therefore we can't stop them, for example, or subdivision not required along road frontage. We are limited as a town in what we can do within the state laws and also a real world understanding of the costs of things. I have been shocked in looking around trying to figure out if there's some place I could afford to move to when I can't walk around where I live now and it's just about impossible to build anything at anything vaguely resembling affordable as far as I can tell. I don't think that's greed. I think it's the result of most of the land already being developed and the materials and labor and all that has gone way up in price. So I think just having some basic information that the rest of us could see when we're thinking about affordable housing or any of these other things would be quite illuminating. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there additional comments at this time? Sarah? Hi, Sarah Marshall, 64 Eames Avenue Amherst. A question and a request or suggestion. First, am I correct in assuming that a master plan, the town's master plan does not in any way constrain or limit what the colleges and university can do with their own property? In particular, their open space that we all love to look at. So maybe that can be answered sometime this evening. And then my suggestion is that in my recent thinking about affordable housing projects, I looked for, but could not find on the town's website, any kind of map or GIS layers that might show the various types of affordable housing, whether owned by the town or private entities, could not find a resource like that. I think it would be very useful to have that because I've heard comments that maybe some kind, part of town is being picked on is not the best phrase, but I mean, if we all knew where the housing is and where it isn't, I think that would be informative. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Mr. Backemin or Mr. Zomac, do you wanna address the issue about the higher ed institutions and the relationship to the master plan? Chris? I can talk about that. Most of the land that's owned by the university and Amherst College and Hampshire College is zoned ED, which is the educational zone. In the town, it does not have any regulations related to the educational zone, nor can it really tell the university, given that it's a state institution and what it can and can't do. So we really don't have much control over them. I'm sorry. One moment, please. In terms of maps on the website, I don't think we had thought about providing maps showing where affordable housing is located, but if people think that would be a useful tool to have, I think we could probably provide that. Okay, thank you. Next comment. Please come forward. Bruce Kolder, my living district one in North Amherst. I was the, along with John Kuhn, Foundation Chairs of the Comprehensive Planning Committee in 97 or something. At that time, I think, and I can't exactly remember, but I think we were talking about providing some kind of public fund for the provision of parking in the downtown. And I'm not sure where that went. It could only have been a suggestion or a question that I made, and it could have been gone no further than that, I really can't remember. But right now, I'm curious as to whether, A, if there is or might in future, B, a parking problem in the downtown where the surface parking really isn't an option because you can develop right up to the property boundary. Whether we have the power and whether it would be politically or economically or in any other way, legally prudent or possible to create a fund and require developers in the central business district to pay into that the theory being or the objective or goal being that parking then could, there would be a fund to solve the downtown parking if we have it or if it happens collectively and communally rather than struggling perhaps with simply municipal resources to do that, would we be able to progressively build up a fund over time by some kind of levy or what have you on development, new development? I'm not going to have you answer that question at this moment, just let me just say that the downtown parking committee is just completing their report. The consultants are also finalizing their report and the issue of parking, which several of you may also have comments for and I will call on those, is alive and well and I will tell you from my own perspective being a district two counselor at Pat's and my first district two meeting, that's all anybody talked about. So are there any other comments about parking? All I can say is we're just at the beginning of the parking comments, not at the solution portion of it. Yes, please come forward. Carol Lewis, 21 Ward Street and a thought about parking that I've had for a long time is it's not separable from everything else. You don't want to build a bunch of parking lots if what you really want to do is encourage buses or rickshaws or something or other than cars. So it seems to me that the parking discussion needs to include the whole topic of transportation and where do we really want to get to, to think about the climate and to think about the kind of place that we want downtown, thank you. Thank you, any other comments on this particular topic? Then let me go on and look for other comments, please. Raise your hands, yes, please come forward. Julian Hines, District 4. This may be a little lengthy, so please stop me. Just remember your time. I go over the time of three minutes. I would like to address two, three issues. The first one is that the master plan mentions having quality public safety service and after many times of talking with the fire chief and many firefighters, I've found that the fire department is drastically understaffed and does not meet the, at least what I consider, quality level public safety service. And in accordance with the master plan, this issue should be fixed with safety in mind. The second is both about affordable housing and historic preservation. There is an idea that I've heard about in the Amherst Indy about changing the regulations in the Kendrick Park area of town. This 40R zoning regulation increases affordable housing, which is good. However, encourages more unfortunate development like one East Pleasant. And I believe that instead of a regulation like this, what we should do is mandate that all new units to be built in our town, specifically apartment units, must, 20% of them must be affordable. This shouldn't be for a tax break or really anything else, but it should just be a simple mandate on developers that 20% of their units must be affordable. The other thing I say is expanding on Kathy's point is that both the business improvement district and the DPW have extensive efforts into beautifying our downtown area. And I thank them for that. However, we can't do that alone and that is why I would like to recommend strict regulations on issues like height and setback, like what we've seen with one East Pleasant Street. This would allow for new projects such as widening the road, bike lanes, wider sidewalks in street trees. This didn't happen with one East Pleasant or some other buildings in town. And I would like to see that improved if we were to create a new master plan. Regarding both one East Pleasant and Kendrick Place, these buildings have already been built. So there isn't a lot we can do about them now. But what we can do is we can learn from our mistakes and understand the fact that many residents, including many of my peers at school who I've asked about this, have not been pleased with the aesthetics, frontage or affordable housing in these buildings. And we need to learn from that going forward if we are to create a future master plan or do any other type of building within our downtown or village centers. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. And you did very well staying within your three minutes. Are there other comments? I saw a lot of other hands up earlier. Yes, you might come forward again. I want to take up too much time. But the other thing I wanted to say was about affordable housing. Affordable housing means you have to earn less than 80% of AMI. And as far as I can see, there's something else that's the affordability of housing that gets left out of the conversation too often. Because there's a big distance between those people who maybe have some subsidies and you know, we need to work at that. But then there's this giant gap. You make $10 more and then you can't get that and you can't do anything else either. And that seems like something that needs to be addressed. And the only one thought that I have had about how it might be addressed might be with infill housing that has different kinds of restrictions. Some way that you could have it, we could have a tiny house on the part of our property that right now is grass that we can't keep mowed or something. So that there's some way to make it more possible to create housing that's a little bit more affordable than what we've got. And that's gonna work better when we get to climate change issues anyway because we can't all live in these big places anymore anyhow or it's not gonna work. And so anyway, basically I think that the issue can't be only affordable housing. It has to be the affordability of housing. Thank you. Thank you. Other other comments? Athena, how are you doing on time? 637. Right. Have we met our 50% mark? Yes. Are there other comments? Bruce, can you please come forward? Bruce Coldham, I was thinking that I would do two at once but I thought no. But now it seems that I get a chance. Another thing that occurred to me and has occurred to me for many years, stemming I think from my time on the beginning end of the comprehensive planning process was North Pleasant Street and the eastern sidewalk of that. As with many streets in metropolitan areas you have an active side and a less active side. It just seems to be the way things are. And the more vibrant side I think of North Pleasant Street is the eastern side but that's also the side with the conspicuously narrower sidewalk. That was evident years ago and in conversations with Bob Mitchell and others at the time. Bob, some of you may remember came from Burlington and Burlington at the time famously pedestrianized its main downtown street. So of course that was in the forefront of some of our minds and Bob was at pains to point out why what was possible to do in Burlington wasn't really possible to do in downtown and I understand we understood that but I think the observation that can be made is we should continually look at the trade between vehicular real estate in that corridor and pedestrian real estate. Recognizing that as time goes by I suppose vehicular traffic may change. It may change because of high digital controls and driving it could change for all sorts of reasons. The pedestrian dedication also comes with it the possibility of expanding businesses to the out onto that sidewalk and the commercial opportunity and the vitality that comes with bigger rising that pedestrian corridor at the expense of the vehicular corridor seems to me something that the master plan should permanently review. And I understand there's all sorts of issues and maybe the people on the west side would be bummed if the businesses on the east side were given a bonus but maybe there is a way in which that bonus there's a claw back or something like that maybe we'll say no that's no good because it'll be overrun by university students and other folks will say no we can do better than that that vitalized pedestrian corridor and business expansion out there would drive other kinds of interests and have people coming into town. It's a wonderfully complex conversation but I think it's one that we should permanently keep in more or less the forefront of our mind because that is a very useful piece of real estate and from a pedestrian and business point of view it's not being used. I don't think as well as it could and cars are getting a bigger chunk of the action than I hope they eventually deserve. Thank you. Yes, please come forward. Kitty Axelson from District Two. There's something in the master plan that I saw there about already existing environment and having new buildings be consistent with the look and feel of a neighborhood that's existing already. It seems to me that with these new buildings that are going up in the center of Amherst that that is changing what the already existing environment is and that that could lead to more of these very tall buildings without setbacks that would be considered this new Amherst style and therefore okay. So is there a way that the master plan can address that because these are very recent changes and I think there are changes that people don't agree with 100%. Okay, thank you for your comments. Chris briefly. I just wanted to say that I think that's a zoning issue that we can address via changes to the zoning bylaw. Right, thank you. Please come forward. Remember to state your name and where you're from. But I'm not gonna fall down again. Morianne Adams, 14 Best in Street. So since an earlier comment mentioned North Pleasant Street that really kind of anchors the comment that I was going to write to you about. The interesting thing about North and East Pleasant is they really represent two different styles, two different cultures, one a residential neighborhood, the other more business. And so there's a really conceptual difficulty there. I remember in some of the contention about Halleck Street there was the issue of whether Kendrick Place and one East Pleasant Street on East Pleasant Street should be anchor architectural models for what went on on the other side of Kendrick Park. And yet what's on the other side of Kendrick Park only actually starting with North Pleasant Street is North Pleasant Street is not a North local historic district but everything behind it is. And when we created the local historic district that is in that area and documented the houses on North Pleasant Street, they are very, very interesting architectural models of them, of some of them really quite unique in their style. And some of them are actually already four stories high and most of them are already set back with nice green space between them. So that really indicates to me that we can't have one plan fits all. Amherst is such an interesting patchwork of neighborhoods, styles, businesses all jostling with each other. And I think we have to come up with a plan that represents the integrity very often at the small scale or it gets lost. And in that regard, I think that the difficulty in advice coming from the design review board or the historic commission because historic commission may indeed have a say on some of these issues is indeed that they are advisory. And I in some cases alas, merely advisory. And so it really depends on the composition of the planning board, whether they want to pay serious attention to these two advisory groups. So I would really want us to consider the relationship between those three commissions, possibly have DRB and historical commission something more than advisory or some understanding of the way in which their considerable pains to give advice are publicly noted in the decisions that get made because as you know, many people were quite unhappy with the result of Spring Street on that particular issue. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Are there other comments at this time? I'm gonna make a last call and please make sure you've signed in if you've made public comment. Thank you. Are there any other public comments at this time? Please come forward. Mary Ser, District One North Amherst and just a couple of comments. One is, I think it has to do with Andy's comment about sort of conflicting parts of the bylaw. And I know that when I was on town meeting, we did a farmland preservation overlay with thinking about that. So I'm wondering about the Mitchell Farm which is in North Amherst and I see as now it's really zoned as, I guess it's some light industrial or what is it called? Professional Research Park. And that's a, number one, it's a working farm. Secondly, it's got a lot of flood plain. Thirdly, it's a wildlife corridor and all of those things. And yet we've designated as a place to have a commercial enterprise. So that's one comment. Secondly, I guess I would like to just say that I agree completely with the whole idea that everyone's talking about is looking at design in Amherst a little bit more closely. When I come down East Pleasant Street now, instead of being welcomed into Amherst, there's a block and it's just like, there's a block in front of me. There's no welcoming into Amherst. You used to be able to see the Catholic Church and a sense of come on into Amherst and enjoy and now it's like a wall. Let's see that I had a third thing. I'm not used to speaking in public so I guess that's it for right now. Okay. Okay, thank you for your comment. Are there any other comments at this time? Let me then conclude our forum by saying that at any point in time, please feel free to forward your comments to all of us. You can do that by addressing it to town council at amherstma.gov. And I usually reply on behalf of the council, but that does not mean that individual counselors may not reply as well. And we do welcome your comments at any point. Kathy. I didn't want to take any public time, but since that's over, I just said it's not. Okay, I just had one additional thing. If we have ideas and other towns to look at, so one would be White River Junction and what they've done, including working with developers with an impact clause in their zoning law, I think it would be useful. Thank you. Okay. May I also point out this is not the end of our conversation. It's the beginning of the conversation. So we want to thank you all for your public comment. And I will ask for a motion to adjourn. In a second? Okay, all those in favor, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Thank you. Oh. I agree with the motion to adjourn. However, it is Mandy Jo's birthday. And I would like to publicly thank her for being here tonight. Happy birthday. Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.