 We are recording. Good evening. It is January 30th, 2024. This is a regular meeting of the Community Resources Committee. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, extend by Chapter 22 and 107 of the Acts of 2022, and extend it again 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 by telephone, and there is no other actual in-person attendance. But we will make every effort to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. So, there is Councillor Ate. Good. I'm going to take a roll call and just make sure everyone can be heard and hear. I'll start with Mandy John Hanakie. Present. Councillor Ate. Present. Councillor D'Angelo. You're muted. Present. Sorry. Councillor Tao. Here. And Sam Rene is here. Topic, it is action item 4A. It is, we need to discuss ZBA. They can see. And in particular, we have sufficiency of pool. We have options to proceed. Review of interview questions, selection criteria, and interview dates. I'm going to state for the people that are in the audience. Action item 4B is the discussion about rental bylaws. And we will get through the ZBA conversation as quickly as we can. But it was on the agenda first. Thank you. So. Looking to to the. PRC members. In your packet was a short report on the status of community activity forms and also sort of a statement of the immediate ZBA need. At the moment, there was one resignation. So there is a full members position due to the resignation and that is for about a year and a half. Ending June 2025. There is still an associate one year position of which there are about five months, six months left of that term through the end of June, 2024. There are. Coming up in July, there is one full member position. And again, the four associate members that normally get assigned each year. At the moment, we have two current associate members. We have a current full member who is interested in the 2025 position and three new community activity forms. Two of those people have expressed interest in other town committee. I think anyone want to take a little conversation about the status of that. I'm going to have trouble seeing hands. So I'm going to move this down. Mandy, Joe. Given the trouble that we had trying to find applicants in November and December for these positions that we couldn't declare the pool sufficient and given right now that it's the end of January and it generally takes six to eight weeks to complete the process. I think it would be wise for us to amend the bulletin board notice to include notice of the impending vacancies for the terms that expire on June 30th of this year. So the terms beginning July one, the one full member that's expiring June 30th and then the four associate members that expire every year. So that we can potentially go through the process once and appoint residents to fulfill, fill out the current, well, recommend appointing residents to fill out the current five or four, however many months remain when we finish the process and then also recommend to the council appointments for the next year. It seems odd to just do the one full member, the one associate member now and immediately start the process over for July. So I would recommend modifying the bulletin board notice, waiting two weeks. I know I believe because of what I've seen that you've notified the current associates and the full member for those whose terms are expiring about a CAF, but it would be good to not modify the bulletin board notice, I think, so that other people that might be following this recognize we're looking to fill not just the next five months or four months that the term would be a year and see if we get anything, any additional applicants. That's my thoughts. Thank you. Jennifer. Yeah, so I just wanted to clarify. So we would now start posting so that we would not be repeating this again in, okay, and we can do that. I mean, there's like nothing in the charter that requires us. I mean, I think that's a good, if we can do that, that makes sense. Although I also have a question, but that would mean a delay in when we would fill the current vacancies. Can the ZBA wait that long? Yeah, good point. I'm going to show you how to do that. So the charter requires all vacancies or impending vacancies to be up for two weeks. So if the bulletin board notice gets modified instead of a new one there, we could declare the pool sufficient for those five potentially at our next meeting or so. I recommend modifying the bulletin board notice so that new CAFs don't need submitted by anyone because the notice is already up. And we know the procedure requires that you only include as applicants those that file a CAF after the notice goes up. So to save us and them work, I think modifying that notice, which is possible, would be the most efficient way to do it. We could still probably do a lot of the stuff and look towards working on scheduling interviews in that intermediate time, even though the pool hasn't technically been declared sufficient yet. Any other comments on that? That sounds like a very reasonable approach. Does anyone have wording they want or do you want me to just go work with Athena to include the additional positions that we would like added? Jennifer? Yeah, I may be happy to work with you. Do I have permission from the committee to work with Athena to modify the current posting that is on the bulletin board to include not just the vacancy for one full member for the year and a half term, but also to include the vacancies for the four associate members and the one full member starting in July 1, 2025. OK, I'm seeing nods. We'll do that. Thank you. OK, while we are here and we're on the topic, have people had an opportunity to look at the interview questions? I put out a notice to the council and said if you have any comments to add or subtract to our questions, our interview questions for the VBA, I received none from anyone on the council. So I am assuming that they were good in the eyes of the council. Did any of you have any comments on the interview questions? Should we pull them up just to have them or is I'm seeing a nod? Yes. I'm looking to Mandy to pull that up. All of all of these just for new counselor, all of these items, all of these documents are in our packet in SharePoint so that if you have an opportunity to go through that, they should always be in there prior to the meeting itself. Most of us, again, are familiar with these questions. We used them last year. Do you consider them adequate and appropriate? Jennifer. I do. I think they served us well in our prior interviews. Anyone have modifications that they feel strongly need to be added? I'm seeing also a thing. No modifications. I think I had gone through them and some are tricky, but quite good. I don't know any other ones. Can we vote to adopt these interview questions for the coming season? I'll just call it season. I'll second that motion. OK, thank you. I'll look, we'll go by head count here. Mandy Gehannaki. Hi. Pat D'Angelo. Hi. Jennifer Tao. Yes. Councillor Ate. Hi. And Cameroni, aye. That's unanimous. We will adopt, reuse the questions, selection guidance. One more topic here. The criteria for a healthy and effective multi-member body. Again, we have the factors that the council felt were important for an effective body, and we had input from the body's chair. In response to my outreach to the committee, to the planning board, the voting board's chair, excuse me, there was no change in the material. The one suggestion was that in terms of some items to consider when making appointments and recommendations to the ZBA might include, and we have a list, geographic, economic, age, employment length of residency, diversity. And then the last one, which is collegial, willing to listen not only to the views of the applicants in public, but also sensitive to the opinions and expertise of other members. He said probably the only thing he would do is swap those two around. So they would be in just a different order. He felt that the condition and the criteria were still very valid and stood the board in good stead when trying to make decisions. Thank you. Do I have any kind of emotion to accept those changes and adopt the selection guidance as it appears on the paper? So moved. Any second? Second. Thank you. Let's see. All in favor, we have, again, I'll just keep going through the same list. Mandy Johanke. Aye. Matt DeAngelis. Jennifer Taub. Yes. Councilor Ette. Aye. Camerooni. Aye. So it's unanimous. We made the changes. We will adopt those as our criteria. Thank you. I think that's it. I think that's it on ZBA. So let's see. And thank you for that. That was quick and efficient. We are now moving to action item 4b, which is general bylaw 3.50 rental registration bylaw regulations and fee structure discussion with landlords managers on rental permitting bylaw regulations and fees. And we will begin by attempting a discussion on that topic. I have, sorry. David, you have your hand up. Yeah, depending on how you want to conduct this, Pam, I'm just hoping that Councilor Hanneke could assist us with, she's a little more nimble with the technology than I am. So if there's some help to be had there, I would hope that Mandy could help out there, depending on how you want to run this part of the meeting. Thanks. I have also asked Mandy Johanke if she might be willing to pull up documents if we needed to look at something if someone is trying to reference what is in the proposal. So let's ask Mandy Johanke how she feels about it. I am happy to do that. I actually raised my hand for another question since you had told that one previous speaker, 730. I wondered if we wanted to adopt our calendar first to get us closer to 730 so that the only agenda item left is 4B and then we'll know exactly how long we have for it. Yeah, it's up to you. Fine, I think we were, yeah, great idea. So we have calendar and we also have minutes so we could do both of those and just get them done. So going to calendar, there was a little bit of discrepancy between the calendar that was proposed by the clerk Athena O'Keeve and the one that I had taken a draft stab at. But it looks like if I think it's in the packet. I think I did put this in the packet with kind of a marked up version with red dates that were still different than what Athena had suggested. And we can adopt the ones that we feel are appropriate, given you're all calendars that we hadn't had a chance to consider. Yeah, but you're able to find that. Perfect. Is this the one you were asking for? One, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Everything in dark letters is as Athena O'Keeve had suggested in the total calendar. You still have your hand up, Mandy. You want something else? You can go on. I have some questions about it, but I'm comparing. So give me a second. So we get down to April 9. And I had originally suggested April 16. But I am willing my calendar was open as to April 30 and April 9 as the two April meetings. I think we had a conflict on the 23rd. And so we don't want the 23rd. And so the 30th was fine. It works for us. Any other questions about those two particular ones? But I'm going to suggest that we adopt the April 9 and the April 30. In July, there was not a date on the calendar for Athena's list. And she suggested that rather than putting in something extra that we would, that we not include something there. So I wanted to run that by the committee. Do we have a placeholder or do we simply say there is not a meeting in July or early July? How do you all feel about that? Pat, you're muted. Yeah, I'm sorry. Just like council meeting, I'm sorry. The suggested by Athena, I was interested in finding out the reason she was making those suggestions is it's had something to do with staffing this or anything like that. Her suggestions were based on the overall schedule of committee meetings and recognizing which members are on particular committees. And so she was trying to separate them out. No, I understand that. But she suggested this 9th or she suggested the 16th. She suggested the 9th. And then also the 24th versus the 17th. So I'm trying to figure out what her reasoning is to see how I feel about it. Does that make sense? I can answer some of that. Mandy, go ahead. So the 23rd is, well, Athena set the CRC calendar to be the second and fourth Tuesday of every month with finance being the first and third Tuesday of every month. So that's how she set it. So that's why she had April 9th instead of Pam, who was looking at the 16th to put them two weeks apart. She had April 23rd. But April 23rd is actually the first full day of Passover. So the second evening of Passover. So it might not be wise to hold a meeting that night. And so moving to April 30th, given that I think there's four the Tuesdays in April anyway, makes a lot of sense. Athena skipped July 9th. I was actually going to comment on that and say, I prefer having them in the calendar. And canceling if we could. But once we don't put it in the calendar, it's hard to add a meeting in when everyone's ignored that there might be a meeting there. So I would like to have July 9th listed or some second meeting in July if we want it to be the 16th. I don't really care which one it is. But two meetings a month, I would like to have listed on the calendar, which that's why I've got a lot of comments in November and December. But two in a month is what I'd like. So something in July. I'm not partial to the 9th or the 16th. It doesn't matter to me. OK, thank you. Jennifer. Yeah, and again, I think Athena wanted her suggestion to not have the meetings in July was because so staff would know there was a month, they could take vacation. So I don't. But we could pencil it in. We could say if needed. OK, let's move to the September then. September was suggested by Athena. And the 24th was suggested by Athena. I had earlier and later versions of that. Does anyone have any hard feelings about 10th or 24th? And October 8th and 22nd is just one week later than what I had originally suggested. And then November 26th, which is two days before Thanksgiving. And we could again just say we don't hold that meeting. Mandy. So alternating with finance in November and December presents problems for CRC because then we end up with one meeting a month, which maybe we'll have a light schedule. We can always hope, right? But I guess my suggestion would be to schedule them instead of two weeks in a row, like November 12 and 17 and December 10 and 17, to actually go on the same days as finance. So November 5 and 19 and December 3 and 17, it means we fully alternate instead of having three weeks, one week, three weeks, one week, or something like that. I think it makes for a schedule. I believe I'm the only counselor affected by having finance and CRC on the same day. And I'm OK with that. OK, so your suggestion is November 5, November 19, and then continue with December 10, December 17. December 3 and December 17. OK, all right. And then what about September? Anyone else have thoughts on the September 10 and 24, 8 of October and 22nd of October? Those would stand. And then back to April, just so I'm confirming. And we could just say if needed, if needed on that one. Any motion to adopt these dates for the calendar? So moved. Any second? Second, Jennifer? Let's see, all in favor. Henneke? Aye. The Angelos? Aye. How? Aye. That's A. Rooney? Aye. So we have adopted the calendar. That's great. For 2024. And we will submit that to Athena, so she knows our schedule. Quick here. So we have the last item before we go back over to rental registration. And that is the meeting minutes from our first meeting of the year, January 11, very short, very sweet. I'm going to move that we adopt them as presented. Any second? Second, the Angelos. Thank you. And let's see, Henneke? Aye. The Angelos? Aye. How? Yes. That's A. Aye. Rooney? Aye. Done. OK, thank you. So now we're moving to action item 4b, general bylaw 3.50, rental registration, which I read previously. And I would like to see if there are folks in the audience. So we have Zoom. Zoom is not a very friendly character. And if there might be five or six people of Pat, so you have your hand up. Yeah, I just want to remind you, and you're probably already thinking of it, of the gentleman Rich Gold, I believe his name was, who's coming at 7.30. He should be added into the list when he gets here. Thank you. So the way I have envisioned working through this material tonight, because there is a lot to think about and lots of comments that have been received, that I had a bit of a structure that I was thinking would be, all right, one of my notes. I had a structure that I had written out at least to focus the conversation on different topics. And I would like to make it as easy to interact and ask questions of some of the participants, not only given what we just experienced earlier, but the fact that it's going to be very tough to go back and forth. What I'm thinking is that we might work through some of these topics and then hold another session of public comment or questions that could also be then responded to by staff or by CRC members. I'm also looking to see if you can bring Rob Mora into the conversation if he's in the audience. Let's see if he's there. So I think we could certainly proceed without Mr. Gold having, because he'll have an opportunity, I think, to speak a little bit. Are there some folks in the audience who are members of the Landlord Association and or are generally just either small, medium, large managers who would like to participate in some question and answer opportunity? I think CRC members have expressed interest in at least asking some questions of you all. We're here to learn. We're here to understand what works or doesn't or and that's very difficult with responses to statements. So I see Renata Shepard, Tom Frostman, Pat Kamens, Karen Quinn. I would like to ask if people know Karen Quinn. I do not personally as someone who is a landlord, because I think that is the conversation tonight. Dave, are you comfortable with, this is the tough part, to separate it out from just folks who would like to speak or up to three or four minutes and discuss what works and doesn't or are you looking for response from committee members, Pam? Or yes, I am. There are other thoughts other than my own, Andy. So we have what seven people right now who've raised their hands. We could start by recognizing them in turn and then move on to potentially a conversation with some of them if they indicate, if they are speaking on topic, on this item and are a landlord in Amherst and potentially indicate their desire to continue the conversation beyond initial comments, you as chair could make a decision as to whether to allow them to remain able to talk versus not able to talk. But we could initially run it similar to a public comment. I think that could work. So I'm going to give a quick overview for those who have not attended meetings in the past on this topic. And it looks back about 10 years to my little bit of prelude here. Back in around 2013, 2012, at the urging of many residents, the Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods Committee, crafted the bylaw that's in place today. It was adopted by town meeting in 2013. It is voluntary and requests self-certification of safe living conditions. Since 2013 UMass has grown. It is now approximately 27,400 in-person students housing on campus accommodate about 15,000 students. Those living in the Amherst area in the 01002 area, number approximately 8,900 people. With this growth, there has also been a conversion of workforce housing that has converted into student housing, and primarily as investment property. Many of the owners that own property in Amherst do not live in Amherst. The self-certification process by the owners and managers for habitable conditions has still seen unsafe conditions that we heard about through our outreach and through our public forums that we held much of last year. The question is, and the question that has been raised often is, what does this proposal accomplish that existing bylaws or enforcement do not? And I think two points with the community resource committee wanted to make is that self-certification of habitable conditions may not necessarily be protecting the health and safety of tenants. This proposed bylaw also allows consideration of other town bylaws in issuing a permit. So as a preface, I would like to hear from Renata Shepard to begin with Tom Crossman, Patrick Kamens, and start that conversation if they have specific comments that they would like to make and then perhaps keep them available to speak. And we can make our way through the list as was suggested. It may be just a little less interactive than we imagined given what has happened tonight. I'm a little leery. So Renata Shepard, please. Take your name and address. Hi, Renata Shepard from Justice Drive-in Amherst. I'm a small landlord. Two bedroom condo that's rented that we capped after we bought our house. I have a small one bedroom condo in Northampton that's rented also. I've been doing this for the past 25 years. And the property in Amherst, being a condo, it's very well regulated in terms of there is a management company and there are rules of regulation. And basically, I'm responsible for the inside of the condo. Just to give a background, if that was not clear before. But let me go back here. I saw, Pam, I think you sent out something about there was a list of items. And number six, I have a big problem with that. It says the, what was it? Linking permit renewal to tenant behavior provides Amherst police chief another option to gain compliance. I have a very big problem with that. The offender should be solely responsible. Otherwise, you're treating tenants and landlords differently from owners. Owner residents should be held to the same standards. And raising behavior to a criminal case or having police involved would help not only the landlords, but also the neighborhood. Because then we have proof on our hands if we need to try to evict or whatever. Because if you go the other way around, especially small landlords have very little recourse. We can't really, we can try to regulate behavior, but it's a lost cause, mainly. And also, you've heard a whole lot from me over the year. So I'm just going to summarize what I think of rental registration. It is cumbersome, intrusive, overreaching. It's a blanket policy to attempt to solve about 10% of our issues. If you must implement it, absolutely must implement it. One initial inspection should be enough for safety and instructions and making sure the landlord know what they're doing. Subsequence inspection should be complaint driven with the understanding that the complainant proves that they attempted to contact the landlord, be it a neighbor or whatever, because our information is on your site. Or contact the police if the problem is tenant behavior. Your mask should be involved if applicable. And the fees should not be higher than maybe $100 for non-owner-occupied units or $3,000 per parcel if there is a large property, especially landlords who rent out in condos like myself that have their own set of standards and regulations. With all the available technologies, there must be a way to save on personnel cost. Let's try to be creative and mindful of people's privacy and affordability. Thank you very much. You've been very true to your word over the last couple of years. Walking through this with us, I appreciate it. Thank you. Tom Crossman. Testing, can you hear me OK? I want to start off by apologizing regarding the negative rhetoric that kicked off this meeting. That was very embarrassing. I want to let you all know that you are all appreciated for what you do for our community. It was a pretty obscene experience. We all navigated, and I want to make sure that you all understand that you are loved and appreciated for what you are doing. So moving forward regarding the rental registration and bylaw topics, I just wanted to go over a couple of quick things. But before I dive into that, I did want to identify Michael Ercolini is a representative from the Amherst Landlord's Association that we wanted to make sure that he had an opportunity to speak. I believe he is in the audience. Michael Ercolini is spelled E-R-C-O-L-I-N-I. Thank you. Moving forward, I just wanted to identify that sometimes some of these statistics can be massaged a little bit. For example, the overview and purpose since 2013, UMass has grown from by seven or 8,000 students to greater than 32,000. I'm looking at a letter that is to Amherst Town Council from UMass Community Relations dated October 25th that identified five different time periods over the last five decades. And UMass in 1982 had a total enrollment of 24,939 with zero online students. In 2002 had 24,062 with 700 online students. And in 2022 had 32,229 students, of which 4523 students were online. Online students are completely online and do not attend classes on campus. So that ends up being a net 27,706 students from 2012. The number was 28,236 of which 5602 were online. So that is from 22,000 to 27,000 from 2012 to 2022, of which housing has increased on campus. From 2000, if you go to 2006, North departments were 864 beds added. And then Commonwealth Honors College added 1,585 beds. Existing buildings were modified to add 500 beds. University Village was 300 beds. And Fieldstone is 824 beds for a total of 4,073. Your overview and purpose says 850 units were built in the last 10 years. So some of those numbers and statistics that are provided may be a little misleading. And I just wanted to enhance and add information to make sure that there's more clarity as to what the numbers actually are. In addition to that, self-certification by owners, managers, habitable conditions prior to the safe and healthy neighborhoods rental permitting procedure, I think that numbers were roughly 480 nuisance noise complaints and violations to the town. And then as recently as 2018, 2019, the year's average 291 complaints. Amherst Landlord's Association asked for what those complaints were specifically to try to get more substantive information. And we did not get any information back from town hall. So those are just some of the things at the surface. I'm only touching part one of the overview and purpose. And just trying to highlight from our perspective, there has been improvement from the safe and healthy neighborhoods. And the numbers, I will add, this was overlooked, but there has been an additional 1,100 full-time employees added to the university. So I was just referring to housing stock that was added to campus. There has been housing stock added to the community. There's been an absorption that's very clear. And that's because Amherst is an employment nucleus. And a lot of people want to live, work, and play in the community. And so you can see one stuff is constructed. There's immediate occupancy because of the high demand. But anyway, that's just a little bit. I wanted to make sure that I yielded some of my time to Mr. Erkalini, who represents Amherst Landlord's Association. Thank you. We'll get to Mr. Erkalini and we'll look for his hand up. Let's see. Patrick Cayman, please. Hello, thank you for inviting me in. I think I've met all of you, except for the new counselor. My name is Patrick Caymans. I run Caymans Rural Estate. We manage about 1,500 properties in the area. I've spoken to each of the council people trying to help. And I was invited by Mr. Zomek to actually be on the original rendition of it many years ago. And I guess our concern as a group is we brought to the council questions of the legality of it. And I'm here to help. If we can get an answer why we think it's legal and why we think we should be able to proceed, I'm really willing to help with you. I mean, I've done this for 32 years. But as I've mentioned, I mean, we really can't participate in something if our counselors are telling us it's illegal. One of the big things that we have an issue with is when we wrote it so many years ago, the fees had to equal the service and whatever service you want to call it. And now I'm told that there's not a separate account. It goes into the general fund. There's a surplus of somewhere in the means of $250,000. So I guess our question is not sure that's legal either. That's one of the points that we brought up and we not had an answer to. When I met with some of the counselors, they were very concerned to make sure that the fees did equal the costs. And I'm concerned for the last 10 years what the owners I represent, where those surpluses have gone. And are we going to get those dollars back? And if there is surpluses, why wouldn't there be enough funds there to launch the program? There shouldn't be any additional fees. If there's, say, $250,000 is the right number. When I see Rob has joined us, he can add if he feels. But if $250,000 times 10 years, that should be plenty of money to get the thing rolling. So as a group, we are concerned of the legality of it. And I'd love to hear from the counselors what KP laws decided on that. And if it's proven to us that it is perfectly legal, then I'm willing to help you guys as I have in the past. So I'll be happy to. I'm going to stay on here. I can add in if you have questions. Thank you for listening, Pimi. And if you have any questions to me, as someone who's done it for a while, I have small one-unit rentals. And I also have large communities that I rent. So I represent pretty much both sides of the spectrum. So I'm happy to help. And thanks for allowing us to speak this evening. Thank you, Pat. Yeah, you definitely bring a lot of expertise to the conversations. I really appreciate that. And we may come back to you with some questions. I see a YZA. I do not know who YZA is. I'm willing to bring YZA in with a name and address. And let's go from there. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, my name is Yusef Awad from Pine Street in Amherst. Hi, I'd like to make a short comment. My wife and I rent the house next to us. And we've been following this matter closely. There are some problems that we feel with the proposed regulations. But I'd like to point out one. Can you hear me well? Yes, very well. OK, great. The nuisance property bylaw states that three impractions of the bylaw in one year results in, among other things, a loss of the residential rental permit. Now, we've had consistently, have had wonderful conscientious tenants and have never had any complaint. But what if one year there is a tenant who gets three noise complaints and refuses to change their behavior? Why should we lose our right to rent overall for the criminal acts of another adult? I think the simple and logical solution to noise complaints would be to increase the penalties on the perpetrator, maybe 300 first offense, 500 second, 1,000 third criminal penalties. These are adults who have broken a regulation of law. They should be held responsible because it can be very hard within that one-year period to change the behavior if you do, unfortunately, get a bad group of people, which is very rare, but it is possible that could happen. And I think that would do more to solve that problem. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah Morton, name and address, please. Sarah, can you hear us? OK. Can you hear me now? OK, great. Sarah Morton, I live on Eames Place in Amherst, and I have one apartment that I rent that's in my house. So very, very small landlord. I wanted to say that it would be really great if you could make sure that you don't raise the price for doing the inspections and that you keep letting people self-inspect. I think it would be very intrusive to try and have to get someone in. And I'm also concerned about the legality of what's being proposed. I don't have anything else to say. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sarah. I see Richard Gold. Thank you for being patient with us, Mr. Gold. Good evening. I'm Richard Gold. I live on Puffer Circle in North Amherst, a retired UMass professor. With my wife, we've been small-time landlords in Amherst for 30 years. We lived through the rental review board, which dragged us out at night for weeks. That finally went away. We occasionally have a problem. And the tenant calls the inspection services. And together we resolve the problem. That may be one out of 500 tenancies. Your plan to inspect all of the rentals in town seems like overreach. Like it's a solution seeking a problem that there is no problem. This is just going to cost a lot of money. And you're going to have to hire more people and get more vehicles for them and have secretaries handling it. And you're not going to find much. So I don't understand why it's being done. Perhaps if you would inspect the town manager's house and perhaps the select board's people's houses, you'd also find occasional issues to correct. But that's not going to be done. And it's not necessary. So I think it's a solution in search of a problem and there is no problem. I suggest the current system, which is complaint driven, works and leave well enough alone. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gold. I do see Michael Urkalini. You want to bring him? Hello. Hi. Hi, this is Michael Urkalini. I'm here on behalf of the Landowners Association. Nice to meet all of you. I'm speaking because I've had chance over the last several months to review the by-law. And all its iterations and its revisions. And I'd like to speak just of the legality here and look at those issues. As it's defined under the current iteration of the by-law, it's illegal both under the United States Constitution and the Massachusetts Constitution. And specifically, the warrantless searches that it would permit. I have been contrary to Supreme Court jurisprudence for about 60 years now. And just to spell out what the by-law and its regulations and its current iteration would permit. It would permit the town inspector, which may be according to the regulations, the police chief of Amherst, if the town manager points him, to conduct any time with any frequency inspections of private homes in Amherst. And that's a concern because I think what we need to do as landlords in the town is make sure that the complaints that we've heard or the response to the complaints is proportional to the problem. And we're willing to do that to work with the town to see what those responses are. But under the current iteration of the by-law, this would permit the town inspector, whoever he's designated, to forcibly vacate and secure entire properties within the town. I'm not sure if everyone realizes what's in the by-law currently, but that is what it would permit. And what we see as the major issue is that the town is going to be subject to tremendous litigation costs to deal with challenges to this. Because people in Amherst are not going to readily agree en masse to inspections of their private homes with any frequency that the town inspector deems necessary. So those litigation costs are going to be substantial. But on top of that, the damages are going to be far more substantial because in the event that the by-law is held illegal, the town is potentially going to be on the hook for every month of lost rent that is suffered by any property owner in the town. That includes also any consequential damages that any tenant suffers as a result of their forcible eviction by the town inspector, which again is permitted under the by-law. I can't stress enough, I think the best route for the town is to work with the landlords. And from my experience in speaking with the landlords, they are open to solutions that bring everybody together and try to find a way to enforce the existing nuisance by-law that's on the books, the registration by-law that's on the books, and other laws that would be subject to this registration by-law that would effectively be enforced through it to increase the penalties as necessary so that we're holding responsible the actual actors instead of the town en masse and creating a pretty large bureaucracy that we think is unnecessary. And disproportionate to the problem that's presented by the by-law. So I'm happy to take any questions on the legality issue. But we've also circulated a memo that spells out the Supreme Court jurisprudence, some of the other cases. Right now, the by-law would effectively coerce landlords in Massachusetts to agree to warrantless inspections of their tenants' private homes as a means of renting property within the town. The application would itself require the consent of the landlords to that. And it's been Black Letter law on the books for at least 60 years now that you cannot coerce the landlord to agree to a unconstitutional program simply by applying to rent a property in accordance with the zoning and their rights as landlords. So I'm happy to address any specific questions that I just raised maybe on the legality and point you to any case law. But I just wanted to raise those issues. I was just going to say, did we lose our chair? I think we may need Ms. Heinecke to take over. No, I think we need our vice chair, Jennifer, to take over. Yeah, but did Pam lose or she'll come back on? We can. You could pause the meeting, Jennifer, until we know. Try and figure out what happened to her. Sorry, I spoke to Heinecke thinking that she was co-host. I just want to ask, is Davis still on? Oh. Yes, Davis. Do you know, do we lose Pam for a moment? Yeah, Pam lost her connection. So she asked if the vice chair would take over, Jennifer. Okay, so I will go. I see Alan St. Hilaire is next from, want to bring him in? I'm here. I don't know if anybody can hear me. We could hear you if you could just state your name and where the town you reside in. Fantastic, thank you. My name is Alan St. Hilaire. I'm the owner of Valley Property Management, Namer's Mass. And I live in Hadley, but my business is in Amherst. So I came to the meeting with a long list of things to talk about, but in the interest of time, I'll touch on the high points and email the rest for consideration. And some of them have already been covered. So Tom Crossman had helped to illustrate some of the data on the growth of the university. And I wanted to add to that in addition to the hard work that the Amherst landlords have committed to making Amherst a better community along with the collaboration of the university and Amherst police, UMass has increasingly become a better school with higher GPA requirements and higher caliber students. My son is 18 and applying to colleges. And I can tell you that students won't even be considered without a 4.0 to the Eisenberg School of Management. It's a very, very competitive school with 66,000 applicants and 5,000 of those accepted. So my point is that the quality of students has increased immensely. We get the police reports every Monday morning from Amherst police department specifically for noise complaints or other behavioral issues on rental properties. And I've seen that sharply decline in the 16 years that I've been in this business. Every time we get those reports there's only a handful of them. So reiterating what some of the attendees have already said that we just don't see this as a bigger problem as it's been made out to be. Beyond that, a lot of our students are just good young adults. They're dog walkers, babysitters, snow shovelers. I've seen this in the rentals that we manage. We manage a lot of houses in sensitive neighborhoods and by and large, they're good people. The other point that I wanted to touch on was, there's this recurrence of discussion of the self-certification being insufficient. But I feel that by no means is this the only method that the housing quality is upheld or is it the best method in my opinion? Any renter, whether it be a student or a janitor at UMass who's renting, can call the board of health and make a complaint under the chapter two state sanitary code that their minimum standards are not being upheld. And the penalties for this as a landlord fall under the mass general law 93A which allows for triple damages. So the tenants do have quite a path of recourse if they feel that their housing does not meet minimum standards. So perhaps one aspect of the things to be addressed here is educating these residents, students, non-students, grad students workforce and letting them know what their rights are. There was some attempt at this with including it in the leases, which it is. But much like UMass has done the walk this way campaign, I think that there could be some education on what their rights are under the existing laws. And the last thing that I wanna mention is the fee structure. If this were to be implemented in some expanded manner from the present fee structure, it really needs to be proportionate to the property. It is outlandish to suggest that an owner that I manage a duplex floor on Main Street should be paying half that of one of the larger complexes that have three, four, 500 units in town. I do agree that there needs to be some sort of a budget to make this work and then that budget is funded from fees, but those fees need to be proportionate. If you're going to give a discount for a large property then that discount should extend to owners that have multiple properties or management companies that are responsible for multiple properties. It's no different in my mind than we manage several properties within a half a mile on Main Street, seven or eight multifamily properties. That's no different than Puffton where they have eight or 10 buildings in the same amount of space. So, could the fees be proportionate to the number of units or to the tax assessed values similar to how CPA funds are calculated? You know, it needs to be proportionate to the property to say that Puffton or some of the other big complexes are capped at $1,000 is artificial. So, thank you for the time. I appreciate your work on this. This is these are the things that I wanted to bring up as most important. You're muted. Thank you, Mr. St. Hilaire. Those are some points that we've actually not heard from people much. I apologize for my absence. Something just turned off and I was floating in space. I'm looking at the list of folks who have hands up. I see John Kinchela and Steve Walzak, Karen Quinn. Let's go with Karen Quinn, please. Hi, can everyone hear me? Yes. Okay, great. I just wanted to say hello. I am new to managing an apartment building in Amherst. I'm with Hampshire Property Management Group in Northampton. And so this is the subject that has just come up. So I'm just interested to hear more and learn more through council and what's happening with these regulations and laws. So it's very informational for me to participate in this meeting and I appreciate it and I really am, excuse me, enjoying hearing everybody's comments on this. So I look forward to hearing more because I think there's a lot of conversation that needs to be had about this in terms of proportion and how everything's going to get allocated. So I just wanted to say hi and thanks to all of you for all that you do. I know it's not easy. And we as property managers and property owners are trying to kind of navigate through this as well. So I look forward to hearing more about this as we go through this process. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time to educate yourself. John Kinshla, please, if you could state your address. Hi, I'm John Kinshla. I live in Hadley and I rent out several, mostly single family homes in Amherst and I've spoken with Pam a few times about my thoughts on this program. And I also want to say, I appreciate that you guys are taking this up because as a landlord and a business owner in Amherst, I have seen the impact that sort of unruly neighbors can have, let's say, on a neighborhood. And I recognize that it's an issue and definitely empathize with people who have to deal with that. However, so I think that what you're trying to do is good and necessary. But I view the bylaw as, besides the legal concerns that are out there and are well documented at this point, I just view it as something that is missing the mark. The previous drafts seem to place a lot of the burden on landlords. And it's been noted already that landlords actually don't have a whole lot of legal standing with their own property. I'll tell you, I've tried to call the police on some of my tenants before who were having a loud, large party and they said, you can't do that. So here I am as the property owner, trying to do the right thing. And I actually can't inform the police of this. Somebody else has to do it. So consider that. That's where landlords stand in the hierarchy of things in the legal world. Alan St. Blair made a really good point and I'll back him up on this. There's already a very effective mechanism for tenants to ensure that their living space is livable and that's to order a Board of Health inspection. And trust me, nothing gets your attention quicker than when the Board of Health is at your property checking things over. It's a very high priority for most landlords. So there's a mechanism that already has a raft of regulations surrounding it that work quite well. Regarding the plans for this bylaw, we live in a town that's focused on education but I see very little of it in this discussion. Alan also made a great point that these students are intelligent, they're motivated. They're actually really, most of them are wonderful people and we're lucky to have them here in our community but they don't know anything. This is for most of them their first time living off campus, living away from home and they simply don't know. So it took me a few years to sort of come to that realization because I'm just that much older than them but then when I thought back to when I was their age, I realized I didn't know anything either really. So we communicate with the tenants. We try to be very regular with our communications and proactive and reach out when there's nice weather coming and there's the tendency to go overboard with outdoor parties or there's cold weather coming or winter break is coming and they run the risk of people breaking into their homes if they don't lock them before they leave. Things like that. And I think it would be really useful to consider the role of education and just creating a culture, an expectation that when you're living off campus and you're in a neighborhood, that's all well and good but you have neighbors and you have families next to you and it can't just be one or two communications sporadically, it has to be a regular occurrence and probably done by somebody who specializes in communications with college age students or college age people. And I think that type of investment would pay off well for the town. And the reason that I think that is because as Alan again pointed out, the incidences of noise complaints or nuisance complaints that Amherst police email to landlords every Monday has steadily declined. And to the point where now you get the emails sometimes even in the middle of October or a warm weekend in April or May, the noise complaints are way down. And I think a lot of that comes from the program that the police setup where, or UMass setup the party smart system where you can provide your information and indicate that you're intending to have a gathering and if it does get out of hand the police will call you up and inform you that you need to quiet down. And I know my tenants use that I encourage them to use it. I see it as a very positive tool that the town provides and the university provides. And I'd really like to see more engagement in that fashion as opposed to this heavy handed approach of we're gonna have inspections you must submit to its inspections the fees will be submit substantially higher. And I really don't think that that approach is gonna get the community what it wants to get which is better quality of life. So I think one of the prior speakers indicated that they've requested information about inspections and safety problems and they haven't received that information from town hall. That would be useful information if it was available but from what I hear my take on all of this is that the ultimate goal is to improve quality of life in Amherst for the year on residents. And I don't see this program getting you to where you want to be. And I think you need to have buy-in from landlords students, the university, police department, fire department people need to be working together to achieve that goal. So that said, I do think that things have started to move in the right direction. I'll also say that the block parties that UMass has put on have been well received by my tenants. So yeah, education I really believe is the key here. And I would build my machine around that as opposed to forced inspections and creating possibly more friction between landlords, tenants and the community. So I thank you for allowing me a chance to speak and hopefully that's helpful information. Yeah, thanks very much. I'd like to go to Steve Walls actually. Steve, can you hear us? Steve, can you try speaking? Can you hear me? Go ahead, we'll try to understand you. It's a little garbled. Garbled. Steve Walls, I don't think I'm going to ask the truth. Can you hear that? Very, it's very broken up. Try again. Is that any better? A little bit, a little bit better. Steve Walls, I don't think I'm going to ask that. Do you want to, let's go to, let's go to Cinda Jones and maybe and then come back to Steve. Steve, you may have the same problem I did, just like I got unplugged. So can we do that? Can we go to Cinda, please? And then come back to Steve. Thank you. Hi guys. Thanks for having me. I live on Amity Street downtown and I have unruly student rental housing around me and I have unruly student rental houses that I am a landlord of in the Mill District, North Amherst. It's hard to control student behavior and we do so many things to do our best. We hire what I call mall cops, they're fake policemen who walk around and monitor the neighborhoods. We hire people to clean up on Sunday morning so there aren't red cups. We punish students when they misbehave. I hope there's a credit for doing as much as you can to stop bad behavior in the bylaw. I'm calling to ask us to think about the reasons why this came up. When I've lived here over 50 years off and on and downtown and when people move here it's shocking and hard to live between UMass and downtown and when I move back it was shocking and hard because students live near the university. There are goals said that are health safety and welfare providing clear expectations enforcing bylaws making rental houses safer and those are true but also there is a contingency that's pretty vocal in town that wants it to be unhospitable to convert more houses to rental houses and that's kind of behind the scenes one reason why this is happening to make it less profitable, less easy and maybe that's not the intent but I think it's behind some of this. I would like us to consider that houses are not nuisances that there are nuisance landlords and there are nuisance tenants and the bylaw needs to punish the nuisance landlords or tenants landlords change every few years 70% of rentals if they're student rentals change every year and we can't blame the house for the who's in it or who owns it so if we agree that the problem is student behavior and unsafe houses we should address these two things and I think some of this bylaw goes beyond those two things we need to stop allowing beer pong tables on front laws make it illegal to encourage honking with signs like you honk we drink we need to get the police to enforce underage drinking laws I looked last year and I believe there were zero off campus arrests change that and we fix the problem of student behavior just enforcing the bylaws we have will fix student behavior the unsafe houses when there's a complaint you absolutely or you see on the outside it's unsafe it's pretty obvious when there's an unsafe house and I applaud your efforts to make this community safer and quieter thank you. We lose Pam again? It looks like we lost both Pam and Pat. Well, I'm gonna call on Steve again if Steve Walzak your hands up. I'm trying again, I don't, can you hear me? This is much better, much better. Yeah, we can hear you. Steve Walzak Belcher Town, Massachusetts Buffton Village and the Amherst Landlords Association. I'd have an awful lot to say about this but I'm gonna just pick on two points to quickly hit me tonight. One thing that's been proven if you study towns who have passed stricter registration laws the actual number of people registering has gone down dramatically. What ends up happening is I respect to spend all that time trying to get people just to register not to comply. I hope you take that into consideration and take a look around do some homework. It's the town recently in New Hampshire had this happening. The other thing is I have a little contention about fees being high up to certain properties. I understand that fee is based commonly on the tax costs. Costs if they have one unit that could have 500 units. On a floor cut, it should be that permit for my tax cost, it's the exact same amount of work being done to make it a permit for the expatriate officers. The services are based on the actual service provided according to the law as I understand it. I wonder if you have any comments on the process? If you don't want to give out the process. Do you think that should be the service? Yeah, I would. Basically, a lot of disagreements with the entire biologics spoke to many of you separately about that list of issues and the actual complaints. We have not been hearing that. We're having trouble hearing you now. Okay, is this any better? Now it's a little better. So really, I think the issues that we provide to the town residents, some kind of study showing what these issues are, where the complaints have come from, what have they made up, are they all noise complaints, knocking complaints, that justify a massive program. Basically, where I am at this point, I'd like to see a little bit more of a situation. Sorry, the sound doesn't look good. Okay then, I'm done. I can't hear you now. Steve, it makes me feel like I'm being raised up. Steve, have you sat down twice for some reason? Do you think because we have so many panelists, that's affecting the connection? Yeah, I got thrown out. I don't know what happened. I don't know, too. Councillor, I think it goes with his hand up. Yes. I think first for Pat, I'm glad that you're thrown out, but you're safe and back. But I would want to say for Steve or for anyone else who is having difficulties with connection, if it's possible to send an email so that we don't misrepresent what you may have said or what we might have missed in what you had. And that would also be helpful for those who and not, or were not available during the time that you were speaking. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. That is a good point. I'm trying to pull up the attendees list. So it looks as though I would like to say that we have, we have made our way through much of the commentary that on this topic tonight. And we have a few minutes left. I think there are, I want to give the opportunity to members of the council, the committee here, to ask questions of folks in the audience and we can, if everyone could put their hands down in the audience. And if you would like to respond to a question that perhaps that we can bring you back in to talk back and forth a little bit about a particular item or a particular question. And people hear me because I feel like I'm in a time loop. Okay. So any questions from the council? I have a couple if you want me to put them in. Yeah, it's not really for anyone in particular but the landlord seemed to be extremely concerned about having their properties inspected outside of a self-inspection. And we heard comments of that one comment was the beliefs the ultimate goal is to improve the quality of life for year-round residents. We heard comments that well tenants can always just call the board of health. Yet when we did a survey of tenants, here are just a few of the comments that some tenants wrote about their properties that presumably had a self-certification that all laws, board of health codes, building codes and all of that were being followed. Cracks in a shower wall that no one will fix a problem. Black mold, mouse infestation in the air ducts, cracked windows, halls in the walls to the outside. Not a thing was done about it. Homes infested with cockroaches and spiders. State law constantly ignored. Heat broken three times in a single winter and no sense of urgency to get it repaired. Smoke detector in a basement stairwell broken for one to two months despite constant messages to the landlord. Black mold spilling out of a crack in a bathroom wall, mushrooms growing out of it. Two months, the maintenance, it took two months before a maintenance request was even responded to. The windows and doors don't close all the way. There is no installed heating source. The rental has not had running water for three days straight. A fear that if the residents file a complaint against their landlord, they will be retaliated against. So I want to ask the landlords, if residents fear retaliation, despite it being illegal to retaliate by calling the board of health, how would you write a bylaw to ensure that the regulations of the state health and safety regulations are being followed when it's clear from these comments that self-certification is not making that happen? Does anyone like to speak up on that? Or reply, Tom Crossman has a hand up. Pat Kamens and Steve Waldeck. Yeah, I'll be brief. I did, as you can imagine, I'm kind of a data guy and I do recognize that there was a response from a survey that was provided for the general public. The response was 80 people, I believe 80 tenants responded. And if we take into consideration our community has 5,500 plus rentals and maybe on average three residents per rental, we're looking at over 15,000 residents. And I don't feel that 80 people responding will be an adequate sample size of how our town behaves. I do acknowledge that there are some bad players that are out there, but I don't think that that represents the majority. I mean, testimonial from 80 residents out of 15,000 is less than 1%. So I don't think that's a large enough pool. It is kind of heartbreaking to hear some of those conditions and hopefully some of those conditions can get addressed as soon as possible, but I don't think that those particular situations represent how the housing stock is as a whole in the town of Amherst. So I do appreciate the gravity of the importance of those particular instances, but I don't think that's enough. I don't think that represents all the housing stock in Amherst. Patrick or Steve? I'll take a stab at trying to help Mandy. I agree, Tom, that that's a small portion of the tenants. But I also believe that most of the people that are very happy with their housing aren't gonna respond, right? I mean, if everything is perfect in their house, they're going to do nothing. They're not going to say, hey, my house is perfect. Everyone just expects the house to be perfect. But I think what you're missing, unfortunately, is you don't have to rewrite a bylaw. The state has specific state regulations in place that every community in the Commonwealth uses. It's the same playing field, same ideas, same procedures, same everything. And I don't understand why, because you're exactly right, man. There's no retaliation. We cannot retaliate. If the Board of Health comes in, we cannot retaliate. We can't raise rent. We can't evict them. I mean, I've been doing it long enough that I've seen tenants that actually call the Board of Health when there's nothing wrong just to avoid eviction. They haven't paid six months rent and they call the Board of Health in so they can avoid eviction. So you're exactly right. There is no way we retaliate. So the playing field is set for Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I guess what the counselors are struggling, or I guess what I'm struggling and why the counselors feel that Massachusetts has to have a higher standard than the rest of the community is an entire Commonwealth. If the standards are set, that's the playing field. We all follow it. We all know we have to follow it. Not sure why Amherst has to be at a higher standard. So I hope that helps a little what your question was. And I'm happy to, if you have a rebuttal question, I'm happy to answer that as well. Thanks, Patrick. Dan, am I allowed to talk? Steve, yes, please. I don't know if anyone's familiar and Rob should be, State Senator because it's just rewritten. One of the things that's going to be demanded and it's coming in leases and in postings is that people have to inform tenants of their rights to call the Board of Health. So something you're talking about is being addressed. It's being addressed on a statewide level as part of the State Senator's report. So we will have to adhere to that. So that is one thing that should alleviate some of tenants saying, well, we didn't know or we don't know because it has to be made public. Where'd that walk? Rob, can you hear me? Am I correct in my reading of that? Yes, that's correct. I agree with you, Steve. Okay. But that's just one point I want to make that, you know, will it make a dramatic difference? Not totally because some tenants just don't call but it will make a difference in some that are concerned. Thank you. Thanks very much. We have several more hands up here. I also want to, let's keep that question going but then also Jennifer, do you have a different question that people can respond to it in the same manner? I just wanted to respond to one of the comments about, you know, if we could target properties that are showing signs of deferred maintenance and Rob may want to speak with this as well, but we were told that we can't do that. We can't knock, the inspectors can't knock on the door of a house that looks like if it's show signs of delayed deferred maintenance or just looks dilapidated on the outside that that does not allow the inspectors to go in because it's their sense that there's deferred maintenance on the interior as well. And that's one reason how we arrived at the point of it being more systematic because we can't, that's the only way that you can inspect a house that one would assume based on how it looks on the outside is not up to health and is not code compliant on the inside. Is that correct, Rob? Yes, that's correct. If we were conducting visual inspections from the public way, saw things that appeared to be violations, we could attempt to contact the property owner and have those items dealt with but it does not give us any reason to request entry into the house or to conduct a thorough comprehensive inspection under the state sanitary code that's been referenced here so many times. It just wouldn't be appropriate to do that. Let's go to Renata Shepherd. Jennifer, you're muted. I'm sorry, go on Pam. I'll hold my comment. Renata? Hi, Renata Shepherd again from Justice Drive. I loved what John Kinch was said about education and if you cannot, yeah, you cannot just knock on a door just because it looks bad because maybe you have peeling paint on the outside but it's great on the inside. I think the idea would be really education. It works to avoid the appearance of impropriety of targeting the town has the means to inform every resident. Something should be sent to everybody in town. You have the emails, you have an on-call system, you have the mailings that go out. We get a water report. When you send something like this, send a page, something simple, it doesn't have to be complicated. It needs to be bullet points in maybe two or three different languages or with a QR code to translate in your preferred language or whatever, so it can reach everybody. It can reach cultures and different languages and it would be something like number one, if you're having a problem with your safety that is X, Y and Z, steps. First, contact your landlord. If you contact your landlord one or twice or three times or however many times, don't get there repaired or replaced or fixed. The next step is called the Board of Health. And that's where I guess the town, not only the Board of Health, but the inspectors or whatever would be engaged in answering to that complaint. Explain that they cannot be retaliated against for doing that because housing court is very favorable to tenants as everybody in this panel probably knows. And it does not have to be heavy-handed, complicated. It needs to be educational and it needs to reach everybody. And it will lead to punishment if things are not done but you need something simple, a one page with an explanation and saying that they won't be retaliated against because it's against the law and that they can reach that information in their language of choice. I'm a translator, so I guess it kind of comes naturally. I don't know, how about that? And that doesn't cost that much. Actual idea. Pat, you have your hand up. Yeah, thank you. I thought, I believe there were references to tenants' rights and education, providing them with information, the landlord providing them with educational information about what to do, where to complain, et cetera. I believe that's in the rental registration bylaw. The other thing is I wanna say to Ms. Shepherd, I agree with you with the discomfort that you have around item number six where you can lose a permit because of student behavior. So you're not alone in that concern. But I am still concerned irrespective of how small the percentage of respondents were because as a counselor I've received outside of that survey complaints from tenants. We have had in Amherst mid lease rent increases. We have had affordable units receiving mid lease rent increases. And luckily the tenant involved was able to confront the landlords and get that taken away. But we don't know about the other affordable units, whether that was true for them or not. We have a young woman who at the end of her lease period was denied her security deposit by a management company here in Amherst because there was something wrong with her kitchen. And the photograph that they used to prove that there was something wrong in her kitchen was a different kitchen. It was not hers. It was a manipulation by the management company. So we're getting complaints from tenants. We have had countless students in casual conversations talk about the threats that they get from landlords. Or if the landlord says, if this doesn't work, I've tried to deal with this mold twice. If this doesn't work, then forget it. I'm not gonna do it. Then I'm not gonna do anything else. So to downplay renters complaints makes me very uncomfortable. It is not a system where a tenant who is threatened feels safe to call or contact. And the education piece is absolutely important. But we need to really look at what's needed. It complaint-driven inspections don't necessarily work. And self-certification does not work. I wouldn't want to have people self-certify their ability to drive a car. So we need to find a way to compromise on some of this instead of just threatening lawsuits, et cetera, et cetera. Thanks, Pat. I'm gonna add a question. Jennifer, you had your hand up earlier, but if you wanted to repeat it. One of my questions that has struck me a number of times is I've heard from now a number of places that it would be illegal to require a mandate of inspection. And yet in speaking to some of the landlords here, they told us that they, in fact, do their own annual inspections. So it can't be the inspection itself that's illegal because it's already occurring on their own time and in their own manner and reaching out to their tenants in whatever fashion that they do. So it keeps striking me as not based in actual occurrence. And I wouldn't mind hearing from a couple of folks on that topic and also on the education. So follow up to the two folks that have talked about education just given the number of, I think when we think of what I, excuse me, I'll use myself, but I think of a long-term resident or someone who is working at a job and lives in the community, hopefully for them, they get to live and work at that job for a couple of years. So reaching out with some information, perhaps on an annual basis might help, but when we have the, we have to determine the actual number of off-campus students, but from that latest information, roughly 8,900 students live in the 01002 area. That is a group that literally moves and transitions every two and three years from place to place. So seeking help on working on education of that particular population would be extremely helpful. So I'm gonna call on Michael Urkalini again, and then Mr. St. Holler to respond to any of those questions. Yeah, so I just wanted to respond to the previous point first. Aside from the anecdotal instances of complaints from students, just by the numbers, you're talking about 80 complaints out of about 5,500 rentals, I believe it is, which is less than 1%. And you're effectively, you're suggesting a program that would cover 100% of cases in order to target 1%, which is, by any stretches, is going to be an effective in just targeting those instances where you have a problem. You're gonna be far less effective in doing it, in fact, because you're trying to hit all 100% of the units in town. As far as the other instances go, that you've said that there's been a change, mid lease of the rent and increase, there's been a refusal to return the security deposit, and a lot of the other issues that you've raised about habitability, those are all covered by Massachusetts law. Neither of those practices is permissible under Massachusetts law, which would be an issue for housing court. You cannot change the rent in mid lease, you cannot demand more than the security deposit and the first month's rent, and you cannot refuse to withhold a security deposit at the end of the lease, unreasonably. That's an issue that I assume that the board is not trying to preempt Massachusetts law on. In addition, the habitability issues that you've raised about mold, all of those things are part of the warranty of habitability. There's a warranty of quiet enjoyment, which every tenant in Massachusetts is entitled to. And if a landlord is not fulfilling their duties on that, a tenant is within their rights to withhold rent for refusal to do so. And that's going to be an issue for housing court to determine. And I again, would stress that I don't think the board is trying to preempt Massachusetts law on those issues. As far as the inspections go, the difference between an inspection by the landlord, and I will just note that a lot of these landlords are subject to federal regulations. And they're regularly inspected by HUD, by other bodies, and they receive a federal grade. And many of these properties received 90 and above for their units. And there's no discretion, well there's discretion now on those inspections, whether if you pass a HUD inspection, now the board has the inspector now has the discretion to decide whether you're subject to the bylaw. It didn't used to be that way in 2013, if you passed your federal regulation, you were fine. And so again, I hope we're not trying to preempt those laws, but the difference between a municipal inspection and an inspection by the landlord themselves, it's a big difference because you can do those during a vacancy if you're a landlord, if it's a municipality doing it, and they're telling you that they're gonna show up within 24 hours, and you really don't have the ability to refuse to consent, except you can sign a declaration and a sworn affidavit that you're refusing to consent, which most people are gonna be loath to do. There's a big difference between those two. The municipality has different abilities with respect to the property as the landlords do, and the landlords can opt to do it during the vacancy. They have a lot more flexibility to do so. So that's what I'd say about that. If you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer it. Alan St. Hilaire, please. And then we, I think, I'm looking at my watch, it's past 830, and I think this is a good place to end. So I'd like to hear from Mr. St. Hilaire, please. Thanks very much, Mr. Chair. One quick thing I wanted to touch on that's a little bit off topic, but relevant to the first thing that was brought up. The very first bullet point under the overview and purpose mentions that the current rental registration bylaw is voluntary. My understanding is that is not true. When that first came out in 2013, the building commissioner and his inspectors were writing letters to any and all property owners in Amherst that did not have their mailing address at the property demanding they comply with the rental registration. And we also get yearly renewal notifications that it's time to pay the fee and renew online. So I just wanted to illustrate the fact that that is in fact very much mandatory. Jumping back to Ms. Henneke's question, it's unfortunate that the survey for the CRC committee was the way these issues were brought to light by the tenants. And I do think this reflects back to the need for education both of the tenants and of the landlords. There was a point made earlier that small landlords may not have the tools or the education available to them. And I do believe that that needs to take place. If they don't have the experience, if they bought a property and were given the set of keys, they don't understand management. They may not understand mass law. They may not understand the sanitary code. They may not understand the legal rights, security deposit law, et cetera. So perhaps along the same vein of education, something could be made available and required as part of either the current bylaw or any proposed revision is that first time landlords pass some sort of an online education that just gives them and I think this is also reverberating what Renata said, a few bullet points. This is what you need to do. This is what the laws are. This is what you need to tell your tenants. This is what you can and can't do. And if you need more information, here's some links to all of that material. As property managers and rental agents, we have state mandated licensing qualifications and continuing education requirements to do that. So there should be some requirement for the small landlords and perhaps some of the less educated and underperforming landlords to have that information available to them. One other thing I just wanna put out there is in addition to access to all the laws that the council mentioned, the UMass students have access to free legal representation through UMass legal services. So that is another way of they can protect themselves from retaliation, from improper handling of security deposits, from violations of state laws, whether it be safe and healthy living or the financial through their security deposit rents, et cetera. Thanks very much for allowing me this additional time. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. I see John Kinslow's hand. Did you have any final words? Trying to get him. We've had a really good discussion tonight. I think I have learned some things and I appreciate the time that everyone has put into this. I, again, am completely disappointed in the activity at the beginning of the meeting and I will give some thought as chair to how on earth we can try to prevent that kind of activity from ever occurring again. I think at this point, we have covered our items, I'm going to wrap up the action items. We've done minutes. Are there any announcements? Next agenda preview, the two items that we had as a rough target anyway, were nuisance by-law and solar by-law. And right now we do not have any information on solar by- Let me just bring this down a little bit. John Kinslow is trying to speak. I think we just cut it off. John. Hi, sorry, I don't know how to run this thing. I'll let you finish up the meeting and I can put my comments in a written form. That would be appreciated. And actually, thank you for that note. I was going to say if people have other comments that they would like to send to us, please do. They can send it to each of us as counselors. They can send it to myself as the chair and it will be distributed. But really appreciate all the time and energy and focus with folks tonight. Thanks. And you could just move John Kinslow back into the audience. So next agenda preview, the items that we have nuisance by-law and solar by-law. I haven't received anything on the solar by-law yet in terms of beyond waiting to actually get a chance to talk to staff and find out if there's a method to madness to kind of work through all of the departments that the CRC is tasked with meeting with and getting input from. Sounds like we need to put ZBA on the agenda again because we would like to make some progress on that. Anything else? And the rental by-law? Will that? And rental by-law, of course. Yep. Andy has her hand raised. Or did? I can't see it. Andy, do you have your hand up? Jennifer covered it. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Pat. I have no items that were not anticipated. 28 hours advance. I would like to adjourn the meeting. It is 8.43 and I'm sorry we went over the 8.30 mark. We'll try to keep it within the two hours in the future. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.