 The appointed hour is 6.30 having been reached. I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals. My name is Steve Judge, as chair of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals, I call this meeting to order. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, general laws chapter 30A, section 18, and the governor's March 15th, 2020 order, imposing strict limitation on the number of people that may gather in one place. This public hearing of the town of Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but the public can listen to the proceedings by clicking on a link on the town's webpage. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts general laws chapter 40A and article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst Zoning By-law, this public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties of interest. We'll begin with the roll call of the regular members of the ZBA. I'm here, Mr. Judge, I'm here. Mr. Langsdale, Ms. O'Meara, Ms. O'Meara. I think you're muted, but I know you're there. Ms. Parks. Here. Mr. Maxfield. Here. And the associate members, Ms. Waldman, Mr. Barrick. Here. Mr. Greeny. Here. And Mr. Meadows. Here. Also in attendance is Marine Pollock Planner and Dave Washevich, building inspector. And Rob Mora. Oh, Rob Mora is here as well, great. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of Chapter 48 by the general laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important elements of the Amherst Zoning By-law is section 10.38. Specific findings from this section must be made for all of our decisions. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification or additional information. After the board has completed its questions. Generally. Excuse me. There we go. I had a peanut before I started the call. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. This public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raise hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, please state your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings for information about the project and input from the public is gathered followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information and time, it will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition is heard by the board is distinct and is evaluated on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for a special permit, the board has 90 days from the close of its hearing to file a decision. For a variance, the board has a hundred days from the date of the filing to file its decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members and is filed with the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there is a 20 day appeal prop period for an agreed party to contest the decision with a relevant judicial body in superior court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of deeds to take effect. This hearing can be viewed on the town's YouTube channel as well. Tonight, we have the following agenda. A public hearing on ZBA 2021-06, backyard ADUs request a special permit to allow a supplemental detached dwelling unit as accessory to a one family detached dwelling under sections 5.0111 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw. Located at 34 Baker Street, map 13D, parcel 46. Neighborhood residents are in zoning district. This is continued from November 12th, our hearing on December, November 12th, 2020. Members sitting for this are Steve Judge, Ms. Parks, Mr. Maxfield, Ms. O'Meara, and Mr. Greening. ZBA FY2021-10, Lawrence Hansen, requests a special permit to modify the previously approved special permit ZBA FY2004-41 in order to remove condition nine that requires a permit to expire upon chain of ownership and replace it with a condition that requires a new owner to submit a new management plan and complaint response to the ZBA review and approval at a public meeting. Located at 338 Pine Street, map 5B, parcel 55. Neighborhood residents are in zoning district. Members sitting for this matter are Mr. Judge, Ms. Parks, Mr. Maxfield, Ms. O'Meara, and Mr. Greening. The first order of business is ZBA FY2021-06, backyard ADUs located at 34 Baker Street. We have received a request from the applicant to continue the hearing on this matter until February. I'm unaware that the applicant wishes to speak to the board on this. Correct, I spoke to the applicant and he submitted an email requesting the continuance to a date and time certain in February. And I said that I could, in addition, convey that to the board. So, and I said that his attendance was optional for tonight. Are there any questions or comments from the board on the request to continue this matter? Are there any public comments regarding this matter? And I want to remind the public that any comments on this matter shall be limited to whether this application will be continued until February and not on the application itself. No indication of public comment. Hearing no further comments, I move we continue this matter until February 11th. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Park seconds. Is there any discussion on the motion to continue this until February 11th? If not, a vote occurs on the motion. It's a roll call vote. I vote aye. Ms. O'Meara. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Ms. Maxfield. Aye. Mr. Greeny. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. So we'll deal with this matter on our February 11th meeting. The next matter on the agenda is ZBA FY 2021. Lawrence Hansen requesting a special permit to modify a previously approved special permit, ZBA FY 2004-41, in order to remove a condition, number nine, that requires the permit to expire upon chain of ownership and replace it with the condition that requires a new owner to submit a new management plan and a complaint response form for the ZBA review and approval at a public meeting. It's located at 338 Pine Street, map 5B, parcel 55, neighborhood residents are in zoning district. We've received the following submissions, a modified management plan and a copy of special permit ZBA FY 2004-0041. Are there any disclosures from board members regarding this matter? Does the applicant wish to speak before the board? Larry, I've promoted you to a panelist. So you're able to unmute yourself. Hi everybody. Thanks for hearing me out and no, no additional comments. We submitted all the paperwork. Mr. Hansen, just give your name and address for the record, please. Yeah. Lawrence Hansen, 36 Jeremy Drive, Westfield nice. And yeah, we submitted all the paperwork. I just wanted to attend just to see if you guys had any additional questions and those about it. For the benefit of the board, the issue before us tonight is the desire to remove condition nine of the original special permit which required upon change of ownership, the special permit would expire. And instead, what's before us is that upon change of ownership, a management plan and a complaint response form should be submitted to the ZBA for review and for approval at a public meeting. That's what you're requesting, correct? By way of background, there were a lot of, for the benefit of the board, there were a lot of special permits granted 15 and 20 years ago that had this provision. Often the ZBA has, when there is a change of ownership has moved to amend the special permit to require that management and complaint response forms and plans be submitted to the ZBA and not have the special permit expire. It's been something we've done quite a bit in the past and that's by way of background to the members of the board. Does anybody have any questions for the applicant? Hearing none, are there any public comments regarding this? No public comments. Then I move that we modify special permit ZBA FY 2000 dash 00041 by amending condition nine to require that on change of ownership, the new owner submit a new management plan and a complaint response form for the ZBA review and approval at public hearing and that we approve the management plan and the complaint response form submitted in to the body previously and that is on our record today. Do I have a second? Second. Mr. Maxfield seconds the motion. Is there any discussion on the motion? Mr. Mora. Oops. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I just want to clarify, you said public hearing, I think you meant public meeting. Thank you, I did mean public meeting. Yes, thank you for the clarification. Mr. Chair, I asked, yeah, we should amend the motion. So we amend the motion to delete, I move we amend the motion to delete hearing and insert public, insert meeting. Second. Second it. We're gonna need a roll call vote on that. I vote aye. Ms. O'Mara. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Mr. Greeny. Aye. Now we're discussing if she's on the underlying motion. Is there any discussion on the underlying motion? If not, the vote occurs on the underlying motion as amended. Let's see. Roll call vote. Yes, Mr. Greeny. I do have a question. Okay. So I don't know if anyone on the board knows or anyone present might know, but has it there been some change in owner occupancy requirements on duplexes since 2004? Is there any relevant change in bylaws that has occurred between 2004 and now that would be relevant to our making this decision? Is anyone aware? I do not know the answer to that. I don't think there's anything relevant, but I'll ask staff to opine on that if they know the answer. I suppose I should have been more ahead on this and looked into it. It seems to me there might have been something where requirements of owner occupancy on duplexes, some change in bylaw to that extent. I mean, to that effect. Anyway, I'm asking and they know one knows. Mr. Mora? So since 2004, there's been a couple of changes related to duplexes. One is that the bylaw established a different use classification for owner occupied and non-owner occupied duplexes. The other change that occurred in recent years is that in a non-owner occupied duplex, the permit actually does expire, but only in the RG district. This is in the RN district. So if this one was being permitted today, the current thinking of the board in recent years is not to expire permits on the change of ownership and rather put the condition that you've is part of your motion now. So I give you the answer. Mr. Greeny? To some extent, anyway, no. Any further comments or questions? There being none, this is a roll call vote on the motion to amend condition nine and to condition accept the management and the complaint response form. I vote aye. Ms. O'Meara? Aye. Ms. Parks? Aye. Mr. Maxfield? Aye. Mr. Greeny? Aye. Motion is unanimous. Motion carries. Larry? So Larry will provide you a special permit after the board reviews the decision and signs it in its file with the town clerk will provide you a copy. So then you can record it with the registry of deeds. The cover letter will go into detail of all the steps that are needed. Great. Thank you. Since there was no other matters before the public hearing, I move we close the public hearing and open a public meeting to deal with administrative matters and for the board discussion. Do I have a second? Second. Is there any discussion on the motion? If not, the vote occurs on the motion. It's a roll call vote. I vote aye. Ms. O'Meara? Aye. Ms. Parks? Aye. Mr. Maxfield? Aye. Mr. Greeny? Aye. All right. We're now in a public meeting to the agenda for which is to discuss some administrative matters for the board. I thought this was really a good thing to do just to kind of follow up with board members on some things that we, I think we should be thinking about and give you an opportunity to ask questions or to make suggestions. I really unbalance, I think this board has functioned really well and I think the members have spent a lot of time, have given a lot of effort. It's really been difficult over the last nine months to conduct these meetings and to participate in these meetings via Zoom. It's just very odd and weird and we're all getting used to it but I think that the board as a whole has done just a tremendous job and I thank each one of you and compliment each one of you for the work you've done as well as the support we've gotten from our staff which is we just frankly couldn't do it without them. So there's nothing we're shaking here that I think we need to talk about but I do think it's important just as a reminder to go through a few things for how we operate as a board and also give you the chance to ask some questions and also finally give you some information that we've had and provide some opportunities for you to have input into the potential modification of the zoning bylaws in the future of the town. So the first item I'd like to go over is just a little bit about site visits and site visits are something that we do that you've all participated in and it's really important that the site visit be limited to just getting a feel for the building on the ground where it sits, how it sits with the neighbors, the proposed space, the lot lines, if we're looking at internal stuff and interior stuff, how it's physically set up. It really is not the opportunity for us to engage in a discussion with the applicant about the value of it, why they're doing it, what the reason is, what the neighbors are thinking about it, how they've gone through their whole thought process that's more appropriately dealt with at the public meeting. And indeed each question we ask we should be also at the public meeting asking that question and then putting it out for the record. So I think it's really important that these site visits be focused just on, just the facts, ma'am, kind of from, I don't know if any, Keith is probably the only one on this call, Keith and I are the only ones in the call to remember a dragnet, but it is kind of just the facts, ma'am approach to a site visit. And then those questions that we all have, and we all do this, I'm as guilty as anybody on this, we all do this, but those questions really should be way held off until we have the public hearing. So the notion is to kind of get in and get out, get the facts, get a sense of the feel of the site and then move on. And I also think it's important that the chairman or whatever the acting chair in that case open up and give that sort of context to the applicant. And then we really wanna rely a lot to a large extent on staff to make sure we're moving along and that we're not engaged in too much discussion. So I'd just like to encourage everybody to keep the site visits on focus on topic and not kind of veer off into a lot of other things other than just seeing the site, seeing how the building or the facility fits in with the area. And so you can have a better sense of how to make a decision on this from being physically there. Are there any comments or questions? Maureen. I just wanted to put, if Keith wants to indicate that he's here for the record. Here. Oh, and Joan, we didn't get to hear you as well. Ms. O'Mara, we need you just to say that you're here. President. Yep. And another thing that I wanted to then discuss is board decorum. And again, this is made more difficult and or it's weirder in on Zoom. We lose that body language, we lose all sorts of, we're sort of disconnected bodies that are on these little squares and it makes it more difficult. And I think we've conducted these meetings pretty well. And I think everybody has behaved really excellently. But I think it's a time just to remind us all a couple of things. I had this, one of these meetings that I know you've been going to Dylan, Mr. Maxfield, from the sponsor to kind of help us become better board members. I received an article that really kind of goes through how to be a really good board member and some of the things you should keep in mind. And I'm going to give that to Maureen and ask her to distribute it. But there's a couple of the 25 different short things that this article identifies. There's a couple I would like to highlight. And the first one is that we are really, we really do want to create a good impression of the board for the public. And we have to remember that for a lot of people, this will be their most important, in some cases, their first real dealing with the town, with the town government. And if it's dealing with their home or their business or their property, this is really important to them. And they may not be very, they may be very nervous. They may be very uncertain about this. And it's really important that we give the impression that the town works, that we care about this, that we're treating this fairly and that we're taking it seriously. And I think we've done that, but it's also really important just to remember that that's overall, that's one of the most important things we should be doing. I also would like to encourage everybody to be on time and to be a couple of minutes early. I think 10 minutes early gives us the opportunity just to say hello to each other, to kind of to call us as a group ahead of time. And we're not just kind of starting off cold. It's normal in, we're not going to talk about the issues. We're not going to talk about matters before us. We're not going to deliberate. We're not going to violate the open meeting law. But it's important to be, I think it's important to give us some time just so that we as a board are more familiar with each other than just at the meetings. So 10 minutes ahead of time, that means we can get started on time. And we're going to talk about how we schedule things here in a second. But I'd like to encourage people to come in 10 minutes early if they can. It just gives us a chance to start on time all as often as possible. One other thing that I feel is important is I want to make sure we enforce with applicants the rule to get us the material ahead of time so that you can have enough time to review it. Most of you work full-time jobs. I don't, I'm lucky, I'm no longer working, but many of you do. And we get a lot of material and it's really difficult if you don't get it ahead of time. So one of the things that we're going to continue to do is require that applicants get material to us seven days ahead of time and that there aren't any material changes of any significance before that so that we can have the material to study. Because if you're working a full-time job, it's really, you have to really make time for this. And I'm aware of that. And I think whether that the applicant is represented by an attorney or just a person representing themselves, there's no reason that we can't expect them to put the information to us in seven days ahead of time. So we have adequate time to review it. Mr. Langeville. Yeah, just a question on that. If for some reason we don't get something for like a day or two ahead and it's significant, it is a significant amount of material, what recourse do we take? Well, I think we continue the hearing. I mean, that's the ultimate recourse we can have is that we just, we don't have time to, we can either listen to the hearing and say we listen to the application's presentation and say, we don't have enough time to review this. We have to continue this to a later point or we can tell them ahead of time, we didn't get it in advance. We intend to continue this. You may or may not wanna show up at this meeting but we're gonna continue this because this is voluminous material. It's significant and the board has no time to review it and it violates the board's rules. So I think those are the two options we have. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, we have to be willing to do that, right? Right. Yep, Maureen. I just wanna say, sometimes an applicant for these larger projects will have some things that are submitted in a timely manner, but then things happen and it is just a few days before the meeting. So another option is to say, oh, well, the board can review the things that you provided in an advance notice, at least seven days. And then if the board decides to hold that meeting, you could review those items and then say, oh, well, we only had 24 hours to have this new material or whatever the amount of time and say, we'll take that up at the next meeting. So you could do some review of the project instead of just missing it all. So it is all project specific of what the details are. And the last thing I wanted to talk about is, and this is one where I'm talking myself to blame for this, but I really think it's important that we avoid being engaged in kind of an adversarial relationship or discussion with applicants, the public, the representatives. We are more a semi-judicial body than we are like a legislative body. And I've seen too many congressional hearings and not enough sort of judicial hearings that I kind of fall into the trap of back and forth with an applicant at times. I remember one case where I've done that and I regret that. And I think it's really important that we give everybody the opportunity to speak. We don't intake it personally and we don't take sort of defend the nature of the body or the ZBA, but I think that it's important that we let people speak and even if they want to tell us off, we accept it, we hear it, we don't respond to it and we don't have to respond to it. That we ought to think of ourselves as more a semi-judicial body rather than a legislative body where you have kind of a back and forth in terms of tone, not in terms of information, but in terms of tone. And so I think that's something that I found myself doing recently. I don't wish to do it anymore. And I think we all should abide by that admonition if we could. I will, but you're gonna receive this. It's called Reagan's Rules. I think it's pretty good. It provides some context for this. But those are things that I think I'd like to have us work upon over the next year as we continue in this body. And I hope that you'll get a chance to see this, Marine will share it with you. But I'd certainly open, if other people have questions about either decorum, deportments, the way the meeting is handled or conducted, this is a good time to bring that up. Okay. Oh, Mr. Maxfield. Yep, Mr. Maxfield. I missed literally the last part you were saying as I was Googling Reagan's Rules. We're bringing things related to decorum here right now. Yeah, yeah. I guess, I don't know. The last thing, there's something I've been thinking about which probably isn't as necessary if we were all meeting in person, but maybe we want to consider this a little bit more while we're still meeting on Zoom regularly. Maybe everybody kind of seeking recognition from the chair as we kind of move. Cause I know, I'm talking with applicants where maybe I want to ask an applicant a question where I'll find usually while I'm still kind of getting there, they might chime in with something and start replying where, I don't know, sometimes I feel it would be a little bit better if after I've asked that they still seek recognition from the chair to respond to the question where something we're all meeting in person and we have it, it might not be necessary, but it feels a little bit, when you're on the walkie talkie, you have to say over when you're finished so people know your fingers off the button while we're over Zoom, it might make, if anybody else is feeling this way that maybe everybody seeks, Mr. Chair, may I be able to respond to this just so that way we don't kind of have people talking over each other on Zoom, which I feel happens a little bit in this format. So I don't know while we're doing this remote format that for all cases to speak, that everyone seeks recognition from the chair simply to kind of keep things moving without people talking over each other, what's everybody's thoughts on that? Well, if I'll just respond quickly, we should always do that. I mean, the question, the real need is to seek recognition of the chair all the time. And you all can help with that by doing it, by helping out and it's important for me to try to enforce that in a delicate and diplomatic, or not delicate, but as diplomatic a way as possible that you seek recognition from the chair before you speak. And with the public, that's the chair's responsibility to make sure that they seek recognition before they, or applicants seek recognition before they speak. So I appreciate that comment, Mr. Maxwell, I think you're right. And that all of us can do better with that. And the chair has to be the one to impose that discipline. And I will. Any other comments or questions or suggestions for sort of decorum and deportment of the board? Any concerns that you guys have? Good. One of the things that we have historically done is had this meeting start at six and end at nine, we try to have it end at nine. Three hours is a long time. It runs over at times, but the notion is if we know we can't finish it in a few minutes after nine o'clock, we're gonna continue it. We're gonna try to keep that as much as possible. After nine, I think it just becomes a really long day. And I don't feel that, especially if you're working and you gotta be at work at eight or nine o'clock the next morning, we've pretty much shot your evening. But this year we moved it back to 630 for a couple of good reasons. Number one, we had people whose work schedule changed because of the COVID and we wanted to accommodate them. And two, we have one member who's also on another board that tends to meet on the same day. And I'm wondering if we, I'd like to know about the board's consensus. If we can move back to six o'clock as much as possible as often as possible and have a full three hours. I think it's hard to go to 930 or 10 o'clock at night. I really prefer not to. I hate to lose the other 30 minutes if we start at 630 all the time. So my question is for, I guess, Mr. Maxfield and Ms. O'Mara, is it gonna be possible for you with your schedule to have the meeting at six? And is it possible for you, Mr. Maxfield, to work with your other committee to either meet on another day or perhaps end earlier? I know you get off of work at five and then you have to go to one meeting and then you come to the other. So I'm sensitive to that. But I don't know if there's a way that you can work with your other committee to try to provide that flexibility and Ms. O'Mara, whether your schedule still allows you to, to work to come to six o'clock meetings. So Mr. Maxfield first and then Ms. O'Mara, yeah. Yeah. So what I'm trying to do with my other meeting is cause we typically meet bi-monthly. So I try to now stagger it where one week is the board of licensing commissioners and the next week will be the zoning board of appeals. I know at the holidays, I don't think there's any overlap. I have to double check my schedule on that. But I know going forward from January, this is a discussion I'm gonna be having with them as well of saying Thursday nights are fine, but it has to be they can't coincide with each other. So that way it would be, I could do ZBA at six and then a board of licenses at five on the night set that isn't, but I will coordinate once we get our next schedule going forward from January coordinating to make sure that there is no overlap with ZBA and then anywhere where there might be an overlap. So I can come to that meeting, but that's gotta be a half hour in and out. We're just approving licenses and moving on. We can have our discussions another night. So going back to six shouldn't be an issue for me just so long as we know in advance which nights that we're meeting, which it looks like we have our schedule set. Think into what January, February, we've got meetings already set. So we know when we're meeting. So I don't think it would be an issue for me to move back to six, 6 p.m. Okay. Ms. Omira, I saw your hand up. Thank you, Steve. Yeah, 6 p.m. works for me. Thank you. Great. Good enough. So I think we can probably work that through. Let's try to have six o'clock meetings. And is there anybody else that has an opinion on this or a conflict, Mr. Langsdale? I don't have a conflict. And I think six o'clock is best. The only thing that concerns me is sometimes we'll have two or three hearings and one will take long and then the last one may be I don't know, a very simple kind of thing. Just a family trying to do something with their property. And we get to nine o'clock and we're not done with them because the other things have run long that if we, I'm just concerned that we allow them more time in that evening to go to 9.30 or so just so we don't have to continue something that may end up going three or four weeks further down the road that's really not that convoluted, that it's really kind of simple that we can have the flexibility. That's what I'm getting to. Thank you. The flexibility to deal with that without going, you know, nine o'clock, we're out of here. Yeah, I think that's... And that hopefully won't be, you know, often at all. But just so that maybe that in terms of scheduling we maybe think about that in terms of each night, what might take longer so that if there's something that will take longer that we can then say, okay, it's nine o'clock, we're not gonna continue it. But we're not then hurting the smaller application. I'll say it that way. Yeah, I think that's something we should be sensitive to. There's one way to do it is to put some of the quick, that we think are quick early on the agenda. If that's, we get that done early in the meeting at six right away, it all depends. Some of these meetings are, we have to go back and forth. But we'd have to, we have both hearings and meetings. So, but I think the most important thing is to have some flexibility to try to deal with the simple things if we can. And have some flexibility in time. I think it's a good suggestion. Good. All right. Any other comments? Those are both good. Any questions? I have a quick question. Yes, Ms. Parks. Is it ever possible to change the order of how things are heard? I guess from what Keith was saying, if you know something's gonna take, there's something really simple that is not gonna take very much time. I mean, I know there's no guarantee on that. But are you allowed to do that or is that something you're not allowed to do? Well, the agenda can be, I'm gonna ask Maureen to opine on this as well. But the agenda can be set ahead, should be set ahead of time. And I worry that once the agenda is set and public notices out, we have to follow the agenda unless we make some kind of a motion to move them. But Maureen, Rob, Dave, can you talk to us about a flexibility we have on the agenda? Yes, Mr. Mora. When we're now setting times, which we usually do not. So we don't have a hearing at six, 637. I think there's some flexibility and it's not uncommon for the chair to recognize that something could be disposed of quickly and might choose to do that and move it up in the schedule. So I think the chair has that option even at the opening of the hearing. But I have one other suggestion. This is something the board used to do quite often. Maybe Keith remembers it if he was around during this time, is that when the chair sees that, maybe they've had a really long one or two hearings, 815, 820, and is not through that, that hearing and still has another one to open up, the board might decide to close the public hearing and kind of put that one aside until later and not complete their deliberation and their finding or their conditions and vote on it and go through the 10.3 findings and open that public hearing for that, that last group that's waiting to be heard. And if the board has time, come back to it, to that public meeting portion of that earlier case, finish it out or continue it if it's too late. And it's a way to get everybody heard all the presentation done and all the applicants, reasonable time to be given to make their case and have the board react and kind of give them an indication of how things are looking in that first initial setting. It's good to know we have that flexibility. Yeah. Exactly. Good question, Ms. Parks. Anything else? All right. The next item on the agenda is discussions about recommendations to the planning board regarding modification of the zoning bylaws. As I think most of you know, the planning board has been tasked with reviewing the zoning bylaws and making I think recommendations to the town council. And this is a process that's gonna take a little bit of time. It's not gonna be done quickly, but it is an opportunity for us with the experience we have with the zoning bylaw to provide input to the planning board on changes that we think are important. And we'd like things that we'd like to see. And so what I wanted to do is first either Rob or Maureen or Dave, let us know about, tell us can you kind of set the schedule? And then secondly, just really tell you that this is something that over the next couple of months, I think we'll be able to look at. And if we have suggestions for the planning board that we should put them either as a letter, as a motion or just empower the chairman to go in and talk to the zoning board chairman and discuss these changes, but some way communicate them at some point in the future. But it really over the next couple of months, take a look at the zoning bylaws and through your history with them, your work with the committee, make any suggestions that you think we can just consider as a board, we can consider suggestions and make those suggestions to the planning board. But Rob, could you talk about the process that's being used to review and then potentially modify the zoning bylaws? So I just let you know a little bit of what's going on right now. We are at the very beginning of really looking at the bylaw page by page. The tasks are broken up, that staff is doing some of that work and the CRC is doing some of that work and the planning board is doing work as well as they always do. The bigger discussions of bylaw changes are beginning to occur at the CRC, the community resources committee, that's the committee to the town council in their latest meeting, the town council meeting, the CRC brought to them a recommendation on priorities to address in the zoning bylaw. And like I said, they're really focused on some of the bigger items, the downtown zoning, inclusionary zoning, affordable housing, and there's a really long list of things that are being worked on and staff will be working on more of those technical fixes, corrections, missing definitions, incorrect references in the bylaw, and reformatting. So we're trying to give it a cleaner, fresh look, easier to read, easier to follow, straighten out some of the tables, take all this criteria out of the table format and put it into more of the narrative format and make the table a little cleaner and easier to read. So at the very beginning of this, so it's a great time for the zoning board to either individual members or administrative meetings to work on any suggestions they have, get them to staff. It may not necessarily be the old process that we knew when we were a town meeting form of government where the zoning subcommittee and zoning board would talk about all these changes. Staff will be bringing them to the CRC. We'll be drafting proposals and presenting them there first and then ultimately going to planning board public hearings and town council public hearings for adoption. So I think you're gonna start to see this happen more aggressively as we go into the new year. There's, I think a lot of, there's a lot of momentum. There's a lot of kind of built up interest in making the bylaw better. So I think it's a good time to get involved and just let us know through Maureen or anybody, what you're thinking and what we can do to help and get that information. Certainly join those meetings. You know, they're gonna, their CRC meetings are held generally early afternoon, twice a month. And then of course the discussions will ultimately happen at evening meetings with the planning board and zoning for the town council as we go into the new year. Great. Thanks, Rob. Let's move on to the next item then. Ms. Pollock, do you want to talk about standard conditions and the resident managers to the next items? Oh, sure. So just to start with the standard conditions for residential uses, you know, the board has had conditions relative to the, you know, rental housing regarding the amount of people that can be on the premises at one time, for instance, at a party or something like that. And then the other standard condition that has been historically used by the board is about how many guests can stay overnight and for how many consecutive nights in a row. And I don't know if Rob wants to talk about how, you know, the intention of those conditions relative to, you know, this college town and protecting, you know, the neighborhood and the property owner and the tenants themselves with these conditions. Mr. Morrow? Sure. These conditions have, you know, they've changed over the years when I had first come to work in Amherst, the standard condition would be something like no more than four occupants in a dwelling unit. And it sounds good and, you know, helps supports of decision, but, you know, when we're in a fourth and enforcement position and there's a property that's having some trouble and the neighborhood remembers those hearings and calls attention to those conditions, we find that, you know, the reality is that's really difficult to enforce. You know, the boyfriend and the girlfriend staying over, you know, the number of cars that are in the driveway, more than four, the indicators there. And it really was difficult, I think, for us to either make any enforcement and satisfy the legitimate concerns that the neighbors had. So we suggested years ago that, if we're going to put a limit on the number of occupants that we talk about guests and just, you know, be clear up front that there's full-time regular conditions where there's four unrelated individuals living there, but there's also other situations that occur that have a guest staying or an extra vehicle parked there that isn't always there. And that led us to try and do establish a what is the duration and, you know, consecutive days or overall duration that makes sense. And that's changed a little over time and really, you know, based on the situation, the neighborhood, the history of the property, you know, the board has, you know, dealt with that differently, but, you know, typically it's, you know, some small number of days up to seven maybe. So, you know, that's something that has helped us when we're dealing with issues, at least it gives us and the property owner a clearer standard to try to comply with. The other one about larger gatherings, you know, we see less of this as a problem than we did in prior years. There are a lot of good things going on with party registration through the police and campus monitoring that. Our code enforcement and community outreach officer, Bill Laramie, will, you know, hold meetings with neighborhoods, with new tenant groups that move into properties that historically have had larger gatherings. So, you know, it's pretty typical that we see in leases without even, you know, the board's involvement in a property, there'd be a limit on the number of guests that can be there at a gathering at one time, sometimes with permission of the owner that could be exceeded. So I think that's pretty standard and has worked well. I think, you know, certainly the ones that the board have issued permits for, you know, we typically see 10 guests per, you know, per dwelling unit as a number. We have seen higher numbers, but I think there's enough other tools in place for us to adequately respond to that situation if needed. And it really is all about, kind of, for our standpoint, it's really about gauging the response that we get from the property owner to the situation. It isn't so much that the party or gathering occurred or, you know, the guests stayed over for five nights. It really is about what is, you know, what is the property owner doing to maybe more hands-on or more adequately manage the property if it needs to be managed in a more controlling way. And that's really what we look to try to get out of the property owners or managers. Many times this is in response to concerns from neighbors who, right, a lot of times this is a condition that's been in response to neighbors having worried about large parties or having instead of four people living there, really eight people are living there and you really wanna control that because both the neighbors in the town has a desire not to have overcrowded rental housing, especially in a college town. Is that the reason these kind of conditions began, Rob? I think it is part of it. You know, certainly whenever a neighborhood or public is involved with a case, it almost puts the board in a position to have to address this in order to adequately support their findings and to make their determination that it is not more detrimental to the neighborhood to add this additional dwelling unit or expand it or whatever the request may be. So it becomes a good tool for that. And it is there to reinforce the bylaw requirement which is no more than four unrelated. And the group of conditions that go along with that whether it's related to parking or gatherings or guests all are there to support that bylaw being complied with. And this is really much more important before the rental regulations were adopted because it's all we had. Now, you know, the rental regulations have been really successful in doing what it was set out to do and really, you know, bring attention to a property, make known who the owner and manager is, highlight deficiencies and violations right on the mapping system on the public website. So that's available contact information. So I think all of that, the vast majority of the properties, you know, are very well managed by owners or develop investors, owners or property managers that really do take it seriously. And the problems we have are with a really small number of properties. So I think that's been really helpful. We are complaint response. So it really, you know, we're not out there patrolling the town, looking for problems trying to correct them, but responding to the complaint. And that's the way the program and our department was designed and structured. Can I ask a question about that? Yes, yes. Is there an easy place to find the information to contact the town about problem properties? Because I, you know, in the past, I had had a problem with a rental property with too many cars parked and having our driveway blocked. And the only thing I knew to do was, you know, it happened to be run by Eagle Crest. And so, you know, I had their number on speed dial, it was constantly calling them. But I didn't know that I could have gone to the town and said, you know, these guys are in violation. Is that like published somewhere so that, you know, citizens know that? Yes, it is. So on the website, through the rental, residential rental permitting pages, there's a couple options. You can get right to email contacts for me, John Thompson, the code enforcement officer, any other inspector in the department, but there's also an online complaint system. So you can file your complaint online, you can upload pictures, you can make it anonymous, you can ask for a response and the person making the complaint will get one. Those can be filed 24-7. And it goes directly to a small group of staff that will respond to those and divide them up to the, you know, the proper staff person. Submit a complaint right there. Yep, Maureen is right at that place. So that's the way most of our complaints are received now. You know, we'll get them over the weekend, they'll come in the middle of the night. In fact, we'll get complaints about anything. You know, the sidewalk not being shoveled, the trees not being trimmed back in certain areas. And, you know, we'll kind of manage that and send it off the proper department that might be handling that case. But it is a pretty well-used way of filing complaints. Of course, you know, you can call or email directly. It's another way of doing it. And, you know, occasionally we'll get a written request about to deal with something with a property. Mr. Langsdale. Couple of things. One, this complaint response that we were just looking at, would it be possible for us to include that in the complaint response that is given to the butters with phone numbers of the owner and management? So that people understand that there is more than one avenue to travel to make a complaint rather than just saying it's on the website. If we could give them concrete instructions on how to make those complaints, that's one. Mr. Mara, one of the things that I know that we have dealt with in the past is with parking and not just for parties, but for like if suddenly there are eight people living in a place that are only supposed to be four, suddenly there's like two or three cars parking on lawn. That is something that we've always, as I remember it, I think made a condition about, but is there something more we can do about that in terms of, my understanding is that that doing that is against the bylaws and therefore is something that can be dealt with through your office. Is there something we can do to strengthen that in terms of one, the bylaw and two, in terms of conditions? So I definitely favor conditions even if they repeat what the bylaw does, especially if we're in a situation where there's known to be a problem or a neighborhood that's really concerned about it. I think getting it as a condition, the special permit just draws additional attention to it. It's a document that's recorded against the property. I think that's a wise decision. Once the violation is identified, we're notified and respond to it and can find evidence of the violation, the rest is pretty much handled by the laws that we have. They're given a period of time to comply with it. They're subject to the penalties that the non-criminal disposition allows and we'll use those if we need to. 99% of the time, the issues dealt with just on a simple request. Even there's really good response and good communication to our office. What gets tricky is when you have those eight cars at a property that we're trying to understand is how regular of a condition is that and is it an indicator of some other problem? And that takes time. The code enforcement officer will monitor the property for a period of time before taking any action because we know ultimately if we have to go into court, which is our next place to go to get any sort of support and enforcement, we need to have a good case established. So we need to be pretty certain that we have a violation there. So we've got the tools. We have staff typically available pretty rapidly for complaints that are made. And then depending on what the situation is, there are longer-term monitoring needed in order to establish that violation, which honestly most times do not result in finding any violation because it's just really difficult to. I'll just add the parking on the lawn is not permitted. It must be on paid surfaces. So that's one that we typically find in residential districts and only two cars are permitted in the front setback of those properties. Those are the two major parking-related violations that we would find in a residential district. Thank you. I guess one question I have and I don't know the answer to this is, is there an annual notification from a renter from a rental unit to its neighbors that here's my number, here's the complaint response form? Is there some way that the neighbors get an annual notice or is it done just through the special permit process? And after that, the neighbors have to go to the town website to try to lodge a complaint. The only notice would be by the renewal of the rental permit, which you'd have to go into our website to view that. To get the information of the emergency contact and their phone number. So other than that, unless we were to make that a condition of a special permit, there wouldn't be any other requirement to notice annually to the neighbors. Okay. Good. Other topics to discuss, Maria and I know we were going to talk about the resident manager. It was one of the things that seemed to come out as one of our recent items. It was contained in there. And there's some question about, not relating to that specific case, but question about the history of residential managers at times. And can we just talk a little bit about that generally without being specific? So I'm going to keep Rob on a roll. Cause then there's another topic that I think Rob would be good on. So resident manager, I can read the definition in the zoning by-law, which is under section 12.41 is a live-in resident of a rental residential use qualified and responsible for implementation of the property management plan and for managing and coordinating the maintenance housekeeping in administrative duties for the rental units under their charge. And so under the dwelling section of the by-law, there's a requirement that if the property would have to be either owner occupied or that there would have to be a resident manager for that dwelling unit. And as you sort of indicated, Steve, there's been sort of, I don't know, a healthy discussion about resident manager and what does that really mean? I know I just said the definition to you, but we wanted just to see if anyone on the board had questions about it and also if Rob has any other comments about it as well. The only question I have about it is that it comes up in more than just one case. So it's been something that I've observed in other cases but I'm just wondering how valuable that is as a check on the property owner and the check on trying to reduce disturbances in the neighborhood and whether that is valuable and whether that is one of the kinds of things we gotta be looking at for the, and I'm not making that decision now, but I'm wondering if that's one of the kinds of things we gotta be looking at in terms of changes to the by-law. So what's your experience on that and if you find it a valuable provision? So this is a section of the by-law that I don't think does what it may have been intended to do. That definition suggests a lot more out of an individual named the resident manager than what actually occurs. And it's really rare for us when we're dealing with a problem situation to really get anything more out of a resident manager than access to the property or coordinating a meeting with tenants. And I think it kind of makes sense that a property owner or a property manager can only give so much responsibility to one of the four tenants living in the dwelling unit. And I think we've come to quickly move past the resident manager and focus more on our dealings with the property owner or property management company, which is what we're really looking for as a higher level of management in a situation that is causing some sort of conflict in the neighborhood. Just our approach generally when we have an issue is to address it to the owner of the property and we're not telling the owner what to do or how to do it. We're identifying the issue and we're telling them to tell us how they're going to respond to it. I've never had a property manager or owner use the resident manager as part of that solution. So even in the situations where they are required under in the converted dwelling section, I feel like the resident manager roles diminished really quickly and almost is a point person for us to contact the group or make an arrangement for access to the property. So I don't think it's all that valuable now. I think it may have had a larger purpose or intent before the rental regulations were adopted. And maybe we just never saw that develop. You see that develop the way it was envisioned originally because the rental regulations kind of picked up and took things to a new level, which the regulations generally say, if there's a violation, you need to correct that or show us how you're correcting and responding to the situation. And you need to do that effectively otherwise you're at risk of losing your right to rent that property. So yeah, I guess I don't feel like this is, we have to deal with it because it's a provision of the bylaw. Once we get that initial notice at the hearing of who a resident manager is or that there will be one, we generally do not get notice of the new resident manager as the tenant sees change over time. Thanks, Mr. Mora. Mr. Greeny. Nope, you're, there we go. So just a few comments, I've been on McClone Street for 25 years and I'm not remembering exactly, I don't know when you came to town Rob, but things improved a great deal after those renter registration bylaws or whatever they are were established. And a lot of that came out of a group of people in that area, especially on Fearing Street. So I don't know if you're aware of a study that was done by Ralph Colstrom, where he documented that problem properties were never in any single case an owner occupied property. And so what came out of that study that he did probably 12 years ago or something like that was the powerful deterrent that owner occupancy has on problem properties. And it's maybe outside of the scope of this discussion, but it's occurred to me over the years and I should probably talk to the CRC or the planning board about this, that in addition, the owner occupancy requirement not only is almost a guarantee that a property will not be a problem property, but it also is a very effective way of having affordable housing and Amherst. It allows owners to live in a property that they couldn't afford otherwise where they're able to rent out additional units. And so I've always been a strong advocate for that condition of owner occupancy. And so I should probably familiarize myself with what the existing bylaws are and maybe talk to the CRC since they're now in the middle of this revision is that they consider that seriously in their revision of the bylaws. So anyway, I just wanted to make that comment. Thank you, Mr. Greeny. Ms. Parkes. I'll just say that I've had confusion over the owner occupancy versus this living manager because I remember when I first moved to Amherst, there were a lot of issues with people wanting to buy a multifamily home to rent out and then finding out that it needed to be owner occupied and it really changed whether they decided to buy that property or not. And so I'm confused about is there such thing as owner occupied property anymore if you can have a resident manager? Or is there a property that doesn't have an owner living there but is an owner occupied property? In other words, it feels to me like when I first moved here, if your property was owner occupied, if it was a multifamily home, an owner had to live there if you were renting out part of it. And so this idea of having a resident manager in lieu of an owner feels new to me and not universally understood. Am I wrong in that? Is this a new thing, the resident manager? Mr. Mora. I mean, it's new in the past 10, 12 years new but there's every possible combination or situation out there as far as owner occupancy or resident manager goes. This option for resident manager is specifically in the converted dwelling section of the bylaw. So that's very different from the duplex section which could either be owner occupied or not owner occupied. Additionally, back in mid 2000, 2005, seven almost every converted dwelling application you'll find a condition that it be owner occupied. So as a specific condition of the permit. So the resident manager wasn't even used in those cases. And you're right, a new owner looking at a property may not even become aware of this until the moments before our closing when it is found through the title examination and highlighted by the closing attorney as a condition of the special permit. And that's when I get the call, what do we do? Am I gonna be in violation if I rent this tomorrow after I take ownership? So that has absolutely happened many, many times. I've been here since 2012. And we deal with it in different ways sometimes helping the applicant modify the condition or in some cases bring the property into compliance. But yes, there isn't a universal situation out there and every case has to be looked at the history of each property has to be looked at to understand exactly what the conditions are. Okay, I'll just say for me that it isn't clear. I know of several houses on Lincoln Avenue that are down closer to UMass where it's kind of like they were all meant to be owner occupied and then something happened and they are no longer have that condition. So I'm just throwing that out there that for me that's confusing and it doesn't seem like it's been applied equally or that information has been distributed equally. Mr. Langsdale. I think part of the confusion from Ms. Parks and myself as well is that if we're looking at a structure that is multi-family but is like seven or eight apartments or bedrooms or something that there's a possibility for a resident manager to be more separate or in an apartment building. But in a, I know we have one that we're looking at and we're looking at the same thing. And I think that's one of the things we have one that we're looking at now where the resident manager would end up being one of three or four people in one structure along with a second structure and that that puts the resident manager in a position of having to in quotes police the others. And as Mr. Mara said, that that makes them maybe no more than a point person for contact for the owner. Is it possible for us with each application to look at the structure of the building or buildings and if it's not possible to separate the manager from the other occupants that we refuse to make it anything but an owner occupied? I believe absolutely. I think if you are unable to make your findings that you need to make without that arrangement without a very convincing arrangement where there's this resident management role and not just the written piece of that not just that part of the program but actual the physical layout to make sense and you can connect that to that requirement. Absolutely. I think a converted dwelling may not be successful if it doesn't have those elements if judged and looked that way. Sure. Mr. Maxwell. Yes. I mean, if it all comes back down to the required findings that we have to make here because my general feeling is obviously I like the idea of owner occupied rental units more than anything else. It's always better to in my opinion have the landlord be a resident of the town with an actual stake in what goes on here as opposed to some developer out of Boston who's just looking to make money, show as many people as you want in that apartment. I don't have to see it just don't let me hear about it kind of thing. But if we're talking about the need to make kind of special the specific findings required is although I don't think we could put any sort of stipulation saying that, well, maybe it's not owner occupied but we would like the owner to be somebody who's nearby in a way like we, for a resident of Amherst who's the owner because then we know that they also have more of a stake in the community, more of a motivation to maintain the property outside of just the financial factor. But we couldn't say that they, the owner must live in town. I think we might be able to do some type of thing with the specific findings saying that they have to be relatively local to be able to be responsive to complaints. So rather than have necessarily an owner occupied condition, but then not dealing with the resident manager either to have something where we would want some condition to say that the owner needs to be able to be responsive in order to do so they would have to be within some general proximity to the property if they wouldn't want it to be owner occupied so that we might not have to force that condition onto properties, but can still get the similar result of not seeing properties become, you know, essentially party houses and neighborhoods, which I think is a lot of what we're trying to avoid here. But that idea of using specific findings to I guess impose locality of owners, is that something that the board has any interest in exploring? I've not thought about that before as having sort of a town resident as a, I mean, owner occupied or non-owner occupied. I've never thought of town residency as a criteria that can be used to as a condition. I don't even, I don't, you know, it's an idea, Mr. Max, feel like this is not something that I have thought about before. I think it might raise some question, legal questions about, and maybe practical questions about, you know, what if the person, the owner moves out of Amherst, what happens to, then we, you know, it just does. He moves out, he moves to Hadley or he moves to Welchertown, because he have to sell the house, is the house then out of compliance and he loses the ability to rent it. I'm not, I'm just not sure. It's something to think about. Mr. More, did you have your hand up? No? Yes. So just a part of that just for your knowledge is that the rental regulations has a provision that if the owner isn't within 20, located within 20 miles of the property that they're permitting, that they must have a local manager, you know, a local property management company. And we define what the qualifications are. And I know that's just the beginning of what was just mentioned. So building on that, I can tell you there's plenty of examples with the zoning board special permits in the past where the property manager was, you know, almost, you know, put through an interview process through the hearing to understand exactly how they were going to manage the property. And although we don't necessarily tie it to a company, but we're tying it to their function and their services that they're providing. So I think it's definitely something to consider if we have a property, we know the owner is not local. Maybe we don't even know if the owner has the background or qualifications to manage the property effectively. I think it's appropriate to ask for a professional level management to be established. Perhaps it could be reviewed in time, you know, but certainly initially, that could be a very useful condition to ensure that a property is managed. And looking at exactly what we find is, you know, property managers have all different levels of scope and services that they provide to these owners. So really looking at what are they gonna do? How are they there to respond or, you know, try to proactively deal with issues that may occur on that property. Mr. Greeny. So we know, I think it's fair to say that we know that owner-occupied properties are not problem properties. The problem is that some people could easily see that as being too restrictive on a particular property. And so what Dylan's suggesting, and apparently we have some of that in what Rob just talked about is a less restrictive, but a condition that would, you know, give us some assurity that the property would not become a problem property. So I just like to ask Rob in your experience, property management properties that are under property management firms, are they generally well-behaved or not problem properties? Could you comment on that? Yeah, what I can say with certainty is that the properties that are managed by a property management company, the grounds, the outside appearance of the property is very well-capped. And if there is any situation that kind of goes out of compliance, it's dealt with really quickly. So I think that, you know, that is definitely proven itself. When it gets into things like the number of occupants, guests, late noise coming from a property, what we learn is that the property management company may not be the person that's responsible for that situation. And it falls back to the owner. And that's when, you know, we get into these discussions with the owners. We just had one recently on Phillips Street where we needed to tell the owner that enough, you know, every few months for having the same situation over and over again, you need to have a property manager do more. So we told them they needed to come up with a better, more thorough scope of services to manage this property that we reviewed, we agreed to, and we rely on that to take the property out of violation and give them the opportunity to proceed and hopefully do better. So, you know, we're using the tools that we have that way. So I think the property manager can make a big difference, but what we need to be able to do is make sure that the owner's engaging them to do those extra services that they may typically not include. Well, this has been a really interesting discussion and I think valuable, informative to me. And it's the kinds of things that we should be thinking about talking with each other about in these kind of meetings and maybe it's something that we want to examine for recommendations to the CRC or the planning board at some point. I know we've got several other things that we want to go through on the agenda. And so Maureen, you said you had one more item on. Well, we'll give Rob a brief break for the moment. This is like commercial. So, well, a couple of things, I guess, there's gonna be at these trainings, which I think, you know, we'd like to have maybe at least twice a year or not, I mean, sorry, administrative meetings. We like to hold twice a year, but we are definitely open to having more administrative meetings as needed. And so at these meetings, we always wanna remind, give everyone a refresher about the ZBA site visits, which we did tonight. And then about the open meeting law of just a reminder of, you know, outside of these meetings, we, the board members shouldn't be talking about applications that are being deliberated and perhaps even not talk about applications that have now been approved and the project has now moved on to construction. And so with that, because that would be a violation of the open meeting law. Additionally, you know, occasionally someone will send an email to everyone of something that's minor such as, oh, I can't meet that site visit at 10 a.m., can you do 12 p.m.? You know, technically those sorts of emails are fine that, you know, you're say, scheduling something or maybe someone by accident sends an email to all saying, oh, I didn't receive that attachment, can you resend that email? Technically those sorts of emails are fine, but just to be consistent, we, a staff just reminds everyone to just email, you know, Rob, myself, Dave Buskevitz or any staff and we can help answer your question. And then we can, you know, if there needs to be a reattachment or the attachment was never sent, then I would then, you know, you would let me know individually and then I would respond to everyone saying, oh, whoops, here's the attachment. And that would be the example. A couple, and then- Maureen, I could just say one thing. Yeah, reply all is not our friend here with the, when we're on the ZBA. And even though sometimes it's technically permitted, we're not in technical violation, just don't take the chance. Just don't take the chance. Go through the staff for all for the communications and that way we'll avoid inadvertently violating the open meeting law. Okay. And periodically there are trainings for ZBA members and planning board members. I believe I sent out an email a couple of months ago about fall trainings. And I believe some of the members did attend training. And just as a reminder, whenever I see these trainings being offered, I will of course forward that information to you all and the town can certainly reimburse you for attending these very useful trainings. And then lastly, I just wanted to mention, so in these COVID times, getting, it's difficult to, it's difficult to get everyone information or do special permit decision signings because everyone can't come into the meeting, they come into the building and everyone has difficulty because they work full time. And so I'm actually looking into whether e-signatures would be allowed. I don't know actually, I haven't had a chance to talk to Rob about this, but I was going to reach out to our town attorney about it and to our registry of deeds and see if that would be allowed and whether everyone would be agreeable or if everyone thinks that's an acceptable way of signing before I even pursue asking around whether it's legal. Tammy- I'm all for it. Steve, is it thumbs up? Yep, I'm all for it. I'm looking for Bob's thumbs up, okay. All right. I don't mind the walk into town, but I think it'd be a lot easier for everybody to sign it electronically. Yeah, okay, I'll look into whether it's legally acceptable with the registry deeds and with, I guess the state, the Massachusetts and with the town. So, okay. And last, I believe on the agenda for our administrative items is Article 14, and which is temporary zoning regarding permitting for certain uses during COVID-19 emergency and it's aftermath. And, oh. Mr. Matthew, did you have something regarding e-signatures? No, open meeting law. I wanted to just take on that quickly. You said, we know we can't talk about things that are currently pending or that where we're currently reviewing, but you said in closed cases as well. So let's say it's summertime, I see Steve walking around town and I want to say, hey, let's talk about that 40B application that we, what do we think we did right? What do we think we did wrong? Is that a violation about talking about something we completed months ago at that point? No. Okay. Yeah, fine. You're not deliberating on something that's before the board. Yes. Or potentially before the board. We can then speak on it. I think that's right. I should let the staff discuss that though. I don't want to be the expert if I'm not. I would just suggest that we ensure that the appeal period has expired and that we're not aware of any potential litigation associated with the property, but certainly six months later or the project's under construction and you meet up with each other and talk about how great it turned out. You know, there's certainly no problem there. Thank you. Thank you. And you were going to talk about when you're talking about the article 14, Maureen, or I'm going to talk about that. We're going to talk about it. I think he wrote it. We're going to have the author. I did. Yeah, back in May, in response to COVID, the idea was that we temporarily loosen up some of the special permitting and site plan review process to certain types of businesses. Back then, we were not expecting to be in this situation still at the end of the year and thought, you know, we'd be well into recovery by now and this would be useful. You know, right after we proposed this to the council and had their support, the governor issued an order that, you know, essentially said notwithstanding any zoning regulation, outdoor dining can, you know, proceed under these certain conditions. So again, didn't really get a whole lot of use because the governor's order permitted us to allow the outdoor dining to happen. So we did have a few cases though throughout the summer where article 14 was really useful. It did permit expansion of outdoor dining areas that are more of a permanent construction, not just set up out in the road or on the sidewalk. We actually had a hair salon set up outdoor services in individual one, you know, single service tents and water supply set up outdoors. So we did see it be used a couple of times and as it was originally adopted, it had a six month duration. So as that was coming to an end in the beginning of December, we went back to the board last, to the council last month and asked to extend it entirely through 2021 and we expanded it quite a bit. So we did identify the difference between a permanent use and a temporary use. And we got a lot of requests for temporary uses. That would, you know, attend at the survival center or a church or the schools. And we expect that we'll probably have the same requests again in the spring. So we, you know, we built in a number of what we could think of is probably, you know, likely to be asked along the way. We also included farm stands and medical establishments not knowing what would be needed for, you know, rolling out even the vaccine, you know, whether there'll be temporary structures or areas designated for that purpose. So what we wanted to do is ensure that there wasn't a 90 day process to allow this to happen. But we didn't want to bypass all the zoning bylaw requirements entirely. So essentially what happens is I conduct a review with other staff and in the hopes the hopes of issuing an administrative approval that satisfies the special permit requirement does not require the applicant to come in front of the board. But I am responsible to ensure that the 10.38 findings are applied properly all conditions of the bylaw are met. I can't grant the waiver any different than what the bylaw says can be waived. There's still no variances and things like that. So the bylaw itself doesn't change except for the approval process. So restaurants are definitely one that's in this category and most likely to be used, retail establishments and likely medical facilities. I'm expecting to be used through these sections. So the board shouldn't be surprised if they see a new restaurant open downtown. For example, that didn't have come in front of the board because during this time, Article 14 actually will allow that to happen through an administrative approval that we conduct entirely by staff. This is specific to zoning districts. It doesn't include any residential property like our discussions tonight about owner-occupied, non-owner-occupied residential properties, those are not subject to this. There will be temporary or permanent situations that happen. So far, we've granted two administrative approvals for permanent situations and one is an expansion of the outdoor dining at Stacker's Bar downtown in the back. They had a patio. They expanded the patio to accommodate additional seating for the spring. That's a permanent change being proposed at just a temporary outdoor dining setup. So we were able to find that acceptable and grant that approval. And there was another one just down the road where the old Barts Ice Cream Shop is again for a couple of outdoor seats in a permanent placement on private property. So that's it so far. There's a lot of discussions happening with potential restaurants. The opening in town or filling some of the vacant spaces downtown, but we expect this to go well into next year before it's actually used any further. So Rob, how long is this article 14 contemplated to be in effect? Is it going, it's mostly COVID related, right? And it's supposed to expire at a point in time. Is there a date or is this something that the council has to look at and then sort of delist it at some point? It automatically expires December 31st of 2021. Okay. So up until that time an administrative approval can be granted. It doesn't mean that the work has to occur or the use open, but the approval would be granted by that timeframe and be covered by article 14. The decisions are recorded with the town clerk's office and are just as real as a special permit would have been and in the future will be viewed as a legitimate permit. Even if that same establishment has to come back to the zoning board five years from now to alter or expand it would be an alteration or expansion of that administrative approval that was granted during this time. So yeah, all of next year and then I would imagine September, October of 21 the council will decide if there's any need to extend it or just let it expire and go back to whatever our new bylaw might say. Mr. Beric, we can't hear you, there you go. Right. Sorry, I was muted. These changes all seem like a very good idea. Would it make sense for you as you make as you issue these permits to have some procedure for notifying this board so that we can be aware of what you're doing and should it seem to people on the board that you were doing either less or more than seemed advisable there could be a feedback loop to advise you. You know, not to overturn your decisions but to make sure that the ZBA a year from now not find itself totally out of sync with what you have been doing. Absolutely. I think Maureen and I can talk about a way of making sure the board's informed. If there are more administrative meetings like these I'd be happy to give a report of what we did during that period leading up to that. And I welcome feedback and any suggestions that the board have at any time you can always reach out to Maureen or I individually. If you see something happening and have questions about it just wanna understand what went into making that decision be happy to spend time on that. And please understand that I say this not in any way to disagree with what you're doing but just to try to assure that there is some mutual understanding between you and the board going forward. Absolutely. Really good, good suggestion, Mr. Barrick. Thank you. Maureen, Ms. Pollock. I just wanted to mention that during the review process through the administrative review process with the building commissioner the applicant would need to put a sign at their door at the entranceway of their door or on the front window or the siding of the door to indicate to the public that they are requesting an administrative approval for their proposed project. So as a way to inform members of the public. Mr. Langstiel. Ms. Pollock, is that a standardized form or is each entity going to make up the road? I believe Rob and inspection services are working on a template of what the line would look like. That's right. It doesn't have to be any particular notice. It's not a town notice. So it's not on town letterhead, but we did put a template in the application that mainly to ensure that certain information is put on the notice and that it be the location of a size that can be read and for a duration of not less than 10 days prior to the work beginning or the approval occurring. Those were some of the basic criteria and our information so that they can contact us with questions. Okay. Mr. Wosiewicz. Yeah, Rob, can you speak to whether or not the abutters are notified and their participation in that? The abutters are not notified. So again, the whole purpose of this effort is to speed up the process, to get the business open again, to get the business adjusting to whatever mandate from the state or guidance requires them to make changes and give them the ability to hopefully be as successful as they can during this time. However, that 10 day notice that's required is an opportunity for anybody to contact our office and give suggestions or feedback. Not that I would expect this to occur, but if there was an agreed party to any approval, my decision for the administrative approval would be appealed to the zoning board, just like any other appeal would be heard. And that's specifically written into the Article 14 as well. So yeah, it's not a formal notice. Great. Thanks for the update. And we will look forward to updates and continuing conversation about this, Mr. Moore. I think that'd be really helpful for the board. Maureen, did you- I'll take it back to the item on whether the board has any recommendations to the planning board about zoning bylaw amendments. Do folks want to email me whether you have suggestions or recommendations rather or should we just go ahead and plan out an administrative meeting now and in the future, like in a month or so? How would that- I think collecting, I think my impression is collecting some emails is a good idea. I think that asking all of us to do our homework on the zoning bylaws over Christmases in the holidays is gonna be tough. So I think that a month is too quick for this. I plan on doing other things in reading the zoning bylaws for Christmas, but I'm gonna do some of that in January when it's cold and I have nothing else to do. So how about we, how about good ideas go to you Maureen and to Rob and to Dave? That's a great idea. Then let's try to have some kind of a meeting. If we have some good ideas in February, maybe the end of February, is that gonna be too late, Rob? No, at the end of February, we can have another administrative meeting, we can discuss it and have some ideas at that point. Why don't we do it that way? And then freeze up everybody's Christmas for our holidays as best as possible, okay? Okay. Yep. Do you have anything else, Ms. Pollack? No. Mr. Greeny, go ahead up here. No. So can we, can those be shared if people are sending? They can't, okay. So one last thing that I had is, one of the things that I'm challenged with is site plans and all the different plans that we get. When we have a big project, especially I think of recent projects, there are 15 sheets that are gigantic and the ones that challenge me are the site plans, the drainage, the different, the traffic, the power, the grading, the lighting. All those are confusing to me because I've never dealt with that. I don't have a problem with the interior. I've built out office spaces before managed building out office spaces before. So that doesn't, that isn't as confusing but the other stuff is confusing to me. And I don't know if that, and so I would like to have the town engineer or somebody sit down via Zoom and go through exactly what those plans are. So I'm more, I'm not relearning every single time I see one. And I don't know if other people on the board are interested in doing that. If that would be helpful, I would be happy to try to set something up. We can do an administrative meeting so that we better understand those documents that we get in front of us. I think we'll do a better job as a board if we do that. But I'm wondering if that's something that people are interested in or should I just go off and do it myself? If you're interested, raise your hand. Great. Well, we can have class. We'll have a virtual class on reading site plans. And maybe we can work together to do that. Again, not during Christmas but after in January or February, all right? Maureen, does that sound like a good idea? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I guess a couple of questions. So what is it sort of the whole plan set of you wanna be walked through the plan set or are there in full sheets like that? Walk through the plan set, walk through the plan set, kind of understand what level of details we need to have before we can make a decision, how much modification and much additional detail is made after we make a decision before construction. Just that kind of, so it's everything from what that squibble means to why there's 15 pages in front of me, what do all those pages are and then how does that change during the process from application to construction? Is that? Yeah, sure. And we could do sort of two different types of projects. Maybe one is a larger project, like a mixed use projects. Maybe a project the board has previously approved. Yeah. And then maybe a small, a duplex or something, just as a contrast of a smaller project versus a much larger, more detailed, which gets maybe into fill and much more detail about storm water. That would be great. That'd be a good way to approach it. And I also wanna just open this up for any, that's the last of the things I have on my agenda. So I just wanna open it up for anybody on the board if they have a comment, a suggestion, a question or something that they'd like to get off their chest, even this is a good time to do that. And just remember we have a public meeting. So this is being recorded, but this is an opportunity for any discussion on anything. Ms. Parks. So I'm just wondering if when we bring out these items up to the planning board, if we can bring up some of the items that are not real clear, like, what does it mean to say substantially more detrimental to a neighborhood? Some of the things that we struggled with over the last six months, a buffer zone, whether parking lot counts as part of a business related to buffer zones, stuff like that. I'm wondering if we can kind of ask the planning board to give us more detailed information on those kind of open items that are not fully defined items to me. So that was one thing. And the other thing is I just wanted to say, Steve, I think you're doing a really great job. It's really wonderful to work with you. I think you're very, you work really well with the public especially if people are getting concerned. And so I just really appreciate the job you're doing. So I wanted to thank you. Thank you. That's kind. I couldn't, I can't do it without all you. So that goes to everybody on the board and all the staff. I think we've done a really good job and that's a compliment to all of you. So thank you very much, Cammy. I appreciate that. Mr. Linesdale. I'd like to echo her words about you. I think you're doing a marvelous job. And it's very, you have very strong but contemplative leadership. I would also like to thank Mr. Mora for being here because I think the more we as a board understand the processes that he goes through, the clearer we can be in terms of conditions that we want to put on any certain project. And the more we understand the, I don't know, problems, limitations that he has to deal with, I think also enhances what we're able to do on the board with each application. So thank you. I'd echo that. Great. Ms. Parks. Just really quick. I also want to say big thank you to Maureen for always being really wonderful and getting everything to us. And thank you so much for your support. I really appreciate you. Here, here. Here, here. Here, here. All right, well, that settles. I think that's everything for the agenda tonight unless there's anything else that anybody wants to say. Oh, one more thing. All right, Maureen. We do have the general public comment period. That's correct. But we're done with the comment from the board. Yep. The administrative staff. We have one last thing is the general comment period for any matter, not before the board tonight. If there's anybody from the public who wishes to make a comment, this is the time to do it. I see no raised hands. So do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? Mr. Maxfield. Seconded. All right, motion is made and seconded. Any discussion? Oh, you don't discuss a motion to adjourn. I keep forgetting that. That's the reason you do this. So there is no discussion on that. It's a roll call vote. I vote aye. Ms. O'Mara. Sounds like Ms. O'Mara's dog is voting aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Mr. Greenie. Aye. Ms. O'Mara. Aye. All right. Have a good night, everybody. Motion carries, it's unanimous. Have a good night. Have a good holiday season.