 Welcome, Lindsay. Hi, how are you? Good. You're all set. Have a good one, everyone. Thank you, Athena. Let me know when you're ready, Lindsay. Okay, thanks. Sorry, I have a meeting at one right before this. So I try and get out, but I am ready. Okay. I didn't want to start when you weren't. Welcome Ben. Hello. Hi there. Hi, Shalini. It was nice staying up late with everyone last night. Thank you for enduring Ben. I'm impressed you guys are able to stay, stay sane through all that and still kind of process all the important decisions you're making. Yep. So I think we have everyone here. We're waiting on Rob. And Dave. Yeah. We've got about five, 10 minutes till we'll get to zoning. Because we're going to do minutes first, but if you want to check on that, Christine, that would be fine. Okay. I am, I don't, I need to leave around three. Just so you know, and. If I'm still sharing my screen or anything, I might, maybe I'll just email it to someone. Yeah, that, that'll work. Okay. I'm hoping to be done the zoning portion by then. So that should work well. So let's get started. So it is two oh two in the afternoon and I am calling this. November 17, 2020. Meeting of the community resources committee to order. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, and I'm hoping that the meeting is being recorded for future broadcast and any votes we take will be by roll call. At this time, I'll call on each committee member by name to confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Shawnee Balmille. Present. Mandy. Joe Hanneke is present. Evan Ross. Steve Shriver. Present. And Sarah Swartz. Present. Thank you. And we will, we have some guests that will introduce as we get to those items. I switched our agenda order around a little bit today. To try some stuff out and we'll see how it goes. We're going to start with minutes. There are three sets of minutes on the agenda. We only have two of them. October 13 and October 27. Okay. I put in the packet the original minutes I received and also revisions. The revisions are very basic. I am going to share my revisions for the October 13th minutes. So people can see him. It was correcting the name of the committee. And then that might have been the only thing on it. Hold on. That I think was the only thing on the October 13th minutes that was correct. I don't have any revisions for the October 13 minutes. I am seeing none. I'm going to stop the share of that one and share the October 27 minutes. Because again, I was correcting the name of the committee. And then. I'm not sure what the formatting was. I added. And then I added to the end of the paragraph on section a, that Shriver mentioned the practice and other cities of posting a sign at the location subject to an application for a use permit. As we were talking about article 14. I corrected a Scrivener error error down here. The word in should be is. And then the only other thing was the hyphen in 90 day. Another of two or. And I think I changed if to weather. Down here in section C. And that was it. Are there any other requested changes of the October 27 minutes? Seeing none. I will make the motion to accept. Okay. Let me get to the right screen here to accept the minutes of October 13, 20, 20 and October 27, 20, 20 as amended. Is there a second. Second. Evan seconds. Thank you, Evan. Any discussion. Seeing none. I'll go through roll call. We start with me. I am a yay. And then we go to Evan. Yes. Steve. Thank you. And Shawnee. Yes, those are unanimously adopted. That takes us to our presentation and discussion items, which our first item is zoning priorities. This is where Ben gets to, to, I think, share his screen. The goal with these discussions before we've been share his screen and welcome Rob. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And building inspector and. Ben breaker planner here with us for these discussions today. The goal for our committee, I believe, is to come up with priorities that we can then take to the council for, I guess, council action. To then be able to inform the planning department of. Priorities outside of their own priorities. And that's where we're going to be. I think that's a wonderful spreadsheet. Ben has created and modified after our conversation next week. And I'm hoping that within the next. Two meetings. Our next meeting is December 1st. We might be able to have something that we can take to the council for discussion at potentially the December 7th council meeting. About potential priorities. So I think that's where we need to be thinking we're going to be thinking. I think that's where we need to be thinking. I think that's where we need to be thinking. And this is Ben. Right now in terms of sharing screen enough. Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll get up the, the matrix on the screen here. And. Chris, how would you like to do this? I can kind of just run through the. Feedback from last week's meeting and the changes I made. That's on. Why don't you do that? And then we can. Kind of. Changes to the actual like numbers and, you know, language within the. Cells here. So like, you know, I had taken notes, you know, people wanted to see, you know, small impact changes to large or to medium for some things or, you know. Adding some time to, so there's little changes I made. But only a few, but the, the bigger changes I made were. Adding two columns, I believe we're, you know, one thing was a clarification on, you know, some of the changes that are made. Are to zoning items that are waveable, such as like the parking bylaw is something that can, the requirements of that can be waived. Whereas other things are, you know, you put that in the bylaw and it's kind of like a change and not something that can be waived. So I thought. Parking bylaw and maybe sign by a lot where the two. That's it under that category where, you know, the permit granting authority has the. Can wave some of the requirements of that. And then. The second column I added was the. The second column I added was the planning department. And some, someone mentioned, you know, it might not be important town wide, but it's something that's in turn internally important to the planning department. And I think really the, the two items about recoding the bylaw and reviewing the bylaw where. I guess they should say hi as well. Yeah. So these two items were important to the planning department and I think that. Everything else we proposed isn't important, but just that these are uniquely important to the planning department. And then secondly, or I guess thirdly, I. Reformatted the columns. You might notice there's more colors this time. Hopefully that doesn't make it more complicated, but this is now done by topic as opposed to by. The zoning items. So, you know, previously it was all the planning department items, all the planning board items, and then all the town council items. But I also had this column all the way to the right that talked about whether it was a priority that was shared by another body. And so. The way I organized it now is basically. Grouping those together. So if, if two or three. Different bodies propose that zoning item that I put them together. And you know, the language is slightly different, but they are generally the same kind of concept. You know, so this is. Zoning, you know, bylaw review and recodification. This is parking bylaws. These three all have to do with housing development, you know, increasing density and unlocking. Development. This is apartment and mixed use. Regulations. You know, the planning board had a general. Item of improving downtown zoning and then town council. Three counselors said, you know, Doing something around the BG district setbacks. So I kind of group those together. And then the remainder are all kind of standalone items that I didn't think. Fit neatly grouped with another item. And so I think. You know, there's certainly some discussion like, you know, BL district. Relates to downtown zoning as well. Maybe that could go in there. You know, form based code or design guidelines for downtown. That could, you know, be grouped there as well. So. This was just the first, first go at it. And I'm certainly open to. Any feedback, you know, the. My goal for this isn't to just like, you know, fixate on the structure of the table itself. But this is, you know, meant to be a tool for everyone to use to help organize thoughts and you know, priorities. So that's how I see, see this being used. Thank you, Ben. Christine, it looks like you've got your hand up. I wasn't fast enough to raise it in. I think we didn't get very far in looking at this chart as a whole. Last time we got through the first portion, which was the planning department. Priorities. And I don't know if we got through planning board priorities and we didn't get into town council priorities. So maybe we should start at the top and review it. Just, you know, line by line again. What do you think about that? I think we could. I'm not sure. I guess I would leave it to the committee to see if they need a line by line reviewer. If they haven't done that. I'm not sure I guess I would leave it to the committee to see if they need a line by line reviewer. If they have an idea of what each of these is referring to. There might be some that we actually do need a review of. But if we're looking at the top here, the blue, the comprehensive review and recodification we talked about last week. Parking bylaws. We would have talked about last week because it's under planning department. I don't know whether we got to housing. And increased density at all. Last week. You know, I think we talked about. Yeah. Buildings. Last week. I'm just looking at the things that have PD next to it. Most of that we talked about. We talked about. We talked about. We talked about. We talked about. Flood Mac demo delay inclusionary zoning. We could talk about, you know, I think the one thing I would like to talk about is the yellow and the gray actually, the improving downtown zoning and the need for housing. Cause as. Ben mentioned, I saw some of the white things that could go into some of those and that related. And I know I have some questions about how they relate and would they be done at the same time type thing. But I'm not sure that I would like to talk about that. But I think we should start unless I see any hands from committee, I'm going to suggest we start talking about the yellow section need for housing. The way the planning department worded it was need for housing and increased density planning board said unlock housing development and increased diversity. Housing stock and the town council summarized it as. Expand the types of housing permitted in town, both by location and permit type. So. Do you summarize, you know, sort of what. Falls under those categories in terms of zoning changes. Well, certainly. The upcoming topic that we're going to tackle later in the meeting. 40 are would be part of. Need for housing and increased density. And that provides us a way of. Getting more housing units per acre. And. Therefore increased density. There are also other. Things that we would like to do such as redo the zoning. If, if. Whether or not 40 hours adopted. I think we should redo the zoning in the BL zoning district, especially the BL zoning district that a butts downtown. Because currently there isn't really a possibility for. A lot of those areas at all. The lot area requirement per dwelling unit is too high. And so that really needs to be looked at. And that would provide us with places where we could. Create denser housing. In and around the downtown area. I think unlocking housing development and increasing diversity of housing stock. That was really. Something that the planning board talked about. And partially. Instigated by Maria Chow, who's an architect and she's done a lot of research and different kinds of housing that's possible. And she brought to the housing to the planning. Zoning subcommittee actually. Of the planning board. Kind of a study showing how. We could get. In terms of. Density and also high density in the terms of. Things being closer to one another, but also in terms of height and number of dwelling units that could be contained in a building. Could get progressively greater as you move towards the center of town towards the edge of town or in the. Outlying neighborhoods. Those places would. Possibly remain either one or two family houses. Or two. Or two. She did talk to the. Zoning subcommittee. About allowing duplexes. In, in the, some of the residential zoning districts like. Particularly the R N. And I believe in the R G, there are two different types of duplexes. There's the owner occupied duplex and there's a non owner occupied duplex. And that's where the owner is. And that's where the owner is occupied. And then there's the area for. Permit requirements. So. Kind of trying to make it easier for people to. Own a duplex. Certainly in terms of an owner. Living there. It's, it's kind of a win-win because the owner can. Gain income from the other unit to support. The house as a whole. that the planning board and the zoning subcommittee were looking at and increasing the diversity of housing stock I think you know the town has gone a long way doing that and one of the ways they've done it is to allow accessory dwelling units particularly ones that are built out in the yard it used to be that an accessory dwelling unit really needed to be part of the existing house but now we're allowing them to be out in the yard and that's something that there's there's a project that's coming before the zoning board of appeals about that right now um so there are a number of different ways to unlock um housing development but those are some of them and then expand the types of housing permitted in town both by location and permit well that's kind of what I've just been talking about the different types of housing that might be located in town um there's also the possibility and you know we haven't really talked much about this before at all but um triple deckers are really popular in the Boston area and you really don't see very many triple deckers out here um or three family houses and again that's a way for a person to own a house and rent two units but still live in the house and be able to control what goes on so that's an example of different types of housing that can be permitted in different places right now we would allow um three family houses I believe only in the RG and the BG and the BL if you can get enough land area but they wouldn't be allowed in um RN or any of the outline residential districts um they would be allowed in some of the village centers and the neighborhood residential zone but um just you know thinking more more expansively about types of housing that might be appropriate in different places I think our zoning was primarily written back in the 70s when people were very afraid of density and they were afraid of UMass expanding and afraid of all the new developments that were being built many of our existing apartment complexes were built back in the 70s and so um later on in that decade the town really put the brakes on different kinds of housing that could be allowed in different areas of town so it's just a an effort to be more open-minded and and more expansive about um possibilities but at the same time um maintaining our open space and I think that's something that we really want to keep in mind because we have you know beautiful swaths of open space throughout town and we don't want um we don't want Amherst to be developed the same way some of the near in suburbs around Boston are developed or the same way that Long Island is developed or northern New Jersey we want it to remain a community that has a lot of open space but we need to think about places where we can put housing where it makes sense where it's near services and transportation and so you know that's kind of what all of these three ways of phrasing this one topic mean and I'm sure that others in in your group particularly Steve Shriver has a lot of ideas about this being an architect so we can talk more about that if you'd like at this time or go on to the next thing. Are there any questions or comments on this particular item on this list the housing density housing types and locations and all before we move on? Just open comments or yeah okay yeah so actually really interesting Chris and Ben but um you know housing density is a really tricky one particularly when you have an established community and the housing that or the Amherst isn't a red hot housing market so it's not a place where people tear down housing and try to redevelop so that's not a phenomenon that's really happened here in to my knowledge ever so um so a lot of the goals are really incremental like the triple decor is converted dwellings you know all the tools that exist now the fastest way to housing density and to increasing new housing is to allow multi-family so the incremental housing on individual lots is each lot is a struggle right and the yield for that is limited but the yeah so the best way to increase the housing stock is to in my opinion is to look at multi-family more than three units on basically on brown fields on sites that are underdeveloped. Excuse me um Jack Gemsick would like to attend the meeting and I wonder if Athena could send him a link to the meeting um or if someone could send Jack Gemsick a link to the meeting. Let me see what I can do as host I'm not sure if it should be on the town calendar right yeah if he can just join the attendee does he have the link for the attendee because I can send that to him you send that to him yeah okay um thank you Steve while I'm doing that Evan you had a comment yeah um so the that sort of um suite of options that Chris just talked about are probably my biggest priority so I guess yeah there's a broader question here there's more for the committee about what does it look like for us to recommend priorities because all of these are broad enough that Chris just listed a whole host of things that could be considered increased housing and density but so a couple things um one is that you know some of the things she mentioned I think are probably easier to do both technically in that it's just it they're fairly they're easier to write the actual bylaw itself and I think also would be easier in terms of less controversial so so for example you know I've been talking about duplexes and allowing them by right in all residential units and even folks who um let's say historically have not been the biggest fan of my positions on density and development have been in favor of making it easier to do duplexes and so even within these broad categories there's there's stuff that still seems to me low hanging fruit and I'm wondering just how we sort of tease those out the other aspect I think is correcting things and I this is I guess a part of response to to Steve's comment um which is that there's not a lot of houses being um torn down and rebuilt which is which is true the other reality is half the stuff that I'm interested in if you did tear it down you couldn't even rebuild what's there right and so you know I was looking when we were looking when I was doing um all of my reading for the 40R I was looking at the Kellogg Smith Street neighborhood which is RG basic minimum lot area in our regulations 12,000 square feet and I think there's only one house in that neighborhood that actually meets the current lot area of our zoning and so there's an aspect of yeah we're not a market where people are tearing things down and rebuilding but even if we ever became one they literally couldn't even rebuild what is there now in many of these places in that neighborhood on Shumway on north and south and so one of the things I'd also like to see us do is is even if we don't think that this is going to be there's going to be a lot of tearing down and rebuilding I still think we need zoning regulations that make sense right and so part of it is to me is also fixing things and to me if we have neighborhoods that we like I really like the Kellogg and Smith Street I think it's a great example of a it's a neighborhood feel it's residential but it is actually fairly dense and it's right on the outskirts of downtown if we like that we should have our zoning actually reflect that which right now we don't thank you for that I think I just we're working together here Evan pull over your hand Christine I just wanted to mention a new way that we're kind of looking at the zoning bylaw and existing developments and I think this has been new in the last five years or so that there are developments in town that were built in the 70s and some of the larger apartment complexes and those are all non-conforming uses in there for the most part non-conforming uses in their zoning districts and previously we had thought we needed to come up with a new type of zoning to deal with those apartment complexes but it turns out that we've had some pretty ingenious developers and working together with Rob Mara building commissioner we've realized that since these places are already non-conforming that you can take advantage of a certain section of the zoning bylaw section 9.22 and developers can expand their already non-conforming developments via a special permit from the zoning board of appeals and this has already happened in the case of presidential apartments which added 54 apartment units I think they built either six or nine buildings towards the back of the property part of the property that hadn't been developed previously but they were really able to add you know a substantial amount of units there along with six affordable units because they were required to have a special permit so since then other owners of large developments like that I think south point was one of them have come to us with the same idea and south point it's either south point or the boulders I can't remember which one but is also adding a building and I think the building has 47 units so that's an interesting way of developing property in already developed areas adding to the housing stock and you know adding pretty substantially 54 units in one place and 47 in another and both required the inclusion of affordable units. Thank you for that I'm going to take a chance to comment with some comments similar to Evan I was struck I don't know what meeting it was when Steve said the neighborhood he lives in couldn't be built today and I went why because that's one of the favorite neighborhoods you know it's one of the ones that's always pointed to as a great neighborhood houses are close together it's slightly you know houses are slightly smaller than what are being built now it's walkable it's close to town and all I kept thinking was why is our RG requires such a large lot like that the residential general is supposed to be our densest residential why is it so large of a lot that's required and so to answer Evan's question as we come up with these priorities I think these discussions are what help us figure out what within need for housing we would be concentrating on if that's what we say is the next priority you know that that's what we want our zoning to concentrate on or the next revisions to concentrate on would be say the yellow section on this one housing a density types of location and part of that I think could include we could go in and say you know expand where things are built but also correct you know find the neighborhoods we like and figure out how to write the zoning that matches that in a sense like that type of thing so that's sort of where I am with priorities of I think we have larger subjects here some of them are very specific some are not but we need to figure out through these conversations which ones are the council's higher priority over some other ones even if some are somewhat quick maybe and and then go from there I also think we're going my plan is to split it between those that require consultants and those that not particularly with the ones that require consultants let's rank which ones we'd like to see worked on first we have a limited pot of money right now which ones the higher priority to give some guidance to the the planning department so Steve yeah we're not trying to solve the problems now so back to my own neighborhood so RG it's one of the issues was that it was large it was 100% laid out prior to zoning and so it was laid out based on some system that who knows what normally I think somebody on land they divided it in quarters and gave it to their their kids or whatever so there's a lot of odd lot sizes but there are lots right near my house that are 195 feet frontage which is a significant amount and much larger than needed in RG but that can't be split because it would it's not possible to split somebody that's 195 feet into two rods in RG you can do a five lot but you can't do a two frontage rods so I think that those things are worth looking at in particular when you're close so there's no provision because of the table three there's no provision for pretty close unless you have the asterisk you have the foot node so like somebody with 99 like literally 99 feet of frontage 198 foot watt they can't split that into two 99 foot rods because they miss by a foot but an asterisk or foot node would allow that to happen without going through the variance process which is a very expensive and likely to fail us. Thank you Shalini. Yeah I was just curious how many zoning projects can planning department staff take on at the same time I understand different projects involve different amount of work but just generally how many projects can you be working on at the same time? Christine I know your hand was up before that question but so you could say what you were going to say and then if you could try and answer the question. I wanted to slip in the fact that Jack Gempsick is waiting in the wings and if you wanted to you could turn him into a panelist and that would be great because then the planning board would know a lot more about what you're saying so what did you just say Shalini? I was asking how many zoning changes can the planning department staff handle at the same time? I would say one at a time is easy but much more than that is difficult particularly since we have a lot of other things going on but we do have an intention to work our way slowly through the bylaw to make a lot of changes and eventually make them all at the same time so it's challenging to work on multiple zoning changes simultaneously but we can try to see how far we get. I mean this makes it even more important for us to be really sure about where we want to start because each project takes six to 12 months and so yeah so that was helpful thank you. I just want to announce that I have moved the chair of the planning board into the meeting as a panelist. Welcome Jack we are discussing sort of this wonderful spreadsheet that Ben has created and we're trying to talk about some of them in terms of potential priorities for the council and any recommendations we might have for the council as a whole. We're in the middle of housing right now Christine. So I wanted to make one more comment which has to do with the fact that Amherst is a university town and so one of the issues we face constantly is developers who want to develop housing for students and we had a proposal at one point I don't know five or ten years ago to make it easier to develop property in the RG zoning district and at that time there were developers purchasing properties particularly in the RG in the Lincoln Sunset area but and I don't know if they did it in the High Street area but what was happening is they would buy a property and either build a single family house or buy a single family house and then they would turn it into a duplex and they would rent it out so I think that we have to go into this notion of making RG easier to develop and potentially more dense we have to go into that with our eyes open that there will be developers who want to develop the properties not for people to not for families to live here and send their kids to school or whatever but for the purpose of renting them to students and I'm not saying good bad or indifferent about that but I think that's something that people have to be realistic about and so and the other part of that is that when developers build houses and this did happen in the Lincoln Sunset area they don't consider aesthetics what they consider is how can I get a house up quickly and rent it out quickly so you end up with houses that are from the home store and just sort of plopped down on a site and that's not really the kind of development that we want so we have to think about well how can we create design standards or form-based code or something that at least gives us the physical form that we want I'm not sure that we can do a lot to control who lives there but in any event those are just issues that come up when you talk about densifying the RG. Before I recognize Jack that brought up a question I have which is when looking at this list a lot of the stuff as you've said before is interconnected and so you know there's things that we have as priorities but something like design guidelines which is on this list down there more than 12 months and consultant required is that something that goes hand in hand with some of the things we've been talking about about unlocking housing with something you just said is that something that the planning department would think or recommend goes hand in hand with something like that whereas you know if you're going to unlock and sort of change an RG density requirement to allow it to be more dense or to add all of those housing types that you'd recommend doing it only after form-based code or design guidelines are in place or is you know to be able to control it more or is that sort of ordering not necessarily something you'd recommend Christine. So I think that if we're if we're focusing on one area say the RG zoning district we might be able to tackle design guidelines at the same time that we're looking at zoning for that particular district I think that when we said that form-based code was going to take more than 12 months and require a consultant we were considering the fact that maybe we're considering all the downtown and all the village centers and you know wherever development might occur so you know if we're more focused and only considering the RG we might be able to come up with some design guidelines that would make it possible to densify and expand in the RG and incorporate design guidelines for that particular area of town. Thank you. Thank you. Jack you have your hand raised. I just on the subject of the lot size I wanted to go back to that a little bit and I think that the only reason other than you know architectural for you know limitations and lot size are if you have you know septic or on-site you know private well those things they require space but other other than that I don't I don't know that there would be any reason to restrict you know to restrict you know the lot size or frontage sort of thing it kind of but if if we were in an area of Amherst that did not have water and sewer there you know you got to start thinking about area because you need you need to be able to have you know adequate distance between the different septic systems and the wells and things like that so I just wanted to bring that out from like kind of a point you know from my background anyway you know from you know groundwater perspective that's that's that's why there's large lots you know in some rural areas but I don't see that there's any reason for a lot to be a specific size other than you know from architectural or other you know perspective so I just I just want to add that thank you um I see two more hands I'd like to get move our discussion on to the downtown zoning bg bl that sort of footnote a all of that soon but um so so Evan and Steve Evan first then Steve and then we're going to move on to the gray and white sections of this chart yeah so um just just to throw this in there because we sort of uh coalesce this discussion around the rg um you know on top of that I think they're they're probably also a conversation to be had about the boundaries of the rg um and so when we're talking about lot sizes and reducing lot sizes you know maybe it doesn't make sense for Lincoln and Sunset to have significantly smaller lot sizes and so maybe there's a conversation about well do Lincoln and Sunset really belong in the RN as opposed to the rg um and it's sort of on the opposite side of that if you look at say a lot of um Blue Hills and some of Dana you know they might actually make more sense in the rg than in the RN because some of those lot sizes meet the requirements of the current rg but don't meet the requirements of the current RN even though they're in the RN and so just I think it's a conversation about lot sizes within the rg but I think that conversation also needs to include um it are the boundaries of the rg what we think they should be at this point thank you Steve yeah so there are so part of density is the built environment but part of density are the actual humans that live there so there's surprisingly number of humans that live in the rg at least my part of the rg despite the fact that there's large lot sizes and that's in part because of some of the Amherst zoning or pre-zoning that has allowed conversion of big houses to multifamily and or allowed accessory apartments so despite the fact that looks like it's not dense it actually is dense in terms of people that live here so that calculation also needs to come in to you know as we go through this that calculation also needs to be considered so the other thing is that um many humans that live in Amherst have cars and dealing with the cars is the vaccine problem and it is one of the drivers of lot size because cars are normally have to be accommodated off street we can we can certainly question that but in particular we don't want Amherst has been good about as you know especially in the downtown areas not allowing cars to be parked in front of single family houses or duplexes or whatever so they're I don't know if it's where it is in the zoning but typically they have to be parked to the side or behind and so the one way to get to really narrow lot sizes to allow parking in front or that completely changes the aesthetic so some of this we have to be very cognitive of we have not grown up as a community with alleys alleys solve a lot because then parking and service can all be handled from the back but we don't have any alleys in Amherst so that also creates a complexity here thank you I'd like to move on to the gray and parts of the white last week we talked about demolition delay flood maps I think we skipped inclusionary zoning I'm not sure and sign but I guess one of the questions I have you know I think we understand what improves downtown zoning and BG district setbacks and all mean this goes to what Ben was mentioning earlier I look at the gray and I ask does footnote a do bl district requirements belong into that gray section especially the bl district requirements because that's a sort of in my mind an essential part of the downtown zoning is the bl thing and so you know when the planning board and maybe this is good that jack's here when the planning board talks about quote improved downtown zoning is it talking about bl bg the setbacks that we have here is it a footnote a thing um you know is it form-based code you know what what is it um christine or jack I'd say it's all of those things um particularly the bl and I think that could be potentially moved up to be closer to some of these other things improved downtown zoning and the housing business because that's really what it's all about is trying to get more housing into the bl zoning district and you know many people want to view the bl as a transition zone from downtown to the rg and the outlying areas but it isn't really I mean physically it is a transition zone but in terms of its zoning the text of the zoning bylaw it isn't a transition zone it's more like a highway strip zone um so that really needs to be addressed if we want to be able to identify housing in the in the downtown area what was the other thing you mentioned not a footnote a really applies all over town um it's a mechanism by which someone who wants to develop a property can ask to have a certain dimensional requirement waived and if you look at the dimensional table you'll see um footnote a either in a in a whole category of things like front yard setbacks I'm just pulling things out of the air I don't know if it really does apply to front yard setbacks I think it does but anyway um or it could apply to a specific thing like height in the bg district so um it's something that allows developers to um if they can't quite get it right within the box that they're allowed to build they can ask for um you know a dispensation to be allowed to build something closer to a property line or taller and in the case of we just had a case of this recently which didn't have anything to do with housing it was the embers media building which asked for a footnote a modification um for its front yard setback in order to be able to fit their building in the area that was designated um as appropriate by the local historic district commission so footnote a applies to all different kinds of things it's not specific to housing thank you jack do you have anything to add about the planning boards um priority for improving downtown zoning well we're going to discuss uh the 40 r proposal which is again a downtown focus uh tomorrow night um but I mean for me um you know the the bl zone really bothers me uh for the same reason that you know Steve Schreiber wouldn't be able to build his house you know in kind but anyway it just it's so broken and and I'm just I'm just wondering um if 40 r um is going to help uh in in in a somewhat ever expedited manner um for for the downtown because I'm really concerned about the timeline of ours of the the zoning bylaw changes and and what we're we're faced you know as a as a town uh with covid and things like that and and for me um that 40 r is an overlay and it just seems like it kind of smooths out the the huge problem we have with the bl because most of the 40 r yeah uh has that you know uh bl overlay as long as well as some other the general business as well but um okay yeah I think you know and I really appreciate some of Evan's comments um from the last town council meeting with regard to you know uh comments with regard to that are against densification or building height and things like that because it just that that structural racism I think was the term um correct me if I'm wrong Evan um but I think those are things that we need to and then and then affordability I think you create these buildings and and and and then if nobody can afford the rents you know that's that's a problem so we really uh I mean I know like Amber's copy just moved out you know they're unhandling now you know it's kind of I know the owner there pretty well but we have you know a lot a lot to think about with regard to how to make you know make things work and but I'd be very interested in the CRC's perspective in terms of the realistic timeline for zoning changes um because I just feel like it's a tough it's a it's a going to be a tough road and I I'm just wondering what your thoughts are if a 40 hour overlay would expedite um at least that zoning aspect versus the entire redo yep so we'll be talking about that in the next hour starting around three o'clock okay here specifically um I think now it's time we've sort of talked in brief about most of the stuff on here I know we haven't covered it all um but I I want to pivot to the ones that are marked consultant and I think there are four of them on this chart we saw three of them there um parking is up there and then the other three are sign by law design guidelines and climate action goals into the permitting standards and other zoning requirements and so I you know we have a pot of money already um you know budgeted for some sort of planning consultant um I don't know whether it's specific to downtown um or specific to us you know a part of the planning but I think it's probably general enough to maybe cover at least three or four of these and so I'm I'd like to hear from the committee of those four which one would be their highest priority and I'd also like to hear from the planning department um you know in terms of the consultant money which one would be the planning department's highest priority um for the use of the money that's already been sort of budgeted for planning consultants Evan um so I'm going to actually start with to me is not the priority and then I'll give a reason why which is incorporating climate action goals into permitting standards and zoning requirements and that's not because I don't view that as a um priority but because I think there are other ways um we could do that when I uh when we were at uh a bunch of us were at uh MNA in January I intended um a session on all of the ways communities have used those MVP action grants um and one community I think it was Cambridge uh used the MVP action grant to hire a consultant to essentially revise their zoning to build climate action and climate resilience into their zoning and so to me that's a that's something that we could um speak with uh Stephanie Chagarillo and ECAC about whether or not they would be interested in applying for an MVP grant to do that um and so then not depleting the money that you're talking about right now um because I think I just think there's other ways that we could we could pay for that um to me my my biggest priority would probably be the form-based code um for other billet centers uh any other committee members at this time before I recognize Christine Steve I second what Evan said uh Shalini yes third and just because I think that would solve so many different it's like one thing but that's has such a huge impact on so many things including downtown vitality and what Jack um just pointed out in terms of COVID in terms of um all the other issues that are related to downtown so I think form-based zoning would really help with a lot of that and Sarah so we all agree because that it's definitely would be my number one and and I do agree that you know we're working on density and like Shalini said at the same time you know if we're bringing all these people here we don't want to be paying catch up with a community like Hadley we don't need to be them or offer the same services but we also want to be able to start um creating areas um of interest for all the people that we're bringing here and I think that's a good way to do it and it gives it gives the community a lot more um flexibility in a positive way thank you for that um Christine so I wanted to um just let you know that the money that we have right now um was um appropriated a number of years ago it was right after the gateway project um was looked at and the gateway if you remember was an area along North Pleasant Street stretching from roughly Kendrick Park up to the university so that money was earmarked for zoning in the downtown and the gateway area so I think you know we would be able to use that for um form-based code in the downtown and probably we could stretch it to the BL um and gateway but that's that's really what we'd have the area that we'd have to focus on so if there are other things within that area um we could also use it for that but it's only $40,000 so it's not a huge amount of money I did ask for another 60,000 as part of the next capital round um but I I don't know when that's going to be considered and whether that would even be positively looked at with all the other capital projects that are coming along so um anyway right now $40,000 for the downtown and the gateway thank you for that I'm going to ask a few questions of myself I will say that that it sounds unanimous from this committee without taking a vote that form-based is the highest of the ones that have been identified as needing consultants um because that would be mine too um so my question is I have a couple of questions design guidelines um this one is for downtown and village centers if we concentrate you know if we had the consultant and it was for downtown and it was for the gateway area could those design guidelines be transferred or reused and all in the village centers or do you need completely different design guidelines for each village center so that's one question and then my second question actually then relates down to the town council design review board where four counselors talked about design review board and they were incomplete um some wanted to keep it some wanted to get rid of it so my question would be design guidelines I'm not exactly sure what parts of town the design review board must review things for um but would adoption of design guidelines into our downtown village centers or even other areas of town um essentially get rid of the need for design review board um would it sort of duplicate what the design review board does so those are my questions as it relates to that consultant you're you're looking for an answer from me now if you've if you've got some thoughts on that so I think the design review board unlike some people I think the design review board is useful um one of the things they do is they look at you know minute changes to buildings particularly signs um but they also look at you know other things that are are not so minute and they really scrutinize them pretty carefully and I think that their their jurisdiction goes beyond design guidelines unless you have design guidelines that are like as strict as Nantucket you're really not going to get to the kind of detail that the designer review board looks at so when I'm thinking of design guidelines I'm thinking about the kinds of things that are contained within the 40R zoning proposal where you're talking about you know how is the ground floor treated with regard to windows and um entryways and things like that and then how are the upper floors treated and are they uh recessed or are they um flushed with the ground floor and then how if you have a top floor if it's a fifth story or sixth story how is that treated those kinds of things are design guidelines but you're not going to really get down to you know well if you have a sign for a restaurant that's on the first floor what's that going to look like and who's going to review it so I feel like there is a a role for the design review board um and I think that they would still be needed even if we had design guidelines do you have an idea of whether if we adopted design guidelines for downtown they're transferable to other village centers or do you really need different design guidelines for different areas due to what those areas look like I think the ideas of them the concepts of them could be transferable um I think you'd have to scale it down because obviously you know design guidelines for a four or five story building are going to be different from what you might want for a village center um but you know um so the other thing is that we do have some ideas about um looking at the village centers and doing plans for the village centers we haven't really gotten that project off the ground but each village center is pretty different and the way it was developed and so um probably the design guidelines for village centers would go along with the planning effort for each village center that would be my recommendation thank you um Evan Steven and Shalini and then I think we're going to conclude today and move on to 40R Evan yeah I guess so I guess my question was given that we have we keep referencing the design guidelines in the 40R proposal and given that we have those um written not adopted but written um I guess I'm curious does that um make it easier or at least lower the can we use those as a foundation for the design guide I mean we're talking about design guidelines for downtown and we have a 40R 40R bylaw that has design guidelines that encompass an area that is a significant portion of downtown I mean how much more is it to to be able to get to that next step in other words could you use the 40R um proposal to create your design guidelines and zoning for downtown um I it's it certainly gets you on the path I'm not sure I haven't thought about this so but I'm I'm not sure that it would get you the whole way but it would it would certainly get you partway down the path okay any follow-up Evan no yeah that was my question okay Steve I'll pass I'd like to talk about 40R so I'll pass um Shalini oh just a quick question is the gateway project something that could be revived or can we never ever talk about that again um it became a little sort of a third rail um after the project was done there was a lot of opposition to the idea of developing North Pleasant Street in the way that was described in the gateway project um and a lot of that opposition came from the neighborhoods that are you know closest to UMass and really feel the most vulnerable um certainly you know the ideas that were in the gateway project I think they're worth revisiting at some point um but we have to expect that we will get a lot of pushback from um the neighborhoods that are closest by thank you for that I just wanted to comment Ben I think I know you have to leave soon you you can unshare your screen and and do that when you need to I think we're good thank you Ben all right thank you all for today yeah can you just say the new table was amazing it really was super thank you awesome good to hear and Dave I just wanted to quickly um respond to Shalini's question about the gateway um my my take is that nothing should be off the table we should be talking about everything and what happened five or seven years ago um is what are over the dam and I I think Chris is correct there was a lot of neighborhood opposition but it's a new day we have a council we have a new form of government uh we have a pandemic and um we shouldn't be afraid to look at anything that makes our community better stronger more resilient um provides housing provides jobs so um I I think it should everything should be on the table thank you um I want to note for Lindsay in case she didn't catch it that Sarah had to leave at three o'clock um so she is no longer with us she has not lost connection she had warned me ahead of time that she had to leave the meeting at three um so we are down to four committee members um I think we had a good discussion we've got an idea of where the CRC's priorities for spending money is um we would take a formal vote on that as we get closer to formal recommendations the next meeting I'm sort of going to next agenda the next meeting will focus on potential ways to prioritize the rest of the list that would be done in-house um that'll be the focus of this portion of the discussion for hopefully being able to bring something to count council by the seventh um uh moving on our next agenda item is 40R again this was one that Steve had asked that we put on the agenda last week and there was clearly a lot of desire to discuss specifics so it is back on the agenda this week I have not asked for a presentation on the specifics I told our planning department that many CRC members had already attended many of the forums um could watch the videos and we didn't need specific new presentation we could watch the consultants presentation and start right in on questions and and things like that um unless there were specific questions about what it is and all but I was I was giving us the benefit of the doubt that we've done our homework and I I think I did ask Christine but Jack is here I don't know how much he can add um but I asked Christine to be ready for um sort of summarizing where the planning board's thoughts are on 40R before we get into all the questions we have um so I know I think the planning board's got a more in-depth discussion planned for tomorrow night but if Christine or Jack could summarize where they are now and sort of those discussions as it is before we move into questions and all from the committee Christine so I think the planning board has a mixed feeling about 40R I think it was presented to them in a very preliminary way in May and they had a lot of questions and concerns about it and then it was presented to them again um I think they had a discussion sometime in August and then another presentation more recently and that the more recent presentation I think there was a better feeling about the 40R I think that the planning board members saw that the consultants had made changes to respond to concerns of of residents in the area as well as concerns that were expressed by planning board members and and as the public as a whole so I think the planning board had a better feeling about 40R I think that there are still a few members who um just feel like it's not it's not the right thing for downtown but they haven't you know arrived at a a conclusion as a group about it um but I think that Mr. Jempsick is fairly enthusiastic about it so you may want to hear from him Jack? I would have to say I I can't believe I I feel like I we I was talking to Chris you know when we met with the consultants or they presented in in March was it or February pre-COVID um and then Chris said well we're going to have another presentation they it's there it's on their contract and it's like why are we doing this sort of thing and but I I was just really struck by it it was like night and day um they really tightened things up they they really took in comment uh responded to comment uh and it was impressive and um uh you know so I uh I think uh Rhea Chow is also uh I think uh has a similar opinion like we should listen to this and and again I I respect Rob Crowner so much and he's on the housing authority uh and he's been a proponent of it I wanted to hear him out and you know and and so it's solid it may not be for the extent that they they have proposed but it may be you know perfect for a portion of the area that they have proposed but I we have three new planning board members I have no idea you know where the planning board is uh on this but I'm I'm kind of eager to talk about it again um and I just I just I kind of feel have a sense of urgency um now versus back you know pre-covid uh for the for the downtown thank you jack so we're going to move to uh committee questions comments thoughts all I'm not going to try and segment between any of that so you know you conclude it all when you talk uh Steve yeah so um I think that the town hired a cracker jack team to put together this proposal and I do think that they listened to particularly the the neighbors right the ones that will be affected particularly by those ones that live adjacent to the bl zone so I think that and also I've chatted offline with you know people like Rob but I think that there's a lot to the proposal and I really hope that that we move forward with it in some version but I guess a couple of thoughts that I sent after the last presentation is one is to me it seems like this will only work if it's accompanied by down zoning in the the um the bn zone so in other words because right now there's no there's no particular advantage to someone to use 40 r because they can already do five-story buildings you know etc but it seems like um if we down zone the more by right zoning and then head 40 r as a way of relieving from those zoning restrictions that would make this a lot more likely to achieve the goals that we're we're hoping for so the other area is the bl zone so again there's no advantage for the 40 r proposal and I know going up to four stories in bl is controversial so I understand that resistance but I think we're and and I understand that it's going to loosen up housing but I guess my concern that what we'll do is only encourage non-mixed use buildings in bl and some of the sites for like the site on triangle street across from Kendrick place just seems like the most obvious place for a mixed use commercial on the ground level residential above but I'm not sure that the 40 r proposal as red will unlock that particular property totally understand the concerns of the cottage street neighbors who live right behind there but it seems to me that the proposal could be written in such a way that there is there's a certain height if you're facing say triangle street or a major artery but then there's another height you have to step down to another height if for that part of the building that say the rear of the building that faces a lower scale residential area thank you um anyone else from the committee Evan well I didn't Chris Chris just put a hand up I don't actually want to respond to Steve Christine um yeah I just wanted to say that this is a framework on which we can build our version of a 40 r so there's a lot of opportunity to change the dimensional requirements or allowances and I think Steve's right that um you know having a lower building closer to the residential neighborhoods and a taller building up along the roads makes perfect sense and I think Maria tried to address that in her um her map that she sent around today I don't know if you all received it but um you know it was a way for her to understand what's being proposed but then it's also a way to understand how we might want to change it so we don't have to take this 40 r proposal from the consultant's lock stock and barrel we can take it and change it to our own specifications and really make it what we want it to be thank you Evan um so I have a couple things I'll just try and run through them at once and hopefully not take too much time um I think overall conceptually 40 r is a really good thing for our community I mean I think that it has um a little bit of everything that that we want in the community and on the council um I think in when I read through the bylaw and you know for our last meeting I had sort of just skimmed it but I I fully read it for this one um and I saw a lot of things that I that I like in there that I think um we're not even elevating as as reasons we should do this including things like um you know putting thing parking in the back and minimizing curb cuts is something that's so important to walk ability in the feeling of a community you want to walk in you know my least favorite part to walk downtown is over by um you know where the pub was and the spoke because it's just you're walking along parking lots and it's curb cut curb cut curb cut and so I think that's you know we're we're always pitching this as just affordability density and design guidelines but I think there's a lot of other really important things that we need to make sure we're telling people about the other thing that we haven't talked too much about what when I was reading through in the design guidelines was talking about things like um mandating street trees and low impact design to deal with storm water encouraging reuse of storm water for irrigation and I think when it comes to um the climate action plan the ecac is putting together and the climate focus we've had those are things that fit right in um we were focusing a lot on reducing emissions but anyone who had ever attended an ecac meeting which is I think no one in this group knows that I'm always talking about the biggest thing we need to do is storm water storm water when it comes to climate change and I think that there's a lot of things that talk about how to deal with storm water um uh using um green infrastructure instead of grain infrastructure in here and so I think that it you know it's also in a climate adaptation and a climate resilience proposal um as much as it's some of these other proposals and I think we're not always elevating those things and I wanted to make sure we did that um some questions slash concerns um though you know one is my concern from the beginning has been that we would view this as a way to fix the bl um which is sort of something that jack touched on earlier um and I still think and I'm glad that chris spoke to this earlier um I really don't want this to be the way that we fix the bl I don't want us to say we don't have to fix the underlying zoning in the bl because now we have the 40 r I think we need to do both um and so I'm hoping um that we don't see this as the solution to the bl is oh well we'll just do the 40 r and then developers have the choice develop under the 40 r or don't develop right um because they literally can't in the bl and I don't think that's what we want to do um you know I also I understand steve's point of um it becomes uh more um uh desirable for the 40 r if we down zone um but I'd really like to see this be a proposal that says here's how we are incentivizing over our underlying zoning without us having to make our underlying zoning less development friendly like I really want this to be something that says to developers we're giving you something in return for you giving us design guidelines and affordable housing and I don't want it to be a situation where to do that we have to take things away in the underlying zoning um I think there are ways that it has um up zoned in a few areas um which I think is good uh you know I don't want to get too specific about some of the parcels but there's a few areas where it seems like it's actually going to be um that the overlay will actually decrease density versus the underlying zoning there's a couple parcels around um the one behind rents I think it is and some along Kellogg that are currently in the bg but would it be in the second sub-district so I think that actually you get less density than under underlying zoning and I might be incorrect here because this is not my area of expertise um but I guess I would be curious about um that and then my my one question I have a whole bunch of things but I'm trying not to hit everything my one question is you know I was looking at dimensional guidelines and they specify some of the dimensional guidelines for the districts um but of course there's a whole bunch of dimensional regulations that aren't mentioned in the bylaw and so is the assumption that um the overlay district changes the dimensional regulations that are mentioned in the bylaw and those that are not mentioned are the same as in table three the dimensional regulations because if so I know you know I had a meeting with an architect almost a year ago and they said one of the biggest issues that they faced in doing the bl was um the maximum building coverage and maximum lock coverage which doesn't seem like this touches and so if it defaults to um the maximum building and maximum lock coverage under the underlying zoning I guess I'm questioning whether this is uh helping uh actually fix some of the bl problems so I know that was a lot and I do have more but I'm trying not to pick up all the airspace but I am sort of curious about that idea of um of does it default to underlying zoning where dimensional regulations aren't specified in the uh footy are Christine do you happen to know the answer to that you're muted it does default to underlying zoning so if there are things that we want to change about the underlying zoning you know we can do that via the changes that we're working on as part of the overall zoning amendment so um we don't have to live with the dimensions that we have in the bl I agree with Evan that we really need to look at the bl and change the bl even if we decide to um adopt 40 r I think that's going to be important because there will be some developers who just don't want to get into um the requirements of the 40 r they're just not big enough I've heard from some people that um only big developers will really be attracted to working under the 40 r because of so many different kinds of requirements so we want to be able to allow our our local developers to also um develop in in the bl and I think it's important to change those um zoning requirements to allow that to happen thank you um I'm going to take my turn I'm also going to suggest that everyone if you have comments and all um send them to it could be me or directly to Christine I was thinking if you send them to me I can grab them all and ship one document off to Christine and the planning board instead of she getting four or five I think that would be easier to work with because I also took a deep dive into this for really the first time and I was struck by a number of things some of which were Evan mentioned um you know some of the why some sections of bg were designated as sub-district two instead of sub-district one um you know some of that stuff um but one of the things that really struck me was the I I finally started looking at you know height requirements setback requirements and all of that and there are parts of the rg district that are labeled sub-district two in this or plan to be sub-district two they're near McClellan behind North Pleasant some of them are on Kellogg from what I could tell from all the maps and what struck me is something we were talking about earlier which is everyone refers to bl as a step down district between bg and rg but rg were rg allowances are 40 foot heights and three floors um in rg which is actually higher than bl height requirements height limits of 35 feet and three floors and so I was struck by that you know and that's the underlying zoning because that allows an rg to be taller than a bl yet everyone's afraid of a four-story bl but rg right now can be taller than bl and and so when you look at that underlying zoning then I I question the the height limits on the sub-district two you know they the height limits I must say on sub-district two went kind of crazy in that they were different depending on where you were in sub-district two and so it was really hard to figure stuff out but but what I was looking at is the the parts where rg is the underlying zoning what I could tell is the height limits would be 25 feet and two and a half floors in um in the that sub-district two with the overlay yet the underlying zoning is 40 and three floors so it's the height is not giving you your benefit under the under this 40 r I guess what would be giving and I'm not sure much else is giving you the benefit because when you look at what's allowed rg already allows two families already you know allows one families um it allows multi families um you know through a special permit so maybe you get a little bit that um it doesn't allow mixed use but I I wondered one of my biggest question was goes back to what does the 40 r give you and I think for sub-district two in bl it might give you a little more because it actually allows you nbg it even if it's sub-district two it allows you to build more than just a mixed use building there um for bl you could build two families we don't really have a three family designation from what I could tell in the zoning bylaw um but it allows you to build more residential but in the rg it doesn't allow you to build more residential and in fact restricts you to lower heights um and so that concerned me and um and I wanted to mention the climate action too because I noticed things exactly what Evan said and so I I would encourage more thinking on that part on things that could be you know right now some of the landscaping design guidelines are um encouraging of you know bioswales encouraging rain gardens encouraging native species um and I wouldn't I I would suggest whether we ask whether we could instead of encourage require um under these um the bioswales the rain gardens and some of this stuff for you know stormwater management and all of that to to start incorporating all of those climate action issues into that um yeah and then the other one specifically Kellogg um Kellogg the parts that were designated um were designated as sub-district two yet across the street from them are five-story apartment buildings and so I was I I wasn't quite understanding why they were designated sub-district two instead of sub-district one because you know some of them are already bg um but across the street is you know apartment buildings which seems to more match a sub-district one than a sub-district two those are briefly some of my thinking on this um and I don't know whether it helps or not and I've got a long list as I was trying to figure it out uh Christine. So I wanted to say that um the RG zoning district is very restrictive in the terms of how many dwelling units you can get on a particular lot size you need 12,000 square feet for the first unit and then you need an additional 2,500 square feet for each additional dwelling unit so um the the overlay district the 40R overlay district wouldn't have that um that restriction so you could pretty much fit um as many dwelling units as you could fit in the box whatever box you're allowed to build you can fit as many dwelling units in there as you as you can possibly fit so that really makes a difference in the number of units that you can get on a on a particular size property in the RG so it's it's kind of um it's maybe it's a little bit invisible that this is the case but the density that's allowed by the overlay district the 40R is much greater than the density that's allowed in in the RG zoning district so does that help? Yes that does um even though the box has to actually be smaller potentially but I think that one of the things that developed that the consultants were looking at was what exists um in the RG and the fact is that there aren't really any but not I'm not going to say this as a blanket statement but take North Prospect Street they're probably aren't 40 foot tall buildings there now and we didn't want to um create a situation where we were building things that were much bigger than what is right there now whether or not it would be allowed in the future with regard to zoning and maybe we need to change the RG to be be less tall I don't know I haven't really looked at that but the point is that we didn't want to overwhelm the neighborhood that is there with new buildings that would be a lot bigger than the buildings that are there. Evan? Yeah so I think Christine just answered a question part of part of this is you know a little bit of confusion um so the minimum law area and the additional law area per family is is that eliminated if you under the overlay district? Okay earlier when I asked about if it doesn't specify the dimensional regulations does it does it default to underlying zoning that was one of the ones that I noticed wasn't specified but you're saying it that one actually does those two dimensional do not default to underlying they actually are eliminated. That is my understanding I can confirm that but I think that would make a big difference in my understanding of this that's my understanding. Shalini? Okay one of the concerns I heard and I think Chris you briefly mentioned it is how because of all the paperwork it's really hard for a developer small or local developers to make use of this so is there service we can provide to developers or do we know how successful this has been because I was also reading another study it was about Boston but it was an MIT paper on 40R and they said it wasn't very successful because the community didn't like it because of the density the developers didn't like it because of the complications in the paperwork and so it didn't really get utilized so my question is it's if we are going to go through all of the work to make it happen then is this something that is going to be utilized by developers? Christine? We've talked about creating a department or a person or some kind of administrative service within the town government to help people who are facing either a requirement for affordability or a desire to provide affordability and right now when a developer has to provide affordability for his development say Barry Roberts on University Drive had to provide four affordable units well he has to find an entity or an agency that will help him to make the tenant selection and then monitor over the years that the tenants who live in those affordable units are in fact eligible to live there and there's a bunch of paperwork that goes along with that he absorbed the cost of that as did the people who are developing Aspen Heights or it's not really Heights but it's the development on Northampton Road which used to be the Amherst Motel so they're absorbing all of those costs if a smaller developer wanted to develop something in the 40R and he wasn't going to get you know 36 units out of it then to provide the required number of affordable housing he would have to hire you know Amherst Housing Authority or hire Valley CBC or hire somebody to help him do the lottery and then help him to monitor things over time and that is an expense so we have thrown around here in our department of the idea maybe we should have somebody in the planning department who can help developers do that and especially if we're ever going to require inclusionary zoning across the board that could be a service that the town could provide but that conversation hasn't really gotten much traction so I think it is true that we could provide this but it would cost the town some money to hire somebody or some bodies to do this and we would have to kind of be intentional about it. So does that answer your question? Can I just ask another question for Shalini? Yeah another question I'd heard was that in other and I haven't done enough study to see where the 40 are in other communities was in the heart of downtown does it make a difference whether it is in the heart of downtown or not? The only other community that I'm really familiar with is Northampton and they have 140R that's not in downtown it's on Hospital Hill and then they have another 40R that is in downtown on Pleasant Street so they've kind of gotten they've done it both ways I think there has been increased density in both projects but it's two different kinds of things and I haven't really studied either one of them very closely. Okay so there's nothing to say that there is a disadvantage to having a 40R in downtown. I don't think so the only disadvantage here is what Steve was mentioning which is the fact that developers can already fit as many dwelling units as they are able to within a certain box so the box is only limited by how high it can be and what the setbacks are in the lot coverage and building coverage and so they're not really getting the density advantage by choosing to develop under a 40R in the BG zoning district nor is the town getting an advantage of the differential between the number of units that could be built underlying zoning and the number of units that could be built under a 40R if you can show that there's a delta there then you can get money from the state to pay you for that delta and you don't have that in the BG we have it in the BL but so that's an issue and that's why Rob Crowner and Steve that's one of the reasons that you would want to down zone the BG before adopting 40R because then you could show that oh yes you get a whole extra floor if you use 40R and therefore the developer would be attracted to that and the state would be able to say oh yeah these units wouldn't have been allowed under underlying zoning so we can pay you for those those additional units so we would down zone first and then claim the incentive or whatever from the state interesting I haven't talked to anybody at the state about what they would think about that but that's something that the consultants thought might be a good idea so and they're interesting I have a follow-up question on that wouldn't doing something like that almost force developers to use 40R instead of truly giving them a choice at least in the BG area if we down zoned all of the BG down to BL is that something wise to do I don't know if it's wise but it would force them to provide affordable housing in the BG or just disincentivize to do any kind of development if it's easier in other neighboring towns are there any other thoughts from the committee members at this time on 40R I will say I encourage the committee members to send their thoughts if they want to to me so that I can compile them and send them onto Christine who can then share them with whoever is appropriate to share them with or just create our own file and if the planning board can desires to continue forward with this you know it sounds like you know for Jack's benefit here that CRC doesn't have a strong opinion one way or another right now has more of a lot of questions based on what we've seen and all and all and and so and at this point before we move on I'll I'll recognize Jack one more time Jack yeah I just I just want to say appreciate the input and you know I don't know how the conversation is going to go tomorrow with the planning board but you know I think the down zoning would would be it's it's a difficult thing you know but we're you know you guys are looking at the entire bylaws now so so anything is possible but um you know I'm just I'm just I think the the understanding was the downtown you know wasn't the spot for the 40R um but I think but again the recent proposal has you know piqued my interest it's worth a discussion um but I would be interested in terms of you know the bl and the timeline you know what do you anticipate that we would actually do something about you know the existing zoning I mean is it are we five years out you know three two you know and uh for me that's if it's if it's gonna be a long time because I it's always a difficult issue you know in AMR to to make changes so I just I was wondering what you know people's gut feeling on the CRC would be with regard to and Rob uh with regard to the actual bylaw revision I think we'll have a better idea on December 1st when we bring that discussion back from today's discussion it sounds like bl and housing are some of the more important ones for CRC so they may come up towards the top of um beyond the recodification and all as that's going on the the focus of the next sort of bigger changes to stuff but we'll have a better idea after the next meeting I believe um so thank you at this time we're going to move on on our agenda when we do not have any action items today we're in a lot of discussion mode right now the item after action items is general public comment we do have members of the audience at this time we will accept general public comment for those who wish to comment on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC for up to three minutes in order to do so if you have um joined through zoom not through a phone number then all you have to do is raise your hand there's a button somewhere on the bottom and I will recognize you and and if you joined I'm not sure we have anyone that has joined by phone we do not so I don't have to go through the phone raising hand instructions um so yeah if you'd like to make any public comment it can be on what we discussed today and it can be on anything within our jurisdiction that hasn't been discussed today uh please raise your hand and I will work my way through recognizing everyone so we're going to recognize Pam Rooney first um I think you should be able to unmute now hi there Pam Rooney 42 Cottage Street thank you for talking about this topic I think you all had a really good conversation about it um I also appreciated the seeing the priorities uh that you were discussing in terms of zoning and having Mr. Jemsik in this conversation is probably a good thing there clearly are lots of overlaps in the topics um what has been going through my my head is you know we're talking lots of little details about setbacks we're talking about lots of little details about height and really it feels to me that from a from a from a planner's perspective what are all the cards on the table here um I don't know that I've ever seen from anyone whether it's the zoning subcommittee or the planning department um a a nice comparison of what are the the pros and cons of a inclusionary zoning b uh fixing the downtown b c fixing the limited business district um you know d 40 r uh d form-based zoning so there are lots and lots of tools that we have as well as you know the the underlying um the underlying zoning that just feels like it wants to you know get our arms around and get down on a on a piece of paper where we can actually see some of the comparisons between one form of zoning and another and what are the benefits to us of the town where do we have the most control um I was um reminded of some of the issues for instance in the rg um zoning where I think a couple of years ago a developer wanted to buy a couple of parcels on or actually wanted to zone a couple of parcels on butterfield terrace to rg so that they could take the houses down and build multifamily housing so it's it really is a very it's a very intricate and very uh interconnected conversation here so um I'm just wondering if it would be possible for a group I'd be happy to volunteer to just get some of this all in one place so rather than saying yeah we really love 40 r but there are lots of issues with it or yeah we really want form-based how do we craft this I would love to see some comparisons you're struggling you're all struggling to get into the details of it so are we to just see where we can get what we want we want some affordable housing but we sure don't want to kill neighborhoods in the process so it's it's sort of and we don't want to kill the downtown in the process um so is that possible thank you that was a long question thank you for your comment Pam um I'm sure you'll be getting some answers or if you attend more meetings you'll be hearing similar questions and responses to to something like that as we move forward on the discussions um is there anyone else that that would like to make public comment I am seeing none that brings us on our agenda to whoops we'll have in there um two announcements are there any announcements from anyone announcements next agenda preview um we'll at this point I think we'll go back to zoning and then try and squeak in a little bit of housing policy and not put 40 r in um oh we're I think we'll wait await uh planning board's conversation on 40 r before we discuss it again um so not next meeting but maybe we'll consider putting it on an agenda a couple meetings from now if if we hear from planning board that it's something we should be doing um any requested items for the agenda from anyone not seeing any um so oh Christine this has to do with the housing policy um can you send me whatever the latest version of the housing policy is I'm not sure um where to find it I will send you a copy it is an extremely rough draft with a long list of un um organized and not even culled potential items in it so I will warn you now but also in your email that it is not you know while it is a public document because it has been you know posted for meetings and we've talked about that it is not something that has it's it's very much a work in progress I would say um and and very much on the early end of work in progress over even mid end of work in progress um but but I will I will send you the the the last one that was in in a public in a public meeting that was presented in a public meeting for you and any other um items related to agenda setting or anything and seeing none I don't have any unanticipated business does anyone else have anything that business that was not on the agenda uh seeing none of that then I will let you guys out 15 minutes early so we are going to I'm going to adjourn the meeting it is now 345 and CRC is adjourned for the day thank you