 Right. Webinars being recorded. Craig is up to you. The appointed hour of six o'clock has been reached. I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Amazon Board of Appeals. My name is Craig Meadows at the request of Steve judge chair of the Amazon Board of Appeals, who is unable to make tonight's meeting I call this meeting to order as the acting chair. I am pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended again by chapter two of the acts of 2023. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can make adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. Additionally, the meeting recordings may be viewed via the town of Amherst YouTube channel and ZBA webpage. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when that when the public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing nine on your telephone. When called on please identify your stale yourself by staying your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. The provisions can express their views for up to three minutes, or at the discretion of the zoning Board of Appeals chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds there a lot of time their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. Next with the provisions of Massachusetts general law chapter 40 a an article 10 special permit granting authority and the of the Amherst zoning by law, the public meeting has been duly advertised and notice there of has been posted and mail to parties in at interest. We'll begin with the roll call of the regular members of the ZBA. First myself, Craig Meadows here. I'm Gilbert present. Ever old Henry here. Associate member David slow guitar here. Also in attendance are Rob, what she'll a planner and ZBA staff liaison. Christine bestra planning director. And any other town staff, you will see on the call. At the moment, I don't see any others. The zoning by board of appeals is a quasi judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 48 of the general laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For the purpose of promoting the health safety convenience and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. What are the more specific elements of the Amherst zoning by law is section 10.38 specific findings from this section must be made for all of our decisions. All hearings are hearings and meetings are open to the public are recorded by town staff. The procedure will be as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification additional information. After the board has completed questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should indicate by using the raise hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. If a member recognized present your name and address to the board for the record, all questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered, followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough time information, it will decide the applications tonight. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own member merits, and the board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily, for a special permit, the board has 90 days from the close of the hearing to file a decision. Since the board has 100 days from the date of the filing to file its decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members and is filed with the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there is a 20 day appeal period for an agreed party to contest the decision with a relevant judicial body in superior court. In the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of deeds to take effect. Tonight's agenda. Public meeting. A roll call the public minute minutes and the public. No previous minutes meeting minutes to approve at this time. ZBA FY 2018 dash nine. Sarah Craig 100 North prospect street to enact condition 18, which states any substantial changes to the project shall return to the zoning boards of appeal as a public meeting. The applicant is proposing to slightly expand and move in addition to the building. Is there anyone here. Representing this petitioner. Yes. Yep, so I'm going to promote two individuals who raised their hands. And they should be accepting and joining us panelists very shortly. Hello. Hello. As I was promoted here so I hope I didn't miss anything too important, but I'm Kyle. I'm a project manager for integrity. And your last name Kyle. Kyle Bollinger project manager at integrity and Nicole whether I was also here with me from integrity. We're here representing Sally Craig, who could not be in attendance tonight. On her projects. And I guess if now is the appropriate time I guess I'd like to present the changes to the previous ZBA decision. So you do have screen share capabilities as a panelist so if either one of you want to share your screen you go ahead and do so. I do and here we go. This is where I get to show off my Luddite side of myself and trying to share everything via zoom. So hopefully it goes smoothly. I have everything here. The plans that we submitted. I also have a summary of changes. But I guess just to kind of give you a quick. Run down of what it is that we're talking about. You'll see. The actual in the center of the screen. The addition as proposed. And then you can see the remaining or the existing structure which was built completed back in 2019. Also on here the sections that say living room and no work to second floor. That's all existing. The previous zoning board decision approved the the addition actually further up the page so further north than what's shown here and the footprint is slightly different. It is a library but it is also intended to be a bedroom with bathroom and closet for the the parents of Sally who is moving there as an aging in place accommodation for them. They currently live in the addition and the original intent of this addition and the intent still is for for the parents. Unfortunately, one of which over the weekend who was in the most need of it passed away over the weekend. So it's we still intend on moving forward for her mother, although her father's not in consideration anymore. So, so it will be a bedroom for her the arrangement right now and the reason why it actually kind of had to move. To actually be viable. If you have driven by, or look at any pictures of the structure, the front of the building essentially is on the top of the page right now that's where there's a walkway that's tight to the building. There's a street on the right, just off page is where the driveway comes up to it. And the nature of the building itself is to be as low threshold and zero barrier for entrance as possible. So, the ability to actually have vents for mechanical equipment, both for the propane exhaust and intake, as well as ERV exhaust and intake. All those things sort of found themselves in a design build fashion during construction on the left side of the structure, the west side of the building, which is where the addition was actually proposed of being. So the installing or building the new addition in that location was going to be cost prohibitive and maybe not even feasible, just based on where all those things had to be. I could move it further south as shown the overall size has also changed. There was a little bit of a change between the last zoning board decision and when the building permit went through the ZBA approved an overall structure of 2220 square feet. And the addition got a little bit smaller. Last time the main addition that was built in 2019. And therefore the new addition got a little bit larger, however, the overall footprint is still one square foot less than the original structure that was approved, just based on layout and how it worked for. Honestly, it was decisions that were made before I really got involved when Q and riddle presented this to the board. What else what else the walls are a little bit taller than what was previously proposed. The structure actually had a shed roof. So we were attached to the main building, and it was of a different pitch than the main building. What we're proposing now is a gable roof of the same pitch. And as opposed to the last time it was proposed where the the ridges where perpendicular to each other or the user perpendicular to each other now they're going to be parallel to so, in my opinion at least a little bit more cohesive of a roof plan or a roofline. The walls got a little bit taller. And this was of primary interest to the homeowner, because on the side that I'm showing here the elevation detail to on page a five on the right side of the page. Those windows are up high. When it's being used as a bedroom. If you were to look out those windows there actually is a rental. I guess it can be a little bit noisy at times and there's the parking lot for that rental right there as well. So they were, they felt that it was important for them to have some windows on that side. Being the south side, but they wanted them up high to so as to have privacy in the bedroom so we ended up matching the facial height on the existing structure and the new structure as such. And from that and I'm open to any questions but aside from that, the finishes are all the same as what was previously proposed the color matches the building as previously proposed. It's an asphalt shingle roof as previously proposed, and the windows are four over one Marvin elevate which was what was previously proposed, they were called Marvin integrity back then but they're the same windows a different rebranding of that. So if you have if you're interested in it there is a, there is a, there's also a survey of the property, which shows the proposed structure, which is a dash line. We're well outside of the setbacks. It's 10 feet side and back in that zone and we're 38 and a half feet on the back and 25 feet on the side away from the side setback this was a survey from a couple months ago. So what is the most significant change and the requirement is changes come back here what is the most significant change. The most significant change is the location, as it's moved more south compared to what was proposed previously. It's still being used the same way. I'd say also the wall height before the wall height was shown lower to stay below the Eve and now it's, it's the eaves are matching the faces match each other. That's the most significant. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Kyle you had mentioned that the footprint of the addition that was built previously that you know proved in 2017. That's true, slightly correct. And, and the addition that you're here to discuss today shrunk to sort of accommodate so to recap you had mentioned that the overall square footage of the project with this proposal is one square foot less than what was previously proved that's correct. Yeah, yeah, correct. Well, maybe we're not saying the same thing but I'll make sure that we're clear. The footprint of the structure that was built in 2019 as well as the addition was approved at 2220 square feet. Now the overall footprint is 2219. The addition in question was previously proposed at 18 by 21, and now it's 18 by 25 and a half or 25 foot six. The main structure built in 2019 was reduced by that same square footage or actually one more square foot than that was reduced. Right. Yeah, no, we're saying the same thing I'm just, I just want to make sure like the floor area ratio basically, you know, is is equivalent to what was previously, you know, deemed allowable. So, I, you know, from from my perspective, given the setbacks, you know, and that you're meeting and exceeding that, you know, and they are still matched. You know, I think that that solves any questions you know that I would have or any issues that I would have from a siting standpoint. Okay, great. I have a question, Mr. Chairman. That's okay. So do you have like, I know you have a summary of the changes proposed to do those changes also include your calculations for a lot and building coverage, or do you not have those handy. We do, we do have those. The requirements are summarized on here, just as a reference. So you can see they're kind of center now. The actual coverage proposed building coverage is 18.5% with allowable 25% and overall lot coverage is 36.1% with allowable 40. Thank you. And that includes all hard scaping and structures and derive way through any other board members have any questions. I don't all of my questions have been answered so. Okay. Rob, does this require a vote. Yes, so basically the board has to do a simple majority vote. So that means three out of the four of you have to vote yes to approve it. And that's all you really have to do. So if you decide to approve it as a board, you know, you do your motion your second, like usual, these guys can go ahead and move forward with their, with their building permit. So, do I hear a motion from any of the board members. So moved. Second. I can. Okay. Or not. Okay. Mr. Gilbert. Move the question and Mr. Slovitar seconded. I'll take a roll for approval of the, the, the request for a special permit. The chair votes aye. Mr. Gilbert. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Mr. Slovitar. Aye. So the special permit is granted. Just to clarify, Mr. Chairman, you're not granting them a special form. You're just approving their, their modification to their plans. Okay. Just to clarify. So the board just voted to approve that their plans as presented, the modified plans are acceptable to you. Thank you. All right. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Next on the agenda for tonight. For public hearing. We have ZBA FY 2023 dash 18. A request for a special permit under section 3.340 of the zoning bylaw to construct a 9.35. Megawatt DC 4.4 megawatt AC ground mounted solar photovoltaic array. Spanning 41 acres on a 102 acre site. When the company and battery energy storage system. At three parcels of land owned by WD Coles. Inc. Identified as map nine B parcels 11 and 12. And map nine D parcel 27 on shootsbury road. Outlying residents. Oh, zoning district. Frontage and access to the subject parcels of land is located between 187 and 201 shootsbury road. Tonight we'll have a discussion by the. Petitioners. We will have general comment. I'm going to read off a very long list of transmittals that we have. The ZBA will open the public hearing allow for application to present their project to the board. Give comments and questions to the applicant. On their presentation. Take public comment and continue the board. Hearing at if to a future date certain. The public meeting portion of this project will remain closed. The board members will not deliberate on the merits of the proposal. The following submissions have been received by town staff. Application materials ZBA FY 2023 dash 18 application form. Management plan. Specific findings response. Landowner authorization letter dated April 27, 2023. Project narrative dated August 2022. Battery energy storage system. Narrative. Evidence of insurance dated April 27, 2023. Interconnected service agreement with ever source. Soil and wetlands and stormwater reports. Soil infiltration report dated March 3, 2022. Order of resource area delineation expired on August 10, 2023. Wetland delineation survey dated July 15, 2020. Natural resources inventory dated August 29, 2022. Water quality memo dated April 19, 2023. Stormwater management report dated August 20. August 2022. Stormwater pollution prevention plan. Dated August 20, August 2022. Management conditions plan dated March 2, 2023. Emergency procedures and maintenance. Operation and maintenance plan. Energy storage system risk mitigation strategy dated May 2023. Material safety data sheet. Specification sheets. One line diagram dated November 16, 2022. Module specification sheets. Battery storage specification sheet. Inverter specification sheet. Converter specification sheet. Solar panel racking details. Sound analysis. Sound map. Sound study dated November 14, 2022. Decommissioning documents. Draft decommissioning document, not the final version. Decommissioning plan dated April 2023. Mass historic commission submission. Mass historic commission project notification form submitted April 22, 2021. Mass historic commission response letter to project notification form dated May 10, 2022. Mass historic commission. We'll be over that in one minute. The AD 6 project. Notification form submitted April 22, 2021. Mass historic commission response letter to project notification form dated may 10, 2021. Mass historic commission response, letter to site plans dated June 11, 2021. and plans and relevant documents. ZBA FY 2023-18 plan set dated August 2022 revised April 19th, 2023, and May 26th, 2023, prepared by Verdentera. Land revision summary, environmental buffer statement, construction phasing narrative, glare study dated July 2023, 2022, excuse me, line of sight diagram dated April 2023, lot coverage calculations, proposed signage example, transmittal from town departments, wetlands administrator submitted August 15th, 2023, memo from Chris Borestra, planning director submitted August 18th, 2023, fire department submitted August 21st, 2023, public comments, Phil Rich received August 8th, 2023, Robert Sucha and Jenny Callick received August 11th, 2023. That's the list of documents that we have. Obviously there are some things that are not ready yet, so that will, that coincides with what this will, the meeting will be, when we adjourn tonight, it will be set to a date certain in the future to continue this. Are there any, can we have the presentation by the applicant and whom is there to present and could you please state your name and address for the record please? All right, so I'm promoting a list of people to panelists so they can present. Great. And of course, applicants, if there's anybody else you want me to promote to a panelist that you wish to have present as well just let me know. Attorney Redi, I assume as usual you're first to go. You've got it Mr. Chair. Please do. Let me see if I think Andrew Shabal, I don't know Rob, if you brought him in as a panelist but he should be here. Okay, great. My invitation to be a panelist so he's, he's still an attendee in the audience. Okay. There you go. He is accepting my invitation and should be joining us. Perfect. All right. Well, thank you everyone for the record. Tom Redi, an attorney with Bacon Wilson out of Amherst here on behalf of ASD Shoot Spree MA Solar LLC who will refer to his peer sky from now on because the other one's mouthful. Here, seeking a special permit for an energy facility. Mr. Chairman, as you noted off of Shootsbury Road on land owned by WD Coles. With me this evening, we've got a slew of folks. We've got from peer sky Andrew Shabal and Cory McCandless. We expect to have Lauren's cook probably at the next meeting and chair to your point. You know, we don't expect this to be a one and done. We're here for the processes as you'll hear from Andrew. We've been in this process for quite some time and we're happy to get into all the details when it's appropriate. And I think tonight, you know, you'll hear a higher overview of the project and then we're here to listen. You know, we've heard a lot already from from the butters, but we've done a lot of design. So I think, you know, we hope you're going to be very pleased with what we're presenting. Also this evening from Bert and Tara, who was the site designer, Chris Connolly, and he's here. And I think between Andrew and Cory and Chris, they're going to do the majority of the presentation sharing of the screen and the overview. We're going to try to keep it somewhat brief 10 minutes or so. There is a lot of material. We fully expect this to likely to have a peer review. As you noted, you know, the order of resource area delineation, which delineated the edges of the resource area expired in August, but frankly, not a big deal. One of the conditions of that ORAD was that we refresh the wetland delineation and we've already started that process. And so we would, you know, when it does get continued, we think it'll take a month and a half or so. So, you know, we're looking at an October meeting, hopefully, when you continue it to that time date certain. We expect to have a good handle on, you know, we expect to have a good handle on the delineation, you know, by tomorrow, if not the first or next week. So, you know, we've been working on it. And so I think, you know, for for tonight, so I don't steal any more thunder. Let me turn it over to Andrew and Cory and Chris to walk through. By all means, stop us. If you've got questions, if you want to wait for the end for questions, we're going to be taking plenty of notes. So you know, this won't be the last time we see you for sure. So with that, I'll turn it over. Great. Thanks very much, Tom. And as Tom mentioned, my name is Andrew Shabo with Pure Sky Energy. I apologize if I'm a little raspy. I'm just on the tail end of a cold here. So, sorry for your ears having to listen to me. If I have to cough, I'll just go on mute for a sec. But I'm just going to share my screen. And it's just, as Tom mentioned, fairly brief presentation, really just designed to provide an overview of the project, some specific items. But really, last thing we want is for me to just be talking at you. I'd really love to hear your questions so we can try to provide answers and get you those responses. So I'm just going to dive in. So here is our, you know, as Tom mentioned, we're Pure Sky Energy, formerly Amp Energy. We are a company that focuses on developing renewable energy projects in our core areas that we're located in. That is Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Minnesota. We look to partner with towns wherever possible for offtake, you know, if they can provide the energy to them to individuals, house authorities, sometimes businesses as well. We're actually actively already in working in Amherst with the Hickory Ridge project and constructing that solar facility and we're working on that for quite some time. Lawrence Cook, as Tom mentioned, is our construction manager on that. Fortunately, he's on a flight tonight. But hopefully he can be able to provide some input at a future time. To go through this, I'll go through this pretty quickly, you know, 10 minutes with the set, but, you know, we're strongly supported by W.D. Coles, the landowner for the project. They have set aside certain properties to pursue renewable energy projects in addition to setting aside over 5,500 acres of working forces, you know, to turn that off to development for in perpetuity. And this is part of their overall vision to the environmental stewards and we're here to support them doing that. And this Shoe Spray Road project that we're going to speak to tonight is one of those such projects. As Tom also alluded to, you know, we have been working on this project for quite some time. Back in August of 2020 is when we originally got the ORAD that was mentioned. And from there into 2021, we met with various town individuals and authorities. I'm not going to go through every one of these. We hosted a few Zoom meetings with butters, a site walk with the butters, and the director of conservation development along with W.D. Coles to show the property answering feedback and questions that came up. We then went to the conservation commission to concom to speak to the project. At that time, we were looking to do a little bit of clearing in the wetland buffer zone for shade purposes, so it wouldn't shade the panels. Upon working with the concom and getting their feedback, we then revised the design and reduced the project size by about 10% from the original proposal. Part of that also, that progress with the concom was there was additional work that they wanted to see. That was a soil infiltration report. That would have unfortunately taken too much time for us to complete while still staying within the allowable time that we had with the concom, so we threw that application to do that work. We did pursue that work, did additional site walks with concom administrator to look at any additional potential isolated wetlands on the site, had a pre-application meeting with the town, pursued other studies such as a water quality study, then submitted our ZBA application in August last year. In working with the Plain Department since then, we pursued other work that would make this a more robust application, such as listed here, such as slope analysis, a later study as two examples. In June, our application was deemed complete and brings us here today. I'm going to go through this very briefly, but the reason why we're pursuing renewable energy projects is many people might not be aware that over half of the energy we get from the electric grid in New England is from fossil fuels, it's natural gas, and in Massachusetts alone, it's close to 80%. The state has a goal of trying to reach 40% renewable energy by the year 2030. Currently, we're at 12%. So our mission is to try to help the state meet those goals by pursuing renewable energy projects to help get us there. This project would be able to provide clean energy onto the grid to help us move towards that end goal. The environmental benefits that a project like this would be able to provide is a snapshot listed here. The energy equivalent, it would be powering about 1500 Massachusetts homes, the equivalent of about taking 900 cars off the road. Using EPA calculators compared to the sequestration potential for this system over the expected lifetime of 35 to 40 years, it's about the equivalent of over 5,000 acres of forest sequestering carbon. When you consider the fossil fuel emissions that aren't going into the atmosphere from natural gas power plants, I think this is an important point just to make. What we're seeking to do under the array is also to establish a pollinator meta of native vegetation. This is something that's also promoted by the UMass Ampers clean energy extension through their PV certification pollinator program. This is kind of a win-win for everybody. It provides additional grassland habitat for certain species that direly need that, such as bees, grassland birds. It's more cost effective for us because we result in less mowing, and frankly, this looks a whole lot better. What we hope this project will provide in terms of more direct benefits to the town would be, if it were approved and granted ability to move forward, would be the long-term tax revenue to the town over 35 to 40 years. It would be in existence. Providing that clean energy opportunity will export onto the local grid in addition to creating the additional habitat that is sorely needed in Massachusetts. We've also moved forward with doing some initial collaboration with local researchers who want to study the long-term effects of solar in certain habitats and particular soil carbon. That's something we've already provided a letter of support for them for their submission. We hope that that is granted that we can move forward with providing more data and more research for the future to make systems even better. We're happy to talk more about the project. That's kind of the brief overview. I'm going to turn it over to Corey now for a few minutes for us to go through the overview of the project itself, some of what you've already received in the materials, and then we can turn to any specific details from there. Corey, I'll just continue navigating here. Let me know if you want me to go to the next slide. Yeah, thank you so much, Andrew. Can everybody hear me okay? Thumbs up if you can. I was having some technical issues earlier. Okay, great. Well, thank you again so much for having us tonight. We're really excited to be here. We've got a great project and we're excited to work with you guys moving forward on this. So what is Shrewtbury Road Solar Project? So it's located on Shrewtbury Road in the jurisdiction of Amherst, Massachusetts. It is a pretty large site at over 102 acres. We are proposing a project footprint of a little over 41 acres. A lot of that will require tree clearing. We are staying outside of the wetland resource areas as well as the buffers. We do understand that our overhead has expired, but we are taking steps to take another look at those wetlands and so far we haven't seen any changes to what we previously had delineated. I'm not saying that nothing about this will change, but I will say that this site plan is a great site plan. We've worked very hard and very long on it. We have to take a lot of things into consideration when we are setting these projects. So that was our note about the site design. We also wanted to avoid steep slopes, so we are avoiding those as well. It's a 4.4 megawatt AC system and per Massachusetts law we do need to include battery and energy storage, which we do have on this equipment pad. So, Andrea, I don't know if you can zoom in, but you will see. Yeah, I think, yeah, Cory, maybe we can focus on the site plan at the end of the presentation. We'll let Chris zoom in on that. Sure. Okay. So, let's hop to the next slide. So, this project is located, you know, off of Shrewsbury Road and it is set back quite a distance. There are some of butters that will be, you know, that are located in, you know, fairly close proximity to the project. However, there's ample screening. Some of it will be planted by us. Others is pre-existing natural vegetative screening. So, yeah, just looking at some of these numbers, the distance from the nearest the butter property line to the array limit of disturbance, we define the limit of disturbance as where the fence line is. So, the closest one is the is a little over 200 feet. The distance from the nearest the butter, their home to the array fence line is, you know, 245 feet. Next, the distance from the nearest the butter property line to the array modules, so the actual solar modules themselves, that is 274 feet away. And then from the butters property line to the equipment pad is over 800 feet. So, it is set back quite a distance. And this is a detail of the screening that we have proposed that runs parallel with Shootsbury Road, as you can see on the right hand side. Those green structures are the butters homes. And north of there is Shootsbury Road. And then you can see our access roads snaking down along where the road kind of juts north. Ours is cutting out and does continue down towards south and southeastern section of the property. So, that's roughly where it is located. We are proposing a Powin manufactured battery and energy storage system of 750 E stack centipede. We also have, and I apologize, my audio wasn't working earlier. So, Tom, I'm not sure if you mentioned that we do have two representatives from Powin on the phone call with us tonight. I'm not sure if they, if Rob, if we can make them panelists so they can speak and just introduce themselves. But they're really here tonight to answer any basic questions about equipment and also explain how this particular technology works. Do you have their names so I can look for them? Yeah. So, we have, let's see, Martin Baikowski and then Josh, Josh Whipreeb. And perhaps we can do that in the Q&A section to make sure we get through the presentation first. Sure. Yeah. Well, we're doing, can you hop to the next slide Andrew while Rob gets them to be panelists permissions. So, we do have a phasing plan that we have also incorporated into the site application package. It is broken down into two phases, phase A and phase B. There are five subsections of each phase. And so, phase A, that'll be, you know, roughly 10 to 30 days. It is, it's a pretty large time window because each phase is a little different, but they don't exceed more than 10 acres for, you know, for each particular phase. On the left of this, of the slide here, you will see those phases color coded. Purple is phase one, phase two will be the light blue on top. Phase three will be the yellow, the center piece there. Phase four is the green on the right. And then phase five is near, you know, is the end and that's near the bottom. So, it's basic, you know, construction phasing work. We will be clearing, we will be grubbing, we will be grading, you know, we will be making temporary access roads to get to those different parts of the parcel during each different phase. Swales and basins, lay down areas will also be incorporated for, you know, erosion and sediment control. And also for stormwater, we'll have level spreaders and soil stabilization. So, that's the bulk of phase A. Phase B is 10 to 20 days. So, that's where we're actually putting the equipment into the ground. So, we'll be installing racking modules, conduit, the wiring, the equipment pad will also be installed. Overhead poles to connect to our point, our point of interconnection along Shootsbury Road will also be installed. And soil stabilization to help, you know, make sure that soil, you know, that ground stays there and it doesn't get washed away in the event of any sort of heavy rainstorm. So, we do have the phasing plan narrative that we have submitted. And Chris from Burdentara is also on the line and perhaps after this presentation, we can open it up to him to break this down in a little bit more further detail than I did. Do you want to jump to the next slide? Andrew, please. Great. And I can jump in for construction. And this is a high level overview Gantt chart provided by Lawrence Koch, our construction manager on, you know, theoretically what we could expect from construction for a project such as this. It operates on, obviously this is, you know, malleable and flexible, but operates under the assumption that approval is granted at the end of this year and then kind of stacked beyond that. But that is, it breaks down into effectively about an 18 months from start to finish, I guess, pre-construction to flipping the switch on, powering up the system and exporting the energy to the grid process. It's effectively the actual construction itself that we're mentioned about, you know, clearing some of the land and actually putting the equipment into the ground will be about seven to eight months expected. That is part of the phasing plan that we also mentioned in terms of that process. And then as equipment is putting into the ground, you can pursue, you know, certain activities on part of the site or other activities on other parts of the site. What I mean by that is, you might put in the piling into the ground in one section, move on to the next section, do piling over in that section while you're putting modules on the first section. So it's a little bit overlapped there, but that gets us into, you know, moving forward with the project in a timely manner. Throughout the process of construction, we'll do regular or regular little removal. Any storm events of quarter inch or more in a 24-hour period would have the access road inspected to make sure that it's clear and safe and certain stormwater features and protections put in place as well for the projects. Long-term O&M, I don't know if you can jump in here as well, but it's fairly simple. This is a very inert passive site. There's really not a whole lot of activity that happens on a project site such as this. Usually it's, you know, once, twice a year or after storm events going to just look at the site to make sure that no equipment is damaged, make sure there's no litter or stormwater features have been damaged to make sure that if there has been anything that happened in that nature, it's repaired and fixed as quickly as possible. Very, very simple process. It's usually just one or two people going out there in a pickup truck just looking at the site and making some spot checks from there. I think with that, it's probably enough of us talking at you. For the question section, I'd love to stop there and circle back to anything we touched on whatsoever to expand on. And we can, as Corey mentioned, we can turn it over to some select members of our expanded team here to address things that are maybe a little technical. But for me, let me stop there. Thank you for your presentation. I will begin with a few questions that I have and then the rest of the board members will I'm sure have a number of other questions. A remark, I know it is a probability that we're going to need some additional help on this. I think that we're probably going to want to have a solar PV and best specialist as a consultant for us and also someone as an environmental or groundwater consultant for us. Rob, you'll note that. Another factor that I'm a little concerned with is you may have noticed the roads in Amherst are not always in the best condition. I'd like to have someone from the Department of Public Works comment to us come in and comment at the next meeting after they've taken a look at the roads and see what the, I know the traffic once the construction is finished will be negligible. But during the construction, there may be some need to look at our roads prior to it and see what might need to be done if anything. Another comment, which I'm sure Attorney Riedi may have mentioned to you, I'm aware, we're aware of the requirement for pollinators and you are doing a good job on the area covered. However, you've got Arborvite indicated as your barrier and they are not our pollinators. So I think you're going to need to take another look at the pollinators and wonder what you might have considered other than the Arborvite. Mr. Meadows, can I ask a quick question about that? So when are you mentioning the Arborvite as part of the vegetative screening proposed in parallel to Sheetsbury Road or just an? The vegetative screening, correct. That is indicated that you're going to be planting them? Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Right. We'll just consider holly as because of its pollinator qualities. I took the words out of your mouth, Mr. Chancellor. You certainly did. I'm running it down. I'm running it down. And lastly, the fire department has made some comments regarding your choice of the best system. And I think that there should be some time to address that and also discuss it directly with the fire department. Yes. Those are those are my comments so far. Any of the other board members? One of Mr. Slovitar. I just one quick clarification of something you said. I think it was on the last slide the last slide during operation and maintenance. You mentioned that inspections of the site will take place with a truck with two people driving on to the property and looking around. Are those inspections will they be made as part of an automatic part of a rigid schedule or will they be as needed or discretionary? That's a good question. At minimum there would be a set schedule every year where they go out there to observe the site and then in certain events like a storm event, for example, there would be a special case where they would go out to review as well. So it would be kind of a dual approach. What storm event I certainly understand, you just a moment ago said annual. Does that imply that the truck with the two people in it will go out once a year? At minimum just to do simple O&M checks of the facility. As you mentioned, if there was an event that causes concern to go out there, just look at the site earlier, they would want to make sure everything the storm water features was okay. But if there's no identifiable event like a severe windstorm or I don't really care, a severe weather event, if there is none of no significant event in a four month period, does that mean that at no point during that four month period, any representative of the company that's operating this would be there? That it could be four or six months and no one would set foot on the site? That is feasible, yes. I will say that one of the aspects of this site that facilities like this is they heavily implement remote monitoring capabilities so that there is a way to monitor the site remotely for just generally day to day. But because these facilities are so passive in nature, they really kind of run generally like clockwork and there's not a need for somebody out there usually. Is the monitoring visual with cameras or is it sensors? It can be, typically sensors. In some situations there can be cameras that are added for security or safety. Okay, so if something would develop that's unforeseen such as deer getting hung up in the fencing or something like that, is it possible that an unforeseen condition would develop and it could be months before you discovered that there is a migratory route or that there are deer getting hung up in the fences and there are six of them by the time someone shows up? Or would your monitors detect that kind of thing? I'm not thinking of it becoming a popular place to dump bodies by the mob but I'm just, it just strikes me, it's just a comment I'm new to this kind of development other than having driven by them but anything that is just not observed by human eyes connected to a human brain for six months, all sorts of things can happen. And it would seem that if you have other operations in the area or you have representatives who are in the area it's not necessarily a terrible burden for somebody to drive by on a more frequent regular schedule and go in and confirm that absolutely nothing's happening. You can probably do that in 10 minutes. It's a very good thought and while for pure I guess when I think O&M I think you know equipment but for the actual site our landowner partner W.E. Coles is based in Amherst and our partner there ahead of their forestry team is active in the field all the time. I don't think I want to commit him to going out every week to look at the site but I think that he certainly would be on the site in the general area and if there was a concern could pop in. That said you know there is an equipment on a camera on the pad but to my knowledge I'm not personally familiar with situations like that where deer try to jump over and then are not able to and get stuck on the fence. Usually the fence is and I think Chris can correct me on this and off but the fence top has a metal bar instead of prunks and so they would just sort of if they tried jumping on they would kind of roll off. And the fence is quite tall. I actually read that part of the description and I think it was eight feet or seven or eight feet seven feet and it specifically said there's no barbed wire or pointed anything on the top and there's a 12 inch space at the bottom to let small wildlife get through. Correct. So you know clearly there's attention being paid to that. Okay thank you very much. Thank you. Rob. Thank you Mr. Chairman. So I do have a question regarding I know it's a you're growing a natural pollinator meadow but I had questions regarding your landscaping and snow removal schedules. So you did submit materials in your management well not materials but you did submit mention your management plan that you were going to do those two features as needed. Do you have like a set schedule for when you anticipate having folks come by to trim or to do any sort of snow removal and if so do you have any local contractors in mind and if so do you have name and contact info and would you be able to provide that information maybe at the next at the next public hearing so that's a good question I can take those. So we would anticipate for the pollinator meadow itself because the kind of the intent of that feature is to just let it sort of do its thing. We would really only need and want to get out there to do any trimming if the situation arose where any of that vegetation was starting to shade many of the panels in a significant significant proportion. Because of the seed mix we select it's usually vegetation that doesn't grow as high to do that but with invasive species which is possible that is something we would then go and spot you know spot remove those and then maintain it. So typically that's only once a year but and and that would be most likely in outside of nesting periods. So it's probably you know before April we would get out there to kind of do some of that work just to not interfere with any sort of nesting habitat for for birds or other wildlife but also to balance the kind of any overwintering qualities that that vegetation might have and then the second question we at this stage we haven't selected any vendors to do that yet. We typically want to get a little further in the process before seeking to lock anybody down just to make sure that we're you know not wasting their time if it's and make sure it's a real project but I think our intent would be and I will speak for Loris but I think that our tent would be to use anybody local as to whatever whatever extent we can kind of our bread butter. Thank you. Are there any other board members with questions? I have one more then your your interconnect is going to be on shoots for a road you said and you're putting holes up along your entry road to get to the interconnect. Do you know if the National Grid is planning on increasing the capacity of the wires going to the substation in order to accommodate this? That's a very good question. So yes there's a certain extent they will be needing to upgrade some of the utility lines to go from single phase to three phase and let me just I'm going to go to an image of the site so I can just sort of point out a few things. If this there we go let me just go up. There's one a little earlier that might be a little better. Okay so for this this kind of high level view of the site just so to be clear and kind of what the utility is requiring is they will have seven utility poles going in along this road going into the site and then there's a kind of a trade-off where then we would have three poles of our own with the equipment that we would require at that point until about if you can see my mouse where I'm hovering where this first baseness then the wires go underground along the road all the way to the equipment pad to try to minimize further visual impact. But to focus on the other part of your question yeah the the way the electric grid was originally built out it really wasn't designed for distributed energy generation facilities like this to be placed in various places it was more designed for coal plants nuclear plants central facilities so much of the existing grid is single phase and so one of the aspects of what our work entails is when we do propose a facility like this more often than not we do have to upgrade those wires to be able to take the greater capacity of electricity that will be flowing to that substation I think it's Amherst 17k substation that's down the road so that that would be required and the utility is the one that sort of tells us what needs to happen and we don't really have a lot of say in the manner they they just sort of say this is what we need to do and here's how much you better pay us otherwise you're not doing anything so that's kind of the situation we're in now with them. So is that going to the substation that's down on route 116 or is there another another substation you're going to? No I believe that is the one I believe that is the one. And are there upgrades necessary for that substation in order to accommodate your your site? There are so typically a substation like that it only as you can imagine only has so much capacity can take and distribute at any any moment in time so we have to usually upgrade the transformer and maybe some other equipment on that substation and that's wrapped in so it's usually a few different chunks it's sort of the substation upgrades itself the line upgrades and then labor and you know that we need to pay for those three items so it involves all three of those for this project. So will you have transformers on your site also or your or on Shootsbury Road or are they not until you get to the substation? Really not until you get the substation for the the ones we're talking about on our on our facility on the equipment pad we do have plans for the energy storage system that's required to the state center program the inverter and then some other power electronics there that then will go into the poles and then go into the into the grid but you usually the the energy that's being generated by the facility is adequate for the three phase lines to carry that to the substation then the substation will typically step that up if it's going further sometimes you step it down for distributed use. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions from board or Rob? Yes. So Mr. Chairman if it's okay I just want to state that any questions that do come up from the board that the applicant was able to answer tonight obviously I'm going to make a list of those and email that to the applicant after this meeting but if it's okay with you Mr. Chairman there's also some documents that I was hoping to address that need to be updated prior to the next public hearing of course also then email form as well to the applicant but is it okay if I briefly go over those documents right now? Yes please. So there is a good deal of documents that were submitted that still have AMP on them I don't have the exact full list right now but some of those documents include the operations and maintenance plan as well as the emergency response I believe it was the risk mitigation strategy plan so just before the next meeting you know if you could change that to the current company Peer Sky that would be favorable and then I notice in the operation and maintenance plan you don't really address any sort of section in regards to site security so I don't know if you guys want to give us like some sort of description you can answer that question after I'm done as well if you wanted to like what what security measures you have on site we know the fence is up to seven seven and a half feet tall but you didn't mention there's one camera on the equipment pad but you know we don't really know much more besides that and also the emergency sorry the I believe you called the risk mitigation strategy document so you do a pretty good job talking about like what hazards exist on the barry storage units and what could happen and I also believe you include a document that talks about what to do if you're exposed to any of those and like what the symptoms are what the remediations are but I would recommend including a section where you describe how a specific incident were to occur such as a fire or if there was a leak maybe instead of being vague like you were in that document make it specific to those examples on how the fire department could respond to them and if that technology were to ever change you know the board should consider conditioning that that plan should be continuously updated so the fire department could respond to those future threats if they were to occur so those are things to keep in mind those are kind of the big ones that I notice and of course one more thing to consider on your site plans it would be wise to include setback distances from the nearest building structures that include solar panels to abutting property lines so just so we have an idea of how close you are to the setback of the front side and rear yard setbacks I know the front is that small sliver that's on streetsbury road and you're really far away from that but I notice on the side yard in the rear um you're kind of close and we don't know exactly what the distance is so if you could just have like a maybe an additional page in your plans that show those distances that'll be most helpful and again I will provide all this to you the applicants and email form so you guys can have a full list of what we're looking for um but yeah I noticed I brought the the issue of site security I don't know if you guys have any security measures in place that you're trying that you would propose for this Andrew um if you wanted to speak to that sure no and that's oh Corey did you wanna uh were you gonna say nox box because that's what I was gonna talk about uh why don't you start and I'll jump in after okay great um yeah Rob we can definitely put in a nox box um it gives access to you know it gives access to the fire department the police department if they needed to have it um you know if if the board wanted the code to that as well um you know the landowner would also have the code to it so that they can have access to the site um we can figure out what that site access list should be otherwise nox box seems to be a really well um solution for this and it's you know it's pretty standard and acceptable across the commonwealth and different municipalities so is that is that what you were looking for were you looking for something a little bit more robust or so I guess um well the nox box is the fire department's most likely to require that anyways um I'm talking more about you know um do you have any sort of camera system that you're gonna have on your perimeter fencing are you gonna have any sort of sensor uh anything to if somebody was lucky enough to scale that fence if if they were inclined to do so how would you know about it I mean is it something that you would not know because you don't have any measures in place I'm just asking out curiosity yeah no it's it's a fair question so I guess the the short and an honest answer is you know if anybody walks up to this facility I mean with the wire cutters the bull cutters they're it's hard for us to to prevent that person who's determined with that to access that that facility I mean we we can implement certain features such as other cameras but due to sort of the remote sort of out of sight out of mind feature of a lot of that the facility itself we do have the 24-7 monitoring of the critical equipment but typically it's not it's not something that we will regularly monitor the perimeter as an example just because it's it can be uh really just I don't know it's it's just uh not not necessarily you know you're not going to see a lot I guess I'll say I don't know day to day but unfortunately there are people out there that would that would try to access a facility like this and the best we we can do is try to just uh post science saying this is private property also it's very dangerous to go inside because there's trick you know wires everywhere that are high voltage and so we would try to do our best to discourage that and then react accordingly if it became a problem they would have yeah I mean they would have to try really hard to to hurt themselves though I mean there are wires but they are managed they're tucked away none of them are exposed and you know they're they're all cased and rubber and you know fire fire safety code um housing so normally we don't have any sort of cameras up around our other sites we just haven't seen the need for it um if that is something that the board would require or ask of us we can entertain that but from our point of view we're not really that concerned about safety it's it's private property it's posted it's set far back it's set back quite a ways and it's you know there is a fence and a gate that's locked I think oh yeah please I was simply going to say that that I think that Rob's we just had a best system come up in front of us a little while ago and it was very much enclosed and had a considerable number of cameras associated with it this is the uh the blue wave standalone storage project in town yeah that's correct understood yeah and I think that uh it's to Corey's point too I mean it's it's certainly something we can we're happy to look into deeper I think that with that site in particular uh blue wave it was a few acres um so it might just mean we have to expand our scope here but uh we certainly want to make sure that you know our concern first and foremost is safety uh so we want to make sure you know that's that box is ticked I would think that the primary thing would be around your best system not not so much you you you've got enough off-site 24 hour 7 coverage of the panels and your other equipment but as far as someone accessing the best system I I don't see anything indicating that it is enclosed in any way and we do have a camera on that a quick pad focusing on that I think it would be probably minimal effort to add more than one we could certainly do that it's a good suggestion um and then if I might just uh just to clarify Rob if I could so changing uh the name amp to pure sky uh is that uh to be clear do you want that across all documentation because we've been provided some reports from third parties uh that uh we can certainly do easily on our side but are you are requesting for all of those to be updated with the updated name as well so these are documents that are important to um that are tied to the special permit I think let's say you know your management plan that's one where the name should be changed your operation maintenance plan that's one that should be changed the emergency risk mitigation strategy that those that should be changed as well I mean just because those documents are crucial to operating the site under the accordance of the special permit um so if for example you weren't operating in regards to the management plan that that document would have to be updated in the future so I'm going to give you a list of the documents that need to be updated and those are a few that are included these are documents that are essential to operating the site in accordance with what was agreed upon with the board and that's kind of a way to hold you guys accountable for operating under the purview of the special permit so it's important to update the name on those just so it's current so for example if you ever need something changing your emergency response plan you'd have to come back before the board most likely if they condition that to discuss it with them so that's why um I'm stressing the importance of doing that in those documents um just because you know they're going to be continuously updated most likely um if anything were to change to the project after the permit was granted if if it was granted that's helpful I understand now thanks Rob yep no problem Mr. Slobotar you had a question I was I was just going to uh I never thought of somebody coming up to a fence with wire cutters and cutting in there because that's just not something I've ever thought of doing and didn't do as a teenager but I know that there are systems for monitoring fences that work by electrical continuity and when a the fence is cut and the circuit is broken that there is an indication that something happened so if you have a fence all the way around the property you certainly have electricity on site that you know it's not like you have to do anything special so that might be something that you could look into that some somebody with wire cutters or bolt cutters if they cut it you would know right away because the circuit would be interrupted so it's something just to consider thanks it's a good thought I wrote that down we will look at that are any other board members with questions I have one other comment I primarily because I just got filled I just had a requirement to fill out safety information for the Department of Defense project I've got and it it required a listing of all of the personnel and telephone numbers contact information particularly the safety engineer is that something that you've already provided for I think that we have provided a list of contacts but for this project in particular it has not yet gone out to bid because we're you know hoping for a permit to do so and then we would seek to procure you know somebody to fill the project someone to maintain it longer term but as it's kind of relatively in the early stages here we don't have something like that locked down that said we do have vendors we do typically work with on other projects that most likely would be selected for this for various features such as you know the remote monitoring aspect so we could certainly provide that for what we've used for other projects if that's helpful if you could do that please sure if there are no other questions from board members I can open it up to the public yes please I was gonna say we have one hand raised so far but you have to sorry I didn't mean to cut you off there mr chairman I was simply going to say if there are members of the public that wish to speak they can use the raised hand function or by pressing nine if you're calling by phone when you recognize present your name and address to the board for the record and all questions and comments must be addressed to the board not to the petitioner so um miss brushup has her hand up I don't know if she has a question she wanted to ask beforehand or or I just wanted to make a statement that I think you need to press star nine not just nine if you're on the telephone so that was something that was not included in that um introduction introductory statement I just wanted to make sure that people didn't get left out because they didn't press star nine thank you thank you Rob can you I can't see who's hand yes so we have two hands raised mr chairman we have a Karen Tarlo and John Montanari who are sharing the same screen they raised their hand first if you want me to I can allow them to talk so they can ask their yes all right I'm sorry we did not intend to raise our hand oh okay thank you yeah no problem all right let's move that and then we have a Jack Hirsch who I can allow to talk right now mr hello I'm yep I'm jack Hirsch um I live on flat hills road in Amherst um I have a bunch of questions uh probably that reflect my ignorance more than anything else um the first one is probably a simple one um on the second um diagram that or the second slide that you shared or that was shared with us it had um the the um dates for construction and it had permitting in 2023 and then it had a design phase which was in 2024 so I don't understand how does the design phase follow after the permitting shouldn't that be before well the questions are to the board but I think I can give you a little bit of an explanation since this is something that I do in my business all the time and that is that we we do preliminaries prior to getting permits and and permissions and then after we get the final permissions we go ahead and do the the final documents and I would assume that the petitioner is doing the same thing so don't the final documents require approval also the if there are changes from uh from the initial documents there would be a review and approval of those but that'll probably be done by the uh by the town and the building inspector okay whatever those whoever is in charge of a particular thing may I continue and ask some other questions yes okay thanks um why aren't all the wires buried why um do the overhead wires go a short distance on the property and then get buried I'm always wondering why the utility companies don't bury the damn wires it seems like it's just asking for problems when they're not I I can't give you a rationale for the utility companies I've tried to do that myself many times and it's a little hard to determine I mean mr chairman if you want the applicant to answer any questions you can let them um it's up to you do you feel that uh they'll give a good answer I I don't think that there's much more that the applicant would have to say as far as that's concerned okay ready what about the initial part um from chutesbury road to the whole that that's really up to the utility company on how they want to set that up um if the utility company told them to have it all underground they would but if the utility company says I want it up above ground and then to go underground that that that ends up being the utility companies call typically I see I see um I also noticed that they said that the panels would last 30 to 35 years and that really surprised me because everything I've read showed that um the panels gradually decline in their efficiency and after about 20 to 25 years um there that's the end of their life um and even the contract with ever source is just for 20 or 25 years so I don't understand the 30 to 35 year lifespan I'll I'll let someone from uh the petitioner answer that I I mean I I I've got I've got three projects solar projects going right now none of them are going to last more than 25 years so so I'm happy to answer that um the the panels themselves are warrantied by the manufacturer for 25 years um that said field studies have shown through uh various governmental bodies like the national renewable energy laboratories and such that uh the actual degradation of the panel for the energy at outputs is somewhere in the order of half a percent to 0.6 percent a year so uh for example if you have a panel that's um that's up and mounted after 20 years it's still going to be operating at you know 90 percent 85 percent uh of its the visual output and because these are encapsulated products they're this aluminum framing with ethyl vinyl acetate sheet acetate sheeting on these modules they're designed to be totally waterproof so unless there's something like a hail event or something physically comes and cracks that you're not going to get any water damage that would actually cause the panel to degrade faster and um be be irreplaceable uh unusable um so as it stands right now um all of the the models that we run forward with with our projects is uh assuming about 35 years sometimes 40 years for the project by time that's that's interesting the um the panels start off at what about 18 percent efficiency I'm happy to answer that I don't want to talk to you go right ahead because I I think you're being optimistic I'd love to hear how optimistic you are that's it's a good question also um for the efficiency uh it does range depending on the uh panel technology you choose and I'll I'll spare you the the weeds on that but the technology we use it's uh each panel the efficiency that it has in converting sunlight to electricity ranges about 18 20 percent um you can get theoretically higher than that but it's more boutique cutting-edge panels that aren't really commercial um and the reason those efficiencies are are where they're at is because based on the way these solar panels are are set up on through the engineering side they only are designed to capture a certain amount of the wavelength of the light that hits it that's a single band gap is what they call it um so that there's a theoretical max of what you can hit for efficiency I I don't know off the top of my head what that is it's maybe like 30 percent 33 percent um future panels might do more than one band gap and you can capture more of for example infrared light or ultraviolet light and that will result in a higher efficiency panel but where we're at um technologically speaking with the panels that are commercialized um we're at the you know 18 20 range right now so after the lifespan of say 20 or 25 years it's 90 percent left but it's 90 percent of that original 18 percent efficiency so the efficiency is actually pretty low um let let me ask another question about Mr. Hirsch I I appreciate your your questions but we do have three other people who've got their hands raised and um I think we're gonna have to move on okay thanks thank you all right so next we have a Robert Mullen um I'm going to allow him to speak uh good evening my name is Bob Mullen I represent Fred Hulk 317 Shootsbury Road here in Emers can I ask um I did have a couple questions um I saw some of the graphs and it went by kind of fast I'm just trying to take notes could anybody answer I guess the board members how many acres of land does this project take up 141 acres 41 acres um now this is for a special permit correct yes it is uh could you tell me what conditions the petitioner must meet because it's not by right it's by what the Sony board would like to provide if they so desire so could you kind of go over the conditions that the petitioner must meet because I'm a lay person I'm trying to figure out you know what they have to comply with here it's it is not um it is not a normal zba determination primarily because the state has specific rules on the installation of solar in massachusetts and so the zba has a very limited role as far as deciding various aspects of the installation or let me I think I can probably say the installation itself so while you could say it's not by right if you take a look at the rules of massachusetts has promulgated it basically is by right okay could you tell me where I find those rules rob if you got so um sorry good great Chris give me a citation mass general law chapter 40a section 3 would um help you to some degree because that talks about the limitations of regulating solar installations but I also wanted to direct you to um our zoning bylaw our amorce zoning bylaw which has a section called 10.38 which is the criteria that the zoning board of appeals looks at when it's um deciding whether to grant a special permit and in the application um the the applicant actually answered the criteria of section 10.38 to the best of their ability so they're offering those comments to the zoning board of appeals as potential findings that the zoning board could make in this case so you might want to look at the um application that's online and check out the section that has the answers to section 10.38 as part of that application that will give you some idea of what the criteria are thank you very much chris appreciate that okay one last question is the public going to be able to speak at other hearing dates or is this it speak other hearing dates okay okay thank you I have no further questions right now thank you very much thank you all right and then we have a stacy mccullough batter henry's mrs mccullough could you give your name and address please yes hi i'm stacy mccullough i live at 26 north valley road in pelham and i'm the newest member of the pelham planning board um and i am here at the request of the chair who could not make it um to express that the pelham planning board is strongly disinclined to support cutting down forests in order to install solar because while we are strong solar proponents we believe that there's better places than cutting down our valuable forests for that um i understand what you mean about it being in a way by right um craig but we're sorry mr meadows but that um that's evolving right now really quickly policies are being put in place by the state um and the science is evolving to make sure that we protect our natural environment while meeting our net zero goals for 2050 um the department of energy resources report that just came out recently um said that to meet those those carbon neutral goals by 2050 which is ambitious we certainly do need a lot more solar we need about 27 to 34 gigawatts of solar in the state which is a lot more than we have now um what that report did is they looked across massachusetts and said where do we have highly suitable places for that to go if we only put it in highly suitable places would we possibly be able to get enough and the answer was a resounding yes we have um more than two times the um perfect places with zero demerits on the suitability whether it's the electrical infrastructure biodiversity carbon sequestration we have another four times the amount needed with only minor demerits still considered highly suitable places to its solar so altogether we have more than six times the highly suitable places we need to put solar without cutting down 41 acres of forest um so this science is evolving the policy is evolving at the state level and we on the pellum planning board would really encourage you on the amherst zoning board to make sure that you are consulting with the folks who are behind those evolving decisions and that you're taking them into account and that you're taking all the responsibility you possibly can to shape a project like this more fundamentally than just the details um all respect to the petitioner i think the plan you have if it weren't for cutting down forest you know i wouldn't have a problem with it but uh the cutting down of the forest is something that that pellum planning board is is really working to mitigate thanks very much thank you thank you mr meadows may may ask a question absolutely um so for the petitioners just to piggyback on what mr mokala was saying about cutting down the trees were there any of the sites considered for this or was this it so a very good question uh the the reason this site in particular was selected um is for the simple fact that the electric grid as it stands today is completely oversaturated it was built in such a manner that distributed generation wasn't foreseen um and when it was constructed initially so the way we go abroad site selection is we'll look at substations and distances from substations um to see uh well to you know try to determine what what property is actually available to site a solar facility but even so even in that situation um oftentimes even if it is a reasonable distance away um the the grid is fully saturated so to put a solar facility there it would require sometimes not even upgrade the substation but totally reconstructing the substation and be cost prohibitive um that report that was referenced actually um didn't take into account the current state of the grid or any economics for interconnecting into the grid um which is unfortunate because i feel like it can give a false view of the potential that we have in the state um but as it stands currently today um it we're very limited to the sites we we can select so this particular property was selected because of its proximity to the substation on electrical lines that weren't already totally saturated um that was available um for us to lease so thank you all right so we have um michael lapinsky mr chair um i can give him speaking permissions yes please hi my name is michael lapinsky i live at 167 chutesbury road which is about as close as you can get to this project um so obviously i have some concerns i'd like to comment on a few things that were said already this evening one is this issue with the interconnection it's it's kind of implied here that this is a good choice because it's we've got a transformer down the road which is easy to connect to it in reality it's going to cost them a couple of million dollars to run from chutesbury road to that particular station and the reason why is because it's single-fated wiring all the way up to the Wagner wood operation all of that wiring is going to have to be changed over to three phase wiring that is not a cheap thing to do it's very expensive and it gives you a sense of how much money this company is willing to pour into this project so keep that in mind another thing to keep in mind is this idea of forest and how much solar benefit you're going to get from it one thing you haven't heard tonight is that you there are 41 acres of forest that are planned to be cleared but what you haven't heard is the fact that they plan to cover that cleared area with only 10 acres of solar panels so what you have there is a four to one ratio of destroyed forest to solar panels you've already heard someone comment on the efficiency of the solar panels so this is the type of trade you're making on this particular site it's a four to one ratio of destroyed forest to surface area of solar panels those same solar panels if they were placed on on rooftops or on parking lots would also cover 10 acres but they would be destroying no forest so it's something to keep in mind as far as the scale of this site and the trade-offs that are being made in the interest of this project going through a correction I'd like to make is at the beginning it was implied by the lawyer that there was a lot of input from the neighbors they cited two zoom meetings and a meeting where the neighbors walked through the forest I think it's important to know that very few people turned out for the zoom meetings I'm not sure if anyone did and the people who showed up for the walk through the woods which was done two years ago there were a handful of butters there were a number of Coles people and David Zomac that was the last time there was any involvement by a butters and that was about two years ago so there's this implication that somehow a butters have had a strong voice in determining what's happening with this project there's nothing could be farther from the truth and the other truth is this company has avoided on purpose letting the general public know what's going on they have no general public meetings very few people in town know about it because they've kept quiet about it there are people in the town offices that know about it the butters know about it but very few other people have I've contacted them to say how about holding a public meeting where the community can actually learn about this and make comments they're not interested staff members have contacted them asking them if they'd be willing to do that and they said no we're not interested so you can see the tactic that's being used here keep it underground as much as possible yes they have to conduct these formal meetings where people have where people can talk in a very structured way but as far as really approaching the community and really talking about the project and maybe talking about that four to one ratio of forest to solar panels that's not happening maybe they will do it in the future but so far they haven't just one tiny thing there was a suggestion about an inspector coming in and checking on the solar facility and there was an offering of sending in a coal's forester to be the person who checks on the safety of a solar facility I think we might want to file that in the not a great idea a category foresters shouldn't be the people responsible for inspecting solar facilities and one last thing I noticed at the beginning they mentioned that the poland people are here and we haven't heard from them and I think they're here for reason I'm hoping that the reason why they're here is to talk about the recent fires in Warwick New York in June that involved the poland centipede systems that are the same ones that pierce guy is proposing to use both at Hickory Ridge and at Shootsbury Road in case you didn't know they had fires on two different facilities the two different facilities use those same poland centipede systems the fires actually moved between cabinets even though testing had assured people that that wouldn't happen and it was enough of a problem combined with another fire at a different facility using GE batteries that the state of New York has just gone into this state of we have to investigate we have to see what's going on with these fires so it was a big deal in New York State I think it should be a big deal for the town of Amherst that the batteries that are being proposed to be used here two months ago or on fire at a different facility so I'll stop there I'd love to hear from the poland people maybe they can talk about those fires and fill in some of the details thank you thank you so mr. Meadows um mr. Lipinski has said a lot but I think he raised some valid points that I'm hoping that the petitioners can at least respond to some of them starting with the 41 ratio of forest cutting down to what's been used for the solar panels uh sure I can I can uh take that one so uh the 41 acres that are removed unfortunately it's not feasible to put panels side by side as you can imagine because there's a shading reasons uh the reason the approach was taken to space the panels the way they are is because the the way these panels are set up it's actually a tracking system where they are kind of on their racking as you can imagine the line and as the sun tracks across the the sky in the day they actually move to follow the sun to maximize the amount of of light they can get like a sunflower um and so um so that's the extent for how close we can actually put them together without having panels shade one another um the the entirety of the site will have a pollinator meadow underneath it not just on the panels so it would be the 41 acres of pollinator meadow um but the the reference to the panels is essentially just the panel square footage um but space on those rows is kind of required on what you've seen other other locations so any other questions I should field can you talk about the batteries and the fires there I would be happy to turn that over to the Pauen folks as they're able to address that more effectively than I could uh good evening Mr. Chair board I'm Joshua Preeb 3768 Summit Avenue in Ontario Canada Ridgeway Ontario Canada I am a project manager with Pauen handling the Amp Now Pure Sky portfolio projects um as of right now the incident that happened under in Warwick New York is under active um RCA with our company um we have a team preparing a document for local fire department um the fire chief as it is not being released to public record yet I'm sure by the next public hearing we will have more information we can comment on what I can say about it um is anything that has been suspected as the issue that might have started the event these were first models off the assembly line and we have addressed numerous um issues that have come up and they have been engineered out of the system during the event the surrounding community was safe from from it there was no damage anywhere off site to the community at all as I said earlier I would like to have a direct discussion between your company and the fire department to go over this yeah thank you Mr. Meadows um and we have seen the comments from the fire department uh we have already reached out to the fire chief um you know we've explained our our situation in this fairly unique situation right because um Pauen is still undergoing an RCA that's what the root cause analysis I think I got that right um Josh and Martin um so while that is ongoing they can't release that to the public because it is an ongoing investigation now it is something that we are also concerned about and should it not be a good fit for us then we will I mean this is still flexible you know we can still we we prefer to go with Pauen we have submitted our application materials with them we are we've worked with them on several other projects this is a unique situation um but we are you know once it is the appropriate time we you know we will work with um with the town and with the staff officials and with Pauen to make sure that what we're you know proposing is safe and it's not going to be a liability to to anybody the other thing to know is that it is pretty it is very far away I read to you the abutter distances um especially from the equipment pad it's it's very far away so the risk profile for this is already fairly low just because of where it's located obviously the zba is going to take uh whatever the fire departments indicates and listen to the the fire department uh as to their judgment on on this so that's that's where I'd like to have um your Pauen talk directly with the fire department if you can't release a public document that it maybe this is going to delay our next meeting we'll have to see yeah and our hope is by the time we come back to the next meeting we'll have all of the wetlands work situated and um signed off on as well as um you know these outstanding questions with the Pauen best equipment but we're we're we're confident that it's not going to delay us much further just because they are you know they they are actively working on it and it's something that they are you know very concerned about and it's a very high priority for them so if I understand correctly by the next meeting you should have a findings as to what caused the fire and if it's something that is an issue you have a backup for a different source slash supplier move forward with your project that yes that is that is the plan okay Mr Chairman we do have um another hand that was raised from Lenore Brick and then two other hands from individuals that already spoke so I um with you I give Lenore Brick permission to speak um and ask a question or to give a comment yes please right hi my name is Lenore Brick I live on Strong Street um and I uh I understand you have a lot of things to consider um but because the issue because the uh issue of the state was brought up um and because the initial presentation was about um the the fact that this is part of a climate solution I would like to address that in a less myopic view with a little bit more of an elevated view because even though you have very specific jobs to do I think you need this elevated view since since fundamentally we're talking about climate here um and I appreciate that the the company and their staff and the landowner and everybody involved is just trying to do a good job and um you know has good intention but there's but it's hard to know what you don't know so that's what I want to just say the person who from the Pelham Planning Board who was cautioning you that there are things happening at the state level that needs to be taken into consideration because you mentioned that there is state uh law involved as we speak there are people in the state house and in administration that are struggling and trying to figure out um how to meet these conflicting goals so so it was mentioned about the carbon neutral 2050 state goals but there's also the climate goals in the forest as climate solutions which is a new programming campaign there's a healthy soils action plan there's the resilient lands initiative and the Healy administration um and the climate office now in Massachusetts is is working on how do we protect our ecosystems and our forests and our farmlands at the same time as meeting those climate goals that is a very um front and center strategy that is that is happening and if you go ahead and start permitting things that are at odds with that you're not going to be able to take back any decision that wasn't in sync with that the doer study by the way that that was referred to um the the statistic was that we have in Massachusetts 15 to 18 times the um the the solar energy potential to use disturbed lands then then we originally thought um even if that's not even even if there are considerations in that that's still a lot of disturbed lands green you know ground fields gray fields built landscape that we can consider um let's also not forget in terms of the state that if the state wasn't offering subsidies that by the way are paid by us taxpayers this and similar projects would not be pursued on forested land because it wouldn't be lucrative and Christine brought up I think Christine you were talking about the Dover amendment I think that's what you were talking about the Dover amendment is a law an archaic law in 1985 that was about when solar was only about rooftops not about forested land and we were worried that a neighbor would think it was unsightly and so that law right now is is is being scrutinized and made and and there are several pieces of legislation that have been proposed to strike that law from the Dover amendment so so we're not sure right that you have that law backing or that state backing right now with your permitting process and that's something to take into consideration and then if we if we zoom out a little bit more sort of into the international community of climate scientists forest ecologists conservation biologists indigenous leaders the people that are really on the cutting edge those people are talking about taking off all green lands off thinking of that as non-negotiables because you're not going to get those back and there is no other better resource that we have for climate resilience and climate mitigation that's our original green energy and if we're really interested in helping to regulate the climate like really then that holistic strategy needs to include conservation solar and built landscape and regenerating and protecting forests and green lands so when the original presentation and I appreciate you know the effort that's gone into this and trying to see where these different camps meet but there's pieces of information missing which is what makes it myopic is those calculations comparing carbon sequestration to in forested lands to solar potential doesn't include the consequences of soil disturbance doesn't include that 50 percent of the carbon is stored in the soil doesn't include what's the what the consequences are for the present and the future doesn't consider the destruction of the microbiology in the soil so all of this are things that we're just learning about right now in the way that nature has already has been regulating the climate for millions of years and doesn't consider the need for healthy forests for for just climate resilience alone with all the increasing floods and drought that we're all experiencing we know this we're living through this and so we need to consider what are our non-negotiables when so we have a little bit more clarity and can take the most intelligent action going forward because again once we lose it we don't get it back and I am not casting dispersions on anybody who's just trying to do a good job but we really need to look at this from from a zoom out view and then a zoom in view and thank you all of you for your good work thank you for your comments so uh mr chairman we have two individuals that already spoke who raised their hands again I don't know what you want to do in this situation they're the only two individuals with hands raised at the moment and there's a third person who just raised their hand who hasn't spoken yet um a jane calick I can give speaking permission to if you'd like yes please all right okay good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak and everybody's work the the meeting started out uh with some questions about what the zba could and couldn't do in relationship to issuing a permit and the chair mentioned the limitations that a zba has based on what we're now all familiar with is the dover so-called dover amendment which which gives lots of opportunity for solar to be cited because of our climate emergency however the zba also has the responsibility for the health safety and welfare of the community and in this regard I wanted to mention this project is in the part of amherst where all of the residents are on private wells and the private wells draw from aquifers that are unknown and a the water protection committee in town as well as the solar bylaw working group have both spent a lot of time thinking about how to imagine the need to protect residents who are on private wells if a solar project were to come in of the water supply protection committee did a white paper and looking at the town as a whole 95 percent of residents use town water but for the five percent of us who happen to be located right where this project would be built uh comments were made from the conservation commission and I'll just give you a little feel for them with a quote the clear cutting of our watershed forests will likely have an adverse impact on the quality of the drinking water supply and there are many details of why the conservation commission administrator believes this to be true and it has to do with basic science of what forests do to help walk help with water and recharge uh and the taking the trees out you have a lot more water but you have contaminated water as a result of that uh the vegetation soil and waters are all interconnected you can't take the trees out and expect the water to remain clean and drinkable the the idea of replacing a forest with a storm water system that is not only going to manage storm water when we don't know how much precipitation we're going to have but also that the residents in this area will have drinking water when the project is done so this is something that needs to be looked at from the point of view of health and safety of the residents who are directly affected uh by this project at a minimum of uh we would ask the uh the project to install water quality monitoring wells not only because of the changes of the water quality but also the possibility that the batteries the chemical applications on the site don't actually contaminate the ground water so although there's much said about there's no leakage but there are chemicals that are involved in creating this project starting with the herbicide that's going to be applied in order to establish this pollinator field so I would ask the zba to look very carefully at the possibility that the risk to the water supply of residents adjacent to this project and possibly beyond the butters could actually become unusable as a result studies are not substantial but there's lots of reasons to believe in water and soil chemistry and science to believe that this project would put the water supply in this part of town at tremendous risk so is this a risk that the zba wants to give to us to the town and what is what would the town intend to offer us if our wells are no longer usable thank you thank you mr mr meadows a couple of follow-up questions if I may so I did read that email that was forwarded by the plan department earlier to this person's point just now and I did have questions on that so um what is your response to um potential harm to the 5% that use well water in that area and is there a commitment if and to someone's earlier point we don't know what we don't know so if future studies are done and there's a discovery that because of this project well water is contaminated is there a commitment on the part of this project to say okay we're going to do something for these residents I can address that um so we did do a study with a hydro geologist to look at the the area and looked at all series of wells in the area to do an analysis of if there would be any effect from the solar facility on well water the only conclusion that they well the conclusion they came to was that the only real impact that would ever be had to well water quality or amount would be if the bedrock itself was disturbed if there was some blasting that was to be done on the site which we are not planning to do the reason for that is because a lot of these wells have the water going to percolate into them from the surrounding bedrock so if the blasting were to change the aperture of the cracks of that bedrock then it would you know theoretically could do something as it stands right now it's it's kind of difficult to to know what may or may not happen but certainly if there was some sort of measurable effect on someone's well water and they were unable to get water I think that we would we would be committed to helping deal with that yes and have you guys done any research into potential have you done any research in past projects where similar situation where people use well water solar farm came in have you looked at those and to see how those have been impacted we personally as a company have not I'll have to look at the research for that I do believe that the mass DEP has looked at this I want to say back in 2011 where they were looking at zone one, zone two quality wells and then did determine that solar was not seen as having adverse impact on those wells being approximated to that but we can certainly look into that that's a valid question thank you so mr. sorry good post we have so we have three individuals that already spoke mr. chair I don't know if you want to give them a second chance to talk again it's up to you otherwise we can move on if we can limit it to one minute for each person okay and first up is michael lapinski I will give him speaking permission michael lapinski 167 shoot spare road speaking very quickly I don't know how many of you feel very reassured by that answer about the batteries I know I don't here's what I heard warwick was like our field test for the first units coming off and guess what they flunked the field test warwick still has a huge number of those batteries that were the first ones off the line that are still in place you're hearing what happens when an accident occurs there's investigations there's reports there's trying to figure out who did the bad thing was it the battery company was it the contractor was it the owner there's a lot of finger pointing that goes back and forth in the meantime the the batteries just sit there and whatever's in the batteries leak out this is a huge problem there are other problems involving amp that will fill you in on whenever we meet again in october but I know I personally was not reassured to hear that oh there's a problem with those batteries we're working on it don't worry and then an amp person saying well don't worry about it the batteries are far away from your house I think any battery that's on fire at amherst should be a concern to everyone in amherst no matter where it's located that's all I have to say on the topic thanks for giving me a second chance I appreciate it guys thank you all right so we have jack hersh hi I'll also be quick thanks a lot for recognizing me I still live on flat hills road in amherst I wanted to give you another perspective and that is is that solar panels are still in a somewhat developmental stage people think oh this is great we can harvest light from the sun and create electricity and it's gets us off fossil fuels well that may be true but it has a huge footprint and land on our planet is also very valuable there are many many areas of research including a company in east hampton if you want to look them up that are looking at alternatives to producing clean energy that don't require such a big footprint so let's say in 10 years one comes along what are we going to do with this cleared land and this obsolete solar panel solar panels that are spread out over 41 acres so please consider that miniaturization is also a very likely thing in the next 10 years there are lots of opportunities to do it better that are coming down the pike and so I think that's something that you should also consider when you think about um this installation thank you thank you then we have um jenny jenny calick who just spoke um i'll give her a quick permission speak then that's the last person with a hand raised thanks rob and uh i'll be very quick i just wanted to uh respond to andrew's point we don't really know uh yeah that's our drinking water thank you very much and thinking about solar and their effects on water is a different prospect when you're uh removing 41 trees and building storm water where there'll be an infiltration system which in a way infiltrates dirty water back into the groundwater so we're not just talking about one aspect we do need uh to know that we don't know a lot about this but there are reasons to be concerned the only other follow-up I did have is it's not just a fire but the fires create toxic fumes and in some of these cases people have had to be evacuated or shelter in in place until the fires were were put out so it's not just the idea of the fire jumping to your house or to to the um forest nearby it's the fumes as well thanks for the extra time appreciate it okay thank you you have someone else ron we do have one more person who is a new speaker mr jeremy anderson I can um give him the floor thank you so much for for giving me uh an opportunity here and continuing with wells jeremy anderson could you give us your name full name and address please yes jeremy anderson I live at 34 high point drive in amherst in north amherst as well and I think like many of the other speakers uh very worried about the well water and not just uh as as was mentioned um the flow and and making sure that there's sufficient well water but also wondering what type of contamination might come in from the routine maintenance to the solar panels cleaning the solar panels herbicides in between the rows your type of that that infiltration into our drinking water what type of testing will be done and provided to uh citizens is that going to come out of my pocket every time I have to test the well water or is that something that the town will be doing as well okay well thank you very much for your comment um are there any other questions no more public comments but mr chairman we do have to do um uh one more thing tonight we have to establish a date to continue this public hearing to and so we have to establish a date for a site visit the applicant has informed the town that they would plan to do a site visit over the next few weeks um there's a lot they have to do in their end to coordinate that um so uh I think the board should consider looking at their calendars and we can pick those two dates and afterwards the board would have to vote to continue the public hearing if it so desires to to that future date it's looking like that's going to be the case tonight for what I see but I just want to suggest that we should do those two things while we while we're here um so I guess the board if they want to do the site visit portion first um Cory or Andrew um is there a time that works for you as the applicant to coordinate a site visit thank you I I think I it's okay with the board I like to just look at our calendars and try to if it's okay to coordinate that offline um I don't know I don't want to potentially put the board in a difficult position if we put a date out there and then for some reason we have to waste all your time and move it and yet the other thing Rob is we'd like to make sure that the right members from our team can attend as well and we're just not sure about their availability so um if that's something that you and Mr. Meadows and Andrew and I can work on um we you know we we just want to make sure that we've got the right folks uh to join us for that visit if you could propose three or four dates and times and then um we can take a look at those dates and circulate it amongst the the board and find out which one is going to work for everybody or at least most people I would say avoid a date when there's a a zba meeting taking place uh the second and fourth Thursday of every month as well keep that in mind uh right because we will have other site visits also um now as far we do have to pick a date certain for the next meeting and um I'm thinking that it probably is going to end up being in November given the fact that you've got you have prep time the to get your conservation uh commission materials together get it to the conservation committee commission get that get on their calendar um and then for them to give us a recommendation so by the time we get finished you get finished with all of that and because of some other conflicts I think we're talking about sometime in November so mr chairman the first meeting um in November is November 9th I don't know if that works for the other board members in terms of a date to to set the next hearing too I'm in New Orleans New Orleans okay um so can I just for for quickly if you know I heard mr meadows mentioned earlier the likelihood of a potential peer review for this and just thinking about the timing of all of this right if we kick it over to November and wait for the whole conservation process to be done whenever it happens in November then the board's going to go out to get they're going to vote to say let's have a peer review and then the peer review isn't going to come on board until you know potentially late November beginning of December and so then before you know it we're in January where if we accelerated a little bit and have a meeting in October ideally you know we'll have a good sense of what's happening with the conservation commission as far as um our wetland scientists the conservation commissions peer review and the conservation agent understanding where those wetlands the boundary the resource spare area boundaries are and whether or not that's going to materially modify the project but if we can check in in October and maybe get that peer review process go going I mean that quite literally saves a couple of months especially because of Thanksgiving Christmas etc for the other holiday so for what it's worth we would ask for maybe an October date to keep this process moving that's up to you as the board to decide that you can discuss amongst yourselves mr chair it may make sense because if we can add to November 9th the following Thursday is Thanksgiving and I don't think we're going to meet on Thanksgiving I don't believe so but uh so maybe the 26th October 26th the last Thursday I'm in Orlando and I don't I cannot imagine that they're going to have it ready by October 12th but we could also um do it on a date that's not a normal scheduled zba meeting night if the board would want to do that to be more flexible um Greg are you gone that entire week on the 26th or are you uh I am okay and I'd say if we meet the 12th and it is just for a peer review to you know we can give you an update of where we are relative to the conservation commission what we've found from the delineation and then there can be a discussion of the peer review and you can if it is the board's inclination to have one hired we can at least start that process and then you know allow us to continue to work on those plans and by the time you get the peer review hired then we'll have likely a set of plans for them in earnest to review so you know even if it is the 12th it doesn't have to be material or substantive I think it will help move the process along uh Chris uh if you could chime in here so the only thing is October 12th we have a potential 4db project that might be scheduled for that night uh Chris I don't know if you want to talk about what the flexibility could be with that I think you're muted sorry um the 4db process has a certain number of days um in which to open the public hearing I think we have what 30 days or something like that so um we could possibly work with the applicant on that project since that project hasn't been submitted yet um to schedule this meeting for October 12th okay so basically what we're talking about is an interim meeting on October 12th because it's certainly not going to have all of the final information that we're going to need um does an interim meeting make sense I I'm asking a question I don't know the answer yes Chris I think it makes sense because by then each individual member of the panel will have developed a sense of what do we need more information about and there's potential for needing peer review on other things besides the things that were brought up today so um you know you you can take that time to think about that and then when you come together you'll also have Steve Judge back on October 12th um and then you can have a conversation about all the things that you might need peer review about and you can move forward with that and I do agree that the concom issues won't be completely resolved by then but at least we'll be farther along with them and we'll kind of know where we're going with the conservation commission so I think it's a good idea to have a meeting on October 12th and does October 12th or for the other board members as well it can be available on the 12th Mr. Slovitar I'm I'm also available that night yes Mr. Gilbert paying a peek in my calendar right now looks like a peek at my other calendar Mr. Henry say he was available then so the the 12th it looks like I'm clear cool okay it sounds like it is the 12th good with with everyone else the petitioner uh yes thank you thank you all right so now the the board has to vote to formally continue the public hearing to October 12th 2023 at the seven sorry 6 p.m. zba meeting still moved wait do I do that can I do that the Craig has to start the oh right yes they have okay so we did we have a second all right okay um then I will uh ask for a vote to continue the public hearing for October 12th on uh zba fy 2023-18 um the chair votes aye mr. Gilbert hi mr. Henry aye mr. Slovitar aye great thank you very much do we need uh thank you perfect sorry what did you say during for the evening uh so there's uh you have to go through the rest of the agenda first and then um and afterwards you can adjourn you didn't finish my dialogue with that is there any other business that uh has not been brought before the board tonight none none that I can think of mr. chair uh miss pressure I don't know if you have anything you wanted to bring up to the board while we have everybody here well I think it would be a good idea to mention um what you mentioned before which is that we do have a 40 b application coming and we've been told that it is coming soon possibly by the middle of September and the clock starts ticking as to how long you have to hold a public hearing which I believe is 30 days which is why we had chosen October 12th in the first place but we don't have that application in hand yet so we can't it's not a burden the hand it's two in the bush so um anyway that is coming up and it may cause us to reach out to you to find a date for scheduling that public hearing okay that's it okay I'm sorry dates are so difficult as far as I'm concerned but that's life for me okay do you have a motion to adjourn so move slow return this mr. Henry you're a convenient second all the time I am for a first I second that motion very good the chair votes aye mr. Gilbert aye mr. Henry aye mr. sloveter aye we are adjourned