 to the August 7th meeting of the Community Resource Committee of the Amherstown Council. So we do have a quorum, so we have four out of our five members present. So our agenda today is, I think it's public comment. Then we're going to discuss the syllabus or the informational topics. Then we're going to discuss the master plan. Then we're going to discuss the dog park. Yeah? I'm sorry. OK. And then we're, other business, 48 hours. Yep? I was wondering, given that the discussion of the master plan is going to be ongoing for several meetings, whether or not we could get to the dog park sooner? Yeah. Well, we have to have the dog park advocate here. And Chris is on the way. Yeah. In the meantime, we can see if there's any public comment. And I also think there needs to be a public thank, and we'll see you on our seat, public thank you to Senator Hortz for the share point. Thank you so much. I did one little thing. She did everything. No, thank you so much. So we're going to go out of order, and we're going to go right to the dog park. You're on the air. Oh. We need a minute's taker. He did the last two meetings. He did the last two meetings. It's recorded onto the YouTube site, but it's really hard for the staff to upload it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hello. OK, it's on now. Hi, I'm Nate Malloy. I'm a planner with the town. And I'm here to talk about the dog park. The Dave Zomac presented to the council, and they referred it here. There's some work going on in the right of way. So if we walk through the packet, there's one just the location of the park. So there has been a dog park task force that had been meeting for quite a while. And they centered on this property off Old Bolster Town Road. It's the old landfill. And it's the area in the red circle. So it's a little over an acre. It's an acre and a half park. It's in an area that used to be, I guess, the stump dump. So there's not as much danger of anything under the soil. In the larger packet, there's a colored rendering. It's not the final rendering of the park, but it's pretty close to it. So it shows that there's two sections of the park. There's a small dog area and a large dog area. And there's parking along the street with one central opening in the middle, one central entry. And then it splits off into two dog areas. The request right now that staff is making is the, as you can see in the rendering, the parking and some of the improvements are within the right of way. So if you look through to the third page, there's the final design with a solid red line. And that shows the right of way line, the property line. And so the design was finalized before it was clear exactly where the right of way line was located. And in some of it is, the rest of the landfills actually considered prime habitat for the endangered, for the grass-happer sparrow. So the location of the park is such that we're trying to reduce the visibility of the birds while they're nesting and still have a park there. And so the request is to allow within the public right of way some improvements. So allow pole and parking, change in location of sidewalk. Anything that's built as part of the park in terms of fencing and other things will be pulled onto the property. But right now, it's a pretty wide road and cars can pull up on the side, but we're proposing this formal 20 car parking lot. There'll be some bike racks and it's a daytime use only. So there's no lighting. Staff can lock the gate. So there isn't any anticipation that this would be used during after daylight hours. And it would be open seasonally. So during the winter, depending on the snow or the conditions, it wouldn't be open either then. So there wouldn't be any reason to plow the spaces during the winter. That's been discussed. It hasn't been totally decided. More than likely, it'll close. But it could be open if there's not a lot of snow and depending on how, if it's seasonally warm into November, December, it could remain open. And then at some point, it would close. And I don't know if anyone else has questions. I mean, Berkshire Design worked on this. We're anticipating that we're providing ample parking. So the trip generation shows a lot fewer or something like four to six cars. The standards haven't really been developed for what a dog park would, you know, how many people actually would go to a dog park in terms of compared to like a regular recreation facility. But we're anticipating that there's sufficient parking in bike racks and there's enough neighbors that they can walk. But there is, you know, the need to have some vehicle parking here. If you look at Amethyst Brook, you can see how many cars park there now. And, you know, the idea is that some of those maybe users may be coming here with their dogs. Yeah, they're different types of fun. So this, you know, here the dogs are, you know, they're going to socialize. The owners, right, the owners will socialize. It's a, I guess if you're lucky enough to take your dog on a bus, like if it's a service dog, there's a bus stop right there. Right. The number 30. Yeah, you know, the two site visits I've had, I've also thought like, oh geez, do people walk here? But both times I've been out there, there have been neighbors walking with their dogs on the street. Something, oh, they're probably the likely candidates to. Chris, you had your hand up. Good afternoon, I'm Chris Brestor, planning director. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that what you are being asked to look at is what's going on in the town right of way. I don't have an agenda in front of me, so I don't know exactly how this is expressed. But the park as a whole has been reviewed by the planning board and the planning board approved it. I think it was in June. We haven't written up the decision yet, but it was approved in June and the town council is being asked to look at what is being proposed in the town right of way. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Chris. Yeah, and the conservation commission also reviewed it because there's some wetlands nearby, and so they approved it. You know, and the design has been, is responded to both planning board concerns and conservation commission. It's also working with natural heritage, so the fence posts are gonna be unbalanced so they can't puncture the landfill cap. And so, you know, there's fill being brought in because the dogs can't dig down. You know, we don't wanna have them dig down to the cap. So, the design responds to a lot of different conditions that are on the site and what, you know, has to work for a dog park. Andy? Yeah, so I actually had three questions, but I think Chris answered one of them already, which is that the limitation, as I understood the request, is for the part of the right of way that it needs to be added for parking spaces, and that is really what the council action needs to be because we are the keepers of the public way, formerly a function of the select board, which is why I'm conscious of that. The second question that I had was, is that if I understand this correctly, well, you mentioned people can walk to it. In fact, isn't part of it going to be fenced off so that people walking from wildflower, that corner really can't get through because it'll be fenced off to protect the sparrows? Oh, you mean the, so the entire property will then be fenced off. There'll be a perimeter trail on top of the old landfill, but the dog park itself right has a perimeter fence and there's only the one entry gate on Old Belcher Town Road. But the idea is right now if people walk across what is the old landfill on the field, that won't be able to happen anymore. So the idea is that they'd have to either walk along the perimeter of the fence, or walk on the streets to get there. Is that what you're asking? The fence perimeter that I, let me see if I've, are there two fence perimeters, one around the dog park and another around the portion of the old landfill that we now need to protect because of the. Yes, the Grasshopper Sparrow. The Grasshopper Sparrow. Right, so if we went to the first map, I showed you there's the outline and yellow of the whole property and then the red circle is the dog park. So there really would be the fence, I'm not sure it's gonna follow this, it's not gonna follow this outline of the property, but there would be a perimeter fence around some of it and then a fence around the dog park. Yeah, I just don't want to create impressions for neighbors that walking to it is something that's gonna be easy to do. Yeah, I mean, I guess I was thinking they would just, through Larkspur, they would walk, it wouldn't be something that they could informally walk through. I mean, I still think the trail is still gonna be connected. The trail that goes through would still be through and it'd just be on the perimeter of the fence. So they wouldn't, that's still available. And in the drying that's the color drying, in several areas in the dog park, there are little blue things. What are they? Are they the shade structures? Are they something else? No, so in the dog park there's, when you enter it, there's a paved area. So there's like kind of an entry vestibule where someone, there's two sets of gates. So if someone has a dog there, they can transition between leash and off leash and then enter either area. And then there's paved pathways and then the shade structures are in the yellow and blue and then there's peace stone within the walkway. So that's, there's one surface treatment there and then there's the grass area and in the grass area, those blue or purple things are actually rocks or boulders. It's something that dogs can climb on. They wouldn't be, it's just some element that they can use for playing. So they'd be set in the ground. Anyone else? Right, and so I think in terms of the right of way, as you can see, there is gonna be formal parking. So there's, it'll be a permanent, essentially nose-in parking within the right of way. You know, there's an existing hydrant that I think can remain, you know, there's proposed to have some tree plantings within the right of way and then the new sidewalk will, right now the sidewalk kind of straddles the property line and it will in the new plan too. So it'll be a newer sidewalk that, you know, is in front of the parking. So if I were a UMass employee coming from Delta Town, I would park there and take the number 30 bus every 15 minutes, four stops to UMass, five stops to UMass. So I guess it'll be signed or it's a good point. Yeah, we can sign it, or meters signed. That's in it. Yeah, it's a good point because I think that there's been some concern over time that people are parking at Amethyst and then taking the bus in from Amethyst too. And actually not the advocate for metering because they're not trying to make this hard on people who want to use it. But whether appropriate signage for both areas and I think that the Amethyst parking areas into the control of the Conservation Commission. So there are the ones who need to monitor parking there and see if they feel that there's a need. But if this were to happen for reasons that you've just, the chair has just described, I do think that we would have to consider parking restrictions on those spaces because they are in the public way. Right, no, I think that's, yeah, I think there could be time limits. I mean, there is an expected average length of stay at a dog park because I don't think it's any more than an hour. So there, you could have some time limits that could be somehow enforced. I mean, the idea is that there will be friends at the dog park that may be some self-policing and neighborhood policing. Maybe if there's that one car that's parked there every day for eight hours, that'd be noticeable. Any other questions or comments? Is anyone want to make a motion? Do we have the specific proposal that is before the council that will need voting that we are there for recommending? I don't have any language. I didn't see it either in the previous packet, right? You know, as now these are permanent improvements or changes in the public right of way. Is that something that, the 22nd of July? Is the parking entirely in the Belcher Town, will Belcher Town road right of way? No, if you looked on the sheet L2 with the red solid red line, you can see that half of it is- I see, the red line. Yeah, is the property line. So as it exists now, the edge of curb is, on the previous sheet, you can see where the existing conditions. And so the dotted red line on L1 shows where the existing conditions. So right now the roadways a little narrower and there's the sidewalk just outside, within the right of way. And so now that sidewalk is being shifted basically to the other side of the property line. I don't have- I don't, I'm looking at what was easily findable in the packet for the last, I was looking at what was most easily findable for the packet of the last meeting, which was item 7D on the agenda dog parking. So we have our plans and it has two of the maps that we just saw, but I don't see the language that we are being asked to support. It's kind of hard to vote to recommend action when we don't have the action before us that we're being asked to recommend. So here's a possible solution. We're only advisory to the town council. So our vote is not a binding vote. It's just a recommendation. So we can certainly indicate our support for the dog park and indicate our support for the use of the right of way as shown on the survey. And then by the time we actually vote on this at town council then hopefully we'll have that language. Right, yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if I was ever presented any language either. Specifically what then changes to the right of way. I think you can say as in accordance with these plans. Yeah. You know, and I think your idea is about signs though or some type of parking monitoring is a worthwhile consideration. If you think people would park here long term, is there, you know, there's an entry kiosk with signs and there are regulations for the use of the dog parks. There's something that would be signs there anyways. It would be possible to put this aside while we start working on the master plan and see if Nate can find out from upstairs whether there's specific language. And if not, then we'll do the general proposal that you suggested. All right. Are we mostly just asking so if we're gonna say that CRC recommends to town council the approval of the, but we wanna know what to say is the approval of what exactly? If the language is available and we can look at it today and approve the actual language, we can consider that if not, then I think our plan B is what was just described to us by Steve, which is a general motion saying that we reviewed the plans for the dog park and support the final plans for the dog park, including the action by the council to make a portion of the public way available for the parking that's needed for the park. And it'd be then a general motion without the specifics of the language. Sarah. So I just wanna make clear, I think it was made clear to us by Chris Brestrup that the only thing that we're actually recommending is just, or if we do, if we vote and we do, is just for the land to be the right of way changed so that the parking can be there, but we're actually not saying anything about how we feel about the dog park project in general, correct? Yes. Okay. Do you think anyone's upstairs that can? Yeah, I think I can ask and see if there's anything. I don't, that's easy enough to do. Yeah. Yeah. So why don't we, do we, we don't have to motion, we don't have to move to table, do we? We can just come back to it. Okay. Yeah. All right. So while, so just looking at, yeah, thank you. So we'll just take you whenever you come back. So I'm gonna suggest we even go out of order again and then start on the master plan discussion. Good afternoon. Ms. Brestrup Planning Director. I don't have a presentation for today. I understood that you were going to come up with questions and comments and that you would be looking at items that you felt need to be updated but not replaced, items that need to be replaced and items that might need to be added and any other comments that you might have about specific things in the bylaw. I did review the implementation section of the bylaw yesterday and kind of thought about which things have been accomplished and which things are ongoing so I can answer questions about that. And if you have any specific things that you'd like me to talk about in the beginning of this session, I'd be happy to do that. So let's start there. So are there any general questions about the master plan itself for Chris? And were you all able to look at it and take a stab? My basic, my starting question is, is the list of what is ongoing? What's actually been worked on? What hasn't been looked at? Because I think that there are some really important things in the master plan. But I don't know where, has this report been done? Has this committee been formed? Some of those answers about committees I have. But so. Go ahead. Yeah, I think we started to do that last time I was here speaking with you and I can go item by item if you turn to chapter 10, which is the implementation section. And we can go item by item and talk about what has been done and what hasn't been done. The master plan is really a living document and many of the things that are stated as goals and strategies are things that take a long time to get done or encompass many different aspects of town government in order to accomplish. But I can start to talk to you about what I know about these things if you wanna go line by line or if there's a particular section that you wanna focus on. I am usually more involved with the land use section and perhaps the housing section. But I can talk about the other sections as well. So if there's a particular section that you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to do that. Or I can just launch into talking about the land use section, which is really the first one that's listed in the implementation matrix. So I think what I'd prefer is rather than thank you for that offer. So maybe let me just think for a second. So that might be a good place to start though so what I was gonna suggest is that maybe we skip one and two, which are introduction goals and policies and then just work our way through each of the chapters. But then hearing primarily, so the hope was that this is the counselors for whom some of this is relatively new and just to hear what they, to listen to, what am I looking to listen, to hear your comments. So let's try that. Go ahead, Andy. I just put out one additional piece and that is it has been a few years since we did the Astro Plan process. And there are a number of factual observations and findings that are implicit in the plan and that lead to the actual strategies that are put forward. Some of those probably have not changed, but some have because there's a lot that has been just passage of time, progress from the marches forward and so you get into things like, looking for examples because I have a long list of things that I wrote down. The last housing plan was, helped me with this, the market study probably. The market study. Now it's about 2008. 2015. Yeah, that was 15. So that's fairly recent. And there was a housing production plan done five years ago that expired in 2018. So that was done in 2013. So we have those two housing reports, one focuses on affordable housing and one focuses on market rate housing. So the question is whether there's any information in those plans that needs to be reviewed and incorporated both in the factual findings and in a review of what is in the plan itself and the way of strategies. There's changing demographics that we're all aware of including things having to do with population, school-aged children, the following enrollment in our PK to 12 grades, how that might affect any of the findings, the increasing age of our population that goes along with the fall on school-age population, the obvious increasing difficulty of starter families being able to find suitable housing and make this an affordable place to live whether that is a factor that needs more change. We know a lot more about climate change than we did when the report was written. There were certain things in the report about its stress use of renewables. And I think that there's been some change of thinking because of the recognition that some forms of renewable energy are not exactly clean energy. And whether that needs to be revisited, there's certainly technology changes that are happening at a rapid rate. And then there's references in the plan to select board and town meeting and bodies that no longer exist because we adopted a new charter. So at what point do we just go through the plan to make sure that the factual underlie and some of those statements are still correct? Is that a rhetorical question? Yeah, I mean, I think it was part of what I was thinking about when I was reviewing the plan today. And I think that that's critical when we start this master plan update task force or whatever workgroup, whatever we call it, is that those kinds of things be addressed, Sarah. So that's one of the things that hit me is I was trying to actually look through this master plan that actually by law is for a planning department to do was that the underpinning of the entire thing was all of that information about economics, about demographics. And that's the one thing that to me, even though it'd been done like five or six years ago, that those things are really the underpinnings of the foundation of trying to figure out the rest of the master plan. And for me, that was the most dated. So one, I felt a little overwhelmed as just a town council does not have enough information, knowledge myself, that, wow, I really have a lot of catching up to do. But the other was to even try to look at this. It seemed to me the same thing that Andy said is that I think that all of the basic knowledge needs to be or the surveying, those things need to be done first before we can then say, I think this should be changed. Steve, so there's sort of factual underpinnings which are the size of the town, things that we know, particularly from the other studies, but the other part, like there were thousands of surveys done in group meetings in which was trying to get a sense of the pulse of the town. So if we were to re-go through that again, that's basically another master plan is to go through that process again. So I guess that's kind of the question is are we at a point where really this is a matter of simply updating or are we at a point where this becomes the old master plan and we redo it? I don't know the answer to that. Like is a change in government enough to make the master plan irrelevant? So as I was pondering this, I was looking at a book I took out from the library yesterday and when I was looking at the dates of people who had taken it out, one of the last dates that was stamped was a year 2007. And I thought, holy cow, we were still stamping books back in 2007. And for me, I was like, that's actually a long time ago. That just hit me as far as like, do we need to completely redo it or not? I'm just thinking about how much has changed in the world and in our town from the time. And it seems relatively short, but then when I think about technology and changing demographics, it was a long time ago. It does seem to me that we need current information about demographics. We need current information about, well basically that, but I'm also, there's even simpler stuff that I need, which is when you went to housing, Christine, you talked about affordable housing and market rate housing, but there's also moderately affordable housing. So I'm just feeling, I'm feeling very naive. And I'm not, and I guess I also wouldn't be afraid of public input or public groups to talk about some of this stuff again, although that can be disconcerting on many levels. Maybe you're making a lot of sense. We can make this a conversation. So the planning board member, McGowan, I'm trying to think of the official title for our planning board, planning. Yeah. Hi, I'm Janet McGowan. I was involved in the original master plan, which I think is a long time ago. I think it's way beyond 2010. I think it's like from 2006. And so I understand the issues that you're talking about. I think that it would be really useful just to go through the strategy section and work through it. And not even, I mean, one of the things that jumps out at me is that there's no implementation body and that's one of the first strategies and they're supposed to, one committee that is looking at the implementation of the plan, working with other committees, working with the community, making sure all this happens and doing a yearly update. And that never happened. And I think we do see as parts of the master plan have been implemented and parts haven't. And so if you're talking about revising a plan and we don't even know, there's no body to ensure that the next one gets implemented. It seems sort of odd to me. And so one of the strategies I looked at was a committee on citing, talking about where to cite things that people don't want, like maybe a DPW building. So instead of the DPW fire station committee going around and hunting around for sites, that a committee would be looking at good sites or possible sites and also establishing a process for assessing it. And instead of having individual committees do that, there'd be a citing committee and they would talk about a community process that never happened. And we see the consequences of that every time anyone tries to cite anything. And I've gone to lots of meetings with people with their hair on fire, kind of neighbors startled. And so I kind of feel like we didn't really implement the master plan in a systematic way. And there's a couple of bunch of strategies I think, eh, that doesn't really help. Why would you focus on transfer development rights and Amherst, it's so small, and the other thing I, I'm gonna just shoehorn this into what I wanted to say, is that the housing study calls for an affordable housing requirement that is more uniform across all the different ways of developing an Amherst, a 15% and that it be simplified. And right now we hardly require affordable housing in very limited situations under a special permit and a few spots and a thing. And so that idea of an inclusionary zoning, a requirement that is recommended in the housing study isn't even in the strategy for affordable housing in the master plan. So that looks like a defect to me. And so, you know, and I think the affordable housing issue is like red hot. And, you know, you could talk about re, you know, we can do another master plan and put that affordable housing requirement and that would be in a year or two. Meanwhile, on the planning board, I'm looking at a development of 60 units on Southeast Street and there's no affordable housing in it. There's gonna be, you know, hundreds of units going in. You know, have gone in downtown. There's no affordable housing. And then meanwhile, the town is kind of buying, is it rolling green? You know, we've given a tax exemption to the North Amherst development. We're looking at these 40R, 40Bs where you give hyper development in exchange for affordable housing. You know, so, and then we give a tax deduction so that, you know, it's like we're in this kind of desperate straits when we could just be requiring across the board, including subdivisions, 15% of units over a certain amount or 15% of space be affordable. And so the developers bear the burdens and they share the benefits of Amherst. And so part of me feels with this committee, it's like, you know, maybe identify the issues that are really, you can do something on or do it quickly and do that kind of stuff. And so I have some handouts on affordable housing and I wanna hold up on that. But I keep on thinking like it's really lovely to have this master plan that we're sort of implementing and sort of not and talking about it when there's issues that we're facing as a town that we're not really coming to grips with. So I'm not sure that's gonna make you feel better or worse. And I'm just gonna pause this for a second because we're Nate's back and I wanna see if we can finish up that particular. Thanks, I spoke with Athena and there wasn't really anything written. It was just, you know, approve a permanent use of a public right of way is kind of the language. So the, you know, what the council's looking for is a recommendation that the parking and the changes, you know, that this, you know, the CRC would recommend approval of a permanent use of the right of way for parking for the dog park. You know, you can be more specific if you'd like in terms of referencing the plan, but there really wasn't any, wasn't anything written at this time in terms of a request. Okay. Sure, would be. Would it be the use of a permanent? Yeah, it'd be recommend approval of a permanent use or change of a public right of way. So I think that's kind of the key thing is that it's a permanent change or use of the right of way as opposed to, you know, something temporary. This would be, you know, parking and sidewalks. Would you wanna tie it to the set of plans that was reviewed by the planning board? Is this the set we have right here? I believe so. Yeah. Anyone ready to make a motion? Steve, can I ask a question? If you approve it, link to this plan as permanent, does that mean at some point if you said instead of parking, we want a bike trail? Instead of parking, we want X, Y or Z? So does it restrict us in the future and in the use of the public right of way? My thought would be if we wanted to change it, we would come back again. So if we wanted to put a bike lane or something different, we'd have to come back and make a separate request. So their quest now is for the parking and, you know, the change of the sidewalk. And if we ever wanted to change that, it would be another request. And does it, it's hard for me to look at the diagram but does this change where the sidewalk is or is there still a sidewalk? There's still a sidewalk. I mean, the red line kind of goes through that. The sidewalk has shifted maybe about 10 feet. You know, so instead of being straight across along the curb, it now, you know, kind of angles in. So there's sidewalk plus parking and a street. Right, yeah. Anyone ready to make a motion? I'm working on one of that. Okay, okay. So what I came up with was something like this. Move that the Community Resources Committee recommend the permanent use of a portion of the public way to allow for parking for the dog park is shown on plans approved by the planning board and consider appropriate parking restrictions to assure appropriate use of those spaces. What I'll do is I'll write it up as an email and send it to you after the meeting and then you can just copy and paste it. But again, I'll read it one more time since I have it written on the back of a piece of paper. Move that the Community Resources Committee recommend the permanent use of a portion of the public way to allow for parking for the dog park as shown on plans approved by the planning board and consider appropriate parking restrictions to assure, I hate to use the word appropriate tries, use of those spaces for the, as anticipated. Maybe, okay, that's good. So there's a motion and then there was a second, yes? So, any more discussion? All in favor, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. I'll vote. It passes 4-0-1. One absent. I'm sorry, 4-0-1 absent. Thanks. Thank you. Back to the easy stuff. That was the hard stuff. The easy stuff is updating the master plan. So I just wanted to make two comments that I think are informative. One is that we may not want to, if we choose to update the master plan, we may not want to do that until after the 2020 census because then we'll have all the new demographic information and it will probably be a year or two after that census that we actually have the information. The second thing I wanted to say is many of the plans that have been done subsequent to the master plan, like the housing market study, like the transportation plan, et cetera, were incorporated by reference into the master plan by the planning board in a vote. And I can probably troll through planning board minutes and find out exactly which plans have been incorporated. So that means that all of the information and recommendations that would be in the housing market study would be considered to be part of the master plan. That would be incredibly helpful. So if I may, so Janet is right that the master plan process started I believe in 2006 and then it took at least, it took a solid four years. I wish that most of the visioning sessions were in the first couple of years and then there was a writing group and then the planning board was basically the editing group and then it was all passed February 2010. So there are parts of it that were old, part of it was old by the time it was written, frankly, you know, it was already four years old. But that's what we'll get with a new master plan also. So yeah, but so there are, I think there's basic things that can be updated. Like, you know, I don't want to say today, but like right now, not right now, but like the other documents that could be, that are part of the, it can be attached to the master plan or have been approved to be incorporated, that part could be updated. It also seems like changes in things like the form of government, you know, some really basic things like that would, but whether or not it's worth it to get into all that without, I guess we're really trying to get a sense of what level of updating we need. So there's also the, they're just, you know, listening to Janet's comments. There was basically the objectives, the strategies, and then the implementation, right? So like the implementation is requiring whatever the Southeast Tree zone is, requiring that particular zone, that particular circumstance to, you know, have certain characteristics so that we can achieve, if it's stated in the master plan, you know, to achieve those goals. So that's part of it. So that wouldn't be in the master plan itself, but that would be a strategy or an objective in the master plan. There was something called the MPIC, the Master Plan Implementation Committee, Go MPIC, and it was never populated. So, you know, there are little things like that. Yes. I'm sort of gonna jump in on the more abstract level that you were just on, Steve, on an objective, a strategy and implementation. Using the example of affordable housing. The way I tend to think of those and when I was first reading through the master plan, if I basically said this is a good objective, I looked at whether the strategy had all the prongs in it that I thought it needed, and there were a few places that I thought there might be one missing. So I'd give us an example for affordable housing. Cambridge has an occlusionary zoning law that's anything over 10 units goes to 10%. So it doesn't need a special permit and it could be a renovation. But I mean, it's a tool, whether Amherst wants to have that tool. So that's not in our strategy box. If we think we've got good strategies, the question I'd ask is, do we have a barrier to implementation? Is there something else that we've got in town? So I'd look at the flow and which are moving quite well, maybe slower than we want them to, and which there's the goal. The strategy seems to have failed because nothing's been implemented. So just I would go through it systematically that way. So it doesn't need a total update. It needs to say, where is, where are we missing a tool we might need? Where are we missing an implementation strategy? That was part of the plan was to evaluate implementation. Did it work? So it's sort of coming back to say, pretty far along on this one, didn't even start on that on going through major areas. I mean, we're certainly doing a lot of infill to downtown. I mean, UMass is doing it faster than we are. Soon they won't have a square foot of grass left. But are we getting the kind of lively, walkable, accessible community we thought we would get? And if not, why? I would be asking questions like that. So is it pieces of our zoning law we're missing some key tool? Or is it the zoning law doesn't have a steerage mechanism that would steer you in one direction or another? You know, what is, what do four other towns that we look at might be like? So I think that way about it on a, is the strategy missing something that we might need? And that's why it hasn't been implemented. Or if we tried to implement it and been blocked, and what was the blockage? And I know that's too abstract, but I could go through each piece of that. You know, I come from a healthcare background and it's like, why don't we have price control in the United States? Well, we don't have any powerful purchasers. So it's like, there's a goal we'd like more affordable, like what are the pieces we don't have that the rest of the world has? So this is more a way of thinking about it very locally with things we, you know, and maybe we don't have agreement around the goals, but if we like the goals, you know, what happened along the way? So I hate to be the guy with, I realize I, with a lot of history here, but I'm trying to think of like the discussion here. So we have to put ourselves back in this 2006, 2010 period, right? So 2007, I believe is when the first inclusionary zoning bylaw was passed by, was proposed by the planning board and then approved. So I think that's around the time. So around the time the master plan was being developed, that became a law, inclusionary zoning, which on face value required, 10% affordable housing more or less for housing development with more than 10, more than 10 units. For all that never got tested until buildings started being built in downtown. So a big part of the master plan is infill, right? But Steve, it's 10% but not for site plan review. There's no requirement for that, right? Hang on one sec. Okay. So whatever it was, it was a good faith effort to have an inclusionary zoning bylaw. There was no test of whether or not that was a good zoning bylaw and still building, you know, it's all theory until it's not, until it's, there's actual projects. So there were also incentives in the master plan followed by zoning by law changes that tried to encourage development and really what was a one story downtown, you know, right next door to a very large, you know, university. So that made little sense to have a, you know, so there was an encouragement to have denser mixed use projects in that part of town. So many of us know what the flaws were with the inclusionary zoning bylaw. That's not part of the master plan. That's more of a nuance and know the years of, you know, efforts to address what those, you know, what those issues are. So really what the point was that this was a very different land, downtown was a very different landscape, you know, you know, 10 years ago when the master plan was approved. Yeah, Andy. You know, I appreciate all the points that have been raised by you and Janet. The financial reality for the town too is a part of this that without regular course of new growth which is more than just replacing outdated single story underutilized places in the center of town, but it's also a matter of assuring that we have a town that is gonna have the economic vitality and ability to meet the needs that we expect for many things that are actually incorporated in the master plan. There's sort of this balancing act that needs to take place. And it is how do we encourage and require inclusion of affordable housing and not discourage any development because discouraging development doesn't serve the purposes either. And so it's a very careful balance and it's one of the challenges for the planning board to try and figure that out so that it comes out in the right place with something that encourages and requires more affordable housing but not to the point where it discourages development. I think that's the conundrum that we've been dealing with for the last 10 years but I also wanted to talk a little about comparing ourselves to some of the cities and towns in the eastern part of the state where land is much, much more expensive and affordability is much more difficult to achieve. And there's also a tremendous pressure on those places for development. So it's easier for a place like Cambridge or Brookline to require that these developments include affordable units even if they don't have special permits or whatever because people are so eager to develop there and they're so eager to get the high rents that they can get from the market rate units that they're willing to do just about anything to accommodate that. And we don't have quite that situation here. Our property values are high in the downtown area as well as throughout the rest of the town but they're not at the point where we have that kind of pressure and we also don't have that kind of development pressure because we've managed to save a lot of our town via conservation APRs, conservation restrictions, et cetera. So I just wanted to offer that that when we compare ourselves to Cambridge and Brookline it's really not an exact comparison. Maybe we should compare ourselves to East Hampton, North Hampton, Holyoke and the towns that are near us. And I also wanted to say that we do have one of our goals over the past 20 years that I can remember has been to keep our level of affordability above 10% so we're not faced with unfriendly 40B developments. And I think that's one of the things that's been in the back of our minds and we are lucky enough to have over 11% right now which is considered really good. Throughout the state there are very few cities and towns that do have over 10% and we need to be proud of ourselves for that. And we did achieve an award I think two years ago for our excellence in creating affordable housing. So we have a little bit of business to pat ourselves on the back about. I know we don't have enough of affordable housing but we shouldn't feel like we're really failing at providing it. And more recently we've had some developments that are providing affordable housing. We have Barry Roberts property on University Drive which is gonna have four units of affordable housing. And we have Aspen Heights which is the old Amherst Motel property which is gonna have 11 units of affordable housing. So sprinkled throughout town we are developing affordable housing in little bits and pieces. And of course we have 132 North Hampton Road which may or may not come to pass but that would be another 28 units if it were to come to pass. So those are just some thoughts that spring to mind and I don't know if I answered the question. I just wanna say in a general way the Amherst Motel evicted a lot of people. That project evicted people without any backup plans. And so long term we're gonna be a community that is a just community. We've got to plan that to, I'm just an aside. I know your values Chris and I appreciate them. So the Amherst Motel, the old Amherst Motel and I know some of what you're discussing but that would not be considered part of the 11% because it's not in the inventory. So that would be sort of more of an informal affordable housing situation that's, yeah. I have a little handout just of some examples from the state. Okay, Mr. Dog Park, sure. So I like the discussion about one aspect of the plan but the master plan has so many pieces and it's interesting about does the community agree on the goals and then how fine grained we want to get it in terms of implementation. And so I've often thought that if we can agree on the goals maybe then we develop a process for implementation. So if we don't know what the right percentage is for instance for affordable housing but we know that we want to get there then we can have a, whether it's the MPEC or some committee that would work toward that. So what is the right way to get more affordable housing across the board? I don't, I do feel like the master plan could have had more implementation but then at the same time if it's too prescriptive and things change like you said over 10 years what's the planning horizon? Are we, is the plan irrelevant? So is it, you know I'd like to think that we could try to get a plan that has a really broad consensus in town and then maybe exact implementation measures are are not, you know, it's not so specified but it's, you know, there's a process that outlined to get there whether it's by a committee or a group. And so if we, for instance like with transportation in complete streets what does that mean? We say we want complete streets in a pedestrian bicycle network but I can't imagine the master plan I can get down to a little detail of what that looks like for every street in town. You know, what does it look like in one neighborhood or village center? But if we know that that's a goal what are some strategies and then really what's the process to actually implement that? Is that through the TAC the Transportation Advisor Committee or is there another way to set that up? You know, the same would go for historic preservation or other pieces of the master plan because I think there's so much that can be put into it but you know some communities do a master plan in a year. You know, right? They really, they really have a lot of robust process and they just, and they get it there so that it's not dragged out. I was part of the master planning process I came in when as an intern and I helped with the mailings and doing the website and online surveys and you know, we did 600, you know, we mailed out 600 surveys and I think the process was great but then it took so long. You know, it took a few years so to me that felt like a long time. So you know, we have people coming in saying well I'm not sure I agree with this anymore. You know, they maybe even submitted their survey comments and two years later their ideas changed and so I just, you know, I'm not sure we need to, I mean to me it would be like, what's the process? I think we've actually done a lot in the master plan and so I like the idea of kind of reviewing. We've often talked about what has been done and then where are their barriers or obstacles and to me it would be like what would a new master plan look like? You know, I don't know what's a good example but is there, you know, what would we even think what a new master plan look like? Does it follow the goals, objective strategies or is there another format to help the community along? You know, I just, I feel like, you know, I work with the housing trust and the affordable housing, I've been doing parking, working with the downtown parking working group and the consultants were saying for parking, we're hoping they provide methodology in a way that the town can then use their plan in the future. We're not necessarily asking them to prescribe say a certain price point for parking but tell us how to get to that price point. So we're not, you know, we're not reliant on the consultant every time we wanna make a change but they give us a process to use and so the master plan to me sometimes didn't describe that process. You know, how do we get to all these objectives we like and maybe if we had an implementation committee that would have helped but I feel like it fell on all these various boards, you know, these different boards and committees to do that. I think it is being implemented piece by piece and the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust is a good example of that. The trust has been working really hard on developing the East Street property and that's a property where we may get as many as I believe 30 family sized units, affordable family sized units. So incrementally, we are building up our numbers and it may not be as apparent to the public because these things aren't often written up in the Gazette but we are working on multiple things at the same time, particularly in that area of affordable housing. Yeah. Chris, when I was reading through the emphasis and flag lot changes. For the master plan, I'm sorry. But the idea of developing more densely and there's information in here about flag lot development and changes in zoning to allow that kind of thing and cluster development which I believe we have. So can you tell me anything about those kinds of zoning changes? I'm searching flag lot or a flag even and I can't find anything. Yeah. So I think little by little, we are. The finding of those boundaries. Yeah, we are infilling. I can give you a couple of examples and some of it has to do with reinterpretation of what the zoning by law means. There's a property on North Prospect Street. It was owned by the Hastings family and it was a single family home and it had a large piece of property. A person came along and wanted to develop the property into a duplex and I think it was either four or six, probably four townhouses. And in the past, the interpretation of the zoning by law would have been that you couldn't have two principal uses on the same property unless you had an act of God or something. So there's a current interpretation that's different from that and that allowed that property to be developed. Instead of having one single unit for a single family it now is approved to have eight units on the property. There's another property down on near the railroad tracks that used to be owned by Nancy Hamill. That used to be a house and then it was divided into offices. Currently it's being proposed to have, in addition to the house office, it's going to have 16 units of apartments. It's in a mixed use building. But anyway, the interpretation now is that an office building and a mixed use building can exist side by side on the property. There needs to be a finding by the planning board or the zoning board of appeals depending on which kind of a case you're looking at that says that the two uses are complementary to one another. But I think that is really helping to promote infill in some of the inner neighborhoods, particularly the RG and the BN. And we really haven't changed zoning so much as changed the interpretation of the zoning to allow those kinds of things to happen. But Mr. Schreiber is aware of a property I think it was on Gray Street that was also proposed for infill. And that was quite contentious because there was a house that was going to be built in back of another house. And neighbors really didn't think that was a good idea. So we have to be kind of careful because these are existing neighborhoods that where people feel very strongly about the way things should be and don't necessarily want to see things changed to the extent of building a house in back of another house. So we're sort of working on it and it's happening but it's not necessarily in the spotlight. And a place like Amherst. So Amherst, if you look at a property owner, if you look at the GIS, we have all of these back lots. So there's not an extraordinary number of streets. So it's not really an urban area with streets every 300 feet or something like that. But because it was developed really as a rural community. So without putting in new streets, really the only way to achieve infill in some of these areas is through either a flag lot ordinance, flag lab bylaw or a smaller frontage which essentially is what a flag lot is. So, correct me if I'm wrong. It says here, like I'm looking at page three of the strategy and it's HIF, demographics and housing. Allow two family houses by right in all residential zoning districts. I think we have that now, somewhat because of town meeting has said that you could have an extra unit on your house or every garage or outbuilding can be turned into an 800 square unit. And so I've told people this because I thought it was kind of, it covers the whole every zoning area. You can basically turn your large shed or garage into a 800 square foot house. And almost nobody knows about this. And to me, this is a way of doing infill and easing the burden on people who they can have a separate apartment on their house or a little tiny house next to a small house next to them. Not so small because a lot of my neighbors live in 900 square feet houses. And if you are worried about taxes and you're living by yourself, maybe you move into that smaller unit and you rent your things. So to me, that's a great strategy for increasing density but without changing the real look of the town and it makes everything more affordable. People don't know about it. And also people probably can't afford. A lot of people don't think they could have the money to get the 50 or 60 or whatever, $100,000 to do that. And so the goal has sort of been achieved. We have the flexible zoning, but it can't be implemented because lack of knowledge or lack of money. And maybe the town could have a no interest or a low interest loan program for that kind of conversion. And then it would also stimulate a lot of local construction companies who could specialize in that. And you might say, okay, your garage is now gonna be an 800 square foot thing and it should be accessible because we're all gonna be using a walker for some days as far as I can tell. And so I think that's the kind of, if the mopec was there saying, hey, we achieved that goal but we didn't get the result, why not? And almost nobody knows about it. And it's probably daunting for a homeowner to undertake that or take that kind of loan. And you could work with local banks and say, hey, this is what we're interested in. So that's the kind of mopec thing I think could happen. And mopec could work with the housing people saying, you got this great stuff, you've done part of it. How do we make it a coherent package or what is the result of our steps? So that part struck me also. So because I think it's a great idea that any residential zone, a two-family house owner occupied should be, in my opinion, allowed by site plan review as it is in some. So it's allowed by right and RG and RVC, not allowed at all in RF or, I guess that's the only residential district it's in. You said again, RG and RVC. So the straight up residential zones, you can do a two, and I'm not talking about a supplemental dwelling which is slightly different. So it's a route, owner occupied duplex is allowed by right, site plan review in RG and RVC, and allowed by special permit in the other, all of the residential zones except for RF, which is fraternity. Yeah. And then it's not allowed in, it's allowed in another zone. But I think that two-family house can being able to have a two-family house is a very efficient way of keeping the look and feel of Amherst and then doubling. It's a very efficient way of taking a single family community and doubling the density, right? Because you're not adding new structures. Then on top of that, we have the converted dwelling by law, which as you point out can actually make some properties three-family. So you can have by right two-family in the front or then converted supplementary dwelling somewhere else. Am I right, Chris? Yes, you can. It's converted dwelling is sort of an awful. I'm sorry, I said supplementary dwelling. Yeah, converted dwelling is something else. So all of this assumes owner occupancy also, which is a neighborhood stabilization. And everything that you just said, Janet, about being able to stay in your house, why not build a converted dwelling, live there, rent out the front of the house, whatever, or the main house. So it's a good way to keep neighborhood stability, to keep people in their houses longer than they might be able to. There's always the counter, the countervailing force is students, Airbnb, short-term rentals. In other words, there's other forces at work here too. So we haven't sort of reached, that's sort of an unsettled issue is who's going to be living in these densified properties? So that brings up an issue that came up when the town was, Planning Board was looking at infill in the RG and thinking of making it possible to have smaller lots with smaller houses on them. And then immediately the flag went up, is our investors gonna come in and buy these smaller lots and put home store houses on them, which have nothing to do with the neighborhood that don't look anything like architecture that's already existing there. And how can we allow this to happen without, number one, having the neighborhoods fill up with rentals and number two, having houses pop up all over the place that don't look like the rest of the neighborhood. So to some degree, that what it looks like has been solved over to the west of the downtown and the local historic district because they can control what the new buildings look like, but the issue of whether these can be built by investors and rented, it hasn't been dealt with. So that's an opportunity that we've been considering, but we haven't figured out the details enough to make it work. So that would be something that we would be, I think the Planning Board would be interested in working on. Another small clarification because you use the term renters, but it sounded to me like you meant student renters. Student renters, I'm sorry. No, the only reason, yeah, because there's a big difference in what we don't have is enough rental stock at a reasonable price, yeah. I'm not 100% sure why I'm saying this, but just because I live on Meadow Street and because it's so much students and a long time ago when my husband's grandparents lived there, they did have an apartment upstairs. And so I think that there has to be some way to kind of, this is a problem I think that all of Amherst has and we know it, but because I live with it all the time, I just wanna say like, lots of times you can have like that little extra place, but in some parts of town that little extra place that should maybe house two people will now house 10 people. And I think that the other thing is is that in certain areas, students will pay so much more for rentals that the thing is, is that you may say, oh, well, I'm just gonna rent out that small space for $800 a month and then your buddy over coffee says, are you kidding, you could rent it for 2,000. And for some people that makes such a huge difference that if you could get 2,000, why wouldn't you? So it's just, I don't know how you regulate those things so that it remains safe, but I definitely think that there's violation of that and even like some people who it's supposed to be occupied and everybody who lives around knows that that person actually lives in Florida. So just, I'm preaching to the choir. I'm just saying like that's another thing. Make a phone call to the inspector, building inspector and tell them, yeah. And you have a, Cambridge started this program because obviously Cambridge has a lot of affordability and students and they have this thing called Nestorly and it's like a online program or a program to get, you know, grad students and well-behaved undergrads and the foreign graduate students that everybody is always seeking into people's homes who have kind of empty Nestors. And so that could be a program that we set up. It's like, I think we could increase housing without building new units and what are the ways to do that that don't put huge pressure on neighborhoods but alleviate problems? Maybe even thought, well, there's always problems when you have individuals or people together and we have all these mediators in town that meet monthly, maybe they could do a service of mediating problems and stuff. So I just think there's a lot of ways just to crack the nut of housing in a way that's not gonna change the face of Amherst. But I do think that we need to have a super simple comprehensive affordable housing requirement. You know, the consultant recommended 15%. I've never heard that mentioned before. I mean, maybe I just lost track of things but if it was 10% or if it was 8%, you know, the developer that is looking at the 60 units on Southeast Street is looking to do the same thing across. There's, you know, just hundreds of units going in and it's all good but what if eight or 10 or 15% were affordable and we just required that. When you do a subdivision, you set aside lots or space. I mean, towns do that and you wanna pick the right number but we don't have a comprehensive number across methods of development. And so, and that was the recommendation of the consultant, so. Where to, folks? I'm trying to get back to my notes here. I think, you know, having gone through, I lost track of who said this but there is a ton that we have tried to address in our own, not necessarily. So that I know the planning board has taken a lot of the strategies and tried to craft a way to, you know, to implement those, but yeah. I mean, I saw as I was going through it and I don't want to go section by section but I saw lots of places where different things, bodies were created over time to take on pieces of it. There was a section, for example, on budget that talked about long-term and short-term planning and there was actually a body that was created when John Musanti was finance director that did exactly that and there was a community choices committee, I think it was what the name of it was and they produced a fairly comprehensive report. I was actually on the committee which is why I sort of remember this. So there have been pieces that have been picked up and one of the things that I really appreciated in looking at the master plan is not how much we haven't done, but how much we have done. We've really done quite a bit and it's not just in the area of planning but picks up in numerous other areas. The, I do think that basics, and I think Janet, you said this is an subcommittee meeting that I always had that the core of the plan is really well stated and we shouldn't be messing with what the plan is but looking at pieces, I think that's what we're really kind of in the same thinking that you are or at least we're at that meeting. Let me put it that way. Yeah, so well along that line, I think a focus could be focused on the strategies. So rather than focus on the rewrite or even the objectives because the objectives are, I think are generally general enough to still apply. I didn't see any of that seem to be irrelevant now but I think some of the strategies could be definitely updated and updated for two reasons. Well, maybe more than two reasons. One is that they've been done, a lot's been done. And the other one is, well, it's either been done, not relevant or needs to be added and wasn't there in the first place? I think those are... Some of the things we probably don't want to do that we've tried to do and we found out that they didn't work out like transfer of development rights. Yeah, so we could have a line done that, didn't work. It never made it past the planning board, right? It never made it past the planning board because nobody wanted to be the recipient of the units. People wanted to be the giver of the units from their property to some other property but they didn't want to be the recipient in the neighborhoods. And some we tried, like form-based codes, we didn't get it passed, we can try again. I mean, there's still things here that are very relevant. I understand the amorphous complexity of your task and I was thinking that by focusing on this to-do list and strategies, you'd get more information of what's not working in the raster plan and what is. And so if you're gonna do a revision, I don't think it would have to be a three-year effort. You'd be just somewhere like, oh, you're kind of more into it, into the weeds and so you can sit back and just do a fast cut on it. This is super random, but I just thought Sarah might have some help. There's a whole thing about doing priority soils, farm soils and focusing on a kind of comprehensive protection of farmland. Did that ever get done? And so I just, I wonder like on, so I don't think I just, when I was going through it, I was going question mark, no, yes, kind of things and there's not everything I know. I think you would have a better sense but I think if you're working through it and this discussion would get deeper and then you can sort of say the TDR was interesting and didn't work or maybe it could have worked if it, you know, whatever, if it was not 2008 during a crash, you know, it might have been better, you know, during a peak or something, I don't know. But I think sort of digging into this will help revising it in a way. Yeah. Are you imagining a multi-session dive into the master plan? Not necessarily. I think we wanted just to have this conversation. Do you want to start going through these things line by line? Through the. Through the strategies. Yeah. Well, I'll say that. Yeah. So, maybe it's easier for you, but I don't see this. I think this is a wonderful. Totally agree. And I agree with you, Pat. But I guess my question is, do we want this to be the, this exercise definitely has to happen, but should it be the CRC or should it be this other group, the master plan update committee? What the hell is this committee about? I guess is my blunt question to us, to all of us, because it, you know, that's my blunt question. So, here's a suggestion. What you might consider doing is spending half hour, 45 minutes at each of your meetings. That's a good idea. Going through these strategies and deciding whether it's something that you want to keep or eliminate or say you've already done it or say you want to spend time working on it. And that means that you wouldn't hijack, you know, whole meetings, but you could spend some amount of time at every meeting. And then, you know, probably as you work through it, things will become clearer to you. And I would just say just as far as like setting goals and implementation, I think that we should sort of think about even if it's this body, but creating a body that is in charge of that because I agree with what Nate said, which is, you know, if you can then look at a strategy, I mean, in order to get to a goal, you need to really define that goal, I think, in a pretty precise way, even if it changes next year. But if you say this year this is our goal and then you can chunk it down until we need to do this by this time and we need to do that by that time, at least you feel, and there's somebody who's sort of guiding it, who's sort of looking at things that are happening in that area and making sure you're working towards it. I think that you're, that would stimulate more thought and also more forward progress to know exactly what your goal is and how you're gonna get there. Patty raised a good question, which, yes, it is the role of the committee. And gets back to the other side of the question with the role of planning board. And the development of master plan is really principally the responsibility under the state statute of the planning board and even under our charter. I don't think that the creation of the master plan is the role of the council. I think it's the role of the council to review and approve, but it really is a planning board document, not a council document. It's a very, and I don't know if every state is like this, but it's sort of, and then Chris, you struck, one comment you made at the very beginning that struck me was that the part, and of course, the part you're most familiar with is the land use part because transportation and some of the other parts are not your jurisdiction. And so here we have the planning board, which is a subset of any community focusing on land use primarily, responsible for, and quite frankly, not only responsible for developing the planning board and then they're the body that's entrusted to approve it, but it's things way out of their jurisdiction also, same things that, but that's what we have. So that's why I think things like the transportation plan, which was approved in 2015, I believe, and the open space and recreation plan, which has been updated, I think it was last summer, and all of these plans that are sort of offshoots of the master plan that have been incorporated by reference are important to remember because those were worked on by bodies that actually knew a lot about those particular topics or became knowledgeable as they worked on them, and so we do actually have expertise in those areas, not necessarily in the planning board, but in these other bodies. This gets to the idea of working groups, which GOL was looking at, but it also gets to what is the purpose of this committee, and it's to study the impact of decisions that we potentially can make or are being made by the planning board or any other board. So my point really is we need to create liaisons to those committees who are working more directly, and it has to come from the five of us. I mean, otherwise, you know, and I think that's realistic. Let's go through this, so you're obviously right that when this committee was even being conceived, one of the ideas would be that we would be the master plan update committee that works closely with the planning board, but let's try to go through this trip. So one thing the planning board was looking for from the town council was some guidance about what you think of is the status of the master plan and whether you think the master plan needs to be completely redone, somewhat redone, updated, approved as it is, just some idea from town council, what direction should the planning board take? Because if you decided that you wanted to redo the master plan process, that would cost a lot of money, and we would have to appropriate 100,000 or probably more than that to hire a consultant to go through the process. So it's gonna be a community effort and it would need the backing of town council in order to get this rolling. On the other hand, if we're going to update the plan that we already have, that's a whole different kettle of fish and we can do that in-house and we can do that with the planning board and the CRC and eventually with town council. So just wanted to state that. Let's go through the list. So if you go to your implementation matrix, page one, LU1 says preferentially direct future development to existing built up areas. So the first thing is LU1A, inventory and identify existing developed areas that are appropriate for density increases and redevelopment. So I think we've been doing that on an ongoing basis. It's rather incremental as we've been going around neighborhoods and looking at pieces of land that could be subdivided and potentially redeveloped, but it's sort of an ongoing process and it's a process that we engage with developers with, discussions with developers, but we also talk about it in-house. So there's no sort of one thing that I can point to that we do there, but it is something that we're always thinking about. The second thing is LU1B, evaluate built up areas on the basis of character, quality and priority, identifying areas to emphasize preservation. So historic areas of the downtown and village centers. So that's where I can point to the areas that are right of adjacent to the downtown. I think we recently went through a whole process where we adopted a local historic district west of downtown. We currently have a local historic district east of downtown, which does a very good job on preserving the buildings that are already there and making sure the buildings that are new are going to be compatible. Emphasize adaptive reuse, particularly high quality historic areas of the downtown. Well, we don't really have the kinds of buildings that say East Hampton has or even North Hampton, the old mill buildings and things like that, but I think we've done a pretty good job of reusing the historic buildings in our downtown area. And that's really on a case by case basis. Which are the historic buildings in downtown? I would say all the buildings along Main Street and the buildings along South Pleasant Street. And there's nothing along East Pleasant? Probably there are buildings along East Pleasant, some of the wood frame buildings, yep. So, okay. If the central fire station became empty, would it be? That would be a historic building or a potential adaptive reuse, yep. And that has been talked about as an entertainment venue. I'm not sure where that project is right now, but there's a group of people that's been looking at the fire station for adaptive reuse. So, Chris, I don't wanna dog you, but are those discussions going on with the historic, I always get the committee's name wrong. Like what's historic downtown and evaluating like what downtown should be preserved or protected with the historic committee? Who's the historic commission? I think we have two different ones, right? Yeah. So the historic commission usually will sit things on a case by case basis when something is being proposed to be either torn down or changed in some way. I don't think they have a global project that they're working on to evaluate historic buildings in the downtown. So perhaps that's something that we would want to work on. Actually, I'm glad that you raised that because that was one point that I had specifically cited as I noted as I went through the master plan and preparation for today's meeting when as an old car dealership in the historic building is the one that most people talk about. But I think what really is there is exactly the question that you wrote down is what are significant historical aspects of downtown? I don't think that we've really come to an ability to make that judgment, which is why you get into the question of people debating whether an old car dealership might in fact be in the historic building or not. Well, I have some ancient history. So I was at the Emily Dickinson Historic, I think it was the historic commission and they were having a public meeting and they kept on talking about the need to protect the Emily Dickinson historic, the houses there and they kept on using examples of downtown like the Bank of America building and this. And I said, well, why don't you protect downtown because you have all these criticisms and all these things. And then the answer from the head was like, oh, that's, we're doing this first and then we're gonna do downtown next. And that one of the master plan says is to identify different areas for historic districts and do that. And so I'm not sure the commission is doing a systematic look at downtown or other areas like where else, like maybe the South Common area is obviously. I don't think they are, I don't think they are. So that could be like a whole. It could be a project that they could work on. I'm thinking adaptive reuse would relate to Amherst works where the old bank building has been turned into a place where people can work, but they've preserved the interior and exterior of the building. You wanna move on? Yeah. Allow a varying combination of preservation and redevelopment other village centers, transitional or neighborhood business areas. So in North Amherst, the property that's being developed by Kohl's has been adaptively reusing some of their buildings. They redeveloped a barn and created the Atkins North up there. They have maintained their office building at 134 Montague Road, which is an old house, an old farmhouse used as an office building now. They have plans to reuse a barn that is right on the edge to the east of Atkins Farms. And there is also, I believe there's also something they call the onion barn on the north side of Kohl's road that they've been thinking about redoing, preserving and redoing. So that's a combination of preservation and redevelopment. Allowing more extensive development and redevelopment with the balance of incentives and controls, highway commercial corridors and research parks, more extensive development and redevelopment. So that is probably something that we are not doing now, but we certainly could do that. We do have research parks that are designated, but for various reasons, they haven't been developed. Some of the reasons are that the research parks tend to be really wet, especially the one along Belcher Town Road going towards Emmerst Woods and the research park up in North Emmerst. Some of it does not have water and sewer. So that's a challenge for developing those properties, but those properties could be developed if the ones in North Emmerst could be developed if water and sewer extended up there. And that may be a project that we wanna consider doing in the future. Encourage denser development of appropriate scale and design in village centers in downtown. Well, I think we could debate about whether some of the development is appropriate scale and design, but we have certainly seen denser development in the downtown with Wunnies Pleasant Street, Kendrick Place and Boltwood Place. And we're probably gonna see the project on Spring Street happening fairly soon. That was approved by the planning board a few years ago. There's also been a proposal. There was a proposal to develop a property that contained Bertucci's that kind of is lying fallow for the time being and I don't know what's gonna happen with that property, but we are seeing development in the downtown. So is a way to make sure it's appropriate is to, how would you do that? Like give the design review board authority instead of just recommendations to kind of control the look. Design review board could have more authority, yes. And we could also establish form-based code, which we haven't done, but we've talked about doing that in the downtown. So that's probably something that we should look at. And if we do establish a 40-hour district, form-based code is part of a 40-hour district. So let's see, using flexible zoning techniques such as form-based codes to promote mixed use development. Well, we haven't used form-based code, but we have used flexible zoning techniques and we do have a lot of mixed use development. So I'd say we have seen the results of that. I'd say we either have done or are doing that. And again, we need to look back and see if we want to incorporate form-based code. D is undertake rezoning efforts in order to direct more intensive development to appropriate areas and limit development in resource areas. Well, I think those, that has been done particularly in some of the areas that are right next to downtown, like the BN zoning district. We used to have a different zoning down on Main Street in the vicinity of the depot. And a number of years ago, that was changed to BN, which is business neighborhood. And that allows more of a use of, a mixture of uses of residential use and small businesses. So that's an example of more intensive development but maintaining some of the character of the surrounding development. And we're hoping that the new Emmer's Media Building with their new design will fit into that area. So I have questions about like the projects that have generated intense emotion and involvement have been places like the retreat. And then of course, you know, strawberry fields on Southeast Street. And so I wonder about the other side of that equation. Like there's a lot of zoning of subdivisions or whatever, you know, the purge that was on Southeast Street or the retreat that is intensive development in really a woods or a farm. And we're supposed to be protecting our natural resources in our farm. So are there places that you would say, oh, we need to, you know, I guess the expression is down zone or reduce the density of development in areas that aren't currently developed that are outside the village centers. And so I'm always wondering like, where in the map are those spots? Because, you know, a lot of people move into an area and they're next to all these great fields or forests and they think, oh, I'm safe, you know, and they're really not. And then the question, this is suggesting those aren't appropriate areas for development that you wouldn't want to have, you know, a luxury resort for students ever, in my opinion, but anyway, but that, you know, maybe that's not a good spot. Why was the zoning there or that allowed that? So I think the retreat was defeated by zoning. I think the fact that it didn't, it couldn't fit the zoning bylaw the way it was originally proposed. And then when it actually did meet the zoning bylaw, it was a big, I don't want to use the language that I'm thinking of, but it was not suitable at all to the location in terms of grading and blasting and filling and it just was not a good use of that property. So I think it kind of imploded on its own as a result of not being able to meet the zoning bylaw in a reasonable manner. So I also wanted to, there's one other thing, one other thought that I had about that. Yes, I know. So Van Caner came to town meeting in the spring of 2018 with a proposal to down zone parts of North Amherst and his proposal wasn't exactly completely thought out. He did most of it on his own and he did consult some hydrologists and soil scientists and people. But I think the planning board has every intention to go back to that proposal that he made and seriously look at rezoning that area because they realize that the current zoning really isn't suitable given the underlying soil conditions. And we probably need something. What we have is 30,000 square foot zoning up there. Van Caner was proposing 80,000 square foot zoning. So the planning board is thinking, maybe there's something in between that, a larger than, maybe an acre is reasonable. So anyway, those are the kinds of things that we can think about to rezone to develop in areas more appropriate in more appropriately in areas outside of the downtime. Let's see, create incentive zoning with bonuses for well-designed infill redevelopment. We do not do that. We do have some incentives for creating affordable cluster developments, but that really doesn't relate to design at all. So we haven't done anything with E. Provide incentives, including density bonuses, to encourage energy efficient development. We haven't really done that either. Establish programs to encourage economic development in existing developed areas. Well, we do have the Opportunity Zone in North Amherst that was recently established. So there is some activity in North Amherst based on this new Opportunity Zone that we have up there. And that was an application that the planning department put in and we did achieve that designation. We'll have to see if it comes to fruition. Provide incentives to encourage infill and redevelopment. Well, I was talking to you a little about, it's not really incentives, but it's a new way of interpreting the zoning bylaw that allows more infill in inner neighborhoods closer to the downtown. Well, I'm sorry, what number are you? I'm on H, L-U-1-H. Provide incentives to encourage infill and redevelopment. I can't think of any incentives that we provide. Well, we do provide the tax incentives for affordable units, but we don't really provide what I think of as incentives for infill and redevelopment. My L-U-1-H says something different. Oh, it does? Oh, it does. Yeah. That's my... So I'm not looking at the matrix. I'm looking at the actual... Yeah, I'm too, looking at the plan, not the matrix. Oh, you're looking at the plan, not the matrix. Interesting, so the matrix disagrees with the plan. I didn't realize that. Let's redo the master plan. Yeah. It's worthless. What the plan says under H, what we were looking at is create mechanisms for transfers of development rights, TDRs, from key resource areas and agricultural lands to village centers downtown and other specific districts and neighborhoods where denser development is more appropriate. 1-J on the matrix. Yeah, I have it as 1-J also. Descriptancy, well, that's something that could be fixed during the update. So you don't have the 1-J. The land use upper, land use 1 ends with H. There is no I or J, so there is a difference between the matrix and the... So these don't exist in the report. Okay, that's good to know. How do you get to look at it? I couldn't... It's in the last chapter. It's chapter 10. If you have chapter 10. That's a good cheat sheet. Sorry. Yeah, no, I just find it interesting that we find all of a sudden that the difference is between the plan and the matrix. All right, yeah. Yeah, after 10 years. It's an easy way for someone to slip some additional stuff in. Oh, yeah, I see that. Wasn't edited very well, I guess. So you want to move along to create vital downtown and village centers. I'll start using the text, the main text now on. Including retail, commercial and residential elements that are walkable, attractive and efficient. I think one of the things we've done is we've helped to create the bid. The town manager, former town manager worked very closely with the business community to create the business improvement district. And I think that's gone a long way to creating a vital downtown. We've also hired an economic development director and that is also helping us to maintain our vital downtown. Okay, now I'm lost. We're on page. 3.7. 7. It's really the, probably the strategies are what we should focus on. Strategies, change zoning to allow denser residential occupancy, near existing services and public transit. So we're working on a 40R overlay district. We've had a couple of public forums about that already. And that does just what it says here. It creates denser residential development near existing services and public transit. And the tweaking of the zoning code to raise the number of stories. That's correct. Was a direct result of this also. So we've allowed five stories instead of four in the downtown. Encourage increase upper floor residential development in downtown and village centers to support a vital economic social setting. So we took away the lot area requirement per dwelling unit and that went a long way to allowing development of downtown properties. Previously there had been a lot area requirement for each dwelling unit in the downtown and that just didn't make sense. So we've done that and we've also increased as Mr. Scheiber said, increase the number of floors that are allowed in the downtown. Support development of live workspaces, artist lots, high tech, small business offices. So we haven't really promoted live workspaces. We did investigate this during one of our planning processes. I think it might have been when we did the gateway planning process, but since then we have kind of not paid a lot of attention to that particular topic, although we do allow business use of homes, but that's a little bit different from what we're talking about here. Live workspaces are really places where people live on the second floor and they have a little shop or workspace on the first floor. So we haven't quite gotten to that yet. Build a permanent farmers market facility. We had a lot of discussion about this during a development of the plan for Kendrick Park. And we did come up with a couple of models for a farmers market there. In the end that was not included in the final plan. People felt that they didn't want to have a permanent building on Kendrick Park. So we haven't really gone back to that as something that we want to look at. I think that the farmers who currently use the Spring Street lot would like to have a covered space that they could use year round, but we haven't figured out where that could go yet. Develop more public art in downtown and village centers. We have a public art commission that's working very hard on that, trying to get developers to incorporate art into their developments and trying to get the town to spend some money on public art in municipal buildings. Can I just ask, as Chris goes through, so on what occurred to me when you said the permanent farmers market facility. Some of these items might be, do we still want to do that or not? So is that a good idea? So I don't know when you want to flag it on a, not just where would it be? It didn't work out here, but if we got to the point where we said we don't actually want it anymore. I'm not saying on this one we don't, but it would be a question I would raise on where would we put it if we don't have a suitable place? If we want it, we'd have to identify a suitable place, but it would be a question on maybe that shouldn't be on the list anymore, right? And here's the rub on this one is that we used to have the winter farmers market in the middle school, which was a great thing. And maybe it came out of the master plan, I don't know. But then it moved to having all- Most of the people were from out of town too. A lot of the customers were not from Amherst. So it's one, Sarah's going to speak to you. I'm not saying no to it, I'm just saying it's one that's kind of sitting here with no one. So I just wanted to say that when North Amherst was looking at being developed and we had all those lovely surets, I mean it's something that came up for North Amherst as well. I would say that I think that farmers markets are not doing as well as they were 10 or 13 years ago, but people are growing year-round a lot more now. And it's shown that in areas where there is a specific space for a farmers market, they also can double as entertainment venues. And this is something that we sort of looked at. Obviously there's a lot of issues with the farmers market that we would want to take a look at and revisit. We want to support Amherst farmers first, yadda yadda. But it might be something that we see if people still do have an interest in because we're talking about the dog park and the dog park being public art. Farmers markets year-round are actually the plans that other people have, or things that other people have done have actually been similar in the fact that they have value as entertainment venues or places for people to meet or public art. I would throw some support. I love the farmers market, especially in the winter when, I remember just coming out of like five foot a feet of snow and finding people. And there was music, there was food, and it was a nice way to see people in the winter. And I've always thought it was really sort of tragic that our farmers market is bustling and full of food at the time of year when there's a few as people in town. And so, the public markets that are permanent and different, I don't know if this is an urban model, but they're really doing well and they draw a lot of tourists and visitors from other communities who come in for the produce and the food and just the vibrancy of it. Just a time check, we have about another five minutes. So I think trying to get through as far as much as possible. But yeah, so I think that's a really great point that Kathy brought up. Is that something that we should ask the agcom if they're still interested in doing? And it also just, with Sarah's comment, it's if it was an expanded vision that it's a dual purpose that it's an end, you know, can be used. You know, so the question was it may be sitting on a table and not done anything because it hasn't been conceptualized quite in a way that would make it so public art. I think we're done with that. Use downtown green spaces more intensively. And adding play spaces to encourage people while they just congregate. So it just so happens that we just applied for a park grant to build a playground in Kendrick Park. So we're hoping that that comes about and we'll find out about that in the fall. Create music, dance and meeting venues in downtown. So we talked about the group that has been working on creating a music venue in the old fire station. I don't know if they've gotten any traction with town government, but they're a private group that's very interested in when that fire station is vacated, turning it into a venue. Promote sustainable tourism in Amherst. I think the bid and the chamber have been trying to do that. And you know, there has been some effort on the part of the town to sell itself as a tourism destination. That was particularly true when John Musanti was town manager. I don't know if the town managers subsequently have grabbed onto that idea, but that's something that we could go back and talk about. Tony, my rule list, I don't know what he's doing now, but he was working, he said a lot of the UMass students wanted to see more music downtown and more art spaces. And I think he was working on like sort of creating that. I mean, he was doing his a position at UMass and that the students like really wanted that to come downtown for different like openings and things like that, so. Should we keep going or is this a good stopping place? This might be a good stopping place, but one thing I was gonna mention and I'm looking for it as we scrolling through, is there anything here about a grocery store or the co-op? Because we talked about the farmer's market, yeah. When this was written, was Louis still downtown? No. No? It had already disappeared. It disappeared in the 80s. There is no food. Well, that would be, yay, something missing in there. Yeah. Create. Could be an economic development, I'm not sure. Could be. Or could be not a downtown issue, but I think it's a downtown issue. So we just spent a half an hour going through these strategies and I think we've had some pretty good comments and discussions. I agree, I think we could. Maybe we could spend half an hour at your meetings and do this. So actually I was looking at our syllabus, which we never got to, and we do have for our next meeting, two weeks from now, continued discussion of the master plan. Do you want to continue to go through the list? Yeah, we don't have the dog park, so we could spend all two hours. Okay, and Dave will be back. Sarah. Is it possible, like when we talk about this again, that we talk a little bit about where the master plan put village centers and I know in North Amherst, the village center, it moved, like just in some thought about like in the future, could if you have a village center and it's been infilled, but then like further down the road, you don't, like just what the general ideas are about what makes a village center and whether those are flexible and then they can be moved in the future. Just a question, because it happened in North Amherst. I just think it's interesting. So I did bring a map of the land use policy that goes with the master plan. So the next time we can talk about that and I think the village centers are flexible. They're not defined in a very hard manner where we know exactly where the edges are and as things become proposed, the village center can expand to accommodate them, but that depends on whether the town wants that to happen or not. Could I just, I'm gonna come next time. So I like that combination. If you could also cross-reference, when you write a strategy plan and each of these are a focus target, one may not, needs to be linked to another part, but it's not necessarily. So in a village center vision, how you get around. So the complete streets vision, transportation, that we don't necessarily control the development of that. The developer controls the development of their development. But it changes the context of the whole village center if you plunk something very large in without saying, oh, these streets were originally horse and carriage streets. Should this street be wider than it is right now? And so how and where in town can that kind of thinking? So on planning board, could you have said Coles has to be a wider street? Or is that beyond, do you not have the tool to do that? So I just like that kind of a discussion that if you wanna have this here, the street has to be wider because we need a two-sided sidewalk. Yeah, what? What? Two cars to go through, it's gonna be. Oh, come on, you can't get everything. It's now the challenge. One car and one bicycle today couldn't get through. But I'm just thinking, so it's with streets, but over here it's the development side and then the incentive side and then the sewage side and then Andy brought up affordable for the town. The net yield starts to be smaller the more we have to spend a lot of money to get something. So just some way the dots connect in a planner with a planner mind. So that's a really good point. We attempt to keep on top of those things by attending the Transportation Advisory Committee meetings and knowing what's going on with them and making suggestions, but the planning board doesn't have jurisdiction over the roads in town, so the planning board would have to take the initiative to say to town council, hey, look, this road really needs to be wider to accommodate this development. So probably more communication is the thing that we need to do. Because I'm thinking we're planning to put a bit more power because then you're able to look at, if it's part of the plan, that we're looking at walking and biking and traffic and greenways and it gives you more of a chance to actually have input. So let's wrap up to be continued. Is there a motion to adjourn? No, I have a question. Yeah. What's happened with the percent for art? We're supposed to be discussing that and it hasn't happened. What happened at finance? I can give you one piece of information on that, on finance. So you can say what happened at finance, but then I was asked to do something that will, I think, come to the next town council. Did you want to speak? So we had a discussion of it and the question was what happens next? We just had a beginning discussion and there was a request for work group. Could a work group be formed? So Lynn asked for a draft of what it might look like. Bill Cason and I then drafted it and I believe it was gonna come before the council on August 19th. And so, and I thought it was gonna be shared with you all because the way it was drafted is one person from CRC, one person from finance, a couple, you know, the arts council and someone from the town. So a five person to take a look at the issues that have been erased and come back with a revision. So that's the way the informal work group was set up, Pat. And since... We don't have it in the committee. Yeah, so, and I can send you a draft of that because all we were asked is just draft something so that... Right, which I appreciate, I guess, what I'm concerned with. This goes back to liaisons and if we need the information flowing from finance when it's gonna, because we need to, as soon as possible, I guess, so that we can keep moving ahead. Yeah, I think that we need to be cautious because we are looking at three different pieces that need to be considered together and not separately. One is the benefits of percent for art, which is actually, I was talking about a little bit in our discussion review of the master plan. The second is the financial cost of it. And the third is what are the re-write of the by-law would look like. And all three are part of it. The reason for a working group is to try and bring it all together and to allow that to happen. Concern that the art commission has is that if we get too far down the line on building a building without having reached a conclusion that they may miss an opportunity, that's what their fear is. I don't know that we're that close on any of our proposals at this point. The other thing is that as far as the cost consequence is concerned, we really didn't get into it because I think that we need to be working with our finance staff to do this, but we really have to figure out what is gonna be the cost for each of the buildings and where that cost would be paid so that information is for the council because if it is a building that is gonna come from debt exclusion override, then you're going to be increasing the amount of the debt exclusion override by half percent because you're gonna be presuming that you have tried to make the building as cost-effective to build as possible so that there isn't extra room in there, you add to it. If it is a building that is being built without a debt exclusion override, it comes out of other capital and you get into the same principle and the question is, how much are you reducing capital available for other needs, including roads and sidewalks? And that again is something that we need our professional staff to help advise us on and so we're not quite there because I think it's a lot more complex problem than some people have hoped it would be. That helped? Okay. I move it for your turn. Okay. Second? All in favor, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. All opposed.