 The appointed hour of six o'clock having been reached, I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals. My name is Steve Judge, as chair of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals, I call this meeting to order. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, spending certain provisions of the open meeting law, general law is Chapter 30A, Section 18, and the governor's March 15th, 2020 order, imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This public hearing of the town of Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of the members of the public will be permitted, but the public can listen to the proceedings by clicking on a link on the town webpage. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 40A, and Article 10, Special Permit Grounding Authority of the Amherst Zoning By-law, this public meeting has been duly advertised, and notice the rev has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. We will begin with the roll call of the members of the ZVA. Steve Judge is here, Mr. Langsdale. Here. Ms. O'Meara. Here. Ms. Parks. Here. Mr. Maxfield. Here. And the associate members of the ZVA, Ms. Waldman, Mr. Barrick, Mr. Greeny. Here. And Mr. Meadows. Here. Also in attendance is Maureen Pawlik, Planner of Debochevitz, Building Inspector, and I'm not sure if we'll see Rob Mora later on in the meeting. The Zoning Board is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of Chapter 40A of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important elements of the Amherst Zoning Bylaws is Section 10.38. Specific findings from this section must be made for all our decisions. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and they're recorded by town staff. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification or for additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raised hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized to present your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will nominally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered, followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information and time, it will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition is heard by the board is distinct and is evaluated on its own merits. The board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for the special permit, the board has 90 days from the close of the hearing to follow a decision. For a variance, the board has 100 days from the date of filing for its to follow its decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting members and is filed with the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there is a 20 day appeal period for an agreed party to contest the decision with the relevant judicial body and superior court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of these to take effect. Tonight we have the following agenda. A public meeting on ZBA FY 2020-14, herbology group Inc., for the review and or approval of a proposed de minimis change to the previously approved signed detail pursuant to condition 21 of the previously approved special permits ZBA FY 2019-13 and ZBA FY 2019-14, located at 422 Amity Street, map 13D parcel 8, limited business BL zoning district and research and development RD overlay district. Public hearing on ZBA FY 2020-1-06, backyard ADUs, request a special permit to allow a supplemental detached dwelling unit as an accessory to a one family detached dwelling under section 5.0111 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw, located at 34 Baker Street, map 13D parcel 46, neighborhood residents RN zoning district. This has continued from December 10th, 2020. And ZBA FY 2021-03, pioneer property services LLC, request a special permit to convert the existing detached garage to a residential unit, which will increase the number of residential units converted dwelling from one to two under sections 3.3241, 9.22 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw, located at 275 East Pleasant Street, map 11B parcel 63, neighborhood residents RN zoning district. This has continued from our January 28th, 2020 meeting. The general public, we also have a general public comment period following this business, as well as an opportunity for other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours. The first item of business tonight is ZBA FY 2020-14, tribology group Inc. for the review and or approval of a proposed de minimis change to a previously approved signed detail pursuant to condition 21 of the previously approved special permits ZBA FY 2019-13 and ZBA FY 2019-14, located at 422 Amity Street, map 13B parcel 18, limited business BL zoning district and research and development overlay. Are there any disclosures from members of the board? I wanna go through the submissions that we've received regarding this matter. We have received submission from Amanda, email from Amanda Pfeiffer responding to emails from Ms. Pollock. That email details the other material that they've sent. We've received a sign of the draft of the existing approved sign out in front that's proposed to be changed. We've received a set of updated site plans 10 pages of those dated June approved. These are the approved site plans from June of 2019. We have received a mockup of the planned sign, two pages that we received, I think on January 28th, I think, or February 3rd, I think February 3rd. The plan mockup items two and three. I don't think there were any other submissions public or from, and there were no staff submissions at this point in time. Is that correct Maureen? That is correct. Who's presenting for the applicant? We have Harry, I'm not gonna say your last name. It's okay, Harry Auerbach with Agnoli sign were located at 722 Worthington Street in Springfield. All right, Mr. Auerbach, before we start, we also have Mr. Mora, he's also in attendance here. Mr. Auerbach, go ahead and present your presentation. Thank you, Maureen, I believe you wanted me to share some documents, if you will. And I think to do that, I need to be a co-host. Is that correct? Or should I just go into the presentation? I think you should be able to share your screen. I will do my best. Yeah, so for the purposes for the board, it would be nice to see what you're proposing. Of course, bear with me. At times I'm a Zoom novice. So here we go, hopefully the board can see this. And please tell me if you can. This was the original proposed approved sign. It was going to be made out of wood and externally illuminated. And this is the new sign. Again, the difference between, in terms of the materials, this is now an aluminum sign. And it's internally illuminated with LEDs. The granite post exists now and will be used for the new sign. So again, the difference between what was approved and what we're seeking approval for is wood now versus aluminum. We want to use aluminum externally illuminated, now internally illuminated. I'm so sorry. And, pardon me, too much technology. I apologize. Any questions? This is the same size as the previously approved. Thank you, yes. The same size as previously approved. Again, the granite post exists. The sign will be fitted between the two posts in terms of that method. And it's important to point out with the internal illumination on the screen, if you will, the only part of the sign that will illuminate is the logo and the letters. That is the only part because what is green is aluminum and therefore will not illuminate. We call that in our terminology, these are pushed through letters and logo. It's a piece of acrylic that pushes through the aluminum sign. One question I have is, how was the old, the currently approved plan lit? That would have been grounded illumination. Ground and going up and shooting up. And what's really interesting, many times, actually in a neighboring town in Hadley, they want external illumination, which actually causes more light to spill. This will be actually less light spilling out. Thank you. There are questions from board members. Mr. Meadows. How will the lights be controlled? They're typically out of timer and controlled from the inside. And when I attend meetings like this, many times the board will tell us what to do. Typically it goes on a little before dusk and stays on an hour or two after the business closes to allow people to egress, if you will. I mean, it's not a source of illumination to the cars, but a timer. So the timer is gonna have to be changed fairly regularly in order to keep up with daylight? Yeah, again, with the change of seasons, Easter standard time or going to daylight savings, you just move it back, if you will. Would it be possible to put it on a photo sensor so it'll go on when there isn't enough light and then you can put a timer onto it so it turns off at a specific time at night? That could be an option. This is, I'd have to discuss with the owners as to, it's not, there's no photo sensor on the current sign, but if that's a requirement or a request, and actually now that I'm saying that, sometimes the photo sensor can be by the building. So it's, you know, so yes, that could be an option. Other questions from board members? Good job. Mr. Langsdale. Excuse me. I did not receive the printed materials for this meeting tonight. So I don't have the picture of the originally, original approved sign, but it seems to me that the name has been changed. Is that of concern to us and should it be? Good point. Keep, Mr. Langsdale, you're not, none of us received the package. Oh, okay. Yep. It was mailed out Monday and none of us have gotten the meeting package. This, what you see in front of you here is the existing approved sign. So I, why is the name, did the company change its name? Yes, the company did change its name from, well, Pleasantries is a subsidiary of Herbology and they're with me for a second. I can try to be specific about this and in a letter to Ms. Pollock from my colleague, Amanda, dated February 4th, RJB Enterprises is the operational equivalent of Pleasantries Inc, FKA, formally known as Herbology Group. Okay. So it's a name change, not ownership change. And any change of ownership that is with notifications that are required by the state laws have been taken care of, I'm assuming. Yeah, I mean, You're a lighting guy, you're not their lawyer, so. That is true, but having done a number of cannabis entities, if you change the ownership groups, it's a whole nother story with the CCC. So I can say fairly confidently that same owner group, just a different name. Are there other places where signage needs to be changed because of the name change on the building? There is a second location and allow me to bring that up if I can. Bear with me. So in this area, the Pleasantry name will go there as well. I don't have a PDF of that, per se. But it will also be pleasantries. So I'm assuming Mr. Auerbach that we had an approved sign. We had a plan that had the sign on it, which was approved, and that if you're going to put something different up here, I suspect you don't need to do the same process that we're doing tonight for that sign. Mr. Morris, is that correct? My understanding is the sign that was approved there did not change in terms of its material structure. It's only in name. Okay, so Mr. Maher, maybe you can tell me if we need to have a separate consideration of a de minimis change there. So there's different types of de minimis change. The ones that I approve and the ones that get sent to the board, as long as it's limited to the name of the establishment changing, which we are finding to be pretty common with the marijuana establishment so far or not unusual for them to change name to the court prior to opening even. The reason we decided to send you the freestanding sign is because of the addition of the internal lights, the elimination internally, which was different and suspected that just as we've heard so far, the line of questioning would be important to the board, but simply name change substantially similar to what was originally approved would be something that we would generally just approve without sending to the board. Thank you. Are there other questions from board members? Sure. I don't, is there a hand up? Mr. Mac Maxield. I guess my question here, it's more just procedural I guess from our end here on de minimis change and I guess my understanding of de minimis change wasn't, I guess it could be wrong about this. Whose de minimis change is it's coming to ask us if this change is essentially, does it warrant that we were asking if whether or not this warrants revisiting the whole application in the first place is essentially what we're asking with the de minimis for change. So if we said no, this is not a de minimis change that would mean that the applicant would have to submit these new plans to us then we'd have to approve these plans or if we would say no, this is not a de minimis change. That's us saying they're not allowed to do it entirely. Procedurally, how would that work here? So I guess, just to elaborate, I guess to make it a little bit more clear, my understanding of de minimis change is essentially that we're saying, if we say yes, it's de minimis change, it's essentially the same as us saying it doesn't require input from the ZVA and we're concurring with that. It was what my understanding of de minimis change was. Am I mistaken about that that we are saying there is a change and we're just approving it? I think that there's, maybe Mr. Mark can help here, but I think there's, as he said, there's two kinds of de minimis change. They make decisions to allow for change that's very de minimis and they don't think has to come to the ZVA for approval. This because of our interest in lighting and light wash and making sure that things are downcast and not like spreading beyond the sign itself is an issue which we take interest in on the ZVA. And I think for that reason they said, came to us and said, this might be a, this is something you should look at and that you can vote as a ZVA to permit this just in a public meeting or if we reject it, then they'd have to come back and they wanted to change the sign, they'd have to come back to either another de minimis change or they have to come back into a public hearing. Is that right, Mr. Mora or did I make a mistake there? No, no, that's correct. I think what's really helpful to think about is whether or not the change is big enough to require a modification of the special permit. And really that wants to be done when the board feels like they really need to put conditions into the special permit that they don't have now. Because you can't add a condition during a public meeting like this, but you can rely on the applicant's submission, their management plan and the testimony that they provide that'll get captured in the meeting somewhere. So I think in the first step to decide, do you even wanna consider this proposal or do you think it's completely inappropriate for the application? And if that's the case that it's inappropriate then you simply would say, no, we cannot approve this as a de minimis change. And then it's up to the applicant to submit a formal application to amend the special permit. But if you find that it's appropriate and could be considered small enough of a change, not significant enough to meet a special permit modification, then you can go ahead and approve it and try to capture the things that are important that we can read in the meeting summary and ensure that the applicant does during the installation or construction. So that would mean that Mr. Meadows concern or suggestion for a photovoltaic cell to allow for on or off could be recognized through or could be acknowledged in the meeting summary and the meeting notes. And that's something that would be kind of like a condition on the change here because it'd be mentioned in the notes. Is that right? That's right. So it is important with meeting summaries or public meetings to be as clear as you can about what you'd like to see and what makes it that de minimis change that you approve so that we can see that when we're at the permitting stage because what we're gonna ask for is that detail, that photo cell or time of operation. We're gonna ask for that at the time of the building permit application and make that a conditional permit to ensure that it actually happens where we won't have years later, we won't have this special permit condition to rely on that somebody could pull out and find it's gotta be done right at the time of installation. So some public meeting approvals don't come with any conditions or any additional information, which is fine. It's just the way the applicant submitted. But if you wanna make something changed about the application, we wanna try to capture that in the meeting summary as best we can. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from board members? I had one. Are there other lit signs along, internally lit signs along University Drive there? I know there's not an Amity Street going south, I guess. But are there any other signs lit like this along University Drive? Maureen? Just anecdotally, I would say that CVS is lit and perhaps the sun. You know, I couldn't confidently say one way or the other. I think the big Y as well. What about the other marijuana establishment that's down the road? I think they have a lit sign as well, is that right? I can't recall the top of my head to be perfectly honest. Okay. That's my recollection, but I can't remember either. And then of course, Huli Dickinson on University Drive, their sign is internally lit as well. That's great. Okay, thank you. Ms. Parks. I do think this is a de minimis change and I don't think we should require a light sensor. Any other comments? Mr. Langendale? Is this the same size as the one that we approved? Yes, it is. Yes. Okay. Any other comments, questions? All right, this requires a vote by the board to approve the de minimis change. Maureen, who serves on the panel for this item? I have listed Steve, Keith, Tammy, Dylan and Greg. And Greg, okay. Craig. Mr. Meadows, yep. All right. Is there a motion to approve the de minimis change? So moved. Mr. Maxfield, seconded by Mrs. Parks. Yes. Is there any discussion on the motion? Mr. Langsdale? Yeah. Ms. Parks has already stated that she thinks we should not have a what we were talking about requesting, but we haven't discussed that. So- This is the place to do it. Yep. What are we in fact voting on? Well, if you'd like to amend the vote, the motion to, or Mr. Meadows wants to amend the motion to include a photo will take timer. This would be the place to do that. The motion before us right now is to approve it as submitted, which doesn't include the timer. If you want that to be included, this is the time to do that as a motion to amend the motion. I would like to see it with a photo will take to turn it on and a timer to turn it off. Is there a second to his motion? I second that. All right. We have a second to the amendment. So the motion before the body is an amendment to the underlying motion to require a photo will take and the timer as stated by Mr. Meadows. Is there any discussion regarding that? Mr. Maxfield. I guess my question here is can we, again, procedurally can we put conditions like that in a vote for approving a de minimis change? Mr. Mora. So you're not able to add a condition to the special permit, but you're advising us, the building inspectors that are going to issue the building permit for this installation. And if you're comfortable doing that and keeping it as a public meeting item, I think what you'll know historically, what we would do is make that a condition of the building permit based on your recommendations. So we do follow through with that. So you should feel comfortable with that if for small items like this, I did want to add though with that sort of recommendation for the photo cell and timer that if the board was concerned, I think the applicant said that turnoff time would be about an hour after closing. So those are the kind of details that are helpful for us, you know, not going off at midnight, going off, you know, after they close at eight or nine o'clock to understand that if that was important to the board. Thank you. Ms. Parks, did you want to share anything while you would oppose the motion to have a timer and a photo of a psych cell? Sure. Well, I think that they mentioned that there would be a timer. And so I don't think that the addition of the photo sensor is necessary. I'm not sure how you would set it up also if wouldn't that cause it to go on at dawn or dusk and not when the business closed? If I may explain. Yes, Mr. Meadows. When we're looking at projects, we often have it such that there's a photo electric cell that turns lights on so that they turn on when it begins to get dusk. And then a timer to make sure that it turns off at a specific time in the evening rather than stays on. And what this does is it saves energy because if you have to manually change the timing as the year goes on, you can overshoot it one way or the other as far as turning it on is concerned. Whereas the photo cell turns it on automatically when the lighting is needed. And it's not turned on during the day that way. Exactly. So you have the advantages of both, I understand. And that's something that the applicant can do. Is that right, Mr. Aurobock? Yes. Or you can help with the installation of such a sensor. As Mr. Morris said, it would be a condition of the permit and I would work with the manufacturer and the applicant to say this is a condition of the permit and that we need to have a photo cell somewhere around the building that to Mr. Meadows' explanation goes on at dusk, turns it on at dusk and then a specific time to turn off at night. So an hour after closing or something like that, right? Is that what we're talking about? Let's give the staff as much guidance as we possibly can. I think an hour after closing sounds like a reasonable time. You know, I have to take the board's direction. Yeah, right, we can pick it, got it. So it would shut off. So for what would the dawn to one hour after? After closing, that's typical of other municipalities, you know, near Amherst, you know, and again, it just allows the personnel to egress. And just to repeat one hour after the closing of the business? Correct, if I may say, you know, I don't know the particular hours, but some businesses, you know, Monday through Friday, it's nine o'clock, Saturday and Sunday, it's 10 o'clock. So you usually defer to the later period time periods or you're not bouncing back and forth, you know? And again, I can't speak to the hours there yet. I'm sure that you can find this sophisticated enough time to give you seven days of various time. Like taken, yep, yep. And I think it's eight o'clock is the timing, I'm gonna go close for most of the marijuana facilities in Amherst. So I thought, I think we're about ready to vote, but I didn't see Mr. Maxfield raise your hand. Yeah, because we're still just talking about the motion, the- To amend. To amend, which I am definitely gonna be voting no on. I just think, I don't know if we have procedurally, if we should be making conditions on changes for proving the minimalist changes, I'm sure we could do it and I'm sure it wouldn't get challenged by anybody, but I don't, I don't think we should be putting on a condition for a vote for the minimalist change. I think we should just leave that to the building inspector or we should say no, it's not a de minimis change. We wanna add this condition of a light sensor is how I think we should approach this and not put a condition on the de minimis change. Mr. Morrow, is your hand up? Yes, so just in response to Mr. Maxfield, I think what the board could do, if they wanted to and decided the same, ended up having the same opinion, is that you'd advise the applicant to come back next meeting with the documentation, supporting what you're asking for tonight. So the applicant gets an understanding of what you could or would approve in a public meeting. That is, if you were uncomfortable with the meeting summary, capturing it and relying on a condition of a building permit, then you would have the applicant adjust their materials to reflect that. That just seems to be more of a burden on the, we get the same result, probably put more of a burden on the applicant. If I may, am I allowed to comment or not during this time? What if you have something to add? Yes, I think from the applicant standpoint, as opposed to the motion, we would, obviously, if we need to do a photo cell, we will do a photo cell. And if we could to your point, if we could save time coming back again, because obviously they would like to move forward with the project as quickly as possible. So if we could, if everybody knows that the building, you know, if Mr. Moore says it's in the, to get the permit, you must do, we will do it. Got it. All right. Mr. Langston. I think it's important that we understand that we're not putting a condition on this. We're putting, we're doing a recommendation to Mr. Moore so that he can put a condition on the building permit. That's different than us putting a condition on this public meeting, on this hearing, public meeting, de minimis change. So I just think it's important to make that distinction. Read. And Mr. Macfield. Though the motion before us is to make a recommendation about this then, that's all this motion is. The motion is, the motion is to approve, the underlying motion is to approve the de minimis change. There's an amendment that before us to amend that motion to recommend or to advise staff that a photovoltaic timer and sensor be placed on it and that that sensor go off at one hour after closing. That's the motion before us right now is the amendment to the underlying motion. And that amendment is simply advisory. All right. Then I'm ready to move forward. Thank you. You bet. All right. Ms. Parks. I'm sorry. So is this, so if we voted for this is Mr. Moore then required to, is that then required? I guess what Mr. Maxfield was saying is there a difference between recommended and required? I think practically he's going to, they're going to do it, but Mr. Moore, how do you view it? I mean, it seems to me that this is, that if the board votes, if this is our preference, you're going to implement that. Right. I think no matter what we get to the same place, but the motion and the decision of the board is that we find this, a de minimis change provided that a photo cell and a timer at, you know, cut off at one hour past closing time. And then if I got something different for an application it wouldn't be the de minimis change that the board approved. And I would say you've provided me something different. So like if they came in with a sign five square feet bigger, I would say that wasn't the sign that the board approved. And they would have a choice to make. They either come back to the board and with a new change for the sign or they make the adjustments based on what happened at tonight's meeting. So I think it really doesn't matter to me whether it's as recommended or just as, you know, basically acknowledging that there will be a photo cell, there will be a timer that shuts off an hour after closing. And therefore we find that it's a de minimis change and does not require any other, modifications to the special permit. Yes, Ms. Part. So again, you are requesting or you're requiring on the building permit. So if we made this, if we vote to say, yes, are you requiring this? I'm requiring it. If this vote is based on the installation of a photo cell and a timer, that's going to be a requirement of the building permit installation. Okay. So I think we're clear on what's before us. The first vote will be on the motion to amend the underlying motion to require the photo take timer, which shuts off an hour after closing. Do I have a motion to approve that amendment? So moved. Second. Second. Second. Second. All of this roll call vote. Mr. Judge, aye. Mr. Langsdale. Aye. Mr. Langsdale. Aye. Ms. Parks. No. Mr. Meadows. Aye. One, two, three, four. We've got four ayes and one nay. No, your motion passes. Yeah. What's that? Oh, Mr. Maxwell, I thought you voted. Mr. Maxwell, I'm sorry. I know, I'm sorry. Just, we'll keep moving, but just with the language of require and voting nay. So you voted nay. So we have three to two. We need a vote of four, I think to pass this for any item. So that motion fails. That amendment fails. Now a vote occurs. Mr. Dominguez, tell everybody where we're at. The vote now occurs. The discussion is on the underlying motion to approve the de minimis change. Mr. Maxwell. I'm just going to make the motion just to, that we advise for the installation of the cell. And then we can vote on that. I think we'll have the votes and we can just move forward. So I just don't want it to be required. The building inspector can require it. We can advise it. That's what we just voted on. No, we just voted on to require. No, we didn't. To require him. The motion was to put that as part of the approval. That requires Mr. Mora to implement that. We didn't make the requirement ourselves. We told Mr. Mora that that's what we'd like to see. But if we just advise him, he's going to do the same thing. So either way, we're in the same place. Well, I think we're all getting in the same place. We're getting logged down to bureaucracy. So I think we can go ahead and move forward. We want with just the motion ahead of us right now. So the motion ahead of us now is just to approve the de minimis change without any instruction to the staff on a fuller vote take or a timer. That's what's before us now. We just, that vote just lost because we need four. So right now it's the plain motion unamended. Any discussion? Oh, Mr. Moshavitz. I don't know if this would be agreeable but maybe the should, so what's before the board is this is a de minimis change. And I would suggest perhaps it's a de minimis change with the understanding that the installer will install the photovoltaic sensor and the shut off timer. And that's all it is. So anything outside of that, you would perhaps want to consider it not a de minimis change. Does that help at all? Well, it helps in the absence of a vote that just voted against that. So I mean, I'm looking to you guys how you're gonna implement what it seems to be a, not how you would implement this because right now we have a, the legislative history on this is a defeated motion to suggest that to the staff. Now we can all say, if we all would say this in some other way, I guess we could possibly do it. But right now that's what's out there is it's not no instruction to the staff, I think from the motion that just failed. The amendment that just failed. So the motion before us is to approve this in a de minimis way without it. And there is no other instructions to the staff. That's what's there. All right. Do I have them? Is there any other discussion before we move on? Ms. Parks. I just want to say that there is a timer. It's, you know, that was discussed as part of the lighting for the sign. So it's not that we're removing a timer from this. It's just the light sensor. That's, I guess that's right. There's a, there is already a timer. Yep. There's already a timer on it. I'm going to, I know we're in the middle of a vote, but I want to make sure that's correct. Mr. Arobach, is there a timer on it currently? I don't know the answer to that, but there will be. I mean, there has to be because the, you know, Otherwise, you're not going to have it on 24 seven. Correct. Yeah. No, that was, you know, listening to the board, the board is saying either, and I'm not sure the procedure rules, but the suggestion has come up. We're good. We're good. No, you answered my question. We're in the middle of a vote. So I don't want to extend more discussion. All right. Mr. Langsdale. Hey, my problem is that the, Mr. Arobach says that there will be a timer, but we don't know what that timer is. So we don't know at this point, what we're voting on as a de minimis change. That's my thought on this. Okay. So it looks to me that we've got the following issues before us. One, we can pass this and leave it up to staff to decide whether what's appropriate timing. We, I don't think we have direction to staff, although Mr. Washevitz made a valued effort. There's not direction to staff to try to put on a photovoltaic timer on the sign. So we can either approve this with nothing except the undetermined timer, or we can ask the applicant to withdraw this and come back in two weeks or three weeks with something specific that answers your specific question, Mr. Langsdale. Those are our options. So the one option that I think is, it solves all of our problems to come back with something specific from the applicant in two weeks with the timer and the timing sense and we can deal and schedule and we can deal with it at that point as opposed to trying to make these decisions and going on with this. If I may, am I allowed to say? It's the second, Mr. Powerbott. Mr. Maxfield. Let's just do this so we can hopefully move on with this. Can I make a motion here? Or essentially the same thing, word it a little bit differently that we, I'm going to go ahead and make a motion. We advise staff to require a, the photo, whatever the name of the timer is there. I'm gonna go ahead and make that motion and we'll move on to that. We're moving to amend the motion that we advise the staff to require, advise the staff to make a condition of the building permit the use of a photovoltaic timer. Yes. Is there a second to Mr. Maxfield's motion? Ms. Parks. Seconds that motion. All right, the motion before the body is an amendment to the underlying motion to advise staff to acquire a photovoltaic timer as a condition of a building permit. Any discussion? All those in favor, this is a roll call vote. The chair votes aye. Mr. Langsdale. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. The vote is five, oh, on the amendment. Now we vote is on the underlying motion as amended to approve the de minimis change. This is a roll call vote. Is there any discussion? All those in favor say aye. I vote aye. Mr. Langsdale. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Motion's five, zero, it carries. The de minimis change is approved by the board and with the advice to staff on a photovoltaic sensor. All right. Good luck, Mr. Arbaugh. Thank you very much to the board. We appreciate this positive vote and you all stay safe. Now, the next item on the agenda is public hearing on ZBA FY2021-06 Backyards ADU requests a special permit to allow a supplemental detached dwelling unit as an accessory to a one family detached dwelling under section 5.0111 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaws located at 34 Baker street, map 13D parcel 46 neighborhood residents are in zoning district. This is continued from December, I'm meeting on December 10th, 2020. Sitting for this matter is Mr. Greeny. He's there, there we go. Mr. Greeny is sitting for this matter. What we have as a submission is a letter from an email from Mr. Lee with Backyards ADU asking for wishing to withdraw this without prejudice. That's all the information that we'd have and no other submissions. So the effect of this is that the applicant has withdrawn they can resubmit at some point but we have to approve the withdrawal of that application before the board. Is there any discussion on that motion? If not, is there a, do I have a motion to permit the withdrawal of this application? So moved. Mr. Maxfield moves it. Is there a second? Second. Mr. Greeny seconds it. Is there any discussion on the motion? If not, this requires a roll call vote. I vote aye. Ms. O'Meara. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Greeny. Aye. Motion is five zero unanimous it carries. Motion is withdrawn, the application is withdrawn. Before we move on to the next item I want to acknowledge that Ms. O'Meara, Joan's going to be stepping off the ZBA. I, we, Joan and I joined this on the same meeting about, what was it, three years ago? We've been partners in this for three years and she's got better things to do with her time, I understand. And not to demean what we do, but just, I think Grant's children are always better than anything you can do at the ZBA. And so I want to congratulate you for that. And I want to thank you for being a really great board member and being a friend on this board. Thank you so much for all of your work. Should I say I'll be back? Yes, I hope you will. I hope you will. And I credit the board for all the hard work they do. And I know it's tedious and aggravating sometimes, but we're serving the community with really good, really good people. I wish you all the best, be safe. Thank you, Joan, for your work. It's been great work. Okay, Keith, yep. Thanks, Joan. Thanks, Joan. It's been great working with you. Thank you. All right. Next order of business is a public hearing on ZDA FY 2021-03, Pioneer Property Services, LLC. Requests a special permit to convert the existing detached garage to a residential unit, which will increase the number of residential units, converted dwellings from one to two under section 3.3241, 9.22 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw located at 275 East Pleasant Street, Map 11B, Parcel 63, neighborhood residents are in the zoning district. This was continued from our January 28th, 2021 meeting. On this matter, Mr. Meadows will be replacing Ms. O'Meara on the panel. Before we begin, I wanna address two procedural issues brought up that were brought to the staff this week concerning this application. A member of the public has asked the staff to turn on the video for all public commentors. And in talking to the staff, I am informed that the town boards only have board members, staff, applicants, typically with the video on and that public commenters, the video is not on, but the audio is on. They come in and they're recognized by the staff or by the chair and given an opportunity to speak but their video isn't put on. That's for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's time consuming. You have to make sure that the video is on when that person wants to speak. You have to make sure that Maureen would have to help people try to do that many times. That becomes time consuming. Starting them as a panelist can be time consuming as well. Sometimes a commenter has trouble starting up the video. So it all takes time. Also, there's a limitation on the bandwidth that we have. And if we have a large meeting where we have 50 or so people and they all wanna be, we wanna avoid having to put each one of them in individually which takes time and we put them in all the beginning, then they would take on a bandwidth problem. So it seems that this is something that takes more time. I think our, it just adds to the length of our meetings. I think our meetings are long enough already. And I don't see any great public benefit to doing this. Lastly, I don't know that we wanna start this. The town has set a position on this, a process. I don't think we should be changing it without having a discussion with the town manager or the town council. And so I'm gonna go forward with it as it's been done in the past and not do this until we get different guidance from the town manager or the town council. I just also wanna say that we do give, regardless of whether we see your face in the public, we give great consideration to public comments. We go out of our way to make sure that we have time for them. We listen to them, we write them down, we make sure that the applicant responds to it or we can respond to it or town staff can respond to it. So I think that this is not an indication of not caring about the public comments. It's just that we don't wanna change that policy now and we may not have the bandwidth to deal with it. A second person has asked that the applicant not be permitted to respond to the public comments after the public comments. We always have the applicant be able to respond, answer the questions, maybe to reflect the views or concerns or respond to the views or concerns of the public. I'm going to continue the process we've had. I'm not gonna do that and I wanna make sure that people know that this is the process that has been brought forward through the entire ZBA. It works very well. We go back and forth. And I think it's important to allow the applicant to respond and for the board members to hear the response and not just have some is gonna be last. And in this case, it's the board members asking the questions before them is the applicant responding to the public comment and then before that is the public comment. So I think the procedural changes are not necessary and I certainly wouldn't wanna do it for this application alone. So I know that the staff has been asked to bring these items up and asked to have them brought up in this meeting. I don't think that this time it makes any sense to change our current policy. And without direction from the town, we can't change the Zoom policy. Lastly, we spent a lot of time at the last meeting talking about how we get our information out to us before these meetings and how we have sufficient time to consider it. And we decided that seven days would make, last meeting we thought seven days made a ton of sense. It gave everybody a chance to review it and gave chance for Maureen to be able to get it to us so that we can review it for the time. What good news is everybody got all the applicants got their information in and the town commenters got their information in seven days ahead of time. The problem is there was a lot of comments and a lot of stuff. And it wasn't able to, and it took a day or more to put it all together so it could be put into the project application report. That project application report was mailed on Monday and none of us, I don't think any of us received it ahead of the meeting. That project application report is, I think the most important thing we have to deal with particularly when we're dealing with a complicated application. It lays out the way in which we should review the findings, the waivers, if any, the conditions that we have on the special permit. And it's kind of the guidepost for all of us, the guide map for all of us. We can get it online. It's not the same thing for me. I'm still a paper guy. Even though I've gone through all this, I ended up printing up all of this paper myself just because it's easier for me to review it that way. So for tonight, I think that we've got the online version and we're gonna use that as best we can to try to guide our conversation. But I think it's very difficult to make this decision tonight when we don't have the paper in front of us. And I want everybody to know that there is no pressure to resolve this application tonight before we adjourn, that if we feel that we need more time after hearing the applicant's new information, after getting public comment and after our discussion, we can wait and do that next week. And I also think that we should probably be looking at something more than seven days for the submission of the material. That gives Maureen more time to put it together. That gives us more likelihood of getting it in advance and allowing us to look at it. So all that's being said, we give it our best shot. We'll move it back to 10 days and hopefully we'll be able to get that information to us before the meeting next, for the next meeting. All right, is there any questions on the process? Okay, good. Thank you all for your patience on that. So are there any disclosures? Submissions, I'm gonna go through the submissions that we've received. These are in the project application report. They're available online in the OneDrive, but I will read them off here. We received the applicant's presentation from the January 28th meeting. We got an email from Mr. Sparkle dated February 2nd. We got a transmittal of supplemental information presented by Mr. Sparkle on that date as well. We got a parking memorandum prepared by the engineer, Mr. Sparkle on February 2nd, a parking schematic of existing conditions prepared by the same man on February 2nd, a gravel drive sensitivity analysis prepared by the engineer dated January 31st, ZBA parking management plan for dated February 2nd, a plan sent prepared by Mr. Sparkle with a title sheet on existing conditions, a site plan and details, all dated from February 2nd and January 24th. Email from Mr. Mendelsohn dated February 2nd, a memorandum from Pioneer Property Services dated February 2nd, management of business overview on February 2nd. We received on February 2nd, also a lease for 275A and 275B. Yes, we received two and we received a resident manager scope of services agreement and a property management plan, also on February 2nd. Staff documentations, let's see, staff documents or project application report dated February 8th, a list of ZBA and town staff requests in preparation for the February 11th meeting, existing rental permit and associated parking plan, associated parking plan, comments from the town engineer dated February 3rd and complaints filed with the town of Amherst for property as of February 4th, 2021. In terms of public comments, we've received 17 public comments since the last meeting. Those are from Mr. Stevens dated 28th, Mr. Rosnoy dated 29th, January 29th, Mr. Schreiber dated January 31st, Mr. Cobb dated February 1st, Mr. Carson dated February 3rd, Mr. Strayer February 3rd, Mr. LaRaja February 3rd, email attachment from Mr. LaRaja dated February 3rd, Mr. Schreiber February 3rd, Mr. Schreiber, email dated the same date, comments from Mr. Holton Cohn dated February 3rd, Ms. Kimberly Perez dated February 3rd, comments from Teran LaRaja dated February 3rd, email from Attorney Reedy dated February 3rd, legal opinion via email from Mr. Reedy dated February 3rd, comments from Ira Brick dated February 4th, comments from Mr. Schreiber dated February 6th, and an email attachment from Mr. Schreiber dated February 6th. Mr. Chair, and there was an email that came from Mr. Strayer on February 9th, which was emailed to the board. So that was on Tuesday. That's right. I saw that. Thank you. So that went through the submissions and the public comments that we've received. All, as I said, all those were available to us on the OneDrive. Current business before the board is the submission of the applicant answering the questions raised by the board at the last meeting, as well as responding to issues raised by the public comments, if they weren't able to respond to those at the last board meeting. So I'm assuming that if Mr. Sparkle is going to be speaking for the applicant. I also want to acknowledge that Mr. Bard, the town councilor to the town is on the call in case, so if we have questions for the town lawyer, the town attorney, Mr. Bard is here to answer those. All right. Mr. Sparkle, how are you going to proceed? Well, we've also got, I guess that's right, Mr. Sparkle, we received your presentation today as well. Oh yeah, of course. And the elevations. And elevations, which are available on the OneDrive. Those were submitted this afternoon. Yep. Good evening. It's good to see everyone again. For the record, I am Bucky Sparkle, the applicant's representative in this application. I do have a much shorter slide presentation this time than last time, fortunately, but of course there has been a lot of additional information submitted by members of the public and the attorney that they have brought in. So I do have a little bit more to talk about and I'm going to begin with a screen share. I have so many screens open. There we go. Okay. So moving right to the requested information. So we received, I think an 11 point list or so of information that the board was interested in reviewing. Some of it was just updated information. Some of it was supplemental and new information. So since I understand that maybe not all of this documentation has been reviewed in depth because of transit within the town system. I'm not planning on covering all of the details of that substantial stack of paper. So I'm just going to hit the highlights here. And if there are questions, of course, be very happy to discuss. So one of the items was copies of the leases as presented and clarification on that. So what I want to point out is there was asked how many tenants are going to be there? So UNI-A has six tenants up to four of them can be unrelated, UNI-A is the farmhouse. UNI-B, the garage can have four tenants. The proposal is that they are all family, that they are not undergraduates, that we are requiring an affidavit that the individual signs stating that they're not an undergraduate student or planning and being an undergraduate student for the duration of the lease. And these are restrictions that honestly, the applicant doesn't want, but we're trying to address concerns the neighborhood. He's made several concessions during this process. So this is our understanding to benefit the neighborhood to eliminate students, although some of the public comments are saying differently now. So we sort of have a mixed message and we might be talking about that a little more tonight. There were questions about how many guests. So each unit can have four guests, maximum, up to four consecutive nights maximum. On the property, it can have no more than 18 people between the two units anywhere on the property and no more than 10 people in the yard in the common areas outside of the buildings at any one time, which is less than the current lease allows, which is 12. There were questions about the drainage, seeking additional information relative to the skim code of grass over the gravel. How might that impact the hydrology? So I re-ran the model in a variety of different ways, provided some charts showing that there's very little impact between all grass, half gravel, half grass and gravel. That is in large part because hydrology considers the top five feet of soil and this type of soil has a lot of runoff. So if it were all sand, you'd see something different, but it is tight soils, relatively tight, it's not clay, but it does have more runoff. So the way the numbers come out is there's very little impact for the grass. And as I've stated before, that the proposed stormwater mitigation is independent of any of the impervious area. If this were a fully wooded site and they were gonna add four and a half dozen square feet for residents, the proposal that I would make is really the same. It's more than adequate for a residential stormwater management system for all of the impervious area, whether or not there was gravel there or whether or not there was gravel there. Also, of course, the town engineer, Jason Skeels, has reviewed this report as well. And like the first time he reviewed the drainage analysis, it is adequate and it is accurate for his words. So I'm confident that what I'm doing is working out and satisfies the town engineer. There was a question about lot coverage, trying to balance the discrepancy between the surveyors' original plan and the modification of that plan that I submitted. The difference is, of course, the addition of the gravel driveway. We've shown evidence that it truly is there, photographic evidence from the sky and the ground. And it's just not visible, it's under an inch of grass. So the surveyors did not see it. The board members, I don't think, saw it during their site visit, even though some members were standing on the gravel driveway. So it's just invisible under the grass so the surveyors can't survey what they can't see. So that's the discrepancy there. There were additional submittals requested in terms of updating the management plan where effectively, Pioneer Properties Services, PPS, their role is to coordinate with tenants, with the community as necessary with the Amherst Rental Office. If there are any complaints, they go right to the property manager. They're responsible for addressing any all non-compliance issues, should there be any, for maintaining the grounds in all capacities, for handling the trash, no removal, landscaping, all of that. And they will be regularly in contact with the resident manager. There was a request for a parking management plan that was submitted specifying that each unit gets assigned spaces in the lot. So two for one unit, two for another unit. No parking is allowed on the grass. That's a town rule, but it's also written into the leases as is the statement that violating that if you're too many cars on site or they're not parked in their assigned parking spaces that they would be towed. There's no guest parking offered in this proposal, but on the weekends across the street, there is a free lot available that UMass has. And there is also across the street, a bus stop for one of the three bus routes that goes by this property. There are also, for the other two routes, there's one stop a little bit north, one stop a little bit south. So there are multiple ways for pedestrians or walkers, bicyclists to get to this property as a guest even during business hours when you can't just drive across the street to UMass. There is a request for an overview of Pioneer Property Services to give the board an understanding of who they are and what they're doing. This is a small family business. They live on Gray Street. They live four minutes away. I Googled it just to see it's 1.0 miles. So they're really quite local. They have been property managers for 10 years now. This is their third property. They have one in Belcher Town, one in Northampton. So they're, I think, learning a little bit about how to be good stewards in Amherst as well. Every municipality is gonna have them doing different things. So they're catching on here. All facets of the business are managed by the family. So the parents, Neil and Jen, handle quite a bit of it, but also the daughters, Eva and Lea, are involved in the business in terms of groundskeeping and some other more rudimentary tasks. So it's a family business. And property management, just three properties, that's not a full-time income. So they do actual on-call 24-hour services for other landlords in the area. So they're, they are quite experienced in handling emergency situations or things that have gone wrong or stuff that has to be handled immediately. They do this professionally for other landlords. So they're not, even though they've done it 10 years for themselves, they do have a broad range of experiences under their belt. And they did acquire this property at 275 East Pleasant in August of 2019. So they've had it a year and a half. And since then, they have fully renovated the interior, cabinetry, electricals, plumbing, flooring, doors, they've done insulation. I mean, pretty much everything you can do inside of a house has been fully updated. And nicely, it's quartz countertops, hardwood flooring on the first floor. It's, they're not doing anything cheaply. This is, it's well done. It's a fully furnished apartment as well. They have begun some of the exterior renovations. So the amount of work that they've put into the property may not be extremely obvious at this point to the neighborhood, but we're hoping that it becomes a lot more obvious if this permit is successful. There was a request for more information on the resident manager. And a plan had been submitted for the previous meeting, as well as for this one, they're very similar. The highlights are the individual has to have experience in property maintenance, at least the rudimentary functions, light bulb changing, plunging toilets, that kind of stuff, have good communication skills, interpersonal skills, have favorable references before they would be signed on for the job. Then they would be provided additional training on the details of the leases, on the property management plan, specifically of conditions of a special permit, as well as becoming very familiar with the Amherst tenant information sheet, which has quite a bit of good information on it, building systems, the breaker panel, et cetera. They would have responsibilities of being a point of contact between the tenants and the property managers, the owners, PPS. For non-urgent issues, the tenants can of course contact PPS directly if they wish to, but there is somebody there who can handle basic things and is given the authority to do so. They are also there very specifically to report any non-compliance with anything, with the special permit or just the ordinances of the town. They are, it's a paid position, even though it doesn't expect to have a lot of time required per month, it's still $150 a month is now written into that agreement, a number that's visible. And in the past, because there was quite a bit of concern that whoever the property or the resident manager was just gonna be chumming around and not doing their job or what kind of incentive is there. And in an attempt to address that, we came up with a relatively draconian perspective of well, what incentive can we give them? Well, they're gonna get kicked out and they're at least terminated. But after thinking a little more about that and through the humanity of that situation, that's really not cool. So what we've done is shifted to a surity, some type of financial security, if you were gonna sort of a bond situation where they earn their money every month and it goes into an escrow account, it is absolutely theirs and they're entitled to it unless they fail to do their job, if they fail in their responsibilities, then that escrow account is vacated and is used in part in order that we can immediately acquire another resident manager. And those funds would be important in that transition. And while we won't kick them out, the lease would not be renewed. So they are aware that if they wish to remain at the property for an extended period of time, that wouldn't be an option if they fail as a resident manager. And finally, in terms of requested information was some plan changes, very minor. I'll bring them up here. They include, let's see, probably the biggest thing, I think this will work. The biggest thing is that at the front of the property where the gravel and pavement is right now, so many cars have been parking there, the neighborhood clearly does not want that to occur. So we're proposing a vehicular barrier. I'll just read it comprised of boulders, woody vegetation, fence or other permanent feature, barrier shall not exceed three feet in height. We don't wanna just put boulders there, they're not particularly attractive most of the time, but we are interested in something that provides an aesthetic benefit. Also would be a barrier for a vehicle to not keep it from coming into that yard and also be low enough that is not a visual impediment because there are pedestrians and if you're pulling out to an intersection, you need to be able to see over anything that would be near the roadside. So they're limited to three feet in height. The other plan change is the doubling of the length of this purple line. This is the screening fence. There was concern that potentially, despite the other vegetation there, that as a vehicle leaves this site, the headlights would come along and impact the butter. So the fence length has been doubled and we're still totally open to working with the neighbor and placing that fence to their greatest advantage, but it's now quite a significant fence. Oh, yes, there was another change to the plan and that was this note because this is an existing fence and copper tops, nice lattice top. It's a relatively attractive fence for being a screening fence because it's supposed to be a visual barrier, but as you can see in this one, it was pointed out there are gaps in the planks. So if we're gonna use a style like this to prevent headlights from going through, this is not good enough. So we've established that the board shall butt together, such that a solid screen is provided and that's the purpose of this fence. So it's important that it is fully opaque to light. And so that, and as Maureen mentioned as well, and I don't have it up easily, I can certainly bring it, but there were changes made to the architectural drawings. There was a letter that came in from one of the abutters saying that essentially everything we've done is questionable because the architectural elevations did not reflect the plan accurately. And those elevations were the ones that were submitted at the onset of the project when it was a three bedroom dwelling in the proposed, in the garage, dwelling conversion. So when the floor plan changed to a two bedroom, which is the current proposal, the elevations were not updated. The applicant felt that it gave the board a really good sense of what it was going to look like in terms of the external aesthetic conversion. And since this is in the Historic District Commission or Design Review Board, we thought that that was adequate to give the board a sense of what was going on. But since it came up in a comment, those drawings were updated so the windows do now reflect the placement where the floor plan would show them to be. Sparkle, can you show, do you have that? I, yes, I do. Or maybe, I mean, I have a copy of it, but I don't know if the other board members have a copy of that. I am hoping they show up on your screen now. Is that, do you see the architectural drawing? Yes. Okay, so that is the west side, that is the side that is between the two buildings. That's where the concrete porch is. Right now, there's a door through, well, I guess this is on the other side, there isn't a door here, but this is, the window into the living room now is demonstrated. And if we look at the front elevation, the north side of the house, originally, there were two windows to the left of the door and one window on the right, but with the revised floor plan, the windows are in these locations. So if there are no further questions on the window locations, there are, we have received again, a fair amount of input from the public. And while a lot of that I feel is a little bit redundant and keeps bringing up points that I've debunked previously, I don't wanna go over all of that again. It's a substantial amount of information. I do wanna touch on things that are relatively new. I think are really, we're talking about in the public hearing. So in terms of public input, what I wanna talk about is a lot of people have said that the safety issue of vehicles backing out is a fabricated safety issue that we're just pretending it's there. That is not the case. It is impossible to turn a vehicle around on this property, even just one single vehicle. I mean, motorcycle, you could turn a motorcycle around, but any car could not execute a turn into the public right away without driving over either the sidewalk or the grass and yard, which is not permitted. I did verify this with the zoning enforcement officer just to make sure you can't drive over the yard, you can't park on a yard. And to demonstrate this a little bit better, I had submitted this plan previously, and then today I had, gosh, an extra half an hour with my life. So what I did is I grabbed this SWEP path analysis software opportunity just to give people a sense. So I've overlaid, I've submitted this drawing earlier, but I've overlaid an SUV via a Ford Explorer as a vehicle to demonstrate that if you were to back out of the garage by the time you clear the garage and could execute the hardest possible turn that vehicle can make, you drive over the sidewalk and then you're still not even facing the street. You could not turn right and if you turned left, you would have a terribly shallow angle across oncoming traffic lane, which is a very unsafe turning maneuver. And if you were to drive all the way down to the back of the gravel driveway and park nose in, which even in itself is maybe a little conservative, to get out of that space, at least half of the vehicle is going to have to drive over the grass. And there are larger vehicles out there. If this were a pickup truck, it would be almost completely off the grass and wouldn't even be able to make this turn. So they'd be all over the yard in order to get in and out and it's not allowed. So the reality is the only way to exit this property in a car is in reverse or stop in the street and back into the property, which I think is illegal. So I'm not recommending that. So it is not a fabricated safety issue. It has never been a fabricated safety issue. The town engineer has said that safety is an issue on this property and that this site plan is going to improve that. I know that the fire prevention officer also talked about emergency vehicle access and that the proposal would improve that for the town services. So the people in the town who are really concerned and knowledgeable about safety are agreeing with our analysis of the situation. There was a comment made about the assessor data and how the overall condition of this property is only rated at 48%. And as has been stated in multiple comments, it said 30 years and neglect this property. It is not an asset to the neighborhood in its current condition. It was even suggested that properties at this level should just be torn down. But the 48% overall condition was the number prior to the Mendelssohn's and PPS taking on this project and commencing the renovations. So even at a partially complete renovation, the current assessor data is that the overall condition is now at 70%. So as you can see, the applicant really is working to make this a better property. And the phase one has occurred and the exterior renovations to the farmhouse are up and coming. That number is gonna keep going up. And of course, renovations to the garage are the heart of this application. And it had been mentioned a few times that making, if this permit were to be approved, that it would be a floodgate to development that all of a sudden developers would be coming in here and turning every scrap of land into other housing. Of course, these rules have been on the books since at least 1986. And in that time, there has been one dwelling conversion in 35 years in the neighborhood. So in terms of the fears of what could happen, that has been possible for 35 years and it's happened just once in 1998. And that particular property, Tom Reedy talks about in his letter. So I'll get to that a little bit in responding to him. We've also heard, I mentioned that that we got the very strong impression that students were just not welcome as additional neighbors in this neighborhood. So against my client's inclination, he said, well, I don't want them there either, honestly. And many landlords regularly say no undergraduate students. That's a norm in the industry. But to appease what we thought, to appease the neighborhood, we would request a condition be made saying, well, if we don't want them, and if it's necessary to make the public satisfied and it pleases the board, we would put that as a condition. And that raises a bunch of questions. And so I'll reiterate, and I'd love to get the board's opinion at some point this evening of how members feel regarding excluding by a condition, even when that's been requested, students from a town-approved permit. We have heard from the neighbors in a very eloquent letter that I'll just say, in my experience, not only do the student renters at 265 East Pleasant Street not contribute to noise and environmental pollution, the multiple renters I have known over the past three years have been exemplary neighbors. And this is absolutely possible. The students are people and some people are awesome. Some people are not, on average, undergraduates, they're experimenting in life, but I was a very respectable undergraduate tenant off-campus housing and I know many other people are capable of doing that. And the applicant is willing- Mr. Sparkle, I would be really, we maybe can give you that, but I think what's helpful for us right now is what you're proposing in terms of students. Okay. And that would be the, I think that's what we need to hear. All right. Well, we're gonna leave the proposal as it was at the last meeting, which is we would request a condition to exclude undergraduate students. And if that warrants more discussion, we're open to it. Got it. Thank you for that application, Mr. Judge. And then, oh yeah, I skipped over that Amherst Housing Market Study that was brought up by, and a butter, well, not in a butter, but a member of the public and I don't quite understand the point that was trying to be made with that because if you're at all familiar with this document, which I wasn't, so it was nice to get into it. It basically reads like 125 pages of saying that this application is really important to the town. That if you just skim through, when I read in detail the executive summary, and it talks about currently in Amherst, that the current zoning density restrictions, block lower income renters and owners that housing needs, the housing itself needs to be smaller for non-student households and single people, which is lacking in the town, that there's an unmet demand for 150 to 250 houses per year and that substantial new construction is required is what the report says. And it recommends things changes like multifamily by right, removing special permit requirements for those creating two and three bedroom cottage style units at higher density and amending bylaw 3.32, which is what we're talking about here to allow infill dwelling units and adaptive reuse dwelling units in the RN district specifically. So that this proposal lines up completely with the needs of the town and the recommendations of this Amherst housing market study as well as other zoning priorities that are being changed. So I thought it was important to bring that to the board's attention, which you're probably aware, but also to the public's attention. And let's see, Mr. Eadie's letter, it was only four pages this time. So I don't need to take up nearly as much time in covering here. He makes three main points and makes a few other statements. So one of his main points is that the use as a garage is different than the use as a dwelling. I completely agree and I know that the nature of a dwelling conversion is to change the use from a place that humans aren't occupying to a place that humans are occupying. So I'm not sure the impact of his point there. He also talks about the effect on the neighborhood and incorrectly asserts that the safety issue is made up, which it has not been, the town agents have shown that. I've shown that with turn analysis and other means the cars have to back out. It is an unsafe condition. Mr. Eadie incorrectly asserts that traffic noise and refuse will double. There are no new cars being allowed on the property. You can have four now and there are often four. You can have four in the future. So there's no new cars. So we're not doubling the traffic. Instead of having 12 people outside able to make noise, only 10 people are outside able to make noise. So we are not doubling the noise. And I agree that the amount of trash is likely to increase by nearly double, but the number of waste bins does not increase. So it is still no impact on the neighborhood in that regard. The third point Mr. Eadie makes is that this is absolutely positively a detriment to the neighborhood where he also incorrectly states that additional cars on the property as a detriment. Well, that's not the case. He again reiterates the incorrect belief that traffic noise and refuse are doubling. That is not happening. And he ignores entirely in his statements that there are legitimate legacy detriments embedded in this property now in terms of the safety issue, which I've talked about a lot in terms of drainage that the neighbors have claimed about flooding basements, including light nuisance, where light is broadcast in all directions from this building. And the parking and aesthetics are very dissatisfactory to members of the community. All of those detriments are conveniently ignored when he talks about detriment. So I just wanted to make sure that they came back into the conversation. He also, he incorrectly states that an entirely new driveway will be created around the building. Of course, there is an existing driveway. He incorrectly states that the board does not have enough information. And of course you get to tell me if this is true, but he says that you haven't been given information on stormwater, on traffic, or on lighting. I've made two submittals on drainage. The town engineer has reviewed them twice and improved them. I think that's a fair amount of information, particularly for a residential project. In terms of traffic, we're not increasing the number of cars. We've made that clear. We've shown turning motions and that we can make a much safer condition. The town engineer also believes that to be the case. We've provided information on lighting, indicating that we will be following the requirements for downcast night, dark sky compliant lighting. So we really have provided the very things that Tom says we have not. And then Mr. Weedy goes and talks a bit about 319 East Pleasant Street, where he gets it wrong saying that the project was not a dwelling conversion. It was absolutely a dwelling conversion. The decision only cites one bylaw section, 3.324 converted dwellings. So that's the only thing in that permit relative to the bylaw. Mr. Weedy also states that that permit was approved because it was owner occupied, but there was a whole list of reasons why this project was approved, all of which are quite applicable to what we were doing. And the owner occupancy per the bylaw is one of the safeguards available to make sure that somebody's keeping an eye on things and a resident manager is the other safeguard available. So in this case it is not. So Mr. Sparkle, we're at 32 minutes right now. Can you get your major points here and let's give them. Yeah, I will jump down to this last line here. Just deal with the new issues that were brought up in Mr. Weedy's letter, not the ones that we dealt with last week. Okay. Thank you. I guess that the summary of Mr. Weedy's letter that I'm getting out of it is that he's stating that if you wanna do a dwelling conversion within the footprint of an existing house, that's fine. That's an asset to the neighborhood. But if you wanna do a dwelling conversion within the footprint of an existing garage, that is gonna destroy the neighborhood. And that's an argument. That's his best argument that I can find in that letter. And I'm personally, I'm not buying that. I don't know that attach or detach would affect the neighborhood detrimentally, especially not so severely. So this will bring me then to my last slide here about what really happens here. And we're not planning for failure and we don't want the board to look at this as the worst case scenario. At the same time, a lot of what is being decided here is what is the long-term impact on the community, on the neighborhood, if this were approved. And we're trying to use our crystal balls and provide all this background information. So I am gonna take a look at, if this went as bad as it possibly could be, if every fear that the neighborhood brought up came to pass, a special permit were revoked. The impact on the community is not even a detriment in that case. We're not cutting down a whole bunch of trees and putting up a parking lot. Permanent improvements for the neighborhood is that pedestrian and traffic vehicular safety are going to be improved with the ability to turn around on site now in perpetuity, whether or not that garage is a residence or not. At the stormwater runoff is going to be reduced now in perpetuity. That the parking and the pavement are being removed from the front yard, that the 30 years in neglect will have been renovated. We are putting more than 30 plants on the property, including replacing the one tree that is being cut down. 64 foot privacy fence will be installed. All the lights are gonna be downcast. That's the impact to the neighborhood in the worst case scenario here. Of course, the owner, Piranha Property Services would lose their investment and a revenue stream. So really the risk of any bun is on Piranha Property Services and this kind of run down unsafe house on the corner will get a major overhaul in almost every way that you can evaluate a piece of property. And that does conclude my 32 minutes in change. Thank you for letting me go on. And I'm going to, I'm gonna leave it here. If we have any questions regarding the plan, I'll go back and release the screen share if we just wanna talk. Thank you, Mr. Sparkle. What I'd like to do is give the board an opportunity to respond to question any thing that's new in your presentation and then we'll go to public comment. So do members of the board have questions for Mr. Sparkle or for the applicant? Mr. Langsdale. Excuse me. I just had a few and I'll just name them off and you can talk about them then. The last I saw of the lease, the lease was for seven months. Has that been changed and will it be changed? Is there any consideration to any sort of a small bike rack somewhere on the property? The vehicle barriers and the screening fence. I think before we're going to be able to vote on this, we would need images of what you propose rather than just telling us. And the other thing, this keeps coming up. It comes up in your presentation tonight, but it's come up in comments from neighborhood people about 275A. When we did our site visit, we did not go into 275A. I think it's imperative for us to really have an idea of what in fact has been done and what they're proposing to do. And if a site visit 275A is not in the cards, let's say, desirable, can we get pictures, images of the renovations inside that building so that we have a sense of what's been done and what their intentions are? Those are my questions. Yes, happy to address them. So the seven month lease is because when the current tenant came on board, they were friends of the family and they had a student who was having sort of a housing crisis due to COVID and asked the Mendelssohn's if they would consider letting the student occupy the farmhouse, which is not normally the plan here, but they know them and they established at that time a seventh month lease because that was the semester term from the time they moved in to the end of the semester. That lease has been extended and does expire this summer. I'm not sure the date, but it's after the semester ends because they turned out to be great tenants. They weren't gonna renew the lease if they weren't good tenants. That's why it only had a seventh month term. And I have noticed actually today it was, I think that the proposed lease for 275B also has a seventh month clause, but you'll see also that those dates are 2020 dates. It's the exact, there's a copy and paste of the 275A lease versus the B lease because they are very, very similar documents. So that wasn't oversight, but the reason it's seven months is it was just for an academic session. How many people are in 275A right now? I believe there are four. So there are more people than just this one student who his parents asked if he could stay there. Yes, there are. And I believe they are all students. Is my understanding? They're all friends I guess is what I'm hearing from the client. And they are, yes, students. In terms of the bike rack, absolutely no problem. That we'd be very happy to add that at a safe and convenient location probably behind the proposed dwelling maybe under the deck or somewhere back there. So they're out of sight from the public way. Happily provide that. And we would have no problem providing, sketches or further information about the vehicle barrier. And we have, I guess we have options on that. So I'll have to talk to the Mendelssohn's because obviously I can't provide that tonight. Right, okay. And the last question was improvements made to 275A. It is in the public record. I will indicate at first that a whole bunch of plumbing and electrical renovation and insulation permits have been pulled for this property since August of 2019. So there is a public record of all the permits. Now, of course you can pull a permit and not do the work, but there are a whole bunch of improvements. I have a, this is a partial list of improvements that have been made. So there was a vegetative growth higher than the garage and all over the building that all the vegetation and brush has been cleaned up. The new boiler, water heater, electrical service, rewiring, kitchen, bath, converting some interior rooms. New windows where appropriate, pine boards on the first floor, new flooring upstairs, solid pine interior. So Mr. Sparkle, will you submit that for the record? Oh, I'm happy to do so. That would be great. Yes, and I have seen a couple of pictures of sort of the renovation in progress, but since these were done and then has been occupied, there aren't a lot of showcase pictures to offer today. So since we will need to come back with the... So will you ask, just to speed this up, will you ask the owners if they would be willing to submit some photos? Absolutely. I mean, then we'll do with this, Ms. Pollock. I wanted to just point out to the board and to Bucky that Mr. Mendelssohn actually did submit photos of the interior space to the existing dwelling unit. I do have them up if board members want to sort of skim through them, or I can certainly re-email them to you. And so he submitted them way back when in October. So perhaps memory is lapsing on everyone's part, because that was a while ago. Would you like to see them? Would you like to see them or? Mr. Langsdale, do you want to see those or do you want to observe them later? Later is fine. See them later is fine. Yeah, let's make sure that we... Let's make sure you distribute those to the board members and Maureen. That'd be great. Mendelssohn, all files of those. Thank you. Good. Great. I think those were the points that I noted. Mr. Langsdale, is there anything else? No, that was it. Thank you. Ms. Parks. Do you have a list of the work that will be done to unit A that is not done, like the exterior painting job, and then there was like... It seems like some of the windowsills are corroded or... Yeah, there has only been partial improvements completed on that. So my understanding is that the roof is going to be renovated and the rest of the exterior is going to be cleaned up. There's still repairs to do on siding and the details around windows. And then eventually painting after all of that is cocked and sealed. There was also part of the installation process required some clavage to be removed. So they're actually the building received a small amount of damage to do the updates and not all of that has been cleaned up yet. But they're looking to really clean up these buildings quite a bit. On the inside from the pictures that I've seen and the list that I've read before, it has not been shoddy work. Solid wood six panel doors. You can buy a cheap door for sure. And that's not one of them. Quartz countertops, et cetera. So they're not doing this on the cheap. They are making it nice. And that's been their intention prior to applying for a special permit. So is there a timeline for when that work will be completed to the exterior of that building? My expectation is it would be concurrent with the renovation to the garage at this point. And I believe they are ready to proceed with that this building season. Ms. Parks, can I just interrupt for just a second? So Mr. Sparkle, is there a list? I know you gave us some there. Is there a list that the home owner would be willing to commit to in a condition or at least commit to the board? Yes, I can get you a list again since I have to make at least one submittal. I am hearing from Mr. Mendelsen that he'll get a list to you and they plan to commence in the spring. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that, Ms. Parks. Go ahead. That's all. I went by today and I didn't realize that the exterior was not completed of unit A. And so I was just concerned about if unit A is going to be completed before unit B is started or... I'm pretty sure that the momentum that got them to this state, they've done 90%, 95% of the renovations to A and they are just going to wrap it up when the building season comes back. The two projects are, they're related being the same property. If we're going to be doing roofs, you're going to do two roofs at the same time. Painting, exterior work, it's nice to do them together when you have that crew and talent there. But we'll have to get you... So yes, those improvements, I'm certain are going to be completed because they started them and nearly completed them before the special permit was applied for it's the plan. Okay. Mr. Sparkle, can you run through the... Are you done, Ms. Parks? Yep. So we run through the least restrictions in terms of who's going to be tenants in unit A and unit B. In unit A you have four people that are allowed, four tenants that are allowed. What's the relationship between the tenants? Well, unit A is the farmhouse and that does allow up to six people. Four of them can be unrelated. No, there's four unrelated. Four unrelated. So that means in effect you could have a couple and two related people in one of the three bedrooms and then two unrelated people in each of the other two bedrooms. Is that correct? That is technically possible, yes. Okay. All right. And what's B? Actually, I'm going to take a step back on that because if you have four unrelated people and a couple, if they don't know each other, then there are five unrelated people in that situation. So by nature, you could not have that density of four unrelated and then two other people, even though they are related, because everybody's related to somebody, but we're talking about relative to the household. So it could be, it would have to be ideally a family situation if you were going to have six people in there. But that's okay. No, I'm having a hard time following that. And it may be that I'm not as familiar with rental policy, but you have two people who are related to each other, a couple for lack of a less precise term. And four other individuals who they're rented on a, they, on an individual basis by the, or they know each other and they rent out those additional bedrooms. Why is that? Not two people, not six total people, four unrelated and two related. Why is that? Because I think within the house, within the household, if you look at the couple and the four other people, you've got four unrelated and two more people that are unrelated here. So you've got at least five unrelated people in that circumstance, even though they're a couple. So if you were going to get so many people in, if you look at the bylaw definition, 12, 17 of family or household, you can have a bunch of unrelated people, but it stops at four. And if you're the occupancy could be six for this dwelling, but they would just have to be related. And what you might end up with is four related people and two unrelated people. And then you would still be within the term of the lease, as well as the definition of a household within the town. So Mr. Mora can, maybe you can help me with this. Yeah, maybe me. Yeah, because I'm having a hard time understanding how this all works. And I think, I think it's an important asset and we haven't even got to the new structure yet. So I think this can, can you help on this or Mr. Bard either one who, who would like to take a run at explaining this for my benefit. Well, yeah, there's, I mean, a lot of different scenarios with tenants and arrangements that could occur, but, you know, just as a reminder, the bylaws allow for up to three lodgers and borders in a dwelling unit by rights. So that, that is something that a family, a couple, whatever the scenario is that holds the lease to the unit is able to have as lodgers and borders under our bylaw. So unless the permit conditions that otherwise that's, that's one situation. Other than that, we've, we've seen all kinds of attempts to get additional occupants into a unit. It's, it's for people. If the four people are not related, then, you know, anything more than four is exceeding for unrelated in our view. And that's the way we've consistently applied that. So, you know, six sets of siblings, you know, exceed for unrelated, you know, so it's that number four that we've, you know, that we've enforced in the situations that we've been involved in very consistently. Ms. Parks. So when you say related, do you mean. A couple with children or if, if a boyfriend and a girlfriend, are they related? We would defer to definition 1217 in the bylaw, which allows a variety of household configurations and is a fairly inclusive definition. We don't want to be in the business of defining families. So, but so in. So could you have three couples living in this house? Not if they're not related. You could have three, maybe three brothers who married three sisters. If we want to get really interesting. Yeah. Maybe. Now the math is getting to be confusing for me. So just for everyone's benefit. I have pulled up a section 12.17 in the zoning bylaw, which defines. Family household. And the different sort of varieties. So the first one is an individual residing in one dwelling unit or a group of persons related by marriage, civil union, blood adoption, guardianship, or other duly authorized console. Custodial relationship residing together in one dwelling unit. Or a group of unrelated individuals not to exceed for residing cooperatively in one dwelling unit. In this instance, necessary use as described in a section. 5.010 and 5.011 is not permitted. And then the last one is a group of individuals. This is not applicable here, but I'll read it. A group of individuals regardless of relation residing in a congregate congregate or similar group housing for the elderly are disabled in a. In halfway houses or in other group residential uses authorized and operated under state and federal law. So could a, so is there a limit? So in unit A, if there was a married couple with 10 children, would they live there? Or is six the maximum number of people that can live there? Six is the maximum. Okay. And in unit B, four is the maximum. Correct. Is that right? I'm not sure. I'm not sure that that's right. In, in, in unit A. If you have a, if you have a married couple with six kids. Aren't they a family? And wouldn't they be allowed in unit A. If there's a family, you know, there isn't necessarily a limit on the, the number of people that are going to live in that unit. However, there are code requirements, minimum sizes of the unit that makes it safe for the number of people that that comes into play. It's not a zoning matter at that point. You know, the, the landlord might be able to, you know, the size of this unit. They feel like it's appropriate for up to six people. And that's something they have to manage. And work out with a, with a tenant, but we're not, we're not limiting the number of family members that are children to, you know, a couple. In a dwelling unit. And unless we find it to be an unsafe situation that we have to respond to, you know, in a dwelling unit, unless we find it to be an unsafe situation that we have to respond to it for those reasons. Got it. Right. Mr. Attorney Bart. Mr. Chairman, thank you. So I just wanted to second that and just. Repeat the part of the definition that's relevant. So the definition of family, Prince's household. The second item is a group of persons related by marriage. Unified. Be it a civil union blood adoption, guardianship or any other duly. Authorized. Sorry. Authorize custodial relationship residing together in one dwelling unit. And I'll just point out that there's no numerical limit on that. Just. A second thing what Rob more. I just said. Now, if the property owner wants to place a limit, that's a different story, definition there is no limit. And so if we have a if the property owner wants to say that there's you only will permit families in unit B 275 B the new converted how is that how is that enforced by the town if number one can we do that can be can the owner not we but can the owner say I only want to rent out to families as per the definition in the zoning bylaw and then how do we if that's a condition that we I don't know if we can we even compose that condition number one and if we don't compose that condition how do we ascertain and certify that that's indeed the case if that is important to the the board for making its decision on the application. Right so I believe we may have touched on this last time so right the the question that's posed here is can you impose it when it's requested by the property owner in my opinion you can it's I guess another question we don't I'm going to duck today just as a court would that we don't have the question before us as to whether the board can impose it on their own and that would be something we'd want to do some research on but if you're asked by a property owner to oppose that condition you certainly can how you enforce it again I'll defer to Rob Mora but obviously it becomes tricky it begins like any other zoning enforcement matter by somebody complaining to the zoning enforcement officer and then investigating it would at that point be a special permit condition so it is enforceable like any other special permit condition and I'll say that and there's lots of case law on this that after the 20 day appeal period has passed with no appeal it's presumed to be a valid condition and generally the courts have held beyond challenge so then it's simply an enforcement question I'm sure it's the kind of enforcement issue that the zoning enforcement officers would not enjoy enforcing but if it's brought to their intention they investigate and first thing I assume they do is contact the property owner and say we understand that the group of six people living in unit B are not a family and we want you to get back to us on that but you know however however their office handles that Mr. Mora do you have anything else to add I mean we did discuss this last week and right I mean just to add why you know we we aren't on our own initiative looking for an attorney bar to do the research on that because we're not really interested in imposing those types of conditions because they are very difficult to enforce and even when the violation or suspected violation is found you know we know that you know it's not going to be immediately resolved in any case you know the residents the occupants of that unit are not all of a sudden just going to pack up and leave because we asked them to so you know we try not to create a situation that you know result in the need for a long-term enforcement or a period of time that's needed for the even the landlord to bring the property into compliance which is why I think staff did ask the applicant to really have the property manager prepared to provide the board with this information on how they're going to apply this type of condition enforce it because I think the most important thing to understand is how are they going to handle this and and not so much how we're going to handle it and I haven't heard that yet so I wonder if that's going to come up at some point but I think that's really important if we were going to seriously consider that as a meaningful condition imposed on their part to support the the issuance of this permit so yeah that's when we have one of the things we talked about two weeks ago you mentioned that yep so before we performance parks mr. sparkle will need to have the applicant tell us how that's going to how they would intend to enforce this and how they would certify it ascertain the status and then how they would let the town know that it's being complied with I know a portion of that is in lease agreement there is but I think you should it's it's not there's enough for us to evaluate it today I think some something from the from you or from the client your client telling us how they intended to do that would be helpful we can provide more detail on that yep thank you miss parks I'm just wondering what what is the minimum number of square feet per person in a dwelling unit what is that do we know I don't I'm sure you know it's not it's not that simple as per person there are minimum square footages for the various parts of the dwelling unit you know kitchen has to be so big a bed bedroom has to be so big and then the Santa Derek code will say how many square feet are needed per additional occupant in a in a sleeping room just you know roughly you're talking about 80 to 60 square foot feet in a bedroom for an occupant but you know when we when we tried to work backwards to create the minimum square footage for say a tiny home you know it gets down to be about a couple hundred square feet or so and then it incrementally moves up by about 60 to 80 square feet per person so it's relatively small so smaller than the square footage we're talking about here for the number for four occupants okay where do you find those numbers but part of them part of the numbers were in this state building code and partner in the state sanitary code okay other questions from board members last week I asked Mr. Sparkle asked you about the the stormwater runoff and you provided additional information and it looks like the town engineer Mr. Skeels has also reviewed this and found it your plan adequate for the I think that's what he's what the termination from the town engineer was I have to say that I'm not the expert those both those people are you and the town engineer have more expertise in this than I do but I'm I'm still surprised that the proposed driveway and the discharge volume on the proposed driveway is less than the discharge volume on gravel is less than the discharge and impervious I mean where you have an impervious surface is less than where you have a gravel surface a hybrid gravel surface and it is more than no gravel which is just grass but it is only less when you account for the rain garden stormwater management system if that were not that's off the property that's off the property is what you're saying then yeah that's the water that leaves the the lot yes so it's not just a measure of the impervious area the calculations account for all of the landscaping the rain garden I calculated the area of retaining walls so that's just not the flow over that surface it's the flow up it's what fills up the rain garden and then overflows from there yes it is discharge from the rain garden and the town engineer has satisfied with the with the design on this I understand from his memo to the board yeah a memo to back to Maureen Mr. Chair yes before we move on to the next topic I unless I miss unless I miss didn't hear it you if you want to discuss about you know tenants per unit I I don't know if the board reviewed how many tenants would be allowed in the proposed converted dwelling and catch and whether it be related or unrelated or students or not students thank you shall I proceed yes please the the proposal is for unit B to have a maximum occupancy of four tenants and that they will not be students is really what we're looking for in this in this scenario because we are currently under the impression that that is important to both the neighborhood and the board and would they be related or unrelated Mr. Mendelssohn is said unrelated so I'm going to to work with that I have my own feeling that that might be more restrictive than necessary because it was the student issue that was most poignant but he has any said unrelated or related Mr. Sparkle unrelated or I'm that the four people should be related related not students that's true related so family like blood family that that and so did you so you know to piggyback the earlier conversation of what attorney Joel Bard and Rob Moore had talked about is you know can the board place a limit on related tenants and then there was this discussion if you can pose a condition that the applicant is requesting just other questions from board members for the applicant okay I would then we should then turn to public comment I notice that we have 20 we have 12 people online listening I'm certain that many of them want to comment I've asked people who are want to comment to as best they can keep their comments to the new information if you've already expressed your concerns we've heard them we've made note of them we I would prefer not to repeat them I think there's enough to discuss and the newly new information that we've seen tonight or since last meeting of those please keep your comments to that if you can and keep them try to keep them to three to four minutes and we'll try to move through it as quickly as we can but we want to give everybody an opportunity to speak so with that I would ask Maureen to start recognizing the public comments first we have Richard Ronzoi hi Richard mr. Mr. Rosnoy yes it's Rosnoy Richard Rosnoy from 11 strong Street in Emerson I'd like to talk about the the role of the board in terms of evaluating the facts of mr. Sparkle's presentations in particular I'm happy to be first because there were just some recent comments from from you chairman mr. Judge about about the issue I'm going to talk about mr. Sparkle sent his revisions to Maureen on last I think it was Tuesday evening Maureen sent an email to town engineer mr. Skeels on Wednesday at 1226 I think you have a copy of that email it's a part of the record the email was was quite detailed from Maureen Maureen asked mr. Skeels to review in five particular areas some of the factual details and technical information of the application number one was the so-called gravel drive and its safety number two regarded storm water storm water and the impact of grass absorption if there is grass covering the gravel driveway number three involved the updated updated fence plan number four was a parking management plan and number five was a statement regarding the grass covering gravel driveway in terms of the discrepancy between the surveyors plan that was submitted and the planning department's own plan plan of the site these are important these are key technical issues affecting this application the board as you just commented mr. Judge the board relies on the professional judgment of town staff to evaluate technical data and the applicant is saying that yes mr. Skeels evaluated all five of these detailed requests which granted it seems to me I mean I've been involved with a number of site plan reviews and it seems to me they involved a lot of information and mr. Skeels returned his memo his email to Maureen at 116 the same day 50 minutes later saying his basic two sentence two sentences I have reviewed the additional supplemental information and revised plans and have no additional comments the applicant's responses appear to be adequate and accurate thanks Jason 50 minutes to review these five detailed significant questions that affect this site this board has a duty to evaluate the facts of this case it's your discretion that the town relies on and evaluating the facts of the case the veracity of the applicant saying that oh yes mr. Skeels said it was okay if the board accepts this there are serious problems with this I encourage you to take a hard look at the presentations being made by the applicant in terms of their veracity in terms of their consistency and in terms of how they have shifted from the beginning of these hearings to whatever it is that you want they will do so my comment is regarding your evaluation on a factual basis of all these materials and when you do that I am quite convinced that you will find some significant issues that make it impossible to approve this application thank you for your time thank you mr. Ross night okay thank you so next we have mr. love Roya hi Ray hi thank you thank you mr. chair I'm not gonna repeat in detail all the issue just give us your name for the record again I'm sorry yep my name is Ray LaRosha I'm in a butter to this project and so I won't repeat it but about the harm but in a letter submitted last last week I mentioned many falsehoods including assertions about the harm to the neighborhood we think insincere promises about renting to families whatever that term may be claims about a housing crisis and a major parking lot being necessary in a rainwater garden that's going to solve problems so you know I want to point out my neighbors raised additional issues showing clearly how this project is totally like unlike when we're occupied rentals in the neighborhood none of which uses a garage especially one that fronts the street like this they explain the enforcement and the ethical challenges which were brought up today about renting to a hard to find hard to define family the dangers of traffic putting all these people on this property especially to wildwood families a displayed lack of trustworthiness of the applicant as a landlord up to this point the scale of the project relative to the size of the property and the risky precedent to the town of a large garage conversion so we've offered compromises in our suggestions to enable the applicant to continue earning well on his investment and I think he already is earning well in his investment I'd like to I'm curious to know what he's charging these friends students were there Steve Schreiber an expert on design land who's he's demonstrated the shyness of the work being offered by the applicant as an architect and former member of the planning board he's shown the extent to which this project oversteps the intent of the exemption and recently he even showed that this property has about the lowest possible rating of any structure in central Amherst with minimal investments in either the existing house or the garage structure substandard design for light and ventilation and the engineers stamps on the drawing are erroneous I don't I can't speak to the changes that have been made but he said they're erroneous the windows that didn't match the elevations the arrows indicated water flowing okay I'm not an expert on this okay so but seems to me it's about making a decision an exception on a substandard undersized highly visible property and you know we don't see much evidence of the properties being proved except for moving apart procuring a parking lot which is not an improvement because it takes away the backyard it's going to double the number of substandard structures on the property and it really does stand out like a cancer in this in a healthy neighborhood now you know the town can't compel the owner of 275 he's pleasant to improve the property now because a single family house is by right use two non-owner occupied houses on the same property are not by right so this is the town's only opportunity to compel the owner to really improve this property I always say we have an attorney who provided solid case law Mr. Reedy to demonstrate the real baseline for assessing the damage a project on a butters and how this project clearly exceeds that standard on many counts and the onus is on this applicant to demonstrate that the conversion of the garage is clearly similar in character effect of its current use its current use is a garage for a single family resident and I we think that the applicant fails here so given all these problems and the counterclaims of the applicant we want peer review paid by the applicant chosen by the ZBA of all the materials submitted about the neighborhood character I want to just quickly speak just a few broader issues about this process this is new based on my own expertise in government of public policy and by pointing these out I'm not implicating any person in fact my argument is that there are structural problems that are no fault of this committee or staff but I want the committee to be aware of them as they make their decision first the confusing zoning bylaws tends to benefit those with intimate knowledge of the process and who are willing to push the boundaries these bylaws with a waiver clause are utterly confusing to the uninitiated and so we the residents see these by it's like shifting sand with almost no foundation as we try to understand what it means for our neighborhood now and in the future and meanwhile applicants and their experienced consultants who know the staff and there's no no problem with that they know exactly how to create narratives that appear to fit the exemption and we're no match for this and that's why we hired an attorney we'd be completely lost without being able to have the case law he's given to us to adjudicate this stuff but even hiring council doesn't change the fact that the current set of rules are bewildering for us and appear like a constant invitation for loophole seeking and they know how to work with staff they chip away at the exemptions and it benefits the aggressive applicants over time and this is called policy creek when governments enable applicants to pursue projects increasingly distant from original intent and it's more likely and it's no fault of this group of this committee with a written set of rules like here when you know there's a lot of turnover on this committee like zba and if you've been on the zba for five or ten years please consider whether you've seen waivers like this granted for such a sub-standard property in a neighborhood like ours especially when there's a community so concerned about harm and without any support for the applicant the second thing i want to say was that the zoning board appeals has a really commendable preference for fairness and accommodation how in combination with confusing laws it tends to skew outcomes towards developers because it's the nature of voluntary boards to listen to both sides but investor applicants they have strong incentives to push the boundaries beyond the original intent and then they come back like mr spark was doing claiming to be accommodating by scaling back the project somewhat and a voluntary board they want to avoid one-sided decisions they understandably don't want to have a heavy footprint in the process but by splitting the difference with the most aggressive applicants it again invites policy creep and it creates the perception of unfairness even though this is the exact opposite i know of what this board is trying to do so we understand students need a place to live our neighborhood is absorbed much more than its fair share but we're at the point where it's it's you know we don't see what the public if this was a public good you would not see this outpouring that we're we're talking about these past several evenings because it really is imposing costs in the communities but we're willing to bear those if we if our leaders tell us this is an important public good this does not seem to be an important public good in fact it undermines the public good by incentivizing the removal of starter housing for younger families so let me close by emphasizing again my remarks are not not not personal criticism i admire members of this committee i've seen you ask great questions i've you've shown amazing concern for all sides and you really i could you really take time to listen to us repeatedly you want us to get out of here i'm sure whether you decide in favor of residents or not and from what i reserve i would vote for all of you but what i'm saying is we're talking about structural biases in this process that puts these neighborhood residents at a disadvantage and so if you're deciding as you decide i know you're deciding on the merits of case um for those of you on the fence i just hope you consider how some of these underlying factors make our case much harder as you think about your decision so thanks again i appreciate your service on this committee thank you mr lawasha um morning we have a telephone number i think we do um hello telephone number uh hi hi moraine this is jeff cobb at six wallwood lane oh sure okay continue um so i've also i'm on a butter uh at six wallwood lane and i i have sight lines directly to the property and i have submitted written comments before so you've had those new bring those are written comments in connection with the last presentation so i i will go through all of those uh hopefully i can make this brief but i did want to um just address a few quick points one is uh i would i disagree with mr sparkles comment about the driveway the what we're calling the gravel driveway and the burning radius and the garage uh since the since the tenants were informed last time last thing that they had to follow the parking rule because there's a parking plan there they have since done that and uh if you've gone by you've seen that they're now parking in the garage that's a huge improvement on the safety of that area there is now full car length or more that they can see when they're backing up so they're no longer backing up directly into people by following and using the existing garage just by itself that's improved the safety and just the fact that the garage doors can go up and down all of that creates the uh the visibility to the person who may be a pedestrian that somebody's going to be backing out so i think it just could be defies logic a little bit that you would that we would consider taking away a garage when the garage works well when it's a single family and has limited parking and consider that the appropriate remedy is to take the garage away and then pave over the backyard so i just wanted to make that point another point about the the driveway there i know there's been a lot of talk about is there a driveway is there not a driveway mr sparkle says well the town says there's a driveway well i mean i've lived here a long time and witnessed that and there's never been a real driveway there ever that was uh mr fair lived there and he was woodcutter and landscaper and he had a he had a at first he had no gravel down he just used that because he had equipment back there the trailer and equipment that he he would use and load and uh at some time he he put down gravel there was some gravel there but it was never maintained as a real driveway he used it very infrequently and he used it to go down to the basement level of the garage load stuff and come up it was never used by as a driveway there were never any vehicles parked there other than equipment and trucks when he wasn't using it or loading it he also had the wood pile back there it was not a driveway that was used on a daily basis for the cars the cars parked in the garage so we don't have a driveway there that was ever officially designated or used as such and before the fair spot that there was no driveway i just spoke to the former owners the kitties and there was never a driveway there when they lived there so i just want people understand that um the other uh corruption i want to make is mr. sparkle mentions that there's only been one special application well that may be true but there are a number of convert there are a number of conversions but there are a number of two families or rentals that had that had two families and the conversion he's talking about a 315 it's either 315 or 319 it's olex's home that was a basement unit that's not visible from the street and it's attached to the rest of the house the garage proposed garage conversion will be taking taking something that if it is used properly it is an attribute to the neighborhood and taking it away and uh essentially creating a type of unit that doesn't exist in the neighborhood at all really just changes character and i'm very concerned because my backyard looks on my other neighbor uh who has a three-car garage with loft now he's there's a very nice person i'm sure he's not going to convert that but is somebody going to now by that look at what look at what mr. Mendelson was able to obtain through his special permit and now convert that into that that that could be converted into many more bedrooms it's a two-story garage with a loft three three cars i'm worried about the creep and the change and the tipping point of the neighborhood and i just uh i think 315 olex's basement is completely different from a conversion of a garage which would take that away and then pave over a part pave over the backyard which was always used as a backyard except for turning occasionally turning equipment and vehicle um so and the last comment i wanted to make is that you know you know mr. sparkle mentions that the tenants just the current tenants are good good tenants well they had been following the parking plan and they only did so when they were i guess spoken to after the last meeting and i can't comment on you know whether they're good or not i guess but i think the fact of the fact of the matter is they weren't following the parking plan and they may be paying the rent but they weren't i wouldn't characterize it as good if you're not following the parking plan for you know for the residents and the butters one more comment i just wanted to mention i think it's impractical to use butterfield dorms parking lot for weekends and parties that was the suggestion i mean that's pretty full right now um that's not a very practical solution and you have to get parking permit up there and if there are student rentals as it is they can get parking probably they don't need to park at the house so i am concerned about the density the different type of unit the illusion that parking is somehow uh going to be solved by uh paving over the backyard and i just think it's the long density uh it's the wrong site uh for that type of uh that type of extra unit uh thank you for appearing in my comments thank you mr cob okay we now have uh bruce carson mr carson i don't know about yourself um one second it takes a few moments here okay can you hear me now yes hi hi this is bruce carson at eight strong street i live across the street from the property in question i just wanted to reiterate what my neighbor jeff cob just said that this would be a very big change for the neighborhood because it would be two housing structures on a very small lot the garage in question has a very prominent location on strong street and it it would be a great departure from what we have right now so thank you for your time thank you mr carson okay uh next hold on a second next we have hilda green bomb the screen ball yes i'm speaking as myself not as a reporter um help me just give us your address oh tonight at monague road thank you and i don't know how to say this i've seen bucky sparkles work and went to all the hearings of amorous media where the vegetation that was going to be planted there was all placed in a site with a name on it and how big it was going to be to try to make the aesthetics of what wasn't the greatest design look a lot better i know bucky can do really good work but and i've also watched very carefully what was required for um mr stotzman for an accessory dwelling clearly a different part of the bylaw but that landscape plan for mr stotzman had um where the rainwater went to the gutters and how the drainage went down the yard into various swales ending in in the wetlands area and that lot also was sloped and was what i gather from watching the hearing but also he had a lot of plantings on that site that were listed by name and location i don't see any of that here and to quote a former candidate it's sort of whatever he's done to that house is like putting lipstick on a pig it's an ugly property and if you can't make the property look better with proper landscaping or the garage really adds nothing by sticking to windows and a door and it's not an attractor you're not going to get the best tenant and i have several years of experience in knowing how to screen tenants and find people who are going to be compatible with with what the landlords aims are and keeping a nice house over the long term and not have to redo it after every tenant but if you can't make it more more attractive you're not going to get a good tenant and i also think that you need to require you know what what are the what is the drainage off the roof where where are the the gutters and the drain pipes and what planting are you going to put there to make it a more attractive looking building so you get a good tenant and not have to worry about the lowest quality party boy going in there um these are the things that bother me just sitting here and listening to as you listen week after week after week but as i said i got a lot of experience in making old houses look better and this is not one of the projects i would have taken on because i i realized what need to be done to it but that's what i want to say thank you miss greenbell okay we have one more steve schreiber hi steve hi actually i'm steve schreiber 100 high street not speaking as a elected official but i am speaking as an architect and i've been registered i first got registered in massachusetts 1985 i served on the state licensing board for 10 years and um i have a real problem with the drawings that are on mr sparkles stamped drawings so i don't i'm that i don't know the the procedures for licensing engineers but i do know in architecture when you stamp something and when you present it at a public hearing like this you are verifying to the public that is accurate so we've already demonstrated that the floor plans that are part of his drawings that he's adopted into his drawings are not accurate they did not match the elevations i still have problems with the elevations as presented that the windows are now seem way oversized so they just seem random and i believe that the probably the um owner is the one generating these drawings mr sparkle is adopting these as his own but that's a huge problem this is a very serious project that's in a very visible corner and this sort of shoddiness should not be acceptable so i'm going to read you from your own rules the zoning board of appeals rules that you require preliminary skilled architectural drawings preliminary architectural skill drawings with a minimum skill one eighth inch including typical floor plans typical elevations and sections and identifying construction type and exterior finish signed and stamped by an architect if one of the requested waivers is for relief from lot line setbacks or building height limitations documents documentation shall include a street elevation showing the proposed new construction in existing buildings to at least 100 feet adjacent to the requested waiver area this is what you require you should demand this you should not accept a home you know basically what you've been given um i just one other thing about licensing laws is that there's a huge exemption given in any licensing law for things that will only cause you harm so i can cut my own hair for example but i can't cut somebody else's hair unless i'm a licensed barber so um the the owner can design a house for that he himself will occupy because the harm that's possible from that will only cause him harm but i don't believe that you should be allowing this applicant to be designing something that he does not intend to occupy so the other thing the other comment is regarding the housing market study and i may have been the one that pointed this out mr. Sparkle quoted part of that but really the gist of that is the housing crisis in Amherst a large part of that is caused by um basically a demand for what used to be owner-occupied houses being bought by LLCs and by converted to rentals that is very much part of the housing crisis so there are a number of solutions listed in there and mr. Sparkle mentioned the rn so i'm going to quote you another one from the rn that's to amend the section in question to allow owner occupied two family houses as of right in the rn as well as in the rg blah blah blah so this is a not a there's no proposal on the table for this but there definitely is a concern in this housing market study about non-owner-occupied multi or more than one family on a property and then the last question i have is i'm the one that brought up the question of the property value and mr. Sparkle showed maybe a more recent one i cannot find that one online so mr. Sparkle got that somewhere not online which is great but he's introduced that into record and i think you should verify that that's actually true thank you so much thank you mr schreiber oh we have another um attorney reedy mr reedy yep mr reedy identify yourself sure uh thank you mr chairman members of the board tom reedy attorney with bacon well sent out of amherst here on behalf of the neighbors um i will keep it brief given the hour in in my guess that you're going to continue this based upon what i've heard tonight um i guess that's into mr. sparkle oh i'm not right about anything which i think that i probably asked my wife but i think you all know me well enough take a look at the letter don't listen to me don't listen to bucky listen to the neighbors trust your instincts trust your wisdom trust your judgment i think mr roger brought up a great point so to to peer review haven't seen a photometric plan and i know mr sparkle will say uh you know it's residential we can't get it i mean i think the standards would dictate the app thing stormwater peer review i'll do respect as minor as it is in the neighbors would come there was a stormwater peer review same thing with a photometric plan um i know we also heard testimony analysis please back do you want may i interrupt is it just me that's having internet issues okay i'm having trouble yeah i'm breaking up i'm getting about oh no i'm getting back could you tom could you call in could you call in um if you go to the agenda um and call in yeah let me try to call in yeah it just keeps on breaking up sure there was some really great stuff often i gotta stop the timer while he's calling in um while we wait for him i there's a couple of things that um we're gonna want for the next meeting that i i'd like to go through before mr reedy comes back one of those is the um the parking barrier i not only do i want to i think we should see it but i think we need some kind of a evaluation of its safety you know it's it's it just is something i haven't seen in amherst before is a three-foot tall sort of barrier on the other side of the sidewalk that and i'm number one i'm not sure that that's how common that is and how to what it does the neighborhood but i really like to have somebody take a look at that and say that does help safety it hurts safety hear the concerns about it it's just not something i've seen at all around amherst and i think it should be something that we at least should get a look at and if the transportation department or somebody can if there's some way to look at that and say this this has certain kinds of concerns or provides certain kind of protections for people that would be helpful to me so it's a sort of a unique thing and i i i'd like to have that for the next meeting um and then we talked about a bike rack can you get provided what the bike rack would be and where it would be mr sparkle um vehicle barriers we talked about photos you're going to ask about the photos of the renovations in 275a back to us on that and a list of exterior work in a and the timeline for that work you're going to be back to us on that if you if they will give you that information um while we wait for mr reedy is there anything else that members have asked for that we need to have for the meeting the next time we meet on this that i skipped and so if i'm hearing you correctly you said uh parking barrier image photo in evaluation of its safety safety and or effectiveness or efficacy i'm not sure it's just sure now would you is that something posed to town staff would you like you know our fire department and police department and perhaps yeah and and yeah in our our town engineer and inspection services they could all weigh in and then um i guess update the site plan and show a spec uh design spec for um the bike rack um interior building photos of the existing dwelling unit and a list of proposed improvements for the property um for for the i guess 2021 correct okay all right um i will say if if you if uh i i was just reviewing the list of of requests of of the applicant um that i sent by email to mr sparkle uh i guess the next the day i i guess on the 29th of jan of january um and i was just going through all the items um that he's reviewed tonight and he has addressed the majority of of the items um uh there were a couple things that haven't been um addressed which is uh review the management plan now back in october when this uh application was first submitted and before bucky was even associated with this project i believe um neil mendon sin did review the management plan with the board but it might be helpful for the board to sort of have a refresher of that and also um there was a request to have a pioneer property services the applicant a representative that that's associated with the company to give testimony to the board at tonight's meeting about the roles and responsibilities um of their services and to have um pioneer property services provide a portfolio and explain staff levels for a property management company and and uh i guess i think bucky did touch on this but uh submit a resident manager scope of services and draft agreement that will be used so it does seem like we're running out of time tonight but perhaps those items could be um addressed at the next meeting if i may briefly is he back he's back okay um i see raised hand let me i see one also for mr was skeptics and then mr reedy and then mr spark mr was skeptics yeah i just wanted to clarify with mr sparkle what the intention of the barrier was if it's just to keep cars off the lawn it doesn't have to be something that necessarily would um you know it's it's more of a visual prevention as opposed to a physical prevention um yes actually the that barrier was a suggestion from the zba it's not actually our proposal it's our response to a request by board members to provide something to deter parkers from going into the front yard even once the barrier curb is reestablished and the driveway is removed there was some concern that somebody might still decide it's okay to park in front of the house um as i don't know how often that happens in amherst but there was a concern by the board so our response was we would put up something as a visual deterrent um i just down the street watched a car drive through a house if you want to stop a car you need a very very big thing and there's no way you can prevent a vehicle from careening off the road in parking in the grass if they really wanted to so it is just a visual suggestion and and physics would not provide any reasonable means to prevent a car from jumping the curb and going into the yard if they really wanted to yeah that's the reason for my question because we've seen cases where people put up a flip rail fence or they put up large boulders so what is the intention of this barrier uh well the the functional intention is a visual deterrent um not a not a physical safety feature and um because it um it is an aesthetic issue that we haven't quite settled on that and i understand that uh the board is interested in us providing a specific detail and what that will look like so i will talk to the applicant and see if they feel it what would be the most aesthetically pleasing barrier that is uh perhaps a little more substantial than a flower bed all right to answer your question mr. or civics yeah i i just i just want to make sure we're going down the right road here thank you um mr. reedy are you back i think if if if he is calling in from a phone number i think he needs to press uh star nine i see a few phone numbers oh i see i see a hand okay we found him okay okay uh let's see here um okay tom you should be able to talk now great can you hear me yes okay um so i will be even briefer than i was before so obviously the the board was going through a list of items that uh they were asking from the applicant um a couple of other items probably to add to that list maybe an explanation of how they're going to enforce that tenancy i know we talked about both um 275a and 275b and i think there was a request of the applicant not even through his representative but actually the applicant to explain how it would be enforced i think mr. loraja brought up peer reviews and i just want to put a finer point on that because obviously you know mr. sparkle has presented what he has presented mr. skeels has looked at it however so i think to make the neighbors feel comfortable a stormwater peer review as as minor as mr. sparkle may think that it is uh we would request same thing with a photometric plan uh to get a sense of what that light bleed is going to look like so there is on the back corner of the the converted dwelling to be a floodlight and while it might be downcast uh dark sky compliant it is still going to project out to to reach the far end of the parking lot and so to see what that actually looks like we would request same thing with the the the cars backing out you know i with all due respect to mr. sparkle i i don't know that it's that accurate you know looking at the photographs and understanding how vehicles work i think folks may be able to back out of the the garage bays of the garage without actually backing on to the road to to face forward um so to take a look at that and traffic as well i don't know that a traffic analysis needs to be done i know that the the argument has been that there aren't additional um vehicles there but but maybe something to look at certainly the stormwater certainly the photometric and then two questions through the chair to mr. sparkle i don't know if we've seen a floor plan for 275a uh and then also on his sheet one of four on his plans uh in his dimensional and zoning table it says provided and i just don't know if that's existing or proposed i get to be saying it's actually provided now or it's going to be provided once um the project would be constructed so just just the clarification there all right thank you mr reedy and what was that last point your last suggestion was on sheet which sheet 104a you said the the first one sheet one of four well one of mr sparkle's dimensional table yeah yeah it's probably a simple answer but just for for clarity okay thank you so i we haven't um there's numerous things that we're looking for and i and the next meeting is two weeks is that right marine marine so yes so the next meeting would be the fourth thursday which would be 25th of february and then one after that is march what march 11 all right i don't want to be in the same position that we're in tonight for when we deal with this the next time and if we have if we continue this to for two weeks that gives only three days to get all to get this information together get it to you for you to compile it and then you get it out to us so that we have a chance to look at it given what happened with the mail this time so i i don't want to put us in that position i don't want to be in the same position that we are tonight but we don't have the physical paper in front of us to make these decisions and to have all this information so i would it'd be my preference that we continue this for for uh till the second meeting and i i prefer that we i would if everything was perfect i would like to be done with this sooner rather than later i think it's in the best interest of everybody's has been applied since october and if they're going to go ahead with it they want to get it ready before the during the construction season if we're not it's not going to be approved they have a right to know that as soon as possible but i think but i don't think that we can be ready in two weeks and not have the same situation that we're faced tonight which is we don't have the paper so i would propose that we continue this for uh to let first meeting in march at that and then bring it up at that time and before we before we vote on that is there anything else that people need to have answers to information either answers to or information about from either the town or mr sparkle so we can be prepared to move forward and make some decisions we have findings we have to make we have the we have we have to make findings we have to consider the the um um conditions that we want to put on and where those how those findings affect that and this being a complicated application i think it will take some time to go through that whole process but i'd like to i'd like to get that done in a month and i'd like to have whatever you need need up for the town and for mr sparkle to get back to us as soon as possible yes michelin's that um i have um several points uh and questions that um i would like to hear from mr reedy and um maybe some of the the neighbors it has to do primarily with this idea that if granting this uh application that it would be a huge detriment to the neighborhood uh and there are specific questions i have uh regarding that so my question is to you or for us um not wanting to go through all of that at the moment uh is there a way that i can uh crystallize those and send them to marine yes and them on uh so that we don't get into the we don't go four weeks and then suddenly i'm asking these questions and they haven't been thought about or addressed i think that's yet the answer is yes and i think that's one of the benefits of letting this go a little bit longer before we come back because it gives people a chance to you'll be able to read the material and if it's you've got a concern exactly the material tomorrow yes marine so if i'm hearing Keith uh properly uh you have a list of questions or maybe comments uh for the board to consider or for to consider no for tom reedy and the oh okay so you could uh okay so you could email it to me and then i could forward along to the to attorney reedy okay and and then i uh and when would the board get a copy of this the board would get a copy of this at the next meeting well wouldn't it be like any other email that you would have with the applicant or or somebody you know you send an email and you put it on to the one right so what i will do is i will post um i will post Keith's email on the town website um so that all members of the public can review that on the zba page and i will tell everyone where they can find that specifically but it will be on the cba page on yeah so i that we also had that so members had that opportunity to raise those questions um as you review the material you have to do it i would encourage you to do it sooner rather than later the next couple of days absolutely get this all done and move on with making a decision and going through all the determinations we have to make in the next next time we meet on this item great thank you so all right good and anything else from board members miss parks are these plans adequate for uh what we need i mean i i for for my short history on the board normally we do have much more detailed plans and you know not generated by the person who's doing the building but by you know licensed architects i'm just wondering yeah i do is that a missing here i i wish i could answer your question um i my experiences we took my experience is the same as yours as parts we typically have a more um a more detailed rendering uh in elevations but not always but most of time we do and i i'd have to go back and read the the bylaws the rules of the the zba i can do that i haven't looked at what our requirements are mr mora or moraine can you help us with that to answer that i know in some cases we say that we leave it up to this this the staff to approve a building plan a construction plan and that our drawings are just what we approve of sometimes is just is is is not very specific and it gets much more specific at the at the construction documents but what do we need what do we need to do what do we need here in terms of detail so this is really a decision of the board um you know that the plans uh do not meet the specific requirement and the rules and regulations so you're you know you're waving certain aspects of that the architectural stamp and the the number of details that are provided because it's an existing building really isn't all that unusual for the board to do that particularly for one or two family buildings the the building code doesn't require an architect to stamp those plans so that's not really unusual so you know there's no question the plans that are provided are are not accurate to provide all the details you know size of the trim and really what what the building looks like or will look like so it's really up to the board to decide if what's provided to you in the concept is enough clear enough for you to to base your decision on or possibly you'd need to ask for more details or the next level quality of drawing in order to do that um attorney bard would like to speak yes yeah thank you mr chairman so just supplement what mr morris said by simply reminding the board that some of the details particularly let's say drainage planting and so forth likely if you were to approve this you would be approving it based on what you've been shown and what you've been convinced to believe is going to work so you would need plans that will show that in some detail because your decision again were to be an approval would have to refer to those plans to say that this is what we're approving and if you're building your project this is what you have to build so you will want to be convinced that the plans the landscape plan something particularly of the drainage the groundwater flow and so not the groundwater but the stormwater flow is shown at a great enough level of detail that it can be enforced to make sure it's built as it was described and proposed to you good thank you then answer your questions parks well it um it addresses my concern but i don't know um i'm not um can we request of the applicant that we have you know a peer reviewed stormwater review a photometric plan a you know an architectural plan you certainly can do the first two if we wish we can it's uh 50 b i think is the 53 g 53 g i knew it was a higher number 53 53 g where we we get peer review and it's paid for by the applicant um i don't know if that also applies to architectural drawings i i'm just not familiar with that i i don't know we can certainly request we can request um if we if that was the desire of the board more detail um if that's if we're not comfortable with what we have now we can request more i don't need to be peer necessarily peer review i was i was just going to say that i share your concern about the uh the amount of pavement in the backyard yeah that isn't there right now and even though you it's a driveway if you you know loosely a driveway it's definitely not a piece of pavement and so um that is very concerning to me yeah okay mr langsdale no it's okay i i'm gonna do it a different way fine thank you all right i'm gonna do it in greek nobody can ever say that these meetings aren't interesting oh we'll wait for the we'll wait for the greek from you and mr sparkle um i have a prior commitment to a public hearing on march 11th so uh i'm not going to be able to be available for that date specifically i think this will just have to go further into the future um that makes it march here march we um what that sorry uh march 11th the 25th 25th and i don't know if there's any other option i think two weeks is too quick um i hate to put it off that long for the the applicant but um if you can't be there then we need to and i think you're a required participant so um we need to do it on the 25th um and okay sure and i get um i guess regarding this sort of notion or beginning to have a discussion about having a a peer review for items is this something that you as a board want to make a motion on tonight or is this something that you want to talk about in the future well i don't you know i don't really know that we can talk we either have to deal with it now or else we talk about in the future and we've been delayed of consideration of this thing out another couple of weeks while that peer review is done before we can um decide and so then we're looking at june or something uh excuse me not march april or may before we can make that decision on this and that seems to be along so i think we should think about it right now um and can we get an estimate of the cost of can we get an estimate of the cost to the applicant of a peer review on the storm water um and and how much that would be and then how do we make how do we i've never done this before so if we know we have well i we have no you haven't no you have not sorry no we've had a discussion about it before we haven't done this so i don't know if we can request that if we need to have it done in the meeting if we can um authorize tonight authorize the um exploration of how much it would cost bring that back to the board and the board vote on it or if we can just say um existed if it's the i don't think it should just be at the discretion of the chairman to do it but can the board vote on it in two weeks um just on that matter i don't know how we do this so i'm i'm hesitant to to to ask for a peer review without knowing what the what the cost would be for the applicant it's not that it's a disqualifier but i just want to know what i'm imposing upon the applicant so can i do that with that i would be able to shed some light on that if you're interested all right um for for a full scale commercial storm water review you are looking at two to four thousand dollars um in fees if it is a more simple report such as that i have presented then it's it's quite variable i'd be surprised if you were able to find somebody to take a look at it for less than a thousand dollars partly because there are no standards against which they could review it so they're going to have to come up with their own theories and ideas when i did peer review for the town of amherst for storm water management systems which i've done in the last year it was a more complicated system than this for certain but not terribly and that was roughly an eighteen hundred dollar review okay um well that's helpful information the question for us is um well you can staff go out and find a peer review how much it is can you do in the next two weeks and and if you do can we just make that decision to request it in two weeks can we can we meet or can we put a time on the agenda just for consideration of of the ordering of peer review on drainage or on faux boutique if we want without having to open up the whole thing the whole um application for discussion in two weeks mr bar do you think we can do that sorry yes uh i believe you can i mean what process did you have in mind in my opinion for instance it would be sufficient for staff to talk simply to you as chair if the rest of your board is comfortable with that i'm comfortable with that if the rest of the board would be comfortable with me um using my judgment or letting you guys i mean that otherwise we're having having a meeting on this mr langsdale i i think that uh what mr barrett has just said uh is the way to go forward so that uh mr sparkle can come to you with whatever he is able to come up with and that you make the decision because i think it's um i think it's important that we get forward with this either way in which either way that we decide finally but i think uh to to drag this out to four weeks and then beyond is uh not why we're here frankly so uh i would i would personally say yes uh you meet talk with mr sparkle and and get everything let us know and we'll move on to the next process if people do not have an objection let's let's move it that way on the storm water um mr maxfield you have a question oh yeah i'm sorry so we um that you can uh authorize uh whether or not that we need um a peer review or or i'm sorry what exactly is it that in order to move this process forward let me find out how much staff go out and judge how much get estimates for how much is an estimate for how much it's going to cost and then i let me make the decision as to whether it's reasonable i think if it's in the thousand of two thousand dollar range i would think seem to find that reasonable i would inform you of my decision will we go forward with it so that we can be done with it but i'd inform the board of my decision immediately upon making it if there's a huge objection we can we can deal with it but um that's the way i would like to handle it because otherwise we're just gonna we have a legitimate question about this i just don't want this to hold everything up for six weeks in order to deal with this does that answer your question mr maxill yep okay cut it was paul and i just wanted to clarify to the board what a peer review is um in case there's any confusion so appear and please anyone else that if i have a confusion that you correct me is that a peer reviewer is going to take bucky sparkles stormwater proposal calculations and design and review that and that's what the peer reviewer would solely be doing they would be reviewing their peer who is bucky sparkle so they're not creating a new design or new calculations or anything like that they would be reviewing mr sparkles stormwater proposal mr meadows you had your hand up just to just to clarify um this would be stormwater photometric and architectural or no i i didn't i don't think i i mean i didn't move architectural i think stormwater i think foldable take are the two that make sense and they can be done pretty quickly well you know we can't do a peer review because we don't really have anything to peer review for photometric we need a photometric set that's a different issue but all we all we can talk about here for peer review i think is stormwater i'd like to have that photometric seems to make sense but we don't have that and i but there is it's there are limited numbers of lights um people who care about that i a lot on the on the committee i know that but i don't and i don't think we should do a i don't think we should do a whole architectural peer review i that seems to me to be too much but so that's that's my response to your question okay all right oh mr maxfield um yeah i guess i'm just gonna say my my personal opinion is i don't i don't really support at this time um the need for a peer review um i i understand the timing that we're kind of dragging this out and if we're gonna do one we should do one sooner rather than later but i i don't just just over the last two weeks of kind of going through uh kind of public comment of of what the issues with this project are uh from what the the public comment is of saying you know if there's you know the the parking situation hey if that could be addressed i'd support this project if uh there were a real engineering plan i'd support this project and and just seeing that shift over these months that no one has has now come in favor of this project even after those concerns have been addressed and it just seems like this constantly shifting goalpost where now we're gonna impose a condition on the applicant here that they have to go get a peer review and then once that comes back to us and then maybe the peer review says hey this all looks good and then and then it's it's pardon me feels like what's what's gonna be the next the next goalpost and the next hurdle for the applicant here so where it feels like i i don't know if we're at the point where we're going to be approving this project or denying this project it seems i don't think it's appropriate for the board to impose what could be even a two thousand dollar condition on the applicant for an application that that may not be approved maybe when we get to the point where we're really done with the public hearing and we're talking public meeting and we're really doing you know our legwork of trying to impose conditions in here while we're working through that process maybe i might be more open to it but at this time i i don't i don't support peer review all right well we have um diversions of opinion within board members so what i'd like there's only one way to solve that i let's have a vote on whether we proceed to a peer review and whether um the process where i will try to work with staff to try to get a an estimate or of a peer review make a decision as to whether to do it and report to you guys immediately as to what the cost is and what the what the peer the scope of the peer review so i will miss parks i just want to make a comment that you know in a lot of ways i deal i agree with dylan in that i don't i don't know that it will make a difference to how i'm feeling about this project i guess i think it's it it's more important to figure out what what we really need to decide to be able to make a decision about the project and i don't know that i'm i mean i said peer review because that's what i was repeating what other people were saying but it's um i guess i have a concern about the concrete level in the backyard and i don't know if a peer review answers that concern so um wouldn't a peer review answer whether the peer review would answer whether the proposed hardscape provides is sufficient for the proposed hardscape exceeds the the drainage garden the area that is is in the proposed plant that's what we don't know i mean that's what we have a we have a plan on that for some reason i i it's it strains my my credulity that it strains credulity to me that it's that it works i'm not an expert i'd like and i know that that affects other um neighbors so i'd like to know something about that that's what i'm concerned about and i didn't mean to cut you off there miss parks um i'm sorry no i i i agree i i'm in this i'm in the same frustrated place about it because i i don't it's like i i yes that's what i would like clarified and i wasn't sure that the peer review was going to answer that i didn't know if it was going to be someone saying yep that you know yes or no or yes these plans are fine or you know uh no this is not going to i don't i don't know what what the result of a peer review is so i what i what i hope is the result of the peer review is just what i described that it tells us whether the whether the proposed hardscape is going to exceed the volume of the the rain garden and for all intensive purposes that's what i'm looking for okay so then i let's have a vote on whether we should go go forward with exploring and uh engaging in a peer review um is there a motion to do that i make a motion that we uh go ahead with this is there a second i'll second any further discussion all right roll call chair votes aye mr langsdale aye miss parks aye mr maxfield no mr meadows that's an i okay yes yes okay yep vote is four to one um so we'll deal with this marina i'll call you tomorrow we'll set up a time to deal with this right away okay so i sorry i just have a little confusion so um so the board made a motion and voted four to one to explore and engage a peer review for stormwater um and so so you're moving for you so you have actively said that you are going to move forward with this and does the board need to make a motion about anything else um about the cost or anything or can this now just be worked out uh with i i propose that we we just go ahead with it i will report back to the members um or we will report back to the members of what what it is before we finalize engagement and we'll go forward how's that so that being said is this public hearing being continued to march 25th or is this public hearing being continued to um february uh the next february meeting well i don't think we need well that was my question earlier i don't think we need to have if we don't have to have a meeting to engage with the peer review i'd like not to if we can just go ahead and do it and authorize through this but if you're but if you're communicating with the board about that is that during the public hearing if there does there need to be a discussion about the cost with the zba members that's my question for no i don't think so but mr barb can you help us with this yes yeah so mr chairman i i think we're going back about 10 minutes to go here so sorry sorry no no it's fine i think it's important that everybody be on the same page uh it's my view and i think the board members understand this that the board's vote just now was to authorize the chair to work with you and whatever staff you think are appropriate to find the right peer review professionals whoever that might be get an estimate from them have a conversation so it would just be a staff conversation with the chair and the board is authorizing the chair to authorize you uh to go ahead and engage with peers we're talking about you know something on the scale of one or two or maybe three thousand dollars i don't know but nothing more than that um i mean again the chair is going to in his discretion decide and so in the next communication with the whole board or as you post it or whatever you can report when a peer reviewer has been hired if that's the case and when you get their report make that available so there be no no further need for board discussion of this until until the deed is done if you will till a peer reviewer has been hired provided the report okay so i could in an email correspondence to the board say this is the price or this is the consultant this is what we've got yeah okay cool yeah i mean not the price i mean in other words when you've hired somebody yeah all of that at once in other words no need to keep checking in on it you and the chair will make those decisions okay thank you sorry from all right thank you so 926 is there other issues that we need to discuss before we can adjourn to the next in two weeks do we have items on the agenda for two weeks moraine we don't we don't we don't but we need to officially make a motion to continue this public hearing until march 25th so let's do that first um and then we'll get to the motion from the question from mr maxfield so i was just making brave in my hand to make the motion make the motion to move to the 25th great let's move it along i like that motion all right and now i'm gonna like a second even better second all right i've got a second um is there any discussion no discussion on uh i vote aye mr leisdale hi mr parks hi maxfield hi mr meadows all right all right motion carries um is there anything else that needs to be discussed and we don't have a meeting scheduled for next week or for two weeks agenda so miss parks i'm sorry i just i just want to say that uh there's comments about you know students the number of students it isn't the number of it isn't students that are the issue it's the number of people in a building and and when a whole lot of people are in a building it tends to be students and so i just wanted to you know mr spark will keep talking about that there's a seems to be an issue against students it's not against students it's packing more people into those spaces and i just also want to address who's saying people students parking in the front yard they do it all the time um on many properties so i'm done i just needed to say all right so at present we don't have an agenda we don't have an agenda item for the the next end of February the next meeting is in march then and uh correct mr uh bar has raised his hand yeah mr chair i'm sorry and maybe i missed it but i heard march 25th i didn't hear a date for the continued public sorry i didn't hear a time oh thank you six o'clock that's by unanimous consent can i do this yes all right um i should have said my motions should have said six o'clock or mr maxville's motion should have said six o'clock i think i heard him say that let's six o'clock on the 25th i heard it i heard it we all heard it all five of them i am done okay so done all right if anything else all right thank you all for um your extended time tonight um we do have public comment and items not on the agenda i'm gonna open those up right now to see if there is any and then we'll put you in the meeting so this is the time for public comment on any matter not before the board tonight we have nobody raising their hands we're done and there's nothing on the agenda back so we are done so do i have a motion to adjourn mr maxfield move is there a second second we got a lot of seconds all right vote occurs i vote aye mr langsdale aye arg yes i made it miss parts hi mr maxfield aye and mr meadows aye all right motion carries it's unanimous we'll see you all in a month i guess thank you thank you appreciate it good night yep thank you everybody