 Good evening, and welcome back to Byline. This is a public affairs show here at Amherst Media, and it's co-sponsored by our Amherst League of Women Voters. And we're trying to help our friends and neighbors here in town follow what's going on as we're transitioning from our old form of government to our new form of government. We have two guests this evening from our Community Resources Committee, which is one of the official committees of our town council, right? And so we have the chair of the committee, Mandy Jo Haneke, and we have the vice chair, Dorothy Pam. And we want to welcome you. For each of you, this is a return visit because you've each been here a few times, and it just goes to show we're almost finishing a year of these shows. So fortunately, you folks have been willing to come on and spend some time with us a few times already, so thank you. So let's start from the beginning. Let's remind people what the Community Resources Committee is. What's the charge? Where did it come from? How'd you all get together? Yeah, so I'm learning that, again, myself, being a couple weeks into chairmanship, but it is one of the five standing committees of the council, as you said. And we refer to it as CRC, but it is called the Community Resources Committee. And it was formed to advise the council on matters relating to housing, zoning, water plan, planning, arts and culture, transportation, and development, and there's a whole list. This is the Potpourri Catch All Committee. In a way, yes, in a way. And we do it through making recommendations to the council, but we can also come up with offering our own policies on things like land use or transportation, public way use, as Dorothy was saying, and things like that. But even the ones you come up with still require the town council's act. Yes, we are only advisory. We are advisory in all respects. And so proposals that others are making are sent over to you guys for review and to make recommendations back to the council. And similarly, though, you can create some of your own if you'd like. Okay. So that's where it comes. And it's not a committee that was required in the charter? Nope. It's one we thought, as a council, that we needed a smaller group to really dig into those policy proposals that might be coming to us or by-law amendments that might be coming to us, especially in by-laws relating to zoning, to look at the pros and cons and be able to dig in, investigate, research, ask the questions, and then come back with a comprehensive report to the council so that they can really deliberate knowledgeably. Okay. Right. And so I know, or go ahead, Dorothy. It got off to a bit of a slow start because many of us knew that we wanted something, but we weren't quite sure what. So we had a series of discussions over a period of weeks and actually a few months in which we outlined what would be in this committee, what would not be in the committee, and it took us a while. But then we basically, I think we sum it up under quality of life as the overall. But that includes many, many things. Right. Quality of life. I love that. It's a really good catch-all, overall phrase. And among the things that fit into the quality of life are the public ways, which we all use. So, Dorothy, I know you've given some special attention to that subject, so why don't you kick off a description of what you folks have been doing and thinking about and discussing in the area of public ways? Well, it certainly didn't come from the council. It's come from the people, from the residents. And so we would have our district meetings and we would go planning to talk about some of our larger things that we're doing, our thinking of our capital projects. And what we were hearing from the people, and it didn't matter a wide variety of people, it wasn't any certain subset of the population, was that we had to work on our roads and our sidewalks. That it wasn't really safe and easy to get around. So that has included, I get communications on a regular basis with new aspects. The crosswalks, do we have crosswalks? If we do, have they been painted so people can see them? Are the signs there to slow the traffic down? Because it is a family town and a student town. We have people who walk. And so people have to be able to cross our streets safely. Just at a meeting with some UMass students this past week when a general question, well, what are some of the things that interest you that you would like changed or you'd like us to do? And I was quite surprised and actually pleased that some of them said the crosswalks are too dark because they're coming at it from a different point. I said, well, as a driver, it certainly bothered me greatly that when I come to a crosswalk, people are dressed in black, they're dark, poorly limited, lighted, and we can't see. And the students both agreed, as drivers and walkers, that they were very nervous at the crosswalks. And there was a student who, we have had some fatalities. So there's concern about that kind of safety, about speed limits. We've had done some inquiry to whether we should lower the speed limit within the town as many other comparable towns have done. We also have to deal with the overall question of how are people getting around and where are the cars going to park? So you start off with one small thing and it has ramifications that go into all aspects. And so the parking issue is one that is very tied to economic development. It's not just safety, and can you go up and down your street without being hit by hitting a parked car, but it's also, if we're having a movie or having an event, can people come in town and find a place to park? So it's a major overall that affects the downtown more than anything. But we haven't had a lot of focus on the downtown this year. So you mentioned parking. So there have been a number of parking garages proposed over time, additional parking garages. I think we're heading in the direction of eventually seeing another garage downtown. Any opinion on that? Public or private? Potentially private. I know there are some discussions going on about a potential private that might involve some council action depending on where they want to put it. But we've heard some whisperings that there is some private or nonprofit talk of trying to propose a private garage. Do you think the community generally is favorably inclined toward another garage? Because I remember the large controversy for the very small garage we ended up creating in banks around the bank center. So I don't know, but that would be something that if a request to change a zone into allow a parking garage in a certain area or funding or transfer of land or something comes to the town council, if it's going to be a private or nonprofit development, that CRC would be where the discussion would happen and all those pros and cons that Dorothy just mentioned about impacts to economic development, but also to the streets and the residents on whatever street they might be looking at, if that's the case, things like that, that we'd have to tackle and deal with. We have a parking study, and I've been going to a number of the meetings, and they have a lot of suggestions, some of which are receiving people like and some that they don't. But one aspect was very important. It said that for the town to build another parking garage, it would cost us about 140,000 per parking space. And the town is at this moment trying to envision and deal with four major capital projects. And a parking garage, we can't afford to fit that in. It's not on the tick list at this time. So therefore, a private proposal, whether it's a not-for-profit or a private entity, coming forward might be a welcome proposal for the community to help address our parking needs without further burdening the taxpayers. Okay. Going back to the crosswalks for a second, I'm sorry, I took a little diversion there. You said parking, it just came to my mind. So how do we light crosswalks? Well, there are several ways. One is to have some kind of a streetlight that's a little brighter. It's always a balance. People who live in apartments don't want to have lights going into their windows. So one of the concerns in zoning is are the lights shaded down and how are the lights? This is always part of what they consider. But it could be brighter lights there. Or Amherst College has these little stanchions that flash. So at least in the dark, you can say, oh, something's coming up. So one of the things as a result of this intense residential talking about the whole safety issue on sidewalks and roads is that the town manager has, I'd say, lifted the question of roads and sidewalks in terms of a capital budget, almost as, not quite, but almost as a fifth capital project. We are very behind part of the exercise of getting Amherst finances in really good shape, which they have been doing. I mean, they definitely have done so that our debt is lower and has been perhaps maybe not spending as much on roads as perhaps we're saying now maybe wish they would. But we just have this whole, it's a juggling act constantly. We want to go forward with these large capital projects, yet we want to have a safer, happier downtown where people walk happily day and evening and go to whatever we have in terms of social and restaurant life. So let's shift gears here and talk about another subject. So you advise town council, but you also collaborate with other boards and entities in town. And we have a very active, affordable housing trust that's been developing proposals. What's your interaction and your connection to work with a group like that? Well, so the most recent one has been that they've been developing a affordable housing priorities policy that they've taken on wonderfully on their own to come up with and say, we need a policy and we're going to develop it. And council may be too busy to really devote extended amounts of time to this, so were the affordable housing trust, let's develop something. And they did. And they said it's in draft form, but they came to the council. They've come to the planning board. They've gone to the Community Preservation Act committee and many of the other committees that deal with affordable housing and entities in town and said, give us your feedback. And so the council took that request and said, send that off to CRC, to the Community Resources Committee. They're the ones tasked with recommending and advising stuff on policies to housing. And so our committee, the Community Resources Committee, has been and has finalized its feedback. We had many discussions over five or six different meetings about the proposed policy, not on whether we should adopt it or not, because it's not at that stage. But on its presented to us in draft form, what do we think needs tweaked or is missing or is good about it? And then we've drafted a memo. That memo is in an upcoming council packet for publication to the council though, because we are advisory. So that memo's addressed to the council and says, here's after our discussions and are looking at it, what we think our feedback, the council's feedback should be to the trust. And so it hasn't gone to the trust yet because it's the council's job to send it to it. But some of the things we came up with in reading the policy, and the proposed policy was that it addresses affordable housing, but it doesn't really address housing affordability. And we as councilors, the trust, their focus is on affordable housing. Which means? Which means housing that meets the state housing inventory guidelines for 80% or affordable for 80% of median income households and below. So it looks at one... One specific cohort, yes. Can they, do they have housing in your community? And can they afford it? And can they afford it? And the other version? Can people of many different economic means, including mostly those above that 80% line to maybe 120, 130, 150, can they afford housing in our community? And so one of our feedbacks was, well, it addresses this one small thing, but we're the council. And the council says, we want to comprehensive policy. Not just one small set of it. But remember, they were set up for affordable housing, so they did their job. So they did their job. But you're saying, wait a minute. You asked for feedback, and we want more. And they say, and we had the chair of the trust to our meetings, and he said, but that's not our job. He's put on the chair a couple of times. Yes. And he says, that's not our job. So one of the other things we said is, you know, this is, this is, to us, it looks like a great goals document. But we would love to see more implementation sort of strategy. You know, goals are great. But if we're looking at a policy, we think a policy might better be, how do you deal with that funding? We've got funding. Where does it go? Not just we need more housing, but how are you going to allocate that funding? What's going to be the highest priority when you're looking at funding and things like that? So that's one of the feedback we did. And then I have to mention this because we're counselors. We all have different views. One of our feedback was very mixed. This proposed policy came in with a certain set of goals for units to create within a certain amount of time. And some counselors on our committee and even probably within the council said, that's fantastic. Others said, we need those numbers higher. And others said, wait, we don't really want specific numbers in a specific time because that sets us potentially up for failure. And as elected officials, we might not want to fail. So into our feedback document, what this completely contradictory feedback of, well, that's OK. It needs to be higher. And oh, maybe you need to delete it, which may not be completely helpful to the trust, but is reflective of the counselor's views on reading the policy. And so this doesn't mean necessarily blow up the trust because they have an important focus. But you're saying, hey, we need to look at the bigger picture. And I know, Dorothy, you represent downtown. And you've been looking at the question of how to get more housing downtown. And you don't want it to be gentrified. You want all kinds of people to be able to live and work and walk downtown. Can you add some thoughts to how you see this? Part of it is we have a great pressure on housing because the university has been admitting more and more students for which they don't have dormitories. So one of our concerns is also preservation of existing housing and of viable neighborhoods. Will owner-occupied houses be turned into just apartments for students with a no owner there? There are cases right now that are coming before us. Zoning can keep some things out, but it also protects what's there. And for example, in the Lincoln Sunset Historical District area, the zoning there says that you can have, by right, you can make your single family home into a two family if it's owner-occupied. And so we can tell, actually, when you walk up and down the street, you can tell when a house is owner-occupied and when it's not. You tell by the quality of the front steps, the gardening, the landscaping. And that's one of the things I discovered in campaigning. Campaigning is good. It gets you on your feet, gets you walking, knocking on doors, talking to people, and seeing really close up what is not the same as what you see when you drive by. So we have really strongly support that there should be owner-occupancy of houses in the residential neighborhoods because you can walk up to a house, as I was doing a couple of weeks ago when I was doing some leafling, and you see a pile of pizza boxes, you know, maybe 10, 15 pizza boxes. That is not owner-occupied. You know that because no owner would ever let that happen to their property. So it's a matter of really trying to keep and protect what is working and what is good. But the zoning subcommittee is considering, well, there can be maybe small supplemental dwellings. Maybe we can make it easier for some one family homes to add an apartment. Again, this is within the owner-occupied rule. So that's part of the infill. But as I was coming here today, I thought, okay, how much infill do we want? Do we want to lose our backyards? Do we want to lose the trees? And I don't think so. If you talk to our tree experts, they talk about our urban forest, our trees. And we have, yes, we have trees that fall down all the time in our crazy weather. But we've got some great trees. And they are part of the lungs of the town. So I don't want us to become so dense. And I do remember that in New York City, tenements were infill development. They took a house, they had a courtyard. Then they just built into the courtyard. So there was just little alleyways and there were no trees, no grass, no anything. So making sure you have some green space and some trees. Green space, trees. And so you can breathe yourself and the community, the environment, breathe because you have that. And so any new building downtown, we're really concerned about either ways that we can try to make future buildings, we've had a problem about our sidewalk. And there's rules that are in conflict. And so sometimes we have to say, okay, let's look at these rules and say, well, let's require, it's not just up to the sidewalk. Because if it's a small sidewalk, then that's not a good situation. But to say, well, all downtown sidewalks might be, I think you said ten feet or something. You can say that. Yes, whatever it is. But right now it's a little bit, we know there's more building coming and there's some concern what is the situation, what are the rules in existence and what would be some better rules. And also keeping the sense that this is a New England town. This is Amherst and you look at the pictures. And it's a beautiful town with a variety of building styles. And we don't want to lose that in just in the pursuit of building more and more housing and having more density. We're going to build more housing. Private developers are going to build more housing. But we hope that it will include. I mean, one of the ideas is that if we just have a clearer inclusionary zoning law, right now it's complicated and it hasn't been solved. What is an inclusionary zoning law? Well, if you're going to build something new that you include, some units that are going to be affordable. Affordable to a wide range of people. We're not back to Mr. Hornick's affordability where you would be back. We would say that some units would be according to the average monthly income or whether it's going to be the 80%, the 50% or the 30%. That it's not, and what that also does is that it makes a more of a varied place. We don't want to have it all. This is all this. This is all students. This is all people who really have a lower incomes. This is all that. We'd like to have more intergenerational aspects and to have the people together because we are together. So in keeping with that, let's stay with that for a second. So if on the one hand, we want to broaden the community's conversation about housing, available housing for a variety of incomes. And we have this Massachusetts law which directs communities to have at least 10% affordable. That's the people you were talking about that Mr. Hornick and his committee are looking at. Is there a way when you design an inclusionary zoning scheme to flip it a little bit and go back to the point you were making earlier about making sure that you can have a variety of groups, incomes considered not just market and this. Maybe not. Maybe not. Okay, let's see where this goes. This is where many of the ideas Dorothy was just stating are stuff that the planning board would have to propose in a sense because they're in charge of zoning. And they may propose some of them. They may not and then it would come to CRC and we would look at it and go through all of that. What do we want and what don't we want and each of us have different opinions on that. But in terms of that, there's state laws that identify what affordable means but then also who in terms of where town money can sort of be given, especially community preservation act money that goes to housing and how that can go towards affordable housing. And there are restrictions as to what type of affordable housing they can go to. And so much of that is below this 80% area median income number. And when you get above that, the restrictions say, well, you can't give that taxpayer money to support housing at 100 or 120 of that line. So an inclusionary zoning bylaw says when you're building market rate housing, which may or may not be affordable for someone making 120 of the area median income, it might only be affordable. And affordable has a specific definition of spending no more than about 30% of your income on housing. No matter what your income level is, that's where they sort of say affordable is. And so when we say affordable for 80% area median income, that means that rent or that mortgage payment is 30% of someone's 80% level of area median income. And we can't give money for some of this to those making, to make housing affordable for that, it's developers. And so much goes into that. I don't know whether zoning can address, well, if you're going to develop something, you have to have something in here. But we can do some of the zoning with inclusionary zoning for those that the state allows us to. So state laws and definitions play a role in it. The rules around specific pots of money plays a role in that. So both of those might have to be tweaked in order for a broader. Because imagine the possibility, we're going to build 30 units. We're going to build a building with 30 units. Imagine the possibility that it's a really mixed community. There's room for seniors, for students who just graduated from UMass, who are working here for families, small families, or empty nesters being able to move into the building. But need a unit that is just in the right cost range. And then the affordable units that we traditionally talk about, the people with the lowest incomes. So imagine trying to create that building with that community. What rules would we have to change at the state level and at the local level to try to make that community, that building as a community come together. So it's just a thought. So and speaking of all of this, we're now getting into master planning, we're getting into zoning. You have a role, your committee has a role in that. I was just going to transition to that. But there are others who have a role. Go ahead, we have a couple of minutes left. When you're looking at that, the planning board is sort of the entity that proposes changes to the zoning, which may be able to do some of this that we were just talking about. And so right now, we've had the charter required master plan forum for the council. And so the council's starting to get into that. And we have to figure out how we work with the planning board on the master plan but also on the zoning bylaws. And so hopefully in the coming weeks, we'll get a referral to the community resources committee to sort of work through that initial, how do we do this? And that referral would be to work with the planning board because they own the master plan by state law, they must approve it. And they have approved our current one. There's a lot of thinking that it needs updated. And so if it's referred to the community resources committee, we would work with them to say, hey, this is where the council thinks it might need updated. You can do the updates you think you need. You need to approve it again. And then we can do our charter mandated approval of the master plan once it's been updated, but work with them for that. And then for zoning bylaws, as Dorothy was mentioning a whole lot, that both counselors and planning committee members, and they don't always agree on what those changes are. But there's a lot out there that have been talked about as potential changes to go in and work with the planning board and say, here's what we counselors have been thinking. Do what you're thinking. Come up with maybe a comprehensive or a much larger potential modification to the zoning bylaws that might deal with a number of these issues all at once. But work with them to figure out how that would work because in this form of government, in the new one we have, not just the planning board has to hold a hearing on any bylaw changes, but the council does too. And so we actually have a direct role in the hearing part of the people beyond what we would normally do under state law to hold a hearing. And the council has adopted that the CRC would be the committee that holds that state mandated hearing and hopefully does it with the planning board. So we're going into a phase where we've got to figure out how that sort of dual role works, how it's going to work. We'll try some stuff out. And hopefully if it works, great. If it doesn't, we'll try something else out. I've heard from guests on this show over quite a long period of time now is our master plan is still pretty solid. Our zoning is still pretty solid, but both could use some tweaking. So we're not throwing it all out. We're going to review and revise. And with that, we've come to our last word. And I want to thank you both for being with us. Thank you for joining us. And good luck. Keep up the great work. Thanks. And thanks again.