 All set folks have a good one. Thank you. So at 202 p.m. on October 13, 2020, seeing a quorum of the Community Resources Committee, I'm going to call this meeting to order. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspended in certain provisions of the open meeting law and jail chapter 30 a section 20 allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the CRC. The meeting is being recorded for future broadcast and all votes will be by roll call. At this time, I'm going to call upon each committee member by name so that we can confirm. You can hear me and we can hear you, and then please mute your mic after saying present. Shalini Balmill. Melanie's mic is not working. We will come back to Shalini. I am here. Evan Ross. I'm here. The Shriver. And Sarah Swartz. So Shalini, have we figured this out yet? She can hear us though, because she can answer my question. We still do not hear you. Is it trying the right mic? Try rebooting. She's doing from her phone, I think. Can you hear me now? We can. Okay, so I will. I'm on my phone, but I will. Yeah, we can start and then meanwhile I'll figure out the computer. Okay. You sure? Okay. So we are all present and we can now all hear each other. Let me get back to my. Agenda screen. And so we will move on to our first order of business. Which is general public comment. Public comments on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC. Can be expressed by residents for up to three minutes. And at this time, I think we have. Not no phone callers. So if you'd like to make public comment, please just hit the raise hand button and I will, I will recognize you and then do all of the controls myself. I see Kate Atkinson and I'm going to. You should be able to unmute yourself now, Kate. Yes. Can I start? You may. Hi, I'm Dr. Kate Atkinson and I'm a family physician. I've been taking care of people in the Amherst area for almost 20 years. About 10 years ago, I was in a space that was too small and I needed to move to a larger office space and I could not find anything that I could afford in Amherst. At that time, I discovered that most commercial real estate was owned by only a couple of people and those people were able to keep the costs very high and because of the zoning regulations, there were very few business places. So I managed to actually luckily find a piece of property where I could build myself. And it took almost two years. It was well over a year to get it approved by the town of Amherst for me to build my primary care doctor's office. For me, it was one of the worst years of my life. It took a lot out and every hearing I went to people cast aspersions on me, accuse me of dumping and toxic waste. And at each meeting, I had to bring a lawyer and an engineer and a landscape engineer and an architect. And at the end of all of that, it cost me almost $100,000 more over what it would have cost just to build the building anywhere else. I feel like the process of such restriction in Amherst, in terms of commercial zones, actually favors the huge corporations. The Walmart's and the Dunkin' Donuts and the CVS's who can afford all of that. Pretty hard for a small locally owned business to do that. Such that when a friend of mine a little over a year ago bought a local doctor's office in Amherst, after seeing what I went through, she moved it to Hadley. So if we want to have local businesses and especially the kind of services that we need more of, for example, primary care medicine, I'm really hoping that we can make things a little bit more feasible for small businesses and not keep us on the same requirements that you would have for a big corporation. I want to point out through the pandemic, my office has remained open. We are a medical home to thousands of patients from the area and provide really high quality medical care where anybody, any one of our patients can be seen the same day if they're not seen. We currently have a problem that we do not have enough parking for our staff. There's a little lock right down the street from where my office is. We had a plan to put 10 spots and hide them in the woods so that it wouldn't bother anybody. And we were told that we have to go through that same process that I went through years ago in order to get this approved. And since, as I said, that was one of the worst experiences of my life, I'm really hoping that you would reconsider the way the zoning is written. What I'm frustrated by is they're telling me this would qualify as a commercial lot. I would argue, and my attorney agrees with this, the definition of a commercial lot is parking that you sell to people. You know, you go to a parking space and you get a little ticket and you pay somebody, not where I'm putting my employees who are coming to work if they care of patients all day long. So I'm really just encouraging this committee to look at the bylaws, the way the zoning is written, the definition of a commercial lot versus being able to park employees, especially in light of how these things affect small local businesses. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Atkinson. Are there any other public comments? Seeing none. We will move on on our agenda. Which moves us to our presentation discussion item for today, which is comprehensive housing policy. We will be spending the bulk of our meeting on this, probably till about three 30, and then we will move on to the rest of the items on the agenda unless we finish this portion of today's discussion early. I have a feeling we won't because housing policy can take a while. I'd like to accomplish potentially three things on this housing policy today. I want to start with last meeting we started with going through the goals, as they were listed modifying the language and then the little sort of description of the goals below that, each of the goals. And we got through about two and a half of those. And so I'd like to finish getting through those and review the ones we reviewed last time and then move on to the strategies. This is right now pretty much a dump. In terms of idea dump. That we've just put everything that I've come across. And so we talked about last time needing to. You know, sort of clean that one up. Before anything goes, you know, before we start seeking some opinions on the housing policy as a first look. And so if we have time, I'd like to get to that. And then I would like to talk a little bit about the plan for getting more feedback. And then we'll move on to the next slide. And then we'll move on to the next slide. And then we'll move on and all as we move forward. So those, those are the things I'd like to accomplish today. For housing policy. I know it's ambitious. We'll see if we get through it. So I am. At this point, going to screen share. The housing policy. This revision of it. So that we can look at it. And this one. I'm not putting everything in the packet, but I did put beyond the housing policy. I put. Two word documents. And then the master plan chapter of demographics and housing. The word documents. Had were summaries that the zoning subcommittee. Planning board member, Jenna McGowan had created at the request of. Maria Chow as chair of the zoning subcommittee about a year ago, that she had forwarded to me and they are summaries of the housing market study and the housing production plan. And I'm not sure we had seen them yet. So I put them in the packet as the summaries instead of the hundred page documents. To give you an idea of one of the things I did, I took those three items, those two summaries. And the master plan check chapter. And this is HPP is the housing production plan. And then the master plan. The H M. Let me see if I can find it. HMS is the housing market study. And then the MP would be the master plan. So when you see those abbreviations attached to some sort of strategy or measurable, it will, it, that's what it's referring to along with the page numbers or the section number so that we can see where things came from. So we're going to start with this. So we're going to start with this. So we're going to start with the final. Housing policy. Goals. Before we move on to the objectives and the summary below the objectives, a few of these got. Rewarded. So. We're going to start with this. And. Go through each one of these five to see if the wording of the goal themselves. Actually we'll start with, we'll just start here. We're going to look at the wording of the goal, the objective, and the blurb under the objective before strategies for each of these, and then we'll come back to strategies if we can get through all five goals and objectives. So this first one. And I believe we touched on. Last week, last meeting. I've reworded it to try and make it a little more clearer. And the objective was reworded. I think this is the wording that we talked about at the last meeting. And so if we've got any requested changes or thoughts on this goal or objective or blurb. Please raise your hand and. Mention them. No hands makes me think everyone loves it. Which I'm good with. And we will move on in another 15 or so seconds. If we don't get any hands. This one was one we talked about last week. So. We're going to move on to the next goal. See no comments. We're going to move on to the next goal. Get to the next goal. So here's the next goal. This blurb is a bit longer. The goal is to promote a diversity of housing types, integrated communities, and access to homes at all income levels. I reworded the goal based on our discussion of objective and summary. So this is one we looked at last time. Trying to make the difference. A clear difference between the prior goal. And this is one we looked at last week. We looked at creating housing. And building housing and this goal of different types and. Non-monolithic sort of locations of stuff along with the access to them. Thoughts on this one. Any requested changes or. Editions and stuff. Steve, you were muted. If you were trying to say something. Is that okay? Yeah. Goal objective and paragraph. So monolithic. I get the point. And I think we've discussed this, but monolithic. Doesn't seem like the right word. And I get the point that we don't want neighborhoods that are of. One type of something. Necessarily. Maybe homogenous. That's closer. But they might. So if it's okay, just back and forth, or do you want to, you know, it's okay to be back and forth. We're trying to. So, so I'm not sure that they mean they're made. It's not the. Cohesive neighborhoods. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of what we're trying to get at here. So cohesive neighborhoods. I guess I see monolithic as being a look of something. Looks like a monolith. Yeah. I mean, I think homogenous gets closer because that's talking more about. You know, who lives there or the culture within there. Yeah, maybe homogenous is a better word. We can leave that. I found one. We try to avoid the use of the word citizen. So I'm going to change that to residents. Residents. Yeah. So I guess. The only other thing I'm wondering if we wanted. I mean, I think we thought our objective says integrated in both income level and racial diversity. But our, our, the, the blurb. Is really only focused sort of on. Income diversity. You know, affordable residents that may just stages life and affordable housing. So I guess I'm just going to go to residents of many different income levels, but we have actually never touched on racial diversity in the blurb, but we do mention it in both the top goal and the objective. And so I'm guessing I'm wondering if we want it, if that wanted to be. Worked in there, you know, pockets of town that only support one type of housing. Available into a small range of income. So we keep coming back to this idea of, you know, I'm not sure what my solution is. That's going to be my next question. So stages of life, size of family. It's tough, right? But it just, it just feel, I'm not sure how to work it into this blurb, but it feels weird to mention it in the objective and not in the blurb. Because the other thing that, you know, we're talking about integrated communities here. And so I'm just wondering if that needs to be. In this. Yeah, I mean, I can sit on this and try and think of wording, but. Yeah, maybe, maybe we can try and figure something out. You know, that, that better does that. I guess I'm thinking, have you ever seen that racial dot map? I think so. I'm not sure others have. Can you explain it? Yeah, I think so. So it's, it's, it's so each dot is a. Householder person and they're different colors for different races. And so you can kind of look at how integrated or segregated a community is. And so if you look at Amherst, there's certain areas that are. Pockets of very white. And then there's certain areas that are pockets of people of color. And so part of our goal is to make it. And so I feel like that sort of, when I'm picturing, you know, in here, I'm, I'm lost about. Yeah, creating pockets. My mind actually immediately went to that racial dot map before I went to like pockets of just single family homes. They're related. But I guess I'm wondering if maybe that's a place to, to work in. I don't know. I have to think about this, but I guess I'm just questioning if we mentioned racial diversity and the objective and the goal should it also be reflected in the blurb other than just in that first sentence, I don't know. I don't know. I just want to make a note. Any other thoughts on this one? It's, you know, it's the, I'm, I'm Googling racial dot map as we're speaking here, but you know, that's a hard one because in the way Amherst is so small, right? Compared. So if you look at the. And we can't do the housing. Production plan or the, we can't, we can't work. We don't have the authority to work beyond Amherst, and we don't want to work at U of M. So if you consider the whole of Amherst, there's a great right to the pocket, you know, within a larger ecosystem. What we want to avoid as being. The racially undiverse community within a pocket. You know, we want to look. We want to at least look at what. You know, the whole. We want the diversity of Amherst to represent at least the non-diversity within the, you know, the larger community. It's tough because neighborhoods, we all have a different definition of neighborhoods. Like a neighborhood could be a street, literally, because Amherst is so small, that some people might think of their street as, as being the neighborhood or their building, you know, even. So it's, it's, I think it's a great goal. It's, it's, I'd love to know how we are. Well, actually, I want to look at the racial dot map and kind of see the patterns that Evan's talking about. Okay, any other comments? Seeing none, we're going to move on to the next goal, which I think is one we did not discuss last meeting. Sorry, it's on multiple pages here. Um, what is my comment down here? Oh, this is one. So, so here we go with, this is one that split up into multiple sub objectives, I guess. The goal is to create safe, secure, and environmentally healthy housing. And so I'm going to, and I popped into this one, the support for housing consumers that came from the Missoula one, we had incentivize repairs of rental properties and legislate quality building standards as a sub goal, and tenants supports as a sub goal. Those were three different sub goals within one. One question we have to have is, whether we want sub goals in this document, or whether under each goal, we really just want one objective. And the other two, we've only had the one objective for each goal. This one potentially has three, some of these might be able to be combined. We might be able to put them into one objective instead of multiple sort of sub goals with different objectives each, and then strategies that address them all. I don't think I can get this well onto multiple page, see the whole thing without you being with you still being able to read it. So I think the first question is, do we like splitting a goal into multiple objectives, or do we want one overarching objective? Yeah, so this is this is tough, because I, you know, I like consistency. So, because the first two, which are really important, I only have one objective. It kind of makes sense to me to say consistent with that. But then there's also different things within them. But I guess I'm wondering if really we just have one objective, but then we divide our, we divide our strategies into categories. So they're all working towards the same objective, but we can break them down in different ways, because I think I think we're probably going to have to do that. I mean, if you look at obviously this is, you know, just right now, it's just a sort of everything, right? But you started to do that. Well, I don't know, for the strategies in the first two, there's just so many. And you can start to think of how you might want to group them, you know, zoning, multifamily, that kind of stuff. And so I'm just wondering if maybe the better way to do is have one objective for each and that, and with one blurb that sort of gives the overall view of what we're doing, but then group strategies into sort of these, so these categories, these different objectives you have right here might instead actually be headings for different groupings of strategies. What are others thoughts on that idea? I'm seeing a nod from the Shalini on the computer that does no audio. And from Sarah. Yes, Shalini. I'm just using my phone for audio and screen blur. I figured. Yeah. So I was actually figuring out my system early, but so we're not going into the strategies, right? We're just not right now. We're going to get through all the objectives and then come back to the strategies for each one. Got it. Yeah. Okay. No, I do like what Evan just proposed about having one objective. And then within that we can group them into specific things. Actually, goal is a broader thing. So it could be goals because we never really reach a goal, but objectives are like smart objectives or whatever. So I mean, we could work that in a way that they could be sub or sub-object. They would be multiple objectives within a single goal. Sarah, you were nodding your head too. Yeah. So my next question is, did we have multiple sentences in our objective? One sentence and one sentence. It's the blurbs that have multiple sentences. So we need an objective on safe, secure and environmentally healthy housing. This one is housing should not harm the health and safety of residents and families. This one was improve the living conditions in rental housing and the protections afforded renters through the creation of programs, the adoption of legislation and other means. The housing consumers one didn't quite go to that per se. Sorry for paging back and forth. I'm just going to use this one as our main one. So is it environmental too? So there's a stab at it. I'm wondering if we can get rid of this one completely that was taken from Missoula since we're writing our own. Evan? Yeah, I guess. I assume you wanted to talk. Yeah, I guess we could probably delete it. I'm not quite, when I first read that, I was thinking of sort of support services or support programs. Like, I don't know, like first time home buyer stuff or thing, but we haven't really talked about anything like that. But I guess we could, or maybe like if you're thinking about the supportive housing model that's behind the Valley of CDCs that pairs housing with social service support networks, like this sort of touches on that. And if we were going to talk about that stuff in this housing policy, then it would, I would say it would go in this section. We just haven't really talked about that. Yeah, and I think some of it might be covered in some of the other strategies down below. Yeah, I think if no one objects, I'm just going to delete the whole thing. This whole group. So this is the objective I'm working on, which I pretty much copied this objective and added it into that one. And then we've got the blurb. Evan? So just looking at this, it's a little bit repetitive. And also the two. Yeah, yeah. To do this, we need to expand the policies we already have in place to monitor almost sounds like a straw. We're getting into strategy. So I'm wondering if it just can be the safety and security of our residents is paramount because Amherst has a high number of rental units. We need to ensure that those rental units are maintained in a manner that provides safe and secure housing and then all the way down by ensure that renters can fully participate in community life by reading that part. So something like that? Yeah, I feel like that kind of covers everything and safe and secure rights, protections. It provides safe and secure housing and we need to wordsmith that connection. Yeah. I wonder if it's just a sew that. That one work? Yeah, Shalini? Yeah, I was just looking at the master plan. I like that it's kind of very explicit what that goal is. They say it in terms of the community's ability to ensure the basic right depends on the resources the town commits to, okay, here, to inspection enforcement and coordination. And then I don't know if you want to get as specific, but it actually details out what we mean in terms of safety. And so it says commits the town commits to inspection enforcement coordination of building fire accessibility health codes. Do we want to mention that? I mean, that's where the town runs into problems is the codes and stuff like that. The fire we've heard about that a couple of times the health codes. Yeah. They have three things inspection enforcement and coordination. Would that go here? It was inspections. Welcome, Dave. Enforcement. Hello, thank you. Yeah. Inspection enforcement and coordination. I don't know what the coordination part is, but definitely inspection and enforcement. How's that for people? For our first blush? It's a very long sentence. What if we split it? It's a shorter sentence now. We got a couple of high fives or thumbs ups. We ready to move on from this objective and blurb? We have two more to go before we come back to strategies. So we will move on. We can come back and this one looks like it just has the one objective. Let me make sure. Yep. So we talked about this one last week, our last meeting. And so let me know if I made the changes that we were talking about while people are reading. I'm going to update Dave where we are. We're going to spend most of our time on housing, comprehensive housing policy draft today, Dave. We're going through the goals, objectives and little blurbs first. We're on our fourth of five goals to get them where we're fairly happy with them. And then we're going to circle back to strategies and clean them up so that there's some, I guess, plan and logicalness to the strategies listed. And then we're going to move on to what we're going to do next. Steve, you might need to unmute Steve. I'm just reading through the paragraph. So this is a hard one because through our actions, I'm in the second sentence, including prioritizing policies that will result in existing and new structures that are sustainably built, operated and located where services are. So if we're talking about existing structures, then they, I guess, sustainably built or renovated. I mean, we don't want to make this a word salad that are... We could just say that are sustainable. No, no, but sustainably... That are renovated or sustainably built or something like that. Sustainably renovated or built, maybe. But I think sustainably is modifying both built and operated, weirdly enough. Yeah, that represent sustainable that are used sustainable practices or something. It maybe it doesn't matter. And then also look at where services are. So that doesn't, we might need to be more specific. Like I would say we're near village centers, in our or near village centers as a priority. That does, yeah. And that's open for debate, discussion. Kevin? The other thing I was going to say, one thing I was going to say is in the end of the next sentence, we must implement our farmers that result in housing that reduces the use of fossil fuels. I was thinking we might want to write housing and neighborhoods. And I know, as Steve said before, we all have a different idea of what a neighborhood is, but I want to make sure that we're communicating that we're not just talking about the individual structures themselves, but also that we're looking for them to exist in sort of a walkable, bikeable, multimodal ecosystem. So even if it's, so even I guess what I'm getting at in there too is even if it's a neighborhood that's not located in a near village center, we still want to make sure we're looking at it through a climate lens of like, well, is this still bikeable or walkable or that kind of stuff? Any other thoughts? Seeing none? Well, we don't really talk about housing type. So maybe this is just too much. But so when we all, we look at housing stock, maybe many of us think single family house, but really housing stock could be also a five story mixed use building. So maybe the village center point makes that point. But I think I'm okay. For now? Yeah. I'm sure we're going to get tons of comments when we send this out for comments. Oh yeah. We will move on. And so this one looks like I also put a couple of objectives, multiple mini goals and objectives in. Let's figure out what they are. So this is a line and leverage existing municipal funding and other resources to support affordable housing. And then a mini one was municipal funding. And I think there might have only been two distribution of town owned land up and expanding affordable home ownership options apparently. So there's three of them. But I think the expanding is leveraging everything else. Let me copy these up into the first one so we can play with them. Municipal funding. Where's the next one? Okay. So those were our three objectives. We've got to be able to combine them into one. So does that take care of the objective at least? Ignore these two. Everyone's okay with the objective as rewritten. We'll go to the blurb and I'll add the three blurbs up. Apparently the affordable home ownership options are a Missoula blurb. So we might not be able to use that one. Shalini. Separate objectives and not strategies under affordable housing, creating more affordable housing. So this wouldn't be this one. It'd be like this. I mean it's to support affordable housing. So isn't that a strategy to support affordable housing? Why is that a separate goal? Oh well that's your question. Yeah. So good question. Unless we want to highlight this. It might be the highlighting that you're just referring to Shalini of we've got specific funds and here are the strategies for how to use those funds versus just the general use the funds. I know in the affordable housing priorities policy that the housing trust provided us last year. They were talking about like per unit costs and making sure it fit under that or prioritizing certain funds for certain types of units or certain types of maybe that's why this is more of a goal. The aligning the use of these funds and the use of that to the rest of the goals and then listing it separately. Yeah actually now I think back in finance committee too there were a lot of discussions about the land you know when it's given over and to have some clarity around how that's to be dealt. Okay so it makes sense. Okay. Well I think we can probably delete that full paragraph too. Evan I think you were thinking about saying something. Yeah so one thing to just put out there so some time back when I talked about sort of prioritizing CPA funding for affordable housing development although I was a little bit more specific than this. I did get some pushback from a member of the CPA committee who basically said we're an independent body and didn't feel like it was appropriate for the town council to try to put any type of pressure on the CPA committee to have them prioritize or decide how to spend their money. I think that this is vague enough that it doesn't it just says that the town can leverage CPA money for this. But I guess I wanted to just bring that to our attention as we get to the strategies part of this is to some extent there's almost a conversation in there about that we've never really had as a full council about what is our role to these two between what is our relationship between these. I think with CDBG there really isn't any with CPA it's weird because we do have to approve their recommendations. But how much independence do they have to decide and so I think that this is probably fine it's just highlighting two potential funding sources. However I want to just say as we get maybe to the strategies part that might be a conversation we have to have is what is that relationship when it comes to the stuff and if the council is passing a housing policy that says we really want funds to support affordable housing where is that line of telling CPA how we want them to spend their money. I mean there's a minimum amount they have to spend right and you know can always go and reserve but are we telling them what to prioritize. Then the only other thing is this really focuses on CPA and CDBG but I guess in theory there are other funds that could be used or identified and I'm just wondering if we want to just expand CPA like CPA community development black bars or others off top of my head the only thing I can think of is I believe our inclusionary zoning bylaw right now allows a payment in lieu of units into the housing trust which would be another revenue source so I guess in theory there are likely other revenue sources the town could capitalize on other than just CPA and CDBG. I'm definitely when I can think of right now but there might be other some grants or whatever or they might be able to create revenue sources through some of those funds you know if it's a home ownership down payment plan where you actually zero interest but you pay it back and then it sort of becomes a revolving sort of granting opportunity. Shalini. Yeah I think in the master plan they talked about state advocacy to create to get funding and I think we get it under 40R maybe or 40B we do get funding for so like advocating for that those sort of fundings to flow in this direction. Good point. So are we good with the splurb for now and the objective before we go back up to strategies I'm going to clear clean this one up a little bit actually I'll we're not going to get to that later I'll clean it up for the next draft. Yep Steve. Yeah so maybe on the theme so private funds also right so it doesn't all have to be government funds we seek to and you were kind of talking about that with the the tax incentives but no other revenue sources does it so but it's not necessarily all public funds it could be some private funds and that's also to Shalini's point of the 40B. So do we want to change the goal language then from leveraged existing municipal funding and instead of well you have other resources oh yeah or municipal another funding or something like that I think it's fine. Okay I'm going to leave it like that for now. Are we ready to go up to strategies for a bit? Yeah and as you've noted we're only putting the ball into play this isn't the final draft. Oh no not at all so strategies gets long because we get a lot so I can't put them all on at once but I think we should you know so this is the goal this is the increased production and strategies I think we might before we get into culling and cleaning this up identify what we want out of the strategy section and have a discussion so I'm going to stop the share for now um have a discussion on you know do we want a comprehensive list of strategies anything we can think of do we want to try and since this is a council policy list those that the council wants to better prioritize whether that be zoning or others um you know and so that it really is a a smaller list than pulling everything out of the master plan and everything out of the housing marketing study and everything out of the housing production plan and putting it all in do we want to try and limit what it is to what we want focused the last the next couple years um so thoughts shalani I just wanted to say thank you for doing that that's a lot of work for pulling from the master plan all the strategies and all from the production plan and I'm putting it all here so thank you for doing that so I'm going to thank Janet McGowan for summarizing because I pulled from the summaries awesome it wasn't in the summer thank you Janet let's just document on this one we need to go back to the document but yes thank you it's it's it's an interesting list though Steve yeah so in some ways I think the strategies is the most interesting part of the the document because in a way reading the strategies actually helps explain what we mean by the goals and objectives so I like what you've done I don't agree with everything that we put in there but I think that a comprehensive list which is pulled from various documents that have been produced over the years I think that's useful and but I think we also need to be cautious about some of the things we put in there because not all of it's been vetted but I like the idea of the big copy on some of this Shalini I think I would maybe suggest organizing them something to what I think Evan had alluded earlier that we could collapse the strategies within the zoning's incentives I mean those are the ones that I'm just seeing but I'm sure there's a way to group them and then having them within that I think is good I don't know does it help to suggest where we got it from because then it's like oh you know the consultants in the housing production plan and the master plan already vetted these and these are coming from there so I don't know if in the final policy that we send to council whether we should provide that reference I think the references are helpful partially from a when we're presenting this around people know we didn't just make this stuff up it came from somewhere you know and so it's not necessarily CRC's ideas it is listed from all of these different studies that the town has paid for and we're using them to move forward and all okay other thoughts Evan I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around this a little bit so the the things that are listed under strategies are from the housing production plan the market the real estate market study and the master plan plus right okay so I guess if if all we're doing is re is grouping I guess I'm trying to figure out what the value of this policy is right to the council to the planning department right and so if 95% of the strategies are just things that we pulled out of existing documents is that the value is just what that we're grouping content from multiple documents to for people like what what what's the value so then the other the other side is there's there's stuff that's from counselors in here um but of course we might disagree on those things right and so it'd be hard to say this isn't adopted so I guess I'm just I'm just trying to I'm trying to wrap my head around the strategies what what the value is that adds value beyond the existing documents that we have Nalini um I think that the fact that we have so many strategies out there in different places and if this policy could be the composite of all of those things then it also gives direction to the planning department that's been asking us like where do we put emphasis on and there were a lot of like things around zoning and so forth that that were there in different consulting documents so I think this policy kind of gives direction that we've vetted through all of those things and and this is what we should be focusing on instead of yeah starting in a new place let's look at what's already been done and let's start working here and to me it feels like it's all taking all of those different pieces and putting it in one place so we're going to look at them and we have the references so we don't have to go to the separate places to look at them so can I just yeah you can just respond so the strategies that are pulled from the master plan right so the master plan has been adopted by the planning board and I assume will be very soon adopted approved I think that's the language attorney uses by the council um the recommendations from the production plan and the studies have never been approved or adopted right we just we get a study but we don't necessarily sometimes we get studies and we might disagree I mean right we oftentimes disagree with things in them so is the I I'm trying to build on what Shalini said is the idea being this the stuff that's being pulled from those studies by putting them into a policy we are sort of officially endorsing those recommendations so right now they exist as studies but this adds a level of endorsement and support to them is that sort of what we're looking at okay I'm trying to just figure this out in my own mind so you all are helping me out with this um because then the other side of that is then do we want to include any strategies that were recommended by counselors as part of that 13 page list but that didn't come from the three documents that we talked about because then that's a whole different thing I mean right now it's all in there um I guess I I'm going to take my turn to speak and then and then Sarah if you've got anything to add you've been very quiet so I want to give you a chance to say something um I'm concerned about a comprehensive list simply because then it doesn't serve the purpose that I'm hoping a comprehensive housing policy will serve which is to give some direction and Shalini said to not just the planning department because not everything is zoning but CPA, CDBG, housing trust you know I can't think of other bodies but but even just you know other departments the you know the conservation department this you know Stephanie Chickarello and ECAC as they start looking at you know what to do to meet the climate action goals um and plan so I see it as as a better idea if we try to limit what we list under each strategy um so that it doesn't seem overwhelming um is is one of my thoughts so um Sarah if you've got anything to add so I guess when I looked at everything all together in a way I don't know if we want to just so in a way seeing everything all together kind of it gives you sort of a comprehensive roadmap of where Amherst and in different um places has made um priorities so and and then in some ways even if you don't agree with some of it or it hasn't sort of been ratified I think being able to see them all together maybe in some kind of an index and just showing where they came from maybe able is just like a just an index and then it would be up to us to um pull out what we as council think are very specific things to that we want to concentrate on and maybe even like what we have left for our last year and a half so I would think that would be like in maybe in two separate places I don't know that I would get rid of everything that's all together because I think it it when someone is pondering like well it's good to have them all in one place but then I would we should maybe make that I already said this I'm just repeating what I said so yeah that's what I'm thinking because that way you know where we're headed but you can also see you know somebody goes oh well I think I don't know what taking money from private sources would be great to do this fund and you can say well we've we've been there where do you want to you know put it in it's been explored okay um Steve you lowered your hand I did okay Shalini I think something I always believed in and research was triangulation which is don't rely on just one methodology and so the way I'm seeing these different consultants reports and including then counsellor is like maybe like I don't mind doing that like creating a comprehensive list of seeing because there's definitely overlapping strategies because I started with the plan master plan I'm like oh you already have that under you know that was what was recommended in the housing plan so I wonder if there's a way that we could see that these were the most you know heavily promoted strategies by multiple bodies then those become like oh maybe they're rising to the top and then including then also other stakeholders like you know what's been proposed by John Harnick and his suggestions what is I don't know at some point this is going to go to the community and so so you know so we start off with what we have and then keep looking at what other stakeholders are you know giving weight to and then make that sort of the ultimate priority list that's all my brain works anyways um Steve um yeah so I think it's useful to put all this stuff out in the sunshine and yes if we adopt it so if we adopt this as policy then it puts some things that may have been forgotten or sort of left on the shelf puts it back in the sunshine it becomes policy like I was looking at the various comments about two family houses duplexes and so sometimes those are in conflict with each other like one says um two family houses should be by right and only these certain zoning districts and another one says no they should be by right in all zoning districts those are two ideas that are in conflict but the idea is the same that two family houses are a good way of addressing you know many of the issues that are being discussed and it's very much within the realm of our action you know to enable something like that to happen so I mean there's little things like that that I think are really useful to put out in the sunshine as part of this this this plan and see where it goes so I guess my concern is if we list too many things we end up not getting anything done because there's no structure to what to tackle first um you know and so for example we've got five goals if we list 20 things under each goal do we tackle 20 for in increasing housing stock first you know building more housing first before we ever get to goal four which is climate sustainability um do we tackle the first two on each one do we have to list them in whatever priority order there is um you know I I think you know and and then I go back to or is the strategies more of as some people are saying um what people can take as a way to explain the policy makers ideas of how to get and fulfill the policy because as a council we're the chief policy setters of the town we're not really the you know there's not too much of these strategies the zoning strategies we would have to pass but some of the other strategies we don't have much say in we're not the ones implementing it um so do we list things so that the people that would have to implement it get an idea of oh hey they think this is one way to fulfill this policy goal that they have of creating more housing and not oh and on the inverse side does not listing something also give information to the implementers um you know say I'll take Steve's two-family example say we choose to list as an example with two-family whichever you know pick one two-family by right and only certain districts does that give the policy setters in terms of making proposing revisions a an idea that we want it only in those districts not everywhere like this other policy said like is it a way to signal what the council might might consider better than other strategies by leaving some strategies out or leaving some ways of doing those strategies out shalini I think um the different strategies are not all implemented by the same body and like I'm thinking for example some of the strategies for promoting diversity of housing focusing on seniors right and so some of the strategies within that were I'm looking at the master plan was you know giving incentives to developers whatever to build senior homes and so forth so that's like we're not doing anything I mean I guess we are I mean not the council is not doing but the town staff will be involved in working with developers to figure out how to give them the incentive but what I'm saying is that different strategies are going to involve different bodies so they're not all falling on the same people so I think we do need to have them so that it also sends a message out to the town developers who are going to be there or even families who are looking hey we want diversity we want you to come and live here and here is how we are working to build so I think it's important to have the strategies and which ones because yeah they're a gazillion of them at this point I I mean to me like I said I would maybe start with the ones that are coming from multiple sources and we can highlight those that these have come from more than two or more places and so we can start by how putting all of them but highlighting those and putting those on top the ones that have come from the master plan and the any housing with production plan or are there any others is the only one we thought there were two so there's the master plan the housing production plan the housing market study yeah some language from the housing trust draft priorities right exactly stuff from the counselors that I pulled from the right zoning list that we've compiled right and and not to forget like the master plan and many of these actually included the community input right so in some way we're saying that these reflect the majority not majority so my bad these reflect many voices not just counselors or town staff well the master plan not necessarily the strategies to get to the goals but the goals and objectives of the master plan would have had a lot of input but I'm not sure Dave can correct me if I'm wrong the housing market study or the housing production plan probably didn't have a lot of community input because it was more of a study right that's generally correct certainly the housing market study didn't the housing production plan certainly I think was vetted at various meetings like the planning board and or I'm not that might have been done before we had a housing trust so there certainly was public vetting of it but not a lot of community involvement you know they're one of those plans thanks Sarah okay so getting to Mandy Joe what you usually say is taking a look at what exactly we're trying to do in this document so if what we're trying to do is policymakers is to hand down to people who have to then generate strategies and you know make these goals happen then if I think that I'm looking at it like that then I think if I was on planning board or ZBA or town staff I definitely if I'm the one doing the job one I'm not sure I would want town council has never done this before to give me strategies although I would appreciate the coals do you know what I mean so then if we are going to give strategies I feel like maybe then we shouldn't just you know unless it's an index of if you want to look at all the strategies that we've ever had from everywhere here they are and take a look if you're right because if I'm starting out maybe it's good to have that but I don't know that we should make those policy so I think in that in that vein I would say that whatever we put forward as town council as strategies that we approve of or would like to see or think have teeth then we definitely would only have to I would say we'd have to do the few that all of council or most of council feels like has teeth and you know we would really like to see even though we don't do this all the time we would really like to see it so in that I think yeah I think we should be much more specific and maybe not have everything although I think it would be a service to the people who are trying to achieve these goals for us to have an index of maybe every single strategy you know you could find but not ones that they're just like an index if you want to look up what's what strategies are in blah blah blah plan but I think that then in that case we do have to say here are the few that we would suggest and we would like to see used I don't know if that makes sense so does that you know lead towards under strategies a prioritized strategies list and then and other strategies potentially that's a so I I would say yes and I think also if we're looking I mean what it's going to be less confusing to the people who have to look at who are saying what does council want right I would say yes because what if we got something you know all 13 of us and somebody gave us every single strategy or we like we like 12 of these I would think that we probably want to be more specific I think that was our issue with the downtown parking working groups study had so many um Shalini that is the question though how are we what is the criteria for deciding which ones we want to leave and because I I mean I don't think what the councilors want is the the list I mean unless we I mean we can't say that we know more than the consultants or we know more than the other processes that have gone through to come up with those strategies like we know more so what is the criteria we're using to finally leave in some of the strategies and I think to Sarah's point and like I was saying earlier the stakeholders are going to be impacted or who are going to implement them should be part of this process at some point and I don't know what that looks like you know whether it's the planning board whether it's the planning department whether it's the community the people so and then of course we already heard from John Harnick and so at what point do these different people come into this process that's a good segue into the last 10 minutes or so of our conversation as we continue after these strategies which is one thing I want to talk about is at what point do we ship this out to others do we potentially do um you know some sort of forum or a larger public meeting that's not maybe not at 2 to 4 p.m on a Tuesday is maybe on a different day or a different time that more people might be able to attend to get feedback to get suggestions and what are we seeking when we send it out on feedback maybe given our conversation one of the things that pops into my head is maybe we're ready to go out for feedback on the large goals whatever color those are green or whatever the objective under the goal and the blurb under that and then a lot of questions about what would be helpful to be in this document for the stakeholders that are going to seek to you know sort of apply the policy and meet it maybe that's maybe potentially now is the time to start going out and asking questions like that and seeking feedback on the main goals but that's that's a discussion I'd like us to have in the next 5-10 minutes is thoughts on should we be sending it out now for specific questions and comments even in its sort of unorganized strategy listing form thoughts. Shalini. My perfectionist self would say let's organize these in a coherent manner and then send it out my entrepreneur self would say this is the minimal viable product before we put in too much more time into it we should send it out and get feedback rather than do all the work of organizing it and then you know come up with a totally different way of handling it so just the two perspectives no solutions anyone else. Well we could send out the thinner document without strategies and then include all of those that lists that you've generated as an appendix as a sort of an unsorted appendix as to the kinds of comments that other documents have said about the issues that are related to housing that would be one approach to this. So I don't think that this document is ready to be sent out right now. If we were going to send it out I would kind of go with what Steve said of a skinny version but I also wouldn't include everything in the appendix I think that gives people too much to get bogged down in and if we're thinking about stakeholders I mean where would this go right maybe the housing trust the planning board town staff or planning department maybe ECAC to look at the sustainability portion or the climate portion and what we'd be doing is basically saying here's what we're thinking of goals and our objectives thoughts did we miss something before we move into strategies under those but the unsorted list the chaos I know when I first started reading this last time before I realized what you had done and just putting everything in is I was like literally making notes on each goal and then I went wait a minute this is a waste of my time she just threw everything in here these aren't what she expects that but I by that point I'd already wasted like 20 minutes taking notes on individual and it's so easy to get bogged down in that so I actually don't think we're at a point where we need solicit feedback yet but if we are going to do that I would just recommend just doing goals objectives and blurbs and cutting everything else from the document and keeping it very focused because that way also it just always said there's a benefit of them having a very small thing each of those could put 15 to 20 minutes on their agenda to discuss this but if you if you attach everything you're talking about a really big conversation for these groups for something that we haven't even gone through yet Melanie I think okay what was coming to my mind is that the that firstly like what is the goal of doing that I guess the if the goal is to get the overall objectives and goals approved then yes let's just do that but we obviously don't want to have a policy with just that and eventually we do want strategies and measurables because only then it's going to be implemented otherwise it just becomes one on one other document with some broad goals in it and so at some point we are going to have to tackle the strategies and measurables and so do we want to send them this and then come back and then send them again or do we I mean would it be helpful if if we sent a document maybe not now maybe we get another review with a potential cleaned up document a little bit that doesn't include any strategies per se has a note that goes along with the document that says we're looking to include strategies what method would be most helpful if we included strategies and then give some you know some options or give us you know or comment on ask ask these these bodies to comment on what would be most helpful adding into the document whether it be more blurbs under objectives more descriptions under that of what we're going for whether it would be strategies whether it would be measurables or not you know and then sort of ask for feedback on what else would be helpful to them if this policy is passed in best describing what the council wants as policy and goals I mean that that's an option is we don't just have to send off without any description we can actually ask specific questions that we want responses back with beyond just feedback on the goals objectives and blurbs Sarah so I think that might be the better idea if we're looking at this document as sort of a roadmap you know for the policymakers and we're giving this to other boards and committees as a roadmap for what we want I think that it would probably be helpful to do with the way you just described Mindy Jo because then the people who are going to have to take action on this are giving us some feedback about either how they would do it or what more information they need in order to achieve the goals that we've just sort of roughly set out thanks and Shalini is your hand still up yep I was wondering if you could get feedback from Dave what would be helpful from the town staff perspective like what what sort of a policy document would be most helpful to you oh nothing like putting you on the spot Dave and if there's nothing right now I'm okay with that I mean just something I was just wondering if you could get I didn't mean to put you on the spot that's okay it seems to be the way the day is going um I don't know I may be talking more in generalities but so yeah I mean I happen to be working on a couple of affordable housing projects right now so it's very topical for me you know I think I think I think the you know the stronger you all are the policy setters for the town so the stronger the policy message can be in this document the better I think you know I think it's a fine line between kind of setting that policy and how specific you get that's a really fine line as to you know where where the line is between a policy and you know telling essentially Paul what he should direct his staff to do I guess I'm you know I think the stronger this policy is and and the the sooner we articulate it the better I think I think people know that affordable housing is is a huge priority for the town but you know this issue isn't going away we're gonna we're gonna be working on this for the next you know 15 years I mean it's it's not we're not gonna solve this in one year we're not gonna solve it in three it has to be an ongoing just like climate action we have to we have to be working on affordable housing at every level of government so I think you guys are on the right path I'm not afraid of the specifics but and and I welcome the policy I think this has come a long way from the original document that was presented to you too so I think you've made improvements but thanks Dave can I ask a follow-up question what would make a policy strong according to you um I think clarity um you know words matter so I think this will ultimately be the council's policy right the town's policy on affordable housing so I think a a clear policy using active language that anyone can read and say Amherst is committed to affordable housing these are some of the broad ways that Amherst can achieve affordable housing you know we have various policies and other policies and plans that indicate where that affordable housing should be things like that I think one of the one of the challenges for us at the staff level I know I've I've gotten in many conversations over the last five or ten years when you know because I wear many hats but um you know I I can tell you how many conversations I've been on been involved where people say well you know wouldn't you know Dave there's a piece of property out on Bay Road that's five acres wouldn't that be the perfect place why isn't the town moving forward to acquire that for affordable housing and so I typically have to go through this litany of reasons why we as a community have said maybe way out on the branches of our town way out on Bay Road where there's no bus route there's no there's no sidewalk there may be no water and sewer that's not the best place for affordable housing or housing in general we want our housing to be in the village centers I go back to the master plan and I say the town has said it once and it makes all the sense in the world from all the for all these reasons that housing should go near services near bus lines walkable bikeable and from an energy and land use standpoint it makes all the sense in the world to do dense affordable and mixed use housing in our village centers there's still plenty of room in our village centers there's still room for redevelopment if you look at the east village center if you look at downtown Amherst there are there are dozens and dozens of one-story buildings that were built in the 1950s and 60s Steve you all know this well being a former member of the planning board and I don't want to pick up buildings because sometimes people get sensitive they go I love that I love shopping there and I'm like well that's a one-story uh cinder block building that probably should be demolished and we should go up two stories or whatever but the east village is a classic case I mean there's lovely stores and and wonderful folks who live down there but we have tremendous potential to redevelop the east village with hundreds of units of housing and commercial and retail so there's room it's not that we're out of room we need to be more creative in densifying the village centers so that's probably the long answer show any any other thoughts before we move on at this point we'll just put it back on the next agenda for further discussion cleaning up of that and hopefully figuring something out with where to go from here on it maybe getting it ready to send out with some questions to to people seeing no other comments at this time we'll move on on our agenda we have one action item this stems from a discussion last week last meeting on the policy that we had adopted for recommending appointments to planning board and zba after we've implemented at one time we talked about that and at last week's at last meeting we didn't have any suggestions for changing the policy that CRC has adopted for those recommendations but there was some mention that there seems to be some disagreement or not disagreements a fine word but some some discussion every time we get to these types of appointments including there was some issues it's not just with planning board and zba but about what to do about those who are on a body that we appoint that are seeking a second term how to deal with that how to consider those applications along with whether the council wants to implement any type of policy related to term limits and what came up last meeting was some differences on whether that is an issue I don't think there were differences but but there was some discussion as to that that's probably a better town council matter than within CRC since CRC is not sort of we shouldn't be setting policy on a council level as to what the council does with things like term limits and reappointments so so the thought was to potentially bring up at this meeting hence the action item here as to whether we want to ask the council to take up the issue as a discussion and potential action item of how to deal with individuals who seek reappointment to a second term to a body that the council appoints and also not just a reappointment issue but also then because they could be seeking a third term too whether the council whether we want to ask the council about any institution potentially of a term limit policy or not and so it's on the agenda for an action item we would not be recommending any potential policies the action item on the agenda is whether we just want to ask the council to discuss these matters so thoughts Shalini I think it's a good idea to have that discussion at the council level because it will help to bring out all the pros and cons of the ways that different people think about it and then to have a make an informed decision and then everyone is on the same page because it seemed like there was a lot of ambiguity where some people like well we've always done it this way and but the fact that wasn't in this way means that these councillors voted this way because of XYZ and so there were a lot of assumptions and accusations and reading into intentions and all of that that could be avoided if we all came because I personally have a particular opinion about it which you know maybe different but I think it's important for us to agree on what that is moving forward Steve yeah um I guess we're not expressing our own opinions but I would be very reluctant to isolate experience as one of the qualifications that we either have a yes or no vote on without considering the whole range of if we if we think that developing a rubric of evaluating candidates is a good idea I might be fine with that but having experience as the single marker that we have to make a decision on or that were has to influence us I strongly object to that so that that's continues to be my opinion that we can talk about experience all we want but we also need to talk about all the other qualifications thank you Steve let me ask you would you be in favor of asking the council to discuss the matter as a whole body or not um I mean we can ask them well would it be binding or non binding depends on what the council does with it no so obviously we're you know we're three weeks away from all kinds of elections and some candidates are running on experience and other candidates are running on lack of experience so it's a political decision in other words I think it's up to the candidates to put the best foot forward and if experience is part of their best foot go for it but we in this town have decided that it's the town council that appoints and the towns around us that planning board and I think those aren't boards of appeal are elected and so those candidates are are saying you should reelect me because I have experience in another one saying but your experience is not the experience that we want so you should elect me because I don't have that experience so I think that it's up to the candidates to you know put the rest foot forward and I would be very um and and you know I don't want us to be boxed in where we have to give preference to someone with experience when there's other good candidates in the pool. Evan um so I think that appointments council appointments have been the most contentious discussions that we've had on the council um by far and um certainly part of that has come down to perhaps who the people are who are being recommended for appointment or who is not being recommended but a lot of that um conversation that comes down to whether or not people get reappointed whether or not there are term limits and and I think part of that is because some people have very strong opinions and some don't but most of us have very strong opinions on whether there should be a preference for reappointment whether people whether we should have more rigid term limits whether we should have no term limits or whatnot um OCA had one policy that we used which was essentially the appointed committee handbook um that appointed committee handbook has never been adopted by the town council or discussed by the town council um CRC modified our policy and how we treated that to away from the appointed committee handbook I fear that if we don't end up having a council policy on this then we're going to continue to have really contentious discussions where there is debate over whether there are term limits right now there are no term limits right because we have never adopted the appointed committee handbook but some of us are applying term limits and some of us are not and so I think that that chaos and that confusion um and that disagreement about whether in the absence of having adopted the appointed committee handbook we have term limits or not our preference for reappointment there's a lot of conversations about precedent it's just become a mess and it's honestly it's eaten up so much of council time during these discussions and it has provided um a cloudiness to the appointment process and the expectations because what we heard in the last one was we have a history and a precedent of always reappointing but the council has never discussed that and never adopted that individual committees have and so I think having a council policy is important that said um this would be a council policy and I think that that conversation originates in GOL which deals with the policies and the rules of the council I don't think this goes straight to the council so what I would actually my preference for us to do is to make this specific and say that we are requesting and we've had this before where one committee makes a request of another committee and that committee can ignore it or not but we are requesting that GOL look at sections 2.3 and 2.5 of the town's appointed committee handbook to make a recommendation about whether the council should adopt them or adopt modified versions of them but I think that because this inevitably will be a policy of the council the discussion rightfully sits in GOL certainly not in this committee it did sort of rightfully sit in OCA as a new committee that included appointments but now we split up appointments so um I support the council having adopted a policy I think the first conversation is actually in GOL. Sarah so so I would agree that this is the most contentious thing and I honestly started having ocular migraines after the second time that we for real that we did this and some serious health problems it's really weighed on me. I don't have a problem with it going to GOL although I think that right now through two discussions I think we know almost every single person's personal preference on some of these things but I do think it you know we could put it through GOL but after the last really horrible conversation that we had and I will never forget when looking at all of us and telling us we better pretty much get our process straight because she never wanted to see that again I feel like when we are reappointing people it has to go we have to have rules that the entire council or the majority that we can vote on so we have a majority they vote they win those are our rules because if you are looking to get reappointed to a committee or to get on a committee you you need to know what bar you have to reach or what some of the rules are if all of us are going to as a council you know say yes we we agree on this person you have to have rules to follow and if we don't want to do that right then I think the entire town council then needs to have a discussion of do we want rules that we can measure every single person by or are we saying that this is political and we absolutely don't want any kind of rules or framework hardly any we're not we're not doing term limits we're not you know very roughly and I think so I'm fine with go well doing it but I think whatever we decide has to be decided by the majority of the council otherwise I have no idea how we're going to do this all over again and not have it be another horrible contentious conversation Melanie yes to what everyone said pretty much but I think it's important to have this conversation and to decide one way or the other I don't think we're discussing at this point what our individual preferences are but if you don't have that conversation it'll just stay ambiguous and I think it's just important for us to have that consistency and also for the different committee people who are joining committees to know going in what the expectations are and it doesn't matter whether it's one way or the other as long as everyone knows those are the expectations going in and if you were to go personally about I don't think I'm not going to say that because I don't think that's the discussion I'd love to share what my point of view is about it because I feel so strongly about it but I don't think that's the point right now so I'm gonna restrain myself Steve yeah so I feel uncomfortable about avoiding uncomfortable discussions so I think that the CRC discussion of this was a very frankly I think both discussions were were within the realm of a lively robust discussion I think it was uncomfortable because we were talking about people that we knew that were watching but I think that there were important discussions to be had about very qualified candidates for a board where there were too many candidates for enough spots and if that's the way that the conversation has to happen I'm totally comfortable with that in fact if there was a easier route before us I guess what I'm saying is that we need to be comfortable with having uncomfortable discussions even when we're talking about our neighbors and and friends who are you know candidates for these positions and at the same time they need to they're applying for positions in which they'll be very much in the public eye it's subject to scrutiny by the same bodies that are scrutinizing us and that's that's part of it and and you know I think that we can you know certainly improve but I'm not I'm not afraid of being scolded and I'm not afraid of having uncomfortable discussions so any okay yeah I'm not afraid of uncomfortable conversations either I think that's not what we're discussing here what we're discussing is whether the council should agree on the term limits or not and I think the more clarity we have around those things then it just creates clear expectations because I I think it was everything else was okay with the way the discussions have which is Steve said I think that's I think it went really well given the awkwardness of it but I think the only part that was not so clear is that how everyone came in knowing for sure that oh of course we have always done this so there should be term limits and then they were oh we've never accepted it so therefore it's not a criteria so I think let's just put that whatever let's just put that to rest one way or the other what we decide and I think that's something that the more clarity we have around that and I think it's fair to the committee members to know also one way or the other what it's going to be so I'm drafting a motion here so here's my draft motion and before I make it we're going to modify it so we don't have to do revisions to it after it's made so my draft motion is to request the council refer to GOL sections 2.3 and 2.5 of the town's appointed committee handbook for recommendation to the council on whether or for report and recommendation to the council on whether to adopt a council policy on term limits or reappointments let me see if I can figure out a way to get that on a screen before we make it let me know if there's any changes people would like Steve yeah so I still am uncomfortable with asking them just to look at these two issues so whether or not the council there should be a council policy on weight given to all of the qualifications for candidates which might be professional experience it might be academic experience it might be lived experience it might be their experience on this particular board it might be too much experience on this particular board but I remain uncomfortable about picking just two of the qualifications haven't and then I also remain I also remain uncomfortable with basically writing a bylaw this way so so the bylaw very clearly states what the term is and so if we think of the term should be longer than we should address that through bylaw change or I think it's bylaw or charter change I'm not sure harder has zba and planning board terms okay so the they're also in the zoning bylaw right they probably the bylaw probably mirrors the charter yeah Evan so so I guess you know again my my point in having those specific things and those specific references to the appointed committee handbook is that some members of the council are operating under the assumption that the appointed committee handbook language in these two sections is currently in operation and some are not and I would like us to have a definitive answer as to whether or not these two things are something that the council should be holding itself to I think the question of how we evaluate candidates is much harder but I think to me right now it's these two sections and really it's actually one sentence in each of these two sections that are causing so much debate and confusion in the council appointment process and so to me I would like us to just have a recommendation about at least their start about whether or not the council wants to adopt both of these um I guess my one my one thing is you know so again uh 2.3 and 2.5 are um have a couple other things in them um there are really two sentences like I said that we're we're looking at but um I guess I'm wondering yeah whether that's what I was trying to get at because there's other there's also things like I'm looking at that right now like 2.3 also has in it um the general policy is to appoint an individual to know more than two permanent committees at a time um like that's something we've also never adopted but there was some conversation about should we be appointing someone to both ZBA and planning board is someone allowed to serve on both and right now we have no policy around it um but but those kind of things are also might be important and so these are sort of not criteria or evaluative of an individual candidate but just generally policies on how we go about appointments I reworded it to the last half report and recommendation to the council on whether the council should adopt with or without modification these sections I'd be okay with that any other thoughts on this before we formally make the motion I'm not seeing any so I will make a motion to request the council refer to GOL sections 2.3 and 2.5 of the town's appointed committee handbook for report and recommendation to the council on whether the council should adopt with or without modification these sections is there a second a second sarah any discussion seeing none we will roll call um I think I'm the start of the roll call and I will say yes Evan yes Steve yes Sarah yes felony yes that is five unanimous I can spell um okay we have now made that motion I will get that and past that we are on two minutes we have the September 29th 2020 we're just gonna stop the share we have the September 29 2020 minutes uh in our packet are there any requested revisions to them seeing none I will take a motion to approve the September 29 2020 minutes as presented so move Steve motions is there a second I will second that is there any discussion seeing none we're starting with Evan Evan yes Sarah yes deep sorry I did that out of order totally cool uh yes shalini yes Mandy is a yes that is also unanimous sorry for surprising you Sarah totally okay I was so ready can't see when I was so ready it was like I just surprised you're out of order um with that uh are there any announcements uh shalini I don't have an announcement but I just since Dave wasn't there when Dr. Kate Atkinson spoke I just wanted to bring that to his attention that Kate was here today to talk about the parking issue in her zoning where it's been considered commercial even that's going to be not used for renting out but it's going to be used for her own employees and stuff and so she I think came to appeal to us to a either look at zoning overall when we are discussing how to deal with that but also I think she was looking for a resolution for how to move forward with her particular situation right now so she doesn't have to go through the special the process because that entails a lot of money and what not I'm sorry I missed that shalini um yeah I'm aware of her situation I don't want to take up all of your time on that today but I'm aware of her situation we did offer her a logical solution working with the abutting landowner um Rob Mora uh kind of put pen to pen to paper on that so I'm not sure you know there's really only one solution and that's the one that Rob suggested to her which I don't think was was that costly um you know there's no question the zoning up there is not conducive to what she would ultimately like to do but there is a there is a solution we met with her months ago on that and I'm not you know I think we all went a little deep dive into COVID including her as a medical professional and we're now hopefully at least we're not out of the COVID situation but we at least have a little breathing room here in the valley so um I'd be happy to talk with her again I'll check in with Rob to see if he's had any recent conversations with her but he did propose a potential option for her and then the long-term option might be a zoning change there I would say I think she was appealing to CRC potentially for zoning changes yeah I just wanted to see she's been writing to me personally about the particular parking situation and I don't know what to say to that so maybe I can take this offline and yeah yeah yeah I'll reach out to her because Rob and I have with Dr. Atkinson have an email string so let me refresh that a little bit and see see where we are on that I think that would be nice also just because she came and then we'll just thank you for your comment and then you know nothing back so I think just even if you just circle back to her at least it'll be like she was heard yeah thank you now the future agenda item I just didn't get my hand up early enough uh quick enough earlier with regard to the report on the um our request for the referral to GOL just in the report as maybe attachments if you could um just because I am expecting the council might be confused by this um include the two relevant sections from the appointed committee handbook as an attachment to the report and also sections or section 4a of the um CRC appointment process and the recent OCA process I can send you that if you don't have it at your disposal just so you they can see how it's been implemented in two separate ways just so they have the full context of what we're why we're asking this thank you I'll also include GOL process oh yeah I think it's the same as the OCA one in that section but I will make sure I include that any other announcements Steve um just the 40R meeting is tomorrow night at 6 30 yes yeah yeah on zoom um yeah that's the public meeting and the announcement I have is more future agenda item we are I mean I'll be able to confirm by Friday or Monday that we got the announcement in the paper in time but plan on November 4th at 8 p.m for a planning board joint CRC hearing on changes to uh zoning article 14 I have received a draft of that today I'm waiting for confirmation that those are the final drafts before I ship them out to you as a committee I will do that as soon as I can um so that you can see them um and all uh so so I'll get that out as soon as possible um our next meeting is the 27th we may put that on as a brief discussion item prior to the hearing just so we can understand a little bit more about it um the 27th will also be a continuation of the zoning priorities discussion um so we might not end up with housing on the 27th we'll see um what I can fit in and all in terms of future agendas and all so I think those are my announcements and future agenda items any other agenda items for next time or any other time not seeing any I don't have any items not anticipated does anyone else no one else does that means we will adjourn at 405 p.m thank you everyone and thank you Lindsay thank you