 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise V's and generous donations from viewers like you. So, we're beginning the Amherst Planning Board meeting here at 632. Welcome. And this is, you know, December 16, 2020 meeting based on Governor Baker's executive orders of spending certain provisions of opening law. It's signed March 12, 2020. This planning board meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. My name is Jack Jumsek. And as a chair of the planning board, I'm calling this meeting to order. Whatever was 632. This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst Media Livestream. Minutes are being taken as normal. Board members will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer firmly and then please place yourself back on mute. Maria. Maria's here, I know. Oh, here. Yes. And Tom. Here. Andrew. Present. Doug. Present. Janet. Here. And Johanna. So we have a full slate tonight. If technical difficulties arising may need to pause temporarily to correct the problem and then continue the meeting. If you do have technical issues, please let Pam know. The discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed. And the minutes. Will note if this occurred. Please use the raising and function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see you raised hand and call on you to speak after speaking. Remember to remove, yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the public general public comment item and other appropriate times during the meeting, please be aware of the board will not respond to comments during the general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment during a public comment period, you must join the meeting via the zoom telephone teleconferencing link. And that link is shown. Right above us, sir. So the link is also listed on the meeting agenda posted on the town website via the calendar listing for this meeting, or you can join a go to the planning board webpage. And click on the most recent agenda, which lists of the zoom link at the top of page. Please indicate if you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited if you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone when called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking so residents are welcome to express reviews for up to anyone at the discretion of the planning board chair, the speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their a lot of time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. So, with that said, we have our agenda. And we have several minutes to approve. We have looks like May 6, October 21 and November 4. Is that correct, Chris. That's right. Okay. So, we can let's approve these as one bunch. But certainly, if there are any comments. I have to. I'm just queuing up the hands here. Okay, Johanna. I am interested in moving this along quickly, but I feel like I'm going to vote differently on them and so for because I wasn't at the meeting in May and so if we could do them one by one. Yeah, that's that you're right, you're right. Sorry about that. All right. Okay, so we have the makes this. Six minutes there for approval. Do I see any, you know, I'll move to approve. What's that. Do we need to discuss first or can we can we go ahead and move. We can move and then discuss. I think it's, it's, we can discuss first or, or move, you know, I think that's, that's flexible. So, but you weren't here. Right. So it's Josh, Maria, Janet and Doug. We approve the 26 minutes. Okay, Doug. Here a second. Okay, Maria. Any discussion. Janet, I thought you were talking, but maybe not. I made a motion, but I think I was on mute so. Okay, all right. All right, so we'll do a roll call. On this so. Maria approve. And then, Janet. Doug. Hi. And myself approve. So that's five zero for those minutes. Would we just abstain with the. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, Andrew. I'm staying. And. Johanna. And Tom. I'm staying. Thank you. So the October 21st minutes. We can discuss or someone could move to approve the minutes. I moved to approve. I second. All right. So that was Doug and Janet. Yes. Okay. Any discussion. Yeah. Sorry, I can't get the hand up quickly, but. Is this the one. This is one that we had the revised minutes. Is that right. For the October 21st. Yes. I emailed them to you this. This afternoon with two. Comments that came in and I think they were. From Janet. They came in at different times. So they're on page five of the. The one that I mailed to you today. Maybe. Ham could bring that up on the screen. I'm going to try. I was having trouble with that document. Hang on. I think. One of the, I only mailed one set of corrections today. Based on my memory of what we talked about. So I'm not sure. I think you might have sent the other comment. A few weeks ago. Okay. So the second comment came in earlier in the first comment came in today. Yeah. So this is the one I did today based on my memory. I didn't go back and listen to the meeting and I was confused about. Whether Doug had raised what issue and whether Tom had raised it. And I think initially I thought it was Andrew. So if everyone can identify themselves, that'd be great. I didn't have time to go back and listen to the recording. Did I? Yeah. I mean, this, this is, I didn't either, but this. This aligns with my recollection. I was just trying to give the gist with that, like too much. Yeah, I will say my, my last name has two L's in it. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on with the document. I don't know what's going on with the document. I can see that there's a, there's a few editorial things in here. And I will also say too, that when. I tried to save this as a PDF for sharing, it just consistently would open in word. So you're going to see down here that it looks like it's on page six, but it's because. I couldn't fix it. I don't know what was going on with the document. I don't know what was going on with the document. But it's somewhere up here, like page four. Is practically blank, but I went through it. And this is the correct information. So the final draft will actually look like a normal set of minutes. So when Mr. McDougal said that he, that this aligns with his memory, which one of these paragraphs aligns with his memory. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just wondering. The only my comment, Chris. I don't remember between Tom and Doug. The, the second or the first red paragraph. Oh, so I think I must. Okay. So. Okay. So I have, I'm identifying people incorrectly. So. Okay. But I'm wondering. When we talk about. Business hours that. The. The management plan for the facility. Spoke to this. So I'm wondering. In terms of business hours, but. Nevermind, nevermind. Let's just get these minutes approved. So I was a little confused. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. McGowan. Mean to substitute Mr. McDougal's name. In the first paragraph that's shown up here, instead of Mr. Long, you would put Mr. McDougal now that you've heard that he. Feels that he. Yeah. Yes. Because I think I'm making the same. Mistake twice or something. Marshall also asked a question about lights being downcast. Except for a sign. So this would be. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember the first one. I think. I think that was me. Yeah. I think you're correct. And then I raised the section number. From my, from reading and, um, and then. Mr. Marshall. Follow it up on that. Okay. Trust your. Correct. Yeah. I think that was me. Yeah. I think that was me. Yeah. Okay. Trust your. I think you're correct here. Yes. I'm sorry. I think there were these names confused. I should have just listened to it again. Correct. It's the first paragraph, the one that Janet is putting forward. As a correct one. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And the second paragraph, should that be in as well or not? No. So you want this. You only want the first paragraph. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. With the correct. Yeah. So we can approve the minutes. As. With these corrections. Um, Any further discussion? Nope. Okay. So we'll do a roll call here and Maria. Approve. Um, Approve. Andrew. Approve. Doug. Prove. And that. And Johanna. Approve. Great. Okay. And I approve. So that's some zero. And we have one more from November 4th. So moved. Approve. I found one tiny typo in this. The very beginning. Um, my name is misspelled. I don't know that matters hugely, but that would be the one correction. Where is that? Um, page one. Planning board members participating remotely and present by roll call. My first name has an H in it. Sorry, Johanna. It's all good. Okay. And did someone second the move to approve? Not yet. Andrew. Andrew seconds. Any discussion on the minutes? Okay. See no hands raised. We'll do roll call. Maria. Tom. Andrew. Approve. Doug. Prove. Janet. And Johanna. Right. And I do as well. So that's seven zero for those minutes. So, um, we have a. Public comment period. And what do you see out there? Uh, Pam. This moment. I am seeing none, but usually I say that and see. Okay. So we have Catherine. Okay. I'm going to allow to talk. Hi, Catherine. Catherine, can you hear us? Um, yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Excellent. I just wanted to. Yes. Thank you. Um, my name is Catherine. And I live on red gate lane and Amherst. I wanted to make public comment about. Uh, the 40 R proposal. I strongly support the proposal to bring thoughtful development to downtown Amherst. These plans are the product of a very long and inclusive process. If this proposal is adopted, we have every reason to be confident that it will produce the following results. We will have a plan that will reduce the amount of money that will be spent in the city. We will have an appealing place to visit both for residents and out of town. Visitors. It will broaden our tax base, thus reducing the pressure of steadily rising property taxes on individual families. The proposals requirements for ample sidewalks, setbacks and protected open spaces. We'll enhance the physical beauty of the town. We'll also be able to minimize sprawl and other forms of growth that do the most damage to our natural resources. Finally, it will serve a goal. Most community members have long embraced, but have never fully realized the need for more affordable housing so that we can be a community in which the widest possible variety of people can live and work. I also support the proposal because I respect and trust the community. I also support the proposal because I think it is a great opportunity to have a time and effort to create it. They are extremely gifted and have engaged in an open and inclusive process. Over a number of years, they have sought community input and consulted with a wide variety of experts and stakeholders, including the Massachusetts smart growth alliance, local community members and the state. I also support this program because it's not a one off of a process that has been used with success and over 40 municipalities around the Commonwealth. Our plan has benefited from all that experience and we will also benefit from the state commitment of funds it will bring to this project. Thank you so much. Thank you, Catherine. And we have one other hand up that we can't really identify who that is. So, Pam, we can now allow them to at least introduce themselves and make sure they are, you know, identified themselves. Hello. Hi, this is Matt Blumenfeld from 335 Middle Street in Amherst. Sorry. I'm on my work. Zoom ID, so that's why I wasn't identified. I see. Hi, Matt. Nice to see you all. Thank you. Matt, what did you say your street address was? 335 Middle. Thank you. Thanks. I'm also calling in to urge you to support the 40R district. I'm looking at the overlay right now and I think it makes tremendous sense in terms of what we want to see in our downtown. I've lived in town for 25 plus years. My office is above Hastings, and I would love to see more dynamism, more affordable housing, more activity downtown. I think 40R does just that. So I won't echo everything that Catherine said. And I just want to say that I urge you to support this initiative. I think it's well thought out and will benefit our town for years to come. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. We have a few more jack. Okay. Next, we have Sarah LaCour. Sounds good. Hi, Sarah. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Great. Thank you for taking public comment. For those of you unaware, I'm the former executive director of the Amherst bid. And I'm the former executive director of the Amherst bid. And long time resident of Amherst. Also a professional landscape architect and planner. For many years. A 40R for downtown Amherst is huge. It not only provides the opportunity for us to create affordable housing, which is something we've talked about in this community and felt the need for for so long. But it also by creating a 40R district in our downtown, which is one of the most important areas of our community. And it also provides the opportunity for us to create affordable housing for our town. It protects our open space and the natural resources that are so important to us as well. Our downtown is uniquely, well, maybe not uniquely, but critically important. And a great area to do this. It's on bus stops. Not only PVT our local, but people can get to New York, Boston, Springfield. You know, this is, this is one of the most important areas of our community. And it also provides the opportunity for us to create affordable housing for our town. And it also provides the opportunity for us to create affordable transportation. The proximity to services and resources for those living in affordable housing. You know, we often we've had issues with some of the affordable housing is off our bus routes and is out of town. And people can't access the services and the cultural opportunities that they would have in downtown. And all of that is accessible with. Putting our affordable housing in our downtown. And protecting our, our natural resources. This is what smart growth is all about. And, you know, we've talked about in Amherst for a long time, creating affordable housing, protecting our resources. This, this is it. This is how we do that. It provides the incentives. The state. This is working really well across the state. I'm currently working with it and love low. And it's been a great success. So I just wanted to put my two cents in and encourage you to, to look favorably on this, on this great planning tool. So thank you very much for your time. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Thank you, Sarah. We have what Jenny. Jenny Hamilton. Hi, Jenny. Jenny, I've enabled you to speak. I think it looks like we have Kent enabled to speak at the moment. Hello. Jenny is still. Yep. Okay. So do you want to go out of order, Jack? Oh, that's fine. Ken. Hi. My name is Kent Ferber. I live at 481 station road in Amherst. And I've been a thank you very much for all your work for the town. First of all, we really appreciate it. And I've been a member, a resident of Amherst for about 43 years. And I love living in Amherst because of its high aspirations. It wants all kinds of good things in the way of affordable housing schools, roads, fired police services, library, and the like. But over the years, it's become increasingly clear to me that it's having more and more difficulty affording these. And I'm of the, of the view that's shared by many others. And part of the reason for that is the town's heavy dependence upon residential real estate taxes. As long as that represents something, as I understand it, like 90% of the tax revenue of the town, it's going to be difficult to afford that commercial development is inevitable whether we like it or not. And I think it's going to be difficult to afford that commercial development. And I think it's going to be difficult to achieve in both the normalized tax revenues and the kinds of things that we want seems to be the kind of control smart growth. Represented by this 40 hour overlay district. This is a proven way of controlling that development to our sensibilities, making it do what we want. And so we are, I urge you to recommend that the overlay district be adopted by the City Council. I appreciate that. Thank you, Kent. And Jenny. Is my audio working now? There you go. Yes. Excellent. Thank you for your patience. Still figuring out the technology. You think I'd have it down by this point in the pandemic. Jenny Hamilton. I live at 140 middle street. And I'm echoing many of the statements already. So I'm going to go ahead and share this evening in favor of the 40 hour district downtown. I come to this actually having worked with 40 are as a board member of the Massachusetts smart growth alliance backed when the program was new about 15 years ago. So, you know, this program has been around for over 15 years. It's well tested by other municipalities. We've seen the work that town staff have been doing with the state's 40 hour process for a few years now. So those state funds, the skill of the consultants you've been able to bring in. We've seen that skill in action through the draft zoning that you all are looking at now that's in line with the master plan that we have. Guiding the work and the principles. So I will not repeat what others have said, although I share the support for affordable housing, but I'm also feeling that it's been a great opportunity for to provide resources. And I particularly personally, I appreciate the design standards that mimic blocks, like the Hastings building in town, rather than continuing the piecemeal developments. That's been so controversial. So since these design standards reflect the public input from the multiple community forums that have gone on. I hope you all will. Respect this process. I thank you for the hard work that's been put into it. Thank you very much, Jenny. And we have Erica. Hi Erica. Hi, thank you. I'm Erica Zekis and I live at 40. And I also concur. I just wanted to speak in favor of the 40 hour overlay. I feel it's an effective approach. In line with our master plan that will support a vibrant downtown. And I think it's an effective approach. Providing a mix of retail and residential people living and shopping. In our downtown will create a dynamic mix. And importantly, this zoning change provides an avenue for more of the affordable housing that hammers families need so much. Thank you, Erica. So I see no other hands raised. Right. Public entities there. So. I didn't see any more either Jack. Okay. So I think. One last look. Yeah. Good. So. The looking at our agenda, you know, we're nine days from. From Christmas. It's a busy time a year. I don't really want to go real late this evening. I will not say that every meeting, but generally. It seems like have been saying, but especially tonight. But so we have a lot of, you know, like heavy items on the agenda. And I just thought I'd put some time limits on them. So, you know, first and foremost, we have to get through the, the Kendrick park. You know, addition of playground equipment there, no problem. I mean, you know, you know, the master plan implementation matrix. I'm wondering if we can just kind of discuss that for like 20 minutes. If, if people feel, you know, that's reasonable. The 40 R is again with the comments we had. Put more into that 30 to say 40 minutes. And then the other one be the zoning priorities for new business. You know, definitely that deserves 20 minutes, but that. I don't know if we, if we go at it. So I just, it'll be our first look and then the, the comprehensive housing policy is, is just emerging. And so, but we need to be introduced, introduced to it. But I don't know that it's worthy of much discussion. At this point from the planning board, but I would, you know, like to know how we want to approach it as a group. So with that said, I think we can start. The review of the final choices for equipment for the playground, a current park in accordance with the condition number four, the site plan review decision for SPR 2020 07. Town of Amherst. East pleasant street Kendrick Park playground. And I think Nate's going to speak to this. Hi, Jack and planning board. I can. I'm going to share my screen. It can be really quick. Because. We've already ordered the equipment. So. The, no, thanks for having me back. The, the, the playground was approved earlier this year. You know, there's a whole, you know, one phase of Kendrick Park. I'm sharing my screen here. So what you're seeing is, you know, there's a lot of things that you can do. And then there's all of Kendrick Park in the outline. And then what was approved was a play area, some sitting areas and walkways. And so what we're focusing on tonight is really the play equipment and then some site amenities. And the. Just a, just a, as a refresher, you know, if you can see the cursor here is East pleasant street. There is an East West. Walkway. There's a walkway. There's a walkway. The area that's, you know, we'll be under construction. It's actually already started. So public works already and start installing this pathway. We've chosen a contractor out of Worcester. And they mobilized on site. I'm not sure how much they'll get done this fall, but this is being funded mostly with a park grant. It's a state grant. They expect this to be done by June 1st of 2021. And so, you know, because of that, we, you know, that's why some of the equipment was already ordered. So we have to maintain the timeline. And, you know, there's a few things that have still yet to be decided, but the play equipment has been ordered. We worked with MEO Brian. They're a large vendor. They represent a number of companies. So this is just showing the play area. And the way it's done is, you know, there's a two to five year old play structures and then five to 12 year old play structures. There's some free standing items. And then there's, you know, some accessible equipment. The, the next picture will show you a rendering. And this is looking as if, where it says Kendrick Park on the bottom, this is actually where the, I'll call it the East West walkway. And so we're kind of looking northeast. And the, the palette of the play equipment is the same as graph parks. We wanted to keep kind of muted tones. Browns, greens, light browns. The play surface. What we were seeing here is all rubberized. So there's the, the black is rubberized. It's just a different color to, you know, a walkway, but it's also within the fall safe area for some of the equipment. And then the interior is a different color. It's a mixture of tan and black. So again, it's very similar to graph park that speckled. Rubberized surface. It's accessible. It's, you know, it's actually what Massachusetts will require. I think next year as one of the only play surfaces. Because it is fully accessible. This spinner we see here is accurate and it spins. And it's also someone in a wheelchair or their mobility devices can get into it. There's other, they said some freestanding items. That can be played with. So you don't have to necessarily be on the play equipment. And then there are a variety of different options within. Each. Each structure. So there's, you know, ground level things. There's climbing. There's slides. There's, you know, platforms you can get onto or, you know, reach. So again, here's another view just showing the different equipment. Here's another perspective showing this is the two to five year old upfront. And then the five to 12 year old. Is in the back. It's a much larger structure. There's a rocker, a spinner. And so that's, that's it for the project. And in terms of the site amenities, we're going with a style bench. We use that. At groff and it's similar to the rest of. Some areas of downtown, but it's all metal. The color will be kind of a light. I call it Sudan, but it's a kind of a. Tanish color. These are the round table. So within the sitting area on the park, there's three or four tables. And so we've already ordered these. These are some that we've already ordered. And so we've already ordered these. These are some that we've seen downtown now that we, the town put out in the summer. And they'll be repurposed and use that Kendrick. So they're all one unit with four chairs or three chairs. There's one that will have an accessible seat. A companion seating area. The trash receptacles are the same as what's. Downtown. It's this black. It'll be half recycling, half trash. There'll be a few of those at the park. I mentioned the rubberized surface. I guess we'll keep going. There's a possible sign design. Before we get to that, I just want to say around the perimeter of this park, there will be granite curbing in some spots and granite wall. So in addition to. This playground equipment. And manufacturer equipment, there is. Granite curbing and walls that are boulders and they'll be logs. And they'll be on the side of the ground. And they'll be on the other side of the ground. And they'll be on the east side here as kind of a natural play area. So those are things that. You know, I haven't shown here. It was during the site plan review decision. Review. And those are things that will be supplied by the town and the contractor, both. During construction next spring. In terms of the sign for Kendrick. Park. In the plans, we've shown one with granite posts and then. We've also shown that there will be. Small enough, you know, less than 12 square feet and less than four feet in height. So it doesn't need to be. You know, complies with the site plan or view. Regulations. The town has also been installing kiosks. At the recreation areas and conservation areas, they're timber framed. They can't have a roof or not have a roof. And then they have the ability to have a poster board. So that's what we're working with Kendrick Park. And it hasn't been decided yet what, what would be the preferable sign. And so. You know, that's something that, like I said, we're still considering. There. There's one more. Yeah. So I think, I think that's it for now. If. I was going to show one more. One more picture. Okay. So, so Nate, you're talking about either the, the kiosk style or the stone monument. Yeah. And the kiosk would not have a roof. We'd have a, you know, just a post with copper caps and then a signboard. The, the sign itself. Sorry for all the scrolling is going to go back right here in this. There's a landscaped island as you're walking along the path. So it's a, it'll be a two-sided sign. Right here. So it'll be a two-sided sign. And then on the back side of the sign would be rules and regulations and playground safety. Requirements. So. The manufacturers recommend having some signage about. You know, Not to jump off the top of the slide or something. So they provide. You know, Language for that. And so it would be, you know, just one sign right here. And it's not necessarily for the entirety of Kendrick park. It's really specific to this play area in this. This new park area. Thank you, Nate. I see Chris has her hand up. I would like to ask Nate to describe the naturalized play area to this east of the. More. Manufacturing. I think that was something that. Some people really wanted to have. And I think that the designer made an effort to. Put that in. So Nate did say a few words about that, but I wondered if he could just describe it a little bit more. It's some again, towards the east side of the main play area. Sure. Yeah. If people can see my cursor, you know, here's the. The east west walkway. This is going to be paved in asphalt. And then here is the. The play area with the rubberized surface as a, you know, it also acts as a perimeter walk. And if we go further along in the playground area or in this, this development area. There's, it'll be another walkway. And all of this is accessible. So it creates an area of the main play area. And then there's another walkway. Another walkway. And all of this is accessible. So it creates an accessible loop walkway. There's areas where benches are pulled off to the walkway here. There's benches here. And then there's a. A pebble area. So this is just. Keystone. Gravel with granite blocks around. So this becomes. You know, just another tactile area for play. If we come along the path here, there's an amphitheater. There's gray change. So it slopes up. So this is a little natural. So there's an amphitheater here. In this area right here, although it's not shown there, they'll be earth and mounds, two or three earth and mounds. You know, a few feet in height, just again. You know, using natural grass and earths just for, for play area. And then the naturalized play area down in here. We'll be covered in, in mulch. Wood fibers. And they'll be a series of boulders and rocks. There'll be a large granite block from public works that kids can climb on. And then there'll be. Stumps that are. Placing were from 12 to 24 inches high, you know, vertical stumps that are buried. And then there'll be logs that are. You know, secure to the ground that kids can climb on. And so the exact design of that isn't determined. We have different. Different pieces in the town will work with the contractor in the spring, but there will be. You know, a fairly large area that is. Mulch and have different elements. In addition to the, to the, you know, manufacturer play area. Thank you. So we'll open this up. To the board. And I see a Johanna. Thanks so much for this presentation, Nate. This is really exciting. I had two questions as I was reviewing this. The first was there was the, there was mention of the pollinator garden. So I was just curious what the location of that was and the current thinking. And then secondly. It seems like it's pretty well contained in the center of the park. And I know that there was some discussion about fencing or. You know, just building. I don't know living fences potentially to make sure, you know, that there's a lot of, you know, I don't know, I don't know if kids don't accidentally run off into the road, but I'd love to just hear the latest on the thinking there. Oh, sure. In terms of the water, we did bring a hydrant to the site. And so there isn't any water right now at Kendrick. So there's a hydrant now. Right, right around here. In terms of the pollinator gardens, the original thought was to have them on either side of the amphitheater. And then in certain areas. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of water here. So the dotted lines are, are perforated pipe or drainage that will then. Go to an overflow here, but this is all, this is. Above this will be a garden and a drainage well. So the idea would be to have. Have that be planted. We're still thinking of that. You know, we're working with Alan Warden. Alan Snow, the tree warden and. All death year public works that come up with plant selection. And so. We're working with the. The plant selection. We're in the midst of the drought. The, the drought is, you know, watering it and maintaining it, but there is still some thought of having. You know, annuals or different types of vegetation here. In terms of fencing. This is North Pleasant street. So along this walkway here. They're behind it will be. Layers of both. Ground cover then roti dendrons or, you know, kind of shrubs and then trees. the, you know, when you're closest to the street. In terms of East Pleasant Street, you know, there is, you know, a fair amount of distance and then there's, again, there's a series of benches and blocks and then, you know, we can use the overturned stumps and trees to create some type of barrier. But there isn't, you know, we're not putting a fence or anything. You know, I mean, as it is now, there is, you know, it's completely open. So if kids picnic there with their families, there's, you know, there's the ability to wander. Thank you. Um, Johanna, there's that. Yeah, it's great. Let's see if I can get the information I have next to here. Thank you. Andrew. Thank you. My question is real quick. Just I was curious how tall is that climbing structure? Like I would be excited about it. I just, I'm curious, like, if you go to one of the renderings that's so this one right here. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't have the specifics, you know, right now in front of me, if we're assuming that's, you know, about a five foot tall person. So it looks like it could be about, you know, 12 feet to the top, maybe. But I don't, I don't know. You know, I'd have to look exactly on the specifications. Okay. Yeah, I was, I mean, I'm just sort of curious whether there's some acceptable standards or also just like how the town is protected in case of any accidental injury. Right. So you can see here in this rendering, you know, someone, there's the, you know, someone can walk across up here, but the height of the next, there's, you know, if you call these like a wire, wrong, like a ladder, you know, you're not meant to get on top of this. You know, I'm sure there'll be some daring kids. Every. Exactly what I was saying. That's what I would try. So, so, you know, the, the, the playground manufacturers, they, you know, they put their stamp of approval on this. And so the rub right surface will have to be padded enough, you know, they have to under, you know, they've already assumed that liability. And then when we post the rules and regulations on the back of the sign that I think will cover us, you know, there is some, some risk here, right? So there's some level of risk and responsibility with the users, but there should be, you know, we're assured by the playground manufacturers that this meets all the safety standards. So, you know, if someone does get hurt, you know, if they follow, it depends. I mean, I, I hope it doesn't happen, but we'd have to then, you know, see what, see what precursor is. Yeah, no, I understood. Thank you. Looks, looks really good. Appreciate the presentation. And Tom, please. Yeah, sure. Hi, thanks for the presentation. I'm excited to get this in downtown. That's fantastic. I just had a quick question about the signage and whether that would be presented to the design review board for approval. It had been presented to the design review board and we said we'd go back once we had something finalized as well. And so because I saw two versions. Yeah. Right. Yeah. No, you're right. And so, you know, I was going to have a new share. What we had been looking at in terms of signs. And here's the Amherst golf club. So here's, you know, what a granite post will look like. We wouldn't have a stone sign display area. You know, unless someone wants to donate that. And then here's here's what the kiosk looks like. And so, you know, the team, I think, is leading toward the granite posts. You know, we were at one point, we were thinking about trying to have a consistent design throughout town. But I mean, these kiosk, you know, maybe more appropriate for recreation areas and conservation areas, unless so for a downtown park. So, you know, that's yet to be determined. But if you have any comments or feedback. No, I'm on the design review board. So I was looking forward to seeing it there. OK. Nate, what's a sweet sir. Park have. Is that the right name? Sweet sir, I'm not, you know, I don't know if there's an old start. There's in the corner, there's a, you know, one of the old way finding signs or markers from the town has the corner of Lessee and Main Street. But in terms of an actual sign, there isn't a sign, you know, there isn't a more formal sign at sweet sir right now. If I if I have my memories correct, I think the more formal sign downtown with the more appropriate potentially than the kiosk sign. But this is my opinion. Yeah, I mean, we, yeah, I think some staff felt the same way once we saw the actual image of what the kiosk looks like. Yeah. But I think that Amherst Golf Club sign is like looks just it's amazing. Conflict of interest, conflict of interest right here. But so Chris, you have a hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to respond to those questions about safety of the equipment. And one of the reasons why we chose manufactured equipment for the larger area of play was because when these manufacturers design these things, they design them with safety in mind because they don't want to be sued for injury. So they try to make them as safe as possible for the general public. And that's why rather than having the whole playground be natural, which is what many members of the public were thinking that it could be. We went in this direction. First of all, these these things, many of them are accessible to children who have handicaps, but on the other end, at the same time, they are tested and they're about as safe as you can get and still have some fun. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you, Chris, Andrew. Only only because you asked me that I actually like the the non granite sign only in that I could imagine this might be a meetup space for for parents and like to the extent that that could serve as sort of a bulletin board, I know some of those types of signs will have opportunities for like people to leave messages, like if that might be something worth considering. But again, only because you asked, no, sure. Thanks. Thank you, Andrew. So I don't see any other hands up. We open this up any public comment. Pam Rooney. Hello, thanks. As I was watching and listening to presentation, I'm sort of thinking as a landscape architect, what the bigger safety concerns might be the nice sidewalk that's gone in the asphalt that's there spills out to East Pleasant, East Pleasant Street. But there does not seem to be any intention of safely directing people across East Pleasant Street. And I wonder if you could address what provision provisions there are going to be for people once they get to East Pleasant Street. Thanks. Yeah, I do. But I believe that was already addressed during the initial acceptance of the project. But, Nate, if you would review that, be appreciated. So for East Pleasant Street, I mean, there's an existing sidewalk now along East Pleasant Street in the walkway will just enter here. So there's not, you know, there have been, you know, there'll be bike stations and benches, you know, we're not thinking about actually, you know, creating any type of barrier here. You know, this will just be in open, you know, in a continuation of the sidewalks downtown. So I think, excuse me, my question was more because it would be kind of a mid block crossing if people come to the street and they, in fact, were sort of using using this new sidewalk as a cut across from from Haluk and McClellan and they cut through the park on the on the sidewalk that they're sort of faced with no opportunity to get across East Pleasant Street. I would I would say that we've already kind of gone over this and I know Chris helped me out here, but I don't know that this is really a subject for discussion of what is being presented today. Well, your discussion today focuses on the equipment, but I will say that there is an overall plan for the park. And I think Pam may have been part of the group that developed that plan. I don't really remember. But it is on our town website and it does show that there is a proposal for a crosswalk roughly, you know, a third to a halfway up Kendrick Park crossing over East Pleasant Street. We don't show it on our plan because it wasn't really part of our project. But there is an intention to do that. And it's really up to the DPW and the Town Council to work out exactly where that crossing is going to be. But if you look on our town website and you look for the Kendrick Park concept plan, I think there's lots of information about that and that will show where there's a crosswalk thought about for East Pleasant Street. Super. Thank you very much. That's good. Yeah. Sorry, I misunderstood the question. Yeah, I think, you know, go for during the superintendent, superintendent of public works has said sometimes if there's, you know, there's a they're having a crosswalk right in front of Bertucci's. And so somewhat pretty close to where this entrance is here. But he's always said that, you know, if we if there ends up being an issue with where people are crossing, we can always investigate and assess whether or not there needs to be, you know, measures taken. So thank you, Nate. Any other comment from the board? I see Janet's hand. Yes. Janet, that that actually reminds me of a comment or a question I'd asked Nate about a race crosswalk there, because I think that families will be trying to enter the park crossing that street, which is much busier than North Pleasant Street. And so I think that that conversation I think is a good one because even if it's painted on, we know that by the end of the winter, nobody can see it, you know, for whatever reason. And so I really would put a pitch in for a race crosswalk. So the traffic will slow down. It's probably not going too fast, but, you know, you can't guarantee it coming out of the roundabout. But it would people would slow down for that as they're driving by. And because kids will be crossing there to get into the park and come out and hopefully grabbing some food and things like that. So I would just put a pitch in to Nate to really put a serious look at that and not wait until somebody's injured, you know, some little kid or someone who's just crossing and stuff like that. It's going to be drawing people in. And let's just, you know, let's just share the road with the pedestrians, too. So thank you for it. Thanks. So on that, I I thought we were moving away from the race crosswalks because they don't stand up to the wear and tear. Yeah, I think you can do it so that the plows go over it and it's not so high. It's kind of more of like a blanket. And so we're actually you can put a surface down that's like a plasticized surface that is like creates like a kind of when the cars go over it, it's kind of you can feel it when you're driving it and you can see it more than just paint. So there's lots of options, but I think something has to mark where people are going to go and then some drivers can see that and feel that and slow down. Yeah, so Chris, can I just what's the current thinking? It depends on where it is. We have a raised crosswalk in front of the Jones Library, and that works really well. There are considerations for drainage. If you have a raised crosswalk, then sometimes you have to add some catch bases. So they do become a little more complicated than the regular kind. But this may be a good location to consider a raised crosswalk. And that's something that we will bring up with the DPW when we're talking to them about this project. Great. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Janet. And other hands raised, I don't see. So I know for the discussion, someone to make sure Mr. Marshall raised his hand. Oh, OK, Doug. Yeah, I I was sitting there looking at Nate's screen share and had a kind of an off topic question. I'm glad I'm the last. How did you decide what order to to list the town councillors? It's it's clearly not alphabetical. I'd have to look at that again. It's the DPW's fault. Blame it on the DPW. And I know it's not clear if it's age or height or some. Precinct order, I don't I don't know. That's a good good. OK, well, thanks. Thanks a lot. Doug, your level of scrutiny is should be commended. The first three are at large members, right? The second two or the second ones are district one. So it probably was in terms of district numbers. District, yeah. All right. So we will be up for, you know, proving that the playground structures, the sidewalk. Is still to be determined. The sign is still to be determined, correct? Just the sign is, I think you said sidewalk, Jack, are you? Well, the crosswalk across the discussion. But I thought the sign was was still. It is right. The sign is. Yeah, we're OK. I'd like to make a decision on the sign, you know, in the next month or so just so we can get that fabricated and shop around. OK. So, Andrew. Yeah, does the sign count as a site furnishing? I'm just wondering if that's case. Can we actually move on this? Just as once final choices for play equipment and site furnishings have been made. Yeah, I'm assuming the sign was part of the site furnishings. But you could exclude that from your vote. You could say everything except the sign. I'm fine with that. And then. But that would mean we'd get another visit with the sign and at a future meeting. Yes. Yeah. OK. Great. So any further discussion on the board? Anyone want to make a motion? Andrew. So moved. OK. Is second. I'll second. This is your honor. OK. Any further discussion? I see no hands. So we'll do roll call. And Maria. Approved. Tom. Approved. Andrew. Approved. Doug. All right. Janet. Aye. And Johanna. Aye. And myself as a yes. So that's seven oh four zero for that proposal. Jack, the motion excludes the sign. Is that correct? Yes. Correct, Nate. Yes. Yeah. OK. Thank you. We'll we'll value with a sign. We'll come back with. You're going to come back one. We just love seeing you here, Nate. So yeah, no, thank you. Looking forward to that. It's actually a nice agenda tonight. And I like to stick around. But right. Andrew, we'll take your comments about the sign, too. I mean, I think there is. Yeah, be nice to have the ability to have some area where you can either post things or even if we had we talked about having a locust map and showing other destinations downtown so people could place themselves and know where there's either public restrooms or parking or shops and restaurants. So, you know, we've had different comments about how to make the sign more than just a welcome sign. Thanks, Nate. Thank you, Nate. Thanks. Great. So we have a next on the agenda is a master plan implementation matrix. And it has some girth to it. Again, I mentioned not going too far into it but let's, I, this is exciting because in lieu of the zoning subcommittee, you know, we talked about doing these types of things. So this is, I think it's great that it's being presented and then all of us can discuss. But obviously there's a lot here and will rely I presume on Doug and Chris to give us an update on this. Shall I start? Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you. So why don't we just go through like a couple of pages of this and you can see what we did. It was essentially Doug and I met probably, I don't know, six or seven hours at different times and Doug was great because he had this matrix already to go and he typed and he corrected me and he added things and I talked. So it was a good collaboration. And, you know, I just kind of talked off the top of my head about things that I knew that had happened in the last 10 years or hadn't happened. So the goal was to figure out which of the strategies had actually been implemented and which hadn't been. And also to talk a little about which ones were worthwhile to continue to try to figure out how to make them happen and which ones could we put aside because things had changed in the last 10 years. So I'll just go through a couple of the pages of the land use section, which is the one we started with. And that's really the most, in my mind, it's the most interesting because that's the one that we deal with as planners and planning board members. So the first section says preferentially direct future development to existing built up areas. And we were already talking about that a bit tonight with our listening, we weren't talking about it, but the members of the public were talking about it with regard to 40R and potentially putting the 40R in an already developed part of town. So the idea there is if you build up already built up areas, then you can save your open space for recreation. Chris, great question. I'm just looking at what was in our packet. Yeah. And okay, so I'm just wondering if I'm looking at the same thing. LU1A, is that what you're on? I was looking at LU1, which is the title. Okay. So everything that happens after that is under that title of LU1, preferentially direct future development to existing built up areas. So the first one was inventory and identify existing developed areas that are appropriate for density increases in redevelopment. So we certainly made progress in developing a GIS database which we didn't really have, or at least it wasn't widely available and widely used when the master plan was done. And the GIS shows us clearly where development has occurred. We haven't really inventoried areas of where development has occurred in any other way, but we have inventoried areas where development hasn't occurred. And that is contained in the open space and recreation plan. The town either has done or will soon do a flyover of the town to generate a new GIS base. And the old GIS base I think is from 2009. So it's about time to do a new flyover and see exactly where development has occurred. But for the most part, development has occurred in already developed areas with the possible exception of Amherst fields, Amherst Hills and Amherst Woods. And some smaller subdivisions around town. The second one, LU1B evaluate built up areas on the basis of character, quality and priority, identifying areas to emphasize preservation, historic areas of the downtown and village centers, emphasize adaptive reuse, particularly high quality historic areas of the downtown, allow a varying combination of preservation and redevelopment, such as other village centers, transitional or neighborhood business areas, and allow more extensive development and redevelopment with a balance of incentives and controls, such as highway, commercial corridors, research parks, et cetera, and encourage denser development of appropriate scale and design in village centers and downtown. So with regard to the first one, historic preservation, we've established two historic districts in town, two local historic districts. Of course, we have the National Register Historic Districts, but we've established two local historic districts, one in the Dickinson area, Emily Dickinson Museum area, and one in the Lincoln Sunset area. So that went a long way to try to preserve some of our historical buildings. We do have a few unused historic buildings, but unlike Holyoke in Northampton, we really don't have big mill buildings or big hospital buildings or anything like that. But we do have some smaller historic buildings, such as the Chevy dealership on Dickinson Street that was turned into Amherst College facilities, a facilities building. So they base their facilities department out of there. The Baptist Church on Pleasant Street was, on South Pleasant Street was turned into an Amherst College office building. And the North Amherst Fire Station was converted to residences. And I'm talking about the small North Amherst Fire Station on Pine Street, it's very tiny. You probably wouldn't even notice it if you hadn't known it was a fire station previously, but that is now a residence. North Amherst School was converted to a preschool and a storage area for the town. And Cinda Jones turned a barn into a satellite for the Atkins Farm Market. That doesn't really operate anymore, but it's currently being used, I believe, by provisions, which is a new commercial establishment that's moving into North Amherst. And in Palmer Eye Center, two existing historic houses were turned into office use. And those are on Ron Lavertier's property, just opposite where Moen and Dove is. So those are examples of adaptive reuse of historic buildings. And then with responding to some of the other items in that section, University Drive, we've changed zoning from only BL along University Drive to include an R&D overlay district, which allows some of the spin-off companies from UMass to operate in those buildings that exist there now. And if new buildings were built there, they could also operate that there. And that includes laboratories and manufacturing. So that was a big change. We also changed the zoning of the west side of University Drive from OP Office Park to BL, Limited Business, to allow more flexible development. And that resulted in Barry Roberts' mixed-use development at 70 University Drive. And we reinterpreted zoning in the PRP zoning district, where there were a lot of non-conforming uses that allowed residential use to occur there. So one of the projects that resulted from that, and that was really the building commissioner and came up with that idea, I think. Amherst Motel was a non-conforming building. It was very unused and kind of an eyesore, and that's being converted to apartments. It's a building that's currently under construction. It's behind Domino's on Route 9. And at the same time, there's a new mixed-use building going in at the corner of University Drive in Route 9, where University Drive South is gonna be located. It's, I think it's got 45 apartments in it. And an eye doctor's office. So instead of a single-family house at that location, we're gonna have a nice building with affordable units in it as well. And then the last one encouraged denser development of appropriate scale and design in village centers. The town supported Cinda Jones and the Beacon communities in their project to create 130 housing units, including 26 affordable units under a Chapter 40B development, including 22,000 square feet of commercial space. So I think, all told, we've really done a lot to implement this particular section of the master plan. The next one is LU1C, use flexible zoning techniques, such as form-based codes to promote mixed-use development. Well, town meeting rejected form-based zoning for North Amherst and Atkins Village Center, but we're now re-exploring form-based code via the Chapter 40R zoning. So that's coming back to life again. LU1D undertake rezoning efforts in order to direct more intensive development to appropriate areas and limit developments in resource areas. So we have a farmland conservation overlay district that requires cluster development when residential development occurs in a farmland conservation area. And what that means is that the houses, well, you've all seen it happen down at Dista Terrace, what is it, Hartwell Farms, formerly called Applebrook. And that development has eight houses, and they're all clustered together. And the developer of that property is giving, I think it's a seven-acre parcel to the town of Amherst as a recreation and conservation area. So that concentrated development and maximized open space. Another thing is we're allowing five-story buildings downtown by right, which allows denser development of the downtown. And along about the same time around 2010, maybe slightly after that, we eliminated the requirement for additional lot area per dwelling unit in downtown, which now allows residential and mixed use buildings in the downtown, which is a change from previous years. So I don't know how much of this you want me to keep going through. Well, we've got some time. Why don't we go through all the LU-1? Okay. Up the LU-1J. Okay. LU-1E, create incentive zoning with bonuses for well-designed infill redevelopment projects. We have not done that. Nope, we haven't approached that one. LU-1F provide incentives, including density bonuses to encourage energy efficient development. We do not have density bonuses for energy efficiency, but we do offer density bonuses for affordable units in cluster developments. And Misty Meadows on Tamarack Drive utilize this particular section of the bylaw, but that has to do with affordable units and not with energy efficient units. LU-1G established programs to encourage economic development in existing developed areas, such as economic opportunity areas. We do have an opportunity zone in North Amherst and certain types of development receive tax benefits in that area. We also had prior to 2010, we helped Atkins Farm Market with an economic opportunity area, but since then there really haven't been too many of those. I think Laverdeer's property on Larkspur Drive may also have benefited from that, but there hasn't really been too much talk about economic development areas other than the opportunity zone, which is a federal designation. So we did take advantage of that, but there hasn't really been any development done as a result of that yet. LU-1H provide incentives to encourage infill and redevelopment. I don't think we have made progress there, but we do have a tax incentive for creating affordable units. So you could argue that that is going towards this strategy. The only time that tax incentive has been used was by the Beacon Communities at the North Square in North Amherst. LU-1I reduces energy use by encouraging new residences near supporting goods and services. So when we removed lot area requirements for residential developments and allowed higher buildings in the downtown, we did take some steps towards implementing this particular strategy. And we changed the zoning on University Drive to allow residential development there. University Drive already has a lot of services and it has a bus route. And so it was a smart move to change the zoning there to allow residential use in that area. LU-1J create market or other mechanisms for transfer of development rights, otherwise known as TDRs from key resource areas and agricultural lands to village centers downtown and other areas where denser development is more appropriate. So we did have a project. It was actually, what do they call it? A DLTA project with PVPC. And then the acronym is escaping me, but it was something to the effect of local technical assistance. Anyway, we worked with Pioneer Valley Planning. LU-1J That's right, yeah. LU-1J District Local Technical Assistance, that's it. All right, so we worked with PVPC on this and we got pretty far with it, but then we didn't really have any public, which should I say support for it. Nobody was interested in doing this. They didn't want to transfer development rights from outlying areas to the village centers. And this was back probably shortly after the master plan was completed. I think it was particularly a sensitive topic in North Amherst because people envisioned that the North Amherst Village Center might become overdeveloped as a result of this. So they didn't really want to do this. I think there were landowners in the outlying areas who would have been happy to sell their development rights to places in the village centers, but there wasn't a popular support, public support for the village centers receiving those development rights. So that was sort of, we made a try at that and it was not successful. It has been successful in some other towns and maybe we'll go back to it again at some point, but right now it doesn't really seem to have much appeal. So shall I stop there? Yes, sounds great. Very good. So let's have some discussion amongst the board on what has been reviewed and I'm looking at hands, Andrew. Thanks, Jack. And thanks, Chris. And Doug is well for putting this together. It's an impressive document. I was curious of a couple of things. One, the last one you mentioned, given some of the feedback we were hearing relative to 40R and given this has been a conversation of late, when we identify no progress on here, do we want to consider revisiting some of these? Like how do we sort of go to the next step? Because certainly when you mentioned that this was maybe back in the 2010 timeframe, again, given what we've heard about today, maybe there's more interest in resurrecting something like this. And then also, I was just curious, since you've been along the ride for a long time, Chris, what's your general sense of like all we've accomplished? I'll see a very large list and lots on here. Do you feel like we've met your expectations, exceeded your expectations? I would love your professional opinion. I was surprised at how many things we had actually accomplished because we haven't really looked back at this list until now. And so I was pleasantly surprised to see how many things we had accomplished, but there is more to still be accomplished. So does that answer your question? Yeah, the second one. And then I guess the first, more broadly for the planning board is, what's next, right? As we look through some of these, do we want to resurrect them at what point are we willing to say that that's done? So I was just, master plan came out in what year? 2010. 2010. I mean, looking at this, compared to say that the 10 years prior to 2010, it was like crickets. So I think the town and the planning department has done a fabulous job. With the charge presented to them, with this master plan, my opinion, but sorry, let me look at other Tom. Hey, thanks. And thank you, Doug and Chris for this. It is really a tremendous document. And I agree, hearing from Jack and Chris about progress over the last 10 years versus the 10 prior, I can only imagine how much was accomplished. I mean, my question is similar to that of Andrews in the sense that a lot of these things are actions that we're doing and that we're documenting those actions, but how do we benchmark results, right? So how do we actually evaluate these things to say, if we've done this thing or we've incentivized this or we've moved towards this or started this process, how do we evaluate whether that's done or completed or it did its job? And then maybe something we want to incorporate in the future. So I guess, like for instance, within the master plan, there's some really great things and some of these building an opportunity zone is excellent. How many do we need to make serious change, right? And when are we done building opportunity zones and how do we evaluate the success of that to say, we need more of those? I guess it's kind of what I'm asking. And this is more for us to start thinking about and trying to come up with a process for us as we go through the rest of this document over the course of the next few weeks, thinking about ways that we can start to, I guess, assess these things, evaluate them and think about how we move them forward. Well, can I answer part of that? Sure, wait, but I did the opportunity zone thing. Where is that in our list? It was just an example. It was L, U, 1G. 1G, okay. This is an example. Like we made one, right? But how many is what we need or how valuable was that one? How much improvement came out? Okay, I actually underlined that and I forgot. Chris. So I wanted to say that that particular, what action has not borne fruit? And it's kind of an odd duck. It was set up by the federal government in the last few years. It has a limited time span. And we're about, I don't know, a third to a halfway through that time span. I think it's got a 10 year time span. And then initially we had a lot of interest in from developers, but they were mostly interested in projects that were already shovel-ready and they wanted to jump in and invest in them. What it does is it gives investors a way of not having to pay taxes on capital gains. So they can invest their capital gains in certain types of projects. And then if they hold the investment for long enough, and I think 10 years is one time a frame, they don't have to pay taxes on their capital gains. So there's a lot of incentive to get into that early on, but when people found out that there weren't really shovel-ready projects to invest in, it seems like they've kind of lost interest in it. So I would say the opportunity zone, although it seemed very worthwhile in the beginning was probably not as worthwhile as we hoped it would be. On the other hand, it covered a huge portion of the town. And I questioned it to begin with because it covered areas that aren't even appropriate for development that are outlying areas with their hilly and rocky and their zoned RO and RLD, so residential outlying and residential low density. So I always had trouble figuring out how this thing was gonna work. It was basically the whole part of Amherst that's north of the university that was included in this zone. And as I said, it was a federal program that was set up in the last few years to kind of, I think it was to jumpstart the economy, but it kind of didn't work for Amherst. I know it worked for other places. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And thank you, Tom. Janet? So, I'm assuming, or I think to answer, I'm assuming this is kind of, I don't know what the process is here in terms of going through all this amazingly long Excel sheet. And I'm not sure if that's what we're planning to do over the next few weeks. I was hoping or thinking that we were moving towards MOPIC, the Master Plan Implementation Committee. So the idea is, this is a great start on this work. And then we could pass this along to MOPIC for starting implementation and looking at it. Because it seems like most of the areas have, it starts with like do an inventory of your resources in this area, assess them and evaluate them, and then figure out programs and strategies and maybe zoning changes that implement that strategy, the assessment. And so, that's obviously ongoing work and things like that. I don't think, I mean, I don't know if we're gonna go through every single one of these things that you did with Doug, because we could do that in our own time. And I've had a million questions about them, but I thought we were sort of moving towards starting maybe an implementation committee who starts to say like, how do we implement this to sort of answer the questions that Tom and Drew have raised, which is like, what's the next step? And so, evaluating the built up areas and the basis of character quality and priority, like where do we wanna preserve our historic buildings? How do we wanna do that? Can we do it through incentives or things like that? And so, I don't think the, so I wonder, is that where we're heading? I guess I'm just sort of asking the group because is that what the next step is for this group? Or are we gonna continue to, I mean, I'm happy to work through this because it's super interesting to hear what's been done. Yeah, I mean, personally, I feel this is great. And I know what we're doing now is what we've all envisioned for a number of years of planning board kind of looking at and discussing. But I think when you have a committee that's gonna break this down, then you're looking at compromising Chris Brestrup's time who is doing great work with the CRC. And I just, I don't know that we have the capacity to really support a committee. And I feel like this has been good. I thought that we had been talking about doing Mopec as like instead of doing, there was a proposal by the planning board that put together the master plan to organize this committee. Wasn't there that proposal that you had showed us? I can't remember if this was in the summer or in the fall, because I feel like every day of the pandemic is viable to me. But, and so Chris, you were saying that you thought maybe instead of having a broad Mopec committee, which is called for in the master plan that we could do it in-house and you could find some time to sort of sit with us. Is that a discussion that this board has had or did it proceed to our new members? I can't quite remember. May I answer that? Yes, Chris. I don't remember exactly what the discussion was. I think I did say that I would be available to sit with a committee. I don't really want to get into a lot of paperwork, but I'm happy to sit with people and discuss things and go through some of these strategies like I went through with Doug and talk about what we could work on moving forward. So I think there are two aspects to the master plan implementation committee. One is that it was set up by, it was supposed to be set up by the select board and the select board came up with a charge for it and no one was ever appointed to it. And that was partly the fault of no one from the planning board volunteered to be on it. And it was supposed to have one planning board member, but there were also supposed to be a lot of other people on it. So the planning board, I guess, by itself could establish a committee of the planning board to do what MOPIC or MPEC was supposed to do. But it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be peopled by town council unless you asked them to set this up. And I think if you asked them to set it up exactly as it had been written up in the charge, it wouldn't be a committee of the planning board. It would be a committee of a lot of other people with one planning board member. So you'd sort of have to decide which route you wanna go. You wanna have a committee of the planning board looking at this or do you wanna have a larger committee that's peopled by, that's, I can't think of the word, authorized by the town council. So anyway, I'm willing to sit with a small group of planning board members. I don't wanna have to get into a lot of paperwork or writing reports or anything, but I can certainly meet with people if people are interested in this topic. Yeah, I'd like to hear what Doug has to say and he has his hand up, so. Well, I feel like I'm jumping in front of Maria. That's all right. You had a hand in this, so I just, sorry, Maria will understand, I'm sure. Okay, well, I'll try not to go on too long. I guess I had a couple of thoughts. One, and I hope I can keep them both in mind. First of all, in response to Andrew and Tom sort of saying, where do we go from here? I guess as I was going through this with Chris, my thought was that we were basically updating the scorecard of what have we done in the last 10 years. And when the planning board recommended to town council that we just asked town council to adopt the master plan as it was done 10 years ago, and that we not embark on a new master plan to me that means we're affirming the points of or the objectives of the master plan that are listed in this matrix and described in the master plan. We're affirming all of that as goals we continue to have. So I felt like Chris was basically giving me a brain dump of what we've done so far. And these are all, many of them came across in the conversation with Chris as sort of living in her head as objectives to be pursued as she's working day to day with all the different people that she comes in contact with. So I guess it seemed to me that Andrew, the next time we really think about whether this is still a good idea, any particular of the goals listed here is really when we do our next master plan. And in the meantime, like the one, the economic opportunity area or the transfer of development rights, it was in the master plan, staff tried it and there was resistance by some or all of the residents. So it's just not gonna get the focus that, or it's not gonna get prioritized by staff at least. And so I feel like that's kind of the steady state we're in until we do another master plan. Now, and then in terms of Janet's question about the master plan implementation committee, I guess I kind of feel like, I guess basically what Jack was saying that, I don't know if the town staff have bandwidth to support another committee, but I think there's, I've never been completely clear about whether the implementation committee was looked at as the ongoing scorekeeper and maybe an advocate with the other branches of town, government and volunteer or committees, just a scorekeeper and an advocate or whether they had any executive role. And I've assumed they didn't have any executive role. So that essentially what we were doing here was sort of a shorthand update of the scorekeeping. And then we as a planning board are essentially the advocates to other entities, whether it's committees or staff or CRC or whoever, for what they ought to prioritize. That's all. Thank you, Doug. Maria, and then I have some thoughts, but I would note that we're an hour and a half into our meeting and we'll never finish this discussion on the master plan implementation. With that said, Maria, please. Actually, thanks, Doug and Chris for doing this because this is very timely. The next agenda items about the CRC's memo about priorities and what they wanna look at in three months versus six months to 12 months, a lot of these aligned with the things that were in this matrix and in particular, I kind of circled areas that I saw where the priorities, the CRC sort of noted and where we either did or didn't do things. And so a lot of it was in the housing section that I think that a lot of this could blend together in a way so that as we work with the CRC on helping them figure out how to implement these priorities they've set for us, we can look at this really great tool now that we have because we can see, oh, we've tried this or we haven't tried this or here's a objective that can actually help resolve this particular priority that CRC has brought up. So I think this is really great timing to have had this done in our back pocket now. And I think, yeah, I agree with Doug where the planning board, we're sort of like this connection between this matrix and the CRC coming to us with like how do we, what were some of the things? We'll talk about this, I hope tonight, maybe a little bit, but just unlocking housing, working with fixing the BL downtown, there's so many of these things that overlap. So I think we should definitely keep this matrix and keep referring to it as we work with the CRC whether we create another committee right now. I had hoped that some people from the community who have extensive sort of zoning bylaw expertise could help out, maybe there was a way, if the zoning subcommittee grows into the impact zoning subcommittee, some sort of group that also brings in more of the planning board members, we can work with the CRC on their, this, I don't know what you call this thing, the memo from December 5th, getting that moving forward. I think that all of that sort of in tandem, we have a lot of great resources now, so I really appreciate all the work of this matrix, but yeah, I don't feel like we need to go through every line item, but I think now that we have this, we can refer to it and it's really great to have. So Maria, I mean, what do you suggest? How do we approach, how would you suggest we approach the review of the matrix? It would be great. If later we get to the CRC memo, we think about how we wanna fold in our work as a planning board, some of this is really technical and really getting into like zoning bylaw wording. And so at that point, now that we have our priorities, the zoning subcommittee can jump onto particular items from their memo, as well as refer to this matrix of like what's been done or what's been tried. And then I would like to just talk to, yeah, the planning board as far as like, who else wants to join the zoning subcommittee? And then Chris, is there a way we can bring some people from the community? I think Rob Crowner would be a great addition. He has so much experience and historical knowledge. It'd be someone from BID, someone who, I don't know if it makes sense to bring someone from the plan department as well. I mean, it could be just the ad hoc group that we work through things. And then we report back to the planning board so that way we're not, you know, overloading staff with having to set up Zoom meetings. And we can just as easily set up our own Zoom meetings if that's legal, I don't know. But yeah, I feel like as we get into the CRC memo, we can then think about what the zoning subcommittee could jump on next and whether that can tie into, you know, always referring to this matrix as well as bringing in more people. That's pretty convoluted, but that's sort of, you know, it's kind of a nebulous path forward, but that's kind of my journal sense. So your feeling is like we shouldn't be going light on them during our meetings through this. No, I don't know that, I mean, that'll take days, you know, but I think that as we get into sections that the priorities that the CRC has set up for us, we should definitely refer to that section of this matrix and say, okay, let's look at what's been tried and done or hasn't been done. So, but I mean, I think, yeah, yeah. I think what Chris did with the land use was useful because it's relevant to us. So, okay, so maybe the next meeting, we will rely on the board to review the entire document and we'll just take comments versus having Chris present it all and then maybe divert to the CRC, you know, kind of pinpointing things and using points of reference. Is that sound reasonable to everybody on the board or, but Janna has her hand up. So I remember like Rob Wilbur from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council saying that if you don't have an implementation committee for your master plan, it will never be implemented. And so I understand the issues that Maria is raising because there is a, it is really, it's kind of unclear. I mean, we're kind of in a fuzzy state and I wonder, I don't know if this should be homework for the, if I could present that or propose it for the planning board to look at the implementation sections of the master plan and not just this matrix but also there's a whole chapter and look at that and think like maybe we can reflect on like, oh, what's the best way to implement this? Or I think if it goes ad hoc, it's never gonna be fully implemented. And so I don't think obviously the hundreds of pages bump but I do think there's some really big issues here that we need to look at which is, you know, like a more systematic way. And so can we just, I don't think it's gonna happen in two weeks, but me look at the implementation sections and kind of figure out like, oh, do we need an implementation committee? Should it be in house, you know, or whatever or is there, look at the, maybe Chris can give the select board charge because I thought the charge was really good. And then as to Maria, I'd love to talk more about like what happens next with, you know, the CRC stuff because I'm kind of lost on that myself. So. So our next meeting is January, when is it? January 6th. January 6th, okay. So when- Okay. Chris, do you have your hand? Yeah, please speak. I just wanted to say this, as far as I'm concerned, this isn't finished. It's a draft and there were several items that I was going to consult other people about. And so I feel like it's, there's more information that needs to be put into this. And I will keep, you know, plugging away at it when I have time and sending you, you know, updated versions of this. I think Doug noted those areas where we need more information like I think he wrote in red. Chris- Yeah, I generally did write them in red. I noticed there's a couple that are still just in regular black text, but- So we could, I could focus on that, you know, spend some time between now and January 6th, seeing if I can get answers to some of those questions. But that's all I wanted to offer. Andrew, how does this end up? Yeah, thanks, Jack. I think, Marie, I think it's a great idea of being able to use this as a way to reference what we've looked at or what's been shared by the CRC. I would sort of restate my point from earlier. And I think like the TDRs especially, like we, it didn't work 10 years ago, right? Like, so should we say that it doesn't work? You know, I don't, I mean, given the time horizon for all of this, I don't know if it's really relevant in certain circumstances. Then I'll start to, Janet, the point you made or restated, like, I guess, is this the only document that we have that demonstrates progress towards the master plan? And, you know, if so, and I guess it's like, you could argue we don't even, like, there's no point of even having this if there's no interest in updating, right? So I just throw it out there. I'm looking forward to more conversation on it. The TDR, I'm having a brain cramp. What? Just the transfer of development rights. Okay. It's just that, you know, the notion of building density when all of the public comment we've heard lately is about building density in 40R, like this is another mechanism of doing it. So the fact that, you know, 10 years ago, people said no, I don't think it's really relevant when we consider where we are today. So, thanks. Thank you. Johanna? I'm really grateful to Chris and to Doug for putting in the time to give us this snapshot of where we stand on the master plan. I do feel like we have a lot of kind of pressing and urgent work that is in front of us right now that would touch on a lot of these aspects. And so rather than like going down the rabbit hole of, oh, let's figure out where in the master plan we're falling short or whatever, I'm a little bit inclined to move full steam ahead with the things that are on our agenda, 40R, the zoning bylaw, and then, you know, a year from now go back and like update this grid and say, all right, where did we make progress? And not, I don't know, like not spend so much time on the spreadsheet and the analysis of like where are we going now? Cause I actually think there's a, we have pretty clear direction about where we, like where the big points of action are moving forward. Thank you, Johanna. Based on that, and Chris has her hand up, but I think that we do need to move on and Johanna mentioned 40R, that's one of the topics we have, Chris. So I wanted to say, I think there's a lot of momentum on the part of the CRC and the town council to move ahead with zoning amendments. And I think that that's where your energies would best be spent. Town council is only gonna be in office for another year. And after that, we don't know who the players are going to be. These players have shown an interest in the things that Mandy Joe has put in her memo to the town council. And so I think that there's an opportunity here to act on those things and that's where we should put our effort. So that would be my recommendation rather than spending more time going back over the implementation matrix and figuring out what we haven't done or what among those things we would like to do. We have a kind of a list in front of us here that CRC has given us that these are the things they wanna do. And I know that the planning department has things that we absolutely need to get done like the flood mapping. So my preference would be to work with those things where there is already an incentive to move forward. And that's what I would recommend. So with regard to this, you know, speaking of the implementation of the master plan, I guess I'm seeking, you know, some consensus from the board of how we wanna take this on and any, you know, motions without we treat this moving forward. I think, again, I haven't had time to go through all this but it looks completely solid. I think Doug and obviously Chris for the work put into this. So it's valuable, we've not had this before. Any thoughts on the board, Doug? You know, it's not really clear to me that we need a motion, but, you know, if you're looking for one, Jack, you know, I'd make a motion that we just agree to set this aside, use it as a resource over the next year, allow Chris to finish the loose ends that she agreed to pursue, you know, this time around and then, you know, just put on our calendars for another year or a year and a half from now to sit down and update it. So I agree, Doug, no vote, but I would just like affirmative, you know, people kind of shake their heads, whatever, maybe on this, because it won't be on our, you know, future agendas as such, other than a reference. Is everybody okay with that? Johanna? Yes. Janet? No. No, okay. Andrew, okay, so it's not unanimous. So let's talk about this, you know, more, you know, next meeting and we'll get, you know, some sort of point of, you know, strategy. Yeah, I could send out the sections on implementation and stuff. And so we can look at that and not just the matrix, but like, how do you implement the master plan? So I feel like I've spent a lot of time on the master plan this year and I wonder if it's all just gonna fizzle out. I mean, and then in 10 years, we do a new one that we don't really implement in a cohesive way. It's kind of my fear, but it may be what happens, so. Okay, well, this, you know, again, it's 820. We have other items that I'd like to move on to. So the next would be the 40R discussion and my understanding is that a few of the planning board members were at a kind of productive meeting within their districts. And I'd loved it to hear about that before. I don't know, Chris, if you have anything to say on the, as we're entering this 40R discussion. My comment would be that I'm interested to hear that there has been support for the 40R. I haven't really, you know, prior to September, say, I wasn't really hearing support for the 40R from any quarter of town, other but the possible exception of John Hornick and Rob Crowner. And now I'm hearing a lot of support. And in fact, we received, and I'm remiss for not having forwarded them to you, but we received four emails in the planning department email in the last week in support of 40R. So it seems like it's got some energy behind it. And my feeling is that it's not a finished document. It's, it needs some work. And questions have been brought up by CRC members, particularly Evan Ross and Mandy Johanicki about inconsistencies and things that we want to change. So I think it's probably a good idea to spend some time on it for me to spend some time on it, trying to clean it up. And for you all to spend some time on it, telling me what you think should be changed in it. And maybe we do have a proposal that actually can work. I must admit that I wasn't really taking this all that seriously until probably September, October, just because I wasn't hearing support from the community or from really members of the planning board. And now I'm hearing that. And so it's worth putting some effort into it to make it right and really come up with a good product if that's what you would like to move forward with. Good, Doug? Yeah, I guess I wanted to ask, what is it that Jack, you or Chris or CRC want from us about this? Do they want us to try to wordsmith it or to fill in the blanks that are yet to be clarified? Or are they simply looking for a general expression of support that it's worth others spending time on? So I'm a little clear, I agree, this doesn't feel like a finished document. I have a variety of concerns from wordsmithing to overall approach. So I'd like some guidance on what's the end point you want to reach with this group. Very good question, or statement, Doug, and Chris, can you provide us some light on that? Well, I think that the CRC is interested in this. They're interested to the point of talking about it and discussing it. And Mandy Jo has reached out to the other CRC members to get them to send in comments. So far, only Evan and Mandy Jo have provided written comments, but that indicates to me that they take it seriously and they want to look at it. And I don't really feel like it's the CRC's baby. It's, if anybody, I mean, in my mind, it probably could have been the housing trust's baby, but they didn't really want that baby that he wanted to give it to the planning board. So I think it's the planning board and the planning department. It's our responsibility to make this into something that we think is a good product if we think that we want to pursue it. And I'm hearing from several members of the planning board that it might be a good idea to pursue this. So if the planning board tells me that they want us to work on this, we will work on it. Yeah, my personal opinion, since Doug asked, I really, I feel like this is something that is timely, given everything that the town and the region, the state is facing right now. It's a shot in the arm. And I'm very, very interested in the implementation, not particularly for the entire scope, but for a portion. Particularly the BL district there on west of Pleasant Street. And it just doesn't seem like there's any downside. I mean, it can be implemented and it's an overlay. The developers can choose to use the 40R or not or use the BL, but I just, I feel like our downtown could really use a shot in the arm. And I think the bylaw, the guts of it are really improved from what we saw in the spring. And it's just very intriguing. And so, you know, we're not, I think we're only recommending to the town council whether we would, you know, promote this in total or in parts, but I, but I, you know, if we were to wordsmith, yeah. I mean, that's, there's a lot there, a lot of heavy lifting, but my two cents, Janet. So I've been, I've listened to the last two CRC meetings and they haven't said, let's go with the 40R, there's been no vote and it doesn't seem like they've even discussed it recently. And so if we're, if we decide, if our goal is to implement or try to run with the CRC priorities, I don't see that on the list. And then, you know, I guess when we get to the new business, there's eight to 10 pretty heavy hitting zoning changes. And so, so I'm wondering, like, you know, if we, if the planning department, I know you have, the planning department has completely different priorities and things you're working on, these eight to 10 kind of heavy hitting changes that all often relate with each other, plus working on a 40R, I mean, it sounds like I don't, I don't know, I just, I don't, I don't see the CRC saying go for the 40R. And so I'm wondering, I don't think it's possible to do all those things in a year. The second thing is, I think if, like, by the time if we really spent some deep time on the 40R, we might as well just fix the problems downtown. Like if we're going to work on the design standards in the 40R, which I think are very weak and we make them stronger, why not make that into sort of design standards for downtown? And so to me, I think our efforts would be, if we're going to focus efforts is to do focus on the downtown problems that we see and look at them as a whole, which I think was part of our priorities that we had listed in the summer in Dove's Tales with the CRC changes, but the 40R is like a big, it's a big beast and just I don't know who's going to spend the time on it. I don't think, I don't think the planning department does if you're going to be doing your flood maps, you're doing a recodification of the bylaw. And I keep on forgetting the third thing is that there's some other big project that you're doing. And then we have like these, you know, very big eight to 10 changes proposed by the CRC in the next year, plus the 40R. And, you know, and then in my argument against the 40R, it doesn't address the, holistically, the problems in downtown. So I don't know, and I'm not, I don't want to spend a lot of time rewriting the 40R, you know, it's 25 pages and it's, you know, it's a rough go. So I would mention, Janet, that we do have a couple of pages from the two CRC members within our packet so I think they have two of the five members, but. But they haven't voted on it and they haven't talked about it. No, no, but there is, I think there's interest in it. So I'll let. Yeah, I just don't know, I don't get direction, I don't see the direction from them yet. So. Yep, okay. Johanna. It's helpful to hear that other town bodies are thinking, you know, 40R is now, like it would be the planning board and the planning department that folks are looking to, to refine it. I think my gut would be to invest the time and refine it and, you know, try to put forward a product that we think jives with the master plan and jives with, you know, kind of the direction that, you know, we think based on kind of our experience, the town wants to go in and move the ball forward on 40R. So that would be my inclination. Thank you. Maria. So I really appreciate those public comments at the beginning because they kind of said exactly what was going on in my mind and my responses now, which is, you know, when John Hornet came and talked to us about how time is of the essence, if we don't accept this 40R now, it's gonna be five, 10 years before the next fix comes. And this is by no means a fix that fixes everything. This is one of the many tools we need to do a lot of good work. Yes, this 40R, there are a lot of flaws, but I feel like no matter what state it's in, everyone's gonna always see something they don't like. This product has been worked on for a couple of years now with a lot of consultants who've done this for their profession for many decades. A lot of input from public comments, public meetings. I think it's a missed opportunity to not put more time into this. I don't know that we need to invest hours and hours and weeks and weeks. I'm almost ready just to accept it as is. I'm just, I still don't want this to go away and be a missed opportunity. It can address so many of the issues we have. It's not gonna fix everything, but unlocks BL. We still have to work on the BL of course, but it just seems like if we give this up now, it's like what was all that for? And we're missing out on a lot of what it can offer our town now. It's just such a timely thing. And also I think that to say, let's just fix downtown. We've been trying to do that for decades. I don't think that's an easy thing to do. I think this is one of the tools to kind of slowly move toward that, but sort of ignoring this and saying, why don't we just fix downtown? I don't know what that means. And I think that a lot of people I really respect have spoken up and finally spoken up. I think that was because of a lot of concerted effort of some people sending out emails and just saying, we need your voices. We need, there's a sort of a silent majority I think that has always been there, but just isn't, they're all working there. They just don't have time to come to these kinds of meetings or send out emails. And finally they are, and it's just so appreciated because like Chris said, we just weren't hearing support. And so we kind of thought, well, it's not gonna go, but I've always supported it. I just, yeah, I feel like if we can put, I mean, I'm happy to put more effort into it. I don't know how we work with the CRC or with playing staff, but whatever we can do to make this happen in some form, I think this is the time to do it. That's my two cents. Thank you so much, Maria. And I agree with what you've said. Tom. Thanks, Jack. I would probably lean towards agreeing with Johanna and Maria at this point. I think it is an imperfect document, but it's getting laid upon a very imperfect overlay area. And I think in some ways, speaking to what Janet was talking about, if we are going to be making changes to the overlay document, we can explore how those kinds of changes that we wanna see are the kinds of changes we wanna change in the BL and other parts of the downtown and that we can rewrite those and use this as a learning document to sort of, what do we wanna craft? How do we wanna craft the landscape of our downtown and what do we wanna incentivize? And then we can use that as a means to then shape other aspects of the downtown zoning for a benefit. So I see it as a way to get this group to spend more focused time on trying to address some of those challenges with downtown zoning, but also to capitalize on an opportunity that's presented in front of us now to make some changes that I do think will be beneficial. Thank you, Tom. Janet, you have your hand up, but also Chris, so Chris hasn't spoken a while. So I just wanted to say I thought it was very helpful to get those comments, really specific comments from Mandy Joannike and Evan Ross. They were questions and comments. And if planning board members would be so inclined, I would appreciate hearing from planning board members in the same way. And Janet did produce a document that commented on 40R back a while ago. And if she wanted to update that document in light of the 40R proposal that we have today, I would welcome that. So any comments that the planning board would like to submit, not to all of you at the same time, but just to me, to get my thought process going about this would be helpful. And then we could see where we can go with this because I think it has potential, but I certainly don't think it's ready to be presented to town council today. I think there are too many unanswered questions. So anyway. Chris, would it be helpful if the board kind of gives a kind of an approval of the concept for the CRC or can they wait for more specific comments? And again, I think Doug brought this up. How deep are gonna drill into this proposal and I know we can only recommend. It's up to the town council on that. I think the CRC is looking for a product. I'm not even sure they're looking for a product because as Janet said, they haven't voted to say, we think this is a great idea and we wanna see a finished product. I think they would probably, if they were inclined to support this, the idea they would look to the planning board and the planning department to come up with the product and present it to them. I don't think they're gonna spend the time doing that. So if the planning board is seriously interested in this and wants to submit comments to me, I will do my best to work on it and try to come up with a product. It's not gonna be immediate because I have a request from the CRC to work on these three month priorities. So I'm gonna be working on those. I'm also gonna be working on the flood maps and other things. So it'll take a while. It's not gonna be immediate. But if you're serious about this, it would be nice to try to get it done within the next year so that this town council could vote on it. Does that make sense? Well, I mean, I'm looking for action items. Like what do we need to do? And is this gonna remain on our agenda? Should we have a vote with regard to, are we behind this? I think you should have a vote with regard to whether you're behind this and then that will give me a direction to move in. And then I'll talk to you for specifics. Okay, Janet. So the thing that CRC also is recommending to the town council, I'm not sure, is to hire a consultant to work on design standards for downtown. I would love to work on that project. I'd love to work with the consultant. I'd love to work with the community about, I think there's a lot of agreement on what we wanna see downtown. I think people would get on board for more density if they felt like they liked how it looked and it protected the historic buildings and was a very, we always talk about vibrant, but we also wanna talk about walkable and human scale. And so I'm happy to work on that. And so I think that that recommendation, I'm not sure if CRC is gonna make that recommendation to the town council and they authorize it or whatever. I also think I'm a little concerned about, normally we don't take citizens' comments, like we take general public comments at the beginning of a meeting on issues that aren't on our agenda, just ask people. And then we have public comment after or during our discussion. So I know people are in the audience going to talk, but if we were gonna do like a head count on the comments on about, you know, 40R, it's been overwhelmingly against it. A lot of the people who spoke in favor today live in South Amherst, which, you know, as we know is a bupallic and beautiful place. The people most affected by it in downtown have been against it and other people in different parts of Amherst. And so if it's gonna be like a polling thing and we're gonna go with the group that has the most votes, I think we'd say, no, we don't have public support. If four people speak at the beginning of the meeting, that could be a groundswell of support of the silent majority, but the majority majority, you know, 30 people or so have spoken against it or raised concerns. And so those are my thoughts. And I really do think we should go to the public comment and hear more from people, you know, like to take that before we make a decision. I think we should also wait to see if CRC is interested because if they're really not, you know, there's so many dogs we have in our race. I don't know, you know, I'd love to work with the consultant on design standards. I'd love to work with somebody for, you know, inclusionary zoning. I don't think that's a hard, you know, I think that takes care of the huge problem, but I don't really wanna go down to the rabbit hole or 40R, which I think needs a lot of work, you know, but if people wanna do that, I guess I won't stand in the way, but I do think we should hear from the public. And if we're counting heads, most of the people were against it. Thank you, Janet. I would just say like 30 people. We have a population of what, 20,000. I'm not sure, you know, we talk about silent majority. It's all up to town council. We need to rely on our individual opinions on this and not like who we think we represent. I mean, I don't think that's our charge. So... I do think that we had the people most affected by this proposal have asked to work with us on it and have opposed the height, density. I mean, you've heard that meeting after meeting and we're sitting in the audience now. And so, I don't know. It's everybody's downtown. It's everybody's downtown. And Doug. So I've heard several people express support sort of unequivocably for the entire proposal. Jack, I think I've heard you say it was a way to unlock the BL. I happen to, and you know, I've said this before, but I think it's the areas of the BL where I think I could find, I could most support this. I don't think, I'm not as convinced that our downtown or BG area really needs this. So I, my support for this is strongest in, you know, whether you call it the BL or you call it, I think it was zone two that they had in green on that plan. So that's one point I wanted to make. And with perhaps, well, anyway, so in addition, you know, I'd be willing to spend some time with, you know, a couple of other people, you know, I'd go through it and generate a draft and work with somebody, a couple of people and we could try to try to turn it into something that the board could endorse or not. I don't want to spend that time if it's going to be dead on arrival. But I guess, you know, for better or worse, I'm offering to spend some time on it. Thank you. Thank you. Maria. I'm happy to help you, Dad. And Tom. Same, happy to help out. Okay. Like I don't know whether the best way is to do it individually with comments like Chris suggested or whether it actually makes sense to get together or yeah. Well, I guess I was making my offer to maybe allow Chris not to deal with it, at least as soon. Can we hear from the public, people who have their hands raised? Is there any other comments from the board this time? Okay. So we'll open up to public. You ready, Jack? Yes, Jennifer. Let's start with Jennifer, Tom. I'm sorry, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, I was muted. My name is Jennifer Taub. I live on Lincoln Avenue. And I have to tell you, it is very distressing. I actually saw some of you kind of make faces. You were surprised to hear that there were many residents who have many concerns about 40R and the push for maximum densification in the BL and to relax design standards at the same time. And yes, it's everybody's downtown, but for the many, many residents who live right on Cottage Street, the North Prospect, Lincoln Sunset Amity, there's many of us that walk downtown many times every day. It's everyone's downtown, but there are people that use it more than others. And it is concerning that there's, I feel like it's this sort of closed loop. There's five people on the CRC. There's, what is there? Six or seven people on the planning board. I don't know if any of the planning board members, it's not geographically represented on the planning board. And I think that there's members of the CRC. I'm just gonna be really frank here that have some extreme views on what they want to see downtown in the BL and even the RG neighborhoods look like. And there are, we have an organization that's just forming. We have an active mailing list of over 63 residents from Cottage Street and the North Prospect, Lincoln Sunset neighborhood. We've weighed in at the few meetings that were had that we were invited to with a consultant. And I feel like we're really not being heard. And we want a vibrant downtown, but we want to have input into what, if 40R is gonna be adopted, what it's gonna look like, if it's gonna be downtown as opposed to some of the neighborhood centers, but nobody moved to Amherst. Just like all of you who live in more bucolic areas in town, I don't think anybody said, I want to move to Amherst, Massachusetts because I want to live in a densely populated community with lots of tall buildings that frankly look, we didn't want to move to a downtown that looks like One East Plus and Kendrick Place. If we wanted extreme density, this is not where we would be. And I feel like we're just not being heard. And we want input into how this is going to unfold and we feel like that we've come to neighborhood meetings and then when I see the reaction here of your surprise that people are- Jennifer, I see like there's four more hands. I think you've spoken and I think we understand your concerns. And I apologize, but we're way over. No, I'm happy to, but I just, yeah. Okay, so, but I just think that you, I just want to know that we've been heard and you understand that there's many people out here that don't want to see extreme densification and the relaxation of any kind of design review. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. Next is Jean. Okay. Jean Hardy. So Jean, if you can keep your comments in three minutes, they'd be great. Thank you. Thank you very much for recognizing me and letting me have the chance to talk. I have brought this up before and written letters to the newspaper, et cetera, asking that people attending these meetings get to have their faces seen and they can see the other people here and that hasn't happened. And I would really like to encourage the planning board to work on doing that because it isn't fun to be a faceless person operating without knowing who else is at the meeting. That being said, I would like to really thank Janet because Janet is a voice that really resonates with the way I feel. I also feel a lot how Jennifer feels. There are 30 people like, so Jennifer mentioned 63 people. There are 30 of us that have spent a lot of nights listening to you talk about 40R and we put in the time to come to these meetings, specifically because we care very much about it. So Jack, you say it's everybody's downtown, but it's not everybody who is going to have a five-story building right next to them within 10 feet of their house with people looking down into their bathroom. If you know, many of you live out in the woods and I find it strange to have people who didn't choose to live downtown legislate to those of us who do live downtown, how we should live. We should want to have large buildings next to us. We should want to not be able to park our cars and take the bus. I've heard all of these things talking about this increased densification. What we should do, I see people on the planning board not making those decisions because I know where some people in the planning board live and I feel like the people who have the most vested interest are those who live right next to the BL and our way of life are my ability to take a shower without having four stories worth of people looking in my bathroom will be directly impacted. So I would really ask that you take these people into consideration. I disagree entirely that there's a silent majority who has very strong feelings about this who just hasn't been heard. They're silent because they don't really care. But those of us who spend our nights coming to these planning board meetings care because it will really impact us. And I really thank Janet for trying to think about us. I would like to also address this unlocking the BL. I don't understand why we need the BL to be unlocked. There are plenty of other places that can be developed without unlocking the BL or without changing the zoning of the BL. And I don't see why the 40R is such a fantastic opportunity and why it's only a fantastic opportunity right here in downtown Amherst and not in many of the other, at the beginning of the summer this committee was saying that we should put 40R somewhere else. So I thought, great. And then suddenly six months later, we have a complete reversal where there's only one member of the planning board who isn't strongly in favor of 40R. So what's the- So I thank you so much. Was that three minutes? It was. I can't get my timer to go off here. But I at least finished by saying that the BL is a transitional zone and the way that the 40R is being planned is not a transitional zone. And so it really negatively impacts the people living in Jason's. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Jean. I would just say that they're the- At least for the area that I was interested in, the BL that actually I, maybe someone in the planning board can correct me but it was actually a lower number of stories than that would be allowed. But again, the setbacks and all that make the BL unworkable. But the proposal by the consultants definitely took into consideration the height of buildings. And I believe it was only three stories. The second round suggested three stories but someone else who knows correctly- Well, that's what we're considering right now. That's what it is right now is the second round. So we've moved on. So just wanted to add that. But we have other three more. I see. Next is Susanna. Hi, Susanna. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Thank you. I'm Susanna Mossbrad. I live at 38 North Prospect Street. I have sent comments into Christine that I believe she said she was going to distribute to you all. My concern is that as I read the draft bylaw, it is eliminating a lot of the kinds of review, the design review and the historic review that protect the historic buildings downtown, many of which are in the subsection two of the proposed district. And I'm very concerned. I think those small buildings give the downtown the texture and the small town feel that the master plan enjoins us to protect and that are very important to many people's view of why they like downtown Amherst. I'm also concerned the small shops are being driven out by these big buildings. And we need small shops because they give people a lot of reasons to come downtown. So those are my concerns. I haven't found a very good forum in which to ask some questions and clarifications of what the intent or what some of the language in the bylaw is. So I think there needs to be more discussion that citizens can take part in. The consultants mainly talk to people who were not residents but who had business interests and not the small businesses, the big businesses. Thank you. Thank you for the time to talk. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Elizabeth. Okay. Hi, Elizabeth. Elizabeth, you're muted. Yes, thank you. Yes, this is Elizabeth Veerling and I'm at 36 Cottage Street. And I wanted to start just by saying that I'm in strong support of a vibrant downtown as well as infill and affordable housing. So I just wanted to preface any of my other comments with that comment. I have also written to the planning board in the past and been at these meetings. I do wanna start by saying that in contrast to the speech that those individuals who spoke at the beginning of the meeting, I disagree that the consultants and that there was a wide discussion of this proposal among residents. As was just pointed out by the previous speaker, the consultants did not speak to a single resident in formulating their proposal. I also would like to agree that the BL zone and design standards as written in this proposal remain non-transitional. They are not transitional. And in fact, the only changes that were made were made because of major pushback by residents and they're still insufficient in my estimation. I would also like to point out that it's unclear to me and I have still not gotten an answer from the planning board or from someone familiar with 40R. My understanding is that the 40R overlay does nothing to the general business district because there's no incentive for a developer to use the 40R standards rather than the standards that are already in place rather than the zoning bylaws that are already in place for the general business district. So we're really only talking about BL as being impacted by 40R and we shouldn't pretend that it's gonna change the general business district. And then just two other points. One point I wanna make is that One East Pleasant and Kendrick Place do nothing for residents outside of those buildings if they even do anything for residents in those buildings. But there's no incentive for anyone to go downtown to see One East Pleasant or Kendrick Place. So if the idea is we're gonna have more of those buildings we're gonna eliminate any reason to go downtown. And then my final point is that I actually find it extremely amusing to see the detailed plans for a playground when and all the discussion about exactly what the sign is gonna look like on a playground. And then we have no kinds of similar drawings, considerations or great detail on what 40R would look like in Amherst. And that I think is ridiculous, frankly. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. I had some thoughts on what you had said but they escaped me right now. But I have to say that like Kendrick Place I have a neighbor that moved into the area because of the jobs that were provided by MassMetral there. And so a lot of people and not students live in the buildings there. So I would temper your comments on those two buildings. And do we? There are two more public comments with two more hands raised. So we have Anastasia would be next. Okay. Hi Anastasia. Hi there, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, good evening. I just wanted to speak up about this issue. I've found the comment from the board very interesting. I actually missed the first public comment section at the beginning of the meeting and have found this conversation very interesting and also some of the comments that I've heard made from residents. I think that input is extremely important. And I agree that I think residents throughout Amherst need to be able to speak up on issues that affect all of them. The downtown absolutely 100% affects every single person in this town, not just people who are living immediately in the downtown area. But I also wanna stress that this community is made up of people of all kinds of backgrounds, including those who cannot afford single family homes, who cannot afford the high priced real estate in Amherst. And they also deserve to live here and not outside of the boundaries of this town. So if we can provide them an opportunity to do that through zoning that has been adopted already by other communities throughout the state, progressive communities, and we wanna count ourselves as being progressive, that it's important that we consider this and give it the seriousness that it deserves. And I also wanna state that what brings people to Amherst, I think people appreciate the bucolic and beautiful scenery in the area. They also appreciate the jobs at UMass, at the universities. These are the things that are driving people to a place like Amherst. They also appreciate the schools that are here. Those are the things that are driving them to Amherst. So it's not the very expensive housing in downtown Amherst. It is all of the different resources. And if they can't live here and yet they have to work here and they can't send their children to school here, we actually don't have a very vibrant community. So I do hope that the planning board and the rest of the folks who have been involved in this conversation are thinking about all of the neighbors that we have here and not just those of privilege. I appreciate that. Thank you. And we have... The last hand raised is Pam Rooney. Okay. Hi, Pam. Hello again, how are you? Good, thank you. I'm actually quite sad that we don't have a vision for our town center and we obviously have some conflicting views on what the look and feel of a town center is. I was actually gonna speak about some of the zoning priorities that you were gonna talk about. Maybe you won't get to those tonight, I don't know. But it certainly occurs to me that given the lack of vision for the town center, yet we are plowing ahead with a 40-hour proposal that has fairly loose and undeveloped design standards and we're plowing ahead with the dozen miscellaneous CRC zoning priorities. And I think what bothers me is that treating them as piecemeal targets doesn't make a hole. It does not mean that we come out the other end with something that's cohesive or applicable. So I would challenge you, the planning board. You've said you're the best planning board in years. I would challenge... Oh. I can't hear you. That might have been my, I'm sorry. That might have been me, I was... I apologize, Pam. How much of my speech do I need? No, no, I'm so sorry. Well, you missed the best part and that I'm challenging the best planning board ever, your words exactly, to take on the responsibility of doing the legwork, doing the homework on what 40-hour will look like if you decide to tackle it. What will it look like? How will it feel? Are you actually creating community by the creation of a very dense BL district? I want you to tell me that because you will be affecting the sense of the town for the next 100 years. Also, as you decide to tackle the zoning, I want to see from this group, what are the ramifications of each of those footnote changes? And I think there are some very clear ramifications and I would like to see you do your homework on what they are and how that actually affects living in Amherst. I'm happy to help, by the way. You mentioned Rob Crowner, but there are in fact other people that have been on the planning board in the past who are available. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. So I think we can go back to the board and Janet, you have your hand up. So I think Pam has spoken, Renee has spoken to this before. And I think that if members of the planning board want to work on the 40-hour, which we all can agree affects certain parts of the BL, I think it'd be good to do a comparison of the 40-hour, however you draft it, to adding the CRC change of adding BL to footnote B and all the other footnotes that attach to the BL and give waivers to an idea of changing the BL to Business Village Center, which gives a lot of flexible zoning, but still keeps heights and things. And to start just looking at three or four options side by side, and what do they look at? What does build that look like? What are the pros and cons of each? And I think that's something that the planning department and the planning board could work on. And it would be really helpful to the discussion because we're talking about the 40-hour in certain parts of the BL in downtown. CRC is talking about changing BL, which is three different parts of Amherst and with no real sense of what that's gonna look like physically. And so I think that's something that we can bring to the table and to the discussion and make it richer. And I look deeply to Chris Brestrup with leadership and maybe I don't know if Ben could help with that in terms of drafting what does build that look like throughout the BL downtown or on route nine or on university drive. And the density numbers could get really big, especially since apartments are now smaller. And that memo that you did in 2016, I think is gonna be helpful, but I think we need to update it because the apartments are smaller. So I think we can, as the planning board, bring some depth to the analysis of saying, let's compare these three different methods for four or five and what does it look like and what's the best one? And also bring the community in to discuss it because they have good ideas and it's their town too. Thank you, Janet. So I guess for the sake of time, we're gonna have to put this back on the agenda for the next meeting, I think would be the wisest thing. But you'll see when we go over zoning priorities and the comprehensive housing policy, that I feel that the town has a little bit of a crisis with regard to the whole housing issue and young families and that sort of thing. And that's only, that's one of the main reasons I'd like to for us to consider 40 arc because that's what it's all about. But let's continue this discussion. And Chris, you put it on the agenda for the next meeting, we'll continue. But it is getting late and we need, we wanna talk about Amherst Hills subdivision update, which I think is good news, Chris. Yeah, so we have gotten word from the developer and his lawyer that the roadway is essentially finished, the work that was gonna go on on the roadway to patch the holes and repay it. And I've gotten confirmation of that from the town engineer that the roadway is pretty much finished. There are things associated with the roadway that remain undone. And I think those probably have to do with some of the drainage infrastructure, but I don't know for sure. So I've reached out to the town engineer to get a sense of what exactly in addition to the roadway surfacing needs to be done and how much does he think it's worth in terms of a cost estimate. We did get a request from Michael Pill who represents Tofino Associates for the planning board to consider rescinding that notice that they have filed with the registry of deeds. The notice requests that the building commissioner not issue building permits for, I think six or seven lots in the Amherst Hills subdivision pending, finishing the roadway work. So I need to talk to the building commissioner about that and I need to talk to the town engineer about exactly what work does remain to be done. And then I'll come back to you with a recommendation about what to do about that notice that you've put in the registry to request that the building commissioner not issue building permits. It's possible that you could move forward with releasing some lots from that notice. So that would be upon the request of the owner slash developer. Yes, and we've received an email with that request. I don't know if I've included that to you. I don't think I did forward it to you. I didn't think it was right for you to act on, but possibly by January 6th that would be right because I will have heard from the town engineer about how much work remains to be done off the roadway surface. Okay. Okay, thank you, Chris. So topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours as part of the meeting for old business. I have a topic that I could report on which is that it appears that the Amherst media site plan review and special permit was not appealed. The deadline for the appeal was supposed to have been December 14th. We filed that decision with those decisions with the town clerk. I think we filed them on November 24th. So in any event as of the close of business on the 14th, there had not been an appeal filed according to the town clerk. So if that holds, then that means that that project can move ahead. So I think that's good news in my mind. On that note, I noticed like within a, might've been the Gazette that the Hills, Henry Hills. What? Henry Hills house? Yeah, Henry Hill. Yeah, so they're putting up a barrier there with regard to our provider or something like that. That's right. But that's, they're completely within their right to do that. They are certainly. Yep. It's in an RV zoning district and they're a single family house so they can do what they want with their single family house. Okay. Yep. Very good. Okay, so on the new business, can we just jump from skip the zoning priorities just because of the comprehensive housing policy, I just want to introduce that. What has been distributed to the planning board? I'm not keeping track on that, but okay. So we have a couple of pages from the CRC, but I believe there's much more. Just met with the CRC, they had the chair of the, well, the CRC committee members, then I was there and they had chair of the ZBA, the CPAC, Sarah Marshall, the environmental commission, they never forget the name of it, the acronym there. You see it. Yes. And I think in that, that was it. So anyway, they brought on. And so the question is that we're going to be looking at this pretty detailed policy for how the town approaches what I term the housing crisis, but John Hornick has been developing this for many, many years and I think the CRC is pretty much adopting what he's saying, but they're putting their own revisions to it. And we have a policy, but now they're working on measurable goals aspect of it. But again, Chris, we haven't distributed any draft to the board. No, we did distribute a draft. I think it was either last year or the year before, but that was the draft that the housing trust produced. And then now the town council has asked the CRC to come up with a version that the town council can adopt. So the CRC is looking at the version that the housing trust produced, but they're taking part of it and not taking other parts and they're rewarding it to their own liking. So they do intend to come up with a housing policy, working with John Hornick and the housing trust, but it helps me that the town council can accept and adopt. So in concept, I guess it's a decision that we can make as a board. Would we make individual comments on this policy and forward it to the CRC, or we would rather collectively as a group provide our bullets with regard to comments there? So that was just a process, order of a business there. How might we want to approach this topic? So that much I know, I don't know if anyone wants to speak to that or not. Doug? Yeah, I guess I'm a little... I thought I received a draft housing policy document that came out of CRC or maybe the town council a couple of months ago. It was like in October. Am I confused that it wasn't this comprehensive housing policy and it was some other document? It might have been the older one that just the housing trusts developed. So I'm not sure that had the CRC's fingerprint on it. Okay. Chris, do... I don't think the CRC has come up with a complete document yet. They're working on it piece by piece. I think they're going through the housing trust document bit by bit and putting their own stamp on it. But if Doug thinks he has the document that he received a few months ago, I'd be interested in knowing maybe he could forward it to me and I can figure out what it is. Yeah. So we have nothing here by just, it's coming. And I was just interested in how the board felt about being a group and voting on our comments on this or just doing it individually and sending it to the CRC. How do folks feel about that? Janet? Okay. I think it might be useful to read the policy and have us discuss it together. I'm not sure. And then I think it might be more efficient just for us to send our individual comments unless there's something issue we feel really strongly on because I always find those, I don't know, I'm kind of 50-50, but I think I'd like to hear what other people think of the policy when we get it. But I don't know if we, we might spend a lot of time saying this bullet, when maybe we'll just send 20 small bullets or something. I don't know. Tom, or excuse me, Andrew first. Thanks, Jack. And I think I may be confused because when we say we're waiting for something, what is this draft provision eight that we got in our materials? The comprehensive housing policy. Yeah, that looks like more of an abstract of it, but there's a longer version, but it lacks the implementation goals or the measurable goals. So there's like the back half of it isn't in the draft. And so one of the comments was like, let's just look at the entire draft versus the front half, which is the policy. I think, you know, John Ornig has been a proponent of having these measurable goals you don't want to achieve them unless you, you put the goals out there. So it's, you know, let's get this a much, you know, affordable housing out there within a particular, you know, time span and measure that. And we've fallen short of what, you know, the conceptual goals were that have been laid out in the past. But so we are going to be receiving them that the full view shortly or... I think that they are, yeah, they understand that they should just release the draft of everything and not just the policy, even though they feel a little bit more confident about the policy part versus the measurable, you know, part of it. And then the question is, do we provide comments for the full draft individually as a group is what you recommend yet? Yes, and that's why I was just wondering kind of this kind of doing a straw poll. Yeah, I think, yeah, I would probably agree with Janet. I mean, I think, you know, we need to review it individually, come up with our recommendations and then, you know, perhaps we can review our recommendations together, but it's all gonna begin with an individual review anyway. And I think that there's value in seeing what everybody thinks before we... if we decide to come up with a group consensus. Thank you, Tom. Thanks, Jack. Yeah, I agree with both Andrew and Janet. I do think we need to have a discussion. My sense is hopefully we can have some key items like benefits, concerns, questions, similar to Mandy Jo, that we may all share in common. It may come just naturally out of our conversation, but if it doesn't, then I do think it's probably more efficient for us to write up our own individual summaries with some kind of standardized format the way Mandy Jo and so I forgot who the other person was that came from town council. So I agree, we do need to discuss and hopefully we can come to consensus, but if we can't, then I think we need to issue our own individual statements. Okay, so, you know, at this point, it's just a heads up that this will be coming to us. And I think it's a very important document for the town. So, you know, I hope we all can give it our best in terms of promoting it. And then Pam, I'm wondering if we, when we were talking about the Amherst Hills that we skipped over Mr. Master Alexis, well, I didn't hear you ask for a public comment. I did not, I did not, but I didn't know that there would be any, but I'm sure that's, can we go back and revisit that in, yeah, something to say on that. I think Chris is getting ready to speak. No, I'm not, sorry, but I think it would be good to hear from Mr. Master Alexis. He's probably going to react to what I said or maybe he has further information. Okay. Hello, Mr. Master Alexis. Hello, everybody, can you hear me? Yes. All right, great. And first of all, thank you very much, Chairman Jensak for allowing me to speak here tonight. I'll be brief. I know it's been a long meeting here. And first of all, I just wanna say, I've been sitting here for three hours and I wanna compliment you all on the careful consideration that you've given every issue that's come before the board. It's been really interesting for me to watch. So thank you for your service here in doing this, okay? First of all, I wanna say that the road looks great. Our road looks great and I'm very happy about that. So, and I wanna thank you for that, okay? And the town engineer has been driving around every day that the road's been doing that. And I haven't been watching it, haven't been watching for him, but we're all working from home. And I see his little blue truck driving by. And I wanna thank him for that. But I wanna just say this, make no mistake about this, that this work was done in this neighborhood because the planning board put the moratorium on the building permits and the sewer gups, okay? Which if we go through this, which I'm not, was a replacement for the initial requirements in the subdivision for the work to be done. So I'm very happy that the developer did the work, but I would ask the planning board to not remove the moratoriums on the sewer hookups and building permits until all the work in the subdivision is done. So when all that work is done, and your requirements, the previous planning board, put those requirements in this subdivision, when that work is done, then release those building permits and suing hookup moratorium. And then the subdivision will be complete. And after one winter, which I think is this winter, the road can be offered to the town and the subdivision will be completed. Okay, so that is what I'm asking for your consideration. Keep the hookups and the moratoriums on the sewer hookups and building permits until all the work is done. That's all we're asking because it's been a 15 year subdivision. It's taken until this point for the road to be done. And we just want the work to be done. I know there's another issue here that's not related to the planning board with regard to a lawsuit. We're very comfortable defending that lawsuit as I represent the neighborhood here, but please do what you need to do that all the work in the subdivision is completed, okay? And that's really, and keep oversight of this project. If you release the lots, there's no incentive and no oversight for the developer to do the work. And thank you for listening to me. Thank you, Jim. I have a question. Yes. I wanted to, first of all, thank Mr. Master Alexis for speaking tonight. I wanted to ask him to call me so that I can have a phone call with him and talk about moving forward. But my question to him tonight is when he refers to completing the subdivision, is he talking about completing the portion of the subdivision that is currently built or is he talking about completing the entire subdivision, including the roadways that haven't been built yet? Well, that's, I just wanna say, can you hear me, Mr. Preston? Okay, great, thank you. You know, Mr. Preston, that's a conversation that I'd like to have with you because there is an entire road that is undeveloped with a gate on it. And I don't think that it's necessary for us to complete that one, not me, but to Fino to complete that work before the moratoriums and sewer hookups are released. But I'd like to know what the developer is planning to do with that road, but I'm happy to call you and discuss this with you because we wanna be reasonable about this and all we really want is our subdivision to be completed. So I hope that answers your question, but I'm happy to talk to you. Thank you. Okay, should we talk tomorrow? Yes, you can call me tomorrow. All right, great, I'll give you a call, thank you. Thanks, Jim. So moving on to the last item in our new business, which again, it's 9.30, we had 20 minutes that I proposed for this, but I don't even know that I can do 20 minutes at this point, but I just wanna say, congratulations in this year C and Chris Brestrup for the detail that's provided in this memo. It's thorough and there's just a lot in there and we can see where Chris has been spending her time in a beneficial way. So I just wanted to say that. But again, we can do one round of comments and obviously this will be back on the agenda for the next meeting. So we're talking about the December 5th, 2020 memorandum from the CRC with regard to zoning priorities, recommendation, so if folks wanna speak to that, now's the time, Janet. So I asked you all to put this on the agenda because as you now know, the CRC has recommended like eight to 10 zoning changes, some of them to happen within three months after I guess town council, if they approve. And a lot of them are interconnected and they also sort of tie into changes in the dimensional table that is riddled with footnotes and kind of hard to follow. And so one of the reasons I asked to put on the agenda and it could be a preliminary discussion of, is this like what happens with the planning board next? Like at the CRC meeting, they were saying, we're not gonna write this zoning, we look to the planning board and the planning department to work on that. And then we also have that flow chart, that procedures chart that we agreed to last June or May about how the CRC and the planning board will work together when there's some, proposals on the table. So I'm wondering like, what's our next step as a board? Are we in that flow chart where we're going back and forth with the CRC, we're doing our analysis. And I just kind of wondered like, what happens now? The other reason I really wanted to bring it to is that I thought the CRC was gonna be doing a much deeper analysis of the zoning changes, like their community impact review, which they have a very detailed process and policy for how they'll look at impacts on different communities and land and the whole thing. And so like for me, like when we're looking at zoning changes as a planning board or a town or anybody, I think we really need to understand the changes, like what the existing zoning is and what the zoning, the change means in terms of the number of lots, the number of units, what does build out look like on a lot? What does build out look like in the area? And there's like no pictures to this. And some of this stuff could get very dense and very big, particularly in outlying areas and residential neighborhoods. And I don't feel like I understand what that's gonna look like or what the impact is. And then, so I think we need to do that kind of analysis. So we know what we're talking about. And then again, looking at option side by side, like I don't have any sense that CRC was comparing one option over the other and saying, oh, here's the problem. Here's some fixes. This is what one will do with the other and what are the impacts or pros and cons of each. So I'd like to see any change that we have much less eight or 10 have that kind of deeper look. And then also as I say constantly, I will say constantly is that the town residents need to know what's happening in the town, like in general, because we know we have, what we do in one section impacts others, but people who are directly affected need to know what's being proposed. And so I wanna see that kind of those three principles applied to these changes. And I'm hoping that we'll take a deeper look and the planning department will take a deeper look so we can kind of offer that. But I'm really wondering like, where do we go from here? Janet, three principles, what? One is that we need to really understand as a community and a board, the changes, what the existing zoning is and what the changes will be, like in terms of the number of units affected, the number of lots and what a bill that would look like on one lot, but over time in an area. I don't have any sense of that analysis or that I have no visual picture. And then also we just need to, the number of second principle is really to look at option side by side and consider the effects. When I started looking at some of the effects in the residential neighborhoods, it was really concerning to me, how one foot now would be the other and I could talk about that more specifically, but I don't wanna do it now. And then also that the residents of the town need to be involved. Like they have to know that these changes are being proposed and be part of that process, particularly if in the neighborhoods where people are most affected. And that hasn't happened at the CRC level. It's like, I thought they were gonna do that. Like in the summer, they said, we wanna talk about the priorities months ourselves and they ran that priorities process. And I thought their plan was to take it to the community and get some impact, input. And then when I asked them when they're gonna do that, it turns out they weren't gonna do that. I had asked that question in the summer, I thought it was gonna happen because they said so. And then I asked it again recently and they said they're not gonna do that. So that seems like a big missing whole that I'd love to see us kind of fill in a bit. Thank you. Chris. So I think that what is going to happen is that the planning staff will draft some of these things and bring them to the planning board and with documentation like Janet is asking for. And we did do some of this, as Janet said a number of years ago when some of these things were proposed. So similar to the way we brought zoning changes to town meeting with backup and analysis, I think we will bring them to the planning board with backup and analysis. And then the planning board can decide whether the zoning amendment is ready to move forward to town council. So I think there'll be a lot of working together of the planning department and the planning board and that town council will be interested in learning about these things and perhaps giving their support or making changes. But it's mostly gonna be planning department working with planning board to develop these zoning amendments. That's my prediction, I should say. Did the CRC know about the impacts, how the BL could change? Did they get all those numbers and information that you had? Because I think the memo that you wrote in 2016, I think all those numbers are worse because the units will be so much smaller. Not worse, I guess that's a bad, that's a judgment, but it's gonna be so much more. And so I would like to get that, I can't run those numbers, I'm not that kind of person, but did the CRC see that or analyze that? No, the CRC didn't see that. This was based on lists of the planning board and the planning department have been working on for years about things that need to be worked on. So the CRC hasn't gone into any specific detailed analysis of these things and they're counting on us to present that information to them. Okay. And if you'd like to forward that memo that I wrote in 2016 to me, I would be happy to receive it. Thank you. Yeah, somebody sent it to me, yeah, okay. Well, without any other comment from the board, we can move on. So I see no hands raised and also from the public, I don't see anything. So let's close that. It will be back on the agenda for our next meeting and topics not recently anticipated 40 hours prior to the meeting for new business. Can't think of anything. Okay, great. Form A&R subdivision applications. We have two of form A&R applications and we'd like to present them to you and Pam can bring up some pictures. One of them is at the corner of Harkness Road and Belcher Town Road. And the other one is on East Pleasant Street. And I don't know with which one Pam is going to bring up first. Whichever one was in the packet. I think the one that was in the packet was, I don't remember actually. I've seen both of them more recently. Just bring up one of them if you can. Yep. I'm trying. Bear with me one second. The one that was in the packet was Belcher Town in Harkness. 142 Harkness Road. Here it is. Yep. So Harkness Road is on the bottom of this drawing here. Actually this drawing is very useful because Belcher Town Road is the road that slashes through from Northwest or actually from the upper left to the lower right. Belcher Town Road is route nine. Harkness Road is the one that goes north from there. And the property that is surrounded by yellow is the property that's being proposed to be. Sorry. Why does this happen to me every time? You're flying around town, aren't we? Hold on. We're gonna try it again. It's the late hour. We're gonna finish soon, Pam. We're gonna go the old fashioned way. We're not gonna do this. We're gonna do it like this. There you go, Chris. Okay, so that's the location. And then can we look at the ANR plan, Pam? Yes. So the ANR plan, in this case, the orientation of the plan is different and Harkness Road is on the bottom of the page and Belcher Town Road goes in a kind of upward direction angled up. So what the landowner is trying to do here is create four lots out of one. And you can see the lots demarcated, lots one through four. Each one of them has the appropriate amount of lot area. Each one of them has the appropriate amount of frontage and they all have the building circle superimposed on them. So we would be looking, and the other thing is that they've shown here that at least 20,000 square feet of these lots is upwind area. So this has been reviewed by the town engineer and with your permission or authorization, we would ask Jack to sign this on behalf of the planning board. The signature means that this is not subject to subdivision control law. In other words, there's no roadway being created here. Subdivision would be a new roadway that's created and then new lots off that roadway. These are frontage lots and they're being created off existing roadways. So does anyone have any questions? Janet has a question. Janet. I can't really see it. There's like a lot of swiggles and I'm not sure. So are there any easements or wetlands or I can't see what I'm really looking at. I feel like I need to- There are wetlands, yep. And I think you have this in your packet, but maybe you didn't have the A&R plan in your packet. We hadn't scanned it by then. So let's see, let's take lot four over on the right. Lot four has a line that looks sort of like a necklace and it goes from Harkness Road and it follows up towards the western property line and that's the wetland line. Okay. And then there's a 50 foot offset from that which is essentially where a new house could be built. So they're showing that a new house could be built kind of in the lower left-hand corner of this property here. They're also showing, let's see if I can get, I have the people in the way. I have people in the way. Okay. So the lot would be 80,000 square feet and the upland area of that lot is 41,000 square feet. So that is more than 20,000 square feet. So that meets the buildable lot area requirement. It meets the zoning by-law requirement. I believe that is in the RLD zoning district and there's a requirement for 200 feet of frontage and that's why this circle here is 200 feet in diameter. Okay. Thank you. The other lots like the one that's noted as lot one has 271,304 square feet and over four acres of upland. So that qualifies with regard to upland as far as being a buildable lot. It's in the RN zoning district which requires 120,000 linear feet of frontage. So it is required to show a building circle of 120 square feet which is right here and they put the, I think there's an existing house on the lot. So they've located the building circle around the existing house. I guess I have control here, don't I? This is the wetland line right here and it's the 50 foot offset line. I cannot see Chris's cursor. Oh, you can see my cursor. Okay, well, maybe Pam can show the... I'm sorry, I was writing notes at the same time. Where are you, Chris? On lot one, can Pam show the wetland line? Oh, there's the zoning line. Yes, the RLD and the RN zone. This is the wetlands. Nope, the wetland is that little thing that looks like a necklace. It's got like a long line and a little short. Yeah, that's the wetland line. So things west of that and north of that are wetland. Then it shows a 50 foot setback line which is that dashed line that is parallel to the wetland line. And everything to the east of that is considered to be upland. So that's lot one. And then there are two other lots here. You can scroll down a bit. We can look at those. And what do you want to do, Chris? Can you scroll to the south? So we can see, but not to the south. To the east, to the bottom of this drawing. Okay, so, and let me see the lot numbers. Lot three and lot two. So your cursor is right near- Oh, I see. Okay, this is lot two. Yes. And this one is lot three. I see what you're saying. Yeah, so now scroll up a bit so that I can see what the surveyor has written about lot two and lot three. Why don't you do that? All right, I'm gonna have to go over on the side and use that little scroll bar. Can you do that? Yeah. Rather than sliding that square, go to the bottom of the right-hand side and click briefly on the arrow at the bottom. Oh, that's right. Yep, excellent. Okay. Is that what you want me to do? Thank you. Yes, that's perfect. So lot three is required to have 20,000 square feet total. So it has 35,000 square feet total. And it looks like it has 26,000 square feet of upland area. And that exceeds the 20,000 square feet that's required. The little line there that looks like a necklace is the wetland line. And there's the 50 foot offset for the buffer that needs to be respected where a house can't be built. Nice and safe. Yep. And there's a circle there that shows the building circle, which again, this is in the RN zoning district. So the building circle is 120 feet in diameter. And to the left of this is lot two, which again has wetland in the upper left corner. Yep, Pam is tracking it right now. It has a 50 foot buffer zone against the wetland. It has the 120 foot building circle. And it is also in the RN zoning district. And it's got 61,547 square feet, which exceeds the 20,000 square feet that's required. And it has 42,000 square feet of upland, which exceeds the 20,000 square feet that's required. So all of these lots meet the zoning requirements. And the 10 engineer has looked at these for other issues and has not made any comments about this. Thank you for that exhaustive thing. It's too good that it's not like a cluster because it could sort of get off the wetlands better. But anyway, this is not my lens. Okay. All right, is everybody good with this? And we'll ask Jack to sign this. Chris, it's Johanna. I have a quick question and maybe this is just a teachable moment, but can you help explain like the building circle and what are the impacts in the building circle and why is it okay for a building circle to overlap with wetlands and buffer zones? So the building circle is described in section 6.3 of the zoning bylaw. It's a requirement of a lot that's created. If you wanna be able to build on a lot, then you have to show the building circle and the building that you're going to construct has to be within that circle. It can be anywhere within that circle as long as it meets the setback requirements. In the case of lot four, I do see that the building circle overlaps into the wetland and into the 50 foot buffer zone, but there's plenty of room left in the rest of the circle for a house to be built. So it doesn't matter that some of that building circle is overlapping into the wetland. Is that? There will be some like who makes sure that the house doesn't get built in the wetland and that the wetland isn't disturbed during construction and to all that. So when the developer or the homeowner comes to the building commissioner for a building permit, the inspectors and the building commissioner will look at this map and they will know whether the building is proposed to be built in the proper location. So that's how they know. The building commissioner and his inspectors take care of that. Thank you so much. So I just, I think it'd be a general concurrence. Do we need to do a roll call for this? Nope, as long as nobody objects. Okay. I'm sorry, Doug, I'm so sorry. I saw that a while back, yeah. Yeah, I guess I wanted to ask, are there any limitations on curb cuts along Harkness Road? The parcel that's at the intersection with Belcher Town looks like it might be a little close to that intersection for a curb cut into lot two. So I think that the town engineer has a policy of not allowing a curb cut within 75 feet of an intersection. So it looks like that where the building circle is, is far enough back on the lot that it would not be within 75 feet of that intersection. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Doesn't look like it. Okay. All right, so let's move on to the next one. Yes, so upcoming ZBA applications. Nope, we need to go through, excuse me, we need to go through another A&R. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The quiz, did we get like a general consensus to endorse this one? Yes. 20-20-104, okay. All right, so I will move this on, hold on. Here's the next one, 610 East Pleasant Street. So the next one is located just north of Eastman Lane and Tilson Farm Road, which is in the vicinity of the North Amherst Fire Station and the UMass Police Station. So Pam has outlined part of this lot in yellow. This is an area where there's already an existing house and what the property owner wants to do is combine the two lots, one lot to the north and one lot to the south into a bigger lot. So in other words, combining three lots into one. Two of these lots are a little bit undersized in terms of their, not in terms of their lot area or frontage, but in terms of the way they're configured. And so I think that neither the lot on the north nor the lot on the south could contain the appropriate size building circle. They're sort of trapezoids. So anyway, if Pam will show us the A&R now, that would be helpful. So this is the A&R map. It's a little bit different from the other one that you saw. It's not, different surveyors have different ways of drawing these, but in any event you can see the existing house on the big lot in the middle. And then you can see the dashed lines that represent the previous lot line. And I think there's a note on them. If you can zoom in on this a little bit, can you do that, Pam? Do you dare me to try? Yeah. Okay. Zoom in on this. We may never get back. It's all right. Keep going. Wait a minute. I can't. Lot line is. To be removed. You see this right here. Is that what you were trying to read? Yes. Lot line to be removed. And it says the same down below. So those two lines are removed and the three lots are being combined into one lot that will be 3.12 acres in size. And that's more than is necessary for this zoning district. I think this is our end. Do you have the application there with you, Pam? I do not Chris. All right. Well, in any event. You can see that the two lots for to the north and south are appropriately sized for this zoning district, which I believe is our end. So when you put them all together, they're more than big enough. And there's, you can imagine that there could be a. Building circle where that building already exists. That would be 120 linear feet in diameter. Because each one of the smaller lots has a frontage. That's 120 feet. So do you authorize Mr. Gemsick to sign this plan? Doug has his hand up. Yep. I wondered whether we should anticipate another A and R coming down the pike that splits this new lot into, into two lots. I think you might anticipate that. Yep. Thank you. Any other comment. Okay. I guess the, you know, I think we're going to move on. We're good to go presumptive, presumptive approval here. All right. Thank you. Okay. So let's, the next would be. ZBA. Applications. And it's got a handle on that. No, I don't have a handle on it, but the ZBA is going to meet next on January 7. And they will take up application FY. 20 21 11. For. To request a special permit to modify an already approved special permit. In order to remove a condition, condition number six that requires. The single family house to be owner occupied and it's located at 180 summer street. So that will be on January 7th and also on January 7th. They hopefully will be reviewing their hopefully will have received and will be reviewing a special permit application submitted by the town. So that will allow for an oversized sign. And I'm having the same problem. Chris had and an offsite sign and residential zoning district. Which will be on the corner of 280 main street and triangle street. So it will actually be on the property. And it will also be on the corner of the. The Emily Dickinson museum. And this is potentially what the, what the sign might look like. There's going to be another part to this sign, which is down below where it says town center and it will be a sign directing people to the entrance to the Emily Dickinson museum. So another one down here. Yes, that's right. So that's going to be reviewed by the zoning board. So that's it. That's it for me. Just planning board feel that they would like to. Have a presentation about either of these projects. Mr. McDougal has this hand, right? Yes, Andrew. Yeah, maybe a question for Tom. Is this, is this an example of the weight, the new way finding signage that. I've been hearing about or. Chris. Yeah. So. That would please me. Okay. So there is, there is a system that's being rolled out. And this does look like the language that's in some of the documents that I've seen, but I haven't seen the whole system deployed in yet. And that's coming back to the board and probably around the same time. So yes, this is part of that way finding system. None of the other signs are as big as the one that's going to be installed on the Emily Dickinson site. The reason for that is that Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson. The museum agreed to have the town sign. Located on their property. In exchange for having the. Emily Dickinson sign down below. And that's what made their sign on that property. Very large. And. And that's the only one that actually needs a land use permit because the other signs are all in the town right of way. So that's the only one that needs a land use permit. And that's being done by the, the roundabout at the intersection of triangle street and East pleasant street. Although. These new signs are going to be different. The brown of the main part of the sign is darker. The band below is green rather than a sort of yellowish color. And we think that they're better looking, but. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thanks for the extra info. Mr. Marshall also has his hand raised. Doug. Yeah, I'm just wondering whether the arrow. To town center is accurate for this sign. And if so, why it's not telling people to continue on. On main street straight ahead. It's not going straight to the right or left. So this sign is kind of a generic sign. Part of that system. We don't have a picture of the sign that's going to be presented to the ZBA because we don't have the correct arrow direction. And we also don't have the. The band down below with the Emily Dickinson museum sign on it. But if you'd like us to bring you that one back, we'd be happy to do that. I don't need you to. Okay. Great. That's it for the ZBA. Yep. Okay. So we can go on to upcoming SPP, SPRS, UB applications. There are always things out there in the wings, but nothing has come in recently. So, you know, we're always talking to people about projects that they have in mind, but nothing has been submitted. Very good. Pounding Boree committee and liaison reports. Pioneer Valley planning commission. We had a regional meeting what on the 10th of December. We're going to be looking at the top 10 resolves for the pioneer valley planning. Commission district. And then they spoke to the. The direct local. Technical. Assistance grant that Chris, you know, mentioned earlier. How, you know, they're there to support. The municipalities and their jurisdiction. I think some mention of the housing crisis. In our area. Was made by Catherine Roddy. And. And then. A little bit about what's going on in Beacon Hill. I think it's a little bit different. And. And then. Little bit about what's going on in Beacon Hill. Some environmental justice issues. And that's, that was about it. So. That's all I have. On to the CPAC Andrew. Thanks, Jack. We had a wrapped up sort of our. Five weeks sprint of meetings hearing proposals. There were 13 that we started with, we ended up approving 12. One of them is sort of deferred. It didn't, it didn't meet the criteria for CPAC. I think I'd mentioned previously that. The state match was larger than expected this year, which added an extra $300,000 to. To our pool. So those projects have been submitted to town committee. Town council. And. Yeah, I. Was hoping we'd have the last minutes. Available in case there's any questions about specific projects. They don't have that. At the ready, but can, can speak to any of them. If you'd like in more detail at the next meeting or. You know, if you want, if you have questions about any of them now, I can, I can answer any of that. I remember off the top of my head. But it was a, it was a very good exercise. And I was happy to be part of that. And it was, I think, you know, lots of excitement for the projects that we had. And it really was a diverse pool as is required. But nonetheless, still a nice diverse pool of projects, which will impact the town positively. Well, thanks for taking that on Andrew. And we have. Commission. Oh, sorry. I'd like to report that it's snowing. I'm in my basement. So I have no idea with no windows. I knew it was coming. To the ad commission. Doug, are you appointed yet or. Or what? Yeah. Well, it seems like I can start participating, but they haven't had any meetings. So. No action. All right. Thank you. And the design review board, Tom. Yeah, we had a few items that came up. We had a meeting yesterday. One was just that the cares act is asking for these signage systems that we talked about information about. COVID preparedness within Amherst. These were required to be installed by the end of the year, which was not something that was apparent to them at the time. We had an emergency meeting to make sure that those are approved and those go through. So those should be installed by the end of the year. With some, like I said, COVID preparedness information. And then the other thing that popped up was approving another, an outdoor space for the spoke restaurant on East pleasant street. They are taking over the Amherst copy space that was there last year. And they're going to be able to do that. And they're going to be able to do that. And they're going to be expanding all the way along. Outdoor patios. And they're going to take over the third one and put up potentially a new sign there. So just some exterior modifications. Which are all approved. That'll be the whole building now, right? Yeah. Yeah. That used to be. Like a sub place. Yeah. The best sub place. I know I loved it. Healthy portions. All right. Thanks, Tom. And then the zoning subcommittee is. I'm not sure why that's on the agenda, but. Do we need new members? Maria. At some point. Okay. So we reported the chair. I would say that the next meeting. We're going to have someone from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission that actually is an Amherst resident, Doug Hall, Douglas Hall. And he has been doing amazing work with regard to the, you know, database kind of review of the effects of COVID. And what we would expect. The impacts to be longterm. And the town council. Are invited. To join us for that presentation. But it's very informative and kind of gives us a perspective of what. What's next. Through this. And again, I hope you all appreciate it, but that'll be in our next meeting, January. Jack, I believe that's January 20th, isn't it? Oh, January 20. Yeah. So not the next meeting. I have two meetings from now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And basically that, yeah, that's, that's all I have. In Chris. Well, I spilled the beans earlier about the lack of appeal on the Amherst media. That was going to be my report of staff. Okay. I couldn't wait to tell you. And I hope. Great. Hey, I wish everyone, you know, happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. We were doing good work. And, and, and Chris. And Pam. Appreciate everything you guys do. I mean, it's. So much on your plate. I understand. Thank you. So. Holidays to everyone. Yeah, happy holidays. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year 2021. Let's flip the page. It was an exciting year. Exciting. Yeah. We had, we had to learn a lot of new things and we had to learn to be on the fly. Right, Chris. We did. But you know what, now we can work from home during the snow day tomorrow. That's not fair. No more snow days. And we didn't cancel the planning board meeting because of snow either. So. Very good. See you all next year. Good night. Bye.