 Okay, Mr. Marshall. We have Amherst media in the house. It's 631. You have a quorum of five. It's like we're good to go. Okay, thank you, Pam. Welcome. Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of February 15, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall. And as the chair of the Amherst planning board, I'm calling this meeting to order at 632pm. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media minutes are being taken. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022, and extended again by the state legislature on July 16 2022. This planning board meeting. I just lost my script. This planning board meeting. The meeting public hearings will be conducted via remote means using the zoom platform. The zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. As you know in person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. On the town of Amherst website. Board members I will take a roll call. When I call your name unmute yourself answer affirmatively and return to me. Bruce Colvin. Yeah. Tom Long. As in. Andrew McDougal. Present. I dug Marshall and present Janet McGowan here. I do not see Johanna Newman. And I do not see Karen winter. Why don't we try to note the time at which they arrive. Board members if any technical issues arise we may need to pause to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak. After speaking. Remember to remute yourself. For the general public. Public comment period is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware of the board will not respond comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds there a lot of time their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. All right so the time is 635 and we'll start with our minutes. Does anyone have comments on the minutes I know Janet you had sent some comments to Chris earlier would you like to share those with the board. Janet you are muted. I can't believe I did that after all these years. Anyway, I, one of them was on page four of the minutes where there's a statement by Chris Brestrup that the concom hasn't voted yet. And then the statement that they had and so I think it was that they had, but they, they hadn't like issued an order yet. So that was a quick one. I just kind of loose use of the word townhouse or town homes and a separate words and I just thought we should just call it townhouse as one word, which is how we do it in the bylaw and that kind of pops up all over the place, but because I was kind of confused by it and I was like what are town homes and I was thinking like motor homes and stuff like that so it's just really that's a small one. All right. If anybody else have other comments. Anybody have any objections to the edits that. All right. Not seeing any other hands. Would anybody like to move that the minutes with the edits that Janet proposed be adopted. Andrew I see your hand. So moved. Thank you. And Tom. All right. Thank you both. All right, we'll go right into a vote on that. Starting with Bruce. Vote to approve. Great. Tom. Hi. And Andrew. Hi. Janet. Hi. I'm an eye as well. So the motion passes five in favor to absent. So now the time is 638 and we'll go to item two on our agenda, which is public comment period. And let's see how many people have we got from the public tonight. We've got, I see six people. I think I often read their names at this time so they know who else is in the public. We have Ashley Laurie, Bruce Carson, Dorothy Pam, Jennifer Taub, Mandy, Joe Hanneke and will Laurie. So members of the public, would any of you like to make a public comment about an item not on our agenda tonight at this time. All right, I am not seeing any hands from the public. So we own. I believe Elizabeth viriling just arrived. Elizabeth, we are in the public comment period. If you want to make a public comment about something not on our agenda. This is the time to raise your hand. All right, I don't see anyone's hands still so we will go on to the next item on our agenda, which is item three proposed zoning amendments. And this is a presentation and discussion really mostly of the zoning amendment proposals proposed by Mandy Joe Hanneke and Pat DeAngelis. We are running article three use regulations to change the permitting requirements for owner occupied duplexes affordable duplexes non owner occupied duplexes converted dwellings and townhouses in order to create a more streamlined permitting pathway for these uses. In particular, we moved the use category subdividable dwellings to add a use category three family detached dwelling or triplex to add a permitting pathway and standards and conditions for triplexes to modify standards and conditions for other housing use categories to amend permitting requirements for housing use categories in the aquifer recharge protection protection overlay district. In article four development methods to add three family dwelling where appropriate in article nine non conforming lots uses and structures to add a reference to three family dwelling. And under article 12 definitions to add three family detached dwelling unit or triplex and to delete subdividable dwellings. All right. So Mandy Joe I see you. If you want to say anything. This is a good time to give us an intro. I would know you've been here before and maybe you want to just sit back and listen. I do understand that you are hoping the board will come out of this evening's discussion with a clearer sense at least of our of what we like about the proposal and would support. And, you know, and thereby what we don't like and don't support. So, at least, that's my understanding of what we have as our tasks this evening. Thank you, Doug. I'm not going to say, say much I've, we've done a presentation for two different meetings I think you know I'm here to answer some questions I do have to leave at 715 and Pat could not be here tonight for a number of reasons and she sends her regrets. I will listen to the meeting, the rest of the meeting that I have to miss once I leave. But yeah, I think Pat and I are hoping to, you know, we know it's not the public hearing we know the public hearings coming up and that as we go through the public hearing process there are likely to be changes. But throughout this meeting and the public hearing process, it would be good for us to be able to get an understanding of particularly those parts of the proposal that the board as a whole or as a majority would like to see changes to potentially with what those changes might be, where they are leaning, and so that we can discuss it as sponsors and potentially come back with revisions and all based on on those comments but but we'd really like to understand not just whether one person wants to change but whether the body as a whole is seeking potential change or wants that because that helps us more. It's good to hear what each individual person person is thinking but as a whole since you'll be voting as a whole that's that's where we would really like some help. And so I'm here to answer any questions. All right, thank you. All right, board members. This is our third meeting in which we've discussed this proposal. And I don't know if you are feeling that you've got a sense of what you like or what you don't like. This is the time to start talking about that. I don't know if this comes off and not seeing any hands yet from others I'll I'll just say what I like and what and one concern that I have. I actually think that we should try this in the RG and the RBC zoning districts. I think that our adjacent to our town centers and village centers, and that we should hold off and maybe, you know, for a bit for a later date, if ever. Doing this in some of the outline districts the, I think it's the RN and the R and RLD. Someone is not. Yeah, I took care of that. Karen's in the audience. Isn't it. And her hand is raised just, I'm sorry, Doug, just to jump in. Yeah, okay. Pam, can you move her over? Yeah, I'm in the process. All right, good. Yeah, I feel like I would like to see more density and more housing in areas that the master plan calls for us to be increasing housing and density and building up. And that increasing the density in some of the outline areas is akin to sprawl. And I'd rather not go in that direction. If there's a desire to do it in the RN district that that district has a lot of different characteristics depending on where in that district you are. So it, I would be willing to consider that in in some proximity to major public roads that are served by buses, for instance. But the roads that came to mind initially were North Pleasant Street, South Pleasant Street, West Street down to Bay Road and Northampton Road, and there may be others. But, you know, say within, say a thousand feet of that, of those roads. The other thing I was going to say is, I'm a little bit concerned about the how a property might transition between an owner occupied duplex to a non owner occupied duplex. And the fact that we would be in the position of having to hold a public a site plan review on a duplex that was already approved for owner occupancy. In order to grant non owner occupancy. But the things already built the landscape is already done. And what kind of leverage or flexibility would we have to actually influence the design of the duplex at that point when it was proposed to go to know non owner occupancy. You know, I mean, the easy thing would be to say that both owner and non owner occupied duplexes should have a site plan review upfront before they happen. I realized that's probably not in the spirit of what you propose what you want to do. But I'm, I don't know how else to deal with that. So, I will leave that as a question. And, you know, maybe it's best that we just go forward with the way you proposed it and see, get through a couple of them and see what happens. But I think that could be an uncomfortable position for the board. All right, so that's that's my thought. And Tom, I see your hand. Sure. Thanks Doug, I had a similar thought. And it was similar zones but I think you have the right ones. Sort of now that I'm looking at it and actually the context to the road but I think the idea of testing this in is in a certain set of areas that we outline as places we want to see growth. Yeah, and I think the thing that I'm missing from all of these presentations is data. So how do we know that it builds equity how do we know that it's going to improve X, Y or Z make things cheaper make things more affordable. How do we know any of these things without actually testing is out in our town. So I'd love to see a controlled test within certain zones. Maybe we need to see some data from that before we push it out to other areas and maybe we even have data that tells us we should actually put it in this zone and not that zone and maybe we actually find out some information that will be helpful for us to deploy this in a more strategic way. I think Mandy Joe that this is strategic but in a way that was responding to data on the ground so that would be my sense and I think that Doug's notion of those zones to begin testing sound appropriate to me. All right, thank you Tom. Other board members. This is the time for input. All right I see Janet and then Andrew Janet. I agree with what Tom is saying and Doug is saying about the RN RLD and RO, because, you know what, you know, even though this is sort of presented as a process or a change in process or on permitting there's a lot of added density in it if you look at how it will turn out and I was saying I have the benefit of this huge map of Amherst and its zoning districts and you know I was looking at the RO and RLD which is basically a mostly almost exclusively our open land that you see and also then we have townhouses in there. 10 townhouses on, you know, X amount of acres and I see I would just start seeing in my mind carved, you know, farms being carved up for very lucrative housing, you know, three story townhouses 10 townhouses, or lots being divided to, you know, kind of spawn that seems to be the essence of small sprawl, and also goes against the whole master plan of having density in the village centers and protecting, you know, the lands that we're trying to protect. And so I do think those should be taken off the table. So I was concerned, I have some many concerns. I also was concerned about the removal of all sorts of design standards for duplexes for converted dwellings. And it's, you know, I think we definitely need more design standards, our master plan calls for that. We've been trying to get to that even for the town center but you know the idea that we're we're taking away statements like it should fit into the neighborhood, or, you know, all these different things that would give a board or anybody, the ability to kind of look at a project and say, you know, look at the impact it has on the adjacent properties and things like that so that those get lifted off in several spots I was concerned about that. I don't think we should be lifting design controls and abilities of boards to kind of regulate the look or the impact on this rounding area. I don't think, you know, and one of the things I began to understand think about is townhouses are apartment buildings right there are 10, you know, 10 units they're stuck together. I don't understand why the logic of treating them differently. Apartment buildings and townhouses differently like why would you permit apartment we don't permit apartment buildings and RN so why would we permit townhouses and RN. We don't permit apartments in RLD and RO so why would we permit them there. And then also, you know, in the RG neighborhoods. We don't allow townhouses, but we do it by special permit because it's very dense. It's going to have big impacts and we need a board to look at what the impacts are very carefully and have the ability to kind of put in the conditions and the controls that make sure that it fits into the neighborhood. It doesn't have a negative impact. And, you know, I want I think the board should start looking about at who's living in these. Who's going to be living in the density and how do we prevent, you know, one neighborhood after another to kind of turning into a student neighborhood. And so, but we need more controls on that, not fewer controls. So I think we should kind of trust the boards to do the right thing, but really think about, you know, if we're going to do analogies is a townhouse is an apartment building side by side. And for saying no apartment somewhere why are we saying yes to townhouses or for saying apartments by special permit. That should also be true for for townhouses. All right, thank you Janet Andrew. Thanks Doug. I wanted to add a couple small comments I I came out of last meeting thinking that you're being very happy with what I was seeing, but hearing from, you know, my peers that some sort of phasing would, would make sense and I wasn't really sure what would be a good way I think Doug your proposal. Pretty logical one. And something that I could support. We've let you know limited to certain zones. I guess another point I'd make just in the vein that Tom had mentioned, getting data is, I, I, it's not really clear to me how much this is going to affect existing construction or new construction whether this is really going to drive kind of more conversions to people, you know, redesigning their existing house in which case the impacts to the to the character might be minimal versus new construction where, you know, there could be some significant change and, you know, to Janet's point around making sure that we have some some some guidelines around design, I think would be important for those new buildings especially if it is limited to areas where we already have densification or density rather. And I suspect it's going to be more of the conversions, in which case, probably less of an impact on design so you know if we do phase it where we start in that area that would give us time to think through some of the design standards and maybe we can kind of roll this in. And also, though, you know as I think about limiting the scope of will just call it a pilot for lack of a better term here is that, you know, is that going to affect any change in the near term. Right, if we, if we identify areas to focus in on, and they're really just aren't the opportunities either for new construction or conversion, or we just kind of kicking this can down the road a little bit longer and haven't introduced any new housing so overall still very positive still feel, feel very good about what's happening here and I think, you know, what's been proposed by some of my peers already is, is, I think a really stepped in right direction. Thanks. All right, thanks Andrew Bruce you're next. Broadly supportive of most of what's been said specifically I think Doug I am more supportive of the notion in the two districts that you mentioned. And I'm certainly supportive of Tom's and Andrew's sense that we need some evidence that what is being proposed will actually achieve the goals because as I said last week I really don't see how that can possibly. It doesn't feel like it's going to happen to me it seems that just increasing the housing supply isn't going to. First and foremost, provide us with additional workforce housing. I think it's, it's more likely to go into the, into the student home market. And, and that would make me less supportive of this if I thought that that was the primary slice section of the market that was going to be expanded here. I like the goals of this, but I just don't. I can't I can't I don't have evidence that those goals are going to be achieved by what's being proposed. Therefore, as with Tom and Andrew I'd like. I would like to see a some introductory phase in a way of introducing this and testing it and and and seeing if it can be demonstrated that the objectives will be met. So I think it's important I support Janet's observations about that the RL arrow and RLD are probably the least preferable candidates for this, this change. And finally, the one thing that I might add hasn't been said is that I'm more broadly supportive of making duplex owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes. Elevating them to a by right status. I think I can be persuaded that that would be functional, because I think that the, because I think that with those two housing types, the objectives that are being stated are more likely to be met. So that I think is really where I stand. Thanks, Bruce. Tom. Thanks, I guess I'll start with a question, and I think it has some relevance to how we might think about deploying this as well and and that is, do any of these homes with I've read through them but I can't I can't be quite sure whether a duplex triplex townhouse apartment to any of these have a discrepancy or have a distinction of being rented or owned. And my sense is that I would probably support buildings built to be owned in certain zones versus rented in certain zones and I think the condition of how it will be. Whether ownership is our goal or whether more rentals is our goal again will determine who the end user is, and where that affordable housing for say starter homes could be deployed in certain zones so maybe you can answer the question is there any stipulation about how they can be used and do we, or whether we owned or rented and do we have any say over that. So, I think it's a mandate that's a question I think for you. So certainly there is for duplexes right there are three use categories there is an owner occupied use category, and at least the definition is at least one of those units in that duplex must be on our occupied and it must be recorded on the proposal is that it must be recorded on the deed at the Hampshire registry of deeds. The second use category is affordable duplex that does not require an owner occupancy requirement for either of the two units but it does require that at least one of those units be listed on the state housing inventory for affordable housing and and also that would not be listed on a deed. So, in those two instance so for duplexes there are three different uses proposed well they're already in the bylaw and we're proposing different permitting pathways, depending on which category of duplex there is. We do not do that with triplexes. We just proposed one we have received some feedback from the housing trust that they would be supportive of splitting triplexes up in the same way that duplexes are split up in terms of an owner occupied triplex, a affordable triplex and a non owner occupied triplex. This pattern I have not formal formally talked about that yet, but we'd like to hear your response and thoughts on potentially splitting those up to my understanding is for converted dwellings and townhomes the zoning bylaw is neutral on the ownership of those, but Chris would better be able to state and confirm that. Alright thanks Mandy Joe. Chris do you want to comment on that or not you just just to just to sounds like what Mandy Joe is accurate it's neutral on the ownership. I believe so. Is there so there is no way for us to for instance, within a particular zone, say, it would be okay to build a set of townhouses, if they were meant to be purchased by the owners, rather than rented. And I think that's what I'm getting at in terms of the difference between whether we're building a bunch of rentals, or we're building actual homes, small duplex or, let's say, townhouse homes that people would would own like a condo or whatnot and is there any way for us to make a stipulation of what happens in each zone. I think that's kind of what I'm getting at. Chris. Speaking the zoning bylaw doesn't get into ownership issues or rental issues. It's very rare that it does and we did dip our toe into that when we established owner occupied and not owner occupied duplexes but otherwise we don't really recognize whether someone owns a place or rents a place. Certainly townhouses can be developed as condominiums and we have several examples of that in town, and we have examples of townhouses being developed as rental property and then turning into condos. So that's kind of a fluid situation. There's not usually a requirement that something like that be owner occupied or non owner occupied. It's certainly something we could explore with our town attorney and see how far we could get. I mean another way to think about it would be if we essentially reduced the dimensional requirements for what would turn into row houses. If you own your row house, you're, you know, 16 or 24 feet of width and by 100 feet depth deep or whatever. And, you know, there's one unit per lot, and, and they just happened to all share party walls. So that's another typology that's similar to townhouses, but is clearly owner occupied or at least one owner per structure. That's, that's interesting. I mean, I think my, my concern there is, you know, how do we start to imagine who the end user will be. We're talking about certain zones and can we control who those end users might be by saying, if someone is, if we're asking people to buy something we're building a community, if we're asking to rent it. Maybe someone's going to turn over, which doesn't mean that they can't buy it later, but I guess, I guess I'm just curious if they're, you know, right. We can think about us as time goes on. All right, Tom. Janet. Great discussion because one of my, you know, questions was how do we make space and Amherst for middle and low income residents, you know, given the intense student housing demand plus, you know, the prices that students or their parents are paying. And also builders will build to the higher end of the market, almost always right so you know you're going to make more money on $800,000 house than a $400,000 house. So the idea of giving some more an easier permitting path when you know that the converted dwelling or the townhouse is going to be owner occupied would create would assuage or alleviate a lot of the concerns of people in the RG that they're just, you know, basically, you know, kind of, you know, getting house by house is slowly turning into a student housing neighborhood and people are leaving. I think that's an interesting idea. I just wanted to make a quick note that both unsubdividable dwellings and converted dwellings they do talk about owner occupancy as a factor. And, you know, like with the converted dwellings, you know, it says the proposed conversion so be suitably located the neighborhood in which it's proposed. The conversion if it's in a residential district she'll either be located in an area close to heavily traveled streets close to business. And she'll require owner occupancy or a resident matter manager in one of the units and then it goes on so that that issue pops up in both of those. And, you know, I think, I think this also, you know, I, one of my questions was, what is the history and the purpose of these kinds of this language or these restrictions or, you know, why did town meeting or the planning department or the select or why did they pick this permitting pathway. And we don't have any history of why in the RG we need a special permit for a duplex, you know, but that history is there and I feel like we need that data. So I think we need to have renderings it if we're, you know, saying, you know, triplex is that are, you know, stacked in three stories, not a triplex actually in a two and a half story building. I don't really care how it gets configured. You know what could that look like what would, you know, so we don't have renderings of what can be built now and what can be built under the new proposals because there is a change in density in a lot of the But I do think that we need some kind of guardrails to make sure that we're keeping space for, you know, regular folk like middle and low income families or individuals that, you know, if we're building a townhouse or building, you know, a converted dwelling with an easier permitting path that we know that there's going to be space and I actually think we could say no more than, you know, 40 or 50% can be rented to students. So making sure that whatever you build or convert there's always space for non students in a neighborhood because that builds better community and kind of keeps the balance a little bit more. So, but I do like the idea of like how can we, you know, make sure that the zoning change leads the housing that we want. And I am hoping that we have some examples of other college towns that have dealt with this I know we're all grappling with the same thing. Some research saying, Oh, you know, Ann Arbor did this, you know so and so did that, or no did this I just feel like we're not really. We just need some more information about, and about what actually worked and what were the impacts and not just hopes that it's going to work out. All right, thank you Janet. I'm going to make a couple of comments. One is, you know, Janet, your suggestion that we need more data or examples or renderings. You know, obviously we don't have the resources to bring those for the staff to bring those kinds of things to the conversation. And we have a firm proposal on the table. We don't have to deal with now. So, if you are able to find any data like that and you want to have that available for your consideration. I think it's really incumbent on, on each of us to do whatever we think we need to do in order to be able to decide how to vote on these things. The other thing I'll say is that we have, we have multiple problems in this town. We have a shortage of student housing, and we have a shortage of middle income and worker housing. And I think we, we can't solve the second one without somehow dealing with the first one. And I feel like we're so far behind on providing housing for the students in this town, that it could actually be a while before we see improvement in the worker housing and middle income housing availability. Just because there's so many students that are unmet, you know, their demands are unmet. There's houses being constructed in Hadley and Eastampton and Belcher town, just because of the fact that we haven't got all the students would like to be here in town but they're not able to be. So, I don't think we will be able to target the housing as easily as we want. And, but I guess I always feel like more housing at the moment is better than no less housing or no more housing, just because more housing will solve one or the other of those problems, and both need to be solved. All right, Andrew. Thanks, Doug. So, you know, I've been, I kind of wrestle with the home ownership versus the rental component. Because, you know, just buying a house is really expensive as well. Right. So like if we say well, let's let's try to put some controls to require these things to be owner occupied it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to open up housing for people who don't workforce populations because they can't afford it. I'm also wondering, you know, the same way, the same way that we approach, you know, providing housing units or low and moderate income people in apartments. You know, we've, we've talked about the importance and, you know, just science in general, the importance of having these communities, you know, together. So an idea just pop my head probably not a good one but you know what if what if the answer is just no more than one unit can be student housing. Right. And then like, if we do that, then perhaps we're forcing more, you know, more kind of cohabitation, but you know it might then provide some actual avenues for us to meet the needs of workforce as well as housing. So anyhow, I hadn't really thought through that too much but it did seem like that could be a simple way around this of just providing the limit on that side don't worry about owner or renter occupied. If the idea is just to try to get more housing in general, it could be approached that way so. Thanks. All right. Great. Mandy Joe I know you you may be close to the time you need to leave the conversation started out with sounding kind of like a consensus and then it's sort of devolved and spread out further. My current off the top of my head. Perception is that we're more supportive of implementing something like what you are proposing in the RG and RBC districts. We're less interested in it in the outlying districts farther, farther out. There's a lot of conversation about duplexes and how they get how they get dealt with and triplexes so I don't know if we can actually legislate student rentals and non student rentals but there's clearly some interest in that. I will say that by limiting the number of student rentals in any one area, we are probably spreading the students around further into around Amherst rather than having them concentrated in a zone. And, you know, some towns have a student area, and all the students live there and then everybody else is further away from them and can live in more quiet and peace. And then some some towns may distribute them more and then they're they're more of a presence throughout the town. All right, so I see three hands from board members. Mandy, why don't you go ahead before if you're about to leave. Yeah, thank you I do have to leave soon I just wanted. This is a great conversation and it is quite helpful. And I hope it will continue even though I'm going to have to leave I will watch the video unfortunately I won't be able to respond to anything, or answer any questions after I leave but I did respond to a couple things and correct a couple of things. We have not actually removed the language regarding surrounding neighborhoods within our duplex category, we still have in there that two family detached dwellings, or three family detached dwellings shall have an external appearance and footprint compatible in terms of design with those multiple family dwellings in the surrounding neighborhoods and with converted dwellings we've put in a requirement that they have to meet the standards for their most close use so if a converted dwelling would go to a two family it would still have that standard for three families have that standard in there I didn't have time to you know and so that compatibility is still in most of the uses if not all of them. We talked about the owner occupied requirements for duplexes. I want to address the RN issue. Doug mentioned that RN is quite diverse. Janet indicated that apartments aren't allowed yes in the use category on the use table, apartments aren't allowed but in fact the RN zone is probably the zone that has the most apartments in town. In building wise because the RN zone is where puffed in is it's where Brandywine is it's everything off of East Hadley Road is an RN. So despite the use table saying they're not allowed. They are actually quite prevalent in the RN zone. So that's one of the reasons we believe they're appropriate in the RN zone that townhouses are appropriate. I would say townhouses are different than apartments. Yes, they might have sometimes similar numbers of units, but town homes must have entrances at the ground floor for every unit, which makes it a great transitional type of housing between that more dense apartment mixed use building, and the lens less dense three families to families and single family homes because all units have entrances on the ground floor density. So if we're not really increasing density in most of this, the only place where we would technically be increasing any density is if you're changing a no use to some other use, because a no use doesn't allow it. And so changing that no to a special permit, you could argue increases density, but if it's a, if it's already a site plan review changing it to a yes, there's no change in allowable density, because it's already allowed. We could argue that changing from a special permit to a site plan review, we could argue whether or not it changes density but we're not changing the dimensional tables at all, we haven't proposed that and so if the use is already allowed, either by special permit site plan or site plan review, the density is not changing I would say it's only in those places we've proposed going from no where that use is not allowed to some other permitting pathway. I haven't heard much about the business zone proposals so I think some thoughts on that because we're talking a lot about the residential sides would be helpful. Just to give Pat and I some guidance there are some changes proposed to the BLBVC and BN sections so just just a thought if you guys want to talk about that it would be helpful for us to hear that. I would actually like to hear a little bit more about potentially about the designs guidelines that people are aiming for particularly with respect to duplexes. As compared to single family homes and why duplexes should not be treated the same as single family homes with respect to design guidelines. The way Pat and I approached this and so just saying we need them, we'd like to hear more about that thought comparing them to a single family home because we do not have any design stands guidelines for single family homes, and I don't hear anyone thinking about putting them in. So, those are just some of my responses to things I heard other things that would be helpful for us to hear about. As you continue this discussion I'm sorry I can't stay any longer, but I promise I will listen to this once it is posted. And Pat and I, when we come back for the hearing will try and you know, our presentation will try to address a number of these and potentially may have changes based on these conversations so I thank you for that I hope it continues to go very well and I'm sorry I do have to leave though. All right, thank you Mandy Joe. All right the next hand is bruce's. I was going to respond to you Doug a little bit and he just put a lot of things in the air, but I'm going to try to ignore that except for the design guidelines for the duplexes and so forth which I recall I'll finish with, but I recall you said that where to start here, I'm, I'm, I'm concerned, as I've said about whether the goals will be materialized and Andrew said that and Tom said some kind of attention to the density of student housing or student rentals or houses that are student occupied. It could be a useful addition to this and I've got to say that this is where I've really been putting a lot of my time as past week or two. It seems to me that having a definition of a student home, a use that is actually defined would make it possible to do that and, and I've, and, and consistent with what you said earlier Doug about if we should, we should not expect to have a very short staffed town hall to get us the answers to some of the questions we feel we need in order to make whatever decision we need to make on this. So accordingly I've decided to put a lot of effort into trying to understand this. And I'll probably speak more about this once I've done the work but I'm, I'm gearing up to find out as much as I can from what I might identify as being the, the 12 or 15 most similar communities to ammest around the community and then talking to people in those communities and, and getting answers to, I don't know, eight or a dozen questions that I'm gradually refining. So I'm going to, I'm committing to doing that and I am part of why I want to do that is Andrew what you just said about what I guess that called minimum distance requirements or density of student accommodations also defining what we can do by that and so I'm, I'm going to do what I can to help certainly myself and perhaps others by gathering these data and, and, and making it available. And the question about design standards with duplexes and so forth. I've always found rather interesting because when we were designing our co housing community here. It was around duplexes that's how we got the density that we needed. So we basically went through just a string of special permits. And what I personally then was quite concerned about was that these duplexes should not look like duplexes. And, and what the way we've done it here is we've made them basically attached cottages and we've used a common entry to link to small masses. And so it's a duplex doesn't look like a duplex. And with habitat, I was designing the house that's next to the farmhouse on North Pleasant Street. There's a habitat house duplex there. In order to make it fit well. The design was a two story and a single story so it looks like one big house it looks actually quite similar to the house next door which was the any CF the simple gifts farmhouse. And so that's another way, which you might say a design standard of creating a duplex out of a single story unit and a two story unit it. But when you have to two story units which are right next to each other with a common roof line and two doors in the middle, and it's a simple block mass. That's when I think duplexes start to look clumsy. And so I think it is true that we can even amongst ourselves probably generate some design guidelines that would create more agreeable duplexes particularly in zones where there are single family houses so I support the idea of doing that but I think that's always been our intention hasn't it to, maybe not throughout town but to create design guidelines that will help boards like ours. Make better decisions. So I like that idea as well although I'm not present committing to doing that for all of these units. I think Randy Joe's answer to the townhouse question Janet was a was a good one. The, the idea that the townhouse is defined by having doors that they become more like row houses, more, more urban in quality and so forth but diminished in scale because they have to always have an entry and have a presence on the street. I think that's enough for me. I'm excited to see what you what you find out from your research and your, your other work. Janet, you are next. This is probably where we would be useful to have someone from the ZBA here because they're the ones who are doing all the duplexes right and so in in the the youth chart there, it requires that in all districts a special permit granting authority shall apply the provisions of section 3.0 3.2 040 and 3.2 041 and this should get Tom's attention because these are the standards the design review forward applies in the downtown district and so that's what the ZBA is applying to duplexes. And I actually, that language is stripped out by these amendments. And so, and then the language and converted dwellings that has more extensive kind of design guidelines is also stripped out and then we just lose subdividable dwellings completely. I would think that, you know, there are duplexes in my neighborhood that look just like houses and you kind of have to kind of look to see if they are. So I assume that the ZBA is applying these design review standards and I would suggest that they should apply to all multifamily houses. You know, so it always should look good it always should fit into a neighborhood. So, and I think it actually by requiring it to fit in and look good, like it belongs in the neighborhood you're going to create a lot more acceptance of multi unit housing. And so, if you know I think that the people who do this best or I can't I always forget the group Valley CDC who's building a lot of affordable units around North Hampton and Amherst I think their housing fits in better than most of the other for profit buildings I've seen going around, because they're very sensitive and I've heard people in housing trust one of the person who creates a lot of housing say they really make a huge effort to make sure it looks good and fits in the neighborhood, because they know they're going to have a better position, and they know they're increasing density so they want to fit into sort of a new England style of housing so I really think we should leave that language into duplexes. And if we are going to expand, we should apply it to any multifamily housing. So we have a clear consistent give the boards a chance or, you know, to basically say, you know, we're fine on this, you know, for unit converted dwelling, but it, you know, we have to make it so it fits in and doesn't look like just a big concrete block or your addition is kind of ugly and stuff like that. We do have language sort of look pared down for ADUs. So I think my recommendation is let's take, you know, section 3.2040 and just apply it to all multi unit housing. People will feel better about what's being built they'll feel better about the density, and they'll know that their concerns are being addressed which the ZBA does really well with their special permits they listen to the neighborhoods, neighbors, they make adjustments they make accommodations and they issue permits. I have a question for Chris about affordable duplexes, because when I look at this. This is a different news table. I kind of wonder, like, is anyone building an affordable duplex because it just mean have any like how many have been built in the last five years are people building on our occupied duplexes. You know, or how many owner occupied duplexes have been converted to owner occupied ones. So the primary builders of affordable duplexes is habitat habitat for humanity. They've built to affordable duplexes, a one on East Pleasant Street and one on North Pleasant Street one that Bruce was just referring to. It's unlikely in my opinion that a single person owning a house would build an affordable duplex because well it depends on what his motivation is if his, if he's motivated to house, you know, humanity, then he may, in fact, want to build an affordable duplex and people build houses because they want to make money, either by renting them or by selling them. And so, building an affordable duplex would not provide the developer with a lot of money. So really, I would say affordable duplexes are primarily for institution institutions like habitat for humanity. The other thing is for an affordable duplex. If it were actually going to be affordable capital A, it would have to be on the state SHI, the housing inventory. And it takes a lot of effort to get a unit on the housing inventory. There's a lot of paperwork. And if you're really interested in getting into this Nate Maloy is here and he can tell you all about that. But we personally think that Nate and I believe that the average person is not going to want to engage in that. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. All right, Bruce. I think maybe Chris is build those over what I, but all I was going to say that I heard from Andy Joe tonight something which clarified a lot of things a little for me which was that only one of the two units needed to be affordable in order to make it defined as such within this bylaw or at least proposed change. So I agree with most of what she's all of what Chris says but it is possible that somebody might decide to create one side affordable for whatever reason and one of those reasons might be just in order to make it a by right thing without having to go through the process. So, but I, but, so that was useful for me to register that and I thought do I care about that and I thought no that still fits my, my sense of comfort with a by right. But it did, it did change the notion because I thought it was Chris did that the affordable duplex was always going to be a habitat thing that's such a low volume and that really is, it's the least consequential of the proposed changes. It does step it up a little bit just with our potential wrinkle but it's a wrinkle if I understand it correctly, but doesn't make it. I retain my view that by right allocation for that in any zone is okay at the moment. Bruce, I'm going to channel Mandy gel a little bit in response to Janet to your comment about the design guidelines for duplexes. I think one of their purposes was to try to remove obstacles to the creation of duplexes and treat them more like single family homes. So, I think they, that's the reason that they were proposing that they just become a yes, rather than a site plan review that's going to need a lot of process and registry of deed registration and an application of the design guidelines. I guess as a sort of intellectual exercise, I could ask, well, why don't we have design guidelines applied to single family homes. If I want to build a single family home in an existing neighborhood, don't the neighbor concerns about scale and you know, massing and citing all of those still apply to a neighbor. So, why wouldn't we just do that all the time. Nobody needs to answer that but I think that's, that's kind of a reasonable question to be asking about. Why do when do we really want to do that. All right, Janet I'll call on you and I do know that there is one hand from the public that's been up for a while so Tara Lara. I will be calling on you after Janet. So she said that there wasn't any lowering of design guidelines and so I was correcting that. And I think it'd be interesting to see what the ZBA does with that. And there's a few other sections of the amendments that strip off language about design controls. I understand what you're saying about single family homes but I think that, you know, there's, we want to encourage multifamily housing in Amherst we don't want to have neighborhoods overrun by students. And what's how do we get there and so we've all talked about some suggestions about reserving space for people. But I think that, you know, a duplex that is attractive and looks good. I mean, I think we've had a fair amount of those happening and no one notices them and I think if it's a triplex, or a quadplex or a converted dwelling or a townhouse, it all should look good. We don't have, you know, we don't apply the design review board criteria to townhouses. I think we should. I mean we need design controls. And so I think we should encourage that I don't think they're onerous. And I think it's easy to do, especially with the duplex. But Mandy Joe was saying, Oh, we're not changing that and she's also saying we're not changing density. And yet when RO and RLD she was there, even though it's in the youth table there's requirements for extra units that you have to have either a thousand, you know, extra square feet or 2000 and those got removed also so there's a lot of like complexity to this, and the impacts are, you know, we can document them and show them I don't particularly feel like I have to present renderings. But I really think people need to see what will it look like what could it look like to have a 10 unit townhouse in the middle of the field, you know, with a driveway going up, you know, in the RO or the RLD. If someone is proposing that I think the burden is on Pat and Mandy Joe to show that's what it's going to look like. You know, I think we're probably have a consensus that we don't think that is that density is appropriate for these lands. But I do think, you know, what does it look like because that's how to impact on, you know, things that we've looked at before in the BL. When you look did the calculations and you did the picture it was kind of like, oh, that's much more than what we wanted. It's the same situation so if we're increasing density or reducing requirements what is it going to look like is a pretty fair question for buildings. Alright, thanks Janet. Alright, so I will now go to the public. Pam, if you bring up the timer. Why don't we start with three minutes and members of the public I do want to cut you off at three minutes. Would you please tailor your comments to end before that deadline. Alright, Tara, why don't we bring you over. Hello, can you hear me. Yes, we can please give us your name and your address. Yes, my name is Taryn Leraja and I live at seven strong street, and I feel like I am in kind of a unique position to speak because I own a home in a neighborhood, right in this in this. I think it's the RG is that what we're in one of the areas where you're where you're talking about making a change. And I also own a rental property that I rent to students on to at 265 East Pleasant Street it attaches our back backyards attached. And I also live next to a new neighbor who rents to students and who recently tried by a special permit to convert a garage to add another four students to the property and to pave over the backyard. It just feels really it's something I'm really worried about changing not just for myself and our neighbors and our, you know, on strong street in East Pleasant, but in other downtown areas like this because what it just when it gets to a point where when there's a conversion. Like this there there's no going back to that ever being a family occupied home. I would never think about trying to put another building on the rental property that we have it to East to 265 East Pleasant Street, it would really ruin the property and it would not be fair to just doesn't seem like it would be the right thing to do. And I mean, I really feel like it's totally different when it's owner occupied and someone's putting like a unit for them. Oh, I don't know a study or, you know, in law apartment, but to to just have students piled in to downtown. We've already seen like a really big change we have a lot more students in recent years, and you know, cars are everywhere. I mean, one of the things when you talk about density, it's like, why does there need to be a parking space for every student if the bus stop is across the street and yet, you know, we're talking about that being a requirement paving over backyards. And I just feel like it's it's a real concern. And, you know, I think, you know, I don't think we should kid ourselves that these are going to be, you know, for workers. They're going to be for students because students will pay much more and I can tell you that from my own experience. And, you know, it's different. I mean, I almost feel like it's owner occupied because we're right next door and we make that really clear to the students who are renting from us. I do think your idea about finding out what's working in other college towns and before making any kind of changes and allowing like upon garage to be converted to more student housing I really think it's going to really destroy our neighborhoods and Amherst, and I hope you won't allow it. Okay, thank you. All right. Bruce Carson, why don't we bring Bruce over Pam. And Bruce, if you'd give us your name and state your address, your street address. Hello, Bruce. You need to unmute there you go. Can you hear me now. Yes, we can. Okay, I'm Bruce Carson at eight strong street and I just wanted to thank you all for your service I served on the planning board in the past so I know how much hard work there is. I just have a couple of comments. One is to concur with my neighbor, Taryn LaRosha that be careful about unintended consequences such as parking lots in backyards, which really would change the whole character of a neighborhood. If you're going to add more converted dwellings or units on what are often very small lots in the town center. The parking is a big issue. The other point is, I don't believe that you could legislate the number of student units versus non student. I, I believe from my time on the planning board that that's not possible legally that that it would be considered discrimination. I think when you create housing, it's for everybody. And, and as Taryn said, since students can pay more or their parents pay more, and that is the biggest market in town, I think that's going to remain so. So that's just something to keep in mind. Also, I really agree with Ms McGowan that design standards are so important. Because, and I know what you're saying about single family homes are under those requirements but you're talking about taking structures on existing lots that are not now used for housing and turning them into housing, or adding housing on those lots which does change the character of the neighborhood, and I think it's good to keep within that character by having design standards. So, thank you. All right. Thank you. Okay, and next is Jennifer towel. Where did she, where did she go is Jennifer looks like she took her hand down. So how about Elizabeth viriling. Hello, Elizabeth. You can. Yes, there you go. Yes, thank you yes Elizabeth viriling 36 cottage street. So, I have a number of things I wanted to say. First, should be abundantly clear to anyone who listens to the news that the housing crisis is not unique to Amherst, but it's a state and nationwide issue. However, what is unique to Amherst along with other college towns is the high student to permanent resident ratio, which has a major impact on our town in many ways. I don't know the answer, certainly by any means but there need to be more targeted and creative ways to ensure that the Amherst student population does not dominate the town to the exclusion of permanent residents. Therefore I really appreciate Bruce coldens goals of understanding how successfully or unsuccessfully college towns have dealt with this issue. I wanted to mention that there's been the suggestion that shouldn't we want for climate change, etc to have the students close in. But what about the 4000 UMass staff, who could be permanent residents here but can't afford it. This is a population that's barely mentioned, and that we should want to facilitate to live close. So I'm hardly a zoning or development expert, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the proposals as I can understand them seem to me like trickle down housing analogous to trickle down economics, which I don't think is really viable. And that's why I think we need to have more creative ideas. So anyway, I hope that the focus can really be not just on changing zoning, but on developing approaches and programs. So we might get what we really want and need, which is housing for permanent residents. Thank you. Thank you very much, Elizabeth. I would like to see john varner's hand. We bring him over. Hello john, you can unmute yourself and give us your name and street address. I have 154 Jeffrey Lane, actually went through Mandy and Pat's proposal at length, and it is extremely complicated and full of a lot of dense verbiage and abbreviations acronyms etc that make it a little difficult for people to actually focus. It's a very lengthy proposal I wish we'd been broken up into chunks and implemented again, people have stated in in pieces, not blanketing the whole town as as the proposal is currently doing now. I don't think zoning should be chair, left up to anyone individual and I think the idea of taking categories of housing and putting them under the domain of a single individual is just going to open the town up to to litigation and the butters of approved projects taking the town to court, because it's been one person and not the zoning board that has changed the regulations I think zoning is a contract between citizens and the town, and it should not be changed in a cleanly fashion, but moving on. There are communities across the country and I've talked at length with the Sony Commissioner of State College Pennsylvania where Penn State is located. They track student housing as a specific category. It is not a constitutional issue for them. I don't know if Massachusetts is somehow different, but it works in some jurisdictions. I don't know how the town is currently tracking economic and social segregation, and which properties are currently student occupied I know they are not doing that. And I think that getting data like that is essential to addressing the problems that you're trying to address. You're always going to be competing with people of modest means for rental housing, and the fees of rental houses in Amherst get are going to be interlocked with the fees that you mass charges for dormitories. And I don't understand how these proposals are going to change that dynamic. There are supposed to be multiple places for home ownership opportunities. Sounds lofty but does this create housing for people of lower moderate income in Amherst upscale areas does it encourage the affluent to move into affordable apartment complexes. Or does this predominantly create home ownership opportunities for people who are investors and to expand their investment. You have 30 seconds left. Great dormitories are more sustainable their apartments I don't know why dormitories are not brought into this with their common spaces, hallways, laundries, eating facilities, bathrooms, all being shared, they're much more economic much more environmentally sensitive, and that seems to be a big push in this proposal environmental sensitivity, and I think that that would be a better use of real estate and resources. Finally, is there a community outside the rust belt where real estate prices have actually decreased recently. I don't think so and I don't think any proposal that's on board is going to do that. I have more to say but all right, and more comments will probably appear in the Amherst in the reference. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next we have Janet Keller. Hello, Janet. You can unmute your name and your street address you can unmute. Can you hear me now. Yes, we can. Great. Janet Keller, I live at 120 pulpit Hill Road up in North Amherst, and I want to join the crew that is urging you to be very careful and prudent and keeping design standards. They're much more important to our well being than, than we give them credit for. I also want to put in a strong plea for putting a butter notices back in for all of these projects. It's a tiny little bit of the cost of the application for the proponent, and it's critical for others often know more about the area and what's going on and can point things out. And I think it's really very important. I see. I think Tom's idea about getting data and models is incredibly important and zoning is just a bunch of words to most people and having those requiring those kinds of illustrations before something is decided before it's too late to change something that would be a mistake I think is critically important. And I appreciate the care that, that you folks have devoted to this discussion and appreciate the opportunity to be heard. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. The last hand from public I see is Jennifer towel, we bring her over and Jennifer if you'd give us your street address. Okay, thank you. I can not hear you very well. Can you hear me now. A little bit better yeah yeah it's still a little bit quiet, but go ahead. Let me. Can you hear me now. Yeah that's pretty good. Not too loud I hope. I'm fake I'm sorry. I'm Jennifer towel by live at 259 Lincoln Avenue and I did. I have a comment and kind of a clarification because what I heard is that you would like your the suggestion is, is been made to begin in the RG and the RBCs. But in the RG district where I live and you know who I represent. You can already have duplexes triplexes and townhouses, so that is not a big is not a change. And we don't really need to do a pilot to see what happens with those duplexes triplexes and townhouses, because it's been happening for years, and those multifamily housing are overwhelmingly rented to students and their expensive student at that. So by way of an example just this afternoon, I mean Bruce was there because he's also a member of the local historic district commission on the owner of a property on Fearing Street, what's basically a single family house there was a single family house for years then it was converted into a triplex to be rented to students, not really a very huge lot. They're now proposing to add three four bedroom units to that lot, plus the three units in the front house so they could have 36 students living there. And they, they were very open about the fact those are all for students. So we, again, you know we don't have to see what will happen, because it's already happening. And I personally don't think it's the responsibility of the town of Amherst to house all the students that need to want to live off campus, and to specifically ask the rgs to continue to be the districts that absorb even more students is really targeting one district to bear the burden of what you know, understand standably other parts of town want to avoid. And if you're asking the RG to absorb all these zoning changes and again, you know, duplexes triplex is the townhouses are already permitted here. But to combine that with relaxing the permitting standards is really creating an untenable situation, and that we just had a townhouse complex it's in the process of being constructed on Fearing and sunset in the RG. And it made an enormous difference to the community that that applicant had to go through before the zoning Board of Appeal and through the special permitting process. And it would be, I just don't see any reason for relaxing the permitting process and the regulatory standards but to combine that with accelerating development is a double whammy that really no district should be 15 seconds left. I could also ask I understand the planning department is under staff but I think that these zoning changes being proposed are so sweeping that we should do everything we can to he Janet suggestion that we see drawings and a build out before we adopt. Thank you. Thank you. Next hand is from Pam Rooney. Bring her over. Hello Pam, if you give us your name and your sweet address. Pam Rooney 42 cottage street. The previous speaker actually covered a lot of what I was going to say I think the RG has been the has has borne the brunt of, of a lot of the absorption of extra housing in town. When I was walking around with campaign brochures. I was astounded by the number of converted dwellings within the RG that exists today. I want to ask a very direct question, and that is, why, if someone could tell me why it is the responsibility of the town of Amherst to house the increasingly the increasing number of UMass students who can no longer find homes on the campus. Why is it the responsibility and I think I think Chairman Marshall said this, but why is it our responsibility to absorb this increase we have no control over the increase of the enrollment. There were at least eight years so between between the year 2000 and the year 2020, there were at least an additional 8,000 students added to the roles, not counting university without walls, not not, you know, not counting the people who only worked online. There was over 8000 students that were added that the town and the surrounding communities, and the having to absorb please tell me why we, especially in the RG are responsible for absorbing them. I think the, the folks who come forward to propose housing and dwelling units in town. If they succeed if they want to convert something they seem to be able to do that if they want to create townhouses at key intersections near the near the campus they seem to be able to do that. I really don't understand the, the need to relax the permitting structure to allow that to happen. So thank you for your in depth and consideration of this question and this issue for the town. Thank you. Thank you Pam. I will point out I think believe Pam is the liaison to the planning board from the town council. Let's bring our last hand over at that's Dorothy Pam Dorothy if you give us your name and your address. I'm Dorothy Pam 229 Amity Street, right in the middle of the RG. I just want to second many of the good comments from both on the planning board and from the public. I'm commenting on a complete disconnect between the social and economic goals, which are clearly and pointedly stated in this zoning proposal, because none of these suggestions will in fact result in people being able to social justice or minorities buying homes or being able to afford the rent, or for workforce housing. And I am truthfully very confused. Why is there so little concern for the workforce housing. I want to talk about who should live nearby so many people in the neighborhood live work for the university in one way or the other retired from the university. And there's a great need for housing that people who work for the university can afford who because not everybody gets a big salary. You know, we do have student housing that is successful in our RG, and that is mostly in the houses of owner occupied housing. Those students are integrated into our community come to our brunches, and don't cause any problems in the neighborhood. So we create a lot of help us out with our computers, and, you know, give liveliness to the neighborhood so we like having young people in the neighborhood, both families with children and we like having students, but not in the way that's being proposed because of their profit giveaway for developers who are going to charge everything they can charge. And the students then, because they're paying such crazy rents for so little space are, you know, breaking the limit as to how many people can be in there. And, you know, Pam Rooney mentioned key intersections we were told that we might be getting townhouses at the key intersections, but the proposal that Jennifer towel was just mentioning is in the middle of a block. It's in the middle of a residential block, a budding many, many prior lawns of private houses. So it seems to us that there's a complete disconnect between the goals of what we're supposed to be doing preserving a neighborhood and housing people connected to the university and housing students and this proposal so I am very disappointed with it, because there obviously are some changes that we should make. And I double support that the ZBA has been an extremely helpful board in making a conversation leading a conversation between the developer and the surrounding community, so that we can coexist with a certain amount of happiness or acceptance. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Thank you. That's okay. That's okay. All right. That was the last hand from the public. And Bruce, we can go back to you. You've had your hand up for a while. Yes, I, I, Mr. Carlson said that he felt that students were protected category have presumably under the Fair Housing Act and I believe he is wrong. I do all that has been suggested, and we should not pay any attention to that particular piece of what he had to offer tonight. Does anybody know that I'm wrong on that? I have heard the same thing, so I cannot contradict you, Bruce. They are not a protected class from a discrimination point of view. We've, we deal with this consistently when we're selling houses in our co-housing community because we are very concerned and about people valuing community. And we've established that certain things are protected and certain things aren't. And we've for many years have been paying very close attention to that. Which is why I'm heading out on my little job because being able to identify a student home as a, as a, as a use is wouldn't be possible if, if, if Mr. Carlson was correct. And if he was correct, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't even begun to do what I'm doing. All right. Thank you, Bruce. So it's now eight o'clock, we usually take a break at this time. I don't see any other hands up and I'm wondering whether we might consider closing our conversation for this evening on this topic and move on to the rest of our agenda after we come back. So, I was going to give you five minutes to think about. Excuse me to think about that. And then we can continue or not. When we come back at five eight oh six, why don't we do that. So mute yourself and turn off your camera and we'll see you at eight oh six. Thank you. All right, the time is eight oh six, at least on my clock. I'm seeing people come back. Great. It's like we're still missing Bruce. Mr Marshall, it also looks like it has Karen left. Yes, it does look that way. Yeah. I'm going to note that she left right when it started. All right, there's Bruce. So we're all back. All right, so. Any objections to ending this conversation for this evening about the zoning amendments. Janet. I'm sorry for the interjection, but I wondered like about next steps like part of me was sort of thinking with some dread about like do we need a chart to look at like ad use duplex, different types of duplexes, like how they're handled. Who does it, what the standards are, and then what it would look like with the changes. Like those kind of comparisons would be useful to people. And then I just wonder, like, I also think this is a great setup for our conversation next Tuesday, which is, you know, increasing density in the village centers, which I must cheerfully say is what the master plan calls for, and how we do that. And so, you know, adding a lot of students to the RG or loosening the kind of gatekeeper on that. That neighborhood is obviously under huge pressure and we just hear that over and over again. And so, you know, you know, I think about the RO and RLD is sensitive lands we want to control density on for ecological reasons you know also to good reasons. And I wonder if we should look at the RG that way as a neighborhood that's really under tremendous pressure. And instead of making it easier to just not like we should think of that as a sensitive neighborhood where there's a lot of forces at play, and maybe focus and channel the density towards the village centers where we let more density and higher buildings and more walkable and bus stops and children holding hands, you know. The RG is larger than the fearing Lincoln neighborhood. I mean, I think I live in the arch. I don't think I'm feeling the pressure that they do, necessarily. The pressure is mostly because of the geographic existence of that space, kind of between downtown and UMass. It's not like the rest of us are trying to, you know, destroy them. It's location location location. But I see the same impacts on some way streets South Whitney Main Street towards Amherst. I mean, you know, it's, it's a lot of, there's a lot of transition that even in the 20 years I've lived here in those very small streets between Main Street and route nine. They frankly look junkier and junkier and there's more and more cars and so I don't think I think that spillover effect is in a lot of neighborhoods and so do we let that keep happening. And we make that easier to happen without, you know, design controls and stuff like that so I think it's, you know, I think it's something to talk about maybe on Tuesday, in kind of a more holistic way. Okay, Bruce. So both Dorothy and Jennifer mentioning that thing that we were shown this afternoon that the Local and Strategic Commission hearing. It wasn't a hearing. It was an informational meeting. And it was, as was said, house on fairing, which has become renovated as a triplex and then in the backyard were proposing. Not one, not two, but three additional duplexes. I thought, wow, I've just said that I'm comfortable with duplexes is a by right and then Chris I'm wondering I mean, did that mean that if we were to elevate duplexes to a by right, which is what's the pros that that project that's proposed on Fairing Street, which has got multiple duplexes on the same lot. Would that be what would I be supporting that as a by right entitlement because certainly that's not what I'm not what I'm intending. The other zoning regulations still apply. We still have a lot area and building area requirements but I believe that Bruce is right. I think that that would be allowed by right because it would be a non owner occupied duplex as defined by this proposal so Nate was at the meeting he's here now he may want to say something but in my opinion, that would be allowed by right and I do think that that's kind of a bridge too far in my opinion, again. It's too far you yours I commend you you should all have a look at this damn thing. It's, I mean it's designed by Trevor Roberts is not a silly man, but take a look. Well I wouldn't know where to find it Bruce. Oh, I mean, it'll, it'll show up when we ready for it when it comes. Okay. What is that. Yeah, okay. All right. Well if people don't have more to say maybe we can move on from that topic. Time now is 812. And we'll go on with the next item on our agenda, which I believe is old business. Chris the first thing on the list here is legal ad fees. What would you like to say about that. My mind is getting a little fuzzy recently because I've had too many things in it, but I don't think I've talked to you recently about legal ad fees is that correct. I talked to Doug but I don't think I've talked to the rest of the plan. I don't think you have either. So last June, the planning board, we brought a topic to the planning board the staff did. And the topic we brought was the fact that we were going way over our allotment for spending money on legal ads and the average price of a legal you know an application has gone way up. It used to be, you know, in the neighborhood of 150 to maybe $300 and recently it's been more like six or $700. And recently it's gotten even more expensive than that. But we brought the topic to the planning board in hopes that the planning board would agree to raising the legal ad fee from what it had been, which was $75 up to $300. And we felt that the 300 would cover half of the legal ad and that the town would cover the rest of it and and we were satisfied with that. With the zoning board of appeals. They wanted to get into this topic as well. And they had discussions about it and they also voted to raise their legal ad fee to $300 but they weren't really comfortable with that. They wanted to have a tiered approach to the legal ad fee. And they felt that they had some applications that were for owner occupied houses that you know wanted to expand and nonconformity or something like that and that those should have a lower fee and that things like, you know, what has been described in this conversation, the Barry Roberts project on Sunset Ab, which is I think going to have 17 units, you know, maybe that project should have a legal ad fee that's closer to what the actual legal fee is. Maybe that should be $500. So anyway, the, the zoning board initiated this conversation at its February 9 meeting. And I had spoken to Doug in some time in the last few weeks about this topic and that the zoning board wanted to kind of try to have a meeting of the minds with the planning board and reach some agreement about, you know, lower a lower fee for things that are small and a higher fee for things that are larger. Personally, I feel that that's too complicated and at least it may leave it up to staff to determine whether something's a lower level project or a more complicated project sometimes it's clear but sometimes it isn't clear so I'd prefer to stick with the $300 fee. Anyway, when the zoning board discussed this last week, they decided that it wasn't, and I explained to them that the planning board doesn't really have that many small projects that come along. The planning board is mostly dealing with larger things. And occasionally you do make a recommendation to the zoning board about, you know, a duplex, or you made a recommendation about a project on North Pleasant Street which involved putting a single family home on a site that already had a duplex. So you do those kinds of recommendations but that doesn't require a legal ad. So the zoning board kind of backed off and they said okay well we'll have our own discussion about this and we'll decide what we want to do about our legal ad fees. And we'll let the planning board make their own determination so I'm just bringing this to you to tell you that this conversation is going on. And I guess to ask you if you feel that there's a need to reexamine our legal ad fees or are you okay with a flat $300 for everybody, which in my mind is the simplest way to go and it's also more fair than what we had in the first place which was the $75 fee. So, well Chris you've talked to me and I've already told you but I'll share with the board I I'm fine with the $300 I support that. Bruce. Question. Chris, how did the folks on Spaulding Avenue, which is the smallest project that we've had since I've been there was, did they kick the $300. Yeah, they had the $300 fee. Yeah. Okay, so seems fine. Janet. I have a question so you know I think the smallest projects we have had are those ATM things. Chris do people have to do an ad when they come back to us like with a lighting plan or a sign change or, you know, do they have to do a legal ad for that when they need to come back. Yeah. Yes. No, they don't need to come back if they're coming back to say that they met a certain condition. The only thing that we need to have legal ads for is for public hearings. So that would be a public meeting what you were describing Janet so that would not require a legal ad. And my right Chris that the legal ad occurs when we are going to open the public hearing. Yes, we continue it however many times we continue it we don't do additional ads. No, and small projects like an ATM like Janet mentioned that's you know, Greenfield savings bank they can afford $300 so even though it's a small project, you know it's a it's a corporation that's proposing this thing. I mean, a part of my perspective was, you know, if somebody's proposing to make some modification that allows them to add a rental unit to their house. You know they're going to get 1500 $2,000 a month for that forever. And $300 is just not that much in terms of the total expenditure they're going to have to go through to build the thing. And then in terms of the revenue they're going to get so I'm, I'm not particularly receptive to reducing it for the first single family conversations like that. Andrew. Yeah, I'm fine with 300 as well. Did we, I feel like when we talked about this, maybe last year or two years ago, we had said just have the app can pay for everything. Right. Does that ring a bell or am I misremembering and then I guess we bounced around. I think the conversation went back and forth. I think we ended up at 300 just as a compromise with some of the people who didn't want to impose a sex or $700. The other thing is that staff doesn't always know how much it's going to cost upfront when the person comes in for their application. So, you know, the timing is difficult, you know, you want the fee at the, at the start so that you can go and get the notice and you don't know what it is. Chris. So the conservation commission requires that their applicants pay for the legal ad, and they do spend time chasing that and they have to keep track of it. And they also only have to advertise once so their legal ads are about half as much as ours are their rate there's range between two and $300 I think. So I just feel like it's an extra burden on staff to chase them to get them to pay the legal ad fee. And if you require them to do it by themselves. Then, you're not sure that it's actually going to happen or that it's going to happen on time and time for the public hearing. So we like to control things and make sure that, yes, the legal ad has been placed. You know, yes, the, all the notices have gone out correctly and all that so we want to take that on ourselves. We don't want the applicant to be responsible for that. And if we place a legal ad and then we have to chase the applicant to to get them to pay for it it's just too much complication too much extra work for us so. And that's kind of where we're coming from. Thanks Chris, Bruce. Doug, I agree with you when we're talking about smaller folks who might want to add a rental unit. Yeah, they have a public hearing for the addition. But am I right that once you are in that loop and you want to make changes down the line, you know, if you want to put a ramp in for example, then, because you're part of a special permit process, you have to come back to another public hearing. So it's quite possible that the smaller applicants for subsequent events like that would probably be finding that these larger numbers would be maybe difficult to would be onerous. So, and I think the playing I can see why the zoning board therefore is going to want to do that and but if it's very unusual for us. Then, except it won't be if we, if this zoning changes go through and we suddenly find ourselves dealing with a lot of duplex permits so forth so maybe we'll do it there but but I just want to bear in mind that once you're in this loop and you want to do small events in the future then you're still generating all these never ending public meetings. Yeah, that's a good point that actually I think I mentioned that when Chris and I talked that, you know, maybe we should be making a whole lot more things in town, by right, so that you don't have to get into this loop and require the public hearing and the legal agreement and all that stuff. So, I mean that relates to obviously what we were talking about earlier. Yeah, and that's why I'm part of the reason why I support the by right on the duplexes, and then had a kind of a horrific when I realized that I was supporting something like 98 pairing. Okay. All right. Chris, I guess I'm not seeing a ground swell of consensus to change the current policy that this board has. Yes, I understand it. It's okay for our board to have one fee and the zoning board to have a different structure for their fees. So, I guess we're okay for now. Okay, good. Thank you. All right, the time is 824. Is there any other. Old business. I don't think so. All right, do we have any new business. Not that I'm aware of. All right. Form a and our subdivision applications. None. Okay, ZBA applications. Oh my goodness. I wasn't in the loop. You're in the loop. I was too busy to be in that loop. I can tell you what they are. I can't find my sheep. Let's see here. I think I told you about some of them already. 290 and 300 West street. One of them is a duplex that already exists. And one is a duplex that's proposed. They're along West Street just south of Crocker farm school. I think that's one of them. I think that's one of them. I think that's one particularly remarkable about either one of them. And those are coming before the planning board on. March 9th. Planning board or ZBA. Excuse me. I'm getting everybody confused. ZBA. I'm, I'm ZBA now. As well as being planning boards. So I'm. Things are starting to mix together in my mind. Anyway, I don't know what happened was it was originally advertised for a certain date and the, the notice wasn't posted on the town website in a timely manner. So we had to readvertize it. Anyway, the next one is Canton Ave. And that's really just a public hearing. There's a development on Canton Ave at the very end. If anybody, but he knows where Julius Fabos lived. He's been there since, but in any, any event, he had a big piece of property at the very end of the road. And he's, and his family sold that property and they created two flaglots and one of the flaglots has a special permit to allow a house to be built there. And that house is coming to the ZBA to. Change the exact location of the house. But I don't think that's a big enough thing for the planning board to be particularly interested in. And anyway, it's not a public hearing. It's just a public meeting. But if you're interested, I can tell you more about it. That's coming back to the planning board on March 23rd. ZBA. Excuse me, ZBA. These are all. You're here to straighten me out. 515 Sunderland Road. This is an interesting one. It's a proposal to put battery storage on a property. It used to be Annie's garden center. And it's been owned by the Chang family for a number of years. It's right up near the border with Sunderland. And they're going to be putting a large amount of battery storage standalone battery storage up there. And it's gone through the conservation commission. Conservation commission has scrutinized it. And now it's coming to the ZBA. I think it's something that you want to look at. It's coming on to the ZBA on March 23rd. You're interested in having a presentation about that one. At the moment. I'm not seeing any hands. Janet, you're on the solar bylaw working group. I think it's super important, but I wonder if the presentation should be to the solar bylaw working group because we've been looking at some of those issues around batteries, exciting issues around batteries, I'll say, as a euthanistic thing. There's no, there's no, should I say, there's no permitting path that would require that they go to the solar bylaw working group. So there could be a courtesy on their part. And, but there is a permitting path for having them come to the planning board because the planning board can be called upon to make recommendations to the ZBA on special permits. So maybe I'll mention it to the other board. Chris, can I ask you a quick question about the first duplex on West street, like what's the, there's an existing duplex and are they changing something or is it just the. The existing duplex, the people who own both properties, they're different LLCs, but they're, you know, basically the same people. And they are taking a chunk of land away from the 290 West street to give to 300 West street in order to allow 300 West street to become a duplex. So that's really the change that's happening on 290 West street. It's nothing about the use. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. And then the spoke is the spoke as you probably know, it took over that building that used to have the copy shop. And it also used to have a sub shop and pizza place. And anyway, now they have that whole building on East pleasant street. And they are proposing. To build a nightclub. On pray street in a former build in the building that was formerly old town Tavern. Yeah. And the laundromat. And the laundromat. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at least that building at the opposite end is the laundromat. And it had the dry cleaners. I think that. Old town Tavern, maybe a standalone building. I mean, it's one long structure and maybe it's a firewall, but it's one long structure. Okay. And it's all, you know, it's all vacant at this point. So anyway, the spoke is going to establish something called. Live at the spoke. In that. Location. And it's going to be a nightclub and it's going to be run by the same people who are running the, the spoke. On East pleasant street. So, you know, There really aren't too many. Site changes. I think they're going to be putting two sheds. Behind the building. To house some of their equipment. They're going to be putting a fence. Up along the west side of the property. Other than that, there were really not. Changing much. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. On the property, but it's an interesting use. So any interest in seeing that one. Not seeing any hands. Andrew. I mean, for my, my own curiosity, I would, I would like to know more about it, but I don't want to drag the board through it. I guess, I guess we could all listen into the ZBA. Meeting. Yep. That's reasonable. Okay. I'm going to move on to the next slide. If you're interested in tuning in. Okay. And those are. Let's see what else do we have. I think I might have told you about some of these other ones already. So I won't bother with those. Okay. All set. Alrighty, that's good. Yep. Okay. Then we'll move on. The time is 830. Excuse me. 832. Any upcoming SPP, SPR, SPB applications. Yeah, I'm just put something into. Our system. What did you put in there, Pam? I put in, I didn't really put it in. But it's at Amherst college at the book and plow. That's right. Amherst college is building a little. Outdoor. Gathering place. And they are going to have an accompanying. Outdoor restroom of some sort, I believe. So that's coming. To you. And. Trying to think there'll, there've been a lot of people in here talking to us about different things, but nothing. He has yet. Gelled, so. Okay. All right. All right. Board and committee liaison reports. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Pioneer Valley planning commission. Bruce, have you actually started attending? I believe. Well, If you got your drum drum kit there. You could. Andrew. You were near a symbol or something. Yes. I actually have been confirmed. I have. Thank you all. I have attended my first meeting. First of all, it's kind of overwhelming. It's, it's like a checkerboard, your zoom call that looks like a close painting. At the. At the, the, the, the, the, the news is that they reviewed their budget and. And. I think that that was largely there. There was a couple, there was a. A presentation. Related to all of this me, I'm such a dimwit. I'm sorry, just let me, let me do this properly. I clearly have to get better practice at this. So that I can be more like Janet when I'm talking to this topic. There was a strategic planning scoping seminar. They're looking at this thing called the consensus building institute and. Basically it's. Preliminary to a. A plan. Assessment plan, a strategic plan for the, for the organization. And that was the approach to that was presented. But that I think is, is all any questions. Good. Thank you. All right. Andrew. Sit back. No updates. Okay. Tom. Just an update that Chris now has more in her plate and is now. In charge of the DRB meetings as well. So I look forward to working with Chris. And she has so much to take this burden from her. We have a meeting coming up in the next couple of weeks. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. All right. Janet solar bylaw. I don't really have much of an update. And I was, we worked a little about it. We were done a small section of the solar bylaw and it completely eludes me what it was. And I was hoping Chris would help remind me, but I think I don't want to ask her. Okay. So we worked on the last time had to do with monitoring and maintenance and. Decommissioning and abandonment and all of those things. So. That's what we worked on last time. I think we're going to go over that again on Friday. And then we are also going to be talking about submittal requirements on Friday. Okay. And then. The other thing about the decommissioning, which I'm sort of interested in is the question. And I think it doesn't seem like there's been people pretty much. Use the solar bylaw. The facilities and it's not clear people really would be decommissioning them because they're so valuable, like you would just swap in new panels and stuff like that. So that was just kind of, we spent a lot of time on that. And I was kind of like, is this going to happen? You know, kind of just going to stay a solar facility for decades and things like that. But obviously important. I'm not going to minimize it, but. That's it. Thanks, Janet. Chris CRC. So CRC has been working on the rental registration. They've also been working on the nuisance house bylaw. And this coming Thursday, tomorrow they're going to be. Maybe coming to a conclusion about the rental registration. And then they're also going to be having an initial discussion about the zoning amendment that you've been talking about. So they will be holding a public hearing on March 2nd, but they're getting their introduction to this tomorrow at 430. So if you want to tune in and hear what they have to say about it, you, you will be welcome to attend. And that, that's followed by a zoning board meeting, I believe. So that's right. You can fill up your whole afternoon and evening. Okay. All right. I don't have any report. Other than to say, I'm looking forward to seeing all of you next Tuesday. At seven o'clock in the town room. And we'll have. I think two hours is the plan to just stand around a map and. Talk about. Where we, where we think people might accept more housing. And what kind of housing that might be. So, Chris, anything from report of staff. Just say, thank you so much to Nate and Pam for their hard work. In the recent weeks. It's been challenging, but we're managing to keep our heads above water. And so far we haven't gotten into any bad trouble. How are you doing on, on hiring additional staff? We have second interviews for two. Two individuals that we're hoping we'll. Hand out. Okay. Good. All right. Unless anybody has anything else. Time is eight 39. And I think we can adjourn. Thank you all for sticking it out. Tonight. Go to bed. Tom, I'm going to. Get better. Thank you. Stop recording. Stop recording. Stop recording. Stop recording. Stop recording.