 Pam, do you see any of our board members in the attendees? Yeah, hold on. Sometimes it can take a minute for them to come on over. Well, I only see one person so far. Yep. I only see the one as well. So let's see, we're missing Andrew. Johanna had sent us a note that. Yeah, she acted like she might have to duck out, but I thought she might actually arrive around the same time. Okay. So, yes, I am not seeing Andrew yet and I'm not seeing Johanna. Andrew is traveling with his kids for college. I think he mentioned it last time, but. Okay. Okay. Okay. One, two, three. We have five though, Mr. Marshall. We do have Amherst media is with us. It is 633. You are a co-host, Mr. Malloy is a co-host. I believe we're good to go. Okay. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of March 15th, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall. And as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I'm calling this meeting to order. At 634 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media minutes are being taken. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022 and extended again by the state legislature on July 16th, 2022. The meeting will be conducted via a remote means using the zoom platform. The zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda. Posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technical means. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively and return to mute. Thank you. Bruce Colton. I'm here. Tom Long. Present. Andrew McDougal, we believe is to be absent all evening. I dug Marshall and present. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Here. And Karen Winter. Here. All right, board members. As issues arise, we may need to pause to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to remute yourself. For the general public. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. If you are not aware, the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the planning board chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. If you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. All right, so the first item on our agenda this evening is our minutes. And we have the minutes from February 15th a month ago that are available for approval tonight and any comment. So board members, do any of you have comments on the minutes? All right, Janet, I see your hand. I have a small addition to the comment I made on page seven. Kind of in midway down the page. And the comment was sees the same impacts on Shumway street and South Whitney. There have been a lot of transition in the small streets between Main Street and Route nine. I think I said that there's more and more student rentals and the houses are more run down. So I wanted to add that. Actually, I did say that just to make it make more sense. All right. Chris, I'm not seeing, oh, there you are. Well, Chris, assuming that that is in the recording. Does anybody have any objection to adding that to the minutes? All right, I'm seeing several board members heads. Say they have no objection. Any other comments on the minutes? All right. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes as amended by Janet. You got your hand up first. I moved to approve the minutes as amended. Thank you and Tom. Second. All right. Thank you both. Any more discussion, any more comments? All right. Why don't we go ahead and vote. Starting with Bruce. I'm going to abstain because I'm down here in the Bahamas. I've got my old computer with me and it doesn't have various passwords apparently. So I wasn't able to access the packet. So I wasn't able to read the minutes. I'm sure they're fine. The majority without me. So I will abstain. Okay. Thank you, Bruce. Tom. I approve. Janet. Approve. And I'm an approve. So that's four in favor. One abstention and. Oh, Karen, I forgot you. I'm sorry. I approve also. Okay. Five. Five in favor. One abstention and one absent. So the minutes up from February 15th are approved. All right. So moving on to item two. Public comment period. The time now is 640. All right. So members of the public. If you want to make a comment during this public comment period. On any topic that is not on our agenda later this evening. Now is the time to do it. I don't see any hands raised. So I am going to conclude that there is no desire for public comment. This evening. Okay. All right. So it's maybe now 640. One moving on to item three. Historic preservation planning. Updating the 2005 Amherst preservation plan. We'll have Shannon Walsh. And Ken Komiya. As our guests this evening. Welcome. Welcome both of you. Hi there. Can everybody hear me? Okay. Yes, we can hear you, Shannon. Great. Well, thank you. I'm Shannon Walsh. I'm the historic preservation planner for the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. And we, Ken and I would like to thank you for allowing us to join your meeting tonight. So to introduce Ken, Ken is the deputy director of land and environment at the PVPC. And we are here tonight to talk about the current historic preservation plan that we've been working on for the town. So the Amherst historic preservation plan. Of 2005 is the. Plan before this one. And this is what we're working on updating. That was completed by Martha Lyon. And guys and Tanner associates. And it was intended to be used as a 10 year guide. To preserving Amherst historic and cultural resources. So the plan that we're working on. Was funded by the community preservation act. And it's the project that we're working on. The plan that we're working on was funded by the community preservation act. And it's the project started in May of 2022. And it will be going through June of this year of 2023. So this is from the contract. I'll just go through the objectives of the project real quick. The objectives include providing an updated inventory and assessment of Amherst historic and cultural resources. Identifying issues and opportunities that are pertinent to the preservation of these resources. Assessing the status of historic preservation in Amherst. Identifying priorities for preservation and developing an action plan for implementing the priority goals and objectives. Developing a list of action steps to identify document. Preserve and promote historic and cultural resources. Assocated with diverse minority. Ethnic social and cultural groups and individuals who have played a role in Amherst history and particularly those who have been left out of the planning process and the documentation process in the past. And developing a list which identifies and prioritizes Amherst most threatened historic and cultural resources. So we're currently in phase two of this project, which is primarily about outreach, which is why we're here this evening. We've met with the Amherst planning department, historical commission, historic district commission. And we've developed with the planning department a digital community survey, which is available through the end of April and is advertised on engage Amherst. And there was just recently a newspaper article about it, although they didn't put a link to that. They didn't put a link to the survey in the article, but we're working with the planning department to get the word out more about this so we can get more of the information that's engaged in this process. We've had 81 responses so far. And I was looking at the data earlier, the first question is, do you believe that the preservation of Amherst historic and cultural resources is a worthwhile goal? And 97% of the respondents said yes. So we're getting a variety of responses, which I think will be helpful in developing this plan. We're also going to be meeting with a group of members in the near future. So we're working with the planning department to identify that risk and make risks that list and make sure we have as broad a reach on that group as possible. So tonight we're here to get feedback from you as members of the planning board. And I'm going to turn it over to Ken to facilitate the questions while I take notes. But before we get to that, I want to know if anyone has any initial questions about this project or the process. I do. Go ahead. Yeah. So I did notice the survey link. I think that was in maybe in an earlier mention in the Gazette. And I went to the survey. I haven't actually completed and submitted it yet, but I, there were two points in the questions that made me think. Whether it was sort of slanted toward doing more preservation. And they were questions for and question nine. Where it had, you know, I had a sort of multiple choice answer. That was excellent, good, fair. And not poor, but not enough. So if someone thought you were doing a poor job. I mean, not that I do, but I, I don't know. I don't know. How would they answer that question? That's, well, that's helpful feedback. I was looking through some of the, so we had, we originally formatted this survey based on what the 2005 plan survey was. And working with the planning office. We tried to simplify it. So it would be, and I actually got some responses that still said the way the survey is, it's not, I guess, it's a little high brow for getting people who don't speak in the different, you know, terms that we use a planning board members or planners. So we were trying to strike a balance between it being short, between getting as much information as possible and not turning people off because it was too complicated, but I have gotten some feedback. Because we took a lot of the right in answers out because we thought formatting going through all of that data is a whole other project. But one of the respondents said that one of the questions we said, if you've answered, yes, explain why, but we didn't say if you answered no, explain why. So I've gone in and made some changes. So any comments you have like that are very helpful. And I can tweak and edit the survey as needed for those two particular questions. I'm referencing that were only responses. If you answered, yes, I've added, if you've answered, yes or no, please explain why. So we value any of that feedback. Well, I guess my, my general attitude about historic preservation is that it needs to be balanced with other values and priorities within the town. So, you know, over time having sort of gradual creep to preserve and restrict renewal of more and more of the town is something I would not really look forward to. And we did the very last question is, is there anything else you'd like to add? So there is room for a respondent to that type of feedback in. All right. But thank you. Anyone else have any questions or comments before Ken starts? Okay. All right. I'm going to mute. So you're not listening to me typing. But Ken, you can take it away. And I'm good to meet you all board. I, as Shannon said, I can come in deputy director of land use and environment at PVPC. And a lot of my work is with municipal planning boards, particular to zoning bylaw amendments or development review. So a lot of the work that you do as a planning board member typically revolves around those things, right? So a lot of these questions are specific to regulatory things or regulatory ideas that are before you when you. Observe what happens during the amendment process for zoning bylaw, in addition to any sort of regulations or development review process that is employed by the town where you are, have a role in that. So I have a couple of questions. To ask, and as Shannon mentioned, she will be typing up these notes. But the first question is, as the planning board has a role in protecting some of the historical and cultural resources in town through its administration of the zoning bylaw, are there any historic resources that you feel are most endangered either from future development or neglect. Janet, I see your hand. So I just have a general comment to start with, which is this is the second time I've read this plan and it really holds up. I think it's a really excellent plan. And one of my questions back, you know, maybe we can talk about later is like how much has been done. But in terms of endangered resources, I think the fact is that we have like no real protections for all the, you know, strongest or most iconic businesses downtown and buildings, I mean, buildings, including parts of Amherst College. Same true for the historic North Amherst Village Center. I think very true for East Village because that's the old center of Amherst and, you know, a lot of those, those buildings have real, the houses are really kind of starting to really decay. One of them is just for a demolition decay. And it's really the oldest part of town that was settled by Amherst and had a character, I guess, English colonists, you know. And so, and then I live near South Amherst Common, which is, you know, in fantastic shape, buildings are very well maintained, but there's no protection for it. And so what I see is in the local historic districts, there is a process to go and, you know, expand your house or add on to it, but it goes through a process that makes sure it's all sort of in tune. And, you know, projects go in and they might, you know, have a little bit of process or not the happiest moments, but usually what comes out is really an add to the neighborhood. And I think actually the economic strength of the neighborhood. So my, I think the, you know, we have all these beautiful national historic registered districts and there's no protection for the buildings in them, like no real protection. And so I think that's the big glaring thing. And I wondered, like you were talking about historic overlay districts and I was just, at some point, if you could talk about how that's different or better or what kind of protections are inside that, because I was kind of lost a little bit. And then I also think we're sort of in slow drip by drip, losing that pattern of, you know, you know, villages separated by farmland. And since I've been in Amherst for 20 years, some very large houses have been built in that farmland along streets, but I'm also sort of content that most of that farmland has been protected. So it will be there. But that idea of, you know, kind of almost a European style development, I think is slowly being kind of diluted. Okay. Thank you, Janet. Anybody else? What historic resources are most in danger? Tom. Thanks. I have just a question and I didn't get a chance to go all the way through the plan. But, you know, you mentioned something about the sort of thinking about more diverse landscapes to be protected. And, you know, I think almost the opposite of maybe Janet's thinking about the sort of colonized landscapes, but I'm thinking more about indigenous landscapes and how we identify those, how we protect those and how we make sure that those are, since they're not always objects, right? They're not always things to be protected. But is there a strategy or a process by which you guys can identify those historic locations, their value within their cultural histories, and then strategies to protect those. Anybody else? Okay, Janet. I want to wholeheartedly endorse what Tom just said. And I just went to a presentation by historic North Hampton about the history of indigenous peoples and the Kings Phillips war. And, you know, I think he's right about these landscapes and where people were at different times. And so I think that has to be investigated more. The other thing I'm kind of worried about are these little houses that I see, you know, that is kind of how sort of the history of how people, most people really lived. And I think there's a lot of little homes, like I can kind of point at them that I think that are just sort of fading away. And I, you know, and even like there's in on office southeast street, there's like the baby carriage trail, which I accidentally went on to. And there used to be like a baby carriage factory there. And I think sort of historic markers of not some famous person's home or some large home, but just an ordinary home. It's like this is a traditional workers college cottage in North Amherst, you know, where we're factory workers, Irish factory workers live. Like I think that history is would be brought out more. All right. Karen. So that reminds me that the signage is I think very important. The recent signs that went up. Pointing to the writers, I think was very welcome. And so many people had no idea, including me and I live in the middle of town, but some of the historical houses that were here. And it's really interesting. And as you leave them and as you see them, you grow, it gives you a feeling of pride. And I know in doing research for the local historic society, I came upon this really interesting history of the triangle street and the skirmish of putting in that triangle street, the fight between the East Village and the West. It's really interesting. I can tell you, you know, about it. If you don't know about it, but I think that would be great to have another historical marker there. Just indicating with just a very brief sort of history to let people know that we, we have done the research and that this is, these are special places just to alert people. That's not, that hasn't been the case. And it's starting to be the case. And I think we should do more of that. Okay. Maybe, can maybe we could go on to the next question. Great. Those are some great comments. Thank you, board. And I think what you found, what you have found is in addition to understanding that there is a regulatory nature to some of your role, you've also brought some concepts as policies. And, you know, I think those are captured based on, on your observation. So those obviously are some great points of insight. The next question is, does the zoning bylaw and other development regulations adequately protect historic and cultural resources? If not, what are the special deficiencies? For example, should these regulations provide greater emphasis on the preservation of stone walls and historic foundations? That was just an example of a, you know, a type of question with relation to that regulation. So does the zoning bylaw and other development regulations adequately protect historic and cultural resources? If not, what do you find are the specific deficiencies? Tom. Yeah, thanks. That's a good question. We, we, I'm on the design review board and I'm also on the plan planning board. And one of the projects that came in front of us in the design review board was the North. I believe it's the North Amherst firehouse. Which. I guess an extension of the kind of brutalist landscape from, from the UMass campus. And, you know, there are a lot of really interesting questions about like, what makes that a historic building? And, and should we value it because of its contacts to a collection of brutalist buildings? Should we identify the architect and qualitatively decide whether they're a noble architect value, you know, valued in our community? How do we decide that? And so, you know, buildings like that for me that are really at this intersection of various form of history, not the easy ones that we can identify from, you know, 1875 owned by a, you know, a well-known person, but actually these, these projects that are kind of in the middle that I see value in, like, I don't necessarily want to see that building changed from its original format because, you know, we have a feeling that it might look better that way. Maybe it actually has value and we should restore it. And I think there's real questions about that. That are more, maybe they're there in kind of non-specific ways about the name, the architect or whatnot, but I think some more clear like process for us to look at and say, oh, here are the five steps that we have to take to, you know, to make decisions about this, right? Or, you know, the five decisions that the historic board, historic commission have to take and then give back to us or whatever that is. I think that needs to be a bit more clear for those, like I said, those buildings that are aesthetically unique or, or situationally or contextually unique and interesting. So just, just a thought on that. Okay. Another thing, someone, a resident talked to me about a couple of years ago was like a demolition by neglect by law, where you're sort of not allowed to let your house sort of, or building recede into, you know, waste termite property and then apply for your demolition thing. And so I had, I had, sorry, excuse me, seeing one of those. And then I think that also ties into sort of a revolving loan fund for, to help people repair their properties. Another thing I know the historic commission many years ago, I was looking at like how to save the Amherst barns. And there are a lot of falling apart, but I think that, you know, you know, I think that also ties into sort of a revolving loan fund for, to help people repair their properties. And there are a lot of falling apart barns in South Amherst, and they're really cool. And I'm sure if I had a barn like that on my property, I wouldn't be thinking, Oh, how can I spend 30 or $50,000 to buttress it? But I would want to, and I just, I don't know if that would be, you know, helped by a demolition by neglect, or that there's a better way to encourage or help people keep those barns alive or convert them into housing or something. So thanks, Janet. Bruce. I hadn't thought that the, over the years that I've been associated with stoning bylaws in this town and other places, I haven't thought of the stoning bylaws as being a vehicle for, we're in the midst of a minor hurricane here's a little bit of pudding, but it's a little bit of a mess. It's totally different from the way you saw in the last time with the sun sets in the coconut town. Where was I? The vehicle, zoning bylaw is a vehicle for strike preservation. It hasn't occurred to me that, that our bylaw would, would be called upon to do that. So I'm kind of, so I'm curious to hear the question, and I read it earlier in what we're seeing. So I guess I'd like to see some examples and so forth, because it seems to me that the better way to drive the strike preservation in town is a through declaring districts as we have done in two cases and could do in others, or be just a general consciousness raising where it's not done through regulatory structure, but it's done through such as Karen and others were saying earlier by putting clocks the way people in other countries do on houses that identify who lived there at one point, or some particular feature of it, or whether it's done in sidewalks or wherever, but there are subtle and effective means that essentially used to raise the consciousness of the community. And that is the considered to be the level that's kind of work the best. So I'm, it's not clear to me that zoning bylaw is the place to put this stuff, but I'd be interested to the arguments that would refute that. All right, thanks Bruce. Chris, I see your hand. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that we have seen a major change in our zoning bylaw in the last year. We've taken the demolition delay section of the bylaw out of the zoning bylaw, and we've put a new section in the general bylaw called preservation of historically significant buildings. So maybe this question should not necessarily refer to the zoning bylaw, but should refer to the town bylaws in general. And in that case, I think, you know, there is a pretty strong preservation bylaw currently in place. I also wanted to mention that we do have reference to historical and cultural resources in at least two places. And maybe Nate, if he's present, he is present, but if he's, you know, able to speak could come up with more, but we have the criteria. We have the zoning by zoning board of appeals criteria in section 10.38 and we have the planning board criteria in 11.24. I'm more familiar with the planning board criteria, which actually does have one of the criteria as. Does this project have an impact on historical or cultural resources. And I think the zoning board of appeals does as well. I better stop talking, excuse me. Okay, thanks, Chris. And I guess I would echo what Bruce was saying. You know, I don't think of the zoning bylaw as really having a very strong role in preservation of historic assets. Maybe we could go on to the third, your third question, Ken. Great. So the third question, there's, it's to what extent do you feel the existing historic preservation regulations and policy and Amherst impact the following and then I have a couple of statements. So how do you feel existing historic preservation regulations and policies impact preservation of historic buildings. Hannah. Sure, I'll chime in here. I think in general Amherst has pretty rigorous preservation guidelines. If anything, there are. You know, we have a lot of preserved places. I think the demolition bylaw and the new amendments there. Clarify it. I think more. I feel like I was just reading in the paper, you know, I was like, ah, if I had known about all these things that I needed to do, I wouldn't have bought this place in the first place. So, you know, my thinking. Is we are pretty diligent as a community about historic preservation. Those are my thoughts. Thanks, your honor. Janet. So I think we're diligent in terms of the buildings that are in the local historic. Districts and I think people are individually diligent. You know, there's a lot of people taking an effort. When the Emily Dickinson historic district was proposed, one of my questions at the meeting was like, why are you doing this? These people are doing an amazing job with their buildings. They seem to really care for them. And I live in a 220 year old house and I could apply for a demolition delay. You know, get the delay and tear it down. And so there's nothing that would stop me from doing that. And so I think, you know, there's no day that I really feel that way unless it's fighting with my heating system. But I think there's so many of the beautiful places you see, aren't protected at all, except for the demolition delay for, you know, six months or a year. And so I think there has to be a better way for saying, these are our priority areas, you know, like the local historic districts, you know, are the only mechanism I really know to really strongly protect areas or homes or buildings or lands, whatever. So, I mean, my question goes back to, you know, does he, is an overlay district a way of kind of helping preserve homes and how does that work? All right. Thanks, Janet. I'm reminded of an instance actually maybe 12 to 15 years ago where there was a house on Northeast street that was being proposed to be torn down. And I think the general community was, was not happy about that. And I think the town ended up either paying the owner or purchasing the house. So even properties that are outside of historic districts do seem to get attention. And, you know, I know there've been a number of older houses that have been moved rather than torn down. So it seems to me that, you know, there's a pretty strong awareness in the community of our different historic assets. And even when they're not part of a historic district, there are people who are interested and able to, you know, talk to the owner or talk to the town and devote resources toward saving or moving, you know, how is this that are deemed worth, worth the effort? So I guess I'd say I think we do a pretty good job throughout town. Anybody else on the board? All right, Ken. Oh, hold on. We got another word from Johanna. Sorry, I'll just say one other thing, which is, and maybe this is not the time or the place because we're here really to talk specifically about preservation and the town's preservation plan, but I think, you know, there are a lot of things that we're trying to juggle as a town where have ambitious climate goals that we're trying to meet. We have a master plan that's looking to concentrate development and village centers and downtown. And, and so I think we have preservation goals, but they're not the only goals we have as a town. And so, you know, making sure we're striking the right balance that reflects our values as a town feels really important to me. Thank you, Johanna. Ken. Great. So in, so the question again is how do you feel or to what extent do you feel the existing historic preservation regulations and policy impact? And then the next item is compatible neighborhood development. Who wants to take that one? So, you know, it seems like, I guess I'll venture into it a little bit. I mean, the neighborhood where we've got the most conversation about compatible development probably is in the Lincoln fearing sunset area where we have the historic district. You know, other neighborhoods in town, you know, many of them were built in the 70s, maybe. And I know as we have deliberated about the recent proposal to allow duplexes throughout town, there's been conversation about how to, how those buildings would be compatible in scale or not and how we might guide that development in those neighborhoods. So that's a zoning conversation, though. That's not really a historic preservation conversation at this point. Am I right that the plan identifies buildings that are 50 years old as the point at which they become considered historic? Sorry, I was trying to find my mute button. I would say that's the national park service standard in the United States. So I think that's one of the criteria for being historic. There's lots of ifs and buts. 50 years old or older. Is one of the criteria for being historic, but there's also context like, for example, the former World Trade Center site. There's a new building constructed there, but because it's so significant. So there's a lot of steps, but typically it's 50 years of older, although a lot of communities can kind of decide where they want to go. So that's a big question. I think the 28th branch house is probably considered historically. Significant. I mean, you might. Yes. So that, that is still in theory. Yes. It's anything where are we now 2023. So 1973. And older. But. The mass historic commission. For a whole, for example, maybe there's a mid-century modern neighborhood. Like I know there's one in Long Meadow where my husband's is mid-century ranchers and you feel like you've driven into a different time period on that street because it has that context. So I'll use Bay Road in Amherst, for example. I was recently documenting Bay Road and more so for the history of the road and the very oldest properties that were there and the Nuttingville area, but there's a lot of infill construction that. Is older than 50 years, but it's completely out of context. So. Your house in theory could be considered, but probably wouldn't make the cut because of a lot of those reasons. Okay. Great. Chris, I see your hand. Thank you. So our new preservation of historically significant buildings does say 75 years or older. So I think that puts it back around. 49 something like that. So that those are the buildings that the historical commission looks at, but that's specific to that particular bylaw. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Chris. Anybody else for the context in neighborhoods. I guess as long as nobody else has their hand up, I'll say one more thing kind of along the lines of what Johannes said, you know, in this era of, of climate change and our efforts to reduce our carbon emissions. You know, I think the criteria for whether say. Janet's house from 200 years ago is. You know, is a good thing to keep or not. You know, we might have, we might change our, our, our view of that because. It probably doesn't have any insulation. It probably doesn't have very good air tightness. You know, it probably has. You know, a central chimney that wicks heat right out of the, you know, so, so what, you know, we might want to be a little bit. What we might want to view that a little differently as our, as our cultural. Challenges. Evolve. If I could just add one comment only because Ken knows this because he heard me talking about it. I sat through a mass DEP hour and a half. And I said, you know, we're going to build a new house. We're going to build a new construction workshop today. The other side of that is those bricks were made 200 years ago. The wood is from old growth trees and it's dense. And everything that is potentially demolished to build a new house goes into a landfill. So that's a whole giant, but very interesting conversation talking about that. Each municipalities ambitions for climate resiliency. And what are we, what should we be throwing out? And what should we be keeping? So that's a very interesting thing that we plan to address in this plan, just talking about sustainability as well. And the embodied carbon, that's clearly part of it. You know, so maybe the house is saved, but, but it's clad with 12 inches of insulation and new windows or something. Okay. Janet, now that we've redesigned your house, what's up? It's very funny you were talking about my house because it has four chimneys and our heating system heats every room independently because of the, the fact that it would just consume energy endlessly. And I was looking at that clad that you can put on the outside of your house because it seems like the only solution. Although I keep on picturing the outcry. I have a question though, but what does compatible neighborhood development mean? Because I first took that as like below. But I wonder if it's like the use of stuff because like traditionally, you know, people, you know, a blacksmith would be living, you know, their blacksmith would be next to someone's dairy barn, which could be, you know, everything was, the uses of everything has changed so much. And, you know, under our current zoning, we more segregate out residential areas. And, you know, our village centers were for a long time just in the waste zone, mostly for businesses and commercial. And now we're letting more housing in. So when you say compatible neighborhood development, like, are you talking about the way land is used or, you know, I didn't really understand the phrase. Yeah, I think it's more so in that context, understanding that there seems to be at least in, in some communities where as you mentioned, Janet, typically you have one type of use in a neighborhood. However, maybe there's a home business that's there, or maybe there's an opportunity for a change of use, which may be a little more intense than let's say a single family home, or if it happened, if the, in the, if in the historic district, there is a commercial use and it has a certain look, how does it, how does it look like at addressed if there's either a planned expansion or some other permitted activity. So I think it is just a general, a general statement in looking at how any sort of new development within your, maybe your historic district or how, how the regulations in town impact how, you know, the particular use in that neighborhood gets permitted or, you know, is, is understood. So yeah, I think it's a little bit of both the use and the look. Because I think Amherst is very flexible that we have like this home office bylaw and then also people can have boarding houses and be an air, you know, so there's, there's a lot of flexibility that allows different uses. And I think in our village centers and Amherst Center, we're kind of grappling with that issue about the zoning being sometimes restrictive in one spot and on another. So yeah. All right. Thanks, Janet. I just want to mention the time now is 718 and I saw Bruce, I stopped seeing Bruce on our call. So at some point in the last maybe 10 minutes, he probably dropped off to deal with his minor hurricane. Okay, Ken, what's next? Thank you. So, in that same vein, to what extent do you feel the existing historic preservation regulations and policy impact economic benefits to the town? What about appropriate new construction? Did you mention that? Oh, sorry, Chris, you also have. Sorry for budding in, but. Yeah, no, we'll do that after. Let's do economic benefits first. So how do you feel to what extent do you feel the existing historic preservation regulations and policy impact economic benefits? All right, so I guess I see it sort of as a two sides of a coin. To the extent that they are preserving the historic. Image of Amherst that's that draws tourists and visitors to enjoy our quaint New England town. That's a positive benefit. To the extent that they are caught, you know, they are restricting development that would be either economically advantageous or help us deal with our housing challenges. I see them as an obstacle. Johanna. Thank you. I think Doug and I see I, we have very similar thoughts on this. So I think there was a look to Amherst that makes it a destination and our historic preservation has helped with that. That being said, I think. I think that with the perception and to some extent the reality that developing in town is hard has contributed to our town, not only having very high residential property. Rates particular in regard to neighboring towns and a housing crisis and a not very diversified tax base. So I think the majority of taxes are born by residential taxpayers and we don't really have a significant commercial and certainly no industrial tax base. And then when you couple that with the number of nonprofit institutions in town, we really are in a little bit of a crunch where we're managing a big town on a, you know, kind of. On the backbone of residential taxpayers. And I think, you know, the historic preservation piece is only a part of it, but it is a part of it. And I think, yeah, I'll leave it at that. I think, Johanna, you meant you remind me of, I think there was a project that Barry Roberts proposed a couple of years ago at the corner of what was it? It wasn't McClellan. It was the next one up. Is that prospect? And at the south end of Kendrick Park. And it was Halleck. Halleck Street. Okay. Halleck Street. And, you know, he had a, there's an existing. Old gracious building there and he, the preservation delay was imposed. And by the time that expired, I think the, you know, the tenant he had had gone away and the project didn't go forward. So that was an instance where. If it had been allowed to go forward when all the stars were aligned, it probably would have helped the town's tax base. But I'm sure there were a bunch of people who were just pleased that, that existing structure remained. I'll also mention the many of the buildings on the west side of the north common kind of across from town hall. You know, there's that one building that has the big for rent sign in the windows. You know, right next to Bank of America. And it's been there probably for a decade. You know, I've been in a couple of those buildings upstairs and including the one above subway and they're all kind of close to being what I would call functionally obsolete. In that the floor plates are small. There, there is or isn't adequate accessibility. And, you know, that's actually, you know, the area where I usually see on real estate listings for properties in town. That's the area where I see pictures of how great, you know, great Amherst, you know, that those blocks that front the north common. And so, you know, there are moments where I think, well, maybe that's the area where the next historic district should be. If we really liked that. Because those buildings are not great from a commercial point of view. So I think at some point, some one of those owners may decide it's time to put a put a new building there that's functional. So anyway, Janet, I see your hand again. So I don't want to weigh in on that building with Barry Roberts, but I do have feedback from friends of mine and people about how beautiful Amherst is. And a lot of UMass students really like it, you know, the kind of charm of it. The historic preservation is like an economic driver. Like when you go to Newberry Port, you're not going there because there's a bunch of new buildings there you're going because it's like, you know, building after building is stunning. It's really commercially, you know, rocking. You know, I mean, and I would, you know, and so in the buildings we keep on seeing advertised. I understand what Doug is saying. I know there's a lot of artists lofts and stuff in there and, you know, could be improved. I think that there's, there's nothing holding people back or there's no reason not to expand in a way that's compatible and builds on what we have. And I think that's a New England tradition and probably a tradition everywhere. Like, you know, you need in the small towns like Hatfield, you'll see this like beautiful white house. And this kind of big addition on the back that isn't the same style. And you realize like, holy moly, there's like 20 apartments back there, but you don't see it because it sits on the street in a small way. And the larger building is behind there. And I think that's the vision for a lot of people for Amherst is like, yeah, you can put in a hundred units, but it doesn't have to look like it just dropped out of anywhere. You know, instead it looks like it was organically grew the way everything has always grown. So I think it's like what brings people in. It would brought, you know, my husband went to Amherst college. It brought him back. I mean, this is a beautiful town. And it's actually prettier than most of the towns around here. And so I think that kind of beauty, we can keep that and keep expanding. And it draws people in for tourism. I have friends whose parents come up from, you know, New York every few years to visit the museums and the town. And, you know, so I never see historic preservation as kind of a negative if you're just building in a way that's compatible. And it doesn't mean it has to be old timey, but just somehow fit. That's Tom's job, I think. Okay, Janet. Karen. So I wonder what the, you know, I live a lot of the year in Berlin in Germany. The preservation of the outside of East Berlin was kept intact. But there is so much renovation and what you're talking about. And I think. They're constantly upgrading the insides of houses and making beautiful windows, glass fronts, but keeping them historic and old and, and lovely. And I think that's our goal in Amherst. We don't want these buildings that Doug said that you go inside and they're, they're decrepit and falling apart that, that our preservation rules should not protect that kind of thing. We need architects that will put, you know, that keep that historic flavor, the beauty, the outside that we're known of, but things have to be changed. They have to be updated. They have to become more climate friendly. And why. So that's, that's our goal to keep the appearance. Historic, beautiful. So, you know, maybe have infill they as, you know, I think for example, Barry Roberts, the project on sunset that we work together on to change and to kind of adapt is extremely successful when I walk down sunset now and I see the houses that are put in there in context, they look nice. It's better than that single family house that was turned into a home. So, you know, I think it's going to be a much better solution. So I think there are ways of doing it. That we need to, to work on. Okay. Thank you. Ken. Great. So. Signing with that, that line of question. How do you feel the existing historic preservation regulations and policy impact. Appropriate new construction. Well, I guess my first response is that it's. It's, it's, it's guiding the new construction inside of our historic districts where there it's pretty. You know, where the historic local historic commissions are part of the process. And then to the outside of those districts. I don't know that the regulations are really doing any guiding. I think it depends on the sensitivity of the architect and the developer or the owner. To decide how to respond to the existing context. Tom. Yeah, I mean, I think on some small level, there's language in there that talks about its relationship. To neighboring buildings, right, or to the, the context. And so if that context just happens to have. Buildings of historic nature, then I think we have to somehow consider that, but I don't necessarily think that. There's clear. Regulations or policies protecting those particular buildings other than. And I don't necessarily know if they should. But I guess my point is that there is language in there about context, but it's not necessarily historic where they did. Great. So, again, with that line of question, how do you feel the historic preservation regulations and policies. Impact. And so this is related to the previous one. How do they impact heritage tourism? Does it. How do they impact the increase in heritage tourism? Or how do they in. I mean, how do we know? How do I know there's an increase? I mean, right. So, you know, do they impact heritage tourism? Probably in some way, but it's hard to, I would, I don't know how we quantify the direct connection from. The policies to the. The dollars. Janet, what do you think? Agree with your puzzlement because, you know, I think, you know, lots of people come to see the Emily Dickinson house in that fantastic Victorian time capsule, her brother's house next door. I think it would be fantastic whether or not it was in the historic district. And, you know, you know, it's definitely a shout out to a lot of people maintaining their properties. You know, Amherst college, you know, does an amazing job of taking care. You know, it's half the downtown is Amherst college. And even when they build, it fits in, you know, we, we see modern additions on old buildings, but it all kind of works. And so I don't, I don't know. I mean, I think I don't know how to quantify it because you'd have to kind of know why people came and, you know, the strong house is going to is unprotected, but it's there. The whole downtown Amherst center is unprotected. It's outside any historic district. I mean, you know, what are people coming to see culturally? You know, I think I'm not sure we can quantify that. I mean, and some people are not coming because of the, you know, the historic fabric. They're, they're, they're coming because, you know, there's, there's a lacrosse tournament in town with their son and they're staying over, over the weekend or they're on their college visits and they're going to see Hampshire college or, you know, I mean, it's very difficult to pin down, I think. Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of cultural institutions like the Air Coral, UMass has a lot of museums. I mean, there's a lot to come and see. I think you'd have to kind of, I don't know how you would tease that out. I certainly don't think I can. And there's not a lot of data about cultural, anything in general. So I wonder if that is something that would be helpful to be developed for communities to use, especially because it ties into economic ties into real dollars. But now that there's cultural districts being created, which Amherst has a great one. That might be something that data could somehow be derived from events and things tied into the cultural district. All right. Can you stuff this on that one? So what, what's the next one? The next one is how you feel about the, how you feel about the, how you feel about the regulations and policies impacting environmental protection. Oh boy. These are getting harder, I think. And that could also relate to landscapes, historic landscapes as well. Okay. So I guess I'll say a couple of things here. Number one, if we're going to. Preserve old buildings, we need to have. A very serious conversation about how to retrofit this, those buildings to hit our. Emission goals. Because. It's just, it's a lot more expensive to retrofit old buildings than to incorporate modern heating and cooling. Systems into. You know, highly efficient new buildings. My second thought is just about land use. So. We know we want to be directing. Development in our village centers where ideally people can walk or bike or take transit to work rather than needing to rely on a car. So in so far as our preservation. Anyway, so I think our preservation. Plans. Need to support that rather than impede it. I think those are the two key things I wanted to hit on there. Oh, Johanna, can I, can I be a little more direct about what I think you said? Sure. You know, earlier, I think Janet was saying, Hey, maybe we need to have historic to local historic districts in North Amherst village center and. You know, East Amherst village center and all these different village centers. And, and I guess I, my reaction is, wait a minute, that's the area where we want to rebuild and be more dense. And that probably means taking down the existing building. You know, and increasing the footprint of the new building and making it higher. And so to me that, you know, that's sort of running counter. The historic preservation objective is running counter to what the climate goals and the master plan are calling for. Janet, I see your hand and I know you're going to rebut me. But, you know, so I'd be really leery of putting historic districts all over town where we thought we were going to develop. Okay, Janet. Counterpoint. Well, I don't want to rebut you, but I don't see, so the local historic districts aren't saying don't develop. I mean, and so, in fact, the local historic districts are in the most densely zoned parts of Amherst. And so, you know, the Barry Roberts thing on Fearing Street is an example of a dense new development replaced two houses in a local historic district. And it looks good. And that was partly because they went through that, that project went through that process. And so I could easily see East Amherst, which is going to see, you know, more development in terms of East Street school. You know, you can keep adding people and you can keep adding buildings, but you just need to, what, what Karen was saying is you protect the exterior. And what you're building, you can build up, you can build back, but it has to fit in some ways. And it could be a modern new addition. Like Amherst College did with, I mean, I always call it the Fiber Art Center, that white, the kind of white church in town has this big orange thing behind it. So nothing stops you from expanding. But just the idea that you would take East Amherst and say, Oh, look at these junkie houses of the original settlers and the JCA, which is the second, you know, second church, you know, let's, let's get rid of that and, you know, put something modern in it. That, that to me seems like really old style thinking it's like killing the West End to put in Boston to put in, you know, the fabulous, brutalist Boston City Hall, like an entire neighborhood was destroyed. And yet all the other neighborhoods that were kept in Boston are like economic engines of Boston's tourism, people thronged there or they go to eat there. And so I don't think these are incompatible things. I think you can expand. I hope you can retrofit. But I don't know, I just, I think these aren't opposite things. And I think it's part of your economic development and you know, reusing buildings and expanding and, you know, keeping it all going and like having multiple goals and saying, how do you get there versus pitting them against each other? And some communities have developed design guidelines, like for example, Salem just used a Mass Historical Commission grant to do an entirely updated design guideline, but they have a whole section on new construction, which explains just not that you can't have new construction, but how it can be compatible with the existing buildings to keep kind of the same form and massing and the same feel and context on the streetscape. All right. I don't see any more hands can why don't we move on. All right, we have two more in this, in this line of questioning. So the first one is your existing regulations and policy. How do you think they impact the protection and storage of town records? This is your historic policies. Yes, historic preservation regulations. Yeah. Well, I will tell you, I'm completely ignorant of how we store our records. So does anybody else on the board know or would Chris want to take a stab at telling us how we store our records, Johanna? I don't know exactly how the town stores its records, but I do know that there have been leaks in the library that have damaged some of the special collections, which speaks to the need to deal with that particular building, which is relevant. I'm sure they've gone through all kinds of historic preservation conversations as they move forward with their remodeling. But again, I don't know about the storage of the town records, but I do know that there are a lot of documents. Thank you, Johanna. Chris. Well, we have managed to scan a lot of our documents, but many of the paper documents are stored up in the North Amherst School in the basement. And that's not an ideal location because it's subject to dampness and other things. So I do think that we should spend more time storing our documents. But there are so many other things that also need our time and money. So it's a hard thing to get placed in a priority. But certainly we should pay attention to that. All right, Ken. Great. And finally, to what extent do you feel your existing historic preservation regulations and policy impact the resiliency of historic and cultural resources? This is resilience as in able to bounce back from hurricanes and. Or even emergency preparedness in advance. Planning ahead, whether gutters or if like, you know, that a place when it as a normal rain leaks, then what can you do to make it more resilient? Like you were talking about storage and roof leaks and is there a better place to store things that are irreplaceable? Things like that kind of planning ahead. Yeah. Chris, yours is the hand that's up. So I think one thing we need to do is talk about. Potential for using. CPAC money. I forget what CPAC stands for, but preservation act money. To. Allow people to restore their private buildings, and we had a big discussion here last year about whether it was appropriate to use CPAC money for. For private properties. And I think if Amherst is going to maintain its historic buildings that we really need to make that a priority, that it's not just the publicly owned buildings that need to be taken care of, but it's the privately owned buildings. And sometimes the private owners don't have enough money to take care of them. So that relates to this. Item H here. Okay. And I'm going to, I, I want to just mention one thing that came up that came to mind and a couple of questions ago. We, I'm not aware that we really have any house museums in town. And, you know, if there were old houses that were in danger of demolition and the owner doesn't want to. They don't want to. They don't want to maintain them and keep them. If, you know, it could be that the town or the historic society could decide that we will buy that and just operated as a house museum rather than have it be an occupied dwelling. And the building code treats house museums completely differently than occupied dwellings. So there's more leniency on doing things that are not energy efficient, for instance. So that's just a thought. Okay. What's next, Ken? We got a new line of questions or. Yeah. So we got three more. And this time actually brought it up when he talked about the design review board. And so this question is how does the time, the design review board interact with your permitting process as you oversee both special permits and site plan review and certain instances. Is it effective? What could make the process more efficient? Well, Tom, you ought to really answer that. And just before you answered, he said, make it more efficient, not necessarily make it better. Yeah. Well, I mean, what's interesting is that I'm. I can only think. Maybe one or two projects that have fallen on both of our radars. During a single period. And one of them was the archipelago project where, because it's a downtown, I think the issue with the design review board is the limitation of what we look at. And that's only within the downtown area. And it's very specifically certain kinds of buildings and things that we don't interact with. And rarely are there. Like I said, rarely they're historic buildings. And then sometimes these things kind of creep up and pop into our radar. But mostly it's within a zone that. You know, we don't interact with a lot of historic buildings. Or we haven't yet. But only those downtown. So that's one of the things that I think limits the design review. I think that's one of the major hurdles. So I don't, I think when we talk about how the design review board would look at aesthetics of how a new building might compare to a historic building that won't happen unless it's downtown. So that will go right past us. And that will come probably to. You know, the planning board. Or the zoning board of appeals. And they would have to have the same, you know, as we talked about, you know, design standards, they would have to be looking at similar design standards in order to make that judgment. I don't think those design standards. Exist or apply outside of the downtown. Very well compared to, you know, because the design standards that we look at. For the most part relates to the taller buildings in the downtown and their relationship and sidewalks and all kinds of other criteria that lend itself to be a downtown experience rather than what a. In addition or a neighboring residential house might look like compared to its neighbors. So there's no, not a lot of language in. In the design standards. You know, guidelines to talk about those kinds of neighborhoods. So that might be something that I think we would need to develop to put both of these boards on the same. On the same page. But in terms of efficiency. I mean, I don't, I don't see any hurdles because we, we rarely see the same projects. And, you know, maybe in the future might make a difference. And I would hope that. You know, the way the. Various boards rely on other boards. We might not approve something until let's say. There was environmental approval on certain aspects of. Of a particular site. We would want to hear from those experts before we would approve it. I would hope that. You know, that this board would do the same in terms of something that might have a design impact that we would say. Did the design review board approve this and or what were their comments or recommendations. Before we would approve it. And often that, you know, Seems like it would happen. But we don't have a lot of examples of it happening so far. Okay, Tom. I guess one thing we could, we could think about would be whether it would be worthwhile to expand the. Geographic purview of the design review board. I mean, that would be another way to. To start to have a more serious design discussion about more projects in town. Before they get to the planning board. Janet. So I. You know, so the design review board is advisory. And so is the historic commission. And I have gone to historic commission meetings where people literally have said. You know, why are we kind of bothering? Cause the planning board won't listen. And so I think, so I don't, I've seen the design review board. I don't think they're inefficient. They seem to move their stuff quickly. But everything they're saying is sort of advisory. And I've, you know, I've been on this board. I think for four years I've lost track. Is there's times when, you know, when it was the North Amherst library. We went through the entire design review board recommendations. We talked about the size of the design review board. We went through the entire design review board recommendations. We talked about the size of windows. And we were very careful in the planning board's process. To take those comments and turn that into. Part of the permit with the, I think it's 11 East pleasant. The design. Re board thought the building needed some adjustment in terms of. How it appeared on the street. And also the, the size of it, like to break it up. And we just kind of ignored that and never really considered it. So I think part of it is. The planning board can make these boards more effective by. Implementing what they're saying. And, you know, when someone's on a board saying, what's the point? No one's going to listen. I think at that point that's kind of a breakdown in the process. And I don't know if the answer is to give either board. More permitting power. I mean, the conservation commission. Has it's, you know, it has the power to say no, and to put in conditions under state law. And we wait for them because that's, they have that power. And it's also, I think just sensible and, you know, so I wonder if part of it is if we paid more attention to the boards and implemented what they say. And change the projects to reflect those concerns. And then I wonder if maybe they more than. Have some more power than being advisory. I do like Doug's suggestion about expanding the purview of the design review board. I think that makes sense too. And I think that's a good point. And I think that's a good point. And I think that's a good point. And they'll be sort of more consistent decisions, but I think we have to listen kind of better and implement and use our power to kind of help empower them and their, and their work. Okay. Thanks. I don't see any more hands. Ken. Okay. Second to last question is looking at. Your various planning efforts within town and the future ones as well. What are your goals and with other development related goals? Well, no one's jumping up with their hands to answer that question. And I don't have very much to say, except I think. We're about right in terms of the balance right now. I don't have a sense that. There's a lot that we need to do more than what we're doing now. But now I see a couple of hands. So chime in. Johanna, you're next. Thanks, Doug. Appreciate it. This is a good question. I think. I feel like I see historic development happening around town. I feel like I see new buildings coming up around town, but there's also still a huge housing shortage. And. You know, in the village center close to where I live, there isn't. I don't know. It's like. It's far from what I think the vision of a walkable, bikeable. You know, densely inhabited village center should be. So I think we are much closer to realizing our vision with regard to preservation than we are with realizing our vision of. You know, vibrant downtown and vibrant village centers where people can live their lives without getting into a car. Thank you, Johanna. I thought there was another hand and it went away. So okay. Ken, let's go to the last question. All right. So this is the catch all. Is there anything else that you would like to discuss related to the product, the topic and the project. So why don't you tell us a little more about. You're going to do your work. And I presume it's going to be. A new. Amherst preservation plan dated. You know. 2023. Yeah, we're updating the plan. We're incorporating that there was such a really thorough historical narrative in the original plan. So we've taken that. And what we're adding to it is just more information about. We're adding to the narrative. So we're adding to the narrative. So we're adding to the narrative. Cultural groups who were maybe underrepresented. Not necessarily just by this plan, but by everyone who was writing anything, you know, until more recently when that is really a, a more of a consideration and appropriate that we should be really looking at everyone in a community, including the indigenous people who were here before us. So we're adding to the narrative. We're adding to the narrative. We're adding to the narrative. I mentioned before. And we're taking everything on this. I guess I'll say listening tour, getting feedback from the community, getting feedback from your group, getting feedback from other stakeholders. And we're going to incorporate that into it. And then. Probably. Around May or June we'll have a final draft that, that can be circulated for people to give comments. So we'll have to do that. And then we'll have to get those to Town Council. Does it get formally adopted or. Once you've finalized it, it is what it is. Chris, do you want to answer that? I'm trying to remember what. How we left that. I don't really know, but I don't think town council has a role here. If anything, I think the. Historical commission would have a role. So if it's going to be adopted, it would be adopted by the historical commission. And I think, and I think that's a great thing. And I think that's very, very important. The other aspect we got from the historical commission is they want. They want action steps, but the original plan had so many great steps, but really too much for any one volunteer commission to do. So we're trying to keep that in mind. You know, and have things that are kind of now. And then down the road and then further down the road and to make it. Really something that's usable, but also realistic. You know, as the commission decides, okay, this is the one we're going to work on in 2024. Those actions need to interface with the rest of the town government and, you know, get adopted or accepted or funded or whatever by the town. And so it's, it's mostly. Here's what the commission would advocate for. And then they'd need to bring everybody else on board. Is that right? Yeah, well, it just depends on what those action steps are, which we're still working through with the planning department and commissions. Okay. I see Janet and then Chris. When I, one idea I had when I was looking at this plan because what I was worried that was my question is like, this is Chaka block flow, great ideas. I could, you know, you know, for what I know a fair map or done some really important ones aren't done. And the housing trust has a consultant. And she's paid with, with CPAC money. And I think she's been sort of amazing for the trust and, you know, because there's so many affordable housing regulations and she's been helping, you know, like the housing trust has launched like three or four major low income housing projects. And I think a lot of it is because they had this expert advice. And I wonder, I started to wonder, is, could the historic commission have a, have a consultant who's very experienced in the field about regulations or different state grants or what other towns do, you know, and I don't think it's a huge amount of money. I don't think it's more than like 30 or 40,000 a year. And I, the woman is just excellent who does that. And I wonder if that would be something to add in saying, you know, it's a volunteer board that you give them this massive work project. But there's people who are experts in the area. And would that be an idea that you might want to consider for the plan, like hiring a consultant who could work with the historic commission and just kind of move things forward more quickly instead of, you know, in terms of documentation or applying for grants. You said this is the house. So is the housing trust a nonprofit or is that an Amherst? I think it's separate. So I don't, I don't, this is not, this is outside of my range of expertise, but I don't know. I think part of it is that the commission is a government body. And maybe the housing trust is a separate entity. I don't know. But sometimes there's like a historical society. I'm where you mentioned historic North Hampton or in Springfield. We have the Springfield preservation trust, those types of groups. I know they have a lot of advocate who works for them. They sometimes manage revolving front funds. And it seems like some of those types of things live with those nonprofits that are separate from a government entity. But thank you. That's a good point. I will look into that. I mean, is that does it, does Amherst not have a, an independent private group like that? Is it there the Amherst historical society? Am I making that up? Are they the ones in the house next to the library? Yeah, they're on. I'm sorry. As it reaches eight o'clock, this is my bedtime. So I apologize if I'm no longer making sense. Yes. So that's what I mentioned that we're, we're having another group of stakeholders. So we're going to have anybody who's in either preservation interest groups or cultural groups. We're going to gather together on a zoom and pose some, not these same questions because they were targeted to your audience, but also get them involved in the conversation. Okay. Okay. Okay. So perhaps we'll bring that up at their group. Doug, if I can follow up. So the housing trust, I kind of, housing trust is created by town meeting. I remember this back when, and so it says, it says it's a good, an instrument of town government. Okay. I remember creating it once in town meeting, maybe later. Okay. Okay. Thanks, Janet. Thank you. You've got your hand up and you've been very patient. Yeah. I don't want to take anything away from the housing trust, but they, they did have a consultant and the consultant did work with them and advise them about various things, but a lot of the quote projects that housing trust has been involved in are actually projects of the town and the planning department. Who has worked with Valley CDC and other developers to get things going. So I wouldn't say that the housing trust, and I hope that nobody's going to be offended by this, but you know, runs projects. They really are more of an advisory group and certainly the consultant that they had working with them was very good, but. They didn't go in that way. They're not that different than the historic commission, which. Yeah. Would be advising and recommending things to the greater town. Government or adoption. Right. But I did want to make a different point, which is that one thing that we started to do, the planning board started to do and never really followed through. And I'm going to say I'm guilty about not bringing you along. Is that as plans were developed over time, the planning board would incorporate them into the master plan by reference. And you may want to consider that once the historical commission has given a blessing to this plan that is being developed, that the planning board would take that plan and incorporate it by reference into the master plan. And that gives it a little bit of more teeth or seriousness. If it's really considered as a part of the master plan for the whole town. There are also other plans that have been developed that could also be incorporated, such as the climate action and energy plan and other such plans. So I should really bring this topic to your attention at some point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. List the plans that I think could be incorporated, but certainly the historical preservation plan is one. So thank you. Great. All right. Shannon and Ken. Have we gone through your agenda? Or. Are there further things you would like to talk about? Just that if you have anything after this, that you would like to talk about. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that if you think of later that you wish you had added, you could go through Chris and get them to us. And I'll put it into the notes to make sure that we have it all under consideration as we put the plan together. Okay. Karen, I see your hand. So I have a question. If the historical, if you come up with a plan to say, for example, on North press. Street. This house. That is a historical house and should be preserved. That I, what is to prevent them to sit. You're saying it should be in some way preserved, but it could be opened up. There could be a lot more built. It could be renovated inside. In other words, we are at this point where economically, we have to do something. We have to do something that we can't stagnate and just declare these things, historical houses and keep it frozen. But so what I see is that you're, you're going to say, okay, this is worth preserving. And that would then, I think. Give a sort of open it up and say, okay, when we design the development of this particular. We have to do it in a way that we have this facade and we build, and the architectural plan is going to incorporate that and enhance that with further development. That's what I see has to be the next step. Am I correct? Well, it depends on the area and there's, there's always a lot of, a lot of factors. But part of what we're doing is looking at what has been documented. There are some parts of town that have been mentioned that really have not been part of the documentation process, but still deserve to at this point be put on there. There's sections that are already local historic districts. There's sections that are national register district as have been mentioned, but it's really an honorary designation and doesn't really have any real protection. So we're just trying to take a look at everything as it stands right now and then make some recommendations for next steps. I'm including, if maybe there should be, there could be considered to be stronger protections needed for sections like the center of town. So it's, it's not a hundred percent across the board. I think someone said frozen in amber. It's present in the, actually the cover of the draft plan right now. I took a quote from somebody who is the former head of the national trust saying that preservation is evolving as a movement. And it's not just about that house museum. Or keeping everything exactly the way it is. It's about telling stories, recognizing what's important on many levels, not just the high style or the Emily Dickinson. And it's also about considering the sustainability of preservation because these are existing built resources that have a low, have, you know, their carbon footprint is, is good to keep it there and not tear it down and build something new. So that's not really answering your question, but it just, it just depends. Right? We're kind of starting with what has been documented. What is there? What is missing? And then what are good next steps? And what are things to think of going forward to. Fit in harmony with all of the other planning processes that I know all of you are trying to do. All right. Chris, you've got a hand up. Just wanted to say that this plan isn't really looking at individual properties. So, you know, I just wanted to say that this plan isn't really looking at individual properties. So it's not looking at a property on North prospect street and saying that we should preserve that property. The plan may say, we need to inventory more properties that are historic. And we do have a lot of inventory forms that have been done many years ago. And I think most of them are on macros and you can look up properties and figure out what their historic. Significance is. But the plan itself is more global than that more far reaching. It's not looking at individual properties. So just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. And it's real goal is really not just for the historical commission or historic district commission, but to give everyone in the municipality and residents tools for planning for understanding more about where you live and using it as a, you know, point of reference when you're trying to make these others decisions. Okay. Thank you both. All right. So the time is 806. We normally take a five minute break around now. So why don't we turn off our. Cameras and mute our microphones and come back at 811. Right. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you. Doug, you're coming from my house with a sledgehammer. Think about the energy thing all the time. Oh yeah. Well, I love, I love old houses. Yeah. Well, sometimes I think like, you know, this house was built. And by a fan, the Williams family who had 10 children, the eldest son inherited it and he had 10 children. And I keep on thinking like, if I had 12 people in this house, at least the energy we're using would be divided by 12. And it'd be kind of, you know, better than two or four. Right. Yeah. I often, I often met these meetings with like a little. Blanket on my. Keep me warm. Trying to keep trying to just sip. Yeah, it's a real dilemma. Pam, I think I don't know that Ken really needs to be in on the panelists anymore. Not that I have a problem looking at that right at this moment. He's not here, so to speak at the moment. No, it's not. We're all back. And Johanna, we do know that you may need to duck out and. Deal with your family situation. You know, I just wrangled bedtime and now he gets to watch the first couple of quarters of the Celtics game. So we're good. Nice. Thank goodness for the Celtics. Okay. So the time now is eight 13 and we can pick up and resume our meeting. Let's see the next item on our agenda. Old business. Old business. Right. Topics not reasonably anticipated. Do we have anything from Chris or Pam that. You know about or anybody else. Looks like Chris may have something on her mind. So I should update you on the schedule. And I think I have informed Doug of this, but I'm not sure I've informed the rest of the planning board. So we're going to start with April 5th, which is when we were supposed to have a planning board meeting is actually the first night of Passover. And so generally speaking, boards and committees are discouraged from holding meetings on religious holidays. And so we don't think you should hold a meeting on April 5th, the first night of Passover. And there was a scheduled. Public hearing to that night. We were going to have a meeting. We were going to have a public hearing. We were going to have a public hearing. We were going to have a public hearing on that topic that was going to be dealt with that night. You were going to have, um, Mandy Joe, Hanna key and Pat D'Angelo's come back and talk to you again about their proposal. There's owning amendment. And so, um, we're recommending, you did continue the public hearing to that night. And we're recommending that you, um. We'll just appear for five minutes and say that the public hearing is continued to, um, What would it be April 19th because of this, um, recommendation that we not hold meetings on religious holidays. So I wanted to inform you of that. And then, um, That is good news. So you don't have another meeting, unless you really love coming to meetings. But the other thing is that, um, when Doug was away, I think that was a recent meeting and Tom was chairing, um, you decided to hold a meeting on March 29th. And that, that meeting would be a an in person meeting where you would talk about, you would continue to discuss the topics that you discussed at your in person meeting on February 21st. So, um, in a way that kind of takes the place of the April 5th meeting. I ended up having three meetings in March, but only one meeting in April. So I just wanted to keep you up to date on that. Is that a problem for anybody? Okay. Thank you, Chris. I was wondering when we were going to talk about the meeting on the 29th, just to make sure everybody knew about it. And I was, I did listen to the rest of that recording of the meeting that I had to leave. So, uh, I at least heard everybody say it. Yeah. Yeah. That's what they said. So may I just follow up with, uh, is there anything that we should be doing for that meeting on the 29th that is, um, Different from what we did last time. Not that I know of. Okay. No, I think, you know, what we had was perfectly. Adequate for the conversation. Although Tom, I see your hand. Anything you want to suggest. I think we're just going to be more specifically zoomed in on that one particular area is what I gathered. So maybe if there are specific maps that, um, are about the East East village center, the emerald East village center would be helpful to have some of those bigger. And obviously if Andrew's there with the laptop, he can zoom in, but, um, any, any zoomed in documents we could draw on would be great. Thank you. All right. And Janet. Um, I was wondering if the missing middle, um, uh, those pictures that Rhea Chow had sent had passed out to the zoning board of zoning, but whatever. I forgot. So the sub, the zoning subcommittee, um, if we could circulate them and then I was going to send around a link to the pages in one of the housing plans that talked about like village center. Um, it had some pictures of village center design and things like that. So I'll have to remember to do that. It's all these plans are so long. I think it'd just be good to have a precision like, oh, read these four pages or 10 instead of 176, you know. So. Thanks, Janet. Uh, Karen. Is that maple organic farm there on. Nine. Is that part of the area that we're talking about? I'm so curious what happened and what could happen to that particular entity there. Do you know the one? I mean, generally, I think we've. Focused on the east hammer center and part way out route nine. One of the conversation pieces. I think that would be how far out route nine would we want to think about and change. And, you know, So I think, you know, that can be discussed. Great. All right. Is that it for old business? Looks like it is. All right. Time now is eight, 18. Any new business not anticipated. Chris. So maybe I should have considered this old business. Okay. So I did finally get the decisions for. Our Capellugos project on Olympia drive finished. The nick of time since they're due to be filed with the town clerk by next Tuesday. So I need signatures from. Karen and Tom and Doug and Johanna. Yep. Thank you. So I, I do have the email you sent us all. I'm going to send it to you this afternoon. And I will be, I will make arrangements to, to meet you to, to, for my signature. Thank you. So no new business. All right. And then form A and R. What have we got for that? I don't have any tonight, but we will have some available. On March 29th, we're actually going to bring two forward, I believe. March 29th. In the in-person meeting. So are we going to have a more complete agenda? Or are we just going to conduct this 29th meeting on the 29th? Like we did before where we only talked about one thing. I believe it is primarily that you are just going to discuss your, your zoning ideas. However, because. We just received these A and R's and we have a limited timeframe to work to get them in front of you. We need, we were going to bring them on March 29th. Okay. That would be the only other topic. Yeah. Okay. All right. Moving on to item six or seven upcoming ZBA. Any upcoming ZBA applications? Anything we ought to be thinking about having our own presentation on? I think we've told you about the ZBA applications that are coming up. All right. So there's nothing new. All right. Upcoming SPP, SPR, SUB applications. I'm not sure if we've told you about the pavilion that Amherst college wants to build. Did we? I think it's related to farmland that they have on southeast street. And they want to build a pavilion there for farm workers and for students. So that'll be coming to you. Oh, I think that's April 19th. Yeah. Correct. Yeah, I think you have mentioned that. All right. So we're up to. Planning board committee and liaison reports. The time is eight 21. We've lost Bruce for this evening. So we'll skip the PVPC. Andrew is not here. So we won't hear about CPAC. Tom, DRB, anything new? Yeah, we, we had a quick meeting to approve a. I think it's 104 North pleasant. It's a new restaurant. Amherst burger is coming into. One of the storefronts. I'm trying to think of what it's adjacent to. I'm actually trying to look at a map so I can get a better sense. Where a high horse was. No, it's down the street. That's what's going in there is going to be the white lion brewery is going into there. So we did that one the week before. Yeah. So this is down by, I guess that's like Miss Saigon. Next to CVS that little plaza down there. There's a burger shop. It's going to have some outdoor seating and awning and some nice signage and stuff. So they did a nice package and we approved that. Okay. Great. Janet solar bylaw. I did get my postcard about the survey you guys are running. What's going on. On Saturday, I think from, I'm going to say 12 to two. Look, there's going to be an event at the Jones library. And also on Thursday night to it's kind of, I don't actually know a lot about it, but you can, it's going to be like different boards and you go around and, you know, answer questions and write comments. Chris might know more than I do, but it's part of like the solar survey or assessment of like, what do you want to see? You know, what do you want to see? What do you want to see? And what are your concerns with solar, good or bad and climate change and, you know, the goals of Amherst. I don't really know that much about what is going to happen, but it's going to be a happening. And there will be food. And I think there's stuff for kids to do too. If you want to bring your kids along. Both Saturday and Thursday. And then also engage Amherst has. Like a portal or something. You know, You know, there's a lot of students to. And that, I think the survey. Is going to be open till the end of March. And that's that. And then the. This, the solar. Bylaw working group will have Dave's Oh, Mac as our guest this Friday. Talking about farms and I'm trying to put some panels on farms and forest together for April. the preliminary results and have more detail about like what where and what's possible and then we all mull that as a group. And also everybody's invited to mull with us. And I'd love to see the planning board come to the Saturday or Thursday thing to have sort of live interactions. And then everything's anonymous too. So if people might feel I have controversial views that want to be attacked, you can just participate, you know, incognito. So any, Chris, do I cover it? Yes, they had a session the other night. I think it was Monday night where Adrienne Dunk, who is the consultant from GCA gave a presentation about how this site assessment came about. So I think that slideshow is probably available on one of the websites. And that's worthwhile to look at. There wasn't much discussion that night. And I don't think there were very many people in the audience, but it's, it's kind of like a summary of what the group has been doing and how we're getting to our site assessment map. I actually attended that. I was one of the six participants at that meeting. And she showed a map and said, this is our site. This is our evaluation, our assessment. So it made it sound like that's completed. Is that true? So Janet, why are you saying we need to wait until the end of April to hear what they figured out? I hope I'm accurate in this, because I actually watched the, it was 24 minutes on YouTube. And so this is how I understand it. So I thought it was going to be a solar assessment for the whole town, but they, it's only of non Amherst College, non Hampshire College and non UMass lands. So that sort of slices off, I don't know if it's a half or a third of the town. And so in that room, the assessment is supposed to cover those remaining lands. And of that, of those remaining lands, they've already taken out all the APR lands and all the lands with conservation restrictions, utility rights away. So they've sort of the consultants have lifted off those. And I think they were black on that map. So they all get blacked out. And so the assessment is on those remaining lands and of those remaining lands, like 14% were developed already. And then I get the rest were like open for some reason. That's not the final approach. I hope it's not because they're doing it actually, you know, a key a second, like they're doing an analysis of, you know, cube by cube, you know, not looking at lot lines or property lines, but just looking at, you know, okay, this might be a North slope. It's not great for solar. Southern slopes are better. So what that map was was just kind of really, I think very blunt. And I am expecting to see much more granular detail. I mean, okay, if that's it, I'll be stunned. But I don't think it is Christian better sense of this. Yeah, Chris has got her hand up. Maybe she knows a little more. So that map is really a feasibility map. Where is solar feasible? And we did black out Amherst College, Hampshire College and UMass because we understand that they all have plans of their own to use their property for solar. So we didn't think and we don't also don't have much control over telling them what to do or where they can put solar. So anyway, that's that's what that's about. It's really a feasibility map. If there is another map or an overlay or anything that's going to be created, that has yes yet to come about. And that is probably going to be, you know, the input that the group gets from the public outreach that they're doing would affect, you know, where does Amherst want to put solar? There may be places where we don't want to put solar. So that's a discussion that hasn't occurred yet. So just to add to the complexity. So that Amherst College and UMass and Hampshire College aren't producing all their solar on campus. Like even Hampshire College is bought into a solar field, solar facility in Maine, along with Smith and Amherst College. And UMass is looking obviously to do solar on its campus, but also will be buying solar energy from non, you know, other lands. That's a piece to know. And then the APR land can have solar on it. So the farmers can put enough enough solar to cover their energy needs, you know, and then again, another 100%. And so there's limits on how much solar can go on APR lands, but it's not like zero. And so so. So there's everything's kind of and then the solar bylaw working group will be looking at that assessment probably along with ECAC separately. And then the working group solar bylaw working group will kind of give a priority map of like here's where we think the priority spots are. And I think that's going to be kind of an interesting discussion, which you're all invited to. And you typically meet on Fridays around noon. Is that right? Every other Friday from 1130 to 130. So we're meeting this this Friday. I would love for the the planning board to start getting a little at a sink with that, because it's a lot to do in one week, especially for Chris, I think so. Okay, well, thank you. All right, Chris, CRC, anything, anything new? They're still working on the rental registration and nuisance house. And they have looked at the zoning amendment they looked at that the night after the planning board did. And they also continued their public hearing to April 6. But I think since the planning board can't discuss this on April 5, because of Passover, CRC will probably continue its public hearing as well. But they haven't done that yet. Okay. All right, we're up to the last few items of our agenda and report of the chair. I don't really have anything to report this evening. Report of staff, Chris. We have the good news to share that our new planner will be starting on March 29th. Excellent. Yep. So we're very excited about that. And we think you'll really like him. And well, will this planner come to our in-person meeting on March 29th? Well, I could invite him. I will certainly invite him, whether he will do that or not. I don't know what I don't know what his plan is for that night. He's going to be his primary task is going to be staffing the zoning board of appeals, along with other things. But that's going to be his primary task. Okay. And how many positions total were you going to be filling? We're hoping to fill two. So this is the first one. Okay. And we're going to put an ad out again to fill the other position. Okay. All right. Assuming you have nothing else to report from staff. The time now is 832. And as far as I know, we can adjourn. Anybody? All right. This might be a record. All right. We'll see you all March 29th at what time? The last one we did started at seven and went to nine. Is that a good time? Does everyone think that's a good time? I think that's what we agreed on in our last meeting. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you. Bye. All right. Thank you. Good night. Bye-bye.