 The magic knock. Thank you. Welcome to the October 24th select board meeting. This meeting is called to order at 6 31. And let's see, before we get started, we're actually going to see if we could fit in an un-timed item. No, we're not. We're going to try for public comment. Is anybody here to make public comment not associated with anything in particular? Okay, come forward. And if you could identify yourself for folks at home. I'm Patricia Holland 105 Montague Road in North Amherst. And I wanted to come today because I understand that you're taking up the issue of form based zoning article, which is article 17. And I wanted to present you with petitions from North Amherst. We have some 80 signatures here, which I will turn into you. And we are asking that the zoning for Montague Road both sides north of the Mill River remain and not take on the N-A-B-C overlay. Just to review what we say here on the petition. This is a matter of safety for our families. And we want to preserve the historic character of the neighborhood. This Montague Road is lined with 19th century and early 20th century houses. It is a true New England scene. And the new zoning would make it liable to have apartments built there. And we both, there are two developers involved. They both have drawn up plans that would involve tearing down existing houses on Montague Road and replacing them with apartment buildings. Even if apartment buildings have new form based qualities to them, a sort of old fashioned appearance, these buildings are truly old fashioned and they look quite nice. They're a mixture of apartments and single family residences already. And Montague Road right now, except for when you get to the True Village Center right at the stoplight, is a very attractive way to come into Amherst. It's a true entry point. We're also concerned about maintaining the ecological balance with the Mill River and Puffer's Pond, which might well be affected by this very dense kind of zoning that is being proposed. I don't expect you'll get to talking about this until later in the evening, but we will be here to answer questions if you have any. I will turn in these petitions. I'd like to point out about the petitions that everybody who lives on Montague Road north of the river up to Pass Summer Street has signed this petition except for the two big developers in that area. Okay. Thank you very much for bringing those in. All right. Other folks for public comment, Ms. Simula. I had her hand raised. I'm sorry, Ms. Simula and then Ms. Pearl. And please identify yourself for folks at home. Yes, hi. My name is Rika Simula-Girgin. As Vice-Chair of the Former Committee on Homelessness, I have sent you a memo previously on behalf of the committee about the shelter contract that you're about to sign. I am very disheartened by the requirement you imposed on the shelter guests. Do you require only a clinical social worker can provide referral services to them for housing, employment, job training, among other things? You seem to see homelessness as a result of one's mental illness, emotional trauma, or character defects. You are saying to the guests that they first have to be diagnosed and treated by a clinical social worker at the shelter before they can receive referral services. This requirement is degrading. It pathologizes homelessness. As a person who has been homeless many times in my life and who has worked in homeless shelters as a case worker for a number of years, I must say that I see you as being misguiding your existence on the requirement of clinical social worker and the emmerced shelter. I have stayed in various shelters throughout New England. I did not see in any instance that shelter operators required the referral services to be performed by clinicians. Rather, it was done by staff members who are knowledgeable about local resources relevant to the shelter guests with the ability to assist them to tap into these services. For example, the case workers at the homeless shelters in Western Mass such as the Grove Street Inn, the Interfaith Cott Shelter, Worthington Street Shelter, Franklin Emergency Shelter, Submariting Inn and others are not clinicians but people who are experienced about homelessness. As a result of your requirement this winter, only one staff person from a mental health service will be at the shelter one night per week to provide referral services. Six out of seven nights shelter guests will have no referral services. This will be a big reversal in the progress made in the past two shelter seasons. I know that Emmerced Community Connections, a local tax exempt non-profit agency with primary focus on serving the homeless, was providing steady and reliable referral services at the shelter for the past two winters. As the vice chair of the former community of homelessness, I have read reports submitted by them on the number of individuals that were successful in moving out of shelter into more permanent housing situation or were able to secure employment and pay for housing subsequently. I hope the town will accept the recommendation from the former community of homelessness which allows any agencies with homeless experience to work with a shelter guest. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for coming in. Ms. Perot had her hand raised. And just so folks know, we have to end public comment at 6.45. It's now 6.38 so if you could be as brief as possible so I might fit in other comment. Thank you. I'm quoting from the summary of the charrette process. Actually, could you please introduce yourself for example? I'm sorry, I'm Melissa Perot, 15 Summer Street. I'm quoting from the summary of the charrette process and just some selected things. It says address brownfield sites, a market study should be prepared as a follow-up to determine what the demand is for future expansion. It says future development should primarily benefit the residents and business owners of North Amist. It also says transportation plan is needed and that the creative community art and culture have a multiple effect on local economy and should have a big role in the future of the North Amist Village Center. And I suggest that the, ask that the select board consider seriously whether the cart isn't before the horse in this instance. Thank you very much. Other folks who are here for public comment, sir. And please identify yourself. Thank you. My name is Thundup Sering, resident of 181 Amherst. I'm here to ask you to stand up for Tibet and join the global intervention to save Tibetan lives. Since 2008, there has been an undeclared martial law in Tibet. The situation is deteriorating to a breaking point. Just since March of this year, there have been seven self-immolation by young Tibetans, monks and nuns aged from 17 to 20 years of age, protesting the unbearable lack of freedom and liberty in Tibet. So I ask you to join and stand up for Tibet. I have materials here that I'm going to pass around. I also hope that in the next select board meeting that this could be on the agenda and a request for a resolution in support of this. Thank you very much. I apologize for not getting back in touch with you after the email the other day. I meant to tell you that this couldn't get on to the agenda tonight and that we'd be happy to do it next time. And I do apologize for that. Certainly. Okay, so we will be in contact with you for next time. Thank you. Oh, I apologize for not being in touch with you. All right. Other folks would like to make public comments, sir. And please identify yourself. Phil Goslin, Summer Street here about the North Amherst zoning. I wanted to back up what Pat Holland and Melissa Perot said, perhaps to put it in a less temperate way. This process has been quite disappointing with the zoning board and the planning board and the charrette. And basically, you have something very good there. You shouldn't just let it be bulldozed out of lack of wondering what's happening. Form-based zoning sounds very good, but the result there will be bad. So I think you need to take that into account. Basically, people with petitions appearing at these meetings and things like that, the impression we've had is that it was already predecided. And basically, we've been blown off in the process. And that's not very good. Also, the proposals for the developers are pretty outrageous. I think you should look into them before they get a carte blanche with this form-based zoning. So that's what I had to say. Thank you very much for coming in. I appreciate it. All right. We probably have time for one more comment. Anyone want to make public comment now? Okay. Ma'am. Sure. And identify yourself, please. My name is Valerie Cooley, 125 Montague Road. I am one of the people who signed the petition that you received tonight. And I just want to say that I'm very sorry that I felt the need to sign it. And I would agree with the last comments that this process has not been one of true engagement. I was very disappointed at the public hearing the other night. The planning director said, and I may not have the quote exactly, but anyone who believes that this process is inadequate is delusional, which I found inappropriate at least. For a lot of reasons, and I don't have time to go into that now. I don't think the process has been adequate. And that those of us who live there who would have been the greatest advocates for change up there, because we, more than anybody, know the deficiencies of the town center in North Amherst and would like to see it improved. And we would have been the strongest advocate for proposed changes up there if we felt that our concerns had been taken seriously and adequately addressed. And obviously I don't have time to go into those, but transportation is one. I mean, we're talking about significant increase in population density that will bring increased traffic on Montague Road. And yet I feel like a lot of our concerns have been not carefully attended to. One response I got from an email from Jonathan Tucker, for example, portrays the population density as deliberately modest in scale. And yet if you look, and we have been asking for a very long time for numbers, kind of possible maximum numbers allowable in the entire proposed zoning change, and they tell us basically they can't do that. And I understand that it depends on a lot of factors. And I think that the developers, however, have given us some estimates. And just today I was talking to one of them for the entire area. It could be a thousand people. And so that could be a thousand more cars, which is a lot. And so I just feel like some of the concerns have not yet been adequately addressed. And I'm very sorry that we are not going forward with a meeting that, instead of saying no to that we can't all stand up and say this is a great idea, because I think that would carry a lot of weight in town meeting. If the people who live there said, we think this is a brilliant idea, and we think it has great potential and could be. So thank you. Thank you very much for coming in. Okay, 645. And our first item is application for new taxi businesses. Sayid Lomalam here. Please come forward. And thank you. So this is for grab a cab taxi. Am I saying your name correctly? Sayid Lomalam? Yes, ma'am. Okay, good. So when we have folks come in for new business licenses, we have them come before us when it's just drivers. We don't do that anymore, but this is a new taxi business license that has been recommended for approval by the chief of police and has received the special permit, actually the, I'm sorry, we have the information from the building inspector who has approved the application. This is for currently a single driver and a single vehicle, just Mr. Lomalam himself. And he's been informed that if your business were to grow, you would need to keep the building inspector informed so that you know whether the special permit waiver is required or not, or is still in force. Is that correct? You're aware that if you get more vehicles or more drivers, you need to be in touch with town hall? Yeah, because I'm talking to owner, I'm talking to owner building before, if I'm approved for permit, can I get off it because I'm not approved for first time. I'm not sure if it's got approved or not. That's why I'm not, I'm not keeping the two of these. Okay. So will, I think we're probably going to approve this. And after we do, just make sure you stay in touch with town hall, okay? And we'll make sure that someone from the select board office reaches out to you to make sure you have all the information that you need. Does any select board members have any questions about Mr. Williams? Mr. Williams, excuse me, application. Mr. Hayden? Yeah, just a quick question. Are you aware of the program that the police, Amherst police department is running? I guess it's, I'm going to program is a bit of a broad term, but as far as keeping taxicab owners, taxicab company owners like yourself aware of the various rules that change and their enforcement? Yeah, I have a great idea. Okay. There's been a big crackdown lately on illegal cabs and cab companies that are operating without the proper licensing and other registrations. So just know that, that you might be checked and because there, it's been a problem in town. Thank you. Other questions? Mr. Hayden? One of the things as this business opportunity continues to expand, it is difficult to know exactly how it can all be tracked effectively given the number of resources that we have, but would it be at all useful to say in the motion that the license is only for one driver at this point or would that then mess things up for future because when he wants to add drivers, would he basically, would we have to keep voting on that? It would mess it up if we were to limit it that way. So once we approve the business license, then it's up to the building inspector code enforcement and sometimes the EBA to approve its expansion. So more cars and then more drivers would come through us as more applicants for licenses, but in terms of like if he suddenly went down four cars and he's only got two parking spaces then, like you said, that's building inspector and then figuring it out from there. So who is his best contact person in terms of all this? Would it be the select board office so that they would know which direction he might need to go? I just hate to see people get bounced around. So there's been a lot of coordination between the select board office and the inspections department on this, so I think they'll continue to reach out to him. We're paying a lot of attention to this lately. Okay, Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? Sure. I move that the select board approve the application for a new taxi business license for Saeed Lamalan of East Hampton, MA, doing business as Grab a Cab Taxi at 85 Sunderland Road, Amherst, MA. Second. Further discussion? Mr. Heen. I appreciate the letter that we got from the building inspector in the packet this time. Thank you. Other further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous, and now for his driver's license. I move that the select board approve the new taxi driver slash chauffeur license for Saeed Lamalan of East Hampton, MA on behalf of Grab a Cab Taxi Company. Second. Further discussion? Mr. Heen. It's been a long time since I've asked my question, but I guess it's too late now. We drive carefully. Okay, or does he know the streets of Amherst? That's right. All right. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. You're all set. Thank you very much for coming in. Okay. And now it is 6.50. So we have 10 minutes to our seven o'clock item. Are the folks from McMurphy's here by any chance? No. They're going to be bumming. Okay. Let's see then. We've got a couple of other untimed items we can take care of. Sure. On our desk tonight, in addition to the taxi rates for that new business, was this, what is this? That's the other, it's the first. Maybe if I looked at both sides of the paper I'd be better off. Okay. That's what it is. It's just a new license. Okay. Got it. Sorry. I didn't look at the back for some reason. All right. Still nobody from McMurphy's, right? Okay. Then we will do some untimed items. Folks in the back, you actually have to keep quiet during our meetings if you don't mind. If you have conversations, you got to go out in the hall. Okay. Request for stop sign at Orchard Street. In our packets we had information about a request from folks on Orchard Street to get a stop sign. This has been recommended for approval by Public Works Department as well as both of the public safety folks. Apparently changes that have been made there in particular, the repaving has made the street much more highly trafficked and a stop sign that hadn't previously been necessary is necessary. And does anybody have any questions about the Orchard Street stop sign request? So, Miss Stein, would you like to make a motion? Sir, I move that the select board authorized installation of a stop sign on Orchard Street as it approaches the intersection of Woodside Avenue and Hitchcock Road as requested by Amherst College and recommended by Amherst Public Safety and Works Departments. Second. Further discussion, Mr. Hayden? I just would note that if you spend any time there during the rush hours that they can get pretty crazy. Thank you very much. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. You're from McMurphy's? Okay, good. Come forward. Alright, so we had a request from the folks at McMurphy which is a pub downtown to open early on Homecoming Day. This is the fifth, is that correct? Monday the fifth. And Saturday. Saturday thank you. Saturday the fifth and currently their license has them opening at noon time. We are not actually allowed by state law to limit the sale of alcohol between 11 and 11, I understand, but they're not looking for change in their license currently, which governs their operating hours. However, for homecoming day, they would like to open at 10 o'clock. Could you tell us a little bit about what you're expecting from that event and that opening? Could you tell us a little bit about what you're expecting? First, introduce yourselves. I'm sorry. And then tell us what you're expecting from opening early like that. Sure. It's Tom Murphy, manager of McMurphy's Uptown Tavern. Basically, we've been doing this for 13 years. It's our kegs and eggs event. It's been a UMass tradition. And we've been doing it, as I said, we've been doing it for a long time. So we just realized last year, I guess, that we needed a special authorization to open at 10 a.m. So we wanted to try to get that so we could continue. So I wish you hadn't said that. Okay. So this is homecoming, not kegs and eggs. And what I was going to say was this isn't going to be like kegs and eggs, right? Because that's one of the most disturbing and problem-causing things that happens downtown during the year on weekends. Early in the morning, families are very disturbed by what happens. Other business owners and restaurants are very disturbed by the fact that you've got a whole bunch of basically late Saturday night type things happening early Saturday in the middle of downtown. And so is that really what you're looking to do for homecoming? Well, for homecoming, so basically what we're doing is serving breakfast is essentially what we're doing. So we offer eggs, toast, home fries, the whole nine yards, and then we open for service. And that's just a marketing name, just as far as drop beer on top, that's one of our specialties. So again, that's what we've been doing for several years. So the tradition that has been a problem is the one that happens at St. Patrick's Day. And if you come back to us at St. Patrick's Day, we're going to have a much bigger discussion about this. I'm not aware of any problem on homecoming weekends. Have you had any issues? So the St. Patrick's Day one starts with kids essentially drinking all night long beforehand and then shelling up downtown and like throwing up all over the downtown. And it's quite unpleasant. Well, we open at noon on St. Patrick's Day. This year, right. All years. Okay. All years. I heard that that head change. Okay. So but this, what's your experience with the homecoming situation? It's not the same as St. Patrick's Day, is it? No, I mean, you have a large alumni coming in into Amherst. And a lot of this, again, this has been a 13-year tradition. So a lot of these folks are coming in because they're used to it. And no, it's usually a little bit of an older crowd. And to be honest, they're usually gone by noon because they go to the football game. So it's usually just a quick hit in and out and then folks go to the football game and then we're open for business. Okay. That's normal. Okay. Other questions from select board? Ms. Burr? I mean, my feeling at this point, I really appreciate that you guys came forward when this was recognized. And is that we just need to be in, as you now have, a very good relationship with our police chief and be cognizant of what happens during this particular event because there's obviously some different perceptions as to how things work because I sure remember kids lining up before noon. And so obviously I'm not thinking of St. Patrick's Day. So I've got to disconnect in terms of what my experience with this has been as well. But I understand also what you were referring to with the hordes of what usually sounds like two in the morning crowd at 10 in the morning, which does not impress our downtown community. So I guess I'd say at this point that I'm okay with this with the understanding that we'll maybe have a little bit better communication between us as to how this particular event went to see if there is anything we need to revisit at another time. Because aside from this particular date, this is the only time we're talking about opening at 10. Correct. That's the one time thing. And so their license does have them opening at noon. They are entitled to have their license open at 11. So this is really kind of technically a one hour change. But as I said, I'm not aware of this ever being a problem for homecoming. But the kegs and eggs concept is one I associate much more with St. Patrick's Day, which is a big problem, a really big problem. And so those conversations will continue. Other questions from select board about the homecoming early opening? Mr. Hayden. I also want to appreciate you coming in because you had to know that you were going to hear about all of these problems because it's a huge problem. Right. The question I have is you be selling beer at 10 o'clock? Yes, we will. Do we have to be okay with that? I mean, I really like the idea of a place for people to come in and maybe get some tomato juice to begin to deal with what they had been doing the night before. But I believe the term is pre-gaming. It's a very upsetting idea. I don't want to support that in any way. I'd like people to drink wisely and encourage that. And so, well, that's my question. Do we have to? No, we don't have to. It's up to us because it is an alteration to their license. But it is just for one day. So, you know, obviously, I've made my feelings on this pretty clear. And yet I'm very willing to try it from homecoming because really it is an hour's difference from what's allowed by law, even though their license is for noon currently. And I, as I said, I'm not aware of. I have not heard about serious complaints from the homecoming part of it. And we can see how it goes and know for next year. Obviously, we're not making a huge impact on the world by disallowing one or two hours of alcohol consumption at a particular establishment. But it is important kind of the messages that we're putting out there and the standards that we're setting in the community. So your point is well taken. I would also say that, you know, you have a very large influx of folks coming in and they're going to tailgate at the University of Massachusetts on their land for the football game. So I can appreciate what you're saying. At least you can say that our environment is a controlled environment and we do the best we can to manage that. So. Okay, Mr. Aden. So maybe that brings me to one of the reasons that maybe I'm most appreciative that you decided to come here today and put up with this. We're going to pay attention. No, thank you. Any other questions on this? Are we ready to for the motion? Ms. Stein. I move that the select board approve the early opening of McMurphy's Uptown Tavern on Saturday, November 5th, 2011 at 10 a.m. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And that was unanimous. Thank you very much. Appreciate you coming in. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck. Yes, Mr. I just want to mention. So we they do mention here that they can amend their license for 20, you know, they could amend their application for 2012 for their renewal. But we do those normally in December, right? Correct. There's not a lot of time in there to have found out how things went. So it might be, I guess we have to be fairly on top of that in terms of feedback. So like I said, we cannot limit their license. If they ask for their license to start at 11 instead of noon time, we have to say yes to that. If they were to ask for it to start at 10 o'clock all the time, then we have some jurisdiction there. Right. Well, that's what I'm trying to understand is depending on what they asked for, so that we don't say we don't know what happened. Correct. Okay. All right. So it is now 7.01. And our next item is a public hearing on a business improvement district for Amherst. And so there is a bunch of information on the town website about this for folks following along at home. And we have folks here who are going to make presentations to us. This public hearing is being called to order as per state law at 7.02 p.m. And let me just get through a couple of technicalities before we get started. One of them is disclosures. A couple of folks here are going to make verbal disclosures about this. I will note that I live on a street that is on the northern end of the bid area and spoke with town council about this and said he didn't think that there's any issue. There's no conflict related to that. So I'm just letting folks know that I do live there. So if you have a concern, you can let me know. Mr. Hayden. And I'm one of those folks. I filed my disclosure. I work for one of the businesses that will be joining the BID should it succeed, Amherst College. Thank you, Ms. Brewer. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Wilde. I didn't realize you were in a disclosure also. My wife works for one of the operations that is part of this enterprise. Thank you, Ms. Brewer. And my husband works for UMass and so that there's that disclosure. I also happen to work on campus, but I don't work for UMass. I work for a union that receives space at UMass under a contract. But I will finish filling this out so that nobody thinks anything strange is going on. But UMass is obviously big and my husband is but one small, minor part of that as a faculty member. Ms. Stein, anything you want to tell us? Nothing to disclose that I'm aware of, anyway. And of course, we are all municipal employees for the town of Amherst, which is a partner in this office. Okay, so this is about the establishment of a business improvement district here in Amherst. Among the things that has happened, yes. Mr. Hart, yes. And you need to speak into a microphone, please. And identify yourself. That one's on. I'm sorry, I wasn't here earlier. Has the board directed the clerk to certify that Section 3 of 40.0 has been satisfied? I was just about to mention that. Yeah, that's prior to the hearing. Prior to the hearing. I apologize. So I should have mentioned it prior to the hearing, but it has in fact happened prior to the hearing. I'm just noticing you about it later than that. The town manager at Slick Boys Direction has directed the town clerk to certify that the, I've got words that I'm supposed to read here, that the establishment criteria has been met as set forth in Section 3 for the requirements of this presentation. Okay, so all of this is on file. This is all part of the petition. This is part of the packet that's online. And we have a signed copy of the town clerk who is also here, her petition stating that everything is in order. And let's see. Now, let's see. Okay, okay. And so I think now before we get to the actual presentation part, so what the town clerk did was satisfied. It was certified that the petition as presented, all of the details did conform with what it needed to conform to forced state law. So now we say that we find that the Amherst Select Board here by determines that the petition pursuant to Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40.0 to establish the Amherst Business Improvement District dated September 15, 2011, satisfies the purposes set forth in the establishment criteria of Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40.0. So we do, and hence we can proceed. So all these technicalities, our public hearings are really much more casual than this usually. So we have Mr. Barry Roberts and Mr. Jerry Jolly here from the Business Improvement District Steering Committee, and they are going to make the presentation to us, which will make a lot more sense than the mummojummo we just talked about. Thank you very much, and thank you for scheduling and preparing for the bid process. Part of the, you mentioned refinements, and we have achieved over 65% of the property owners in the proposed bid district that have signed our petition for this public hearing for the bid. So that's very encouraging to us. What I'd like to do is introduce my co-chair for this project, Jerry Jolly, and Jerry is going to speak a little bit about the process and the history of what we went through. We're going to try to keep our remarks brief, and what there is, three other people we would like to come forward and speak, and that's Jim Brasser from Amherst College, and Todd Dakin from UMass, and Tony Morales from the Chamber. All have been involved in this process all the way through. Also with us tonight is Ann Burke from Economic Development Council of Western Mass, who has been our advisor all through this process. She has worked on all the bids that have been established in Massachusetts, so she has detailed knowledge, and she could be available to answer any of your technical questions. Also, Attorney Bill Hart is here to help us and ask any other technical questions. I would also like to acknowledge the rest of our steering committee that was put together for this process. It is Andrew Jones, Kurt Shumway, Dave Mazer, Jim Brasser, Tony Morales, John Kuehl, Nancy Buffon, Sam Lucia, Sharon Pavone, Todd Dakin, and John Kuehl. Some of them are with us tonight and would be happy to speak or answer any questions that you may have. So we'll try to keep our remarks brief and then let you folks ask questions if necessary. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm going to try to read a prepared statement so I don't wander, and so there'll be enough time because I'm sure there'll be some questions. Before talking with you about the history of the bids formations, the committee would like to acknowledge the town work towards a vital town center. Consistent with Amherst-Basser plan, there have been many significant improvements over the past decade. New wider handicapped accessible sidewalks, new bench seating, new roads with bike lanes, handsome new lighting, an award-winning town hall renovation, and a parking garage are all positive additions to the town center. Amherst new community space Kendrick Park has already hosted a number of events and soon will be even more beautiful space with its new landscaping. Thank you for all that. 10 years ago, downtown business owners, property owners, bankers formed Promoting Downtown Amherst in response to the explosion of malls to the west of the town center. PDA mission was to promote and preserve a downtown. Over the past 10 years, Promoting Downtown Amherst has supported, participated, and partnered with many of our downtown activities. For example, PDA has worked with the Amherst Chamber on the Amherst Outwalk, as well as holiday events. PDA has worked with the town of Amherst financially making contributions for street cleaning. We have provided flowers, planted daffodils, supported transportation initiatives, such as a trolley shuttle to and from the UMass campus. We have worked with UMass and participated in its new students program. PDA has provided a website to its members and created a monthly newsletter, as well as a monthly open meeting for PDA members. Five years ago, the town of Amherst applied for a grant from the Department of Housing and Community Development. The grant was used for a number of studies, traffic, Amherst downtown retail mix, and downtown housing, how to improve working relationships with the university and colleges to draw more students to town, to shop and eat in our many restaurants, and finally to assess the question of the formation of a bid. A shop local campaign was also launched at the same time. Two years ago, we held a community presentation workshop working with the town of Amherst, promoting downtown Amherst and the Amherst Chamber, along with members of the select board. From this study, it was proposed to explore the formation of a bid. A steering committee was formed in the western mass, EDC was brought in with Ann Burke to guide us through the bid formation process. We have had many meetings and a variety of focus groups to gather community input regarding the needs, visions, and opinions about downtown Amherst. We have created budgets, developed a needs plan focused on beautification, marketing, special events, business development, transportation, parking, and capital improvements, and developed a fee structure and a proposed designated business improvement district. Amherst is already a beautiful town. Its town center is a multi-purpose place. It is where we all come together as a community. The town center is everyone's neighborhood. We feel that a bid, partnered with the town, the university, and Amherst College will help to sustain Amherst as a vibrant town center for years to come. We ask for your support in allowing us to move forward and create a business improvement district. Thank you. And now for, it's totally up to you of course who speaks, but we'd like our partners of Amherst College and Jim Brassett and Todd Dakin to at least speak because feeling that the town, Amherst College and the university partnering with us is a significant development of moving forward. So if we could ask that. Certainly. Jim. Good evening. I'm Jim Brassett, Director of Facilities and Associate Treasurer at Amherst College here tonight to speak on behalf of the bid and urge the select board to endorse it. The college has been a participant, a very active and enthusiastic participant in the bid study and in all the activities surrounding the bid over the course of the past year or so. Simply for the fact that we feel that Amherst College feels that the future of the college and the town are inextricably linked. The academic reputation of the college is obviously critical in all that we do, but we also feel that we differentiate ourselves as a college, as a college of choice because of its relationship with the town. The fact that we're so close to a healthy and vibrant downtown is instrumental to the success of the college. In order to maintain and enhance that success, the economic vitality and health of the downtown is critical. It's a vibrant social and cultural and economic hub and by supporting the bid, we feel that we can ensure that that continues. Our participation in the bid to date has been more than symbolic. It's more than just supporting the effort. It's participating in the bid effort. We don't just back it, but we will participate in its governance. We will provide student interns to assist with the bid and running of the bid. We will open up the college's parking lots to support downtown activities. We will sponsor downtown activities and events and provide promotion for the downtown business improvement district through our admissions materials, through our websites, and just general support of the bid. I think it speaks volumes that this is an initiative that was born of the business leaders, the business owners of downtown. They've enthusiastically supported it and have given of themselves many countless hours and their energies. I think it's incumbent upon the college to respond in kind and show that this is a partnership with the college and with the town. For those reasons, we urge you to support the bid. Thank you very much. Good evening. My name is Todd Deichen. It is my honor to serve as the Deputy Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. As with Jim, I'm here to signal the strongest support possible that another institution of higher education has for the creation of the bid. And so we believe strongly at UMass that a bid is good for downtown and that what is good for downtown is good for the University of Massachusetts. And that's why I'm here tonight to speak with you. The bid meetings already as we've put together our steering committee, the bid meetings have been, have offered us a valuable and regularized opportunity to meet with business owners downtown. That's an opportunity that we did not avail of ourselves of as much in the past. And so one of the ways or one of the reasons we especially appreciate the bid is it gives us yet another venue to discuss town gown issues this time with business owners. We have other venues for doing that with municipal civic leaders. This provides another opportunity to do so with business leaders. So through the bid, we will have an opportunity to hear the concerns of business owners. And then through our participation in the bid, we'll have another opportunity to express our ideas and concerns with business owners. We will participate in the bid through an annual donation, through providing volunteer labor to events, through mentioning the bid and promoting downtown in our materials such as a commencement program, such as in the materials that we hand out to parents and students when they're here in the summer for summer orientation. So just in the process of organizing the bid, we already feel like we have gained greatly from that regularized opportunity to have those discussions. We look forward to doing so even more often with a bid. Thanks. Thank you very much. So before I call on more folks, I'm just going to give kind of a general overview here for people who might not know what we're talking about. So a business improvement district is essentially an overlay district that the folks who are part of the steering committee have defined that becomes an area in which the property owners who wish to participate impose upon themselves attacks that is administered by the town that goes to sort of a shared fund for marketing or any other kinds of improvements that these folks are looking for that is above and beyond what the town would ordinarily provide together to being able to pool their resources and have a unified interest in the betterment of this district. They have greater strength and greater possibility for profitability and improvement of the district than any of them would have individually otherwise. So just in case it wasn't clear to folks who are watching this, that's what we're talking about. Oh, Mr. Morales, I'm sorry. You were part of that string of folks who wanted to talk. But anyway, now I've given you a good little... Well, thank you, Ms. O'Keefe. And I'm Tony Morales, the Executive Director of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce. And while I had planned a lot of soaring rhetoric talking about the importance of downtowns, my colleagues before me deserve a great deal of credit for getting this going and keeping it on task that being the co-chairs Jerry Jolly and Barry Roberts, Jim Brassard and Todd Deichen, who are showing the support of our institutions of higher learning. And of course, the great description that you've just given have ended all attempts on my part to add to the rhetoric of the moment. But one thing I can say, joking aside, is that there is no doubt that the downtown is the commercial heart of the town of Amherst. In addition, the downtown is the heart in general of Amherst. It's where our dynamic intersections happen. Many different people show up on a daily basis. They come, they live, they work, they eat in these locations. The future of downtowns are actually bright given the trend lines of America at the moment as we pull in back from the suburban sprawl of the 60s through the 80s. We see more people that want to make those connections on a daily basis, getting their coffee in our coffee shops where entrepreneurship happens, buying their newspaper at places like Hastings or just seeing folks all throughout the town in our wonderful green spaces of Kendrick Park and Sweetser and the common. But as great as the future of downtowns look, the economy, of course, is really fragile, as we all know. And the bid at this moment with the cooperation of the landlords who will participate in this and the institutions of higher learning that will help support it. And the nonprofits who do not have a financial responsibility to support this, but will be there as partners in programming and having their spaces open, the wonderful thing is that we are creating a sustainable entity and mechanism for long-term success for the downtown. As Mr. Jolly and Mr. Roberts have talked about before about the various possibilities of what this bid can do, I look forward as director of the Chamber seeing all of this happen and certainly pledge our support and our organization's support to this cause. And we urge you to do the same as a really exciting opportunity. And again, we urge your support. Thank you. Thank you very much. Question, Ms. Burr? Real quick. We have several copies of this bid. They're identical except for magnification purposes as far as I can tell. They are not representing anything other than this particular swath of properties. The green gradation doesn't mean anything. And the different magnifications are just slightly off, right? I don't know the answer to that. So, Ms. Burr said that our maps all look a little bit different. There are funny gradations to the green. She's assuming that only the magnification level of the different maps differs, but that there are not different versions of anything. Is that true? Color printing is cheap. Ms. Burr is saying yes. We're all set. It's the same. It's printing issues. Okay. Okay. Let me see. Something else I want to say about this. Okay. So before I get to other public comment, the select board's role is under state law. We are in our form of government. Only the select board can establish this district. So this is not the same as, I'm sorry. This is not the same as the town's partnership in it, which all the members of the bid have different arrangements with the organization, which I'll get into in a moment. Actually, I might as well read that now, just so folks are clear. Says I shall read this, so I shall. Basis for determining the district fee, this just helps to clarify things a little bit. Pursuant to mass general laws, chapter 40, 40-0, section 7, 40-0, I'm sorry, section 7 of the Amherst Business Improvement District. The annual fee schedule for members of the Amherst Business Improvement District is A, commercial properties will have a fee equal to the assessed value multiplied by 0.005. B, commercial components of mixed use properties will have a fee equal to the assessed value multiplied by 0.005, and residential components will have a fee equal to the assessed value multiplied by 0.001. Public and academic and non-profit properties will have negotiated fee agreements with contributions of cash and or in kind services. D, hotels ends, B and Bs will have a fee of $200 per room per year, which may be increased annually by a percentage, not greater than the percentage by which the real estate tax in Amherst for commercial properties has increased over the prior fiscal year. So that talks about what the arrangement is with the different members of the bid and it specifically mentions the municipality and non-profits. The town manager is in the process of discussing negotiating a memorandum of understanding regarding the town's participation and what the baseline services would be, what degree of financial assistance would be, would be the town's contribution to this. That is separate from what's happening right now. That will, that can take comment separately. The town manager will talk to us more about that in the coming weeks. Mr. Musanti, when he's back, this is just about establishing the business improvement district itself, which is not obligated by the MOU, and this is simply our role under state law. So just so everyone is clear on that. Okay, I know that there are a lot of folks here who are supporting this and that's wonderful and we don't necessarily need to hear from you if you're just saying, yes, what they said. Are there folks here who want to express any concerns about the establishment of the bid? Nobody. Everybody with concerns is about sewer and other things. Okay. All right. So then there's no, does anybody else want to make any public comment then in support or opposition or concern or whatever regarding the formation of the bid? Okay. Then questions from the select board? Mr. Hayden. Are you going to read the next section there? About property owners within the bid, May, within 30 calendar days after declaration recording, elect not to participate? Yeah. It's hard to keep track of all the things I'm supposed to do here. So did that follow immediately what I was supposed to? We might as well just do it now just in case. Okay. Yes, I'm sorry. After the fee schedule, just amend this, jump back a little bit in time to where I said the whole fee schedule. The process to follow for property owners who elect not to participate in or benefit from the Amherst Business Improvement District. Any property owner within the Business Improvement District, May within 30 calendar days after the declaration of organization by the Amherst Select Board, elect not to participate and not be subject to the bid fee. Such property owner shall notify in writing the town clerk of the intent not to participate in the bid. Such property owners shall not receive benefits or services from the bid. Property owners who choose not to participate in the bid, May at a later date elect to participate in the bid by notifying the town clerk, the bid board of directors and the management entity in writing. Okay. I think that's all I need to read up until now. So other questions from the Select Board, but first, Mr. Zomek. Just if I could, I know the Select Board has in your packet. I just wanted to point out to the folks here in attendance tonight and watching on TV that Mr. Musanti is back and doing extremely well and in your packet dated October 21st was his recommendation to the Select Board. If I could just perhaps read the first sentence or two. Mr. Musanti writes, I am pleased to offer my recommendation that the Select Board accept the petition to create the bid and vote to declare the district organized. He goes on to describe how he has worked with the, in the past year with the bid steering committee, Mr. Jolly and Mr. Roberts and Ms. Burke. And he then goes on to suggest and fully support the formation of the bid talking about the various positives for the collaborations as noted earlier with Amherst College and the university and the many property owners in downtown Amherst. So Mr. Musanti, and this is available online. If anybody would like to see his recommendation from last week. Thank you. I appreciate you're adding that at this point. Okay. Questions or comments from Select Board? I have a minor, a small comment. And that is, I wondered if the design review board is still going to be able to weigh in on the quality of designs in the downtown area. That's a good question. Mr. Zomey, do you know? That's a different, I wasn't quite prepared for that one, but my understanding is this would not change the DRB's involvement at all. So yes, projects would still need to go before the DRB. Mr. Wild is nodding. Do you have anything you'd like to add to that? It's my best understanding because the DRB has a different, it's an overlay of a different, that's a regulation I'm going to do with the standards for displays, signs, measurements and so forth in town. So this doesn't trump that as far as I understand it. Thank you very much. Mr. Hayden. Yeah, that, I believe that also goes for zoning and all of the other rules that we've, the town meeting has established for regulating those things down downtown. Thank you. Ms. Burr. I have two questions. One is in regards to the property owners beyond all the signatures, of course, that we have copies of your petitions. And obviously, there could be people who decide not to be part of the bid, as you just read, the part of off the calendar days where they're allowed to not be in it. The information as to who's in it and who isn't in it would be part of the public record that anyone has access to through the town clerk. I would present it. She's asking me like I know, would this be a public record that everyone who would have access to through the town clerk, who the participants are? And if you want to do more than nod, then you have to come to the, to the mic. But nodding is fine if that's, Mr. Hart. Hello, folks. I'm Bill Hart and I helped the steering committee put together the, the notices and the petition and the legal work to bring this before you today. The statute does not address that question at all. The process of opting out is a written statement by the landowner, the property owner, to the town clerk. So you folks know better than I, how much of the town clerk's information is open to the public. But I would think, in all likelihood, the opt-outs would be readily available. And if you compared that with the owners of the property within the district, you'd know who was in. Thank you. Ms. Burke. Hi. I'm Ann Burke. I work with the Economic Development Council and have been advisory to the steering committee for the last couple of years on this project. The next, the, all the property owners will be sent, once a bid, if you choose to form this bid, every property owner will be sent by certified mail. Every parcel that receives a tax bill from the town of Amherst will, those property owners will receive a notice of organization, and in that notice of organization will have the same language to describe how, if a property owner should choose not to participate exactly what the property owner needs to do. We will also advertise that twice, in addition to the mailing that will go out to every property owner within the district. So if you own six parcels, you will get six little certified packets that will tell you exactly what you need to do for that specific parcel of land. So clearly, the steering committee hopes that the property owners will decide to stay in and be a part of this partnership that has been formed. And we are very pleased with the level of support that we have received thus far. But that's technically kind of what the next steps would be, because we want everyone to make an informed decision about their participation in the district. Thank you very much. Other questions, Ms. Burke? My other question, again, just because we direct questions to the chair, not necessarily, because she has to know absolutely everything about everything, is I'm a little confused by the language that's at the end of this page that talks about all the various things you had to read. And the more I read it, the more confused I get. So I'm sure someone can clarify for me. I understand the part about people being able to opt out. What I'm not clear on is within 45 days after the public hearing, well, tonight's the public hearing. Can we vote tonight? Or is this just saying you need to have voted at some point in the next 45 days? But we can go ahead and vote tonight, right? We don't have to like leave it open for some other purpose. That's correct. So that was verified with town council today that tonight would count as part of that. Yes. So we can just go, we don't have to like, it's like some things conceivably you could have to have a hearing and then wait some period of time before you make a vote. But this is not the case. That's correct. Yes, because that exact question came up earlier today. So that that brings up another point. So there are a couple of options with what can happen tonight. And one of them is that we simply go ahead with a vote and form this or another one is that we continue the hearing in case there's additional comment necessary. So what I am very aware of how well the business community has been involved and kept up to date on all of this. And so none of this is a surprise to folks, plus the business community has an opt out option. We all know in Amherst that folks often sort of aren't paying attention to stuff until it kind of ends up in the newspaper or hits them in the head or whatever. So on the cons the potential concern that people in the public who aren't part of the business community could have any issues with the fact that they might not have known about this. And now suddenly we've established it. We could continue the public hearing just in case we wanted to receive potential comment from the public. In thinking this through, we're always trying to troubleshoot things here. How much are we going to screw this up if we do this this way or how do we avoid screwing something up? The more I thought about that possibility, the more it seemed to me that there really is nothing, there's no material impact on folks who are not in the business community. So I'm not sure what concerns members of the public could have about the establishment of this. This is really only about attacks and a structure and management connection that the folks who are in the business community are imposing on themselves. There is, as I mentioned, the issue of the town's participation, which is certainly worthy of public comment how the town, how much the town is going to put into this or whatever, which is entirely up to town meeting to appropriate, but that's not the same as the establishment of the district. So I'm just throwing that out there. In case that's a concern to anybody, I've thought it through myself and decided it's not a concern to me. But if it is a concern to anybody, it is not critical that we establish it tonight if we voted to establish it at our next meeting, which is in two weeks, allowing for public comment. If that was a concern to anyone, then that is an option. Ms. Burr. I was going to follow on that exact train of thought. Thank you. That my assumption would be that any input would end up being along the lines of what the town's MOU looks like. And again, even though as it states here from the town manager, that's not something that will come necessarily unless he chooses to before the select board other than as part of his budget. So although he's going to discuss it with the parking task force, which involves many of the same players, it's not certainly something that has to come here, but that's fine in my mind because of the fact that the entire budget process will include this as a new item. And so whatever he works out, whatever that amount of money is or in kind services, that will be addressed associated with the budget process itself. It doesn't need to impact this part of the decision as far as I can see. Certainly not this part of the decision. The establishment is entirely separate from the MOU. If folks do have comment on the MOU, they're welcome to send them to the select board or the town manager. And whether that does or does not come before us in any form in the future remains to be seen. But that's not part of this process and wouldn't be a reason to delay this particular decision of the thoughts on this. Mr. Hayden. Yeah, just sort of to echo and maybe amplify your lack of concern. A couple of things struck me about this proposal. I've been looking at it over the last few weeks. One is that I think it's unique, and maybe Anne could speak to this, among BIDs that I've read about in that it has us two partners, schools. A number one university and a number one college. I thought that was kind of, I'd like to pat Amherst on the back for being unique again. The other thing that struck me was that in essence, this system really is formalizing something that's already in place. The town already does quite a lot of work downtown. It builds sidewalks and it shovels snow and it repairs traffic lights and street lights and plants things and cuts things down and takes care of it. And the businesses that operate there are also required to spend a lot of time and effort clearing snow and cutting trees and taking care of things like that. So that was sort of it's nice to recognize these things. So much of what happens in a municipality is invisible. We take it for granted. I'm glad to step up and say, no, this is happening. This is valuable to us. This is why it's valuable to us. And to build on that. So there is, as I've mentioned a couple of times with the MOU, the sense of baseline services that the town already provides. So what the town's participation is above and beyond that will be well specified. But in particular, what the bid does is by all these members pooling their resources, we get more of all of that, more beautification of the town, more infrastructure support or whatever. It plans detail all kinds of information about ways that the bid can participate in transportation and decoration and all kinds of things like that. So really in an era of such limited budgets and limited resources to be having other folks be paying for something that we'll all benefit from or really benefit our downtown is a pretty good model. Ms. Drain. Is this the moment that I move to close public hearing? Not yet. Okay. Other questions or comments from folks? Could I just ask the bid folks, do you want to talk at all about what the public process has been in particular with the, I know Mr. Jolly talked about the kind of years you've been talking about this within PDA. Has there been much dealing with folks who are not part of the business community about this? Can I let Ann Burke talk on this because we had quite a few focus groups reaching out to different members of the community? Sure. Thank you. Part of the process of developing a bid is really to try to get to, you know, what do you really want to do? If you had these dollars that you could collectively amass and bring in the wonderful opportunity with the college and the university and others who are here. So to really determine, you know, what would really, if you had this resource and what would you spend it on? What would be your priorities and what would be the programmatic things you'd like to spend it on? So as part of that, we went through a very deliberate process of not only forming the steering committee that was representative of all of these different stakeholders who were in the downtown. But we had, as Jerry mentioned, the workshop, a SWOT, Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, whole warning that we spent with the broader community to come together to really talk about what they felt were important priorities that the bid might address. We did surveys. We've created a website that was available and allowed everyone, anybody who wanted to make a comment to weigh in. We had a whole variety of focus groups. We met with students. We met with administration and faculty from the university and Amherst College. We met with restaurant tours, retailers, office workers and other users, arts organizations and other people who used this downtown as their sort of heart and soul of the town of Amherst. We had a number of articles. The PDA has had monthly updates on the progress of this process. The Chamber has communicated with their members and others through their website and through the articles that Tony has written. We've had op-ed pieces. There have been a number of articles in the newspaper and we've mailed out this plan to everyone in the district twice and also made it available through other 8 million of these things that we have floating around the town that we have made available to the general public so they could be informed about what the vision is and what the plan is and hopefully with the level of, if we are successful in having the level of participation we hope we'll be able to implement a number of these things. There has been a very deliberate process to try to create a high level of consensus around what it is that the bid would try to accomplish and to get people's input on what those priorities might be. That has been the process and it's one that I think has worked very well here in this community because the steering committee frankly has been quite strong and very involved throughout the process and they have gone out and spoken with property owners on a one-in-one basis and then through the property owners they've also spoken to tenants and to students and to others who wanted to inform this process. So you've gotten a lot of comment on what the bid should do to be successful in all these folks' visions. Have you had any concerns from folks or people who are not in the business community who have their own channels for opting out of this or whatever? Did you get any public comment that expressed concern regarding the establishment of the bid? Not so much about the establishment of the process but really what would people think would add value to them as a user of the downtown. So if you were going to be a person who shops here or a student who lives here or a resident who lives in the area, what are the things that you want to see? So I think particularly when you do a focus group a lot of times a lot of those different kinds of things will come out. So if you're an entertainment venue or a restaurant or a bar in the downtown you might want certain kinds of things. If you're a resident who lives in the downtown you might want something else. If you're a student you might want something else. If you're a parent you might want to make it easier for the students to be able to use a swipe card or do whatever and know where their money is being spent. And so we try to use that process to identify the opportunities. If you could put those things together and come up with a program you know what would you want to take what would you want to do and how would you want to try to package all those things together. Now I always say when working in one of these things that not everything in this plan is going to be important to you but hopefully there's enough in this basket of things that you hope to do that it resonates with you and you think there's value there and you think it's worth the investment as a property owner. Thank you. So I appreciate the information on all the public outreach and so so my point here is to emphasize to the select board that there has been no concern expressed from the public about the formation of the district so that is something that can inform our decision on tonight whether we do this right now. And every gentleman here would like to comment if you need to come forward to speak into the mic I'm sorry and please identify yourself for folks at home. I just have a question just one note the properties within this district some of them are zoned residential some of them are commercial. Right. So if this is going to change the zoning of the whole area or. Okay could I get your name please. My name is Abbas Bosor I live in 195 West Street Amherst and I own one of the property in that district. And it's a residential property or a commercial property. It's right now it's residential. Okay so Miss Burke or anybody would like to speak to this gentleman or Mr. Hart. So the short answer is no. No we'll get the long answer. Thank you. No the zoning will not change at all. And what what has already been read into the record is the description of how the fees will be assessed and so buildings that are residential will will have a smaller assessment than the commercial. And buildings that are mixed will will be divided. So folks who are living in the bid district aren't going to be assessed a fee though that's not what you mean. Okay so I just want to be clear about that but okay. Miss Burr. Yes I was very happy in fact to catch that in the declaration of organization that all private and public property owners within the district boundaries accept owners of residential condominiums and residential buildings with less than four units. So thank you. All right any other public comment concerns issues about this. Miss Stein. I just want to say one favorable thing about the BID that appeals to me very much. Many of us have seen businesses come and businesses go and I think that one of the tenants that is part of this plan is for marketing studies and I hope that that will lead to businesses coming and persisting. Thank you very much. All right select board. So Mr. Hayden is going to make the motion to close the public hearings so I just want to make sure that actually you can make the motion and then I'll have my. I would like to move to close the public hearing. Second moved and second and so for the discussion. So just going back to my earlier point if there was any reason that we wanted to put off the establishment of this tonight we would not continue the public hearing. Does anybody have any sense of not wanting to wait for a comment to not establish this. Okay good. I want to be clear on that. All right for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. I haven't made the motion. Oh you're close. Oh Mr. Hayden made the motion. I thought you were saying my motion. There are so many things that need to be moved and read tonight. Okay so let me just make sure we get this right. Yeah all right Ms. Stein I think if you read your motion then I will. I move that the Amherst Select Board approve the petition pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws chapter 40 to establish the Amherst Business Improvement District dated September 15 2011 within the district boundaries described in the petition and declare the Amherst Business Improvement District to be organized. Second for the discussion. I declare. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. So declared. Thank you very much. Thank you for all of your work on this we're very excited about what this is going to look like going forward and we have a ton of things to do here tonight so if you could move your conversations into the hallway quickly I'd really appreciate it. Take a two minute break. I'm not going to technically take a break I'm just going to hope that we're just going to hear kind of hang out here while folks file out of our meeting room here. What'd you say? Just provided words. I would like to move to reconvene. Well de facto you see Stephanie's gavel is way over there. I get so little opportunity to use the gavel. Okay so we are I need folks to be quiet so that we can get through the rest of our business here. Okay our next item is the first quarter budget update and we have Miss Aldrich here to talk to us about this. Talk back to follow here. Sonya Aldrich Comptroller for the town of Amherst and I'm here to report on the first quarter budget and there's not a lot to report on it's too early in the budget year to come to any conclusions. Everything is on track. There's a couple of things that stick out in the reports that we sent out in revenues and I'll just go through those. Departmental recreation shows that we've collected most of the revenue but $386,335 if that is administrative reimbursement from recreation accounts and that's done through an in-house transfer so that happens all at once. Investment income of 9233 represents July and August. Miscellaneous non-recurring this includes budget offsets for the cherry sheet charges and Amherst college funds received to support the operating budget and these transfers typically don't occur until October. Motor vehicle excises on track. We typically collect most of that in February. Other excise 149,434 collected reflects the first quarter distribution of local option hotel, motel and meals taxes for the period of June and June through August. Pilot bulk of these come in as a transfer from the enterprise funds in October and the remaining typically come in in June. Property taxes are 24.8% collected which is right on target. And state aid is at 24% which is right on target. Expenditures through September 30th are at the 25.7% there are a couple of departments that stick out IT. Expenditures suggest a 53.6 percent expenditure already and that includes a lot of the reserves for the contractual services and license agreements for the software that gets paid in the first quarter. Employee benefits show 63.5% of budget used already and that is because of the Hampshire county retirement assessment gets paid in the first quarter and this we normally pay that in two payments but this year we paid it in one payment to receive some percentage off I believe this year. I'm not totally sure of the whole all the details on that but enterprise funds are right on target as they should be and that's pretty much all I have to report. Thank you. So the select board receives this quarterly budget update every quarter as per the name to help us stay aware of the budget and to just be kind of another layer of oversight seeing that revenues and expenses are or are not tracking as expected. As Ms. Aldrich noted the first quarter ones are kind of funny because you've got all kinds of timing issues related to some revenues and expenses. So not everything is at 25% as one might think because that's just not the nature of things but the bottom line is that everything that is not aligned with 25% are things that are fully within your expectations and that there aren't any concerns about how things are tracking right now. Is there anything that you're looking to the future with particular concern about something you're paying extra attention to? Not at this point. Okay. Any questions or comments from the select board about the quarterly budget update? We have one question from the public rather. Mr. Kelly if you're going to speak you need to come to the microphone. Dare I ask how the golf course did? I should have known that's what he was going to ask. For the last fiscal year? I haven't. I actually have not pulled those reports together yet. Okay. Other questions or comments Ms. Brewer? I assume you would have commented if it had been particularly off what you would expect but for the other act size just because we're so excited that we can do this local option is that roughly what we would expect to have received? For the other act size the meals and local option hotel do we do your plans for the quarter vary with each quarter because the things are different in the summertime or whatever do you imagine it at essentially 25% per quarter averaging out because I see this is like 27% or something so that's really kind of right on track. It does. So it's interesting that happens to be essentially 25% right now. Other questions or comments from Ms. Aldrich? No thank you very much for coming in. This is a great report that's available on the website if folks want to pay attention to our budget as it tracks quarterly and we really appreciate the information and thank you very much for coming in tonight. All right next up we have 740 sewer extension master plan. We have Mr. Mooring here and I'll just give a brief intro to this process as soon as I pull up my correct documents. Okay so we have now for a number of weeks been talking about the draft sewer extension master plan as was supplied to us in September from Camp Dresser and McKee. This was an update of the master the sewer extension plan that had last been done a number of years ago and because of issues raised by residents who who are looking to have the sewer service extended it became clear that a an update to the plan was necessary. We received this plan several weeks ago it was the I believe it was the September 26th meeting if I have that date right. We had a one hour overview of the plan from Mr. Mooring and Finance Director Mr. Poehler that was followed on October 11th by a two and two and a half hour meeting here by the consultant as well as Mr. Mooring and Mr. Poehler talking about all the aspects about it again. We have had public comment being received since the plan was put on the website and we have received quite a bit of public comment from folks since that time and what the select board is now being called on to do is to vote whether or not to accept the plan if we accept it if we wish to implement it and if so how this boils down to what what areas of the town will get sewered and how will that be paid for and I will and we'll just start going through the recommendations from staff one by one on that. So Mr. Mooring we'll start with your recommendations to us on the plan at this time and if you've made any changes to it based on the the public comment that had been heard. Okay so in your package you have our recommendations. First we recommend that you accept the study as it was prepared and that we proceed with developing plans to sewer subarea two which is Harkness Road and subarea six which is the wildflower drive area. We recommend that the schedule for construction of subarea two be in the 2000 or the 2012 construction season and the subarea six be in the 2013 and 2014 construction seasons. We do not recommend that change in our current policy concerning ownership of the sewer services. There was one comment about pumps and so forth. The town is considered private pumps and homes to be part of the sewer services and that they belong to the homeowner. We've done that for the last the last two expansions that was the way it was done. So we request you not change our policy on sewer services. The service actually does include the pipe from the sewer main which is in the road all the way to the house. Then we have no no position as we've said in the past about how to pay for this method. Just to update there was 26 comments total that came in. We got some new ones between the time you got the memo in your packet now. We have zero comments from current users of the sewer system and we had one comment that said the study should be redone as well as not to charge the betterment fees. Okay so we'll sort of stick to this subject at the moment before we move on to the next subject. So we have since those public comments received I believe two comments from folks who are sewer users who were because of course most of the comments are from folks who say yes we really want the sewer if the folks weren't on there yet but are in the areas of consideration so that has been most of our comment received as well as their sense of how it should be paid for but we did also get I believe two over the weekend and today from folks who are not part of the areas to be sewered and they are also supporting the plan. Okay there were a couple of issues from when we talked about this before that I just wanted to talk to you about. One was there were areas of concern smaller areas within the larger subgroups of different parts in particular Leverett Road was one part that had been singled out as a potential concern that's part of a larger area and that's and we did receive some comment about that and it's something that you had expressed some concern about. So does your recommendation change at all based on the concerns about Leverett Road in particular and any other sub areas? No our overall recommendation doesn't change we do believe there's going to have to be some more discussion about how to set up the next study typically you would like to review these every 10 to 15 20 years 20 years at the very longest but definitely like every 10 years just so you know what you're doing with the changes that might be coming forward in the village centers and so forth we would definitely want to have another look at our overall sewer plan and within the next 10 years and that's the time we should think more about how to break up some of these larger areas Leverett Road does seem to be the only the only area that should be addressed this way the other areas down a Holst Road and Southeast Street they they pretty much stand together as one group but the Leverett Road area has so much empty space hooked into it that uh that one's going to have to be modified some way when we do the next study so are you saying that would need to take 10 years or that will be happening within the in the meantime by necessity we need to do it within the next 10 years and we should look at that area definitely okay okay um another question that I had had for you was um we keep talking about 93 percent of the town is Seward currently um what would the percentage be if if these areas are Seward as recommended it goes to 95 96 percent okay select board questions for Mr. Mooring about those recommendations Ms. Brewer and perhaps you characterize this better in the past Mr. Mooring and I just missed it maybe I just feel the need to state it again this is called a sewer extension master plan but it actually doesn't cover all of the areas in town that are already Seward or aren't already Seward it talks a good bit about various sections that were identified to be looked at but for example we got a comment you know for a section of State Street that isn't Seward but as far as I can tell isn't covered in this plan so what is the thing that carries all that information is that our GIS layers or you know where do people look to it if they're looking for that information the State Street section you're talking about is in the Leverett Road thank you so this is everything in town this this is every this is everything in town if you'll read back through it you'll see there's two areas we added one was the gateway area and one was the North Amherst area where we actually went through and had them do some calculations and do some preliminary discussions about based on what people are talking about doing especially in the gateway area what do we need to do with that sewer line and there's actually a section on that in there so everything is in this plan so it really is a master plan it is our it is our sewer department master plan for looking at that thank you thank you other questions Mr. Stein do you imagine that the Leverett Road area will need soaring before 10 years go by and is there a way to meet extreme need let's say that's outside of this particular proposal at this time I do believe that it would probably have to be done before 10 years okay is there a method for doing it there probably is we just have never used that method yet other questions from Blackboard Mr. Hayden I'm wondering if accepting this sort of clears the way for the the next one I mean it's the the essence of this is already six years old it's been updated I understand but I'm wondering if part of sort of getting it finally to this point sort of feels like it's been delayed a long time is because it wasn't accepted and so I'm wondering if our accepting this sort of allows the next phase it will pick up you know dividing out Leverett Road and everything else that much more quickly I would hope so I really do so it was sort of peculiar circumstances that led to this sort of sitting without acceptance or management for all of this time it could you speak to that just a little bit like how we got here and how we make sure we're not kind of there in the future well how we got here was when we revised the plan in in 2004 when the results and recommendations came forward it was determined that we just wrote the it was determined that we didn't want to expand anything that was the decision by the the elected officials of the town was not to expand and not to accept the proposal so it just sat and waited for someone to revive it bring it forward again and as people say you know when we go through the next round one of the things that has to be looked at a lot more carefully is is updating the sewer records in the health department when we did this in 2004 the town actually hired an intern and she spent three weeks in the health department going through the files and when she got through we still didn't think we had everything correct we had a very good handle on it but there were little things that were missing that we knew were missing but she had the bulk of the information so there is going to have to be some a lot more coordination and since the health department is a health department changed directors you know things were probably coming about a little quicker than it was last time three weeks was a long time to sift through the file cabinets that was extraordinarily long time it was painful so it's a lesson learned through this is that that the health department records are a key part of improving the information so that the data is as up to date as possible going forward okay other questions or comments or select board mr. Hayden then mr. wall if if we were to engage with with the plan um does that at all impact sort of all the other stuff that has to go on repairs um you know when you know something happens we'll still be able to go get it these projects in this timeline which is going to absorb two years of significant effort won't interfere with that with that regular keeping ahead of all the rest of the stuff the rest of the stuff being the rest of the dpw the rest of the stuff being the sewer the rest of the sewer maybe by extension the dpw but but but the rest of the sewer i know there's some pretty old stuff out there and i know we've been chasing it around campus for instance no we don't really expect it to be a problem with the actual infrastructure the sewer the sewer system is is actually in pretty very healthy condition we've just been going through a process of updating upgrading the pump stations the the division director for the wastewater division is jim leford and he has a couple recommendations for smaller upgrades the plant into some of the pump stations but there really is no large uh need in the in the sanitary sewer side right now small needs there's always small needs and that they won't be impacted by this okay thank you mr wild just had some queries from constituents about some of this so the updating of the records and making them complete and stored in digital form is a job for the health department or a job for the town and i wouldn't say it's just for the health department okay is it is it clear who has responsibility for that or how that would come about if we were to say update them fully and computerize them i don't even think computerize and we just need to go through and sort through them again a little more time and collect all the new data that's all we need to do and what would it take to get that done it's going to take somebody going in and sorting through the file cabinet but who would authorize that do we know is it between departments or is it we would just work together okay once we decide when we're going to do the next study we would just set up a time and work through it thank you other questions or comments from slack board okay um so i'll see if anyone here wants to make comment on accepting the plan but what i want to see is if you want to encourage us not to accept the plan i'm trying to save time so that we're not talking about things unnecessarily because i don't see anyone from the slack board expressing concern about accepting the plan does anybody want to express concern about accepting the plan okay good all right then next um we have the question of uh how to implement it and so we'll just do our votes at the end but um so the the big issue has been how to pay for the recommendation if we were to proceed with it and that boils down to a couple of options one is that you charge a betterment to the folks who receive the sewers the new sewers themselves one is that you um that you do it as part of the sewer fees and you spread the costs across all the sewer users through the sewer funds another is that you do it by property taxes which is a little bit peculiar i'll leave that one aside and then the other one is uh some combination thereof typically a combination of the betterment and the sewer fees and so we have had as you might imagine extensive public comment from folks who would get the sewer but don't want to pay for it and of course that's not just because they don't want to but it's because there has been no precedent in Amherst of having a a betterment imposed just on the people who are using the sewers so we are at this point 93 percent seward and everybody who is seward um except if it was part of a private development whereby the developer put it in and folks did pay for their sewers on their own without any help from the rest of the town as part of the purchase price of their house um the the fact is that all extension to date has been through the sewer fees we have a recommendation from the town manager to proceed in that way to not change how we have been paying for sewers at this point and i won't read his memo but i'll just summarize a couple of key points um he recommends acceptance of the plan and he recommends proceeding with the the two areas as mr moring mentioned and he explains the different methods for paying and he says uh he says consistent with past practice of funding sewer extensions via the sewer rate to all customers as the nearly unanimous public sentiment mostly from affected neighborhoods received by select board acting in your capacity as water and sewer commissioners have articulated that everybody wants it to be through sewer fees the decisive factor for me for recommending these projects be funded entirely by sewer rates is the detailed financial analysis attached to my memo prepared by finance director sandy pooler that shows the estimated net effect of the average sewer bill by funding extensions through the rate is virtually nil because of our corresponding retirement of old sewer debt over the next few years so we have a great memo and this is all on the town website uh in the select board packet um from mr pooler and that's attached to uh to the recommendation from mr musanti that shows in fact that this this is a wash if you will um on sewer rates for the near future because the most recent sewer extensions will be ending the the debt payments on those so um so for those reasons the fact that would make essentially no difference in anyone's sewer bills and because of the um the the not being a compelling reason price wise or otherwise to depart from sentiment he's recommending that we go just with the sewer fees um and I'll just say that that has been my sense from the outset as well and unless we could satisfactorily answer the question why would we do that differently this time I can certainly understand that there could be a threshold a price threshold at which it just was not reasonable so this would amount to about 32 dollars per year for the average family of four average household of four people for 20 years that's not really very much money as opposed to um about 17 500 per new folks um seward on wildflower um and about 23 000 I believe it was on harkness um if this was going to be 10 times that this is just my sentiment you know if it was 320 dollars per everybody or something then that would be a different story but the 32 dollars per year seems um no reason to depart from precedent for me so I am in full agreement with the town manager's recommendation and I wonder if select board members would like to make other comments about this Mr. Hayden yes just one brief comment I I I want to be a little bit careful about poo pooing the mounts here it's real money and 63 bucks is important to some people I mean we you read the comment as we all did that we got from from people um the reason so you know if you're going to ask me and well actually you just did um about that you know I would I would need I would want to have a very good reason to spend that money and and I think here there is one um we and one of the one of the one of the few joys of being on the select board is every once in a while you um get an opportunity to um embrace the community as a whole this is valuable to the community um not because we're giving a handout to these folks but because we are extending what what is a critical um service that the community provides um appropriately and um I'm going to be looking for more opportunities in the future to support community like this okay so you've got no problem basically with paying through the surface okay other comments from select board anyone miss brewer people looking over there because I got accused today of talking too much not by this body some people might remember that I mentioned at a previous meeting that the select was a posted select board meeting although it was actually another venue um that I was interested in talking a little bit more about the impact of doing it of townwide through the property tax because of as is also mentioned in the lovely memo that has been posted on the town website that is deductible on federal tax returns because I've never bought the argument that because I happen to be a super a sewer user that I have an advantage by the fact that there'll be more sewer users to me it's a townwide benefit it's a community wide benefit however given the financing situation that we're in which just goes to show the excellent management our towns had over the years to have had the water and sewer enterprise funds set up the way they have been and to be able to stagger the debt so to speak over this time period makes so much sense financially that um I'm perfectly content with the way this is laid out I do want to state despite the fact that it will probably irritate some people that I would prefer in future when I get feedback from the public that it not be assumed that we're trying to do something inappropriate to people and that whether or not something is fair based on precedent of having done it before is an argument that really rings hollow with me um you did it this way twice before you did this way for the last 20 years that means you should do it that way again I find that not a viable argument I do find it to be a viable argument that financially it does make sense to do this this way and it made sense in the past and it's making sense now doesn't mean it'll make sense in the future so I would rather that we made sure we looked at the full picture and I totally agree with the way it's laid out this way and not imposing the betterment fees and totally recognizing the individual connection cost that's going to cost all the new users thank you other comments from select board Mr. Walton just briefly again and we all recommend to you Mr. Mazzanti's excellent memo but he also pointed to some disadvantages of funding through property tax given the prop two and a half caps and indebtedness and so forth so there are lots of reasons not to choose that as well thank you and not least among them is we have a lot more people who pay into the sewer fund than pay into the property taxes so you know if you did it by property tax it would actually cost a lot more per property taxpayer so but more importantly is that it would take that big chunk out of our budget which is a part of the two and a half cap okay other questions or comments from select board mr. Zomek anything you'd like to add to this yes perhaps a couple of comments quick comments I did have the opportunity to go over the master plan with planning staff and I believe the vice chair the planning board may be in the back I was interested to see if the planning board had any comments on the sewer extension master plan I did go over it with Chris Brestrup one of our senior planners and one of the things we look at is will extending the sewer have any impacts on open space unprotected open space and in general we found that the extension to the two priority areas are really not going to have there are very few large pieces of property that could potentially be developed there are some smaller parcels and a few flaglots but in general most of the land that hasn't been developed yet is already protected as conservation thank you for that point um anything you'd like to add mr. mooring did you get any comment we put this out there to all the various boards and committees to offer comment if they were interested I don't believe that the planning board did I watched that meeting and they didn't express any concern because the development issues um they didn't express concern regarding development issues there was no official comment from any of the boards or committees okay thank you um and one other question for mr. Zomek and mr. mooring um the harkness road recommendation that is a road that divides amherst and pelham um and I know that you folks were going to meet with the folks in pelham just so that we didn't plan to go ahead extending sewer service in that area and not having no without having spoken to those folks so um anything you could tell us about that I'll let mr. mooring we did meet with the select board in um pelham last Thursday well that we met the select board we talked about the areas are going to be impacted they looked at the developable land that might be affected in their side of harkness road and they found very little what they consider to be um land that could be developed along that one little section so they have no real issues with us offering sewer along that road and they would be interested entering to an agreement to talk about how we do that okay so they wouldn't be getting a free ride or anything they'd still have the same sewer connection fees and all that business and and whatever other kind of arrangement you came they would have the connection fees is yes mr. so and there are approximately how many homes along harkness road that are on the pelham side the east side there's like 24 thank you mr. hean I just just wanted to sort of an as an extension of the conversation about the the um undeveloped places one of the this was quite an amazing report I really appreciate um all the work that went into it um there there's clearly some things that will never change the soil warnings are probably going to be the same in 10 years and things like that the thing that that will change and I appreciate sort of the graphic presentation that's in here is of the develop developable parcels that either are sewered or not sewered or could could be sewer that was that was very clear in here and helped the other thing is I'm really sort of pleased to see we've got all this extra capacity here in there too okay let's see um other issues from select board I think we've talked about the key points here and and I did mention earlier that we did get a couple of I think it was two things from folks who aren't in the areas recommended for sewer and both of those also said it might have been three both of those were in agreement with just making a part of the sewer fees and not doing a betterment so just so folks know that all right everybody can see where the select board is going with this would anyone like to speak against having this be paid for as part of the sewer fees I didn't think so okay so select board then uh and let me know before we go along to our vote um so there is a warrant article in the town meeting warrant which we'll be dealing with in a moment um and so folks know at that at this point that warrant article language was written as broadly as possible to deal with every possible uh possibility that could come out of this discussion uh that will be now uh tailored in the motion to deal with the fact that this is requesting for this money to come entirely from um from the sewer fees and to authorize borrowing and that it would not have a betterment involved so just so folks are clear on that miss stein would you like to make the motion I would I move that the select board uh accept the sewer extension master plan dated august 2011 as presented second is there for the discussion all in favor say aye aye and that was unanimous I shall go on please do I move that the select board proceed with developing plans to sewer sub area to harkness road area and sub area six wildflower drive areas as recommended by the superintendent of public works and to recommend appropriation of three million five hundred and fifty nine thousand to pay cost of designing and constructing sewer lines including the payment of all costs incidental and related there there too and to fund the appropriation by taxation transfer borrowing or by any combination of the foregoing second for the discussion all in favor say aye aye aye and that was unanimous sewer plan has been accepted the plan to implement it has been moved forward and the recommendation is for funding it entirely through the sewer fund so now this is uh just up to town meeting to fund the whole thing town meeting has full appropriation capability if town meeting were to reduce the amount that's asked for in any way then that would require relooking at the project but at this point at this point it's it's the full the recommendation is to go for the full implementation of the two areas as recommended and to pay for that through sewer fees so thank you very much mr. mooring thank you so much for all of the detailed information you've given it excuse me thank you uh thank you for all the detailed information you've provided to us and uh and the consultant as well for the detail excuse me folks just give them a minute just give them a minute okay anyway uh we really appreciate it and and for leading us through the process that has been much appreciated and thank you for coming in tonight all right i stupidly forgot my warrant i can't believe i forgot it and not enough in it but relief relief so we're waiting for folks to file out here of course we've got like our fullest agenda ever on uh if we're moving along all kinds of i'm sure things going on tonight these are out of the way yes we got a couple down a couple to go okay oh we don't have some of us are still okay good moving right along then um so we are now voting positions on town meeting warrant articles and uh because mr. mooring is still here for ease of of ordering here we've got the capital sewer extension project as the first one i think folks are pretty familiar now with what that warrant article says does anybody need further information before we take a position to recommend article 11 on the sewer extension project no miss stein would you like to make some motion sure i move that the select board recommend november 7 2011 special town meeting article 11 capital sewer extension project second for the discussion all in favor say hi hi hi that was unanimous um who would like to speak to that article at town meeting i would mr. hayden our engineer thank goodness thank you okay uh article six we can put off article six because uh we don't have anybody here to speak to that so we will do that at the end so now we'll move on to article 16 which is the official zoning map conversion and we have the vice chair of the planning board and the planning director here to speak to us about these and so folks at home now the very familiar name that the vice chair of the planning board chair the zoning subcommittee has is because he is my husband so mr. o'Keeffe please introduce yourself for folks at home thank you i'm jonathan o'Keeffe vice chair of the planning board and chair of the zoning subcommittee i'd like to thank the acting town manager for trying to drag me into the sewer debate i wasn't going to touch that with a 10 foot pole but you didn't take debate now to thank you all right article 16 is the first of two zoning articles we have and it is a proposal to change our official zoning map from the outdated paper maps that we've been using for over 50 years to an electronic layer in the town's geographic information systems gis system our existing zoning map is actually a series of sheets of paper fifth or over 90 individual great big sheets of paper that are bound together in a big dusty book and that serves as the legal basis for the boundaries of our zoning districts as i said it's over 50 years old it was prepared originally from an aerial survey that was done in 1956 that's plane flies over the town and takes pictures and that gets converted into elevation contours on the map and from there the zoning districts were overlaid back at that point by drawing lines on that paper map it's been updated continuously through then and in the last 10 years or so or longer than that actually the world has moved on to doing things like that on computers and today the town hasn't just thoroughly excellent geographic information system that has been the basis of just almost all aspects of life in town that deal with location and geography and the town has put a great deal of effort into building a best in class system except that doesn't include our zoning currently the zoning is the one major aspect of geographical information reference information that's not included in that gis system currently so this is a proposal to convert the official legal basis of our zoning map from the paper maps to the gis system town staff has been working on this for several years laying the groundwork for it um and it was pretty straightforward in most cases most of our zoning districts are fairly easily defined as straight lines they follow property boundaries they follow roadway centers they follow setbacks at certain distances from roadways and it's pretty easy to look at the old paper maps and figure out exactly where the line should be drawn in the gis system the one exception to that has been the flood prone conservancy district that's a zoning district that is in place to protect flood prone areas around bodies of water and streams and low lying areas and the difficult issue in dealing with that zoning district is the fact that unlike all our other zoning districts which are defined legally by the lines drawn on the pieces of paper this one is defined mostly by elevation contours so there's notations on the map that indicate the boundary of the district follows contour line 230 feet above mean sea level or something similar so there are lines on the map that attend to approximately depict where they thought the contour line for 230 feet above mean sea level was back when the plane flew over in 1956 but as you can imagine things have changed a bit since then and technology has changed a lot since then so we now have the capability to measure heights from an aerial survey much more accurately than we did even 10 years ago much less 50 or 60 so the town's most recent aerial survey was in 2008 I believe and we had a great flight at that time and they were able to measure our elevations too with an accuracy of less than a foot so we have really detailed elevation information now and so we know with a much greater degree of accuracy where the boundaries of that flood prone conservancy district are that's the only district I mentioned that that represents any kind of an issue in this because when you draw the contours of where we actually know the elevations to be today in some cases they differ from those lines that were drawn on the map in 1956 because they could not measure the elevations as accurately then and because things have changed since then so there are areas that have that would move into and areas that would move out of the flood prone conservancy district under this change or let me say that they would appear to move in or out of the FPC district because the actual legal boundary of the district has always been the contour indications that are present on the paper maps that they're not actually the lines that are drawn on the map so if anyone proposes to do anything in a property that's affected by the FPC zoning they're actually required to go out there and do a current survey and find out where on the ground those elevations really are and you go out there with surveying tools and you can figure out what the elevations are and that actually defines the legal boundaries of the district so the lines on the map either the old map or even the new map that we're proposing here are actually just indications for where we believe those lines are and they're much more accurate now than they were on the old maps but they still need to be ground checked before anything could be built on one of those properties so as I said some areas would move or appear to move in or out of that district they're actually quite small areas if you look on the map we've actually on the town's GIS system now on the website you can go in and see exactly which areas would be appearing to move in and out and they're basically all around the fringes of the flood prone conservancy district the boundaries shift in and out in some cases in most cases by just a few feet here or there so you've got fringe areas all around the edges of the district where we're measuring the elevations a lot more accurately now there are a couple areas that are a little bit larger than that that are affected but they're almost all on protected land land that has an APR or town conservation land or land with similar protections so the net impact or net apparent impact would be very small and the benefits of the change would be large it would make our zoning much easier to work with it would make it much easier to update in the future things like property lines change all the time and they need to be changed laboriously manually on these paper maps that stuff is really easy to do in a computer system and so it would just benefit everybody who's using our zoning information so the planning board voted unanimously eight to zero to recommend adoption of this article and I hope you'll do the same thank you thank you questions or comments mr. hean if I had only three minutes to sum up the the benefits and the issues with this I would just be very clear that today the technology allows us to measure much more accurately and then I was going to take more than three minutes I might tell the story of how the 1956 aerial photograph was converted into maps somebody who had proven acuity in recognition in depth recognition sat and looked at stereo photographs and guessed where the ground was by essentially moving a dot he would move the dot with his feet backwards and forwards and he would move the dot left and right using his hands up and down with one hand and left and right with the other hand it was an amazing process to watch it's amazing also that any ground control came close to what those those fellows and they weren't all fellows now I think about it we're doing why do you know that I have to ask you I did have a previous life the so so it's very much more accurate also used lidar which is a process that allows you to find the ground from the airplane which you couldn't really do optically always it's true flying in April helps that because there's not many leaves but we do have evergreens in town it's not always possible the other the other half of my three minutes I might take up and extol the virtue of accessibility the dusty maps down in the basement are hard to get at I mean I buy a copy every year for my work and it's a it's a pain in the neck to use and there's something there's a problem with them which is called rubber sheeting when you copy them they don't copy true the dimensions change and when you're working at scales of you know 100 feet or 150 feet to an inch that makes a big difference so it's accurate it's accessible and it's useful the as somebody with a question about a parcel the streams now will be in the right place on the paper maps they were shown someplace and that place has not moved since then even though the streams have so that part of the accessibility is the accuracy the ability to see you know where the water is where you might have to deal with another commission like let's say the conservation commission and then I would yield the balance of my time back to Harrison Greg thank you other questions or comments from select board Mr. Eaton except to say that it would be very useful I think just to have a quick picture of that one section around pot wine lane where the change is I don't want to say dramatic because it's not but that's where the biggest changes are and you know that really does exemplify is that a word exemplifying the you know the accuracy and the accessibility in a big way and oh by the way town meeting paid a lot of money for this we certainly will provide that type of mapping information and in an areas like the one you cite where elevations where the ground is relatively flat you know the difference of a foot or two makes obviously a fairly big difference in terms of the area that's covered on the ground so the small differences in elevation from what they thought back then to what we have more accurately measured now can impact a larger area two other points I'd like to make is one that I misspoke earlier when I cited the planning board recommendation it was actually a 9-0 vote not an 8-0 vote and the other question that has come up a couple times that we've been asked questions have to do with security and access to the information not everybody has a computer and some people that have computers like to do bad things with them like hack into other people's systems so we've been assured by our town's IT department and our GIS administrator that this information is very well secured and kept away from the prying eyes and fingers of the public so nobody can get into it and touch it except for authorized users on town staff and that it's backed up on a regular basis so it's it's very well protected and secure and there and for folks that don't have computers at all there will always continue to be paper maps so as part of the process of doing any update to the computer they would print out a series of large-scale paper maps that would continue to be kept in town hall for people that prefer or have to work with paper copies of things for various reasons so even if the power went out and someone had as was referenced in our public hearing a zoning emergency I'm not quite sure what constitutes a zoning emergency but if you were to have one while the power was out you'd still be able to get at the paper maps in town hall thank you very much mr. Hayden would Mike be able to uh would mr. Elkin be able to to assure us that it is as safe and secure as let's say all the rest of our tax information and our police records and our water bills thank you other questions or comments from mr. Oki and miss Stein would you like to make the motion sir I move that the select board recommend November 7 2011 special town meeting article 16 official zoning map conversion second discussion all in favor say hi hi hi unanimous who would like to speak to that mr. Hayden who's already planned out is three minutes okay it's I appreciate the the irony because this was one of the last things that I looked at as I was leaving the planning board 150 years ago was it that long all right article 17 article 17 is a major rezoning proposal to improve and strengthen our village centers in north Amherst and in south Amherst around Atkins corner this is something that the planning board has been working on extensively has been conducting an extensive public process throughout the course of this year starting back in the early spring of this year holding a series of public design workshops and public meetings to work with residents of both those communities and people from all over town to try to take advantage of the opportunity that we have to really improve and strengthen the town the great town center that we have now in north Amherst and the emerging town center that we have in the area around Atkins market in south Amherst both of those areas have significant zoning issues now in north Amherst the village center the the large area to the north of the village center is zoned calm commercial which is our most intense retail and commercial zoning district really almost a strip mall type zoning district that's not appropriate at all for the large area immediately outside of village center and in south Amherst we have a hodgepodge of a various zoning that's on the ground in and around the Atkins market we obviously have a major road construction project going on there building new roads around Atkins market and there's a significant opportunity to grow that village center and put in the types of services that are that would provide a strong village center and provide services to the people at Applewood the people at Hampshire college and all the residents of the surrounding neighborhood so starting late last year the planning board and the zoning subcommittee began talking about engaging the services of a consultant to help us look at the zoning issues in those two village centers and to work on the process of incorporating form-based code into our zoning bylaw in both of those areas form-based code is a concept that is called for in the master plan that we adopted almost two years ago as an alternative to the way that we've been doing zoning forever basically that most people have been doing zoning forever our existing zoning is largely prescriptive it says what you can't do but it doesn't say much about what you want in your community and over the last 10 to 15 years a lot of areas have been looking at form-based codes as a way of specifying what a community does want in its town centers and as village centers and in other areas with a form-based code you go in and you basically specify this is the type of development that we think is appropriate for our community and sets out regulations that require whatever gets built be built to those specifications so that's a new concept in Amherst we don't have anything like that in our zoning bylaw now although it's not a new concept in other cities and towns throughout New England and throughout the country people have been doing projects like this over the last 10 or 15 years and there's some really successful examples of communities that have really strengthened their towns and their villages through the application of form-based code like I said we have significant opportunity in North Amherst there's obviously a very large parcel there the site of the former sawmill that stands to be redeveloped now it is something will happen there under our existing zoning it's owned commercial and the things that can go in under commercial development are not necessarily the kinds of things that we want to have right in our village center in North Amherst so the the proposal that we have here that like I said we've been working throughout the course of the year on an extensive public process to talk to people in both of the affected areas and people throughout the town is a proposal to create new zoning districts in North and South Amherst for those village center areas and to create a set of form-based codes that would apply to those zoning districts so the form-based codes would specify exactly what we want development in those areas to look like this would not replace our existing zoning our existing zoning would continue to function in fact it would be added to by what that what is being proposed here there's two new zoning districts and they would be regular zoning districts in every respect they would function just like our existing zoning districts with a set of use regulations that says what is and is not allowed and what the permitting requirements are for each use in addition to those use regulations there would be the new form-based regulations that I described that would lay out exactly what things are not exactly but in general form what things need to look like and how buildings need to relate to each other and to the overall environment with the idea of being that if you don't have controls like that things proceed in a haphazard fashion there's no unifying plan for a village center or a downtown area that says this is what we want the community as a whole to look like people are free to do whatever they want with each individual project and you end up with a haphazard mix of of styles and buildings that don't relate to each other pedestrian environments that aren't connected streets that aren't friendly to bicycles and pedestrians and so on so with a form-based code you've got a much more detailed set of regulations that says this is what it needs to look like regardless of what the uses are the buildings have to be constructed in a certain way they have to parking has to be in the back of the building the buildings have to be arranged close to the the front property line so that pedestrians can interact with the with the buildings in a better manner than they do now and so on so the the proposal that we have which I think you all have has has really detailed regulations and I won't go through them all here but if you flip through sort of the first half of the the book that you that you have there's a whole series of drawings and diagrams in there that specify different types of streets different types of buildings and how those how they apply to what's on the ground they assign different areas to different street types and they set out a series of regulations for for how things would look and feel and how people would interact with the built environment so so I talked about the two new districts that would be created this would also create overlay districts in the areas some of the areas surrounding those two new zoning districts and what those overlay districts would do would be to apply the form based regulations but to leave the existing zoning districts in place so those areas that are depicted on on some of the maps as dotted lines around the new zoning districts would have the form based regulations in place but they would not they would continue to be existing zoning districts they would not be zoned as the new districts and the final major element is that we've proposed in a couple of areas changing the underlying zoning from one of our existing districts to another not to the new districts but from one existing district to another existing district and the primary example of that is along montague road north of the mill river and south of summer street that area most of that area all of that area I think is currently zoned our neighborhood residential and that's the area immediately north of the the core part of the village center and we're proposing to zone that as rvc village center residents with rvc being a denser residential district it's still a residential district but it allows a wider range of uses and it allows a higher density that is we felt more appropriate being close to a village center I'll note that the north amherst village center is currently surrounded by on the south east and west rvc zoning so this would add rvc zoning to the existing rvc zoning it would add it on the north side of the district I think I'll stop there and try to answer any questions that you might have about it the oh and the uh so the planning board had a public hearing on this over a series of two nights at our most recent two meetings we had one meeting that was focused on north amherst and another that that tried to focus on south amherst although we spent a lot of time talking about north amherst at that meeting also we ultimately voted to recommend this article five to two with one abstention folks on the and I'll need to point out that we've heard a wide range of comments from members of the public some people supporting it and a lot of people not supporting it so there's been a wide range of opinion I'll acknowledge that members that the board was not unanimous there were there was one member of the board who had significant concerns about the timing and felt that this was not ready to go forward and would prefer to see it delayed for a special town meeting over the course of the winter although he did express support for the proposal overall there was another member who indicated support for the project in general terms but had very specific concerns about the degree to which it did not specifically address transportation issues and felt that he could not support it for that reason and I believe the abstention had to do with timing related issues that member also expressed general support for the plan thank you thank you questions or comments from select board mr. Hayden I attended a lot of those hearings and I I I don't know how anybody presenting this to town meeting could be more clear about the two different things that are going on the form-based and the and the zoning change they do seem to get commingled in people's comments I don't know what they're thinking but what they speak the two are seem to get confused the question that I hear over and over again sort of at the base of the comments is your question how this will control the conversion of houses single family homes two family homes into student housing you know we had a couple of weekends ago an unfortunate incident in one of the rvc areas involving students by their own report being students I understand that zoning is a a blunt tool for doing things like this maybe you'll give your open door speech a 17th time I don't know maybe not but how does this mitigate the risk of the conversions of homes into into group homes for students keeping in mind that there will be three thousand more students here in very few years without a place to stay that will be in the neighborhood looking putting pressure on homeowners to give them a hand so they could live near where they're doing their work of being a student thank you one answer to that question is article five or the article that calls for a townwide housing study so that we have a better idea of what the housing market is out there both today and in the future but with respect to zoning there's a couple things one thing so you asked specifically about conversion of single family houses to student rentals which is something that we see taking place all over town and I can say honestly that this zoning proposal doesn't affect that at all so that's a force that's out there in the marketplace that we have to deal with through one mechanism or another that is significantly affecting the town and that if we don't do something to to deal with that to take steps that address the demand that is behind that those conversions or control the behavior that results from them there's going to be significant issues those are not things that zoning can directly affect because if you want to rent your house or if I want to rent my house to a student or group of students there's nothing that the zoning says about that transaction that's a transaction that takes place in the marketplace and we can't directly control what this would do is for anybody that's building larger sets of houses townhouses or apartments in these specific areas is well one it restricts the uses it requires special permit for for the larger types of congregate housing and special permit as you all know is a tool that that allows the town to say no if use isn't appropriate or it allows it to apply significant conditions conditions like having a resident manager which has been established to result in much better control behavior problems things like that but in general trying to discourage the type of large residential student exclusive housing projects is something that the both the form-based aspects and the use restrictions in here do look carefully at so one of the things for example that the form regulations require is that apartments that are located within this district contain a mix of different dwelling types you don't have a monoculture of like cookie cutter apartments geared toward one particular residential type but the idea is that a strong village center comes from having a diverse group of people living together and so this these regulations would require that type of thing there is also just just the general the general idea of establishing a cohesive strong vibrant village center just through the the physical requirements of how your buildings are laid out how they interact with each other bringing together as I said a diverse group of people having services and places where people can work and shop and sort of mix together and interact in a way that's not just aimed at one particular market segment which is what you see in sort of traditional not so tightly controlled housing areas. Thank you Mr. Walden and then Ms. Stein. Thank you very that there was I like Mr. Hayden I've attended a lot of these meetings I actually happened to work in one of these areas and live in the other the letter being North Amherst so I'll speak a little more about that but I attended the charrette I've spoken to my neighbors I've spoken to the developers I've spoken to the people who oppose the plans of the developers we had a very good and skillfully moderated precinct meeting last night that went over a lot of this so I think I have a good sense of some of the issues and I guess what strikes me is that I can't quantify it but it seems to me we are very largely in agreement North Amherst residents want change and revitalization of the area and so there's a relatively small degree of disagreement I think it has to do with some general issues of principle and some specific areas so I think for example and this is why education and conversation is so important in the weeks that move up going up to town meeting you know I think there's some fear about intensification and densification in general though these things as you said so clearly are mandated in the master plan and again the idea is that if we don't we have to do infill someplace and that sprawl doesn't just take place of the edges it can take place between village centers too so we all say we want infill it has to take place somewhere village centers the logical place for that to happen and what we're really doing that is having a conversation about how and why so there's some concern about the boundaries of village center that will be intensified there's some concern about specific areas and I know that zoning is difficult stuff sometimes so we sometimes throw up our hands and say it's too complicated I can't understand it sometimes even people involved in this stuff so they can't understand it but I would hope that when people express their views about this they're as specific as possible you know rather than saying I don't understand say what you don't understand talk about specific areas for example we in North Amherst are talking a lot about the so-called peach colored area one particular that particular stretch of Montague road so it's helpfully able to focus on that the sort of mix of the principle plus the specific location and the uses there and then I think as mr. Hayden said there's still a good degree of misunderstanding about form-based codes and the question of uses versus appearance you know one of the paradoxes I think I hear is that you know you said very clearly the existing system says what you can't do and then that's what you do lets you do pretty much anything else that's not forbidden I think right now people are worried that the form-based codes will be too complicated they'll set forth too many regulations so they don't want sort of free rain less a fair and they don't want over regulation and I'm not quite sure how you find that happy medium but I see that's where part of the conversation has to take place you know or they say form-based codes are a way to let you do what you want as long as it looks pretty well that's not exactly the case I mean one example is the the lovely Bank of America structure across the street up here form-based codes would have prevented that they wouldn't have prevented a large building or a bank building or a modernist building but they would have said maybe it's got to be aligned differently toward the street it's got to use different materials and massing different colors different window patterns and so forth so I think we need to clarify what I think people sometimes see form-based codes as a threat to architectural diversity and historic preservation whereas in fact you said it's just the opposite and so I guess then finally you know since there is so much agreement it's really painful in some ways to see this become an adversarial process in which people don't trust each other and so forth so I wish that as we have conversations about this they can be civil conversations in which people expect the best of each other and not the worst and really try to focus on 90% we agree on because it's always a balancing act you know we're trying to do something always for the common good that has a particular impact on certain local areas or groups of people and that's not an easy thing to do but I think we have to otherwise it becomes sort of an either or a case of being against something altogether or being for it and walking over the wishes of people who live there I don't know exactly how to get there but I think this is a good test case for a good public process we've had lots of meetings but we're still not obviously all on the same page yet and I hope we can use the next few weeks as productably as possible thank you do you want to comment if I may that that would be a good time to point out as part of the process of using the next few weeks as productively as possible on the planning board is having a public information session on form-based codes at our next meeting on November second Wednesday November 2nd at 8 p.m. in this room the town room at town hall and and we'll have Steve Cecil from the Cecil group who is the consultant that we worked with in developing this proposal in to make a general presentation about how form-based code works because I agree with Mr. Wald that it is key to understand that it's not just a surface sort of Disney sort of make all your buildings look the same it's much more it goes a lot deeper than that because the way that people interact with each other in the public space and the way that they interact with what's going on with the buildings is very much defined by the architecture and as I said the massing of the buildings the way that they relate to each other and that's something that that our zoning now doesn't really exert any control at all over in fact in some ways it exerts negative control and forces you towards things that would not be appropriate so he'll be in to explain that that'll be a public information session at our planning board meeting and he'll have some examples of how people have done that well in cities and towns throughout the country and of course we'll be we'll be providing that information as well when we come to town meeting with this thank you miss stein um earlier this evening someone was in who lives in the neighborhood along montague road and she was voicing her concern that infill was going to dramatically change the flavor of that neighborhood which they feel very strongly they'd like to be preserved and I just wondered what your comment about that would be she felt that that their concern had been expressed thoroughly during the charrette but that it was not taken care of let's say in this article so mr. wall pointed to a couple of different interacting issues that people have been concerned about and so um i'm going to try to draw a line between a set of issues that have to do with the zoning immediately on montague road which is the peach colored area that mr. wall described where we're proposing to change the underlying zoning from rn to rvc that that's issue number one issue number two is the general rezoning of the area and so by that I mean the the creation of a new district that would apply not along that stretch of montague road but slightly to the west there in the sort of interior of the triangle between montague road and sunderland road and then also west of sunderland road there's a big new district there and so that's issue number two and so people have concerns about both of those things um and some people have concerns about both of those some people have concerns about one or the other so I heard that comment earlier and I interpreted that mostly in the context of issue number one the immediate zoning along montague road although I can't say for sure it could have also pertain to the other one as well the the change in zoning along montague road from rn to rvc is motivated by the fact that a strong village center depends on having a sufficient density a residential population around it in order for it to function effectively you don't have a center unless you have a concentration of people and so that's the general pattern of our village center zoning in town is that you've got a core area which currently we typically zone bvc the village center business and it's surrounded by um not entirely but but to some degree or another rvc which is a denser residential uh area that can support large enough populations to have a robust mix of services and businesses and places for people to work and shop in the village center that's the same pattern that we have with the town center as well you have a dense core which is bg general business surrounded by entirely surrounded by rg general residents which is our densest residential district so that pattern that same pattern that we have in the town center is applied in other village centers as well so there's ample precedent for that um and in fact there's there's precedent as I mentioned earlier right in north amherst the existing core village center is surrounded by on the east on the west and to the south rvc residential zoning um and some of those in fact most of those areas are quite nice and are considered to be strengths of the village center those are the areas that people look at the area of north pleasant street leading north into the village center and say we really like this this is a a asset to the village center that's zoned rvc that's not an area that's being torn apart or converted into things that people are scared of that zoning that's on the ground right now and it works really well so that's the type of thing that we'd like to see and encourage in the area that we're proposing be zoned um rvc along that stretch of montague road it is denser than the existing zoning that's on the ground there our end zoning um is mostly designed for single family homes kind of fairly widely separated that's our neighborhood resident zoning that's in place pretty much in large stretches of land throughout the town but in the area around village centers like smart growth practice really has you look for a concentration of people around a center in order to to achieve what you're looking for in that center so specifically um it would allow slightly more units on a piece of property than the existing zoning was it does it's not a radical change it's a it's an incremental change in the density that would be allowed um it would allow some uses by special permit that are only allowed that are not allowed in rn currently um but again special permit is a discretionary permit through the zba it gives the town the right to say no to things that aren't appropriate um and on top of all of that you have the form-based standards that i've described so anything that did get built um would have to conform to the form-based standards which are designed specifically to ensure that anything that gets built is in keeping with the rest of the neighborhood promotes the the intent of what we're looking for here the the regulations specifically speak to that so the form-based codes provide a good uh protection against something that is markedly out of character with the rest of the neighborhood um and as i mentioned a moment ago it's important to remember that the changes in density are incremental they're not radical it's that that's sort of the next step up from our end zoning is to step to rvc questions mr um a really easy question followed by someone one that might be slightly harder um the actual planning board report obviously had numerous meetings and just recently voted is that going to be in the second town meeting that was gathered for today so that will be out in people's hands basically well prior to town meeting excellent easy question slightly harder one probably just rephrasing or saying remember three paragraphs ago but um in hindsight i'm wondering when it comes to the whole issue of the of the rn to the rvc having been part of the master planning comprehensive planning committee from for six years i well understand that the entire community made it very clear that village center was something they were looking at for certain areas of town increased density was something they were looking at for certain areas of town be great if we could have some pictures of how nice rvc actually does look in our town it's not like some imaginary place it's right here in our town um and i understand that we're calling this concept village center rezoning so yeah it kind of makes sense to put all the form base and everything together is there some theory that this is possibly going to be separated and if so what that would look like because one of the you know i'm wondering how much of this aside from everything we've been hearing here is really about form-based zoning versus this particular issue of rnd rvc and if it wouldn't be okay to just for example i would of course like to see the zoning change proved but it would also be okay to have form-based zoning accepted in theory and make an incremental step so we at least have that part set up so these could in theory be separated um we've heard thoughts on a variety of ways that this could be separated um that represents a new one to me well well we'll add that to the list um the most common question we get is whether the north and the south sides of it can or should or could be separated um slightly different question um i think yours is your question of sort of talking about rezoning individual areas and creating a new district that sort of functions differently than the old district and then applying form-based zoning on top of that as sort of each being individual questions to me that's a little easier way to say a little easier question to say no to i don't think that would be a good idea because and then that's one of the reasons why we didn't structure it this way is that the pieces kind of all fit together there the the the regulations in the new district that is proposed to be created by this the things that are allowed and not allowed are colored by the fact that there's an expectation that you're going to have this set of form-based regulations on top of them and so things that um you might in some cases be a little bit more um cautious and say require a special permit for might be required might be allowed by right because you've got this additional layer of protection in terms of how the way that it fits into the environment in the village center that you're creating or enhancing so the idea that you might have that district created with that particular set of uses but then not have the form-based regulations on top of it that they're sort of tied together to to an extent and and the reverse is true also i'm not sure what would happen if you just created the form-based regulations without the the underlying zoning changes that then you'd have form-based regulations imposed upon largely a big commercially zoned district which would be problematic so i i don't think it really would make much sense to to try to separate it along that particular axis well good i mean i i don't want to do that but i'm just trying to understand how some of these various things might play out i think it would really help us if i pound into my head that it's form-based regulations not form-based zoning and i think that then if we could we probably want to come back to that but one last thing about hopefully last thing about this village center issue so in theory in the days before form-based zoning before that was the apple in anyone's eye um and we were just talking about village centers we could have made changes to village centers just i guess i'm just restating probably not nearly as well as what you just said i'd just like to hear that more i think at some of these at some of these meetings is that in theory we could have in the past gone ahead and decided to make that village center already and we would have in fact made it harder to do certain things with in terms of special permit site plan review etc but because we've got the form-based regulations they make a nice package together rather than just trying to make that a denser village center but then having so many conditions on top of it that it's actually not really getting us toward where we would want to go yeah i'll give a sort of conditional yes to that question um if i understood the the premise correctly you were essentially asking could we not have just rezone this using our existing zoning districts and what would have happened if we had done that and the answer would have probably been if we followed our traditional zoning patterns that we might have had there's already a nucleus there of bvc village center business zoning and depending on exactly the mix of uses that's allowed there and the mix of uses that are on the ground today you might have extended that a little bit and you might have surrounded it with a larger area of rvc going north from the the core there and that would have been our traditional village center zoning pattern the the main reason that that was felt to be not attractive is that you've got a pretty blank slate in a big portion of that area so like that represents a significant opportunity to do something good there and it also represents a significant opportunity for things to go awry if you don't have good regulations um and so the traditional zoning that i just described wouldn't have given the town nearly the degree of control over what gets built there as what we're proposing here the form-based code as i said specifically says you need to build something that looks like this and that people interact with in a certain way um and so we with this zoning we would get to say here's what we want it to look like and no matter who does it or what they're doing it would have to be built according to a certain model and that's that that's a recipe for success rather than i'm rolling the dice and hoping you like the outcome i went to a uh uh seminar at the mma annual meeting last year on form-based code and it was the first time i got kind of big exposure to it and um and to me it was it was so eye-opening about the difference between the way we do it and and the outcome that you can get that way um it's very difficult to talk about and that's why we keep talking about you know wanting more visuals for this but it's it's not about as mr o'keith has mentioned it's not about specifying you know that a building has to look like x it's about how the buildings and the space interact and how they are in relation to each other and the road and the sidewalks and the parking so you're you're creating you're creating a plan of how you would fill the space and for example we can't under our current zoning we can't even require that the parking go in the back so when you think about as mr o'keith said the blank slate that that is the possibility here to me the form-based regulations and the kind of the degree of control that gives you to be able to put all the parking in the back to create spaces open spaces and continuous spaces that relate to each other that become what to me is um the the most appropriate context for the jewels of north amherst the library the north congregational church the north amherst school and mill river recreation area you have this opportunity to connect those spaces in a way that you either design for people who are walking around or for people who are driving around and it's only by the form-based regulations by by giving that um that that appropriate um harmonious space relationship you can create the area that is about walking around and along with the density as we've talked about you need a certain density to support a village center you're not going to stick in you know little coffee shops and bookstores and sweet little restaurants or whatever in a place that doesn't have any people like that the market just doesn't do that you need to have a critical mass of people to support these things so you add the density and you add the ability to create a harmonious and um and people friendly space it really it's such an opportunity to um to to build on what has been kind of an area of neglect and uh it just you know i i have lots of the the town publishers through the historical commission all these folks um these wonderful old photo booklets of of amherst and you know you see the library and you see the north amherst school and you see the north congregational church and then you see and then you think about it today and you think about that really tired sad strip mall that's behind or the abandoned gas station or you know and you think okay what comes next do we want to leave what comes next to the chance of creating a bunch of more unharmonious spaces or do we want to really plan the space to be harmonious and be really an ideal village center so uh i think it's a wonderful idea and i hope that we'll be able to communicate to town meeting how how positive it is and how um the opportunity that it represents and that it's not really scary change i'm gonna call mr. talker i'd like to speak briefly to the question of um division of the article or amendments to the article as currently configured the article does not lead itself to an automatic division a from b from c and so forth that end ends up in a nonsensical arrangements however staff are working with the town moderator and town council to to see if we can craft language that would do different things if citizens decided to try to do different things without making hash out of the rest of of the article for instance dividing uh consideration of village centers one from another along with the question of what do you then do with the form-based regulations adopting form-based regulations all by themselves without a district to apply them to doesn't make a whole lot of sense so um we're trying to figure out ways to come at that i would just also say that the form-based zoning or regulations the way you want to say it um are a layer and to a certain degree they alter slightly the way in which you would regulate use or the way in which you would regulate dimensions in a different zoning district but they don't alter much most of the substantial uses say multifamily residential uses that you would have in a village center are still regulated by special permit there's only one type that isn't there's the very little has changed in the way the rest of the regulations work what's been added is an overlayment of the way in which the form of development would proceed right now under the existing zoning that form work is done by the permitting board on a case by case by case basis and even if you have boards that were extremely attentive to that and i frankly think our boards are uh they change personnel you know over the years and it's very hard to maintain a sort of consistent vision for an area i can remember any number of boards you know establishing sign plans for for development and so forth and then having to amend them four or five times over the decades just because things change things move along you have to be able to adjust them uh so what this does is take that work out of the permitting process it says in advance and adds now reuse the term that others have used predictability to the process there are additional regulations and that will add some cost part of the cost is that the resulting development would cost more because it's of a higher quality than it would otherwise there are not going to be a lot of off the shelf um you know your standard stop shopping center stamps that you're going to be able to put anywhere under form-based code you have to design it so that it makes sense as a village center but that's what the community has said that it wants in terms of the result um and the fact that it is predictable and finally in some sense we adopt this developers will be able to say ah i know what amherst wants um and come into the process knowing that uh we'll take a great deal of the cost right now developers often have to develop two or three plans sets of plans very different plans in order for the board as well as the developers to figure out what it is that works in a given setting that time around and then they have to do the same thing next door and next door after that this adds a framework that the community has has said that it wants i think much of the concern about the proposal is really not about the form based regulations i think there's a fair amount of unanimity to the extent that people understand it i think the concern is about levels of development and intensity and in some ways we need to find ways to address that i would note that in terms of making changes people can always move to change zoning proposed zoning district boundaries from one thing to another as opposed to taking things a village center at a time thank you other questions or comments mr wall i really want to talk more about form based codes but it's late and i won't because we're all getting so romantic and and fuzzy here anyway but i think you know mr tucker makes a good point that i was one of the takeaways i got if i understood correctly from the master planning process and that's the predictability not in the sense of making it easy to do whatever you want but there's a lot of work involved in planning and construction whether it's by the homeowner or developer either way and what we're doing here as i understand it or trying to do at least is through a public process imperfect that may be to put more of the deliberation into a public process that's fairly broadly based as opposed to into the hands of an ad hoc body of changing individuals you know so the work goes in up front so that the actual process takes place more easily when people want to design and build which should be friendlier to the homeowner or to the respectful and responsible developer as i understand it you know you want you want special permit to be that just what it is the exception and not if not the rule the the commonplace uh the other thing i guess is that there's a bigger you know filth mr tucker said we have to explain these things and i think there's a bigger philosophical question too and all and you said zoning can be revised which it often is and we often rezone small pieces and parking regulations here and this and that uh get changed at town meeting all the time that we i'm trying to forget i say it that you know we pride ourselves in having an intensive public process again it may not be perfect but it's fairly intensive by the standards of most towns and yet no one's ever happy with everything so you know if we 90 degree or if 90 percent of the residents agree and 10 percent don't that's a difficult question you know to what extent to you know to what extent does that mean we have a mandate to do something above and beyond a mere majority vote or in this case two-thirds vote in town meeting because i guess that's one of the that's one of the questions i have too about these as we go forward with you know with kendrick park with puffers pond with these areas with the public processes with the master plan with the same thing and people say i came and i spoke and what i said is not what you gave me we need to clarify the extent to which i think people should feel or should not feel entitled that the fact that they spoke or a certain number spoke means that that would be reflected in the policy i'm not making a judgment i'm just saying that for example if there was strong public opinion in favor of one particular option and the final plan says something else i think that sets a certain bar for us in the words we should do we should be able to explain why it wasn't a question of heeding the voices of that group and they should in terms they can understand and hopefully again a civil debate it's not i don't know the answer it's a tough question but i think that's part of what it comes down to what we think democracy means in planning what role it has actually again you can answer it because i don't know i could i could do a very quick answer and have a challenge from all quarters which is that for instance uh the section of monarchy road that was owned this currently proposed to be zoned rvc from rn was at one point in the process proposed to be zoned or a good portion of it and a vc the the principal mixed use village center district and in discussion the zoning subcommittee itself decided no uh in order to respond to the concerns of the neighbors that this not all go to something other than residential which and they had from the beginning in a charrette and throughout the process been saying that they not only wanted the character the architectural informed character of monarchy road to remain residential they wanted it to remain residential period because they didn't want to have to be dealing with more intensive uses right across the street from themselves the subcommittee proposed that it be rvc just as the southern three limbs of the of the village center have a transitional zone of rvc far predominantly residential slightly more dense allowing some office uses to be mixed in with residential uses but nothing else no retail no restaurants nothing like that uh and that was felt by the subcommittee at least and eventually by the planning board which is reflected in its vote that that was a very substantial compromise that you know in in the competition between all of the different private voices which spanned the the spectrum they really did there's a very strong voice saying keep monarchy road residential and there were other equally valid if not quite as many voices saying well it needs to be a village center in some way how do we how do we cope with that so that was an attempt at a compromise it may not be acceptable to everybody and that's part of what we're trying to explain how how it works what kinds of consequences will come from it thank you and to elaborate a little bit on mr wald's point i think it's important to keep in mind that while certainly the neighbors in the immediate vicinity are the most impacted by change like this and certainly then have the most concern about it and their their issues are primarily about density and the intensification as you said the consequences you might say well it's it's their neighborhood they should get to decide but the fact is if they decide if we if we yield to that idea that they don't want density so you know they get to decide that means that the it becomes sprawl for the rest of us so the consequences of not putting it there where we as kind of the larger community through the master plan have said yes we want we want infill we wanted to to increase the density in our village centers if if we say okay but but not yours then that means that kind of density has to be spread out in other places so then it wouldn't be dense it would be sprawl in other places um as i think mr hayden pointed out in an earlier meeting um amherst's population grew eight percent in the most recent senate at census i always say senate um we have growth in the university we have only so much developable land left in earmarsh we can't build a big wall around it so you know for if we're gonna have more people who are living here um then we're either going to be putting them out on land that the master plan has says a hundred different ways it wants to be protecting the open spaces as much as it can we're gonna have to put them into density somewhere um or else we're we're gonna we're gonna continue to lose open space and we're going to continue to lose the single family homes which i think is just a critical issue facing the town to student rentals because that's an enormous market factor it's an enormous financial incentive you know we've got this rule for unrelated persons that means for every 100 students who want to live off campus currently if we don't have a dense place to put them that's 25 new houses that would turn over uh from single family homes to student rentals so that's per every 100 students so you know the the effect that that will have on more and more neighborhoods and on more and more housing stock um is really significant so the idea that we have to be creating density in appropriate places i think the idea of it being mixed um mixed audience density you know that it's not cookie cutter that the goal is to have a vibrant village center that has lots of different people living in it has its own controls over the different student issues that we've we've talked about we're all aware of but um but i think it's it's really dangerous to just sort of say yeah but those folks don't want density so since it would impact them you know we we shouldn't give it to them if they don't want density and we go along with that then that has repercussions for everybody so it's it's a grand balancing act it's a grand compromise and uh and it's it's not easy to do and it'll be a tough question for town meeting mr. talker just say very quickly that there are many other um things that are currently being done and that are underway and under development in terms of addressing the housing question um not just article five although i encourage everyone to support article five as a way of getting the critical information we need in order to go forward in a variety of steps but there will be regulations and other changes coming to the spring town meeting specifically to address that we hope to be hiring a code enforcement person within a month or so we have a new building commissioner coming in there are a number of there are already changes in the way in which we are addressing problem houses and we are seeing some impacts from that but we have a great deal more to do and it's underway we do and of course that this is being addressed in lots of different venues as the the various um relationships we have with the university the conversations about you know discipline code of student conduct how it applies off campus um we're attacking this from every possible direction and so you know we hope that it all works together for some benefit okay other questions or comments from select we're all ready to fall asleep miss pro you've sat very patiently here you did comment at the beginning of the meeting if you would like to comment now i'm happy to let you do that if you need to come to the microphone though you're not required by all means i'm elissa perot on summer street but i don't know where to begin because so much has been said that i just want to say is misconceived um the the compromise of rvc that mr tucker spoke of allows for 10 more units on each of the properties of the people who have now decided to develop started out with the coals and then mrs garnier joined the gang and it's quite clear from their plans that they don't intend to make a neighborhood that could work together they want to put up a lot of housing and probably townhouses because that will get them the most money and there is no other town housing on the north side of the mill river i don't know what that has to do with our that the existing character of our area um the charrette with a charade um it nothing from it has been accomplished the summary says as i told you all kinds of things that haven't been done before this zoning plan has has come into existence um that need to be incorporated we're not interested in the buildings having a relationship to each other in a community in a village community in the kind of community that we have in north ammest on the north of the river there and i believe down pine street for a good way to is a community of people who communicate with each other you don't create the buildings to do that the buildings that are there have created the community the strong community that we have where we walk across each other's yards where we we share each other's chickens where we eat each other's sugar and so forth it's it's it's not the buildings and the street structure that do that it's it's creating an environment where people can live together and give and take to each for each other when you live in these townhouses and you don't have anywhere to go to meet with people and there is nowhere in north ammest what we need are the the services and the the the small businesses the even the the line industry as we have at the top end yet on coals road we need those kinds of things so that people have jobs there so that people can talk to people when they're out in in these environments it's we don't have a coffee place to do that and we won't have with this zoning we will not have it with this zoning it will be just the same the transportation will be the same the road structure will be the same the disaster except it'll be worse people will still be unsafe walking and biking and it will be just the same in that beautiful core that you've mentioned mrs. okay and that's a real tragedy when we have the opportunity now to do something that would be truly good keeping Montague Avenue residential is no great sacrifice to either of the developers they have a large corner corner in the middle of the of the area there that can be developed as they please and what would be very nice if we were no longer a food desert as the FDA has said we are because there is no place nearby where we can get reasonable choice of foods and it would be wonderful if we had those businesses and people living on top of them along sundal and avenue nobody in this community will object to that we would like the densification in the core of the of the North Hammers where there's lovely buildings are there's a place there that could be developed across the river where it's for sale ever since i've been in the community nobody's done anything with that and yet we have to spread it up the north of the river destroy that that wonderful corridor there by doing so and and instead of developing it to be the the number one connector across the village it's it's just mind-boggling to me that we had that charrette and came up with these wonderful ideas we were all united in it and and everybody was contributing in a most constructive way and it was set aside and the town went ahead with what it wanted and satisfied two developers against everybody else in the community just about everybody else 80 people signed that petition it's being ignored and what says here right in the master plan and in the charrette that future uses and development should primarily benefit the residents of businesses of North Hammers now what are you doing so it's interesting that you um have such concern about this because a lot of what you're talking about i feel like we're saying the same thing so i think i just do not i don't really think we're on the same page at all i've heard it over and over again i've been to so many meetings and over and over again to think that we're on the same page is ridiculous we're coming from a different place we want a community of people people who interact with each other you want to to put up buildings buildings don't do that it's need to have for people the buildings are for people the people are there the people are there okay so um i appreciate your comments and i'm i'm sorry you're so upset about it i hope we can find a better way to express this to you allow me to do that i didn't expect it i wanted to hear your discussion and all i could do was keep shrugging my mouth and saying it's not right you know so okay thank you very much i have okay you have your process and my golly it's not a democratic and i think you ignore the basic thing that this should be um that the residents who are there should have some say and the some say that we're getting is townhouses thank you very much thank you thank you for coming in okay select board any other uh issues we need to talk about before we make a decision on our recommendation on this article miss stein would you like to make the motion um i'm going to abstain on this so is it appropriate for me to make this um recommendation certainly it doesn't make any difference okay but if you're not comfortable doing it no i don't mind making it i just when it comes to voting i'm going to abstain because i need to spend more time on this um i moved that the select board recommend november 7 2011 special town meeting article 17 village center zoning second so further discussion all in favor say aye oh i'm sorry i thought you did not raise your hand i apologize sorry um so we haven't seen the planning board report yet so i'm going to guess that some of this is in there um just as i mentioned the photos i mean the presentation is never going to satisfy everyone i i fully understand that at the same time i still think that we have we have great opportunity over the next few weeks not just at meetings but also to get out in front of town meeting members we're to prepare for town meeting some more visuals because we have more capabilities in that area than we've ever had before in terms of not only what our village center looks like and um and we're so ready but also what it would look like along these specific areas i mean we can do much better overlays than we used to be able to do with little pieces of plastic in terms of showing people what this would look like because i i keep hearing this polarization that i can't put together in my mind either why i think it's going to look like x y or z and there are neighbors who say you're completely wrong it's going to all end up looking like a b and c and i you know i there's has to be some way of communicating across at least some of those divides like i said not everybody perhaps but i think we do have some area potential there thank you all right uh mr wand at the risk of continuing this this is something i heard very much in the in the precinct meeting too yesterday and i think what you know people say i can't visualize that or well that's brookline or that's lowell or that's san francisco you know consultants have these toolkits of images places they've worked or things that are generic it's like saying i want a desk chair you know your desk chair could look like this it could look like something else it's going to have a back and arms and probably some metal and some plastic and fabric but it's not you've got to visualize the desk chair you want in your own office so i think what mr tucker was saying and what you were saying about north emerson might make sense and it would it would go quite a way to at least clarifying the terms of debate if not solving the problem if the examples of appropriate structures were drawn from north emerson itself or somewhere in emerson so people could say i know that building or i now i get it you know it's it's going to cost somebody bit of time and money but compared to the amount of effort that went to this plan hiring the consultants the public process and the big discussion in town meeting that's not a lot of effort so i think most residents and others would find that very helpful thank you very much just mr where was suggesting other discussion mr haid yeah just one one other slightly different idea and i'm sorry for the lack of coherency it's getting late i i think that it's important that after having heard the the planning the zoning subcommittee and the planning board's discussion on this i think it's important that we bring this to town meeting and let them see it and work with it these are very important ideas these are things that really do speak to the sustainability of amherst as the amherst that we're looking for so i'm looking forward to bring this to town meeting for debate thank you for the discussion before we vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed abstaining has four in favor zero opposed and one abstaining um before mr o'keith leaves um there's discussion at the planning board about uh assigning this to a time date certain and it's something that i had alluded to the possibility of when we talked about scheduling the special town meeting before i had said that i was sort of reasoning out the scheduling of the special town meeting such that it would be uh made most sense to be uh the ninth in case this was scheduled to the 14th the planning board is looking at scheduling this to the 16th so could you speak to that that's correct and thank you for bringing that up um we felt we had a discussion about whether it should be a date certain first of all and then when it should be um and certainly the consensus among the planning board was that scheduling it for a date certain um it would generally be considered positive by probably everybody who's looking at this people um will have a degree of predictability uncertainty um there's that predictability again um about when this will come up um because we are right at the end of the warrant so that otherwise would have the most question about when it's going to come up so um by postponing it to a specific date um everybody would know when it's going to happen and people would have ample opportunity to learn as much as they could about it um so everybody felt that was a good idea um and so then we looked at the date um and the date that we were looking at most seriously was the 16th um which is the fourth night i believe scheduled of town meeting um both as a date that the planning board had a regularly scheduled meeting that night um and so it was convenient for us um in terms of the schedule because we would likely or possibly be meeting um before town meeting as as you all always do i believe we don't do that all the time but only when we have articles coming up um so that would work well with our schedule and um pushing it back to the 16th back in the sense that that's probably a little bit after it would tend to come up naturally um unless things before it go really slow um but putting it back to the 16th would give everyone the pretty much the maximum amount of time to become familiar with the article and read through the the details and watch all the materials that are out there on amorce media and learn as much as they can about the article so the 16th was the date that the planning board would prefer for that thank you miss burr without having heard your rest of your discussion totally disagree with waiting until the 16th rather than the 14th would we then conceivably be planning to cancel the 14th i cannot fathom that this is going to take three nights prior to this night and i just i just don't like doing that to tell meeting members to stretch things out that much further and i really don't think the planning board schedule has anything to do with this so um if you know property owners neighbors etc could be advised that it would be on the 14th but i find the 16th a really unfortunate obviously i'll be there but i don't get it other thoughts and comments on 14 versus 16th only that we were hoping to get done in three days i mean that's that's the reason it's not just to be difficult but if we could be finished in three days i think people would be happy and it's not such a long warrant it's only 18 articles would it be impossible for you all to do it on the 14th mr okay so two things i would point out um as miss burr pointed out if we were done or largely done after two nights then we could very well cancel the monday session so on the second night of town meeting we could adjourn until the 16th um in my mind recognize that not everybody feels this way but the fact that it's three nights rather than four is a much more important factor than how many calendar days those are spread over i mean if the calendar days are concerned we're already talking about 10 days from start to finish versus eight days or seven days so um three nights spread over 10 days versus three nights spread over eight days um to me is not a huge factor um although i'm sure people feel otherwise also um so yes if you felt strongly that it needed to be done on the 14th i'm sure we would find a way to make that happen um we have already um publicly discussed and recommended within our own board that that be the night um so people may have some sense that already that that's the the night that they're planning for although i would say that's probably not a strong sense no one should be making any firm plans until town meeting votes to accept any given uh date so it wouldn't be calamitous if it were to to change from the 16th to the 14th but that that is what we have been putting out there so far so i have no issues either way i do folks feel strongly other than uh miss brewery partially miss stein any other thoughts about 14 or 16 mr aiden remind me when the uh special town meeting won't be the night or nine yep the second night miss burr well since i'm the one who finds it so upsetting um i mean it fits in with my larger concern about recruiting town meeting members keeping town meeting members feeling showing that we're doing things in a shorter period of time and and i really do believe that people look at things differently if they believe they have three nights to do their work prior to article 16 and if they think you know maybe it would be a really good idea if we did stuff in two nights i think there is actually some benefit to that psychologically but given that you've already had the conversation and apparently at least a significant number of the planning board members can be there for the 16th and okay i can live with that and i'm sure that the chair would give a wonderful speech at the beginning of the night on the ninth saying you know it's looking pretty good here we might be able to cancel on the 14th you know we might be able to adjourn to the 16th so given that there's not an extra week in there any place this is not one i need to completely have a fit just try and compress it as much as possible so it would it would be nice if we could go into it sort of agreeing one way or the other as opposed to um um folks worrying you know it's like we're going to be pushing for 14 planning boards pushing for 16 then then we're not really scheduling it that much advance notice and to me if we go ahead and decide the 16th tonight then we can start saying that to everybody tomorrow and so then everybody knows weeks ahead of time that it'll be the 16th and i think that's really important because you know people who might not be able to say take three nights away from their family or four nights away from their family can definitely plan to be there on the 16th then as much as i would advocate to make town meeting as easy as possible for town meeting members the fact is there's there's work that that it requires and skipping monday might be part of that work you know i'm sorry you know i've got 253 colleagues out there um and um it's it's not it's not all um crumpets from the pa centro it's also some effort that we have to put into it okay so uh mr. oaky now go ahead if you were going to make a decision on uh i was going to say so is select board good with me moving at the beginning of town meeting to to postpone this article until 7 30 on over my 16th yes yeah mr. oaky so just following up on mr brewer's comment i agree 100 with the idea of letting people know about that decision um as soon as possible i would just advise um or if i'm gonna be the one who's doing it um do um make sure that people understand that that's town meetings decision i don't want anybody appear to be usurping town meetings role so we could tell them that that's the plan but obviously it's up to town meeting to decide thank you good point all right so we're good with that i think you folks are done who's going to speak to this mr. wald mr north amherst guy would you want to do this or not you don't have to somebody's gonna dislike me no matter what i say so yeah okay great unless somebody wanted to fight mr. wald for the ability to speak to this article okay uh we got a couple more warrant articles and let's try and get out of here my gosh it's almost 10 o'clock okay um so we have article six transfer of funds stabilization mr. pooler could not be with us tonight but this is pretty straightforward this is about um putting money a significant amount of money that uh the motion speaks to the money and stabilization as from free cash because as our financial guidelines recommend when you get to certain thresholds that you put the money into stabilization stabilization is different than free cash in that it takes two thirds to put money in or take money out so it's just a little bit more conservative way of of stick of holding that money mr. hean do we know how much um yeah sit in this memo oh oh they want to put my article 400 000 into the stabilization fund um and they say that this um this is um doable because we have about 5.6 percent of our operating revenue in free cash balance and so they want to take 400 000 of it and put it in that's my understanding and i think that's fine second for the discussion on article six on paper recommending article six i i okay i even moved that we do so okay it was good enough as a motion okay and i would be happy to speak to it sandy pooler and time well i don't know exactly the finance i mean i understand that the financial management policies are just state but it's not saying finance maybe i think they the royal we yes yeah this just doesn't say it that way i guess that's true okay anyway i'm happy the stein's gonna speak to it terrific thank you okay article 18 is nice and easy this is create the committee on homelessness this is the um article that was brought by the former committee on homelessness um basically because they disagreed with everything that we did regarding the committee on homelessness um that they want to maintain a uh a separate committee that is wholly dedicated to homelessness issues and we have spent the last many weeks painstakingly going through how to implement the decision that we made to uh to merge the housing partnership for housing committee concept and the committee on homelessness concept into one housing and sheltering committee concept so if we were in support of maintaining a separate committee on homelessness then we should not have been doing this for these below these many weeks so uh someone like to move to not recommend i guess is what we're doing not recommend article 18 down meeting i guess i i can do the the one negative one i'll relieve mistyne of that but i would move here i i look ahead that we not recommend we uh recommend the town meeting not um except article 18 second further discussion um favor say hi hi unanimous okay oh lord all right we have all this stuff to do what do we have to do um let's yes are you going to speak to that oh sorry what's that yes i'm happy to speak to that yeah yeah okay yes i'll speak to that all right moving right along budget priority guidelines um i don't think there's really anything that we need to talk about that tonight my main um recommendation actually i should call it the document sorry i'm talking about um we had talked about the idea of mulling over the uh human services funding situation and you know whether we should how we should how one might deal with or respond to that idea of including those um i said i would talk with mr. museum to bring us a recommendation we just met six days ago and a lot of things have happened since then and i just could not fit that into those things so um so i don't have that recommendation um also mr. museum he plans to be with us expects to be with us at our next meeting so it makes sense to sort of have that discussion and finalize them with him here so is there more we need to talk about this tonight mr. try and be really great for me a change i know but um one of the things i have been thinking about ever since that conversation was brought up associated with an article spring town meeting yada yada yada um is whether or not there are any particular items that we are funding through the block grant process that we might want to put back toward the budget which we've similarly looked at trying to make that shift associated with personnel just to kind of protect ourselves and keep all our bases covered and i'm exploring the beginning idea in my mind at any rate of perhaps the subsidies for after school care that we provide because they are intended to benefit all families and of school age children associated with all the different after school programs at the elementary level so i think i would intend to ask the town manager about that at that at our next meeting just you know how we might proceed associated with that were that to be something that was interesting to us um one of the other items that i realized that i'm not sure is getting enough attention budget wise is maintenance planning associated particularly for example with say playgrounds you can tell which meetings i go to right um because we don't really since we're on the parks department exactly we have a leisure services department we need a new swing it's kind of unclear as to where that swing is going to come from and it's not like there's some little pool that's set aside that says okay we'll we'll make sure we always have money for this and i think that's more of an internal budgeting thing you know rather than like a guideline we have to provide but maybe it's just something i mentioned as it would be awfully nice if um people started to realize they really want to make sure they include those things as budgets get tighter and tighter the other question i had was we had said very specifically that war memorial pool was so obvious we didn't really need to include it as a specific thing but now thinking about the fact that the bid contribution is also going to be a specific thing i wonder if we should mention those two specific things somehow even though it really messes up the flow of the guidelines as being things that we recognize will be new in the budget so that we can't come back and say huh we didn't say do it we said don't do anything new but those are two okay okay so that might be accomplished with a sentence as opposed to being very simple concept right don't try and work it into something right so we're we're saying that that goes because that um so we're departs a little bit from our overall philosophy that we're just spending on regular stuff that we should call that out i'm just a little concerned in terms of no one being i mean it just seems like a no surprises kind of thing for everybody to say that i mean i think it's all very clear to us that's clearly the town manager but for the other people that we write these bent for as well as his benefit directly that we do expect that to show okay so um how about i draft a sentence on that see if it captures the concept and we think about that next time okay great good okay moving along town manager's report mr zomec i'll be very brief given the hour i think everyone is well aware of mr musanti's continuing progress um he's returned to the office as of last week and and ramping up his schedule working with us in the mornings and you know his scheduling meetings with staff and the general public and as mr kief said i think he has every intention of being with you at your next meeting and of course on the seventh that town meetings so it's all all good news i will continue to do anything i can to assist him and and the select board and return to my day job moving along um as i stated last week we are continuing to work with craig's doors in preparation for the opening of the shelter on on 11 one on november one we are very close to finalizing a contract and craig's doors is working with our fire inspections and health personnel on the various um approvals that are necessary to open the shelter and most of those inspections are happening this week um so i think everything is on schedule there as always it's it's going to be down to the wire but uh i'm i'm confident we'll get there and then very quickly just in terms of recent and upcoming activity i wanted to remind the board and the public that we should be hearing very soon on the three grants that we have in one is is the approximately i believe it's about 4.8 million dollar mass works grant for the work on pine street and then the two park grants we are we are optimistic that we'll hear on those before town meeting as well so we'll keep you posted thank you questioners or comments from mr zomey okay uh let's see member reports liaison representative reports need to know basis here that's all you want them i said it's on a need to know basis only things we absolutely critically need to know anyone it's hard i'll be very fast okay okay um the community preservation act committee has nearly finalized the form that will go out to have requests for proposals for spending c-pack money um and they voted to expedite um released of $25,000 to the north amherst community farm because of the need for urgent repairs on the barn um so there'll be a more uh limited um deed restriction for this but it was the way that they could expedite this funding which was necessary the rest can wait if you wish it's up to you well stan rosenberg had a wonderful 25 years of government service celebration with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people wishing him well and um some very uh important dignitaries from the boston area and congressman albert spoke and he gave a very sincere thanks to the people of amherst and surrounding areas for being allowed to serve and how much it meant to him thanks thank you anyone else memory ports um i'll just mention quickly that the budget coordinating group met for the first time uh of the season last week and in your packets are the budget coordinating group uh summary points from that meeting um and the key things that the group needs to know is um point number one was just a recap of of our four boards meeting point number two with some feedback from the from the school so just to know that well uh the budget looks like level services for the town um because of different issues for the schools and library that is not necessarily the case uh number two is a budget calendar uh the budget calendar is online pay attention to the budget page there's a really excellent budget calendar coordinating the town school and library budget processes right now and that should be an important resource for everybody and finally that our goals are to share information coordinating budget processes to get to town meeting blah blah blah that's our that's our critical goal that we're we're doing better all the time but the other thing that we added is that we're going to be having at that group the big discussion about opab so that we can talk about what it means to the town school and library retirees uh it's not just a town issue it's something that we should be kind of talking about in a in a shared group like that so that's going that discussion will help inform the finance committee's ultimate policy on on how to go ahead with forming opad um if you have any feedback that you would like to give miss burr or myself to bring to bcg regarding that any of those points in particular if you disagree with any of them then you can tell me sometime between now and our next meeting which is uh i can't remember what our next meeting is no i can't remember it's somewhere in the future i'm sorry um miss burr i don't remember either and i don't seem to have the calendar in front of me but we did get an updated calendar i just don't remember if these dates change whatever it says online the two four towns meetings have already been scheduled thanks to make sure you mark those in your calendars it's really nice to know this far ahead yes i did send that information out to the select board to make sure you mark your calendars for the uh you don't have a time replace so right all right it's always nine o'clock in the morning and it's usually somewhere yeah it's either middle school library once it was in the library except when it isn't and that's other issues with bcg summary points then um the other thing i'll say is that um this meeting tonight or this evening tonight prior to the meeting started with the third annual coffee hour select board coffee hour with umass student leaders and the administrators who work closely with them folks from community relations student affairs uh as well as the chancellor and his key staff um we had um i would say uh between three dozen and 40 something was was what i counted at the maximum that's right and that's why there's all this food and coffee here um and it was a tremendous event tremendous um attendance by uh folks from the student government association from the um greek the fraternity and sorority leadership councils and the individual houses um and really just talking about kind of how we're all you know members of this community so bringing those folks together with with um town officials and town staff so that they all know who to go to if they have questions or problems or need uh answers more information um and who on the town side we would go to if there were issues with the students and really just kind of reinforcing that we're all in this together and uh and it was uh very productive very enjoyable evening and uh really appreciated such excellent turnout from university students university uh administrators as well as town staff for uh for taking some time out of their busy schedules to come and and get together for a really important town gown event um one really interesting thing that i learned there that i have to tell you is remember we had that issue of as it called de cam department of capital asset management regarding that house on fearing street the university was going to buy it whether the the dean of students is going to move into that house so the university owns it she'll move in her name is anku goli she's the new dean of students this year she is going to um move in there very soon they are rehabilitating the house right now so she's going to be living among you know that that really um uh student intensive neighborhood an area with a lot of impacts from um students passing through there on their way to other places she's already been reaching out to neighbors about that and they're really happy to have her in their midst and uh i just want to say the the university doesn't talk enough about the efforts that it's making to address these issues um really appreciated the letter from the chancellor in the newspaper the other day about kind of what they're that there are there are standards of behavior that are that are clearly unacceptable to them um these are all kinds of messaging things that they're kind of um increasing as time goes on but the things that you don't know about that i either forget to tell you or don't have enough time to tell you about that they are really making so many different attempts in so many different ways to be very sensitive to the community's concerns uh it's really to their credit and so to and i just learned that tonight about the dean of students living there so that's that's the university um taking the initiative on that and uh i think it's tremendous and and it'll be really interesting to see how that works out so i wanted to share that with you any other comments about the coffee hour okay uh then uh other member reports nothing cheers report nothing so we do have some untimed items that we got to hurry up and get through here one of them is signing the special town meeting warrant and so we don't actually vote to do that we just say okay in a meeting we're going to do that so just so the world knows we're signing the special town meeting warrant for november 9th and nobody can leave until they sign it um the housing sheltering committee charge um it's up to the body if you want to deal with this this is unchanged from our last time except adding the paragraph about composition as you had recommended if you have any thoughts about the thing on composition then we should put it off if you're totally fine with it we can just accept it but i don't want to have a big conversation about the ways it should change for now miss bruer why don't we put it off because oh we didn't get it out until today until all the various members so i would go ahead and just leave it out there for another week since we're now okay two weeks okay and then i don't intend that we'll have a long conversation because i'm only looking for someone to post to say that there's a really big hole in it not that they disagree with everything okay so we're good with that we'll put it off so if you have any thoughts about that composition any issues about it you can let me know beforehand and i can bring a tweaked version to the next meeting okay approve annual lincoln at halloween street closure that's dine would you like to make the motion on the halloween street closure we do this every year but police and fire recommended it's fine i move that the select board approved the closing of lincoln avenue and sunset avenue on sunday october 31st 2011 from 6 30 p.m to 8 p.m with the agreement that at least one resident will be stationed at each barricade wearing a traffic vest with a flashlight and a cell phone and that the police department be given the names of individuals that can be contacted during the period of the closure should any issues arise second further discussion olympia we're saying hi hi hi okay before we get further let's just fix something that we did before um and we were making such good progress that uh that i i thought of this and and was and didn't bring it up so when we made the sewer motion um we keep talking about this equaling 4.2 million dollars and for whatever reason that sewer motion the second one how to fund it um said uh 35 3.5 million dollars and i don't know why it said that and uh and it passed through my brain and and then i didn't bring it up well is this so the warrant article has a different figure so the actual figure should be uh four million two hundred and one thousand five hundred dollars so if we wouldn't mind re um voting that motion i i don't think that's significant more proceed with developing plans to sewer sub area to harkness road area and sub area six while for drive areas as recommended by the superintendent of public works and to recommend appropriation of four million two hundred one thousand five hundred dollars to pay costs of designing and constructing sewer lines including the payment of all costs incidental and related thereto and to find fund the appropriation by taxation transfer borrowing or by any combination of the foregoing second further discussion oh all in favor say hi hi hi that was unanimous once again thank you so uh as mr uh mr greg would say our moderator the scrivener's error we've now corrected our vote as official and we've got the right amount of money thank you mr mooring for sending that information into us okay a couple more things we have we did that uh taxi licenses right i have a question um before i read off rattle off the the three that are written down are we to do charles laminin tonight as well because we don't have a motion for him he's transferring from one from tic tac taxi to green transportation incorporated and we got paperwork on our desk but no motion do you want me to make a motion um yes um so there's no motion attached to the paperwork on our desk there is not okay um so somebody else so i did all right let's do them so let me just say one thing about that other one let us append to that motion um pending recommendation or assuming recommendation by the chief of police right um just in case this somehow got to us erroneously so that we have not approved it unless we make a contingent that's it that's the word we want to use contingent on the police chief's recommendation for approval okay okay thank you all right make the motion let's see let's go through these fast i move that the select board approve the new taxi driver slash chauffeur license for andre d campbell of chickpea mass on behalf of taxi express second uh further discussion all in favor say hi hi i move that the select board approve the new taxi driver slash chauffeur license for paul g harby of montague mass on behalf of got to go taxi company second further discussion all in favor say hi hi i move that the select board approve the new taxi driver slash chauffeur license for john d renault north hampton mass on behalf of the green cab company second further discussion no one favor say hi hi i move that the select board approve the transfer of taxi license for charles laminin palmer mass from the tic tac taxi company to green transportation incorporated contingent upon approval by the emmer's police chief second further discussion all in favor say hi hi unanimous that was perfect thank you okay what else have we got here um i think we have everything am i missing anything does anybody see anything that we now it looks good all right okay yep i think we're good so uh i warned you this would be a long meeting but that actually wasn't too bad and um this was all in trying to accommodate the select board's desire to not meet next monday on halloween so we have managed to do that and uh so here we are so then without objection let me first just say the uh so our next meeting will be november 7th that will be at the middle school um unless people have objection i i'm assuming we will keep with past practice of not taking public comment um at our pre-town meeting meetings and on november 7th we will we've already got kind of a few things we have to deal with and also that's when we're going to hopefully hear from the school committee about their recommendation on article one of the special special that weren't we're about to sign questions or comments mr no i just do think we need to get this housing and sheltering committee charge finished so we can start filling the committee i agree as elissa said exactly that was one of the things i asked people is i we need some more ideas for recruitment because our usual methods are really not sufficient to fill a brand new okay committee particularly one that we're looking and so i'm i'm hoping that they'll have some brilliant suggestions other than i have i have one important i'm so glad i took a second to look at my notes um the appointed committee handbook comments have been um requested and the announcement for them has been up uh occupying prime real estate on the town website i think we should make the end of october the last date upon which to receive comments and then i should intercalate the comments into the existing handbook and give it to you all if you agree then i can let mr precunus know that as of november 1st that can come off sounds good everyone good with that yes thank you for taking care of that okay mr hayden before i move to adjourn i would like to uh offer my appreciation to amherst media for staying up late with us tonight we signed up for this they didn't indeed they got lots of snacks tonight though that that's a good sign okay i moved to adjourn thank you without objection this meeting adjourns at 10 15 p.m