 Yes, please. All right. We're recording. You're all set. Thank you. Okay. Seeing a presence of a quorum, I am calling this August 3rd, 2023 meeting of the Community Resources Committee to order at 432 p.m. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, extended by Chapters 22 and 107 of the Acts of 2022 and extended by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023. This meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time. We are also recording this meeting audio and visually. With that, I'm going to take a roll call attendance to make sure that attendees, committee members can hear and be heard. Our first two in the roll call, Shalini Balmillan and Pat DeAngelis will be absent today. And so Mandy Johannike is present, Pam Murni. I'm here. And Jennifer Tob. Present. And we welcome Jesse Selman and John Thompson today. Jesse, can you hear us? Yes. Excellent. And John, I know we'll check in with you when it's time for your portion of the meeting. But we welcome both of you today. With that, we're going to basically get started here. We're starting a little bit out of order for those in the audience. We have a special guest, Jesse here, who is representing, well, I don't know whether you're here on behalf of ECAC, but you are the ECAC representative for this proposal in front of the council that was referred to CRC, which is the specialized opt-in energy code. And this is just a discussion item today. So we're going to start with that so that we take the least amount of time with Jesse. We take as little time with him as we can with him because he's kindly joining us. And then we will move on to residential rental bylaw. And if there is any time after that, we will move back to discussion items in the follow-up with the joint CRC AMHT meeting and the rest of our items. We will likely take public comment between the specialized energy code and residential rental bylaw so that because today with specialized energy code, our goal today is to collect questions that people have for if we were to adopt it. CRC's role in this is to make a recommendation on whether to adopt the specialized energy code. And so today's purpose of today's portion of that meeting is to collect the questions we would like to see answered before we hold the public hearing, which will be held September 7th during our CRC meeting. So we're not going to be discussing recommendations or anything today. We will do that after the public hearing is held, but we needed a little presentation, a short one to talk about what it is, and then to get our questions all out there. So that's the point of that today. And so we'll probably take public comment between that so that if there are any comments on the specialized energy code, Jesse can be here for them before we up and let Jesse go back to his life and his job while we continue our meeting. Are there any questions from committee members or anyone about the plan for the meeting before we jump right into that specialized energy code? Seeing none. Jesse, I know I told you maybe like a couple minutes to talk, I don't know whether you're prepared to just talk about what the specialized energy code is and all of that, similar to what you did at CRC, but not the in-depth presentation. We will do an in-depth presentation at the public hearing. But would you like to talk a little bit about that before we open it up to questions? Sure. Yeah. And again, thank you for having me. Essentially, the building code contains a portion of the building code is the energy code. And when you get a building permit for your project, it has to meet the energy code. And in Massachusetts, there are currently three levels of energy code. There's the base code, there's the stretch code, and there's the specialized code. Amherst is currently uses the stretch code, which means that it has it regulates to be for buildings to use less energy, essentially. The specialized code is a next step above that. And that is, I think that's the basis of this is, that's the question, should Amherst go from the stretch code to the specialized code? There is a lot right now in, this is a conversation that's happening in many towns right now. We're not the only one, so there's really, there's an abundance of information on this topic. And I'm starting to put together a kind of FAQ frequently asked questions. There are existing FAQs made by DOER who developed the code. There's, there's other points of view out there as well. The homeowners, home builders, association realtors have a point of view. I'm trying to sort of link, create an annotated FAQ. And I think that's the, that's the goal for this meeting is, you know, what are the questions, what are the concerns? They don't necessarily need to be questions that say, you know, that, that are concerning questions, they could be questions for which the answer would be a positive for this one way or the other. And, and this is a pretty neutral task right now as far as I'm concerned. Thank you. So we will just open it up to questions. I'm going to allow for questions from Pam and Jennifer and myself first. If John's got any, John is here, he's our building inspector. So he can chime in with any that he wants on the list. I know he's not prepared for specialized, but if he's been thinking about it, he can chime in. I also received questions from Kathy, Shane. And so I will put them and share screen so that everyone can see it. It will go in that document. I will forward to Athena later today to be put in today's packet. And all of those questions will be included in the document I create based on the questions today. But she wanted them shared. And because of open meeting law, I was hesitant to share them prior to the meeting. So we will make sure everyone can see what they are during the meeting. We'll start with Jennifer. Hi. Thank you, Jesse, for being here. I have a lot of questions because I'm a novice to all this. But at the most basic, and I won't ask all of them, we can go around, but I guess my first most basic is at some point, do we kind of automatically go to the specialized opt-in or the specialized that at some date, all towns and cities in Massachusetts? And would this just mean we're doing it sooner? I mean, I know that he's just collecting, but that is just amazing. So yes and no. The stretch code automatically increases. It's regular. It's regulations every year. It's not regular. So it just happened a year from this month, next July 2024. The stretch code automatically sets better higher targets or lower targets, I should say. It's not specifically turns into exactly what the specialized code is, but it certainly gets closer to it. And then the question, another question might be, would then the specialized code get further, would it outpace it or do they catch up? Ultimately, from my understanding, and this is for the state and DOER, ultimately all of these codes will get to this place. And the base, even the non-stretch code towns will eventually be pulled into unless there's a dramatic change in all political will in the state and country. Energy codes have never gone backwards that I know of. So long answer short or short answer long, unfortunately, to some degree, yes, it's going to keep getting more strict. But I don't know specifically how that surges out with the three different levels. So they'll add another level. You don't have to answer this now, but a couple of questions. Would the specialized get us to our climate action goals quicker? I mean, our climate action goals are to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Does that ensure we get there sooner or just that we get there? This specialized code will, should accelerate, should get the state towards climate goals faster. That is true. I would not say that it will get us there. Okay. Last question, then I'll let other people, is just I read that it only applies to specialized in terms of residential single family homes. If they're over, is there some concern that it's going to increase construction costs, but for a single family home, it only kicks in at 4000 feet or above, 4000 square feet, so that if you're building a smaller home. Some of the some of the regulations start at 4000 square feet. That's a good one. I would put that that's a that's a long answer one. Okay. Yeah, that's great. You don't have to answer it now. And because there's a bunch of related questions that are close to that, like renovations, partial renovations, all those things like what what are the triggers that happen when so we'll have a good answer. Okay. For that whole category. Yeah. Great. Thank you. I'll let someone else go. I may have more. Excellent. Thank you, Jennifer. Pam. I think my question is sort of nitty gritty and and and I'm I'm sort of thinking of construction and the differences between double pain and triple pain is sort of an example. You know, there are there are double pains with low e film and so forth that help really reduce the the the values increase the r values reduce the you values and don't we already, you know, don't we have those kinds of improvements without having to necessarily dictate that somebody use triple pain glass and it's just an example of one component of a of a building envelope that might change with this specialized code. There is neither the stretch code nor the specialized code have any prescriptive measures. There's no you have to use triple triple glazing. I think what it's saying is, well, if you're going to if your amount of glass in the building gets to a certain point where it's a glass dominated building, then in order to reduce the amount of energy consumed and particularly the peak energy, which is what the commercial specialized code is stretch code, I should say rather is looking at it forces you to make choices. I know we're not supposed to answer, but I'm not sure how. So you're not required to have triple pain windows. You're required to show levels of of energy consumption. And so and those that piece of it is already in the stretch code that that's not different from it's not conceptually it's not different from the stretch to the specialized. So it's not so a shorter answer would have been it's not prescriptive that's not a prescriptive measure that you have to do. But if you but it's possible that certain designs would require the upgrade to triple pain or the reduction of glass. Follow up to Jennifer though. I just didn't hear you say it. So next next July, the building code itself upgrades will get a new code will get a new version of the code. Did you say that the that our current stretch code also will up it up the ante a little bit as well as the basic building state building code. The the stretch code in July 2024 the stretch code automatically bumps up again. Yes. And and I don't know if this is pro or con first for people who for if I don't know if this pushes someone in the direction of specialized or not. But that is also the same time that's when the specialized would take effect in Amherst would be July 2024 if if this went the way it's been mapped out currently which so stretch code bumps up automatically and potentially it's specialized in that that's how those two things one will definitely happen one could happen same time. Thank you. I think it's me and I think we're all thinking some of the same things because some of my questions have already been put out there under sort of different versions but yeah I had a question about and and my question regarding the July date when when is a recommended effective date but if the if it's July 2024 with the stretch code what it looked like the stretch codes moving there I guess what I would like to see is what's the difference between where the stretch code is intended to be next July and where the specialized code is next July so that we know exactly what those differences are since since it looks like that would be our effective date so I think that's where we need to be looking at what are we mandating above the stretch code at that time so that's one of my questions another one is can we estimate what the cost difference between those differences would be to build various sized buildings and then another question I had was if we adopt the specialized code there's some reading I've been doing that indicates that those additional costs communities should consider offsetting the additional costs to builders with other potential incentives and I don't know how that works since if you adopt the specialized code it's just there and so how do you put incentives in but but one article I read talked about offsetting those costs with potentially things like additional density in certain areas of town or energy efficiency bonuses I'm not sure what it would look like and so I guess one of my questions is would ECAC recommend adopting building type incentives or zoning type incentives if the specialized code is also adopted like like how do those work together at all and is their recommendation from ECAC I'm not you know and and then what what other other jurisdictions done with some of that it was an article I read by builders and some building association so I know they have their own sort of their their opinion right but but it intrigued me so yeah oh yeah that that's a question those are sort of my questions Jennifer you seem to indicate you had more if you do we'll go back to you or I can throw up Kathy's questions now um I'm sorry I guess it could just be added on to like the question about you know is there a slight at 4 000 square feet is that where it kicks in for a single family home I'd read that it doesn't apply to historic structures but if you maybe in answering that question if it applies to retrofitting is it said that one of the incentives was you wouldn't have to retrofit but I guess I'm wondering at what age of a structure does if that's the way it works does the retrofitting kick in so that was it yeah I'll add the historic to that that's and that is just a side note that trigger is has been very confusing for for various reasons to a lot of people and including um the people that wrote that so we're going to do our best to clear that up for you um thank you um I've not seen any hands so I'm going to share the screen but I will copy all of these questions into um the document but but Kathy had specifically asked if I could share it on screen so that everyone could see it so I am doing that um I see a hand up yes oh Pam yeah could I just weigh in before we get into tech um and I'm thinking about and the fact that John is here in the in the audience as well or in the panel um is the building is the building department able today to manage and um and monitor construction technique and what what do you receive from a builder that you have to review to assure yourself that they're meeting today's stretch code yes and um today's um buildings have to be certified and verified by a hers raider so we um look at those recommendations before we issue a permit and then we look at those reports um you know after the thing is complete great the line looks good okay and thank you John for jumping in on that um okay so I have put on the screen Kathy's I'll I'll page down to it I know no one has read it so I'll take some time but um you know um she talked about some of these at the council meeting um she she wanted to know the cost impact um and how much is that above what the current stretch code that we've already adopted would be if we know those items um and I think Jennifer sort of implied or touched on this other one from Kathy which is older housing stock how does it impact that um and and it looks like here Kathy's done it through stretch code but we would want that answer for specialized code in particular since stretch code's already been adopted and Pam just touched on number three which is the the staff um expertise ability to um apply and monitor and all of that on the Kathy talks about stretch code um I think she is referencing the specialized code and all of this because there's been different different things so I'll fix the wording and all of that as we send it through um you know and so there's some sub questions for expertise um we'll include those and then a question about this if we adopt but our surrounding towns do not what could be an estimated impact on construction in Amherst would we see a drop in construction um because it's harder to and more expensive to build here than say in Hadley if Hadley doesn't doesn't adopt um a timing on grid capacity um and then uh Kathy also talked about incentives here but in a different way than I mentioned incentives I think she's talking about incentives to builders to put in more strict energy efficiencies and and higher energy efficiencies into their buildings but the incentives go to them um monetary incentives the IRA is the inflation reduction act for people who might not understand that that and that is um the federal it was passed about eight eight months ago right um and it's got a lot of energy efficiency incentives where there's tax credits and stuff and I think that's what she's referencing on that um and so those are her questions um I will transfer them to the document I'm creating um but those are that's the document she sent me so I hope I didn't go through that too quick um for people to be able to read it but like I said I will put it in in the packet um for everyone so yep so as part of the research we're doing there's a lot of other questions that are being asked can as we put this together I assume we don't have to just stick to the questions that come up today we can we can add more questions in that that acceptable your minds yes you can add it it's it's your um proposal right and so in addition to the questions we ask you can put any information you want in there to help us that you think will help us make a recommendation so yeah you don't have to stick to just what we have our questions are just sort of the ones that are in the front of our mind right now of what do we need that we know we need to be able to make a decision at this point okay Jennifer um thank you yeah and I guess just to add on where my questions were coming from about square footages in the department of energy resources the door frequently asked questions it started to get into like it would apply they mentioned to single family homes 4 000 feet is above and I because if maybe you could look at the guess we're not really looking to build a lot of you know 4 000 square foot plus houses so if where it starts affecting construction costs are not really the kind of building we're probably going to be doing in Amherst that would be helpful yeah absolutely and that's how I'm thinking about it too I think the the 4 000 square foot and over certainly from an energy consumption unless there's you know a lot of people in that house that's that's an outlier I think for most I'd like to I'd like to try to address that from like I think multifamily and mixed use kind of downtown commercial projects is a really relevant one and to really try to what I'm going to try to do is cite you know who's saying what about that but I think that would be a really helpful one to get costs what are the triggers what's the difference you know all those main questions what's the difference between the stretch of the specialized what are the triggers whether it's a renovation or not and then you know sort of some cost information as well thank you thank you Pam yeah similar to that if we're talking about a duplex or anything larger you know that is that is that the same square foot that you're going to kick in at 4 000 square feet so you can barely get a duplex built and have it not trigger this that's interesting yeah that's a that's a great question that's not my question I have to follow up with Jennifer's but I want to parse that out so let me just write that down because I'm going to get a head start on all this the thing that was going through my head is that your comment your comment just now about there's a lot of information there are a lot of questions being bandied about and and I'm going to raise the question to us in general is are we ready for public hearing because that sort of you know starts the ball rolling really quickly and do we do we have the information that is appropriate for decision-making you know just you know the three of us chatting and bringing out ideas you got a lot more questions that need to get answered I'm I don't let me let me answer that from my let me let me just quickly answer that from my point of view I'm approaching this as if everyone's coming to the meeting and we should be able to answer any question that's come up in whether it came up in Watertown six months ago or Acton or Ashford or I'm I'm casting a very wide net now whether you guys feel ready or not I'm not I won't speak to that but I just so you know the way my list of questions is going to be much longer I think and much more in depth and really try to get to where this has been a difficult conversation in the towns that have done this before us I'm talking to builders I'm talking to HVAC installers I'm going to talk to developers so this is not the only place that I'm getting questions from we've had two conversations with with um inspection services John you know John's department already I will keep asking them you know has anything new John if anything new comes up on your end tell us like so we want to be ready for that but so that just that's so that's how I'm approaching it I don't want this to be limited like will you only ask me for questions so we're I'm casting a much wider net than that if it's helpful are you good Pam yeah okay I'm going to follow up on that and then I'm going to just so I know Jesse you were at the meeting but because we're trying to get them I'm going to go through some of the questions that were mentioned at the town council meeting too just so they've been mentioned here when they show up but but to follow up on pams I guess one of the reasons you know I had originally thought we could hold the hearing on the 17th and then that became clear that that would not be enough time right um so so I guess my follow-up so I pushed it to the September 7th but that I think means that we would need the basic documents by around the end of the month um to give the committee about a week to review it I know that's like that's about three no that that is about four weeks from now so the August 31st or so um which is right before the holiday weekend um that we'd be looking at so um I know you might not have an answer to that now but um we have to post the public hearing on no later than August 24th and so I guess what I would request is if the 21st rolls around August 21st rolls around and you're looking and saying you know I'm not going to have these documents ready for the 31st let me know um so that because then we'll just push the hearing to the next September meeting um you know before we get it posted but just so you know we have to post two weeks in advance on the bulletin board for the to meet the requirements um so I will put that in the document too oh Athena might correct me on this Athena not on the hearing but I think Pam was alluding to a deadline after the hearing and maybe I misunderstood you but there's not a deadline after the hearing like there is for zoning changes this is just a regular bylaw yeah so so to to clear that up Pam we can continue the hearing if we're still not ready to close the hearing on the 7th um but even if we decide we're closing the hearing even if we can't come to a recommendation there is no deadline for the council to vote that would if we didn't vote by that would require holding another hearing unlike with zoning bylaws I think was what Athena was saying okay so would you be able would you be able to just tell me the series of dates again or I can say it August 21st is when I would want to know whether you can have documents and the answers to the questions to me by August 31st and August 31st is when I would want the documents for the packet for hearing on the 7th oh it's only needs to be one week ahead okay one week is the hearing so the packet I think one week unless the committee thinks they need more time I think giving the committee one week to review the documents we've had an extensive amount in this one um so it would be the answers to these questions and any other additional documents and if you send other documents to both Pam and I earlier um we'll find a way to get them posted between vacation schedules and everything we will find a way to get them posted earlier but um a week is when a week is the least amount of time I would want to give everyone to review the questions the answers to the questions we've asked um so I would want those to us by the August 31st for September 7th hearing but because the hearing needs posted by August 24th it would be good to know on the 21st or 22nd whether you can make the 31st date does that make sense jessie it really does okay um surprisingly okay so and I will put that in in the in the thing I send you tonight um the questions mentioned at the council meeting um um was um this one doesn't really apply to ecac which was about referral which was from pat that said why can't ecac make a proposal and then just bring it to go out um so that that referred more to the the referral than anything um andy asked um what staff time is needed to help us make a wise recommendation so again that's I don't know how much that relates to this but I will put some of that in there um paul actually asked the town manager asks um what are the ramifications of this um can we comply if you know if if a supply chain isn't there how how does it comply and how does it affect building and and everything and then also how do we train our staff to implement this what types of additional training might our staff need to go to the specialized code from the stretch code um if any um and then knowing an effective date so those were the other questions I had wrote down at the council meeting are there any other questions from the committee at this time so the next question I have for the committee is there is a draft bylaw I know I put it in late and I'm not sure I emailed the committee that it went into the packet um so I'm going to pull that up just so um it's here and there's a sample motion so what was in the packet was a sample bylaw from doer and what this draft is is basically that formatted for our bylaws I will say that right now it's not much different there's a little bit of cleaning up going on and a little bit of rearranging and a little bit of word changing from that that sample bylaw um in looking at I had sent the the sample bylaw on to Anna um as council sponsor I don't know whether she sent it to you Jesse or not she wrote back and said it looks like the sample bylaws all we need um and so that meant what we weren't sure of is would we modify the current stretch code bylaw which is what's in red here um and with Anna thinking just adopt basically propose and adopt the proposed to adopt the sample bylaw from doer I I basically created this document that said it would be a rescind and replace rescind the current one and replace it with specialized energy code as sample um and so some of the things in here this this is the this is what it was so the purpose I think I just combined a little bit the definitions I got rid of some of the purpose statements that were in the definition so if you look at the sample bylaw from doer and this one um some of those um purpose statements I just moved up to the purpose line instead of keeping it within the definitions I tried to streamline the definitions a little bit there was a note in the definitions about the stretch code and I basically moved that note into the definitions from having a footnote in a bylaw which made no sense to me um and then the adoption looks slightly different um because I based the adoption language on how we adopted the stretch code and so the current language in our stretch code bylaw instead of the doer language um so that's but that's basically what it is um so I guess my question is this at this point unless there are any recommended changes right now is the language I would request that Athena post in the in the public hearing notice for the bylaw thing um but we can make changes to it now Jesse you can forward me a different version if people decide it needs to be a different version at some point um but that's the plan so Pam thoughts um yeah thanks for reminding us that you actually put it in the uh in the packet so the existing one says um to adopt the provisions of 780 cmr which is the stretch code in place of the provisions set forth under 780 cmr 13.00 etc etc and in this case you don't include that as replace the the um the code sections themselves is that so that in case the code sections get renumbered we don't have to go back and renumber this so it was actually because I did not look up whether those four sections that are listed here are the only sections affected by these appendices and cmr 22 and 23 and so I was concerned that if there were more sections affected by the the specialized code if we only listed the four then we'd run into maybe a conflict and I'm not knowledgeable enough to know whether those four with the stretch code that were in the stretch code adoption were the only four affected does that make sense Pam? Yep so so that's why I just changed it to applicable provisions of the mass state building code um it will it will potentially I would say it would potentially stop us from having the problem we have right now which is this is no longer the reference to the stretch code anymore as seen in this um it's it's now 22 and 23 not appendix 115 AA um we won't we'll still have that problem because we're still referencing these so if the state decides to change that we'll but but at least now it'll say this. Okay so point made it it it would track an incorrect potentially an incorrect reference hopefully yes that's the goal any other questions concerns or anything at this point on this draft bylaw itself because that's what we would in theory be making the recommendation on is the language itself Jennifer so and do we have to run this by the council since they voted to refer other language so the council voted let me pull up that referral um the council's motion was to authorize the C or oh wait to refer the memo regarding the specialized code to develop amendments to general bylaw 3.48 stretch energy code consistent with the memo and then work to send those amendments to GOL for review okay right so they didn't send specific language that we've changed without them no because there was no language proposed the proposal was just adopt the energy code and so they told us because they just told us come up with okay that's good that's fine and I think it's worth mentioning and this was discussed at the meeting that there's no leeway on this is a binary decision it's adopt or not and there's nothing so so from our point of view and I've actually been advised don't get involved in any part of the bylaw writing or anything so I'm I'm I think you know you guys understand this I do not understand politics at all but yeah it's not a there's we have no legal ability to design this to be kind of specifically what we want it to be it's yes or no and so if that's I think that's worth mentioning so I'll just clarify that so for example if we like dependencies RC but not CC we can't choose to adopt just RC that's that's we have to adopt both or none basically is the decision okay anything else before we say goodbye to the specialized code for today Pam um I would just say I'm I'm certainly not ready to even talk about the the wording of a proposed motion we haven't had a hearing we haven't heard you know anything so it's great to have a draft but I don't I think it's so that draft motion also came from the DOER modified for what it would look like for us so I just didn't want to lose their draft in the thing so I figured I'd just keep it with it I thought it was very nice the DOER provides those drafts but the draft motions were related to a town meeting not a town council so it needed modified and so I just modified it for that but yeah it's it's meant for information purposes at this point I am in no way proposing a motion at this time I just didn't want to lose how they worded theirs basically um anything else see none I want to thank Jesse for taking the time to join us today I will send out that document um I'm going to format what we talked about and I'm just going to format it nicely so everyone can find it and I will send that document out tonight to you and Anna and um Stephanie Chickarello um who is staff liaison to ECAC and our climate um specialist so um she could not be here today she has the hearing on her agenda so I hope she will be able to join us in September um but she she was invited today but she had a conflict so she could not make it today and so um we should be able to see her in September and ask her questions too um and it sounds like John well you might not be here in September for the hearing but I will make sure Rob or someone from the building commissioners knows about the hearing and is invited or will you still be here John no September 1st last day who's counting it's four weeks four weeks from from today is four weeks from tomorrow um one month so thank you so much so much to say John thank you so much hey yeah oh thank all of you um for taking the time right this is your time as well um you guys work so hard and we added this to your plates so I really appreciate it it's nice to see you all and congratulations John and I'm out thank you Jesse with that um we are going to move to residential um rental where am I um our residential rental stuff um so we have a few I have all three on here we had one outstanding issue on the bylaw which was regarding um whether it Rob interpreted it as applying to ad use the answer we got was yes it does so there's um from that point of view yep Pam they use um full sentences so refer to that I know what you're talking about but nobody's listening does yeah so so thank you for that we had a question last week when we were reviewing the draft bylaw of whether because of some wording in the exceptions to whether you needed to for exceptions for who needed to obtain a residential permit on whether those exceptions meant that um properties that had a accessory dwelling unit on them uh units that are sometimes referred to as granny flats or in-law apartments um if they rented that accessory dwelling unit would they have to obtain a rental permit and we weren't sure based on the language whether that was the case or not and so we wanted clarification on that and Rob wrote back and said yes the language that we have in the bylaw would require those that have accessory dwelling units and rent them out to obtain a permit um and so that was the answer we were looking for in that we wanted to ensure that those units did have to obtain a permit um so I don't think we have from my point of view that was the only outstanding question on our pending questions list so I'm not sure we have to review the bylaw anymore but I will leave it up to Pam and Jennifer to see if they have other things they would like to review on that before we move on to regulations and then the fee structure and so we'll call your hand okay two two things one you did mention um public comment before we started this yes sorry and then I'll have a question thank you for that and I know Jesse's gone but it will be able to put it in there I apologize my my brain didn't so yeah I will do public comment now I apologize to everyone for having mentioned that and then screwed it up in my own set so thank you for the reminder um public comments on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC will be accepted at this time residents are welcome to express their views for one to three to three minutes up to three minutes um we will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment and I just want to say this is a general public comment it does not have to be specifically on the specialized code it can be within anything within our jurisdiction including anything that's on the agenda for today so let me find my participant list um with that I'm going to recognize josna reggae um please un oh I am the host so um josna please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment hello first I just wanted to check is this the appropriate inappropriate time to comment or to ask questions about the rental permit yes okay thanks I'm josna reggae I live on 96 farview way and my my concern relates to the conditions under which a rental permit is going to be granted to owners of non-owner occupied properties how um inspections and enforcement will happen in non-owner occupied rental units and the difference in general between how owner occupied and non-owner occupied rentals will be handled so I just very quickly want to use a current situation in my neighborhood as an example um that we're facing in our neighborhood and then uh just raise questions that would relate to that and whether the new bylaws might address them um in my neighborhood uh two brothers who have since 2004 owned a non-owner occupied duplex rented to students on 798 to 800 north pleasant street have applied for a special permit um to build a new non-conforming duplex on the same lot it has come just come to our attention that they're renting their existing duplex without a rental permit even as they're proposing to build another bigger one so I wonder under the revised rental permit bylaw uh these are questions I have would inspection services have the ability and have the resources to identify rental properties in town and to contact property owners such as the casey brothers who are renting without a permit um second to use the example of the same property given the owners long track record of negligence and violations if or when they did apply for a permit would it be just automatically granted to them or under what conditions might it be granted or denied would the rental history of the applicants be scrutinized um again using this example if or once a rental permit were granted or if it were granted would non-occupied owner occupied rental um have to pay a higher rental fee for their permits in order to help pay the cost of conducting regular inspect inspections and how often would inspections be conducted to check on the actual conditions in the rental property uh in this situation these owners owned it for more than 16 years and ran it into the ground and it finally had to be declared unfit for human habitation do we have to wait that long will fines for violations be increased to pay for the cost of regulars inspections and also for as deterrence what what other consequences would absentee owners pay face for them and bear with me I just have two more questions like this all related to this same situation should a certain number or seriousness of violations in a rental unit automatically trigger the permanent revocation of a property owner's rental permit and finally again using this situation in my neighborhood would a long history of violations have a bearing on the outcome of an application for a special permit to construct a second rental property would it be appropriate for inspection services to provide information on their record to the zoning board of appeals for example and I know john thompson is here and john you know about this property um so yes um thank you for your patience thank you josna for your um questions and comments um we do not generally respond to that but that does not mean if you stay for the conversation you won't hear some answers to those questions I have to say that um um seeing no other hands I am going to close public comment at this time um thank you pan again for reminding me about that um so back to residential rental bylaw we are on the bylaw any last um questions we voted the a recommendation on the bylaw pending resolution of final questions um last meeting are there any final questions and any final requests for revision pan yeah I do have some and I and I would actually at some point like to um have somebody at least uh respond to some of those questions because it's imminent and that's and it's current um in you know going through one last read of this material um oh yeah okay um under section f application it's our new section and application application requirements in order to obtain we go through all this about how to contact the owner the names and addresses etc etc of the of the person in charge we never say the address of the property and or the unit or units described it's the it's implied but we just don't actually ever say it I think we we covered in the regulations but to me it probably ought to be in here as well so let me pull up the regulations um you're you're basically proposing to move that from the regulations which is section it is actually section one a the first thing listed in the application requirements for the regulations um and you're proposing to move it from the regulations to the bylaw itself the address of the residential rental property is that yes I think so because h h talks about the requirements for person in charge all the contact information etc we also state it here so we've we've been redundant at least once already but it just seemed like a no-brainer that we would start out first and foremost with the address are you proposing not to delete it from the regulations correct not to leave it but just add it to the bylaw like this yep thank you okay any other yes yes pan jennifer go ahead jennifer wants to i i've got two more no no go ahead and ask them definitely this is this is actually kind of pertinent to the questions that were just raised but in in section g issuance or denial uh a conditional permit so we go um most of the way through that paragraph and it does say that if after reinfection the rental property does not pass the principal code and its official may either extend the conditional permit for an additional period of time to further allow for compliance and reinfection or may deny the application for a permit that in my mind it leaves the door so wide open does that actually give us any leverage at all leverage for for clamping down if if if in fact we just keep giving an additional period of time and then another additional period of time ad nauseam do we ever actually have the leverage to deny the permit so i interpret that to mean well well we give we give the leverage and we give that ability to rob john can talk about this and think his thoughts but but the way i interpret it is rob has or john or the inspector has the ability to say you know we gave you 30 days and you've done absolutely nothing we're not giving you another 30 days you haven't even tried i'm just denying the application no more conditional permit or we gave you 30 days and you repaired everything we identified but hey in the last 30 days we've identified two more things we'll extend the conditional permit so you can fix those two things and we'll be back in 30 days after you fix that so in my mind it's one of those things where we have to trust our inspectors to use those options appropriately um and and all that that's my thoughts but john do you have any thoughts on pam's question no i think you're right that that's that's how that would play out okay so we so what we what we got rid of is the point system of x number of violations equals absolutely no permit and so i'm thinking about our current friends on taylor street with the with the mattresses left outside for i don't know how many months now um and and being being cited in violation i just want to make sure that in our rigs and in our nuisance bylaw that we that we have the ability to close something down that is just lagrantly snubbing the nose at any efforts to um to control yeah so so i want to say the conditional permit is for an application that's been filed um and that meets everything but that inspection requirement because it failed the inspection or hasn't had the inspection yet um but we do have i'm trying to find it here um we do have a suspension or revocation uh section where we did we got rid of the point system but we did put in that if there are multiple orders to remedy um three or more notices of violation um issued within three years of the most recent one that we're giving the code official the option of suspending or revoking that permit at that time so it's not quite that strict point system that we had originally talked about and contemplated and talked through but we did keep that idea in here for suspending and revocation and if there's a suspension or revocation out there under denial i apologize for all the under denial they cannot get a new one under when the year flips through they can't when that's when that permit is suspended they cannot get a new one okay i think i'm comfortable with that and then my last my last item is um also section g on number six and we have um yeah um hold on it's about the transfer of permit it starts transfer from it yeah so um second looks like second sentence the new owner if you could find that yeah okay the new owner or designated operator of the rental property i don't think we use the term designated operator anywhere we use person in charge right we could get rid of it completely we could say the new owner of the residential rental property or we could just say the new owner or person in charge of the residential rental property which would you like we'd have both i think jennifer's next um yes thank you so i just have a general question if i could ask john um because you know i um attended i zoomed into the zba meeting for 798 to 800 north pleasant street and when i looked in the packet i was kind of shocked to see there's five pages of a police call log over more than you know an extended number of years so these property owners were well two things i mean they were allowed to keep renting although i suppose if i just learned through the comments that um public comment that they didn't have a rental permit if they've never had a rental permit i suppose the permit couldn't be revoked um but would so a general overall question the way we have revised and tried to tighten the residential rental property bylaw would it kind of put a stop to i'm just going to use the term scoff law to a landlord that has a series of violations over a number of years would we get would would the situation that we've had that we've had were some usually absentee always absentee landlords be would are we going to be able to address those will this what our revisions do what we're intending to do and not allow a situation like that to just sort of go on that's part of my question then the other question is what kind of a penalty should we have for landlords who just don't get a rental permit and it's not because they don't know that we have rental permitting it's a kind of two-part question don um the first part of the question say that again jennifer will our um revised bylaw really what we're trying to do is prevent and the kind of situation that happens where year after year after year there we have a nuisance property or problem property that and the situation just doesn't get better yes so in most cases this bylaw addresses that not not not least of which through the tool where we'll be in these properties um so um it'll be much less common for us to you know then go to a complaint at a property and you know do five pages of violations because we've already been to this property we already had those things rectified um some of those other nuisances behavioral nuisances no this this is can't be addressed here that's those are police matters mostly but what about our nuisance bylaw yeah that's not enforced by me yeah yeah you're right okay um and then my other question just generally because we haven't really you know we've talked about trying to you know how we can implement strategies and get out information so that everybody knows they if you're renting if a rental property you have to get a rental permit yes but what can we do you know when that's just they're just not getting a permit so I think this this place is a legacy of having switched our permitting program so we went from you know the old system where you filled out a thing and you paid for it by check to an online system and some properties slipped through the cracks there and we haven't been able to chase them all down yet um you know it's hard to identify a property that you don't know about um right so you know we find out about this I mean I was asked a question about this property first thing I do is a little research and say oh yeah and by the way they don't have a rental permit but I mean I'm not on a daily basis going through you know lists of properties say to see do they do they have a current permit or not it comes up in the course of other investigations um and so now yes we know the cases don't have one they also don't have a local agent that's it's not that they never had that they had rental permits in the past and they had local agents in the past when they when the place got condemned and and rehabbed um you know they fell out of that system yeah I'm surely not holding you know inspections department has no control over but just should we I guess I'm just kind of saying to us on CRC should we have something some sort of penalty if you don't get a permit I mean well I mean if you don't get a permit and I've identified you first they have to be identified in order for you to be punitive so now we have I'll give you till Friday you know to to get that done online and if you don't do it it's a hundred bucks a day that's we already have that ability I already have that that's the best we already we use that right yeah and I guess I was thinking could you say you have a year when you can't get a permit but I suppose we can't do that so we we've not written the you can't get one if you haven't had one in but but what I will say is one thing in writing the report that that I noticed that I hadn't actually been thinking of is John just said it the current bylaw is a hundred dollars a day for not having a permit we've upped it to 300 in the proposal which is a lot steeper right it still might not be enough but it might be a lot more to get them into applying for the permit and once they get applying for the permit because we're changing to the town inspection those health and safety issues should decrease dramatically over the course of the next five or six years if this is adopted the one thing I wanted to say about the behavioral issues while not in here because we ran into those a lot of discussions if you remember about what is the purpose of this particular bylaw and who is it regulating and all but we did keep in the regulations the ability to for our inspectors to declare a more frequent inspection schedule than once every five years or whatever if the property is found in violation or receives the citation as a nuisance house we've kept that in the regulations as sort of on the frequency schedule for inspections and so while it's not something that at this point would prohibit them from obtaining a permit and part of the reason again in the report I wrote was we're in the middle of figuring out what that nuisance bylaw is going to look like right we we've started that and we haven't gotten back to a major revision of the nuisance house bylaw right and so maybe when we do we can go back to this and and figure out a way to work that in but for now we've said well if you're going to buy it if you're found in violation of that bylaw our inspections department can say hey we're going in yearly now you're not under five years we're going in yearly um and on the fee schedule we've we've tentatively adopted we'll get back to that one soon that would actually cost more too because we're we're adopting fees for every inspection for every inspection yeah so a five-year inspection schedule is one fifth the fee basically then a one-year inspection schedule too um okay which underscores the reason for the inspection program yes um okay pam yeah my question is um when are we gonna get back to talking about the nuisance bylaw do we have that on the agenda it is it is on the agenda for the 17th as basically the only thing unless there's questions on these that need answered because of monday's meeting so the goal is to focus on nuisance once we get through all of this so yeah um that's the plan nuisance august through whenever hopefully we can get it done so yeah um any other questions on the bylaw and simply because i think it's i think it's an important part of the package of of bylaw regs and nuisance property yeah so it's the next high priority um anything else with the bylaw i will add this and i have promised athena that tonight she will get all the documents that are necessary from this meeting um for monday's meeting um however much between so it she'll get it all tonight oh c-r-c to so post g-o-l discussion post g-o-l discussion she'll have them all the night they might get posted tomorrow but i will leave this one in tracked version because of the concern and the ease so that everyone can see exactly what changed from what they've been looking at in the packet it'll be an obvious in red here's what's changed um with that we're going to move on to regulations um are there any requested changes to the regulations let me pull them up um so we can see what we were referring to with this this was the application thing where we had mentioned the address i just copied it from here into the bylaw pam asked to keep it in here so we won't be changing the regulations on that one any other requested changes to the regulations we voted last time i could not find any outstanding items on it which is why there's no comments here um but if there's requested changes we'll make them pam again while john is here um you know i i would just ask one last time you know is there any way that we can make sure this does in fact accomplish what we wanted it to is is it good is it you know is it solid and will we get the results that we hope for thoughts john i mean i haven't had a um a hard look at this um let me do that and i'll um can i email you thoughts yeah email them you can email them to the committee and then i'll make sure they get distributed to or mentioned at the council meeting okay sonifer um yeah i just want to ask i don't know if this is to john or just are we comfortable with um i think it's a one through e um yeah that i think part of it was we were just you know trying to get a sense of the number you know so we had some sort of inventory of houses that were rented to students um and i guess we decided to frame it as unrelated occupants do we feel that that's going to capture the information so this i think e was trying to figure out how many people are in each unit not necessarily whether they're students or not and g is trying to oh you're right i'm sorry i'm sorry i yeah i focused on e and i didn't yes thank you okay thank you boy you have this memorized this is no i mean you know every section of so i've spent a lot of time with it yeah i know anything else for the regulations see none we will move on to um the fee schedule so i created a new um well rob answered a lot of questions that document was in the packet and i then created a new fee schedule and a new fee sample set of documents um based on the fee schedule as we've talked about it so i can i like to know which one would people one up the fee schedule that just has the list abc that we've been staring at or do people want to see the samples based on the schedule let me just look at the breakdown of data yeah oops it's not that one that's that's straight from that's um it's the rental permit breakdown data oh on the on the fee schedule okay so this this of the um of the excel spreadsheet a through d is what matches what i just put up from the fee schedule is is the data rob gave us and and matches that um f through i is my attempt to calculate some things for the purposes of estimating fee revenue and um inspection revenue um so you know yep camp so i i had some comments that in a in a way to make it a little more understandable uh top row headings one two three fourth one says total total permitted total permits and i think we need to add the word total parcels permitted okay um that way we understand that that these are just parcels they're far far less than the actual number of units so um that looks fine and actually the math on the first column down at the bottom should be 183 which you did use somewhere else but for some reason that's 182 here this one yep oh i i took that directly from him i didn't actually sum oh wait no yeah it's it's not um oh no this was rental units sorry so this is the number of rental units right so if you do the math for each of those it's actually it's actually 183 110 plus 40 it's 150 plus 24 74 plus 478 and five is 83 okay yep um again going across the top so it'd be column h approximate number of units above the first to be inspected i i clearly did not understand what that matter couldn't remember what the intent was so the intent on this was for me to figure out when we get to inspection fee options when we're adding oh wait no hold on when the application fee options we were talking about an additional fee and even with inspections an additional fee that the base fee would include the first unit and the additional fee would be for every unit above one both in this um in the application fee and in the inspection fee and so what and so that relates to column h my attempt to figure out okay if we're doing fees for a base fee of 50 or whatever and that's what column h is yep okay and then the the approximate parcels to be inspected each year i i sort of question question what that actually gives us because it really is immaterial um we're really in the number of of units ultimately that get inspected no because we have to determine to determine an inspection fee to to estimate the fee since there's a base fee per parcel we need to know how many parcels there are as well as how many units so if you're doing 100 units on one parcel that's going to be a completely different fee revenue than if you're doing 100 units on 100 parcels okay so it's an attempt that's why i always say approximate on those because you have a lot of guesses in those numbers yeah so um then my my follow-up then question is on your let's see it starts with yellow cells or variables and it's the inspection i i i just jumped into the inspection fee um so over on column let's see average number of units inspected per year so we've got this number and i'll i'll accept the math as it is but the 1348 is the number of units expected to be inspected per year and i think that was something that was based on 5000 divided by five i'm guessing 5135 so this one yep so this one on this sheet is just a sum of these numbers and i cross-checked it with over here um and here we get 1034 or so on this breakdown data of approximate units being inspected each year 1034 so we go to here that's where this number comes in but these next two numbers relate to follow-up inspections so there's approximately a thousand units that will need inspected every year just for permitting purposes some of them will fail inspection and so when they fail they'll get reinspected so they'll get reinspected so that's this number here in e eight and then there's a certain number of complaint inspections number of complaints called into inspectional services per year and that's a different number of inspections and so when you add all of those up together you get that number okay so so i'll i'll accept the math so the question is though somewhere else you had how many how many um units kind of can a person inspect in a year and i think the number was 200 yes so the question is on this and this being just you know an annual number do we need 6.5 inspectors to do the work to inspect 1348 units so that's something john or rob rob estimated and that 200 is number of inspections and i i wasn't sure whether that is parcel inspections which would be three or so inspectors or whether that is unit inspections we're talking units well well i don't know what rob what number rob gave me the 200 and i just don't know we need to clarify that or finance will need to clarify that um but it's yeah rob had actually estimated i think two and a half to three inspectors for this program so i don't know whether that is these numbers and rob's not here maybe john has had those conversations with rob or whether that is those numbers um these are just an attempt to give people an idea of of everything they're very fluid numbers john they're fluid but if we but if we are sending this along as sort of an explanation of our of our thinking then we need to have kind of accurate we're i've tried to based on things i've gotten from rob and everything john do you have any thoughts we've had a couple conversations about um you know what how many units you might be able to do how long does it take to do a unit that sort of thing but i've not had any conversations with rob about how many inspectors you might need to hire okay yeah he had that in uh we had asked him that and i know i have to hunt the document back up that we we posted in a packet for that answer and i think it was around three in addition to the ones we have now so if you have if you have um i haven't if you have a let's let's say you have a 2000 hour 2080 hours per week of of a person on salary um and that means that every 10 hours they're having to produce another inspection write it up follow up 200 sounds probably not too far off right yeah rob estimated that each each inspection takes about an hour and a half um when you get above three units you have to add another hour for every inspection that was his estimates so these numbers here what i put in yellow are basically just this i i called them variables as pam has pointed out some of these numbers are best guesstimates um in terms of what can be you know based on data those numbers might not be their their guesstimates they're but they're they're best based on the permit data we've gotten and the information from rob the stuff in yellow is really um where if you change the numbers in white you might get different numbers over here but this is yeah if we decide we were trying for um an inspection base fee of a hundred dollars if i typed a hundred in the total fee number would just change um and you'd see that number change and this number here change and so that's why i called those the variables those are more like the numbers we'd be sending to finance to kind of play with based on the estimates we've made um and same with application fees so the application fees um again the numbers down here were based on items rob gave me um the three sets here are based on what at the last meeting we as a committee had tentatively agreed on would be the application sort of um breakdown in terms of where fees might change and um an owner occupied parcel that had up to six units would have one fee um an owner that had a principal residence in town and owned no more than three rental dwelling units whether that be one three parcels with one unit each or one parcel with three units or one parcel with two units and one parcel with one unit it wouldn't matter a different fee and that fee would apply to each parcel that that owner owns um and then all other parcels would have also a base fee and and as you can see um i only put in additional fee per rental unit for really i put a number in for the third one all other parcels because that's the one we had really talked about but i left all three and yellow we could potentially aim to recommend additional fees for the other ones we had actually not on our fee schedule which is why those numbers are zero um because our tentative fee schedule was only going to recommend an additional fee per unit above one unit for the all other parcel line um and so we could make as many options as people want but i put two in there just to give an idea of for for people we were i think our plan was to just send this on but send it on with our proposed structure which is why i created this pam and then i think jennifer might have had her hand up jennifer had her hand up jennifer well pam if you had a follow-up question it was it was more just is it possible for um the department to actually under be able to identify who has three units i think so you can uh they can probably um produce a report from acts permits to see you know how many of them have common ownership okay thank you jennifer i just have a couple questions about when it gets to the finance committee um so the finance committee would confer with rob about how many staff would be needed and what the cost for the program would be and then that would be they'd factor that into how they set the rates so i i can't answer for what finance would act would ultimately do i would forward on this document in an excel spreadsheet so that finance and shawn mangano have a chance to play with it and shawn's much better at excel spreadsheets than i ever am he might be able to do something different with it um i would form for forward on the structure document which is just a word document that we've generally been looking at um and i would forward on all of the answers that rob has provided to us that generated some of these assumptions right the assumptions about average numbers of inspections that you know the 200 a year on this the we asked him a whole lot of questions to help us make some of these guesses and all and then they would also have the bylaw that and regulations that actually also generate some of these assumptions right if the council decides to change the inspection frequency from every five years to every three years well that changes the spreadsheet right so right now it's based on what we're sending to them um if the council's like we don't want every five years they would have to change these assumptions to match the bylaw and regulations as the council wants them to be but those are essentially the three ish documents i intend to send to finance and we'll include all of them in the packet if we vote a recommendation today they will all be in the packet too um so that they have basically as much information as we've had um with our i would hope finance would have rob or john in the conversation as well as shawn um because one of the better get to it fast right yes um because one of the things we've struggled with is we've got a rob estimated and i don't have that here at all but i think he estimated a total program cost based on our um based on the current bylaw of approximately a half million dollars a year four hundred and fifty thousand i'm not sure what the right number was but he estimated an actual number um and one thing we've struggled with is do we have to match that number finance is the one that can really make those recommendations on how much of that number should be from fees versus from other parts of the budget or and things so all of that would go into my report yeah and last thing and finance we would give them i don't know if you have to the leeway if they wanted to you know slightly change the structure yeah they would essentially have that leeway because we'd be forwarding them and and saying come up with fees and so in theory they'd be able to say you know we don't like what they sent us right we're just trying to help them because right we're just giving yeah we struggled with there's so many options right here's our conversations with what we think the options match best right and all of the hearing we've done all of the listening we've done and and comments we've received and all okay and there'll be public comment and finance so people yeah yeah so i'm going to stop this share um and i'm going to put the this is the document we've been spending the most time with um we can put numbers in some of these if we want we can leave numbers blank we could potentially put number we've essentially put a number in the permit renewal late fee um right um but um which also goes to one of the questions we had discussed today which is if they don't have a permit and john finds them well they didn't if they had one and then never renewed it well the late fee is what might apply because they haven't renewed their permit right um and that's actually much more steep than a daily fine almost depending on the fee um but it might be both so pam you know we had a good comment from uh ranata shepherd about item d and that was the transfer of permit fee and and she made a good point uh owner x sells the property owner x has already paid a a fee for that year owner y comes in and owner y will be required to to pay the fee for the following year you know when when they uh end up going to renew and that it seemed it seemed excessive and she recommended taking it away and i i i thought about it and i said yeah that's it's just sort of twisting the knife a little bit we're we're trying to we're trying to collect money where it's maybe not really needed i i guess my question is for john which is changing the name of the owner and stuff mid-year is is there an expense to that for the town yeah it's an admin expense you know so somebody sits at a computer and makes that change i don't know how long that takes 15 minutes um it's not doesn't cost a hundred dollars probably but you know those salaries have benefits attached to them and it's not without a cost do we have a recommendation you know it's listed as an option as a potential fee in the bylaw and i would certainly want to leave it as an option in the bylaw um we can always send the schedule through if we have a recommendation not to actually implement one at this time um or implement one we could send it through with a recommendation for an actual number if we wanted to put a number in there for um for consideration i guess sending it through without that on the list would be recommending a number of zero right um or we could put a number in there of you know the range in other communities that i saw was 25 50 or frankly zero if they don't have one right it's going to say 50 dollars i mean 50 might be there but if we look at it if in the end the permit fee itself is 50 dollars 50 seems steep right and so i don't know whether we could recommend something without knowing what the permit issuance fee itself would be pam oh i didn't take my hand down sorry i i wouldn't mind having a nominal fee then because if there is in fact admin time required then admin time is required and we're trying to cover what it takes to run the program do we want to recommend a fee of 10 or 15 dollars or do we just want to leave it up for finance i think a little report to finance would be helpful but you know it should be nominal i'll just put it in the comments that work any other questions related to fees i guess my wondering is are we ready to vote oh i guess it's technically a recommendation um i have draft language for it um i gotta find it but the pam you were raising your hand yeah i mean it it's it's an interesting structure but again it it seems like we would we've talked a lot about the range of fees for here and if we're going to pass this along it it would make sense to me to have some of our thoughts documented and and i i'm not sure i am ready to plug numbers in but it feels like we should be able to plug numbers in just as a starting discussion point well i guess i guess then let me let me go back to this one there's only two options does and they actually estimate a wide difference in fees collected um but is there an option that seems or or does someone i can easily sit here and change one of these two different numbers if people want to see some different ones we could potentially send this through looking different and saying you know of what were our schedule samples crc leans towards x you know we could we could definitely say something like that um or you know has no opinion between either option if we want to put options out there we could change these numbers or you know sort of lean towards one or the other on this one rub and i were able to estimate that the cost to process all applications would be approximately 140 000 a year at last time we did this with his answers that may be different now but um so the so meaning the the the numbers plugged into the option one really kind of cover the program are much closer but that that doesn't mean you know i i gave a couple of different options here right um option two is a much larger permit maximum permit fee option one is not we could look at an option two we could put in a different option two that's closer to 150 and see what it looks like um you know with an owner occupied parcel with an even lower base permit fee or something you know um if someone wants to throw numbers out and tell me which option to throw them in i'm happy to do so pam i'm actually thinking that for all other parcels i i would i would think that 125 is probably a minimum so you would say for option one go to 125 yeah so again these are these are oh yeah these are different than inspection fees this is not the inspection fee this is just the application fee right okay but i'm sorry that i would i would revert back to 100 oh and and one problem with with this i will just say is you'll notice there are no parcels in in for our second option the principal residents who owns no more than three i had no way at this point of doing that because we just added that in and i don't have any estimates from rob so right now that number is basically a zero which means depending on how many they're all included in this number right now the all other parcels and so right as i asked john if it was possible to even figure out who then you know three i i can add to um the report that finance would want rob to estimate that that number of parcels i'll make a note of that yeah i'm actually fairly comfortable with the numbers 50 75 and 100 with the five dollar additional yeah yeah i am too so what what i can note is um i can note in the report that sierra is fairly comfortable with option one on the application fees and inspection fees right now there are two options um oh here we go i have two and a half fte inspectors i don't know let let me see what um see if i can find the document where rob estimated how many inspectors he would need so just since john's here the i'm guessing there's some overlap of duty you're not just either processing application fees or inspecting there may be a bit of merging of responsibilities is that correct yes currently um you know i also function as a billing inspector so um if if somebody's out on vacation or lately we've had someone out on vacation and somebody out sick um somebody still has to do those inspections every day so um you know that that happens and we get you know it's not unusual for us to have 10 regular straight up building inspections to do a day um they can be all over town you know you're down on elf hill road and then you're up on old monogy road and then in the afternoon oh you got to go down into bay road so so i found the document and rob um estimated a program cost of about five hundred thousand dollars um i'm trying to find the number of inspectors so is that the combination of of the estimated cost for the inspection program of 285 and then cost of application so 38 it was a total cost and he estimated three code enforcement officers one lead and two non-lead code enforcement officers so let me fix this number to three so and he said 475 or so as a total and so that 340 plus 138 is about his total estimate so that was rob's estimate a while ago so as you can see the total fees are well lower than the potential program estimate of 340 that i've put in these numbers that sounds like dedicated inspectors yes program to these this isn't what the situation we were just describing where you know they'd be able to go back and forth right no that was that was to implement this program specifically not any of the other inspectors in the department doing other things or anything so um this is why we really need to send it to finance but um right and this is why this is why when the question is asked did these proposed bylaws get us what we want if we're costing a lot of money to do something that doesn't get what we want it's not a good expenditure of you know our time and and the town's money oh there's no question in my mind that it takes more inspectors to get the benefit than what we have right now because I have to do a daily triage and you know that's a question about that property down on north pleasant street how did they get you know how did they go without a uh rental permit because you know i'm chasing a mattress on taylor street right right so the other variable on these options you'll notice that the complaint inspections are much different um rob said in his in his response that they do approximately that inspection services recorded an average of 391 complaint response inspections during the last two pre-pandemic years um and so the question becomes how many complaint inspections will there be in a year potentially once the program is up and running there will be a whole lot less complaint inspections because they'll be regularly inspected and so there won't be a need for as many but we don't know so that's why I put that one as a variable um because four years from now we might see a whole large decrease in the number of complaint inspections but we may not right so we just don't know it's hard to estimate right yeah we may not still have our college student yeah it's a new every year new yeah so that's why I showed the options show a different number there um we can throw the numbers from below above to see all right to see what that does so if we pop the you know 75 versus 30 000 it's a big difference right um but you know if we're aiming to try something that gets 350 000 we went into this knowing that we would need a more robust um inspection force right you know even bumping the base fee up still only gets you the 240 000 so this is why we really need to send it to the because we just don't know what needs to be covered under the fees so thoughts on this document in particular or a motion to the council are we okay with leaving this document sort of really up in the air in terms of you know we've kind of said we like option one it seems to cover the costs of the application part of the program and and everything but option two on the fees we have no idea right um because it's just a there's just some big numbers you need to talk about and that needs more discussion are we comfortable with leaving that one sort of necessarily covering what the costs might be Jennifer well you know following on what Pam said in our transmittal or narrative if the point the message is given to the finance committee that we want the program to be successful that's the goal not to have the smallest staff inspection staff that what it takes to have this be successful is that's is what we want them to structure the fee schedule on okay you know i i would also say myself in that transmittal that one thing we've struggled with is how much of the costs the fees should cover versus just the versus the operating budget and and or strategic partnership agreements right where wherever the funds come from yeah type thing um that that we've heard a lot of comments that that have said the renters and the property owners that rent should not be the only ones covering this program because it benefits the whole town and so we felt finance was more um at least i i personally feel finance is better equipped to make those recommendations than we at CRCR in terms of the split as to what things are covered um i agree i agree just that they know we want the program to be successful and i however yes we don't want to do it on certainly on the backs of um those who are just you know renting a couple of units yeah so does this one at least look okay without us in the report talking about any potential preferred option for inspection fees more of a just comments on what we want what what our thoughts on just a fee structure in general are is it relate to inspection fees i'm i guess i'm pretty okay with this okay i'm gonna stop the share so the proposed motion is similar it is last week's proposed motion um i'm gonna read it and we can talk about it before it's actually put on the floor um so so the way i i drafted it to say to recommend the council refer to the finance committee the document titled and then the document it's going to be a different document but it said as modified at CRC um for a recommend date and that document was the fee schedule um although i think i've added a different and and the document for the fee schedule as modified at CRC and the document titled and this one would be the excel spreadsheet which is the fee schedule sample document so the rental registration fee schedule and fee schedule sample um for a recommendation in the the rental permit breakdown data oh those are in the documents that rental permit breakdown data is part of the um the fee schedule samples 2023 let me let me get the the whole name of it oh just like maybe i just printed it separately okay yeah it prints on a different page but it is all it is four tabs in the same document does that make sense yep i just i just labeled them differently yeah no it's four four four tabs of the same document so those two documents um i would also forward on as i said rob morris answers to our questions because they're helpful for context um those those documents um for a recommendation um of the on the fees to charge under general bylaw 3.50 residential rental property with a report to town council by november 30th 2023 so we're recommending that the council refer those documents to finance for them to recommend fees to charge under the bylaw and to get that recommendation to council by november 30 2023 we could change the date of the record when we would want it back from council you mean back from finance back from finance sorry back from finance to earlier um we could make it september 30 we could make it october 30 november 30 i personally think is the latest we should make it because we want to be able to do this by the end of our terms so october 30th jennifer what's your thought yeah no i agree that's um i'm just trying to see we're at the last CRC meeting we have november 2nd are we want to get back to council not CRC right no we'll go back it'll go directly back to council council so there's a council meeting on october 16th and then october 6 i mean november 6 the night before the election yeah but yeah there's not a council meeting on the 30th of october yeah so we could say november 6 we could say october 16 through october 16 i mean yeah i think so too that busy this time of year right we could make it next week no we couldn't i don't think though maybe that goes given how we've struggled i can't imagine they could do it in one meeting but maybe they'll impress us um okay so now that we've talked about dates and all i will read the formal motion unless people have suggestion changes to it before i read it i'm trying to make it easy on our minute taker here um okay so i'm going to move to recommend the town council refer to the finance committee the document titled three rental registration fee schedule proposed revision five 2023-7-14 is it 14 no 7-28 sorry i didn't modify this 7-28 um as modified at crc we didn't yeah we did modify that one and the document titled three fee schedule samples 2023-7-28 permit data updated as modified at crc for a recommendation on the fees to charge under general bylaw 3.50 residential rental property with a report to town council by october 16 2023 could i just get that motion one more time to make sure i got it down sure sorry for that it's basically based on what was forwarded to you two weeks ago kelly but it's a little different um to recommend the town council refer to finance to the finance committee the document titled three rental registration fee schedule proposed revision five 2023-7-28 as modified at crc and the document titled three fee schedule samples 2023-07-28 permit data updated as modified at crc for a recommendation on the fees to charge under general bylaw 3.50 residential rental property with a report to town council by october 28 2023 back at ruining ham seconds any further discussion yeah just logistically if if recommendations from finance come on these calls the 16th of october then our documents will have already been displayed presented discussed by then or is that the same date that the whole package would then show up so the package is showing up this monday for our first discussion at the council um one of the reasons i promised athena anything that happens tonight she'll have tonight um and what i don't know is what the council will do i presume they may choose to refer the the bylaw and regulations to go l because our rules require gol to review it for clarity consistency and actionability um prior to any action or us waive that review um so i presume on monday there will be i'm guessing there will be a discussion as to whether to waive that rule or to move to refer to gol and a vote will happen on one of those two motions um there's a chance that the council could potentially discuss whether to refer the bylaw and regulations to another committee like tso for a review and recommendation on the substance whether that would happen i don't know that is not a motion that will be on the motion sheet because our motion was to recommend the council adopt but i don't know whether someone would make that motion or not um since i think there is some thought that tso would normally be the committee that would deal with these things not crc so i don't know what'll happen with that it's being considered a first reading the bylaw itself needs two readings um i can't guess at this time when the bylaw would come back for a second reading i think it depends on what happens on monday but if i had to guess it all i would not expect it to come back on the 21st at the council meeting because i think that one's pretty full um um given other things that i've heard on that one i doubt lin will put something this big on that for a second reading so i'm i'm guessing but i haven't talked to lin that the earliest this would have a second reading um is september sometime what i don't know is and and presumably with our vote today on the referral to finance that that motion will be taken up on monday also to refer these documents to finance with the september um october 16th deadline what i don't know is will the council decide to act on the bylaw and regulations before it adopts the fee it it could it can't adopt the fees really i mean i guess it could but it really shouldn't adopt the fees until the bylaws adopted and effective or adopted at least right i don't know whether the council will decide to do all three at the same meeting or will choose to take the bylaw and regulations up prior to seeing a recommendation from finance on the fees that's going to be up to the council did any of did that all make sense yeah i'm just thinking about it yeah yeah it's like it's not before we know it it's the end of the year right so um yeah so any other discussion on the motion say none i'll i'll go to a vote um mandy as an i uh pam hi and jennifer hi that passes unanimously with two absent um that means let me go back to my agenda um in theory we are done with rental registration um i want to thank john i know rob is not here but john and rob for 16 months of sticking with us through many different revisions many different things we wanted to try um dealing with all of those questions providing so many answers and so much other thing you guys have been invaluable to us for all of that and john we might not see i'm not going to see you on the 17th some other committee members will i won't be here on the 17th um so we're going to miss you john you've been great service to the town so so will we see you on the 17th or is this goodbye is there is there need for me at that meeting so the 17th i was going to do what the next agenda preview is i have put the the agenda is posted it has residential rental bylaw on it just in case i didn't know whether we were going to finish this and the thing that goes on vacation tomorrow so we already posted the agenda but um i didn't know what happens on the 7th so it'll be up to pam to decide whether the committee needs to discuss rental registration after monday night's meeting i i might be able to touch base with you tuesday morning pam on on that but that's that's it um but you know i put it on just in case you know if the council's like we're not sending it anywhere we don't like any of this send it back right like i hope they don't do that but um rental registrations on there sort of is a as a failsafe for if something happens monday night it's in my calendar so nuisance bylaw is the main thing on the agenda for the 17th so i john you might be it might be very helpful if you could make that one for those conversations i'll come to that one that's short thank you that's a really key one i thank you thank you and and that's where i suspect the committee will spend most of its time also on that agenda which was on this one um and i'll touch base with you pam on on what the follow-up is is the follow-up to our joint crcm ht meeting that we had there were three things crc was supposed to be talking about um so i just thought we'd and i will give you those three things i can say them right now um they were discussed how we fit um how to fit into the manager goals um some of these housing affordable housing implementation things we had talked about um figure out some specific priorities to go along with that for the manager goals um surveying and outreach on what do people actually want for housing was one of the things we had talked about as being a crc potential thing to do and then um uh what about why are 29 to 49 year olds why do why would they want to live here and if so what investment would amherst need to make that happen for that that set of group of people um were the three things i had as sort of assigned to crc for follow-up discussion for that so that is also on the agenda um uh pam and i we can touch base on what to focus on but those are the things i don't at this point intend to change that agenda um i don't think we need to put specialized stretch code back on at this time i think we got the questions we'll forward them on and that'll go to september um so that's the agenda um yeah so any other agenda items that people would want to see on that agenda okay um i don't have other announcements minutes um we'll try and do now i know we're kind of running late there was one change oh yeah so thank you john enjoy your evening thank you i'm gonna miss you yeah thank you for all your service you sorely missed but we'll see you next meeting okay we'll keep in touch yeah feel free to come to public comment and make a public comment on occasion yeah i hope when mandy said 16 months we've been working on this i hope we didn't drive you to early retirement not early retirement it is yeah well deserve 69 i'm tired never know minutes we have two sets of minutes i'd like to get past um athena told me she was not sure who the abstention on the july well on how did she word it the for the 7 13 23 minutes there was missing who abstained in passing i think it was those minutes um it was counselor ball mill and and it was that's who i thought it was so that need added to the minutes the identification of counselor ball because i don't think it made it into the minutes itself for the july 17 minutes okay that's been corrected yeah um that was the only correction i had of note were there any other corrections for either of the minutes i didn't see any okay so i'll make the motion to adopt july 13 2023 minutes as amended and the july 20 2023 minutes as presented is there a second second jennifer seconds any discussion uh well ham uh it's an i jennifer yes and mandy is an i that means we are ready to adjourn i want to also thank we're a short committee today a small committee today but the entire committee for its work over 16 months on this i don't think we were originally supposed to report in december i knew it was a very tight deadline to get it there i didn't think it would i wasn't sure we'd make that but i didn't think we'd still be here in august um but the discussions were great we needed to do it and i think it's going to be a huge improvement for the town and i said thank you for steering us through this both of pam and our chair and our vice chair when when this committee makes unanimous recommendations it's always an achievement so i think we were able to work through our differences to to get there because we we definitely have them but but i think it's an achievement for this entire committee to and i felt good having hearing john say he thinks that it's in a good place yeah yeah and ethena have a good vacation yep thank you and thank you kelly for all your work i don't know whether you'll be for our seven august 17th meeting or not but thank you oh i'll be there kelly have you so we have our new place but none of our stuff has arrived yet so we're staying at my partner's parents house for the time being excellent yeah good to have a place yeah it's very nice staying here yeah i'm going to officially adjourn the meeting at 6 42 p.m thank you for the extra time yeah okay bye bye bye bye bye bye