 This program is brought to you by CableFranchiseVs and generous donations from viewers like you. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting for May 6, 2020, based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, GL Chapter 30A, Section 20, and signed Thursday, March 12, 2020, this planning board meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. My name is Christine Graham-Mullen, and as chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6.32. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. Minutes are being taken as normal. I will now take a roll call. Board members, as you hear your name called, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and then please place yourself back on hold. Michael Burt-Whistle. Here. Maria Chow. Here. Jack Jemsik. Here. David Levenstein. Socially distant. Doug Marshall. He's still not here. Okay. And Janet McGowan. Here. Okay. I saw Doug. Yeah, so I just wanted to confirm that. Pam, what do you see there? I can... I don't see everybody. Hold on. I'm spinning down. I do not see him at this point. So if anyone notices him pop in, we'll reflect it in the minutes. Okay. Board members, if technical difficulties arise, you may need to pause temporarily to, for the problem to be rectified, and then we will continue the meeting. If you do have technical issues, please let IT who tonight at Sean or Pam know. Discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed. And the minutes will know if a disconnection has occurred. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand and call upon you to speak after speaking. Remember to remute yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment period and at other appropriate times throughout the meeting. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during the general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment during the public comment period, you must join the meeting via the zoom teleconferencing link. This link is shown on the slide. Yep, it's up there. And it can be entered into a search engine. So, I'm going to go ahead and click on the link. By typing HTTPS. So, Colin back slash back slash zoom dot us back slash J back slash nine, seven, two, eight, four, zero, five, five, nine, zero, three. This link can also be found on the. Yes. I just want to let you know that Mr. Marshall has joined us. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Doug. We're on the call to order here. The agenda is also located on the town website in two different places. One is through the calendar listing for this meeting, which is on the homepage, the town homepage and find the link on the event called event details. A second way is to go to the planning board. Web page and click on the most recent agenda link. If you click on the public comment, you will see the public comment. If you click on the public comment, you will see that same link that you can click on. Please indicate you wish to make a public comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. If you wish to make a public comment, please indicate you wish to make a public comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. Please identify yourself using your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes and at the discretion of the planning board chair. If these guidelines are not complied with or the speaker exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. If any months are needed, please do not hesitate to make a public comment. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment link. So at this time, we will move forward to item one, which is minutes, which I believe we don't have any. Finalized minutes. Is that true either Pam or Chris. That is correct. Okay. Thank you. We'll move to item to, which is the public comment. Period. trying to see who's, whoa, hold on, who's hand, I saw our hand go up but there, I don't seem to Pam confirm, I don't see any hands up right now. There was Kay Rosenthal, I just, there we go, I just unmuted that person. Okay, thank you, that's probably why I couldn't see that. Okay, great. So I see a Kay Rosenthal, if you could please identify yourself and your address and welcome and you have, you have three minutes on public comment. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is Ken Rosenthal, I live at 53 Sunset Avenue in Amherst and I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I want to speak to the item that you have number 440R, not to the substance but the process. And I know how important this item will be at a time of great change in our world, our country and our town. We have been through great change before and we have dealt with change in many ways. Now we're going to be talking about change in zoning among other things and what I'm hoping that this planning board will do and I know we'll have public hearings but I'm hoping you'll do more than that. I'm hoping you'll have public forums to which you will be inviting specifically and generally not only the neighbors and residents and citizens of the town but business people, their landlords and prospective developers, not just giving people opportunity but specifically inviting them to come and speak, not to particular things that they want to do but to the general developments that we expect to see in the town. These are, this is really an unprecedented time. We've been through very interesting times of change in the 60s. We grew very rapidly but we knew what direction that was going to be. We don't know about direction now. We don't know how the colleges and university are going to change. I don't know what the business community is going to be like. Who do we know how people are going to behave, how they are going to spend their time at home and I'm speaking of a time when we do not have a coronavirus to deal with. We still now will have that problem with us too. So here is my hope. My hope is that the way you will proceed is very deliberately not in a hearing format in which you ask people to speak to you but people to speak with each other in ways that give us a chance to have interchange and conversation about where we all think we may be going. I hope these will be multiple forums and I hope you will take your time to do it. And I thank you for listening to me this evening. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I see one other hand. Do you see that, Pam? I held a green bomb. Okay. Welcome, Hilda Greenbaum or whoever it is, please identify. It's me. Hi. Hi. I just have a quick question and that's to ask if you will be accepting questions or comments from the public after the consultants have given their report tonight. I believe we will, Chris. Okay. Yes, we will. Because it makes more sense to do it than thank you. Okay. Pam, I don't see any other hands. Is that correct? I see one more. Constantine. Okay, great. Thank you. It's flicking around here. So, Constantine, please identify yourself and your address. Yes, Constantine Plashekov. Okay. I'm sorry I joined the meeting a bit late. Did you have a chance to talk about the pandemic COVID-19? No? We don't have that on our agenda tonight. You know, but we're talking about the playground. Oh, the playground, that will be on next after this. We'll be opening the public hearing. If you have a question about that, I suggest you wait till we finish with that and then we'll have a public comment period. Thank you. Constantine, can you tell me your street address please? It's 289 Triangle Street. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. I don't see any other hands right now. So, we will proceed to item three, public hearing, site plan review. And I will open the public hearing. We did have this come to our last meeting, but that was sort of more of an informational presentation. At this time, we're actually going to open a public hearing for the Kendrick Park playground. So, all right. So, six, it was for 635. It's actually 642 in accordance with the provisions of MGL, Chapter 40A. This public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted. This hearing is being held for the purpose of providing an opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPR 2020-07, Town of Amherst, East Pleasant Street, Kendrick Park Playground. Request for our approval to construct a playground, walkways, seating areas, and other site improvements for a public park under Section 3.335 of the Zoning By-law Map 11c-244 RG Zoning District. The first thing I will ask, are there any board disclosures or conflicts? I don't see any hands. That's what I'm watching for. Click your hand if you do. I don't see any. So, we will move to item three, which is the applicant's presentation. I want to just ask Chris Bestra, is there any introduction or a statement you want to make before we or introduce the consultants? This presentation will be made by Nate Malloy, who's a senior planner in the planning department about the Kendrick Park playground. We did not hire a consultant because we have such a good DPW staff and they were able to do to work with us on the design. So, Nate, I believe is here and he can go ahead and give the presentation. Right. Welcome, Nate. And Nate has, I assume there's some slides that will be going up and I believe, Pam, you have those or Nate will be handling his own. I think we have, we both have them. Nate, what would you, wait a minute. I can share my screen. That's fine. I think that you should because I don't see them right here. Okay. Sure. Let's, everyone see that. This is, hi, this is Nate, senior planner. This is, you know, this is cover sheet one that was submitted with the application. The, you know, the time we presented this on the 15th of April, we went to the design review board on April 22nd as well and received comments. Then we're planning to go back in May to the design review board and since our presentation on the 15th, there's been a number of comments submitted online through the online comment form and just through email and notes to staff. So we've, we've met as a team a few times and I'll just say that the plan that's here has been changed. So, you know, the north part of the play area and I'll get into that, but you know, there's been a lot of comments and suggestions and the design team has been taking them seriously in terms of, you know, accessibility, integration of natural features and, you know, trying to create really, you know, a nice walkable path system. So the, you know, I'll walk through what Paul, the town's when the town's engineers has prepared and then I have additional slides to show. You know, we did start off with an existing condition survey. So we do have, you know, we had a consultant survey, the entirety of Kendrick Park, including the topography. And so, you know, that was important for us just to know utilities, trees, curb edge and everything. So we have that for our guidance. And, you know, just quickly on this plan here, this is kind of the central area of Kendrick Park in the middle and there's some topography here. The play area is north of that where it levels out. So this is the area envisioned in 2011 where the amphitheater would be and we're up above that in elevation. So, you know, we're sticking with the general area that was proposed in 2011 and, you know, we're trying to work with the trees and the existing topography. If we look at sheet three, it's, there is a lot to see. I guess the main thing is there's an existing driveway and hard pack here off East Pleasant Street on the east side where, you know, there is some, you know, there's a curb cut and we're proposing to use, you know, have a walkway here, the main play area and then, you know, work with the topography to have this east-west connection that slopes south. The, you know, within this play area, there will be, you know, some excavation. We're trying not to impact the trees' roots. So, you know, every surface needs a base material. And so, you know, we've been talking about what's the least amount of material we need to excavate or scrape off to have to have, you know, either a, you know, walkways or, you know, the agility areas over here to have, you know, a wood fiber base and then, you know, in the play area here with the rubberized surface, what does that mean? And so, the design really responded to what would be the drip line of all the existing trees and try to position, you know, the areas that would require the most excavation and earthwork to be outside of what's considered, you know, the, you know, the do-not-work area within the tree drip line. Nate, can I interrupt you? Chris, Chris Breastrup had her hand raised, although now I see it's down. Oh, no, it's back up. Chris, do you have a comment or would you? Christine recognized me. I just wanted to make. Oh, Kevin, yes, you're recognized. So, I just wanted to make an introductory statement about the origin of this. We do have a design from, for those of you who did not attend the April 15th meeting and don't really know much about this project, we did an overall design of the project back in 2011 and recently, Nate applied for, the town applied for a grant, a park grant and we received $400,000 in the park grant to build a playground in Kendrick Park, which was part of the original plan. And then we went to the town council and received another $260,000 worth of CPAC money. So, I just wanted to, you know, let people know that who hadn't been participating in previous discussions about this and I'm sorry to interrupt you, Nate. I don't know if that's fine. Yeah, so to, you know, to continue with Chris that said, you know, the park grant we've mentioned before wants to have the plans finalized by June 1 and bidding this summer with construction to start in the fall in a deadline of completion by June 1 next year. And as far as I understand, those deadlines have not been extended. The, you know, the town, we've met with a few vendors and, you know, we're getting, we're trying to move things along, but it is actually a little slower, you know, having to work remotely. So, we've asked the state about the deadline and about extending the deadline. So, anyways, back to this. So, really this, you know, this design here tries to respond to, you know, existing trees that the Tree Ward and Ellen Snow and Public Works and Staff thought were healthy enough and could withstand work around them and also topography. And, you know, as you can see, it's not right on North Pleasant Street. So, there is some topography, you know, the site does have a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a hill here on the North Pleasant Street side. So, we're pulling it a little bit away, both because there's existing trees and things that need to be moved. And if, if ever North Pleasant Street gets rearranged in terms of parking or traffic flow, you know, this design would not be impacted. As we move north and just indicating, even though the design will have changed slightly up here, the limit of work is pretty similar. So, again, this area opens up and there's not many existing trees. And so, you know, all the walkways would still need some excavation, but we're outside of the drip line of trees and we're, you know, trying to create, you know, walkable paths. So, this is the demolition and site preparation plan. Sheet for here, the, you know, layout and materials. This general area, if you can follow my cursor, this east-west walkway, this play area and this sitting area, none of this at, you know, this all remains pretty much the same as we've seen it. There's an agility area over here to the, to the north. And then, you know, there's the amphitheater area and again, accessible walkways. And so, you know, this has changed a little bit, but the idea is still to have a continuous loop of walkways and have them be accessible. So, this, this walkway east-west will be, will be, will be blacktop, will be asphalt. It's meant to be paved in the winter. So, that's why they want hard material. It will have benches along it and it'll have, you know, a number of lampposts along it. So, this will become something that's maintained year-round. The rest of the walkways in, you know, the park itself will not be maintained in the winter. So, they won't be plowed. And this whole big area right here in this play area, this is where there'll be manufactured equipment and it'll be a rubberized surface. And, you know, that, that's necessary for accessibility and for fall-safe area. The sitting area over here will be surrounded by a stone wall, a granite wall, and it will be stamped. Because I forgot what we decided. If I think it's maybe stamped asphalt or permeable paving here with, you know, similar tables as shown. The idea is that this will be, you know, a different texture material, but it will all be, you know, accessible surface. The, the walkways up north of here throughout the rest of the play area, we're looking at doing permeable paving and then maybe as an alternate doing asphalt paving. So, depending on price, we're going to seek both. But the idea would, you know, we really like the idea of having some permeable paving here. You know, there's benches throughout the play area that will be, you know, a painted aluminum. There'll be a granite curb, at least a six to eight inch granite curb on some areas around the pollinator garden and along this edge. We're looking at using boulders and other hardscape material too, both as things to play on, and then also to form an edge in a barrier in certain areas. You know, in the amphitheater area will be Goshenstone with granite and stone sitting that's in the hillside. Up in this area now, we're looking at having a circular area with pea stone and maybe some granite boulders. It's not shown here, but in lieu of a sandbox, we're going to have basically like a pea stone area with rocks around it. The agility area shown here with some, some vertical logs will be, the area will be extended, but that'll be an area that has, you know, logs that are on the ground and slightly raised. They'll be staked into the ground. They'll be vertical logs. That'll then also be, you know, in steps or in different patterns. There'll be different sized rocks and it'll all be in an area with wood fiber ground cover. So it's not wood chips. It's actually a, you know, a material that is meets the safety standard. So, you know, this area will be considered the more of the natural play area that leads into this Goshenstone, you know, end up connecting through here. There'll still be the walkway, but it'll be backed up to here with, you know, the Goshenstone amphitheater and stone steps and, you know, a number of benches throughout. So we're really looking at an integration of material, both, you know, surface material and then, you know, vertical elements, whether it's natural rock, cut granite and logs. I'm not sure if there's any questions at this point or keep going. So sheet five, grading and drainage. The idea here is, again, I'll start with this east-west walkway. You know, this is, all this is considered a walkway. It's not a ramp. So, you know, there's no railings necessary. In this area right here, this is the central drainage area. So there'll be under drains, under the play area and under this area that come to, I'm not sure if it'll be a catch basin, but just a depression, you know, and then it connects into the into the town's drainage system. But this is also going to be, this will be an overflow and the thought here is this is a drainage swale that will be planted. So it's, we're trying to have it be a slight rain garden. So, you know, most of the material, it's all going to be sheet flow off of this. It's just only one and a half percent, up to two percent slope, cross slope on the playground and it's all sheet flow that'll, you know, go off the paved areas and go into the mulch beds on the sides or it'll come through the under drains into this area and then, you know, go through this swale here to the overflow structure here. So, you know, this is intended to be an accessible walkway. All this has, you know, would meet ADA standards for cross slope and, you know, longitudinal slope. The, you know, so we're really here, if you follow this, I'll just show an example of these contour lines show, you know, there's, there is some grading up to create this sway on the side, but we're really trying to minimize how much we're deviating from the existing topography as much as we can along the walkways. You know, we'll feather it out to the existing, but we're not trying to bring up the grade much. The, the big difference here is that this hill is no longer part of the plan. It was brought up a few times with the planning board men asked about it. And then one of the vendors asked about the utility and accessibility of, of the slope walkway and the hillside. And so this essentially will still be here, but it'll be at grade. So all these existing topography lines you see won't be here. The walkway will still be above grade a bit, but not, you know, not three or four feet. So we're thinking, you know, two feet at most above the existing grade. So there'll be less spill. But this, you know, this is still, you know, if you just take off these two outside contour lines, you know, the rest of this is still the way it would look essentially. So we're, you know, we're going to be raising everything up a bit in the play area. Um, for one, you know, one reason is to, you know, we have this sub base material we need to put in. So we're excavating a little bit, and then we're filling a little bit. So we're trying to balance the cut and fill. So everything will be in to get the right slopes for drainage. So everything is going to be raised up a little bit, but not, not too high. You know, most of these walkways will eventually be essentially then being at grade. So on this edge, they'll, there won't be a curve. You know, there'll be a planting bed and mulch on this side. So, you know, the grade will just meet up with these exterior walkways on the east side. On the west side, there'll be a curb with plantings behind it, but this curb really is also helping to, you know, retain some earth, you know, is actually helping create an edge against what is, you know, a sloped, a sloped backdrop against the walkway. Are there any questions about the grading or the? Nate, I see that Chris Bester has her hand up. She must have something she wants to add. Hey, Chris. I apologize. I didn't mean to have my hand raised. Okay. Nate, if you're at a stopping point, our next... We have a few more sheets. I was just going to go through them, and then I have a presentation with some precedent images just to help, I think, clarify a few things. Doug Marshall has his hand raised. Okay. So, I recognize Doug. Yeah, I had two questions. One is whether there's any expectation that at some point in the future there would be a sidewalk along the east side of North Pleasant Street. And if that happens, whether it would require any rework of any part of this design. And the second question is, you talked about a fair amount of permeable pavers. And I wondered whether that is driven by some sort of stormwater consideration or what the reason for the more expensive paving material is rather than some sort of impermeable paving. Thank you. Sure. We pulled this design away from North Pleasant Street with the assumption that if there was a sidewalk, this would not need to be moved or disturbed. So, the 2011 plans did show the curb edge coming east a little bit for nose and parking. There's been different ideas of what's happening along this edge of North Pleasant Street. But the design, even this walkway to the south here is pulled in a little bit. So, if there is any need to bring the curb in, this design won't be impacted. In terms of the permeable pavers, I guess I can be a little more clear. We're actually looking at doing like a, for the North walkways, I'll call them, if it's permeable paving, it's not actually pavers. It's a poured-in-place permeable pavement. So, it actually would come, there's different types, actually come in bags and it's an aggregate that you form and you put you, they poured in place. And it's just the way the aggregate works, it creates gaps to let water in. So, it's not as if this would be, these walkways would be brick on a base and loose pavers. It would actually be a continuous surface that would be permeable. So, whether it's permeable asphalt or permeable, we're looking at, you know, some other materials. It would be that in the way we've, the way we're thinking about structuring the bid would be that there'd be an alternate for it. So, that if it is a lot more costly, we could decide not to do it. But we'd still, you know, we've been told that the price per, whether it's a, you know, linear yard or linear foot is not much more than paving it with, with asphalt with blacktop. And I think it would actually be less expensive than concrete. So, we're, you know, we're doing it both for, you know, could be for cost, but it's also really to keep the rainwater on site and something just to, you know, less having a less, you know, a less asphalt in the park. Yep. Go ahead, Nate. Sure. This is the lighting plan and conduit plan. What, you know, so right now at Kendrick Park, you know, there's utility boxes on the perimeter. There's no lighting or, you know, conduit on the interior for, for electrical and there's no water in Kendrick Park either. So, there's no, you know, we're not proposing right now to bring in water. We've discussed whether or not we maybe get a hydrant, but this, that may not, that's not part of this project right now. What is part of the project though is running conduit along the walkway and actually having, you know, pull lights along this, this main walkway and then running conduit up through the play area and have it end at a, you know, at a, at an accurate box. So, be a subsurface box, the top would be at grade and we just stub out a number of conduit points for possible future lighting. So, that lighting isn't proposed at this time, but, you know, while the area is being excavated and prepared for construction, we would just run conduit to likely spots if we wanted to have, you know, lighting come up one side of the play area and even for other lighting opposite the play area. So, you know, the only thing that would be happening is, you know, five light poles along the east-west walkway and they would be the acorn lights that are downtown now. You know, they'd be on a concrete base and they're the, the black rod iron and, you know, they would, I'll say they're temporary, but the idea would be that they, you know, would illuminate the path and if, when, when there's a decision about future lighting for Kendrick Park and even this area of downtown, if there's new pedestrian style lighting, we would swap out the light poles. So, the light poles are something that the town's going to provide and be able to, you know, get this path illuminated. That's, that's the lighting. Now, these are just details. You know, I, you know, there's standard construction details just, but just to show that, you know, everything has a sub base and material. So, you know, we're looking at, you know, you know, there's a depth to everything. So, you know, the wood fiber in the agility area is at a minimum of eight inches of wood fiber with the, can be on a sub base or on a heart, you know, on a, on the existing material. So, I mean, there's anywhere from eight inches to a foot of material, even in the natural area. And, you know, with the walkways too, again, there's, you know, anywhere from a foot to 15 inches of material that would go beneath the surface of the walkway. So, you know, that's something that we've been considering. More details. I think what I'll show now is just some, some images of what, what we're considering for site furnishings and different precedent images. So, you know, do more as we've, the town uses this, this vendor for different furnishings. So, these are actually the benches at Groff. We would probably not use the, it's not, they're not black, but we like this style. So, it's all aluminum as opposed to recycled plastic. The idea would be the benches would be on tubes as opposed to a big concrete slab. And there's different styles of benches, some with backs and without backs. So, you could sit different ways and face different areas of the park. But these are the styles of benches we're looking at. For the, for the tables in the circular sitting area would be something very similar to this. And then for an accessible table, you know, there'd be one without a fourth chair. So, this is a one, a one piece table and chair set that could, you know, can be bolted or can be left within the site enough, you know, it's quite heavy. The trash cans would match what is in downtown and they could be both half, you know, half recycling and half trash or it can be one or the other. I think that's, hasn't been decided. In terms of stones, we're looking at, you know, both, you know, kind of not, I want to say, rough or natural stone and then, you know, a more finished stone in some areas. So, it'll be, it would be a mix of different stone materials. You know, here's piece stone. So, if there's some, there's some areas with piece stone. So, this just shows, you know, what, what we're considering in terms of the different stone material and even, you know, how it would be placed. It was placed on an asphalt walkway. You know, we were considering having a number of these blocks around and something that could be used for play or for sitting. You know, here's a typical wall that we have perhaps around the amphitheater and other parts of the park. The, one thing that has changed in the north part of the park, instead of, we're still thinking about having grass mounds, but not as high as what the, you know, we had originally proposed at five and a half feet with a slide. The slide actually wasn't as big as we would want. So, we're still considering having grass mounds. And so, here's some images showing what that would look like in a play area. This is synthetic turf, which we're not proposing in Washington Square Park. These are, these are other images from another, from a learning, learning park. But just to give a sense for what we've been considering in terms of how, how it would work in Kendrick Park, again with natural stone. These following images are from Pulaski Park. And so, you know, they just took, the city actually provided the timbers here. It was white oak and black locusts and they were, you know, anchored into the ground with two, you know, with rebar or threaded raw that went two feet deep. But these, you know, this is a synthetic wood, wood mulch material, wood fiber material. And these logs are then, you know, threw fastened all the way through the ground through these connection points to keep stable. Here's an image of it here. And again, here are these vertical logs. So, we're considering doing something very similar in our agility area with vertical logs. And so, these logs are equal depth buried to exposed. So, if it's a two foot log, a foot is exposed and a foot is buried. And there's no, you know, it's not set in concrete or anything. It's just into, you know, almost augured into the ground. And so, we were, you know, we're considering something similar to that. For the play area, we are still, you know, considering doing, using manufacturer equipment. And so, this is an image that we showed before. And, you know, staff is going to talk to the vendor about, you know, refining this a little bit. But, you know, in terms of what we like, this is an accessible spinner. So, more than one person can get on it, it's accurate and it spins. So, we're going to keep that. We do like the idea of having climbing structures and slides and different elevations of play. So, this would be for older five to 12 year olds. And this is two to five year olds with other, you know, individual play equipment in the playground. So, we're looking at having, you know, three or four bigger structures and then a few other elements. But, you know, it's really targeted from to the two to five and five to 12 year olds. And the following images are just showing different views of that, that same design. So, there's different climbers. You could have some music makers and number of slides. You know, and we're also looking at a few different types of roof structures. So, I don't think we're going to have necessarily a, you know, a canvas or a seasonal shade structure that we have on, you know, at some playgrounds. We're trying them across. They're actually might be pretty difficult to manipulate, get on and off. But, the vendors do offer different types of perforated material, sometimes as a canopy above these. The play area is in an area that does get a lot of sun. And so, we've been considering having, you know, whether it's a metal, some areas of metal perforated roof, just to provide, you know, some type of shade midday in the summer. And that's, that's, I'm going to have show one more thing. So, that's, those are all the technical documents. The other piece I've mentioned is, you know, here's the 2011 schematic. And we're still staying within this general area. What's changed really is the plan we were looking at was something similar to this, where there was a slide and a walkway. And there had been, you know, a sandbox. What the new design that we're really leaning toward is something along these lines. So, instead of having the hill up here, these walkways are mostly at grade, as I mentioned, a little elevated. But within this area are grass mounds, similar to what we saw in the picture. So, these are the, you know, raised grass mounds with, you know, an accessible walkway all around. This over here in the gray is the piece stone area. And then this is the amphitheater area. The agility area would get extended and have more options, maybe even possibly a sandbox here. But the idea would be to extend the agility area to connect into the amphitheater area. You know, that's something that came to light with all the comments. And also talking with the vendors about, you know, the cost and the utility of the, what was considered the hillside slide. It actually wasn't, you know, the slide was only going to be four feet, maybe six feet at most. And it would be above grade. And you need to have it on post with synthetic surface underneath as a fall safe zone. So, you know, if you see pictures online and you envision, I'm not sure why, but you can go online and see some really cool hillside slides built into the hillside. And that's not what the vendors were offering. And, you know, if the play equipment has a number of slides, they're going to be taller and better than what we could have had here. So that was a $20,000 item that maybe was not worth the both the grading and, you know, the cost of equipment. So, you know, we still want to have some grass mounds here and have different types of play here, you know, planting beds, benches and seating around. There'll be a seating look here. Keeping this at grade also allows for possible connections when the park gets expanded. So, you know, you could have a path come off the north or even through here and connect again. So, the ability of making future pedestrian connections is easier on this plan because there's not as much topographic change. I think I'll stop there. Thank you, Nate. That was great. At this point, we're going to move to the site visit report that happened this week. And then I'll move on to questions from the board. I believe Michael volunteered. Yesterday, five of us were at the site observing what were the changes in plans, as well as the older structure plans that we've seen. Particularly, noticed the two major trees that need to be removed, both large and both aged, whether or not they're viable without the playground being built or not, I don't know. But in any event, it was clear that there would be plenty of tree cover remaining even with the two trees that would be removed. We also located the site relative to the cross trees, Bacleon, and to the buildings across the east pleasant. And that was about it. Thank you. At this time, I will move to questions from the board. So, I'll be watching for your hands and I'll try to call you in order. So, I recognize Doug and then Michael will be next. Yeah, I wondered what the life expectancy of the elements of the park are and what impact this would have on the annual operating budget of the town, whether there's a lot of maintenance expenses that'll be part of any annual outlay. Thank you. Okay, Nate, do you want to answer that? No, no. Okay, do you want to? Yeah, I will. I'll start with the last one, the annual maintenance costs. It's something that staff has spoken with the different departments, planning, leisure services, and public works. Right now, the annual budget for maintenance is not a lot. And so, when we have upgraded the mill river fields and now that we're doing groff, we've always said that we need to increase our operating and maintenance budget. So, we had a sod company come in and work with Amherst Baseball on the Little League fields. And when we told them the operating budget for maintaining the grass, we almost didn't want to put new grass in because he's like, how are you going to maintain it when you have such a small budget? So, I do think that there will be some extra costs. The town maintains Kendrick Park now. So, it mows it and maintains it now. In terms of maintenance, there won't be, there'll still be maintenance here. It'll just be a little different. So, I don't think we've done or calculated a specific amount of new maintenance, but there will be less mowing, but maybe there'll be more raking in terms of mulch beds or other things. So, it will be an increased cost. For life expectancy of materials, the play equipment, gosh, even the rubberized surface, they say 20 to 25 years. There is some maintenance on those as well. The rocks and other surfaces, again, everyone says 20 plus years. So, we're anticipating, at least for the foreseeable future, if this were built, not a lot of capital costs or maintenance on the materials. After 25 years, that could be reevaluated in terms of what needs to happen. So, sometimes the rubberized surface, the surface is good, but the cushioning underneath needs to be improved. So, you can actually inject underneath the rubberized surface to get the fall-safe protection again. If we do use permeable paving, that needs to be cleaned annually or at some point, you don't need to be cleaned. All the natural materials, the stone walls, the sitting, the rock walls and benches, I mean, we're anticipating that to need minimal maintenance in the long term. Thank you. I'm going to recognize Chris Bestrup before Michael. She might have something to add. Thank you, Christine. I wanted to note that two of the members of our design team work for the Department of Public Works. Paul Dethier is an engineer and landscape architect who works for the DPW and Alan Snowden is the tree warden and Alan is in charge of a lot of the maintenance of parks, including maintenance of plant material and grass and all of that. So, they were part of this discussion from the very beginning and in fact, you know, helped us to choose materials with an eye towards lower maintenance. And that's one of the reasons why we've chosen to go in the direction of manufactured play equipment for the larger play area. In addition to accessibility and safety factors, we also find that that type of material requires less maintenance than some of the materials that are actually natural materials, which can deteriorate more rapidly over time. So, I just wanted to add that. Thank you, Chris. At this time, I'll recognize Michael and then next will be Janet. Yeah, just a brief question about the mounds in the north part of the area. I love the idea of grass mounds. Are they going to be kept at the same mowing height as the rest of the grass in the area or will they be shaggier? Yeah, my thought is they'd be kept maybe not as short as the surrounding area, but I hadn't envisioned them becoming shaggy. You know, maybe, you know, three, three inches or four inches, depending, you know, it depends on how much use they get to, you know, the idea here would be that we're considering putting sod down and actually have it be a really pretty thick, you know, kind of material, you know, a sod material that can withstand heavy traffic, but then it would be maintained. I can't, you know, I can't answer exactly how that was envisioned. I was thinking that would be, you know, maybe kept a little longer than some of the other surrounding grass, but not shaggy. That's a good question. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I recognize Janet. Thank you for this presentation. I have questions about the maintenance. I, you know, how often do the woodchips have to be kind of adjusted or cleaned? Like, who will be maintaining the garden, reading it, and what's the source of water to plant it, to water it? And then the planting beds, you know, the mounds look like they'd have to be hand mowed. And the eating areas and the playground itself be cleaned pretty regularly. And so I just wondered, like, is that going to be a daily thing, a weekly thing? It does seem to take up, you know, it's, it looks like a really interesting and fun playground, but it seems like if it has a lot of use, it's going to need cleaning and watering and clipping and reading and all those kind of tedious things of life. Yeah, I think that's a good question. The, you know, as it is now with Alan and his crew and other public works, they, you know, they open all the parks daily and they do a sweep of the parks in terms of picking up trash. You know, so there's a daily, there's a daily, you know, opening and cleaning in terms of the more in-depth, say, weeding or things. I mean, I, you know, my thought is that at least, you know, weekly we'd want to have the wood chips in the, in the agility area raked and, you know, make sure that they're being maintained. We've discussed how the pollinator garden and other areas would be watered and maintained. So, you know, there's the garden club in town, but, you know, we've also looked at whether, you know, right now with public works is between Alan and Paul, they are looking at different plant varieties that, you know, are hardier and don't need as much, as much maintenance. So I think that is a good point, you know, and we're still looking at some of the exact, the exact details of that. So, for instance, on the western side of the park right here, I mean, we're showing plants here, but we're thinking, you know, you know, ground covers and shrubs and things that can be planted that, you know, necessary, once they're established, they don't really need much maintenance. You know, they might need an annual pruning and maybe, you know, weeding once or twice a season, but, you know, they won't need any weekly maintenance. I agree that some of the flowering areas may need a little bit more and that's something we, we have discussed and we haven't, you know, we've thrown out different ideas in terms of how that would work, but right now, it's trying to look at different perennials or plants that are hardier, that can withstand, you know, even droughts or, you know, different changes in temperature. Is there a water source for the plants, the gardens? So, you know, the discussion was to, when this is constructed to have, you know, we're discussing whether or not we could, you know, run a hose from a fire hydrant or get a watering truck that would come by a few times a week. So, long term, you know, the discussion was how to bring water to the site and, you know, it's on the street so that, you know, one thought was to, you know, we haven't figured that out yet actually, you know, was to have a hydrant, but then how to hook up to that with a temporary meter possibly. The other question I had was about safety. And so, in my experience, when you have small children and medium-sized and large children, they move and kick balls. And so, my concern is that kids will be kicking balls into the street and chasing after them. And so, is there any thought to how that could be blocked, like the ball and the kid? Well, the, you know, so right, you know, along North Puzzle, there is this natural barrier. So, you know, there's going to be a curve along this whole edge with plantings and rocks. You know, in this area, there's, again, some planting beds and then there'll be the agility area. The, you know, just the other weekend, last weekend, Kendrick Park was packed with families and kids running around. And right now, there are no barriers. And there hasn't been necessarily a perceived safety issue. You know, the thought is, you know, along with Pleasant, there is this natural barrier. And this edge, you know, we've talked about increasing the number of benches. So, doubling up the benches, having more seating, that can act as a barrier, and have more eyes on kids. But, you know, at this time, we're not proposing a fence, whether it's here or along East Pleasant Street. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty quiet park. I mean, you know, and, and fortunately for the packed park last weekend, there's hardly any traffic. But usually, there's a fair amount of traffic moving through there at different, you know, at rush hour times of day. And it's been a very quiet, lovely, passive park. And we're trying to get kids to come and play and families be there. So, I just want to highlight that as a concern. Okay, yeah. Okay, at this time, I want to recognize Jack. Oh, sorry, Janet, quickly, would you have more concerns about, or about, about North Pleasant and East Pleasant? Or is there one that would be a higher priority? Well, I think there's more traffic on East Pleasant. But, you know, anytime you think of someone, some small kid chasing a ball where there are parked cars into a street, I think you have to worry. So North Pleasant would, I mean, I would just worry. But I, you know, obviously East Pleasant has more traffic. You know, North Pleasant has less. I cut through that street a lot to avoid the traffic circle and things like that. I don't know. But I think, you know, you're trying to draw people into use the park and traffic is always increasing. So I don't know. I just, I, you know, somebody who wrote in had suggested planting a thorny hedge, which sounded possibly cruel, but effective. And so I just wondered if there's an idea of that, like, where balls can go and where kids can go. So, but it sounds like you are thinking of that too, though. Yeah, we, you know, I don't think, I mean, like I said, on this side, we're really thinking this will develop into a really a vegetative hedge without thorns. But you know, the thorns could, that would definitely be deterrent thorns, pop balls. That would end the ball. And I just want to, on the fence part, I think Nate brought up a good point about how there are no fences now and people come and play ball and frisbee and such. And we're only focused on one part of the park. Again, if Nate or whoever's thinking if you put that 2011 or the existing site plan up, you know, it shows you that we're just talking about one little area. I mean, there's still a lot of open space that kids could be playing with. So it's sort of hard sometimes, I think to draw a line, you know, would have to think about where that fence, you know, goes. Because it's this, there's still kind of a bit of an open field to the north part, right? You know, past the, there is a, it'll be this, you know, this area will remain open and, you know, this whole area will remain as it is in its current condition. So there are some big areas, I think it's interesting. I mean, you know, we had talked about even for the North Common having not, you know, like small fences like you'd see in New York City in certain parks, both the key people on the walkway and then also to try to, you know, direct traffic, but maybe for safety. And in terms of fencing, you know, I, Christine, I think, yeah, once, if this starts becoming implemented, you know, a consideration for how the whole park can work with different types of barriers would be really important. So could there be a, you know, if you did need a fence here, you know, is there a way then to carry it through the whole design of the park? Yeah, like those really expensive, gorgeous, wrought iron ones they used to put up like 100 years ago, that would be beautiful. I'm going to recognize Jack again. He's been very patient. Oh yeah. And I actually, my question was on fencing as well. You know, I think, I think the park, I was there at the site visit, but it looks extremely interesting and fun for families and things like that, more of like a boutique kind of park. But I just noticed the, the narrowness of Kendrick Park between North Pleasant and East Pleasant. And so, I mean, I just know how, well, I've had, you know, kids as well, but I'm not putting a ball into my argument. But I knew, I know kids as they just run off, you know, from their parents, especially if there's, you know, the family has more than one kid. And then that kid kind of just goes and this is going to be a magnet for families with, you know, lots of kids. So, I also bring up the fencing issue because I'm really concerned about the safety on East Pleasant Street. And I feel like it, you know, all this, all this stuff is going to energize kids. And what we see now and what people are doing now in Kendrick Park doesn't apply to how, you know, people are going to be enjoying, you know, this new park at all. It's going to be a different population. So, that was my comment on the fence. I feel like there should be some fencing. It sounds like that could be accommodated, you know, later on as a fix, I guess. So, and then, and then I have a second question. And then it's a little bit odd, but I'm wondering about, you know, this Kendrick Park used to have all these homes there. And I know water and sewer, they were provided with water. So, I know all that is readily made, but I'd also know that probably a restroom is very controversial maintenance issues and all that. But I was wondering if Nate or Chris could speak to what do we have for public restrooms right now. It just seems like, and it doesn't even apply to this, I guess necessarily, but for me, it seems like that's something that's lacking. And I don't, I wonder what others think about that. You know, restrooms aren't part of this project. It has been mentioned a number of times. You know, in terms of public restrooms, there's the bank center, which I think may be the closest in terms of a public facility. You know, there's the Jones Library Town Hall and the police station. The, I'm not sure how open the central fire station is, but those are the public buildings. You know, there have been some discussions about what, you know, could a private restroom building, would they open up to the public? And that's something that, you know, can be researched a little bit more. But, you know, right now, there are no restrooms planned for this, for this facility. And, you know, there's also community field of Triangle Street, too, that's open. Yeah. But yeah, there are, there are none right now planned, you know, again, maybe. Nate, can you give us an idea of how much it costs? Like, you know, because I assume that's why you're not considering it right now. How much would it cost to put a standard, you know, bathroom building in this area? Yeah, it's interesting the, you know, I guess it's like, you know, for some conservation areas and recreation areas, we've looked at getting prefabricated or like modular restrooms. So they'd be, you know, maybe have two accessible unisex bathrooms and it comes in a building, a modular setup that you connect, you know, depending on how you want to do it, whether it's to a town water and sewer or if it's to, you know, whether it's compostable or not. But, you know, even that, you know, the prices are 150,000 for material and then you're talking about installation and utility connections. And so, you know, I would think that having putting in then if you want, you know, if you want to be, you know, decorative or have a certain aesthetic or, you know, what we did at community field, we renovated community field restrooms a few years ago, actually, and we had everything be automated. So all the lights are censored, water censored, toilets are censored. And, you know, it's a center block building. And I think that renovation was like 150,000. It was quite a bit. And I was shocked at how much it costs, but, you know, to get some, you know, sturdy fixtures and to really, you know, improve the building. So I, you know, I think the cost would be 200,000, 300,000 for restrooms. And then there's the main outside the budget. I mean, I, you know, I couldn't be wrong. I mean, there could be other, you know, solutions, but, you know, as a public construction project. And then, you know, how, you know, where is it in the park? How big is it? You know, is it seasonal? Is it, is there a water heater? So sometimes if you have, you need hot water for the sinks. So, you know, there's a number of considerations. So it's usually not just a restroom. You know, you usually have to bring electricity in. You need a utility closet. Can that, so would that be like another grant or something? You know, a phase two of this park or, because you're talking about maybe lights, maybe water, maybe the, you know, so you have 100 right now or 660. You're trying to best utilize that kind of money and then that'd be like a phase two. I can't speak to if, if restrooms would be a later phase. I think, you know, staff has heard it. And so it'd be a discussion in terms of how, how would it fit into the park, you know, into the overall budget and in the location there. You know, in terms of the lighting, you know, my thought is the lighting we're saying would be just right now is to run, you know, if we're looking at this plan here, we're going to have lights along this walkway and then we're running conduit up. So if we ever have this connection, the lighting could just run up this way. You know, it's not the same plan, but, you know, we'd have these interior lighting, you know, in terms of water, too, we're thinking about having water somewhere here for the playground. But, you know, a restroom is a much bigger discussion in terms of its overall aesthetic and location in the park. I'm going to recognize Chris Bestra. I think she has something to add. I was just going to say that the, the bid and the chamber have been having conversations with the town about the issue of public restrooms. So it is really a larger topic. And, you know, we, we are serious about addressing it, but this project, you know, can't accommodate it. But, you know, we hear you that there should be some sort of public restroom up in this vicinity of the downtown and whether it ends up in Kendrick Park or someplace else, you know, will have to be considered. But, you know, within our budget and our scope of work, it's not really something that we can accommodate as part of this project. I actually have a question, Nate, if you could, or whoever's driving could put up one that shows the circular seating area with the tables. So here's this area right here. Yeah, great. Thanks. So my concern right now is the, the furniture that's been picked is we have a picture of it in our packet. It's the, well usually four seats attached, but to make it for handicraft ADA, you can remove one of the seats. So that's actually only three seats and three seats. You know, so for family of five, you can get kids to try to scooch and share on a thing, but I just wanted to ask the question. I automatically thought about what I had done with my family of five and sometimes the attached picnic table with benches are nice. But then I realized that that area we're talking about, if it's the scale, I believe is one inch to 10 feet, that area is really small. It's really only about eight by maybe max 12 feet and even at that in the circle. Could that area, was there any thought about making it a little bigger, maybe fitting a third table? You know, it's very small, because then I looked, there's no other tables, there's lots of benches, but that's really the only seating area. Yeah, I think that's the point. The idea is that this would act as a seating wall around it. So, you know, although it's not a table, you'd have some more seating. And at the most recent meeting, we've discussed, you know, eliminating this kind of flower bed area. So that, you know, would just be, this whole area would just be one, a paved surface without this flower area. So maybe with, you know, eliminating this, you could get three tables in there. You know, we can take your comments back to the team and, you know, see if this could be made just a little bit bigger to accommodate an extra table or two. Yeah, it was just, you've got the play equipment right there. And, you know, very often mothers, you know, have maybe three kids or it's two moms and a combo of four or five. I knew I was the mat a lot. And, you know, it's snack time or lunch time, you're making it a multi hour event to go down there. And I just, so adding to that, the strollers, it's maybe it's good if you move that flower bed, but it's a real pinch point and you get three or four strollers in there with, if you were to try to stick a third table, it just seems for all the land that's there, it just seems very pinched. So I would appreciate if people could go back and rethink that a little. All right. I'm going to recognize Maria. Let's see, what was it? I think overall activities, you know, are similar to what we saw in the past and it looks great. I think the only sheet that shows in its context pretty well is the cover sheet, unfortunately. And so I'm hoping it's placed accurately, but it shows sort of the design and blue relative to East and North Pleasant streets. And that one up. Is that see, it was in the set that was in our packet, which is, I know, outdated, but at least the sidewalk is sort of relevant to the spoke, I think. Art or, yeah, it was right here across the street. So I'm just wondering if any more consideration about, you know, how it connects to the rest of the town. I know that, you know, in the future, East Pleasant Street side might change, but as far as that sidewalk on the west and where it hits McClellan and I guess that little perpendicular bit being sort of, oh, sorry, it's not pulled up yet. It's probably hard to find. If you have the first page, Nate, from our handout, like it was the cover sheet. Yeah, the only one where it really shows it sort of. The buildings across the street, right? Yeah. So it's not this one. No. We don't have a handy panel. Do you have that available? I think we had it up. You didn't. It is the very first sheet you had up. Isn't it this right here? Can everyone see what I'm sharing now? No. Oh, sorry. You know what? Sorry. New share. Sorry. I had it on my screen and there you go. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I was looking at it. You got to really share, Nate. Yeah, not to sharing. So yeah, it looks like the east side hits East Pleasant in a place that's sort of no man's land right now, but that's all right because, you know, something might change on the east. I think the only bus stop is in front of the people's bank, right? That's further down here. And so I just curious, like, why on the west do you have such a long sidewalk proposed and then I guess that's like a little crosswalk that you have that's headed in towards the words where you have McClellan, McClellan Street. Is that just so like when people come from downtown, they cross over versus on the east side or, you know, like, yeah, just sort of contextually what was the idea behind all that pedestrian way on the west and then Right. I think the, you know, so there's the new sidewalk here along East Pleasant Street. So there's, you know, one or two crosswalks here further south that isn't, oh, I guess not quite shown. People have to cross and walk up here and then have a direct connection. In terms of down to McClellan, right through here is where the Tanbrook passes through Kendrick Park. And so originally, you know, that I was like, okay, let's let's put a crossing right almost directly across, but then you're at a mid block. And it's so the idea right now is to, you know, if you brought down to McClellan, Public Works is talking about having whether this be a whole raised cross intersection now with a larger raised crosswalk or traffic coming. And then there's some utilities right here. There's a sewer and manhole and drainage, both sewer and drainage infrastructure that you have to avoid. So, you know, that's why it's coming to the south of the McClellan Street. It's really trying to avoid any possibility of running into Tanbrook. So, you know, that I understand that it's kind of a dog leg that comes quite far south. But I hope in reality, you know, it's an easy connection for people walking. You know, they can, you know, be at, you know, an act, you know, at a cross street, they can cross and come up. Right. Because in the winter, that is the only place that will be plowed as far as this whole walkway will be plowed. And it's this, this topography also allows this shape, there's quite a bit of topography right here. It's a shape coming like this allows it to be a sloped walkway and not a ramp or it doesn't need stairs. So there will be some fill brought in here. But essentially this will be you know, an accessible walkway. If we came straight off here, this is quite steep, right where the cursor is. And so if the walkway came straight, there'd be a number of stairs and then we'd still need to have an accessible route. So this, you know, tries to satisfy it with one design. Okay. Thanks. Hey, is there still talk of turning because DPW is involved in this North Pleasant Street, making it a one way? That hasn't been a part of the discussion. I mean, we've discussed, we've mentioned what's happening long term, but that there hasn't been any real discussion on that. I think, you know, in the 2011 plan, they showed your angled parking right in here and making this one way. And so I think all those things are still, you know, under consideration. I don't really know what the long term plan is. Thanks. I'm going to recognize Janet and then Michael will be next. So, Nate, I have a question prompted by what Maria was saying. If people are coming from the North or across the street of East Pleasant, where, you know, all the buildings are right now and probably future buildings, is there going to be a raised crosswalk towards the entrance? How would people from the North come? Would they be across the street or, I think there's a sidewalk running along the park, right? There is. And then there's a crosswalk right here. Okay. So, you know, if you were on the other side, you can cross here and then it's not too far down and then there's this new sidewalk all along the North. Is there thinking about raising that crosswalk to sort of slow traffic down and do people have chances to get across? Not that I'm aware of, but I'll make a note of it. Yeah. Thank you. Nate, could you switch to that 2011 plan again? Sure. Janet's question made me think, thank you. Yes. You know, in that one there was, so I'm thinking about people walking North, like from the campus way, like how I would walk down that way. You know, there it shows some very graceful sidewalks that could bring you down into the park. But at this point, it looks like in the new design, they would have to walk all the way down to McClellan and get into it that way. You're right. So yeah, right now there's no existing sidewalk on the west side of Kendrick Park. And so just in terms of, you know, not having, if we show this, you know, keeping this at grade allows for a connection, but you know, there isn't money in the budget to then create a sidewalk that goes all the way up to this intersection. So that was really outside the scope of the play area. You know, we're, you know, we're allowing for that connection in the future, but not this time. So can you add that to phase two? Yeah, phase two. It's interesting, right, for someone coming North, you know, right now the sidewalk does not, you know, it really follows the perimeter, the curb edge, and it would come around here. So someone would have to, you know, walk around the North and then the East, you know, or they could come down North Pleasant and then come up a bit. Those are the two sidewalks. Okay. Thanks. I'm going to recognize Michael. There. Going back to the cover sheet that you showed a minute ago, another question about that same sidewalk. The, there's the suggestion that the park would be closed from dust to dawn, that it wouldn't be available at that point. And so if there's no fencing, clearly closing it is, is a matter of public perception rather than about, rather than patrolling. But would you, would you imagine that that sidewalk from that connects McClellan Street and ends up on East Pleasant would be available and usable during the evening hours or not? A good question. I would assume, I would assume yes, you know, we're providing, you know, pedestrian level lighting there. You know, and to your point about the playground, you know, it's interesting, at one point we talked about would we have, you know, ballers at either entrance here, not that you chain it off, but you could have some signs, I would say, close at dusk. I think that, I envision that the, you know, the sidewalk here would be illuminated and used, you know, in the evening. I'm sure that's going to your point of when, how is the park closed. Yeah. But thank you. I recognize David. Thank you. And then Chris, you're next. Thanks, Nate. And for the rest of the team for putting together this proposal that's trying to maximize state funding, I just, I mean, that's to be to contrary, it's in my mind, it's not that large a park and it's not that large a play area. And so minimizing the, the added paving or, and I think is, is, is an asset rather than a detriment, because the more you're talking about adding walkways, I think that from the north side, people will be, if they can walk across the field, that's remains, which nice, or they can walk on the neighboring the adjacent sidewalks on the streets, where there are cars, maybe, or like big park. So I think that that's actually an asset to the, the, the current design of the current year, rather than anything else. And so I applaud minimizing the added mcaddle. I think that's, I think that's pretty much it. Thank you. Thanks. Chris Bester. Hello. So we have heard from the DPW, and I think this was a comment that the superintendent, Guilford Moring made, that if we put up a sign that said the playground is closed from dusk to dawn, and we alerted the police to that fact that they would drive by, and if they saw people, you know, playing there or doing things that weren't appropriate or whatever students going through there at night, that they would tell them that the playground is closed, and they can't be in the playground. I don't think that will apply to the path that goes across it, because people do use that, you know, to get from the neighborhoods to the west of Kendrick Park, over to the stores and the buildings and bus and bike share on the east side of Kendrick Park. So I have the feeling that the walkway would still be open. But as long as there's a sign up to clue the police in, and we let them know that we don't knock people there after dark, they will patrol it and try to keep people out of there. Thanks, Chris. I see no more hands up right now for board members, so I was going to move it to public comments. So I'm looking at, we have 28 attendees right now on Zoom, and I will ask them to raise their hand if they have a question about the park. I see two hands right now. So I will recognize you, or at least what I see on the screen. So please introduce yourself and where you reside, and then ask your question. And I see three hands now. So I'll start with Dorothy Pam. So unmute yourself and introduce yourself. Oh, yep. I get it. Okay, so Dorothy, are you there, Dorothy? Dorothy, do you hear us? I hear you. Okay. Is that noise going to go away? Now, we have back feed. Do you have something? Telephone, perhaps. Is your telephone close by? Yes, but I don't remember where I wrote the number down. I have a phone. Okay, I wrote the numbers down. Let me see if I can find them. Do you want me to come back to your door at the end a few minutes? I'll come back to you. I'll go to the other two people, and I'll come back. Okay. Thanks. Mr. Pleshaskov, are you there? I think Pam is he unmuted? He will be. There we go. Hello. I'm Konstantin Pleshakov. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Welcome. Yes, great. Thank you. And if you could say your address again and then ask your question. 289 Triangle Street, just north of Kendrick Park. I'm very interested to know, did the current COVID-19 pandemic influence your planning in the past few weeks? I understand that this is a project for the history. It started in 2011. Clearly, it was a different time. So now we are under statewide lockdown. And health experts tell us that it's likely that the situation will continue for a year or maybe two. So my questions are, number one, did you think about the most effective way to shut down the area in case there is an emergency situation as it's now? Putting up signs will possibly work on families, but definitely not on young people who will be also using the area on their own. So I'm really asking you to think about the fence. I know that it's not ideal, but if there's a fence and the location could be physically put under lockdown, if necessary, that would do a lot for public safety, for the health of the community. And number two, did you have time to figure out the protocols for disinfecting the area daily? I understand that the earliest it will open will be summer next year, but chances are that the situation with the pandemic will not get completely resolved or there may be another way. So when we think about maintenance, I think we're also looking at the necessity for daily maintenance, disinfecting the surfaces, particularly it's the playground, heats. So those are my two questions. So I would be really grateful if you could address them. Thank you. Nate, do you want to answer that? And I just part of it is we have other parks in town. How is that, is there a plan how that's going to be handled? Nate? Is Nate still with us? Or Chris, do you want to answer that? Maybe it's not listening. So I was muted, sorry Chris and everyone. So let Nate have a chance. Okay. My computer was chiming, so I wasn't sure, I think I was going to email. But anyway, so yeah, thanks for your comments. I was going to say that I was saying that the town takes safety of its residents and visitors very seriously. I think they've done a commendable job. In terms of, Christine, you mentioned the other parks. I mean, the town closed its public parks in an effort to stop social gatherings and then also to ease maintenance. So if this park were constructed at this time, again, it would be a patrol issue, but all public parks in an emergency like this would just be closed. We wouldn't allow them to be open because I do think the daily disinfecting is something that we haven't discussed. And I think the easier solution is to close them because that's the safest measure. I understand people will still come. I read in Sweden where they spread chicken manure in the park to deter the basically at the May Day celebration. But yeah, I mean, so I think we haven't discussed that directly. Same with also to like the fence or how what's the effective way if there's another emergency, we're not necessarily designing this park with an eye toward having to keep users a certain distance. I mean, if this were open, people, there's plenty of space for people to have social distancing occur. If there was another health emergency like this, my thought is the town would close public spaces and make it pretty apparent that it's not to be used. I can't say what are the measures the town would use at that time. I mean, if people continue to use it, would it be more patrols in this area? Would it be putting up temporary fencing, chain link fencing, like construction fencing? I mean, those are things we haven't really discussed. Thank you. I'm going to move to Hilda Greenbaum. I believe you are able to speak. Yeah. Okay. Hello. I can hear you now. Please introduce yourself. I have a question about the sidewalks and whether they would be tricycle and baby carriage easily not necessarily accessible, but pushable. And that's emanating from my many years of pushing grandchildren around, especially Amity Street. When I look at the number of tree roots that have made pushing a carriage of Amity Street next to impossible, that I see there are a lot of trees planted or bushes, it's hard to tell, planted very close to the walking paths here, whether you're going to have the same kinds of upheaval of the pavement that we suffer on Amity Street. So I just want to make sure that people are thinking about that when they plan the plantings along the sidewalks. Thank you. So the, you know, the sidewalks are, you know, we're building them, you know, five to six feet wide so they are, you know, wide enough they will be a smooth surface so that they could be used by, you know, different, whether it's toys or assistive devices. For tree roots, you know, if the town's done in some areas, you know, it's the freezing and thawing and other things that happen along tree roots that, you know, sometimes they lose themselves at either sidewalks. So a lot of it goes into the sub-base material. If you, you know, the towns try different methods with, you know, different gravel or sub-base material that has, you know, voids in them to allow, you know, things to expand or move. So, you know, like Chris had mentioned, we're working with Public Works on this design, both the tree warden and an engineer. So my assumption is they've designed the walkways and the, you know, the sub-base materials in a way that it will allow for both the roots to survive and then also to, you know, to remediate any heaving, you know, to, you know, that could be also just, you know, more scoring patterns and joints on a sidewalk. So, you know, concrete will or asphalt sometimes can break, but if you have controlled joints and expansion joints, so there's a few ways to plan for that. I'm not, you know, I, we haven't, that hasn't been talked about. As long as you're aware that there's that problem in the almost. Aware. Aware. Made aware. A lot of people make you aware. No, that's good. Thanks. That's something we can bring back. Thank you. I'm gonna go back to Dorothy. I do not see your hand up, but I'll give you this moment. You are unmuted if you want to speak. I think she has herself muted. I have her unmute, unmute. If she's listening. If not, I'll try one more time. I see one more hand. I see Kathy Shewin. Shewin. Kathy Shane. Shane, that's right. I was like, it's not like how it looks. Hey, Shane. Kathy Shane. She you're allowed to speak now. Wait a minute. Are someone speaking? Okay. Now she should be. Okay. Kathy, are you there? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hi. I'm Kathy Shane. I live at 519 Montague Road and I think, you know, I'm also on the town council, but I'm speaking as a resident. I just, I want to echo what I think David Levenstein said is in this case, trying to minimize the cost and minimize the amount of paving and other things we put in this is important rather than maximize the grant even because I think the issue of us maintaining, you can look around our other parks and see what happens to equipment, not to mention just the grass. So I do have a question about the rubberized surface and I can see how big it has to be and it partly has to be as big as it is because the amount of equipment that's on it. So potentially less equipment would mean less rubberized surface and it's so expensive to put in that even if it has a 20-year lifetime, if it costs $200,000, we may not replace it given the way Amherst does it. So just those two are interactive. Then on the table, I'm wondering whether it may be that it's just more expensive, but when you look at a central park and some of the parks that have playground or play area, they put in stone tables where there's a stone top on a stone pedestal and they've been there forever and the table I saw with the four attached chairs is that aluminum and is there a way to think a little bit more creatively about tables because I do think tables are important, even if they're small, people sit down at them. It's a nice place to gather and talk with people and then the last is, I think there's still a sandlot when I was looking this afternoon and keeping the sand clean is the one time we lived near a playground that had sand and when we lived in DC, the one place that was completely destroyed was the sandlot because pets had gone in it, there was debris in it, cigarette butts and other things in it. So just thinking in terms of sand doesn't necessarily stay clean and you want it to stay clean. So the whole theme is around maintenance. That's it. Nate? I think those are good points. We are talking to one stone manufacturer and distributor to get costs on items so we could ask about tables. I mean I'm assuming that a stone table would be more expensive than an aluminum but you never know. So we can look at that and even different ideas for different types of tables. Yeah, the sand, it's interesting. There's still maybe a sand area and we talked about maintenance so we've also suggested maybe if there's a piece stone area and we thought about if the sand was to go away it would just be piece that we have piece stone instead of sand. It's a little it's different but it's still tactile and kids can play and dig in it. Hopefully it's you know not as much of a maintenance issue. So I understand, I hear that about the sand. I haven't you know I just I'll take note of that. Cats don't like the piece stone as much as the sand. I think that was um so I'm going to go back to Dorothy Pam and if you can try to thanks Pam. I believe she is unmuted. Yes can can you hear me now? Dorothy Amherst Media sent me a message and said to remind folks that they need to turn their telephone down the volume um their speakers down and TVs down before they speak if you have either of those going. Is that better? I turned the volume down. I'm on my computer. I tried the phone. The phone does not let one in. I typed in the meeting ID number and then it asked me for my personal ID and all that it was said in the directions was type um what was it? Space nine. I did that and it wouldn't accept me in. So the telephone does not work. Okay. So I'm ready to I guess that's a simple question about the tables with the attached chairs. If one were wanting to do some social distancing you could not do so with those four attached chairs. Now I understand why movable chairs might be a problem but let's just say that you're a grandparent wanting to watch your grandchildren but we're still in a half kind of social distancing world. So maybe there could be some permanent individual chairs like like like a stone chair that is not so close to other things. I mean I realized this is in contradiction to Christine's point which was good which you wanted a space for a group of mothers and children to eat lunch while playing but the attached four chairs did seem to present a problem to me. The other issue is for price reasons you have decided to not do the natural materials for the play structure but the pictured equipment was my most hated color beige gray plastic color. So I know that the public had one of the meetings I went to didn't want it to be those bright too many bright primary colors but what about making the equipment just that old-fashioned dark playground green and then it would blend in with the trees and I think that would look a lot better but basically I'm very excited about the park and I hope it will be built soon and I hope that we will come up with a fundraising process to build a beautiful restroom at the tip because there's no way that children that I know could ever make it to any of the bathrooms you listed without wetting their pants. So I do think we need a restroom at some point. Thank you Pam. Thank you. Wow my head's hurting. I like the idea about movable chairs you know I wouldn't you know a lot of tacos into that. You know for the play equipment the color yeah the colors can change I mean there's a lot of colors I almost want to say too many color choices but the you know one vendor cautioning it's too dark of materials because it gets hot in the sun and so there is a discussion about what are the right color choices and even you know changing some of that equipment a little bit. Hold up Nate a sec. Pam can you put up the playground or maybe just to show those colors I know there was some like lime green in there. Oh you know sorry same thing. What's wrong with lime green? No just you know just want to show it. Yep. Now I think yes I my hope too would be that the colors maybe read pretty quite bright and artificial on here and it could just be the way it's presented. I mean I agree that it's you know during the forums everyone talked about you know whether it's more muted colors or something that's not as bright and thematic so that's something we can consider. Yeah and just when people are talking about colors on it like if you stop there for a sec you know there's posts you know she said she doesn't like the putty of the brown color where I think some of the slides and such they sort of almost only come in those colors like this is something that might you might want to you know delineate out and find out what are the selections because there we see lime green you know some parts of the pieces must come in colors but some pieces may have a very limited number of colors. The vendor did here this was a this is probably one of their standard color palettes so you know they have like gray or silver posts and then they do different colors and so you know they've said that almost anything can be customizable probably not at a cost it's just you'd have to you know go through and choose it so I think there's like five different color colors on say for instance this play structure you know there's posts there's this plastic there's climbing there's caps and there's the surface and so I think any that I think those can I agree that you know the slide material maybe have you know six different colors you know and then this metal this green right here there might be 30 different colors and so it's just a matter of choosing a palette that works and you know can you know can maybe be more subdued. Thank you and just if we have another map you know I was talking about the table ironically the circle there has a picture. Yeah but you mentioned that stone area in that circle that's sort of like what you got the DPW is planning to do you know so she was you know if people are in that circle and they couldn't didn't want to sit at a table they can sit on the stone benching. And you'll have other benches nearby you know you said that a couple times that you definitely want to have a lot of benches. Yeah so this mock-up right here you know we had envisioned a sign here a bench here you know what we've talked about here is creating a better edge along this by doubling up benches here just to create more you know more seating and then also more of a barrier the you know movable chairs is interesting the you know one of the designs for the north pommet had a plaza with movable chairs just so you know people can can sit how they'd like. I mean it's something I think we can discuss as a team as a design team. I lived near a new park in California and they did put in some movable chairs very heavy not more than aluminum they were some kind of metal that was very heavy and they did have them chained which made them hard to move but that was for theft but unfortunately by the end of two years they were all magically gone. I know that's a concern you you don't want your furniture to travel. So you know maybe ask the vendor I think the vendor would would have a lot of insight on that. I mean even at those that round table in those chairs I think it's they waste 350 pounds as a set and so we talked about not bolting them but having them be you know loose I mean they can't really be moved but I think one of the when we were talking about it for gross someone said well you know someone could pick it up I'm like okay if someone is really intent on stealing something that weighs 350 pounds they can try to drive on there with a pickup truck and a bunch of guys or people move it but I'm like really I'm like really 350 pounds really that's just seems. Oh Nate you're making me gonna say it how many college kids does it take to move a table? We'll ask the master wait we'll make them about 500 pounds maybe and see what happens. All right thank you. So I don't see looking back oh I see two more questions you see them Pam I'll go with Karen Winter first if you can give her okay so I believe it's Karen Winter but please introduce yourself. I'm Karen Winter I live at 14 Elm Street and yeah I'm I'm excited about this playground but now that I see the playground equipment my heart kind of sinks because this is exactly what I was hoping was not going to happen it looks like a lot of plastic and metal and I sent to Dorothy Pam because I wasn't sure who else to send to a lot of pictures of playgrounds in Berlin and Germany and I don't know how long how far long is this whole thing I'm just thinking of completely different kinds of things like the rubber trampolines for kids that are built into the ground which my daughter who lives there says is the absolute hit with all the parents it's not that expensive you see it all over Europe now and then just stone blocks for people to to to climb on you know this seems to me I don't know I'm probably too late and maybe this is a cost thing but my heart is just kind of sinking looking everything else looks great I love the idea of your walkways the flowers the grading the minimal impact but the play equipment is not what I was hoping to see so I don't know is that a done deal thank you for your question Nate yeah I mean I think this play area I've changed screens is you know we'll have manufactured equipment but as we've discussed there's many other elements here that will have all natural whether it's stone seeding or you know wood chips and logs you know piece stone and granite blocks and so there's you know another it's more stone seeding areas so there'll be areas of natural material integrated throughout you know this amphitheater area in terms of the play equipment the design team you know we're it is plastic and metal but it's also both you know accessible and usable for different age groups and it meets the safety standard so Corrine thanks for your emails we did for them and looked at them from Europe but I mean they have completely different safety standards so those trampolines that are at grade I understand they're they look a lot of like a lot of fun but you know as far as I understand they wouldn't be allowed they would not meet safety standards so there's you know it is hard to look at other other playgrounds so you know even when we were doing Roth Park I found some images from yeah from Germany and England for different water parks and you know when I spoke with different safety officials they said well actually here in America that's considered a pool a stream so you'd have to have a lifeguard even though it really is just like you know a little waiting pool so I think you know the different safety standards and regulations do make it difficult to implement things that you might see abroad but my thought is that this area you know really is an accessible play area so the play equipment you know there's accessible items that has different age groups and then there's you know all natural material that's integrated and you know scattered throughout the rest of the area so you know in terms of the dedication to materials I mean this is maybe a third of the playground area and so most of it would actually be to me would be considered you know a more naturalized play area so you know grass mounds and gravel and stones and you know the agility area would be logs and stumps yeah I understand but to me that's the heart of the playground it's the playground but yes I guess I don't know anything about safety standards if it's not possible it's not possible I mean every vendor we've spoken with they do not they no longer use natural wood because it ages it splinters it rots within 10 years they may need to be treated every year with different chemicals so um yet we've asked a few different vendors and they've all said you know they 20 years ago they tried to it and they've all stopped carrying it so the best they would do would be a synthetic wood you know synthetic material tried to make it look like wood or rock and that's very expensive I see and what about rock climbing things that are made out of stone some creative kind of a stone yeah I see that's in a different part okay thank you Nate yeah the rock you know Nate just adding on to that you mentioned oh we you know talk to three different vendors so and the pitches you have I assume are from one vendor who works with part manufacturers did you look at other manufacturers or other vendors and was this the the look and feel the aesthetics that or was it price like you know why are you leaning towards the vendor the images we showed the we like the vendor we worked with them before they're just responsive and you know they do have a lot more equipment than that was shown here so it's a matter now of pushing them a little bit so these were done you know kind of for free just to show what they're capable of the other vendors yeah I mean we I really asked for one you know anywhere from three to five designs one being all natural material and then the other two with you know manufactured and none of them provided an all natural design because they say they just don't do it so you know they were all somewhat similar to be honest I mean I guess it's just a matter of you know some vendors might carry the tables I showed where others are going to do more wood tables or picnic table style you know and so there's small variations between them you know because we use this vendor at different parks you know all the the mechanical equipment the fasteners all that stuff is the same I mean there may be some you know ease of maintenance if you know for instance end caps can be replaced universally throughout the parks in Amherst as opposed to having each park be unique or but yeah I do think it's interesting the you know we looked at Plasky we looked at different parks and it is it's you can have natural materials but to have a play structure that's really built up that has slides and everything else you know we haven't found someone that's willing to quote build one out of natural wood you know it's going to be a manufactured play structure thank you I see one more hand in the attendees Pam Greta and Bruce yeah so that you should be able to speak and introduce yourself or selves whoever's there yeah hi it's Bruce Wilcox I just want to say how thrilled I am that there's going to be a playground downtown we've waited many years for this and when our grandchildren are in town I'm sure we'll be walking over I'm on Lincoln Avenue I had a couple of comments one I'd like to second Dorothy Dorothy Pam's point about restrooms I realize it's not within the purview of your present scheme but something's got to be done about that and I wonder if any large buildings are built across the street if a requirement could be added that they include a public restroom again that's not something you can determine today but I just throw that out there as an idea the other point is that when we visit our grandchildren who are in San Francisco every one of the public parks has a sign as you enter the playground that says only those who are accompanied by children may come in the playground that adults can't just hang there on their own I think that's actually a good idea in a college town and I wonder if that's anything that you had given any thought to thank you I had forgotten about that San Francisco rule yeah um Nate do you have any comments on those or Chris no um you know we hadn't talked about that limiting you know the users typically we just say it's open to the public and you know without really restriction unless there is you know unless someone's trying to vandalize or you know it's after hours or something but again something to consider it is I will say the parks that I was familiar with in San Francisco they were completely fenced so they could be closed at night and that was part of it by entering you had a child with you where this one it's even with some fencing it would still be very open but it's a good concept um all right so I I do see some uh board members have their hands I'm going to recognize Christine Christine can I interrupt you yeah should we have um someone has put um a question in the q&a which I did not believe was possible yeah so was accessible here so it's a person um who is still attending I'm not sure if that person wants to speak for himself or well it can be lumped in so I was gonna if I recognize Chris I also wanted to mention that we have gotten other comments via email and um I think the website and we got a lot of them um email to us today I did read through them all I haven't given them all a hard thought yet um but I want to ask Chris how should we start handling those I know this isn't the only meeting hearing meeting that we're having I wanted to say that um this is the first of probably two public hearing sessions on this project we're not um complete in our design but we wanted to start out and give you all the information we had so far but we're going to recommend that you continue this public hearing to um your next meeting which is May 20th and at that time you might want to um you know read through or summarize the comments that you've received online and that have been um email to us and uh you know mention the names of the people if you can figure that out um but that might be a good time to to handle that and and you really don't need to feel like you have to wrap this up tonight because we don't have all the answers that you're looking for or that we hope to present to you great so that would give the board members some time to you know we receive all of the comments so we can not only read them we can think about it and that will adjust possibly the questions we ask at the next meeting um Pam so back to that Q&A question so there's no name attached or anything there is I'm actually trying to send them a message right now just to see if they want to um speak during the public comment okay we can wait and Ken flick back to them um I'll move to back to some of the board members I see I see three hands up and I believe I saw Janet's go up earlier uh first so I recognize Janet thank you um I just had a quick question or an idea there seems to be a lot of public interest in the park and I know it's in progress and the DPW and planning department being very responsive to comments is there some way to kind of post this information and keep people current not minute by minute but you know people are very interested and is there a place on the website the planning department website that you know the latest plans can go or you know in a week or so or something like that just to keep people informed yeah thanks yeah there's a there is actually a product web page and I think we could we could benefit it benefit by updating it and we could do that um soon and then um you know we it's linked to the LSSC commissions um they have a um like a what's happening or a kind of a another um kind of page on their site so it's linked to a few different areas so that even to the public works um current project so I think we could update that and maybe put it in the news again and just kind of put it out there yeah maybe even on the town crawl I mean it's a very positive development in a time when there's a lot of other not so positive things and I think people are very interested so it'd be nice to show what what the town is working on and things moving ahead and also you know obviously you're taking people's comments very seriously so they could you know people can participate so I appreciate that thanks yeah thanks Nate um next I recognize David thank you I'd like to move to continue to close the public hearing and to continue this to the next meeting um there's been a lot of input there's still a June 1 deadline there's been a lot of work already put on this we have a sizable topic following and so I'd like to make that motion thank you um so I have hands up I'm gonna just call on Michael whether he wants to second that or if he would like to ask his question he did have his hand up before this so I'll second the motion okay thank you Michael um and then I recognize Chris Bester per hand is up so I just wanted to um note that you shouldn't close the public hearing because you will be um admitting new evidence next time around but um certainly uh moving to continue the public hearing to may may 20th would be a great idea that's what thank you for clarification Chris and it is seconded so um at this point I don't see any other hands so we will continue this probably at the next meeting Chris in two weeks yes that's right okay so at this point Nate thank you that's a lot um thanks for all your hard work we look forward to seeing kind of the final draft great thanks I'm gonna stop sharing my screen Pam so I think it'll go back to you if you want to and okay Chris Dan we need to do a roll call vote for continuing oh yeah let me get my little okay that's right thank you so um that's on the table right now to just continue the hearing until the 20th so I will do a quick roll call um so I'll start with um Michael yes Maria yes Jack yes yay uh David yes Doug affirmative Janet yes and I also yes so that's unanimous move to two weeks from now so we'll move on to the next thing on our agenda which is um item four chapter 40 our smart growth um Karen Sonnerborg housing and planning consultant and David Eisen architect of ab abcus architects and planners present a review of the chapter 40 our smart growth study and proposed draft zoning amendments including design standards and I know Chris Besser mentioned that she would like to um speak first so yeah thank you Christine I just wanted to give a brief introduction so that people know what we're doing tonight um in 2019 the town of Amherst received a planning for housing production grant from mass housing and they contracted with we contracted with Karen Sonnerborg and um David Eisen of abacus architects and planners to analyze zoning and give us some input about affordable housing development opportunities so we've held um three public meetings so far one last April one in June and one in December and we've heard a lot about what uh what is smart growth what is chapter 40 are um we've gotten a lot of good information we've got a lot of input from the public at those three meetings and now um the planning board uh wanted to have an opportunity to um find out a little bit more about 40 are and discuss it among themselves because some planning board members weren't able to go to any of those public forums and um the planning board uh is feeling that they would like to have an opportunity to talk about this even the people who did go to those public forums couldn't talk about it with their fellow planning board members so that's what this is all about um we're going to have a presentation from the two consultants and then there will be an opportunity for planning board members to ask questions and to um discuss this possible proposal but I wanted to make the point very clear that this is not something that is a firm proposal that's coming before the planning board this is not a public hearing although you may wish to hear comments from the public the planning board will not be making any decisions tonight other than possibly to continue to look into this 40 r as a as a proposal but um I think you know some people were worried that this was kind of moving too quickly and there wouldn't be enough opportunity for public input so this is really just an opportunity the planning board to hear about it planning board to discuss and then if there are public comments and you want to um receive those you can do that but there will be plenty of other opportunity to talk about this in public forums so chris before you introduce the consultant um so just to be clear this so they're coming today just to present what they've been working on and um are they done with this or do they plan to do yet another public um talk you know um or would it be down the road if decisions were made on to do something with 40 r then there would be more meetings for the public and and reach out so i'm not really sure about that i haven't really talked to the consultants themselves about this my understanding is that they um were intending to do another public forum a fourth public forum and they have graciously agreed to have this meeting with the planning board um specifically with the planning board um but you know the actual uh determination of whether they will be coming back or whether it will be on staff to make presentations is to be determined um so so i'm going to leave that as an open question but i hope that they will be able to come back and give a presentation to the public and have the public in you know give their input certainly the intent on the part of planning department staff is that there will be many opportunities to talk about this in public forum whether or not the consultants are there right so they're a resource that are coming to us today and we can ask hard questions to them about 40 r yes thank you okay okay so i should introduce them yes can i ask you to wait just a second yes so i have been able to bring over david eisen into the panelists um i'm not sure if karin is here we have one person in the tundies named karin just just karin so i'm going to ask that person to speak a second who are you karin karin i'm karin sonnaborg i'm here all right karin i'm going to move you over to the panelists right now thank you is this a good time to introduce the consultants yes i'm sorry chris thank you yeah so we're very pleased to have with us tonight karin sonnaberg and david eisen who have been working with us since um probably the the winter actually maybe even the fall and summer of 2018 and all through 2019 um and uh you know participating in these public forums which everybody or a lot of people had an opportunity to attend um so karin and david please give your presentation and then i'm sure the planning board and the public will have some questions thank you i just want to ask pam or who is uh in charge of the slides may are you there i have it up right at the moment um so i can i can run with it okay so thanks pam yeah i i i'm you know i saw the looks like i could you know help point if the um are you i don't know uh pam did we ever figure that out how i could also do it i i don't have that access right now you you should just be able to give it a try um no i'm viewing your screens but i'm not sure if i can actually do anything with it okay you should be able to annot annotate it if you look up at the top i'm gonna take request remote control from your screen oh all right yeah that'll work you can take it and just help give them one okay there you go but now you have to get rid of the pencil i made okay all right you want me to pam do you want me to want me to um move it forward and everything and you can do if if you're willing to that would be great and then i will stick out watching for a hand i can do that taking notes yep perfect okay so i see um david his screen his videos off and he's able to speak and where's the care karen this is my voice coming through it is now hello okay i don't see my picture uh i don't know if that's a big loss uh can you turn on your can uh your video on the bottom left is it got a lot oh yes okay yeah there we go right okay and ham i don't see the karen yet in the panelists i can't get to my panelists thing right all of a sudden she's she um so i do hear you karen hold on a moment so pam i see that you've given her talking permission but she's still in attendees huh so we don't have a screen for her well done promote to panelists there she goes great on stage oh karen this is promoting you as a panelist okay and if karen you if you want to if you want to turn on your video you can go down to the bottom left and turn the video screen there we go fantastic welcome hi everyone hello welcome thank you so should we get on with it with the presentation the floor is yours and Nate is driving your slides so great well thanks for chris uh to chris for the introduction for Nate and Pam on the technical support and you folks for putting us on your agenda uh this evening uh uh david and i are going to go through this slideshow as uh expeditiously as we can so we have time for questions and comments uh the focus of the presentation is to really look at you know where we've come where we are now and a little bit on where we where we're headed um next slide yeah so you know okay um sorry it does work all right i was just is that okay you have to double click right yeah okay all right so the focus of this technical assistance project which was funded um by the state under uh because the town got a housing choice designation uh the focus was on exploring uh smart growth uh in amours uh through a 40 r smart growth overlay district zoning which is uh meant to really promote mixed use development multifamily development with the inclusion of affordable housing requirements and design standards um in addition to the 40 r work we were also asked to um provide some input on other potential development opportunities or sites in the community that might be suitable for some amount of affordable housing um the major tasks have been to kind of engage in a significant community engagement process to look at a number of options with respect to potential locations for a smart growth overlay district um and to do research and analysis regarding to uh zoning and uh policies that have worked effectively in other places that might resonate with uh the town of amours and once again importantly design standards because the zoning is by right design standards become very important uh to protect community character and then to prepare a draft bylaw we have uh here tonight too we'll get into it to present at least the preliminary components of that uh bylaw next um slide so with respect to what we hope to touch based on tonight we're gonna just um talk a little bit about where 40 r is currently uh working um look back a little bit to where we have been um going and where um to get to this point in the planning process tonight um we're going to talk about some of the issues that we've uh we've heard throughout the planning process and um talk about you know how a town establishes a 40-hour district and then get into the major components of the proposed uh preliminary draft zoning um also uh speaking a bit on uh next uh steps next slide so this map shows uh in the shaded yellow areas where uh what communities have uh 40-hour districts in place and that totals to about 49 districts across 42 municipalities uh with azurite zoning for over 19 000 projected units um and getting you know approaching 4 000 units that are being built or have been completed you can see that the bulk of the four-yard districts are in the eastern part of the state but certainly there are a number of four-yard districts in proximity to amherst um next slide including east hampton uh which passed a 40-hour district with a projected 482 housing units 50 of which have been completed and 18 units approved and those 18 units are in a mixed use development uh where the developer put it two uh properties together um the uh first floor is retail there are some handicap accessible units in the rear and um most of the residential units above the first floor that include four affordable housing units next slide um and north hampton um actually has uh has three at this point uh four-yard districts two in um various two in separate phases or the village hill um project that involved the redevelopment of the state hospital um on 30 acres with the projected 429 units of which 149 have been approved and with respect to a mix of housing it includes single family housing multi-family housing home ownership rental has some special needs housing some workforce housing is a true mix of housing types to address a range of housing needs it also approved more recently a third 40-yard district that centers on only one building which is sponsored by the valley cdc for 31 units of enhanced s row housing the city decided instead of doing what they typically would do a 40 b development that they would use the 40 r process um mainly because a they had a template already in place that they were comfortable with and they felt that they could readily adapt this particular project to the 40 r zoning template they also had a working relationship with the hcd and had experienced pretty quick turnaround times for approvals and third there are financial incentives that come with 40 r that would help make the project financially more feasible uh next slide so this slide just points to some of the you know major milestones that we have realized in this planning process so far um first we've conducted outreach to housing stakeholders to almost 30 interviews largely to get early input on key challenges and opportunities for 40 r or other affordable housing developments getting guidance on what they thought were appropriate locations for a 40 r district as well as potentially other properties that might be conducive to including some affordable housing development uh we held our first community meeting on April 4th we brought in representatives from various state entities including uh mass housing which provided funding for this project dhcd which is the approval entity for this for any 40 r district um the citizens housing and planning association as well as the massachusetts smart growth alliance and we went through local and state housing needs smart growth principles as well as 40 r more specifically and this particular technical assistance project um the we then moved on to a site analysis strategy that relied you know heavily on what we heard from the first community meeting and through the interview process where we were where we obtained a whole list of site selection criteria that would be critical in trying to locate a 40 r district as well as input on um what folks thought were reasonable locations for a 40 r district um we held a second community meeting on june 4th to obtain additional input on priority uh site selection criteria and best locations for a 40 r district all these community meetings had a presentation and uh break small breakout groups so there was real kind of engagement of participants in discussions and feedback towards the project um i should add at the second community meeting we based on our initial input we came in kind of focusing on three potential 40 r districts which included the downtown north amherst and panorail village based on the input we got from this meeting we added a fourth uh location which was east amherst um and then we went back and we looked at the uh what was being discussed and uh in the four at june 4th meeting and realized there was a large agreement that those four areas were would be good uh smart growth uh areas for 40 r but there didn't seem to be any consensus on which was the best area uh so we went through a process of revisiting the site selection criteria prioritizing uh them and then trying to reflect on those by the locations the four locations that uh were identified and based on that analysis the downtown edged out the other three uh areas but it was clear that all four areas would be uh suitable and so we uh decided to take the downtown on as the first location and given how uh the town's experience with that looked to the other locations as uh possibilities in the future we then held a third community meeting december 19th to go over this location selection process um and obtain additional input on how we can make 40 r uh work best and introduced uh design standards and got some feedback on design standards that are uh would be integrated into the actual zoning uh from from state uh requirements and state guidance as well as looking at uh other 40 r zoning bylaws and then reflecting on all the input that we've obtained through the course of the project we drafted a uh 40 r bylaw we took a stab at it and um uh we're going to present the key components of that tonight um we have planned on having a fourth community meeting to get input on the draft bylaw and yes david i have been committed to doing that given covid 19 it becomes a little dicier but uh stay tuned uh to um to to that um and let me also mention that the presentations from the three community meetings um are on the town's website so people who are curious about kind of the focus of those meetings uh please go to the website next slide next slide there we go well you can imagine through the length and uh of this project and all the meetings and we we have heard quite a lot from folks on comments and issues that we need to um you really need to respond to um in preparing this uh this zoning some of the themes that we have frequently heard um are just listed below um there was there was general agreement if not consensus that smart growth zoning makes sense uh and ammers um and it would be a useful to a tool to uh to explore um another comments or theme was the town should guide development to areas that are most appropriate for greater density and away from rural areas and environmentally sensitive sites away from green fields and in areas uh where uh mixed uses and density are important appropriate and residents want a vital downtown with mixed uses they also want to maintain the historic quirky character of the downtown too um but there is I think general support for the notion that the downtown needs more investment um another perspective has been that the town lacks meaningful design standards in 40 r provides the vehicle for really articulating clear standards that resonate with the uh with the community and the town's character very importantly the integration affordable housing is important and that's something in the downtown that's not mandated in zoning the town does have inclusionary zoning in places you know for special permit but there was some you know chagrin about doing development in downtown and doing new housing and not having any inclusion of affordability I mean it's it's worth mentioning that we have heard that there should be some consideration for coupling an adoption of a 40 r smart growth district with some down zoning uh in the downtown um in the bg district because uh five-story development in that district is allowed by right um because of the concerns regarding the inclusion of affordable housing and design standards it would be advantageous for the town to have developers apply the 40 r permitting as opposed to the underlying zoning um which is allowed um and and thus uh getting uh preventing some of the problems that some perceive uh cropped out as far as new development uh in the downtown area and um parking remains a challenge next slide this uh flow chart just shows kind of the major steps that are needed uh to establish a zoning a 40 r district um I mean it's basically a dosy dough with the state um and with this locality not being able to move forward uh with uh with zoning with with the approval without preliminary approval from the state and we have been ongoing discussions with the state and keeping them apprised of where we are in the process and getting their input so uh that has been I think very helpful uh next slide so now we get to the major components of the bylaw uh it is important to note that this bylaw based on 40 r statute regulations must be all inclusive without reference to other zoning uh in the the town's bylaw um the first section of the bylaw states a purpose and um and we have included language that basically states to foster a range of housing opportunities along with mixed use development components to be proposed in a distinctive an attractive site development program that promotes compact design preservation of open space and a variety of transportation options including enhanced pedestrian access to nearby to employment and nearby uh services we have I mean and uh we have added that um that the purpose is all to be in accordance with the purposes of the massachusetts generalized chapter 40 r uh under the purpose to also list uh some objectives um that range from diversifying housing tops for types for a variety of incomes and ages and household sizes um and uh establishing quality design standards in a fair and effective uh development um permitting and approval process proposed sustainable and pedestrian pedestrian develop friendly development and another objective relates or a couple of objectives relates to uh generating positive tax revenues and also additional financial uh resources that come with 40 r uh zoning approval and development uh section two includes a list of definitions that are uh in the bylaw section three is establishment um this section defines uh the the boundaries of the downhound amherst smart rote overlay districts and will uh and references a zoning map that would be created um section four on applicability it you know clarifies reinforces that this bylaw is all inclusive uh it states that the developer also may uh apply uh the requirements of the underlying uh zoning um over the zoning in the in the overlaid district uh section five is permitted uses uh with the residential pro projects including multifamily uh mixed use development also including multifamily development includes so parking and other accessory units other uses such as commercial office cultural civic institutional or other non-residential uses um and then next page next slide chapter six is on affordability requirements um you know at least 20 percent of housing units must be affordable and eligible for inclusion in the subsidized housing inventory um about 25 percent in the case of rental developments and that would allow allow all units in that development to count towards the shi uh a basic requirement is that there has at least 20 percent of all units created in the zoning district must be affordable um section seven under plan approval um it uh you know stipulates the as of right permitting and approval process it uh designates the planning board as the plan approval authority um and the new 40 r regulations do allow um the paa to adopt administrative rules and regulations that they have to be approved by dhcd and then it goes into some plan approval procedures uh with a pre-applic application process uh a list of required materials as part of the application um states uh that fees uh are allowed but they have to be approved by dhcd and is reasonable um allows for the circulation of the application to other boards for review and comment uh an important public hearing is essential and peer review is also allowed uh section nine next page um regarding plan approval decisions and this is important plan disapproval is only allowed when an application is incomplete does not meet zoning requirements and it is not possible to adequately mitigate significant adverse project impacts on nearby properties by means of suitable conditions uh waivers by the planning board can be allowed but not affordability requirements they cannot be waived um and project phasing is allowed but you know once again the affordability requirements are an important part of that and has to be uh they have to be proportionate uh to numbers of units included in each phase section 10 deals with any change to plans after approval uh allowing minor changes without the need for public hearing but any major changes must be processed through a new application uh section 11 goes on to design standards and i'm going to pass the baton david who will uh take up from here thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and just this is sort of 10 seconds of background karen and abicus have been working together for what a dozen years um cities and towns all over massachusetts on affordable housing planning and karen's area of expertise is the process and procedures and policies where architects and planners it's the design and physical form so section 11 is design standards which is about planning the physical form so they're called design standards and they deal with a series of subjective issues it deals with design but these are required so it's assumed that there's a certain amount of negotiation but only to a limited extent these are requirements that are meant to protect the best interests of of the town um and they're intended to reflect the kind of vision of the community and there are diverse set of opinions in amherst like there are in most communities but we're trying to distill out of everything we hear a kind of sense of where amherst amherst could or should go to meet a broad range of issues you know want to maintain the small town character but if it's completely unaffordable to the vast majority of people because there's enough housing that tends to be a problem um so what we're trying to do with the design standards is preserve the positive aspects of the existing town character there are places and billions of people really love improve the pedestrian experience there are places where there are big swaths of asphalt and loss of curb cuts can we improve those areas with the with the design standards um make it good for business if it improves the pedestrian experience if we get people living downtown that's probably going to be a really good thing for business and we're in a challenging period right at the moment nobody knows what the future holds but we're assuming that there will be a kind of rebound that people will want to go to bars and restaurants and stores and do the things they've done and we should at least plan for that even if nobody really knows what the future holds and a big component is affordable housing development and I think that's one of the major things that triggered the whole 40 r process and procedures at the state level um so the goal with the standards begin by laying out goals um for design and that's the context in which designers and developers do their planning and decision making and they allow a certain amount of discretion on the part of architects and developers because you can't dictate good design you can't tell everybody exactly what kind of windows go where but you can set the parameters in which those those plans are developed um and the trade-off is this you have far more rigorous standards than you have with normal zoning but on the other hand if developers and property owners meet those standards it's as of right and it accelerates the process and there's a kind of certainty there that's the kind of public private deal that's being made so next um next slide um then the state reviews the standards so a city or town can set up onerous requirements and the state will say these are two onerous these will prohibit really just about any kind of development we can't allow this to pass as 40 r but you know we don't want to get to that point we we we want to send something to the state it really is pretty reasonable and is a win win win situation so the design standards are based on what's called form-based zoning and people on the planning board may or may not be familiar with that standard zoning it's about crunching numbers and uses and if you meet those requirements you know you're good to go form-based zoning is about design it's about massing it's about proportions it's about materials it's about articulation and the challenge is to make those requirements really clear without trying to dictate that that tends to be counterproductive and that's why this is a step in the process you know we have what we think are a pretty solid set of design standards and and by law but we want input and the sort of standard line is we are experts on planning and design you are experts on Amherst and and and we want to work with you on that so the I think the next slide you'll see this in a map the standards define three sub districts so we have a relatively large 40 r district that we're proposing but it's different on different sides so and I didn't make up these names these are standard names based on form-based zoning urban center north pleasant east pleasant triangle the really the downtown areas of Amherst downtown general urban is a budding west cemetery which is a little bit different you know it's not bounded by a street on the east side it's not bounded by a street on the west side it's removed from north pleasant but it seems to be an extension of the downtown area and then sub-urban not necessarily suburban but sub-urban facing north prospect talak and in coles lane um you know these disabuts uh residential neighborhood and it can't be and shouldn't be the same design standards is on um north pleasantest downtown and the standards do provide basic to mention requirements heights setbacks um along with site planning facade streetscape and and and other kinds of um requirements so go to the next slide so there you see and this is it's a little blurrier than I would like but you can see the outlines of the 40 r district you can see the kind of heavy hatching along north pleasant triangle and east pleasant you can see there's a triangle on the east side and that's the second sub-district which is not the the the the the urban center and if you go um you'll see this up on the north um north of triangle straight and then on the left hand on the west hand side abutting the residential districts so these are you know the the the standards are significantly different for those areas um and then next slide so the next four slides are the kind of illustrations that will will be part of this so you know most standard zoning doesn't have illustrations there'll be a series of illustrations so there are lots of words and the design standards but also pictures you know how do you avoid huge swaths of asphalt by making this kind of parking guidelines actually part of the requirements next so building articulation again not part of standard zoning um articulation on the first floor which identifies this and and this would not be this would be in a long north pleasant this would be different in the different sub districts but you can see the section you can see the articulation at the top and at the bottom this is very characteristic of the older buildings in your downtown and lots of downtowns so this isn't meant to be a stylistic dictate but to accentuate the pedestrian zone and to give some profile along along the top this is tends to be what makes good downtowns next slide um streetscape this may or may not be part of it the streets are already in place to what extent do we want to require developers to develop what's outside of their property um that's a question to this be included might there be new streets um especially towards the east between the first and the second sub district might there be a new street if property owners get together aggregate their properties and instead of having big backyards and big parking lots to do in this street so so that's one of the questions we have uh next slide and facade design guidelines this is not to be this is not meant as a picture of what the facade should look like but it's meant to define some of the key elements we expect uh developers property owners and their architects to provide these are described in words but here are pictures as well and you can see there's some dimensions there and there will be more illustrations and different illustrations with the different sub districts but the first thing we wanted to find out is like do these sub districts make sense you know we want if you think they're more substantial revisions we want to hear about it and then we'll fill in all the holes um and tie things down and then the final um slide is a series of questions and these are sort of Karen's questions my questions I can um I've got the mic I can go through these these are some of the areas where we want uh input um require all affordable units um to retain affordability in perpetuity so that's a there are you know state requirements but there are some you know local decisions that can be made on this um often there's a minimum project size to require affordability like 13 units and above might developers want to keep parts of small and stay under that so they don't have to provide affordable affordable units to we where do we want the threshold to be um should there be accessibility and also potentially sustainability requirements beyond meeting building code for example sitting in a city of Boston for larger developments requires meeting um lead gold standards um setbacks from the street is it appropriate to set minimum oh i'm sorry this is parking big big big question and one we haven't really tackled because it really is a much bigger issue should there be minimum parking requirements let's say one space per unit or one space for 300 square feet of retail or office should there be a maximum requirement which is unusual that but more towns like Cambridge has the maximum amount of parking so a developer may say hey the market's telling me two spaces per unit that's what i want to do and came drill say nope too many cars on the street we don't want to do that so we really want to input on that um we're feeling like a long um present buildings should be a minimum of 15 feet away from the curb line but a maximum of 20 feet you know if you want to retail district on a main street you don't want buildings to be set back 35 or we don't believe buildings should be set 35 feet back behind a front yard but again we want to hear from people um 40 our street design requirements i i showed the slide of street design requirements should those be required the three sub districts are people feeling like yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense and these haven't been put out in public we heard over and over and over there should be sub districts with different characters um are these the right dividing lines in the rights of districts and single family homes um should those be allowed in the two denser developments and we can probably come up with a lot more questions and you may have a lot of questions those those are the questions we came up with and then the final step we we want to resolve all of this work with the state on obtaining the go ahead for local um local adoption and then Karen i don't know if you want to add anything or whether we want to turn it over uh can i just add something i mean clearly there's going to be a whole process um digesting the draft between the planning board and another public meeting and um to work towards even going to the state for um for the next next step i wanted to point that out um maybe i could add something more we wanted your opinion but uh well i could i i guess as these questions are raised we can we can we can deal with them and so um i guess this is a 2018 document so there is a lot to digest thank you um there you're not kidding there's a lot to unpack here a lot of good information thank you so much um that's a lot i'm sure we're all a little like whoa um uh if you're willing to take questions now he's going to open it up to the board first um so low out there if uh anyone has questions i see maria has a question um yes thank you for that i went to i think all all the public forums um that you held and um didn't manage to speak to any of you but i really like a lot of ideas proposed and um there is so much here i'm going to try to stay big picture and not get into the weeds right away um i guess maybe the big picture thing for me is um uh the the sort of demising line of how you create this overlay district i looked really closely at this afternoon and um there are a lot of different owners of the parcels but generally i liked your idea of just putting the parking in the back creating a streetscape and there was a little bit of conflicting information here and there about whether it was a zero street setback or 15 and it sounds like you're heading more toward the 15 but um i guess yeah i it would have been nice to have a little more of a fine tooth comb and dividing the sub districts because um there's some areas where it doesn't quite make sense like for example the post office is included and there's this church that owns a bigger parcel but we've divided it into two different sort of sub districts so i i guess i'd like to know more about um do you see this as a a general map that um maybe it's malleable as far as it's um boundaries but that we we stick with like your idea of all right if you want to create a streetscape use these set of criteria if you want to create more of a transition area use these sets because right now i think the dividing of the blocks seem like they need a little more study but the idea behind like urban versus transition versus residential it feels right as far as what you propose but just sort of big picture question is you know did you study the parcels really closely or were you just sort of mapping like based on um general circulation of cars versus pedestrian this is how you came up with that sort of dotted black line that's the overlay boundary because um there's some areas that still feel like it's a little too heavy-handed as far as it's this you know and so i wonder if you can speak more about just the overall uh you know the boundary that black dashed line that's in the sub district map you're showing there's a lot of negotiation so if we did like a time lapse of the different versions of that you would see that black line wiggling around um quite a bit so we we we we work with a number of people let me Karen and I and Nate was very involved and Chris was very very involved are just you know intuitive sense of what made sense and it's not like this is right and everything else is wrong and again this is why we're we want input it was our best guess is where we you know allow the opportunities that 40R brings with it we're mixed use development bigger development um multi-family housing development kind of makes sense I mean were there particular areas you know with those questions I guess you know along the along north pleasant where the post office is eliminated and I think the well there was always plans for the fire station but then with the church with the larger more modern church piece behind it and the well I'm sorry I'm jumping all over the place but um I guess the more southern portion that's closer to the existing taller historic downtown um that area looks like it's it uh maybe needs one more study I love what you did closer to the two new developments up toward Tendrick part I think that what you propose makes a lot of sense and the scale there makes a lot of sense but I think that part that transitions between the existing historic downtown going north on um north pleasant there's a lot of pieces there I'm not sure are movable or changeable and that maybe uh maybe that that should be considered you know some of them need to just be considered as landmarks and then others and then you work from that um I think in your proposal like from the massing you did keep the church but I think almost everything else is um uh eliminated other than the newer developments which um I think it's fine I think I just yeah I think that this little more finer tooth combing of like figure out the area in the southern part but um but generally I mean the what you've sort of come up with toward the east side of Kendrick park I think is really great um I hope that happens one day um but uh I spy specific I mean there was like a like a 50 page uh document of your form-based code and um it took a lot of thought through so I I guess if there's future meetings we could go into like specific line by line I mean unless you want that now but um I guess with the time we have I was trying to stay more big picture kind of ideas yeah um so yeah I don't have a specific block and I'm not sure you want the answers like that tonight but um yeah no that's a good question Maria um Dave and Karen how would you be do you have any idea because I assume you work with other towns and other planning boards what would be the best way to get our comments um detailed comments I mean we can give you lots of general but how does that usually work okay yeah Karen um I I think the best to funnel them through Chris or Nate and um so they can see them and then they can channel them to us okay that's good Chris but it would be good to have some detailed comments and if they could be in writing that would be terrific and that's what I was thinking uh uh Chris would you prefer us to like mark up the document I think we sure we got it as one giant PDF but um if there's a way we can get one that we can do mark up or something and then submit our comments to you sure do we want to send it as a word document sometimes it's tough getting 23 different word versions back as markups um um sometimes it's better just to get a list here are the 14 items from different people but I'm certainly open I I don't know um you know we every line matters every line of writing matters every line on that map matters and as an architect and planner we work under other people's zoning so I know the importance of all of this so we welcome whatever form the comments take so I I appreciate oh I don't know why we're going weird how many speakers do we have anyways um I appreciate that comment so maybe at this point uh we should just do a bullet list um writing all of our comments to Chris and then when we get to a finer version down the road maybe that you know just keep doing that and refine but at least this first round uh we Chris would get a feel because a lot of times you know what happens a lot of us are saying the exact same comments over and over again and it could be comments that we really like a section too so um Maria is there anything else or I'm going to uh well I am going to move on to Doug but first I'm going to recognize Chris but Maria do you have anything else okay you're good so Chris I'm going to recognize you and then Doug you're going to be next okay I was just going to say I agree that the bulleted list is the better way of communicating I think that a markup is just really confusing when you have so many people working on a document and we did actually get some good comments from Rob Crowner I don't know if any of you have seen them that could be that the consultant just saw them but he sent in a list of comments and questions that he had and then David responded to them and um you know there were all kinds of things like did you really mean to say this on page five so I think you know referring to particular pages in particular paragraphs and if you can find a paragraph number to refer to that will be helpful um general comments would also be useful but um you know we'll take them in whatever form but I think that a bulleted list would be best and Chris when would you like uh our comments back to you um I think if you could get them back you know let's see what's week what day is this this is the 6th of May um maybe by the 3rd of June um we have a meeting scheduled for the 3rd of June and that might be that would give you a little bit less than a month that's reasonable so like get them to you a couple days before a couple days before that yes so maybe the week the Wednesday of the week before which would be what um maybe the 28th or 27th of May is that okay Wednesday so if that's clear with everyone we'll go with uh get your comments to Chris a bullet item listing out uh and it can be positive two things you really like um but your comments to Chris by the 27th of May okay great um Chris anything else or I'm gonna move to Doug no no nothing else great uh I recognize Doug um I didn't haven't been to any of the public meetings and I'm new to the planning board so I'm just figuring out this whole 40 40 uh our regiments um but I did look at the presentation you made back in December and so my first question was uh how did the audience react or feel about the massing that you presented uh through the entire zone well in one of the things it's always dangerous doing that kind of massing because people sometimes think oh this is what they're proposing to build and we're not proposing anything this is an illustration of the kinds of things that could happen it's also dangerous because the current zoning would allow most of that to take place there were certainly um there's some concerns about the size I think one of the things they've got said repeatedly was well you you know um I can imagine it being that big along um North North Prospect you know as long as it wasn't just a one five-story building from bottom to top I think people are reacting against what would um um what has been built and a bunch of people said you know when you're getting closer to residential neighborhoods we don't want these big blocky buildings so and that's in the design guidelines of sort of pushing down so what was blocked out some of that would not be allowable even though we you know we did that modeling in the design standards as written because it scales it down towards the perimeter okay and other people can weigh in I mean everybody filters what they what they hear but there were certainly concerns and you know that's how they were addressed and is it is it uh are you getting a lot of feedback no okay good um so I was puzzled why what I what I thought was a regulatory regimen focused on residential why it seemed uh in some of the locations in the text it is also applicable to commercial office cultural civic institutional and non-residential uses why is that part of this and not dictated and left in our basic zoning um I can respond to that um the the zoning has to be all-inclusive so whatever in the 40R has been included in the bylaw and the 40R does promote mixed uses um and housing in in areas where there are multiple uses um but they the state didn't want to preclude other types of uses and development in a district uh as well uh so it's um did I answer your question well uh not in a way that I understood so 50% needs to be housing but but it's in a mixed use property at least um I think it's at least 51% has to be housing but there can be other developments within the district that don't include housing and so those and so those developments would still be governed by our basic zoning code uh yeah well we included uh we included those uses in the bylaw but okay this is Nate I can't raise my hand Doug I think one thing is if if someone decides to use a 40R they can only use 40R so if in the downtown we said it was only for residential uses the only time the only thing they could do would be apartment buildings and so in a downtown we'd want a mixed use building under 40R so that's why you need to allow other uses so in Northampton in some communities they have only a residential 40R but it's in an area where they don't need or want commercial or non-residential uses but in the downtown if we want someone to use a 40R um and then we want it to be mixed use buildings we have to allow that within the 40R otherwise they can only do just the residential piece so they can't they can't mix and match they couldn't say okay well I'm gonna do a part of my product will be under 40R and part will be under the underlying zoning it's basically all 40R or nothing okay but we are encouraging along North Pleasant that there be uh commercial the retail the restaurants on the ground floor and housing up above but instead of housing it could be office up above partially but most majority it has to be housing so it seems appropriate to have mixed use at least along North Pleasant and along Triangle that's what makes it a downtown okay and I guess my last uh question is um is it correct that this really only works as a desirable framework for development if we substantially down zone the areas that are in place now and that should have been on our list of questions I regret but even though you know Karen you brought that up um in our discussions a couple of days ago uh with Chris and Nate and Karen and I that was our sense it would make it much more effective to do the down zoning but but there are still in the um in the 40R kind of the preliminary boundaries there's uh uh districts the limited business districts and the uh 40R would would apply would likely be there would be likely incentive to use 40R instead of the underlying zoning so that would be a boom to those areas it's the it's the general business area where we would like to promote the use of 40R instead of the underlying zoning thank you I um recognize Michael so a process question uh if we're going to submit bulleted lists of comments on the uh on the presentation we just saw I presume that's on the presentation as well as on the proposed zoning bylaw um if if we are uh going to get those uh I wonder if Chris could circulate to the planning board members the comments of the other planning board members is I would think it would be very useful to get somebody's idea and spin off an idea off someone else's idea so that if as as comments come in Chris whether you could send them out to us um and thereby soliciting even more comments from those of us who'd already made them I don't know whether that's the violation of the open meeting law or not but it would certainly be helpful if you could uh keep in communication with us on this issue as things come into you um I might be able to generally characterize the types of comments I'm receiving but I can't really send out specific comments um because of the open meeting law so you know if I start to get bulleted lists of comments in I could send out something that says you know people seem to be concerned about the height of buildings or people seem to be concerned about setbacks or something like that but it would have to be very general so I think what I'm imagining is you would send your comments to me by the 27th of May and then we could have this as a topic of conversation on June 3rd and then you could still have more time after that to submit more comments this is not there's no timeline here we're not like trying to rush this through or or anything we really want people to be able to talk about it we want your input so um you know I think if we if we get the comments and we discuss them on June 3rd then you can send in more comments and um you know it'll be an ongoing process does that make sense perfect sense thank you thank you chris that's great um I recognize jack I just want to say um um I I'm wondering um I apologize but I have um I have to uh I have to get up really early tomorrow morning I was at a very very long day so I'm just wondering I'll hang in there for a little bit longer and I apologize like I want to understand this better and if you could kind of condense this material chris in in an email that you know what we're supposed to specifically uh review because we've gotten a lot of emails lately yeah so um but again I apologize for needing to check out but if if we're if we're concluding soon then I'll hang in there a little bit longer that's all I had to say thanks thank you jack so at this point I'm not seeing any other members with uh David did just raise his hand hold on and I only see one attendee right now um so uh chris I think jack had a good suggestion if you can just send a summary maybe just like what are our expectations and what your expectations are what we're actually reviewing is it yeah okay that'd be great um I'm going to recognize David and then I also see Janet and then I'll um go to attendees if there are any other attendees out there I see one hand I think it's a brian if there's anyone else put your hand in and we'll get to that and then hopefully um we'll be sort of finishing up with that uh because we are over three hours right now um and we'll move on to the rest of the meeting so right now I recognize David thank you uh thanks for the presentation there's a lot of meat here um and and and I'm looking forward to working through it I just wanted to and perhaps I don't I just wanted to make sure I I am understanding at least one part of it and and it seems as if the in terms of the the residential development if a proposed project has fewer than 13 residential units then the affordability issue doesn't come into play under the um the the the bylaw draft as drafted and I respond to that right now please I am really glad that you brought that up because I did want to discuss that tonight um you know the state used they you know they have some some guidance and suggestions and they had a plug-in figure at 13 and it didn't make sense to me I thought it was too high and um you know looking at other uh 40-hour bylaws they don't specify a minimum project size they just have that 20 percent and 25 percent and given that the overall percentage of affordability in the district as a whole has to be at least 20 percent 13 units this just does not make sense and so my strong uh recommendation for your consideration would be just to eliminate any minimum project size in that particular section of the bylaw food for thought thanks does that answer any more David yeah I think there was shoot but it flew out you know what David I'll call no yes I had so could you could you um could you describe I mean some of the the financial incentives for that are available utilizing the 40 R versus um you know the the the the absence of any using the 40 B but so uh so that we can get a taste of some of that carrot as well um I always wanted that see see there are no financial incentives under 40 B the big incentive under 40 B is density and other waivers to zoning um in 40 R there is uh usually increased in density because there's certain depending on the type of housing there are certain thresholds of density that have to be obtained um under the um through projects in the district um but there are also what's called incentive payments so based on the incremental increase in number of units projected in the district that um the there is a sliding scale on the amount of payments that the state will make to the community there is also a $3,000 density bonus payment that comes with every affordable unit that is permitted in the zoning district through the 40 R so um you know quite frankly in districts that are that are designated for 40 R that aren't very built up there is obviously a bigger opportunity for these incentive payments as opposed to districts that have already um kind of are more built up where there's uh there are fewer parcels that are undeveloped um and uh those are the main incentives I should say also add that communities that have 40 R districts um are more competitive for a whole range of discretionary funding the state uh an example are uh mass works infrastructure uh funds uh where uh a lot of communities that have 40 R districts have also married their kind of development with these extra uh discretionary funds and uh capital improvements and that's another example uh another carrot is that if a and this is not as actually this is not a big issue for for Amherst but for towns that um are still under the 10% affordability threshold uh the state has actually denied some comprehensive permit projects that the towns have kind of fought against if the town was making a good faith effort with their 40 R district uh another example is uh bonus points being more competitive for state funding for uh school development I mean those are some examples of some benefits from 40 R okay thank you um I'm going to move and recognize Janet thank you um there's parts there there's I guess there are attractive things to this proposal in the 40 R district um I am pleased to see the recognition of the need for parking um and having it in the rear um I'm a little concerned about a broad waiver of that requirement since that seems to just lead us down a path um I'm very much in favor of an increased affordable housing requirement I've been pushing for a comprehensive affordable housing requirement for all development in Amherst um I like the idea of setbacks on the upper floors and the thoughtfulness to the pedestrian and shopper experience um and I think that's a central issue in economic development like what will draw people downtown and I love the idea of clear and consistent zoning rules that apply to everyone and having attractive buildings um people developers can understand what they can build and residents can understand what can be built and not see all sorts of waivers and and things but I still see a lot of possibility for waivers and a lot of language about waivers in this draft so I do want to say this because um I think I was probably at the inception of this idea of a 40 R downtown more than three years ago in a zoning subcommittee meeting and I'm very concerned that the residents most affected by this proposal were not contacted and haven't been pulled into this process this proposal of a 40 R district downtown mostly along North Pleasant Street I think initially across Kendrick Park was made by a planning board member in a zoning subcommittee meeting as a thought experiment and um this thought experiment has gone on and through this process has always the downtown has always been listed as a prime target for this proposal there are three historic districts around the downtown the downtown residents are extremely active they proposed a residential properties by-law they meet monthly um very engaged people that they're really kind of protecting their neighborhood from you know being kind of squished in between UMass and all the activities downtown I know a lot of people they really support more development and more building downtown but they really want to participate in what that looks like and the size and scale of that um a lot of people who attended the 40 R public meetings weren't there because they knew about the meeting from advertising in the town but because people personally contacted them like I was personally contacted and didn't hear about this meeting and I've contacted people from the that neighborhood in subsequent meetings um if you attended a public meeting and you felt that in attendance form you were never notified about the next meeting um there was no information about the 40 R proposal it was on the planning department website or the planning board website it's been sort of hidden away on the housing trust fund um so and even the planning board hasn't been part of this process it's it's I'm almost astonished that we've come to this point and this very large proposal to re-overzoning a huge change in zoning in downtown is only we're only meeting now because I'm asking for it last January um um you've got to ask questions about how people reacted to this proposal in December 19th I think people were really taken aback a lot of people were upset and stunned at the size of the buildings and they've actually gotten the the buildings that are being proposed are actually have gone from four stories to five stories in the BL um a lot of people were talking about not having a canyon of buildings on both sides of East Pleasant North Pleasant Street people talked about you know preserving New England's you know Amherst's New England village look it's funky look Harvard Square has a similar look it has a mix of tall buildings and small buildings I don't really understand why one corner of Amherst was picked as you know the look for the rest of the downtown um so I have a lot of questions about you know why this district was filled picked the scale the lack of involvement of the people who be most impacted by it and I so I hope this is literally the beginning of a discussion with the planning board and the neighbors neighborhoods around the downtown you know maybe it's a good I for the R is is a great idea but maybe it's a good idea to start smaller like using one you know like Northampton or in a different part of town where it's not so consequential or so big to just basically say we're going to go from three floors of zoning to five stories you know in this scale so I'm just and I have a lot of very specific questions about you know different parts of this but I know it's late and I just I'd hate to have us all say well this is the proposal and let's just go forward and this is the site and let's let's go forward we haven't even talked to the people who most involved affected by it so I could say more but I that's the gist of what I'd like to say tonight this game we have two attendees can I just add something here um and I appreciate uh Janet's comments you know it wasn't until it was well into the process when we even landed on the downtown um and that landing came from a lot of input so you know we really try to go through a deliberate process of trying to identify uh the best place to start with the 40 r uh district with lots of input um from various folks now you know we're still we're still not the process of getting public input uh has a ways a long ways to go here I mean we're planning uh the uh four uh you know hoping to have a fourth uh public hearing where we'll talk specifically about the draft uh bylaw and uh and really encourage uh those in the neighbors to attend there are also if the planning board decides to move forward there'll be required hearings where um we provide another opportunity uh for input and um you know we certainly look for um you know more instead of less um feedback um in the community and just to add to that I mean you raised some really good questions and so a lot of your questions are process questions why didn't you why can't you uh those are reasonable and any ones that can make it their way into notes about specific things you know whether it's the outline like you think that that's a particular problem to include this property or questions about I mean five stories you know to circle that and say is this appropriate everywhere you know those are good comments those would be from you and then it could become part of a larger process so um appreciate more input on on all of these issues from you she didn't muted Christine you're muted thank you um Chris best drop I see your hand up yeah am I muted no I'm not okay I was muted I had a printer going in the back and thank you for reminding me I wanted to acknowledge that we received an email from Morianne Adams um today and she is um a neighbor she lives on best in street I believe so she's very interested in what happens in the downtown and also in what happens to neighborhoods west of um west of the downtown she had asked me to read her questions but I think you have all received her questions and can consider them carefully and I think Karen and David received her questions today too so the next time we gather to um talk about this topic you know maybe you'll have had a chance to consider some of her questions I think it's very late in the evening and I don't really feel that I want to read all of those questions right now but I wanted to acknowledge that we have received this very detailed and concerned email thank you thank you Chris we'll all take a look at that I did see the email come in uh this afternoon um I see Janet's hand and then I'm going to move to the attendees there's three hands raised there um Janet you want to follow up yeah I just you know I have a bunch of comments but one of just just three big ones is I don't think the proposal addresses or deals with the concerns about student rentals and filling the downtown with students and so um there are ways to stick on the graduate from moving in wholesale into um apartment buildings and um worst nightmare is building a lot of housing downtown and having it turn Amherstown into like a student downtown primarily students and what the impact that would have economically it also I don't see how it helps that middle income residents can live here I can see people I can see apartments at the high end I can see apartments that are affordable and I don't see how people with middle incomes will be able to afford to live downtown and are there ways to put that into the um 40 r I know Concord has done stuff with having people you know what they consider affordable or people with kind of higher incomes I also feel like there's no protection of the downtown historic resources and community character um and then there's no real encouragement of remediation and reuse of existing buildings is there a way to protect facades the cottages the quirky storefronts when you're expanding but you keep the the building um you know a lot of what people like about Amherst and shopping in downtown is in the bl um along north pleasant street and um those those you know putting up a four five-story buildings isn't going to help state that cottage Victorian look at different things and so is there a way to put something in the 40 r that in you know protects those resources the historic buildings aren't just the churches one hall in the library so that's that's all thanks okay I'm gonna um move to the attendees and with Pam's help if I saw Brian was the first hand that went earlier if we can go with that um so it is getting very late I just want to tell them we really do want to hear your comments and your questions but if you could try to keep it you know is brief and concise we would appreciate that and um that will give more time for the consultants to possibly give a better answer uh Brian could you please state your full name and uh where you live yes uh Brian Thompson uh six sale in place welcome Janet actually did a pretty good job I should say I'm very used to apologizing for people for being between them and lunch I'm not as used to apologizing for people for being between them in bed so this is a first time for me um but uh Janet did a good job of really summarizing my question I would just in it um really touches on workforce housing or you might say middle-class housing I think it's how Janet put it um Amherst is it's uh it's a destination people people want to live here and so if you build housing that is you know just the square footage looks like something a middle-class family would be able to afford or you try to do it along those lines um you know it's still going to go at a premium so I don't I don't think that just putting in mixed use is going to all of a sudden allow uh kind of workforce housing to be developed I think you have to have different policies and different strategies to do that and that that's my comment thank you um I'm gonna move to Robert uh Pam if you can enable that and Robert if you can give your full name and where you are from okay this is really Dorothy Pam using your husband's computer because mine wasn't working um can you hear me we can welcome fabulous okay 229 Amity Street so I went to uh one of the early hearings and um looked at all the kinds of houses that the um uh they were showing us and the only ones that I liked that would have looked nice and Amherst were the ones we can't have which is like uh like East Hampton can have making over old buildings so old factory buildings um but um it was all kind of general and then the next one I attended uh it was clear you were talking about downtown Amherst and um I remember that in the breakout groups there was tremendous consternation I could see it all over the room we had four breakout groups people were saying what you mean that here and it was not a smooth um event so I guess everyone was told well it's just planning it's not really here so um I could see how this could work out but I'm not sure that it would work out for example um waivers are allowed so people would say well I'm gonna you know wave the parking and um we're gonna have the same problem that we don't have enough parking downtown but I'm gonna focus myself really on what do you mean in subdivision three those are the areas that are really impinging on the residential area which I represent that's the west side of Kendrick park I see the stripes there above coals I see them going right into north prospect north prospect street which looks like it'll be just a little cutoff strip of houses next to I don't know what but um and then I see it go down further so I'm really curious to know what the third subdivision would be thank you and uh I don't know if anyone wants to answer okay so uh Hilda I believe you can speak introduce yourself oh she can't okay hold on she did have her hand up it's down oh yeah no it's still up go ahead uh can she allowed a top okay there we go I think she's now I got it okay um basically I was gonna try to shut up but you know me um you do it so state your name and your address Hilda Greenbaum 298 Montague Road thank you I have been to most of the hearings I have read all of the literature and at the meeting I want to say that Janet and Dotty have very much put their finger on all of my issues um the interview e-list really shocked me because it was so biased left out most of the people who know what's going on downtown and uh in any event I just want to say that I want to refute what the developer what the consultant said about picking the downtown because I sat at that meeting around one of the tables we're the former chairman of the planning board we're members of the chamber of commerce with one of the big developers in that neighborhood nobody at that table wanted it downtown nobody and that seemed to be the impression that I got from um from reading also the interview lettuce that the downtown was sort of you know not really on the radar and it looked like beacon wanted to have it really badly up here in North Amherst which wouldn't have thrown me either but I think it would have been a better idea if you really wanted to develop some housing one of the things that concerned me a lot by listening into the chamber and the big discussion Monday night and again that it shows up in in in the um bylaw that you guys have written is getting rid of the design review board and if you're getting rid of the whole zoning bylaw by a developer accepting the 40R in its place then it looks like the historic local historic district commission and regulations for the historic district also go down the brain I'm very concerned about that um the one of the other things that bothered me is the fact mixed juice building and have zero to 49% commercial well that brings up a whole can of worms too and I wanted to say the reason we got the design review board working very hard in town meeting was because of Amherst savings bank expressance right at the center of town tore down nice little brick strip buildings to put up that ugly bank which was stuck with imperfectuities so that's why we have a design review board even though they're not taken very seriously um okay so getting back to the whole commercial aspect since the new buildings were built downtown I have very little reason to go downtown because it seems to me my kids counted it there are 21 Chinese restaurants there are bars now we've got economic development in marijuana the only thing I decided I go down for is my bagel fix or I go down get my hair done when you can but that's often and that in the cinema but I mean basically in the olden days we had Matthew shoes we had Anne August we had walshers there was a reason to go downtown and go shopping it doesn't seem to be a reason anymore and if we're gonna fill up the downtown with residential there seems to be what are we gonna get more Chinese restaurant more pizza more bars more marijuana so I think that this has to be looked at more carefully encourage more commercial um I know that the square footage is going to be very expensive for commercial in new buildings because of the stretch code and the building codes etc etc but when we got one east pleasant street we lost the carrot shops and I used to frequent creative needle I used to frequent the the uh the music store to buy violin strings and music for my kids and it doesn't you know we've lost all this and I don't see it coming back unless somebody makes a real effort to uncover something other than restaurants bars and marijuana for economic development so now I've said my piece thank you I'm going to go move to Rob Crowner uh Pam can we enable him uh introduce yourself and state your address Rob Crowder 44 spaulding street welcome back thank you um so I'm pretty excited about this proposal it's it's something that uh I've been looking forward to for a long time rezoning downtown and not not focusing just on um the the general business parts but but the outlying parts including the limited business parts and and even some general residents parts um I think it's important um the downtown hasn't really you know it hasn't worked like it like it could um because it's it's too constricted so I'm spreading it out a little bit makes a lot of sense I like how the proposal makes several zones and it steps it steps the um density back towards the residential areas I think the the where the lines are drawn for the sub districts seem right to me I'm not really sure what Maria was getting at I think they look right to me um and I think I think they're also important because there's an opportunity to um to develop across sub districts where you have a larger building that that actually becomes smaller towards the back um and so it's important to have these sub districts um I also want to point to um um in specifically the RG zones on the west side of of north pleasantry um that Pam was talking about right now the the the middle part there um not the one a little farther down the middle part yeah that one there's there's already an apartment complex there um so Zoring doesn't mean that something's going to happen it just provides an opportunity for for something to happen and if that if that um apartment complex were to be redeveloped I think it would be great if it were redeveloped under 40R um and and and the uh the last the bottom um RG zone where the where the church house is and the parking lots are that's the RG zone you can't do anything there except build um some residential um uses but it's part of the downtown and it should be available to use um for downtown type development that if you read if you were to rezone that according to the to the bylaw that's been proposed you will create an opportunity to actually build a parking garage there and the parking garage doesn't I don't assume will not be built by the town for a long time but a private developer could build a parking out there under this zoning that can't be done now that's an important piece of this proposal I believe so um I want to say is we go a lot but those but I'm excited about this proposal I think it's I think it's it's um has a lot of the things that I've been looking for for many years and I hope I hope you'll support it Christine you're on mute yes sorry I was cleaning up there uh can you uh I recognize Janet Keller and can you unmute her yes Janet Keller I believe you can speak uh your name and address and um your comment please thank you um Janet Keller I live um at 120 Puglet Hill Road up in North Amherst and um I would like to ask um that um in an attempt me made to reach out to those who attended previous meetings particularly um the December 19 meeting um I was very surprised to hear um that among those present um many of whom I know are enthusiastic about downtown development nonetheless expressed um serious concerns and um I'm not hearing them tonight and so um you can see who's out there and I can't but um I'd really like um to request that you provide an opportunity for them to um uh to another opportunity for them to comment before this gets um too locked up um I would also like to um uh put in a a plea for um greater attention to um the historic resources preservation of character and adaptive reuse and maybe preservation of some facades even if the building behind them um is uh going to be larger um and finally I would like to ask uh Chris um I understand that um I haven't seen um Morian Adams email but um it does seem kind of a shame that she took the the opportunity to comment um and I'm sure that was pretty taxing for her and um I wonder if you could share with us maybe her top three concerns thank you um thank you uh and I think uh oh no uh Ken Rosenthal can we allow him to talk uh Janet almost said what I was going to say about Morian's uh questions this is a recording that's going to be made available to the public you've been very kind to let all of us have our say Morian wanted to be heard and that was how she was going to reach out to you and the public and the consultants so is there some way that if you cannot read all those questions or comments you could make them available to the public um rather than summarize them yourself I think she needs her voice needs to be heard and her questions need to be heard just as she presented them thank you um thanks so uh uh Chris are you there yeah I'm happy to read Morian's questions um she has four pages of questions but it's rather large type so I can read them but I don't think that there will be an opportunity to answer them all would you give me permission to read them is the four pages yeah as I said the type is pretty big it's probably 14 or 16 points seven questions all of the planning board members have this document and we could read them on June 3rd but if people feel very interested in hearing them I would be happy to read them now um there's I see some hands from members if if Janet and David could turn um off their hands for a minute and I'll just ask the board um raise your hand if you would like them to be read tonight or should we read them and address them at the next meeting that this is um gonna happen on June 3rd um so right now the hands are down so if if anyone wants feel strong I just want to see if we can at least get a simple um quorum and I just want to remind everybody we're three hours and 45 minutes into the meeting um I only see one member raising their hand so um Chris at this point I you know I it's that's a long if it was one or two pages maybe um and yeah um um I'm checking hands again yeah all right I I one more hand went up but is there any I mean Chris you've read through them are there are these different questions and what we've heard or won't these the the emails that are sent in are made a part of the public record so they're they're they're readable by any by the public are they not um yeah well we all got them so it's part well Chris how is this gonna happen right now so it wasn't part of our packet but it did get emailed to us yeah you know what it seems like we're spending a lot of time talking about them so why don't I just read them quickly okay I need to go this is a four hour meeting it's really yeah I I think it's actually Chris can we can you post them tomorrow somewhere and I'll say to you know miss Adams and and everyone else that you know now I I see this is really important I saw it came in today I will read it tonight I'm sure we will all read it and we will think about it and these all of her issues will be considered and we will continue this dialogue and more um feedback from people like what I kept hearing there is people really want to be assured that um uh people are contacted about this meeting that they know it's there that they can watch that and all this is going to be put on the web so people can read I mean I we're such at the beginning of this right now like we're not voting on anything like we're just learning about it I know I'm learning a lot about 40 are I didn't know so Chris if there's a place you can post them where would that go on the planning board or the we would put them on the place where the rest of the material about this 40 our district is I think Nate said earlier that it's posted on the housing trust website but there's also a link to it from the planning okay word or the planning department Nate if Nate is still here maybe he can answer that um yeah I don't know Nate are you there so anyway and there I think um yeah we could you know we could try to get documents up and um you know I thought there was a web page under the planning uh planning department and um you know we can try to link to it for from a few ways different ways just so people can find it easily and maybe we could put it in the news again um so that it becomes just uh you know a um you know it's one of those items on the front just for for a bit so uh yeah I think there's you know we can look at how to organize that material in a way that it's it's you know people can find it can you put like yeah have a comment section because we got other people's comments too I don't want to put somebody's more head than others we got a lot of comments and we can't talk about them all you know no greedy I think we could um you know we already have the other presentations we could put all the other all the presentations and all the comments received so people can just click and download a PDF of comments could that happen you think and within the next week or something those sure yeah that would be great we really appreciate it and you know we want to keep the information and transparency out there okay so um I think we need to end this for uh tonight um and I I want to first off I want to thank the consultants for coming this is a lot of information for a lot of people it's you know we're learning new things and there's a lot to digest and um thank you for all your hard work really appreciate it um I'm just checking hands here so at this point Chris um we're thinking it will come back June 3rd and you'll receive comments from us on the 27th and in our comments we can also comment on comments that we've read you know that um from other people and affirm them or stress them okay all right so if it's all right with everyone we're gonna um move ahead to uh old business item five is there anything under that Chris I don't think so no uh unless you you had asked me to report on the CRC meeting but um I don't know if you want me to do that is that old business um I could just quickly say the CRC their meeting on the 5th discussed zoning by-law revisions and the process by which we would do zoning by-law revisions and who might be involved in various bodies that might be formed or existing bodies that might do that work and I could probably write up some notes and circulate them I assume CRC will be doing minutes from that their meeting right could you send it out to us when they're yeah and there was nothing firm that came out of them at the CRC because I was there and um I think Janet was there we watched it and it was um you know it's just a lot of discussion right now they've got a lot of things they're thinking about but there was nothing firm that was coming to us yet but when they have something firm they'll be sending us information um thanks Chris so uh item six new business no new business okay item seven form a anr subdivision applications no anr's um eight is upcoming zba applications um ham might have some but the only one I can think of right now is the um colonial village playground I think I might have told you about that last week um they received they are going to receive some used equipment from north village and install it um in the backyards of some of those buildings at north village I mean at colonial village and they're going through the zba to have that approved oh I don't know if we had heard about that but okay thank you no um number nine upcoming SPP SPR SUB applications these are some I might have also talked to you about we are on the verge of receiving an application subprime review application from Amherst media to build a new building on main street uh at the corner of main and gray that should be coming in I have part of the application that I don't have the drawings we received an application from Russ Wilson to build a three season porch on a house at 11 vista terrace which is the apple brooks apple brook club cluster subdivision and all about learning wants to expand its playground I think I might have told you about those last two um the other day last week yes thank you okay so we'll move on to um item 10 report of the chair um I have none um number 11 report of staff thank you very much for um attending the meeting in this unusual way and for sticking with us for the last several hours um we appreciate it and thank you to the consultants so that's all I have to say thank you everyone so if there's a motion to adjourn the meeting if someone wants to raise their hand and someone else raise it to second it hello anyone awake raise some hands do you want to go home or oh you are home Doug and Michael great so I saw Doug's first adjournment Michael second all right I think we're all in favor thank you everyone um you know we're still making our way through this this new zoom world here but I think we're doing a great job um I'll see y'all in a couple of weeks take care of yourselves stay well Dean and Christine and Pam and Nate and all everybody thank you thanks you night good night