 The text from Janet. Janet is in the audience and would love to be let in. Okay. We will, we will do that. It looks like Pat is there as well. I mean, Bandy Joe. Not allowing me to promote Janet. Tom or Doug. Do you have that? Oh, there we go. She finally moved over there. Okay. I made it. I'm eating those cells. I'm gonna stay off camera. Thank you, Pam. You are welcome. You're welcome. I don't see, I don't see Karen over there. Right. And I don't see Bruce. Janet, we're going to mute you. But we do have a quorum. Amherst media is here with us. We are recording you are a co-host. Mr. Long is also a co-host. Mr. Maloy is a co-host. You're all covered. I think we're good to go. All right. Thank you, Pam. You're welcome. Here comes Karen. Okay. Karen is coming. She's coming. She needed. Okay. Sorry. Oh my gosh. Thank you, Karen. Hi. My computer needs to be updated somehow. And I tried for a half an hour and it's just. I'll have to figure it out. Sorry. Okay. We're good to go. Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of March 1st, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall. And as the chair of the Amherst planning board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6 35 PM. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media. Minutes are being taken. This meeting will be conducted. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. And extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. And extended again by the state legislature on July 16th, 2022. This planning board meeting, including public hearings, will be conducted via remote means using the zoom platform. The zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the zoom platform. Or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda. Which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time. Via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so. For reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts. We are unable to. Report on this in the final video recording transcript or other comprehensive. Record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members. I will take a roll call. When I call your name. Unmute yourself answer affirmatively and return to me. Bruce cold. I do not see Bruce Tom Long. President. Andrew MacDougal. Mark Marshall and present. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Here. Karen winter. Here. And Bruce cold. Am I now see you. Yes, I think I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes, we can and welcome. Good. I should say that the power on this island is pretty unreliable. So if I disappear at any point, it's probably because of that. Okay. Board members, if technical issues arise, we may need to pause to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak after speaking. Remember to remute yourself. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the planning board chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds there a lot of time, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. Okay, so it's now 638 and we'll go right into the first item on our agenda. These are approval of the minutes that are available and the minutes we have for this meeting are from our meeting one month ago on February 1st, 2023. Are there any board members who have comments on the minutes? Tom. There is a spelling error on page. Hold on, I got to find it. Oh, boy. I had it open a second ago. It is under new business. So item five, that is page eight. And it says that the board and the is spelled wrong in the second time. That's all I got. All right, so nine pages and one spelling error. That's pretty good score. Okay. Where is it? This. Which paragraph. It is the. Under new business. A, it's the second paragraph or the first paragraph there. It starts. I see the, yeah. Okay. That's all. Okay. All right. Anybody else have any other comments? All right. Anybody want to make a motion to approve with the correction that Tom. Identified. I move to approve as amended or as suggested by Tom. All right. And Andrew, you got your hand up next. Thank you. Thank you both. And any other comments before we vote. All right. We'll go right into the boat. Starting with Bruce. Yes, is to approve the minutes. Yes. All right. And Tom. I. And Andrew. I. And Janet. Hi. All right. And Johanna. Hi. Karen. Hi. And I'm an eye as well. I believe that's unanimous. Thank you all. All right. Now we'll go into the public comment period. As I said before, this is for items. For comments on items, not on tonight's agenda. And since the only item on our agenda is the proposed zoning amendment, mostly relating to article three. This is the time for comments on other topics. Do we have any members of the public who would like to make a comment? Right. I do not see any hands raised. Maybe I will go ahead and read the list of names I see in the public as I've been doing lately. First, we have David Zomek. We have Pam. We have Dorothy Pam. Frederick Hartwell. Ira Brick. Jessica Barrington. Joan O'Meara. John Varner. Louise C. Single letter. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Mara Keen. Melissa Ferris. Pam Rooney. Pat DeAngelis. Rob Crowner. Sandy Musbrat. And Susanna Musbrat. All right. So that's 16 different names. All right. And there are no hands raised yet. So we'll go right on to the third item on our agenda. The time now is 642. And the third item is to open a new public hearing. To amend article three, regarding a zoning bylaw article three use regulations, and article four, development methods, article nine, nonconforming lots uses and structures and article 12 death definitions. To see if the town will vote to amend article three use regulations to change the permitting requirements for owner access converted dwellings and townhouses to create more streamlined permitting pathway for these uses to remove the use category subdividable dwellings to add a use category three family detached dwelling. And in parentheses triplex to add a permitting pathway and standards and conditions for triplexes to modify standards and conditions for other housing use categories to amend permitting requirements for housing use categories in the aquifer recharge protection overlay district to amend article for development methods to add three family dwelling where appropriate to amend article nine non conforming lots uses and structures to add a reference to three family dwelling to amend article 12 definitions to add three family detached dwelling unit triplex and to delete subdividable dwelling. So board members. Are there any disclosures from board members. I suppose I can, I can. I'm not reluctant to say I work at UMass and I know there are many people in town who think that UMass cares deeply about how the town either provides or doesn't provide housing so I am just stating that I do work at UMass and to the best of my knowledge I have no interest in this particular topic from my work. And I believe I can review then vote on this fairly and objectively. All right. So this is the, at least the third possibly the fourth meeting at which we've discussed this topic, although we are just opening the hearing tonight. So I feel like the board is fairly familiar with the original proposal. And Mandy Joe and Pat. Maybe, you know, you could do a quick overview and then tell us has anything changed based on the comments you've heard so far. I know member many members of the public that are on the list I read have been at earlier meetings. I don't want you to short change their understanding of what you're doing but we, we have been over this road already a couple of times. So with that, Mandy Joe and Pat welcome. Thank you. One of the things that I really would like to say is that one of our primary goals is to create housing that is affordable for a range of incomes and a diversity of residents. We have a very, very strong belief, as does strong towns which is an advocacy group, I'm sorry, supporting incremental change and development. And that goal is that no neighborhood should experience radical change, and no neighborhood should be exempt from change. And by allowing incremental neighborhood growth we can increase housing access and inclusivity. And I'm going to do a quick check with Mandy, because you're asking us not necessarily to do the whole presentation but I'll leave it up to your discretion. Okay, if we start to get too long and boring just let us know. Our goals and defining principles are clear and when that comes up we'll be able to look at them. If you could go to the next slide. One is equity and housing by eliminating exclusionary zoning policy and adding more residential dwellings and allowing them to be permitted through a smoother easier process. We will help eliminate economic and social segregation will be able to create multiple places for home ownership opportunities and neighbors that aren't solely apartments or solely single family homes but create a mix of housing types. We believe that the changes can to multifamily dwellings can improve sustainable land use is sustainable and environmental and climate issues, but really make homes easier and cheaper for people to share. We want to address the housing crisis because if we don't, we change nothing. We need to encourage more housing opportunities, both new and infill near village centers in downtown. We need to look at the current duplex and converted dwelling and townhouse permit pathways and not encourage building these types is a way of doing nothing. We need to have logic in the use of the table for permitting requirements are more intense you should not have a less restrictive permitting requirement. And an example, if an apartment has an SPR pathway in a residential zone, then a converted dwelling should not have an as a special permit pathway in the same residential zone. So if you will go to the next slide. So you want to take this one quickly. Yep. So this one was just to give us an illustration that in our village centers which the planning board talked about a lot about a week ago at their special meeting and for particular ones for wanting to sort of look at development in those village centers that we really have a wide range of zoning districts that are within a half mile of those village centers so when we're looking at increasing infill. We're not missing middle of housing. We can't just look at our RG, for example, because, well, near our village centers are our RLD, our RN are pretty much every residential zoning district we have in town, where we tend to put residences and so this was just sort of to give you that visual reminder of when we look at Pomeroy when we look at Atkins when we look at North Amherst when we look at East Amherst. So we really do have the full range of residential districts there and so prohibiting something from being built in a residential districts prohibits it from being built near a village center the very idea of where we want to actually promote more housing. Next slide. I really want people to pay attention to this because there is a sense in Amherst that if we build duplexes and triplexes that we're going to have more student renters. Well, yes, they are potential renters. But so our families that are just starting out in our community, young professionals, recent graduates and friends who want to live near each other siblings or other family members. And so a sense that. Well, I'll go and potential owners who are the potential owners. We're not talking about developers here we're talking about ordinary people, families just starting out, people who rent out other units for income to survive to live on friends who want to live near each other and share and purchase the expense. And this is interesting because this is a progression that we're seeing across the nation where younger people are buying with other families and building duplexes or converting current to two family homes and three family homes and living together more closely. We have family members who want to live near each other but in separate units, and we have people who need as we said before additional income of other units in order to afford to buy a property. It's been kind of amazing in our stations to see how many small landlords they are and how they cross the spectrum of people of people's incomes. Next slide. So what is the purpose of zoning deals basically with the use without regard to the ownership of the property involved, or who may be the operator of the use. And it's very important to regulate using zoning to regulate non land use problems such as behavior, like large gatherings property upkeep and ownership. That's not appropriate. And then really have unintended consequences owner occupancy rules have several never negative effects on equity efforts to build multifamily housing and the overall housing supply, because renters typically have lower incomes and homeowners and a racially more diverse owner occupancy requirements affect the economic and demographic make up of neighborhoods. Next slide. We're, we're very trying to really look at the very real problems of student behavior and we're really trying to use a multi pronged approach. So zoning upkeep parking in undesignated areas loud noises gatherings are not exclusive to any demographic or ownership status, but we need to really look at and this is something else that Mandy and I and other people on CRC are working on is updating permitting by law to address property maintenance maintenance. We're looking at the nuisance by law to define it more broadly. We want to enforce noise nuisance and permitting by laws management and parking plans and waste following regulations. We need to seek pilots to help pay for proactive enforcement. We need to shift convert conversation with UMass and the colleges to assisting their own employees and purchasing homes or renting in Amherst. We need to consider rezoning areas near village and centers to expand housing and retail opportunities, and we need to consider the impacts of requirements like parking minimums on who chooses to live in a dwelling. We can avoid these impacts by simply regulating upkeep rather than assume that renters will be bad neighbors. Local officials could enforce housing close codes blight ordinances and noise or ordinances. Instead they rely on owner occupancy occupancy as a shortcut for regulating maintenance. And that's a quote from the Brookings Institute which is an important quote. And we'll get to that later. Next slide. I think I'm doing the next slide. The next couple of slides. But you know you may be asking why did we talk about the multi-pronged approach and so I just want to go back to that one a little bit before we get into our proposal. And it's because we're basically asking you to bring an open mind to our proposal and recognize that no one thing can solve the issues we have in Amherst. And if we refuse to do one thing or one proposal because we're, we want to use that type of regulation to address all the issues will never move forward. And so we have to recognize that we need to take that multi-pronged approach and we can't stay in a stasis to solve the problems we have because not everything's happening at once. I'm just asking you to keep an open mind. So types of dwellings we will go through these pretty quickly. You've seen most of these slides before the duplex one has not changed we're not proposing a change in duplex it's two units in one building. Triplex based on things we heard from you and from multiple other places we've talked to, we are actually proposing a different definition of triplex than we originally did. We originally proposed one that was built up down vertically only because the townhomes had three units side by side. We have changed the townhome definition and our newest proposal and what is in front of you today to go to four to 10 units instead of three to 10 units such that a triplex would be any three unit building. Three units are in a single building. And so this means it encompasses more than just the vertical we've gotten rid of the two units have to share entrances we've gotten rid of they have to be built on top of each other it is literally our proposal is now any three unit residential building. And we've made proposal the proposal now includes the changes to townhomes definitions that would be required to make that possible. And so you see that here in what is a townhouse. The definition says no fewer than three or no more than 10 and so our proposals to change it to no fewer than four nor more than 10, such so that triplex includes all those three unit buildings. So the converted dwellings again, we've seen them all I added some pictures of actual converted dwellings in our town. So you can see what a converted dwelling looks like an Amherst. And again I just want to focus on converted dwellings are buildings that already exist that we're trying to move that that the owner is proposing to change from one unit building or two unit building to maybe a three or four unit building or convert a different property that already exists the middle picture here. The converted dwelling is the small, what might have at one point been a garage but it's the outbuilding behind the tree was the best Google maps picture I could get. So the conditions I believe. Pat you are doing the first couple. You can see that in terms of duplexes the general requirements are that the exterior exterior appearance and footprint be compatible with single family dwellings. And there's a compliance with zoning article seven and street numbering section 3.204 of the design guidelines do apply and so does dark skylighting. If we go to the next slide. This is an important one because we're looking here at owner occupied duplexes that would have a deed restriction required and could not then transfer over to non owner occupied affordable duplexes also have that deed of restriction and here we see the first real change where we're talking about multiple management plans required and compliance with the rental permitting and application of zoning section 11.24 and a written decision that goes straight through those requirements are also the requirements of the non owner occupied duplex where we're talking about professional management that's an addition being required. The others are the same. And we're talking then for triplexes and triplexes is what Miriam Webster says but it's. Again the same thing professional management multiple management plans required compliance with permit rent rental permitting and here the with the triplexes we're saying there needs to be sore connection required and location requirement. So, next slide. The next one is me, the location requirement mirrors the townhouse location requirement in terms of we had heard you guys, the planning board talk about well near major roads and stuff like that so we didn't put the exact language in the pack in this presentation but it's in the packet. And the sewer requirement comes back with the concern about triplexes in some of the outlying areas. So we have two guidelines we heard that you guys were all concerned that we had proposed removing them from duplexes and then we did not propose including them in triplexes. And so we've added them back in. But we wanted to talk a little bit about why, in some sense we had removed them in the first place it's not necessarily because design guidelines are are problematic per se. In other words, the design guidelines in our bylaw were written to apply to only the area you see in blue, which includes the BG and the BL our downtown business district and the properties immediately adjacent to our town common. So they're mostly, they were written with an eye towards business development commercial retail things like that with pedestrian, lots of pedestrian traffic and all and so there are parts of the design review guidelines that don't really apply to either residential buildings, things like the sign standards don't necessarily apply to residential buildings per se, or typically apply to residential buildings or sections that don't necessarily make sense for a mostly residential area that has large setbacks. I think about things like directional expression I drove down southeast street today and there are many houses that don't have their front door facing the road. And that's not necessarily a bad thing but when you look at the design guidelines they talk about directional expression of where does the building face and so we were concerned that we're trying by putting these or these requirements in for things like this. We're trying to fit in some sense a square peg into a round hole. So we would just ask that you review them or or talk to us about how you modify these or apply these when when they're not necessarily the appropriate design guidelines to apply and so we just wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about that in particular. Pat back to you. No, I thought you were going ahead with that. Oh, I can do this one. Yeah. This is the last one. Yeah, I'll do the rest. This is the same as the last one we're not proposing any changes to what exists currently for the townhouse conditions converted dwelling. This is the slide that shows us what we're retaining what we're adding and what we're modifying will get to what what has been removed from or what we're proposing to delete so we're modifying the suitably located in neighborhood where proposed that part that language is still there the part we've proposed to remove is what suitable location kind of it's kind of defined in the conditions and our thinking was if we remove that sort of specificity as to what a suitable location is we actually give the planning board or the ZBA more flexibility and determining what suitability is for a location and so it becomes less perspective prescriptive and therefore potentially better to ensure that it is a suitable location because you can, you can, you know, adjust what suitability is based on changing conditions it's not set in stone. So one of the things we're adding that is the condition for requiring that the closest eventual use the conditions for those use shall apply. So, we've talked about this before ADU or duplex conditions might apply it might be the owner occupied duplex conditions it might be the non owner occupied it might be the affordable triplex conditions townhouse apartment conditions. It's like that would would be what the conditions would be that you'd be looking at for converted dwelling. And that's important because we are proposing to delete some conditions, because they are covered under that new condition that the conditions of the suit the most potential use apply. And so it's not that we're deleting things like mutual compatibility or exterior changes, you know, or owner, the resident manager it's because they've been included in those other that eventual use condition we wrote we delete the condition of conversions not permitted in our P because we're actually proposing to allow conversion converted dwellings in the ARP zone. And then the other one we're deleting is the minimum open space requirements. That's necessary. And this next slide shows you why, because the dimensional table, the minimum open space requirements in currently in converted dwellings are 2000 per unit, and 1000 per unit depending on the residential district you're in, in the RO and RLD. The RN was 1000 per unit which, if you're maxed at four units is 4000 square feet of open space. The RO and RLD were 2000 square feet. And if you're maxed at four units that's 8000 square feet of open space as you will see our dimensional table requires well more than that. Because of the maximum lot coverage and the minimum square foot per lot for each unit. And so we looked at that and said, it's in some sense redundant and doesn't provide any because it's not additional open space as you would see in other, there's other tables I think for apartments that have additional open space this one was not worded that way this was just minimum open space. Well, our dimensional table requires it so we don't see it as deleting open space requirements we saw that as not adding anything to what the dimensional table already requires. Pat, to you. Go to next slide. Here we've put triplex as a new use category but it would not be allowed in commercial districts. They are not intended for residential uses. And so there's no pathway that conforms to other similar residential uses. In the business zoning districts you can see that we looked at triplexes. And again, said it's not allowed in the business general limited and village centers. We are looking at converted dwellings and moving them to a site plan review, instead of a special permit. In the townhouses we are going from special, we're asking for a special permit instead of slight site plan review converted dwellings use. They're already using an existing structure, and they're adding infill density in the areas and that's supported by the master plan. We've added to six total dwelling units, and it's currently site plan review in the BG and site plan review appropriate elsewhere townhouses and matches the apartment. The pathway in general business and encourages mixed use or business uses over solely residential uses, and it matches the mixed use building pathway for more transitional build business areas. And it promotes density in those areas we can go on to the business zoning districts business neighborhood. We've made revisions to the non owner occupied duplex site and we've made it site plan review. We're looking at triple triple complexes as site plan review and townhouses as site plan review. So we're also then leaving the converted dwellings as site plan review and we've been listening to what some of the requests have been here. The complexes and mixed use buildings are already site plan review and they promote density in this very limited zone and transitions from business uses to solely residential uses at lower densities. And we are removing subdivided, subdivided dwellings from this situation. So we can go on to residential zoning districts. Just one other thing with this one is you are looking at the sole properties that are the business neighborhood district in our town on this slide. So it's, it's got about seven properties on it. And that's about it. So this is the village, this is the village center in general and this is a picture of all of our RG, our general residential and all of our RVC in town. This is shows it all. And so the resident village center the RVC is quite limited in some sense into where it's located in town it's in North Amherst. It's slightly around Palmyrae. And then the RG as we know is is sort of surrounds our general business district downtown and works its way close to the east village center and there's RVC in the east village center close to the RG and where Fort River is. So that just shows you, these are the only properties we're talking about when we say RG and RVC. This, this plan has, we have not changed anything from our original plan so you've seen all of this before so I'm not going to go over it very much it's mostly site plan reviews and a couple of yeses and the owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes. We, we believe these are what is suitable for the, these two areas near our that are solely located near our downtown business district and our village centers. I think this is to talk about the RN you do this slide and I'll do the next ones. Okay. What right here what you're looking at is are some of the areas in Amherst that are our and neighborhood residents, and their echo Hill portions of Amherst Woods and this is important because people keep thinking that's an exclusive area. They're Cushman village colonial village so you see some of the larger apartment complexes. Also, and so this becomes a very important area for increasing variety and kinds of housing to make the neighborhoods more exclusive and also to avoid necessarily building more apartment complexes where so that we have neighborhoods that are segregated again economically and socially. And so, so what are we proposing here, I'm going to take you back to your conversation last Tuesday where you talked about those apartment complexes well they're in this zone. Right now, you can't build more apartment complexes in that unless you either rezone those areas, or you change the use table, sort of what we're trying to do and so one of the things you also can't build in that area is townhomes. And so, you know we've talked about, well you could go you talked about a week ago, well you could go up maybe to a three story apartment complex well you could also build townhomes if you, if you change the zoning like we've done in those same areas. It doesn't have to just be apartment complexes or single family homes in these neighborhoods we're trying to build that middle between single family homes and apartments so what has changed from our original proposal. What is in green so for this one. What is in green we've we've proposed different changes for the aquifer recharge protection district mostly so you see in townhouse, it just says special permit originally only. Our original proposal had that townhouses would not be allowed in the ARP and we've changed that to a special permit for the ARP in townhouses to converted dwellings have not changed from the original proposal triplexes and non owner occupied duplexes we had originally proposed a site plan review in the ARP and so we are proposing them to be special permit in the ARP, instead of site plan review but site plan review in non ARP zones and as you've seen the RN is mostly non ARP. So, in that sense that our proposal hasn't really changed much from the original proposal for the RN but again, just keep in mind, this is a district that neighbors village centers that has many apartment complexes already. And so we're trying to add the ability to build stuff other than apartment complexes and single family homes here. I think I'm doing this one. So in the RO and RLD. This is most of the rest of the town we haven't talked about but what does that include that includes the rest of Amherst Woods. It includes south down to the whole road neighborhood it includes north up to the overlook jive neighbor neighborhood and some of those areas too. And what are we trying to do right now, you cannot build a townhouse there right now. You need a special permit to build an owner occupied duplex right now you need a special permit to build a non owner occupied duplex and triplexes, since they're not a use category. Right now you cannot put them in the RO and RLD zones because they are considered townhouses and apartments. So what are we proposing. We're proposing to allow triplexes by site plan review in this area. We're proposing to allow owner occupied duplexes through the building commissioner and affordable duplexes through the building commissioner and non owner occupied duplexes in site plan review. And then converted dwellings and townhouses were proposing to allow townhouses through special permit and converted dwellings through special permit they're currently allowed by special permit it's then the aquifer recharge area that is causing that green line our original proposal had and I'm not actually sure what the original proposal had but the green shows changes from the original proposal. Other revisions this is. I have self explanatory section for 4.3 cluster development, we've added triplexes to the uses that are permitted. And we've added triplexes to common land calculation requirements section 4.4 plan unit residential development adding triplexes to the uses that are permitted and adding triplexes to density and intensity of use requirements. Section 4.5 open space community development we're adding triplexes to the uses uses that are permitted and section 9.1 non conforming lots and add triplexes to the uses that can be constructed on non conforming lots. We've have removed the definition of a sustainable dwelling. We've expanded. Subdividable dwelling. I'm sorry. Subdividable thank you. Yes. Yes. I hate to receive or remove sustainability. Thank you. So we're removing the subdividable dwelling and 12.51. The three family detached dwelling unit or triplex is a single residential building containing three dwelling units and then moving in 12.52 townhouses were changing changing the three to four. So the ARP again we'll talk about what it is so this includes most of southeast Amherst I would say it's to protect the aquifers. We talked about this and we tried to listen with concerns about development in those areas so we've actually pulled back on our proposal. It for non owner occupied duplexes and triplexes where we had originally proposed site plan review in those areas, and we are now proposing special permit, while still maintaining a proposal of site plan review for owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes converted dwellings we've pulled back and actually proposed no changes. We haven't pulled back we're proposing special permit which was our original proposal there sorry the green is what we've changed since our original proposal the red is all of the changes. And for townhouses, we originally had not proposed a change. We originally proposed to keep them know, but after hearing some concern that that was a little bit exclusive. We are now proposing that we allow them by special permit in the ARP. This means it's still discretionary we have required in all of these sections that sewer connections are required because that to us is one of the most important things you need in this district for multi family housing. The one thing I want to point out that hostels are currently allowed by special permit in this district in the ARP. And we're not trying to change that but a hostile can have 20 beds up to 20 beds I don't know what the ZBA might allow or permit or allow as a special permit for a hostile but the current zoning definition is 20 bed max, which is the equivalent of five units or so if they all have four bedrooms, which fits within the townhouse size that doesn't necessarily mean the ZBA would allow or permit allow a permit with something bigger, but that gives you an idea about triplexes converted dwellings that can't go above four units sort of fit within that number of beds that hostels are allowed by special permit within this district already. So that is our ARP proposal, and Pat. And we're getting rid of subdividable dwellings, because the building commissioner recommends deleting it it's only been used once sense adoption applies to new construction only and so we're going to delete both in the use table and in definitions. Yep. And we're open to your questions. I would like to say one more thing before we get to questions because I didn't do much of the initial reasons behind this we've heard a lot about how bold this present this proposal is. But when you look at the actual proposed changes were really requesting an incremental change in these districts for the permitting of duplexes triplexes and converted dwellings and townhomes one pathway easier. Almost. There are a few areas, particularly with duplexes that we have requested a move of two pathways. Particularly with owner occupied duplexes but in general we're seeking an incremental change for this missing middle. And so, while it is a lot. It is comprehensive. It is could be seen as an incremental change to potentially allow a allow buildings to be built that we want to be built that are having problems coming to the boards for building we're not seeing the applications as much as we can address the housing issues we are having in town and so it's it's in in our mind it's not radical. It is comprehensive. We as Pat stated, to start with, we're not trying to affect one area of town one area of town should not bear the brunt of any of our zoning issues and so that's why we have made it so as you as some people might say large, because if we do one at a time or one use at a time or one zone at a time. We really are asking just one area of town to bear the brunt of our changes and here we're asking the whole town to move incrementally to one. One permit pathway, easier, basically. All right. Thank you Mandy Joe and Pat. Chris, I know you had wanted to make some comments. And I'm wondering whether this would be the time to do that or did you. You still want to do that. I think I would like to do that if. Yeah, and in my comments are rather extensive but I'll try to get through them quickly and if anybody wants a copy of them I'll be happy to make that available. So shall I start. Depending on how long you're going to go. I think I will just tell everyone on this on this meeting that I need to leave and attend to a personal obligation at just about 730. So, if you go longer than that, I will be disappearing and turning the meeting management over to Tom. I certainly hope that the board will hear the, the comments tonight and start deliberation and continue the meeting to March 15 to our next meeting. So that I can rejoin the conversation. So with that. Chris, why don't you go ahead. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Christine Brester planning director and I'd like to offer a few thoughts about the proposed zoning amendments and what the planning department staff has been discussing as we have reviewed the proposal. And by the planning department staff I include Nathaniel Malloy and Rob Mora, building commissioner. I have five main points that I'd like to complete and represents just a portion of what we have discussed. I have five main points that I'd like to make. The first is that the proposal does not currently have the rest robust support of the planning department. I'm honored to take a neutral stance on the zoning amendment and to spend time learning about it understanding it and thinking about its ramifications and how it would work and whether it would accomplish the goals set forth by the proponents. And at this time we feel that we're not ready to recommend this proposal to the planning board. It is currently to all encompassing and too complicated and the consequences and ramifications have not been clearly identified. Number two, I have five points I think I mentioned that number two is we believe the proposal is unlikely to accomplish with the proponents set out to accomplish which is to make home ownership and rental units available to lower and moderate income individuals and families. The planning department believes that the goals of the proponents are worthy and that the town should work to accomplish these goals. However, we believe that the zoning amendment taken in its entirety is not the right mechanism for accomplishing these goals. After many hours of discussion, we have not become clear. We have not come to a clear conclusion that this proposal will help the town reach the goals that they've been that have been set forth by the proponents and here are some examples of things about which we have concerns and this is not a complete list. One example is that there's a disconnect between the proposal and the goals to be found in the proposal on owner occupied duplexes. The proposal to make owner occupied duplexes by a by right use in all residential zoning districts on the face of it seems to make sense. If an investor or developer could purchase a property, build a duplex which is permitted as an owner occupied duplex, ie by a building permit, live in it for a short time and then apply to have it changed to a non owner occupied duplex. If there were no proposed exterior changes, the non owner occupied duplex could then be permitted by administrative approval by the building commissioner with a site plan review waiver. And thereby the non owner, the new non owner occupied duplex could be created without any public hearing or public input and without conditions being set forth that would protect abutting properties from potential problems. We need to take time to establish standards criteria and conditions for duplexes and figure out how to monitor and maintain owner occupancy when it is required and how to monitor changes in ownership and occupancy. Here's one example of unintended consequences of the zoning proposal. Another one is allowing triplexes in the rld zoning district is another example that may not have the desired effect of providing housing for low and moderate income individuals and families. In order to permit a duplex in the rld zoning district, you would need 100,000 square feet of property to meet the law area requirements which is two point roughly two and a quarter acres. It is unlikely that someone with a property that large would build a triplex and, but would more likely subdivide the property into two frontage lots and sell the lots for a single family development for large expensive houses. In the RO zoning district, you would need 50,000 square feet or 1.15 acres to build a triplex. So, we asked ourselves the question with someone with a property that large want to build a triplex and rented out, where would they sell the property to be developed for an expensive single family home. Again, it's doubtful that this change would have the desired effect of providing housing for low and moderate income individuals and families. In addition, in the RO and rld zoning districts, these tend to be located in areas that are not well served by public transportation or other types of services such as stores. So these zoning districts are not ideal locations for multifamily dwellings such as triplexes, especially for people and families who may not have multiple cars per household. One issue of concern is the unlikelihood that low and moderate income individuals and families can or will take advantage of the proposed streamline permitting process due to the expense of buying property and building a house. In the opinion of the planning department it is unlikely that middle and low income individuals and families will be able to afford to purchase property and embers and build an owner occupied duplex. With a stellar credit rating and history of having previously developed and managed property, the bank is unlikely to make a loan for such a project. The only people who are entities who will be able to get a loan to build this type of development are investors and high income individuals and families who are unlikely to want to live in a duplex. If they were to take on this type of project they would be likely to want to get the highest rent possible for the adjacent or second unit, rather than renting it out to a low or moderate income individual or family, although they could do that for altruistic reasons that we believe that that is unlikely. We adopted a zoning amendment that allows ADUs to be permitted by right in most situations. We should see how this new ADU bylaw plays out over time and what the issues are and enforcing the owner occupancy requirement, as well as other aspects of the new ADU bylaw. Let's take time to review how the new ADU bylaw has worked before we launch into a full blown zoning amendment that would treat other types of uses the way we're treating ADUs. Let's find out how many people have taken advantage of the new ADU bylaw, how it is being enforced and what the results have been for ADUs and this may give us some insight into how other zoning amendments would play out. The third point I wanted to make is this proposal appears to run counter to the master plan and that it would encourage development of properties outside of the downtown and the village centers and outside of already developed areas. The master plan encourages growth and density in the downtown and village centers and in already developed parts of town and encourages preservation of outlying areas. This proposal would encourage scattered small developments throughout town, including in parts of town that we have worked long and hard to preserve, such as the Bay Road area and other rural parts of town. We should be focused in areas that are already developed and we should promote infill in these areas. Aspects of this proposal do that, but as a whole the proposal does not protect our outlying areas and does not focus development in downtown and village centers where the master plan says that development should go. My fourth point is that Emerson is not like other towns that have done away with single family zoning and I know there are a number of them throughout the nation. More than half of our residents are students and there's a tremendous pressure on our housing stock to be occupied by students. Emerson has a student population that exceeds their year round population, and we cannot assume that new dwelling units created through this zoning amendment will be occupied by permanent residents and their families. It is more likely that investors will take advantage of the zoning amendments to create housing that will be occupied by students. As we know students and developers of housing for students can outbid and outpay middle and low income families and individuals. The planning department believes that the new units that will be created by the proposed zoning amendment will be occupied primarily by students and owned by investors and developers. We really plan for locations for housing for student populations and place conditions on such housing that make it likely that the units will be managed and maintained to the advantage of the neighbors and the town. And we should be creative in allowing and encouraging housing for low and moderate income. Individuals and homeowners such as the project that is being proposed by the Valley Community Development Corporation on Ball Lane in North Amherst, which will be reviewed by the zoning board of appeals in the near future. This type of project will be subsidized by the state and the cost of the land will be lower per unit because the developer can take advantage of chapter 40 B, which allows the zoning board of appeals to approve more units per lot. And it will ordinarily be allowed by our current zoning loosening permitting processes for so many use categories and so many areas all at once will produce a flood of proposals by investors and developers and is unlikely to result in owner occupied homes being built for by and for moderate and low income individuals and families as envisioned by the proponents. So what that is, there are aspects of the zoning amendment which have merits, and which could be developed into a workable set of proposals, but as a whole as it currently stands it's too broad and all encompassing to have a positive impact on housing and some of the aspects that we found to have merit were making owner occupied duplexes by right in all residential zoning districts. If we couple it with making non owner occupied duplexes by special permit in all residential zoning districts. This would prevent the conversion of owner occupied duplexes to non owner occupied duplexes without a public hearing and without conditions. We want to create a list of standards and conditions for owner occupied duplexes and non owner occupied duplexes, just as we did for a to use to make sure that these properties are managed and maintained properly. Another proposal that we felt have merit was creating the new use category of triplexes, separating three unit buildings from apartment you from the apartment use category and now separating it from the townhouse category. It makes sense, and these types of uses may be permitted in a similar manner as duplexes. In other words, owner occupied and non owner occupied. Again, we should establish criteria and conditions to make sure that they are well managed. We also think that eliminating the category of subdividable dwellings is a good idea. This category has only been used once since it was established two decades ago. There are aspects of the zoning amendment that should be pursued with the proper criteria and conditions worked out for each and the unintended consequences recognized and mechanisms put in place to avoid them to the extent possible. So I have just presented a few pieces of the proposal that should be moved forward. And the planning department is ready and willing within our time constraints to work with the proponents to further develop these parts of the proposal. The planning department recommends slowing down proceeding with caution and examining how each of the proposed changes will play out. We do not recommend adopting the proposal wholesale in its current form. We recommend against making hopeful assumptions about the outcome without carefully studying the potential pitfalls. We recommend moving forward with the more promising aspects of the proposal, and we look forward to working with the proponents to do so. Thank you. Thank you Chris. I will open it up to Mandy Joe and Pat, if you guys would like to respond to that before we open up to board questions. One thank you Chris and it's a lot of that was difficult to hear. I also want to say that the kind of developer who builds a triplex or converts an existing single family home into one is not necessarily kind of developer who is going to do massive building and massive rents. There are there it a lot depends on the work of cultivating an ecosystem of incremental developers in town, small developers small landlords, small owners and therefore landlords. And we need the zoning to support that work. The other piece of their, their changes in Amherst and nationally that support the kind of integrated incremental growth that we're asking for in all areas. This includes the fact that population growth has slowed household sizes are decreasing and there's an increase nationally in single person households. In addition people are choosing to build progressively smaller homes, because they are less expensive and more sustainable and have the potential to fill the starter home cap. I've used my son as an example. He and his wife have joined with another family that has a young child, and they have been looking for two family homes to buy so that because it's cheaper they can afford that the combined incomes of both families would make it possible for them to be home I've used the example before of friends of mine in Pelham who have developed and lived in duplex in Pelham and raise their children there and are aging in place there. So it is not what we're what the potential is here, and the potential is to expand who can purchase something in Amherst, because you can buy a single family help home with support from other family members who want to live with you or friends who want to live and work with you. So I think that I think that we're afraid in Amherst of changes but not making changes is not going to benefit the community and I appreciate your willingness to work on parts of this with with us and we will take you up on that. But I really think that we need to open our minds in Amherst about what's the potential here for changing and infilling in small ways that make housing affordable to firefighters, you know, low income people, moderate income people. Mandy, you'll be more articulate. I'm not sure I'll be much more articulate. Yeah, I want to thank Chris for her very thoughtful statement and concerns and all and as with Pat I look forward to working with the planning staff to see if we can reach a compromise that the planning staff can get behind. You know that we, I would really like to be able to do that. I need more time obviously to digest what what Chris just said, but some things struck me. You know, runs counter to the master plan because it encourages property development outside the downtown and village centers, except the Pomeroy Village Center includes the RO area. It includes the RDR LD area and so how do we encourage development in the Pomeroy Village Center if we refuse to add the these uses to the RO and RLD you know so those are sort of the questions that we as pat pat and I talked about as we proposed this right and so those are some of the questions I would come back with in terms of maybe your solution is a village center overlay I don't know right. Yeah, but maybe the solution is to change those areas from RO or RLD zoning to an RVC zoning right yeah and I'm not sure I think we would support some of that right and and starting those conversations. You know, let's continue those types of thinking and conversations. I'd love to hear what conditions you think we're missing because we tried to base our conditions off of the, the, the ADU conditions. So talking, I think there's just a lot of talking that needs to go on because we looked at the ADU conditions for duplex and triplex conditions and things like that and then, you know, how do we respond to. Well, they might not have the intended effect because the lots are large, and they might just be subdivided into single family homes. Well, if you're not concerned that triplexes will be built in the RLD because they just divide the lot. I guess my response is what's the harm in allowing triplexes in the RLD then right and seeing which way they go right I think that goes back to Pat's concern about we're afraid. Right, well, it's not going to be used that way it would be used this way so let's not even try it. And I think one of the things we're asking you as the planning board to think about is, let's try some of this right let's not continue to be afraid to do anything because we don't know exactly what will happen. Let's try some stuff and and see. Can I just jump in real quick Chris you and listed smaller proposals and things that you would you're willing to work going forward I noted. Obviously triplexes was something you wanted to add and then deleting the subdividable category what were there other things on that list, just to the in case they become part of discussion we want to talk about today. So with the smaller proposals you want to continue, you would continue forward. I did say that we would can be interested in looking at the owner occupied duplexes by right. But with the caveat that we would make non owner occupied duplexes by special permit, so that there wouldn't be that danger of them of owner occupied duplexes becoming non owner occupied, kind of by accident. So I think about all those permutations and Rob more and Nate Malloy and I have been having conversations about, you know, well if we do this, what will happen what's going to happen down the road and how can we put a stop gap in place that will prevent that negative thing from happening while allowing the good thing to happen so there may be more aspects of this proposal that I think are good idea I've actually been thinking about this whole proposal ever since it was ever since it came to our attention and I didn't know how to react to it. It was so big. I didn't know how to respond and so this morning I just started writing my brains out and, you know, thank you. This is what I came up with so it isn't a complete thought. And there's more to be said but it's the best I could do for this time. Thank you Chris. So I guess I'll open it up to questions or comments from the board I'm not sure if you guys have specific questions for many Joe and Pat we can start there. I see Janet. So, um, I have a lot of things to say but I'm going to limit it. I think this is a good proposal to start a dialogue that we need to have. We all agree on the problem. We all have the common goal like how do you make space in Amherst for, you know, low moderate, you know, income families. How do you make it how can people enter a marketplace that is just, you know, housing prices have gone up everywhere they've gone up in our town. Rental prices are through the roof, not necessarily because of a national housing crisis because we have too many students that are on UMass campus is just thousands of students have been admitted to UMass over 20 years. And they've built 1500 or 1400 units and they're adding 400 more and that demand. You know, any, anything that we look at we have to look at other college towns grappling these issues because we're not going to solve it just by allowing more housing at over 1500 housing units build an Amherst we're in a boom, but prices are going up because we can now charge $2,000 for 450 square feet to a student and so I think. But we need to figure out like how do we work with the situation we have. So I, so I think what we need in our zoning bylaw like I appreciate the idea of like things being treated like some more clarity some more simplification of our zoning bylaw more consistency. I think we should have the same design standards for all housing, you know it all should fit in it all should look good it all should be in a relationship to what's around it. One, I have two kind of issues like major issue is we already allowed multifamily housing in a rezoning district, we already allow for plexes, but we call them converted dwellings, we allow triplexes they're called subdividable dwellings. We allow a house with a duplex in the backyard, we allow seven units of housing on an acre and RG in my RN, I could build two more units of my property which is three quarters of an acre, we're already there. The question is why aren't people doing more of that and I think that's the nut that we have to crack and I don't think it's because people feel nervous going to the ZBA. If you go to the ZBA, and if you go to the planning board it's the same process you still have to file notice, you have to pay us some, you know, I don't know if it's $300 fee. You're going to wind up seeing us three probably two or three times sometimes five times in the planning board, depending on the questions we have how well put together the application is. The applications go faster with an attorney or a really good architect who knows the process. That's the same thing that happens in front of the ZBA we're really kind of parallel tracks. The ZBA has a little bit more power to say no, because they can be a little more outward looking in the neighborhood. I don't think we want to lose that in a college town. And so I don't know that that the process of going to the ZBA is stopping multifamily housing. And so fixing that I don't think does anything it just moves. You know, a process that involves money preparation architects, you know, a stormwater management plan, whatever all the things that we require. It just moves it from ZBA to us. So I think that, you know, but all these kind of changes and the intricacies and them are really hard to follow but it has made me sit down and say like oh what would I do. And maybe we don't call it subdividable dwelling and maybe we don't have so many like strange little quirks between converted subdividable, but also adding a to triplex when you already can have a triplex and these two different ways doesn't make sense to me so I think, there's some kind of simplicity and clarity that we need to bring to the bylaws so we all understand that we already have triplexes we don't need to add the category. Anyway, so that that's just my first thoughts. Thank you. Andrew. Thanks Tom. And incredibly thought provoking presentation, as well as you know Chris I think your, your comments, equally thought provoking I. I don't want to pile on echo a lot of what was said, it's really, really big, and it's really hard to kind of wrap around around it I do want to point out things that I did like, though right that. You know, eliminating the subdivide or the subdivide. Sorry for wrote some notes here but they're a little little. I'm clear to read. I think rules, you know, getting more residential around village centers. Great. Right. I think the willingness to look more closely at the aquifer recharge protection. Because of advancements in sewer access. I think that's, I think that's great to be more willing to look at that. I love the simplicity and definitions. You know, single family duplex triplex townhouse apartment like that is something that I think it's really easy to understand and and something I would be supportive of. I also really like this notion that mixing housing types will increase diversity. Now you brought that up early on and I think that's something that is worth a lot of thought and consideration. I will, I will just sort of, again, finish in with. There's a lot here. It's hard to get kind of our arms around in its entirety. But happy to hear Chris say that she is, she is willing to move, you know, use planning department resources to help us tackle some of these because it's, it really is. I think a great conversation starter. I think they're, they're really some very positive things here and I hope that we can leverage some of the enthusiasm and the call to action and actually like. Move towards action because that is, that is something that we need to do. Thank you Andrew. And I do think we had a pretty robust discussion. Last week, which hopefully you guys were able to listen to you and you obviously responded to and, and that had to do with village centers and I do wonder if something that, you know, we're going to discuss in the future would be an overlay district that allows these kind of uses in the way that you're describing them but only within certain, you know, distances around those particular areas as maybe case study or something to that matter so. So I do think we're considering those things even if we don't want to deploy them universally but I think we can put them on a plate for discussion and some of these zones as well. When we talk more about our overlays and whatnot. Other questions from the board comments. Johanna. Thanks Tom, and thanks Pat and Mandy Joe and thank you Chris. There is housing being built in Amherst now so I want to give a nod to Janet's point. I wouldn't call it a boom though, because we have such a huge deficit from years of not building housing in town that, you know, we are not out of the budget and and so I do think we need to be thinking really hard and thoughtfully about how we generate housing in this town how we deal with our student population, while achieving, you know, our climate goals and the goals of the master plan, and I think I do kind of take issue with this idea that like, it has to be a townwide approach and that increasing density throughout the entire entire town by making the permit pathway easier through the entire town for certain types of housing stock might approach because while I understand maybe the justice arguments for one area of town not quote bearing the brunt of zoning issues as a town we have decided that the places where we want to see denser development is our downtown and in our village center and that's where the focus should be. And so I'm really interested in how do we do more of that steer development to those places which then, you know, helps with our climate goals and our, you know, kind of livable walkable communities and doesn't encourage sprawl. So that's one piece to me that feels important. And then, you know, I feel like if there's one person in town who lives and breathes the goals of the master planets Chris breast strip and so when she says don't make hopeful assumptions without examining the pitfalls. I've got a lot of weight with me and I, you know, if just very, you know, kind of off the cuff Chris is able to say well here's one pitfall that I'm concerned about you know based on my experience and here's another and here's another. I think we do need to explore those and give them. You know, I guess the, the breathing room to to be explored before charging in. Thank you. I have Karen next. struggling. Thank you for. Chris, I still. So, the details. We're having a bit of trouble hearing your current we're getting an echo. I'm not sure if it's, she may need to turn off the other computer. Can you hear me now. Yeah, I think we're still getting an echo though. We couldn't hear you, Pam. Yeah, I was muted. Karen, you're muted now. And you're here twice. So maybe if you eliminate one of your images and just have one presence here that could help. I'll go to Janet, and then we can come back to you Karen if we give it a try. Karen, I wonder if you could call in to we could just hear you that way because that's the most important thing. I just want to say very quickly that most, you know, not completely but mostly the RO and RLD, Outlying Rural and and Residential and Rural density. If you look at the map, they're mostly farmlands and wetlands and resource areas and so there is, you know, and so it also we see some very large homes moving into that area too but these are like, you know, Amherst's prime soil soils of statewide interest or importance and, you know, it's where we're getting a lot of our food and increasingly getting more and more food so I think it's not an elitist thing to say oh we should protect these. It's part of our strategy for climate change it's part of it for a sustainable food system. I think those lands need to get protected they are often right next to wetlands and wildlife habitat and wetlets are up taking tremendous amounts of carbon as are you know our fallow fields in your hay fields and things like that so I don't. I do really support the master plan goal of directing density towards already, you know, developed areas. Thank you Janet. Thank you for that quite a few times so I think that's something you want to consider as we move forward. We have any other comments as Karen want to try to come back, Bruce any comments before we move on. No. We have a large collection of attendees I'm guessing. I want to hear some public comment today. We are approaching the eight o'clock mark so maybe we should take our five minute eight o'clock break now and come back for public comment if that makes sense for everybody. Okay, so I have 756. I'm back on 802 by the time you guys get out of here 802. Thank you. So turn off your cameras and mute, and we'll see you back to your seat. 802, and I see most people are coming back, but I'm still waiting on Andrew Johanna Bruce. And Karen. I'm just going to quickly turn off my camera while I finish eating dinner. Me too. Okay, welcome back everybody's 802. I think we're still waiting on Bruce. I think before we go to public comment. Let's see if Karen would like to follow up on her comments. Karen, do you want to unmute. Yeah. Okay, let's see if I can do this. You sound. Yeah. Sorry for all this confusion. I have to go to the Apple store tomorrow. But Chris, the comments that you made were so specific. And I must say that I echo everything when you keep saying Mandy, Joe and Pat, that we have to get over our fear. You know, you can call it fear or you can call it caution. You can look at one specific area and look at what could possibly be a really catastrophic effect on a neighborhood and that's what we have to be very careful. There's a lot of responsibility to neighbors to to a whole town in, in lifting restrictions and I do agree all of us want I applaud you because all of us want a kind of an infill and a possibilities I have children that want to be able to live in Amherst and live for these big single family homes. So I understand what you're talking about. But the reason why we say go intramentally is because we, we have a very special town as we keep talking about with this amazing quantity of students right there. Developers that are so eager to be able to melt these opportunities that what we want to create these middle family possibilities and I like that. I mean, I know that it's very nice to live closer to people to share homes. And that's what young people are doing. We need to go in that direction, but we have to be cautious and Chris, the way that you want to address this with the town to go talk about the possibilities that you see with your experience as something to work on and work in that way. I really applaud that. So thank you. Thank you, Karen. And there's no other comments from the board, we can go to public comment on this particular topic. So if you have if you're in the audience and we'd like to give us a public comment, please raise your hand and we'll go through them you'll have three minutes each. So we've got Pam's already ahead of me. And remember to give us your name and address in emmerced prior to your comments, and we will start with Melissa Faris who's had her hand up for quite some time so Pam can we bring over Melissa. Okay. I'm Melissa Faris I'm here with my husband Graham Caldwell we're at 285 Lincoln Avenue, and RG district for those who don't know that offhand. And we read through the, the proposal very carefully. And we, we had some questions and obviously some concerns. One of the questions is, what would your proposals be for the historic district where generally speaking there's a design component to the, the building plans, and that is a large part I think a part of the special planning process that you're trying to wipe out so we'd like to know if you consider that, you know, to be something that you would, you would be looking at in the site plan review, and how it would be reviewed now as opposed to how it had been before. We do think that in terms of where people would want to develop it's it's obviously in the town centers as one of the board members said in terms of bearing the branch it's where the public transport is it's where the restaurants are it's where, it's a livable city life so of course that development is going to center in the RG zones and also going to center around the university. I, I don't know where the data came from on your slide that suggested that these potential duplexes and townhomes would be occupied by families I don't know if you can cite where you, where you got that information but I think that for the amount that we're seeing in the town they can really only be afforded by the students. And I don't think that it's reasonable to expect families to want to live in the same apartment building as a number of apartments that are occupied by groups of students. I just don't think it's, it's from like noise reasons it's going to even happen. And then I guess my other question is, why would you not fix the regulations around the housing issues that exist before changing the zoning. You know, oh at some point we should update the sound issues and at some point we should update the maintenance issues and at some point we should update the parking issues but why wouldn't you change that before you change the zoning because obviously those are all deeply impacted by any kind of development that is made based on the zoning changes and to assume that it's going to happen later after the buildings are built and the people are living in them. You know, big leap of faith that those of us who live around here probably don't really want to take and now I'm almost out of time so thank you. I do want to say that I really applaud the idea of bringing in a mix of incomes into the neighborhood. Graham and I moved here from New York and we think that it would be wonderful to see more of that. Thank you Melissa. And it looks like we have Janet Keller who's next on my list. Can we bring Janet over please. Jenny can I meet yourself. Thank you. I would also like to offer my appreciation of the tremendous effort and the desire to make more housing available. And but and I would like to also give tremendous support to the more targeted approach that Chris is offering to work on and the detailed more detailed approach based on the master plan and the resources that are to be protected so that we all may have the use of them wet wetlands and aquifers and flood plains. For example, our cheap by jowl with farmland both active and fellow in these areas and it all works together as a complex system that is very vulnerable to any development I can't imagine. If we for example had to start using the aquifers up here in North Amherst for drinking water that we be comfortable with just a little bit of sewage in them. So, and we need them for the flood services they provide. And also for the carbon that is sequestered in the ground. There are so many multiple important reasons and I'm, I'm looking forward to learning more about from Chris about the ideas for making for working out the details of moving forward. Thank you. Thank you, Janet. John, my list is john and partner. I'm bringing john over and john you can unmute yourself, remember to give us your name and address. I would like to thank Chris and the planning board for expressing a lot of the concerns that I had regarding the size and specificity of the proposal. I just think there's way too much in it to do everything all at once everywhere. And part of the problem. I really applaud the social aspects of the program with regard to diversity and inclusivity, etc. But the goals around that are very aspirational and not well defined and will take years to step into effect. Whereas the zoning changes that would permit expansive new development would take effect fairly immediately. And the results would not be clear for several years I don't. I don't know how those two things got united the social aspects and the developmental push to go forward as fast as possible. One of the things that I have trouble with in terms of interpreting what's being proposed and how to affect the town and how we can make decisions is a lack of data in the town. And that's a way to cross reference. For instance, the, I don't even know where to go to find information on current duplexes triplexes etc, where they are, and then cross reference that with, okay now is that a house that's predominantly student occupied or student occupied and as it had behavioral problems, the town doesn't track behavioral problems in given properties for more than a year. I mean it's, we're trying to make decisions on issues where we have poor data. And that makes it very difficult to objectively look at things and decide what to do, specifically around the aquifer protection issue. Where do we go to get an hydrology study of the Lawrence swamp area and how building in the Amherst Woods area would affect that and what would, you know, if we put for, you know, triplexes there okay so there's, you know, three dense, basically three dense occupancy units there. But there could be up to 12 cars. Okay, there's a lot of runoff and a lot of black top and is that being figured into what's happening with the Lawrence swamp aquifer. I have, there's a lack of data there makes me very queasy to make decisions about how to handle valuable resource like that without having more to go on. But again, you know, I thank everybody for putting a lot on the table to discuss I think there's too much to push through all at once, and I hope that things are looked at in a very prudent and cautious way. Thanks. Thank you john. Next up is thirsty Pam can name and address please. Three minutes. Did we just lose Dorothy. I think we just did. Next up I have Joan of Mira. Okay, I'll believe Dorothy if you can hear me come on back. We'll get to your next Dorothy. Joan if you can unmute yourself. How's that. Very good. Thank you. Daniel Wallace. I'm related to general mirror. 37 Cosby Avenue. I'd like to. There's a project being proposed at 98 fearing, which I believe is an example of how these new proposed regulations would affect it. At 98 fearing it's currently a three family. Unit. The reason for this proposal is to put four more units at 98 fearing. This is a single lot. So seven units on a single lot. And at present, I think it would be under the scrutiny of the zoning board. I think we should be if we have these new proposed regulations, this seven unit project would go through. And I think that's telling of, you know, we keep talking about how this is going to play out. Well, I think we should look at 98 fearing to see the impact of these proposed zoning changes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's go to Dorothy Pam, who is at the top of our list before bring Dorothy back over. Hi Dorothy. Hi, how are you. Hi, I'm Dorothy Pam to 29 amity street. So this is a lot of great ideas have been talked about. I do agree that the plan presented was getting more and more complex, and I couldn't find any copy of the change slides in the packet, or I couldn't find even find the packet so that was kind of a wash there. I think in order to achieve the goals that have been described. We have to look beyond the market, and we have to do some kind of what's been going on at ball lane, which is, there's going to be some people who are going to be able to buy some housing to be able to go beyond the market, but that's because there's some subsidy. And what I have been suggesting all along with something like sunny side gardens which was done through a major board which had Eleanor Roosevelt on it and Clarence Stein, and I believe they gave the land the land was given free the aim was to make working apartments like working man's apartments in London. Small apartments houses owner occupied one two and three families so you could buy a house a two family rent one unit and that covers your mortgage. Where are we going to get that land well Amherst College did offer a 99 year lease for $1 to put up the DPW but it was not a good site for DPW because it was surrounded by some lovely owner occupied homes. A one, some kind of a planned community, which is what sunny side guards now it's historical district but it was a planned community when I was there could do that and it would bring us the entry level middle level housing that we've been we were saying we desperately need, but I don't think the market can get it for us because of the competition with the high student rentals, so we cannot depend on the market. So, I also want to really say thank you for all the work that's gone on and Chris. I really appreciate that you and your planning staff in the building department sat down. Your comments if you say you wrote them today I could just say they were very well thought out clearly you've been in your mind working on this for a long time. It was very helpful, and it showed the deep knowledge and experience that you have in, you know, working and planning in this town. It's not easy. It's not simple. So I just want to say thank you for that. And I think that we can work on the goals that Mandy Joe and Pat have brought up because we share those goals, but try to find some other way to get some subsidy public subsidy so that we can build housing that will actually be something that middle class working class people can afford to buy. And that's my hope and suggestion. So thank you very much. Thank you Dorothy. I have Melissa Ferris again. If that's a legacy hand so be it but Melissa also had a partner. So there might be someone else on the call. So maybe we can bring Melissa over and verify that this is not Melissa speaking the second time. Yes, this is grand call to her. Okay, yeah so we also live at 285 Lincoln with her. And so yeah I wanted to also mention the 98 Fearing Streets project which is a lot of our property. And it's a good example of the type of things that we are sort of afraid could be coming down the fight because of this, which is it's a three unit building already that has a cards in the garage. And the LLC that owns it out of Ultertown wants to put up. I believe it's three units, three buildings in the in the back that Melissa says are three units. There's four bedrooms, four bedrooms each. And right now all we have is that is the that having to go to get a federal permit to have any like neighborhoods say and what's happening and it seems like what you're proposing it's more to the rubber stamp how they can do, which is a nightmare for us because it's students. And when it was being presented to the historic, one of the historic boards. A few of the neighbors surrounding it who've been living there for you know decade plus with families said they would leave if that if this development came to fruition they they would have to sell it. I, in my mind, begin a cascade where the only people who wanted to buy those lots for other people who were going to develop it and rented students kind of eviscerating the neighborhood. Also I wanted to point out that the developer who wanted to develop it presented it as nine units, because had you done 10 which he was allowed to do one of them would have had to have been an affordable unit. So he, there's no altruism there. And it seems to me like if you want if and I love the idea of getting more, you know, different incomes and like all sorts of different people and Tim into the town. And it seems like the way to do that would be incentivizing, you know, affordable housing, not just giving like easy, giving it making it easy for developers to have less interaction with the zoning board in the public. It would need to require more affordable units for whatever project they're doing or, you know, I don't know the specificity of it but like that would be a real way to actually incentivize this type of things with your profit driven. And also just wanted to say that, you know, it's a this is a very sensitive ecosystem of like the students and the people who live here and taking away guardrails seemed like a really potentially could potentially have a very good impact. Okay, that's all I wanted to say. Thanks. Thank you so much. And next up, we have Frederick Hartwell. Frederick over and get a name and address please. Hi, Fred. Can you unmute. Okay you're unmuted Fred. Go ahead. We cannot hear you Fred so I don't know if you're having an issue with your mic. We're unmuted and we can't hear you. And we'll give him a moment to try to fix that and we can come back to Frederick in a minute. Let's move on to Ira Brick. Hello, Ira. Hi. I'm Ira Brick, 255 Strong Street. I can see where it shouldn't be a hardship to earn some rental income in your home via a duplex or ADU, both of which are already allowed. But then there's the problem that Christine pointed out tonight of an investor being able to hack into our regulations to turn it into a non owner occupied student rental. Many people in emmer share this concern. There is an infinite demand for student housing here, and a growing invasive flood of outside investors who are not at all concerned about maintaining our town's balance livability diversity and attainability. When we discuss triplexes, we need to remember that every triplex will have at least 12 students and their guests and 12 cars and their guest cars allowed in that house, maybe one of several triplexes in that neighborhood. I've heard no discussion in this proposal about how to control the negative unintended consequences that could and probably will happen. If anything happens, if you were to pass this proposal, and then there's a buying frenzy by the many student housing investors who are already calling so many of us repeatedly. How will you control the surge of student housing in our neighborhoods. And finally, why not just install those controls now. Thank you. Thank you, Ira. We can try Fred one more time. All right, Fred, unmute yourself and let's see if we can hear you. We're not getting you just yet. Well, Fred, we can't hear you. You may want to try our dial up number. Use your phone and call in. We'll keep our eyes peeled for you. But it doesn't seem that this connection is working for years so we're going to have to move on for the moment, but we'll pay attention for you. Is that a legacy hand or do you have another comment or bring door feedback? I have one sentence to add to the discussion of 98 fearing that the plan includes a parking lot of about 24 cars so that all the surrounding houses will be looking into a few little buildings, but almost all the green red had disappeared and a parking lot of 24 cars. And that is so destructive of the trees of nature of what we want to have in neighborhoods we want to have green space we want to have, and there's almost no space for the students to actually mingle outside either. It's just the trees on other people's properties around them, because their trees will have been all and cut down. So we have to really be careful that we try to keep a balance. Somebody pointed out that once a house has become totally student run house where there's no owner occupied. And we have examples where this isn't we don't make into supper. We're not guessing. We can show you all the examples. We could take you around and show you house after house after house. Once that has happened. It's very hard for to go back and to become a reasonable residents again. So it's very quick to destroy a neighborhood takes a long time to build up one. And this neighborhood does is very diverse and has students living very well, but the prices are very high now. We all want to have more affordable housing. We all want people to be able to buy a home. And as Karen said, you want some many people want their children to be able to live nearby and find that that's just almost impossible. So we share we share so many of the goals that Pat and Mandy Joe Joe put forward, but it's the problem is how to do it. And I think we really do have to come up with some subsidy to try to save things. Thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. Chris, you have your hand up. I don't know if you want to respond to those comments in particular. I just wanted to clarify something about the 98 fearing street property. I don't want to talk too much about it because it's coming before the zoning board. But the proposal is to put in three duplexes on a lot that already has a building that has three units in it. So the three duplexes would add six units. And just to clarify right now. Those three duplexes would need to get approval from the zoning board of appeals with a special permit. That's a discretionary permit so the zoning board of appeals can say no. The zoning board of appeals can cut down the number of units. I don't want to discuss this anymore but I just wanted to make that point clear. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I'd like to give Mandy Joe and Pat a chance, Janet and Bruce before we go on to still respond to any of those comments, unless you have something Janet in particular. Yeah, I was, I have a question for the public. So I wonder if this would be a good point I can wait till later, but I was interested in asking the people in the RG or around the 98 fearing street would they feel differently about this proposal. If it was half only 50% of the units could be students or if it was all non students like is there is, you know, just trying to see how people react to those different ideas, since it's a public hearing. Yeah, I mean, it seems as though that people are concerned about parking versus grass area and scale of buildings. It seems like it's, it's more than just that. I don't agree, but could we, could we ask for their response because that, you know, and I would actually love to look at 98 fearing maybe at another meeting or get a presentation. I really don't think we should talk more about 98 fearing because it is coming before the zoning board of appeals and they have to hear all this information, new and fresh and we don't want the public commenting on that project now I was just giving a clarification on the process so I think we better cut off that discussion about that project. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Bruce, did you have another comment regard to. Well, I was going to say that. The first questioner asked, what is the, how does the local historic district commission in the historic districts fair in relation to all the Mandy Joan path are proposing. You know, it's simply going to answer using that example but I don't have to comment on the structure of it simply that the process brings that that brought that project to the local historic district commission and as it happens Karen both Karen and I are still sit on that commission. So the, so the answer to the question I guess is that really nothing changes in that regard. And that project is in the public eye now because it came to the local historic district commission. So, the answer is that if there's any change, I mean there is no change but what it does actually do is give one more opportunity for public to be involved in the thoughtful process. Quick, before I get to Andrew, Mandy or Pat, did you have any comments in response to the public comments. I was going to respond to the sort of the questions that were asked and Bruce actually responded to one which is the our proposal doesn't change the requirements for lots that are in the local historic district those requirements would still stand. And there was a question about why would we not fix the regulations and stuff before changing the zoning well we're actually working as a council to fix some of that right. Rental permitting regulations have been in front of the council community resources committee for about a year now. And they're getting close to being referred or or moved back towards council consideration and out of committee. And that same committee is looking at the public nuisance for the same reason and so it's it's a process that is happening in some sense simultaneously or that one was started before. In some sense before this proposal came forward and so it's not that we're not it's that we're doing these together, in a sense or simultaneously because the town can do stuff simultaneously it's not one or the other. Thank you. And Andrew. And actually Mandy Joe what you just was talking we're talking about remind me one of the quotes I saw in your presentation and I'd love to, if you can maybe share the source of that Brookings report but just, you know, the commentary there around assuming renters will be bad neighbors. You know, I thought was really very interesting piece. I'd love to be able to look at that report more detail. If you know my share in the source and then also I was wondering Chris, would it be possible or if we've ever considered like inviting maybe planning directors from other communities that face some of these problems I know Bruce has got a very ambitious project that he's outlined to really do some research reach out to folks but wondering whether it might be useful to invite somebody from a community that faces similar problems for like open Q&A. So, those are my comments, thanks. Thank you, Andrew. Are there any other final board or presenter comments. See any Chris will meet your help about kind of next steps here from what I gather Mandy Joe your objective was to get an endorsement from this board from what I'm hearing that might not happen as a whole towards this today. I'm just wondering if we want to keep this open for another two weeks till the next meeting or if we. If you want to reconsider how Mandy Joe how you'd like us to move forward or Chris how you'd like us to move forward. I recommend that you continue this public hearing till March 15, and Pam could probably tell me. Give me advice about what time to recommend we do have a historic preservation plan presentation that's coming up but if you move this. To March 15 that's 635 and then kind of made a promise to yourself that you would talk about this for an hour and then allow the historic preservation plan people to make their presentation and maybe go back to this if you had time or maybe you'd resolve it in an hour but anyway, that would be my recommendation March 15 that's 635. Mandy Joe your hand up. Yeah. Given what Chris said tonight. We would actually request maybe two meetings from now because it will take us a little bit of time to meet with Chris. And the planning staff to talk about what they would like to see changed. As I, as we said earlier on in some of the meetings before the public hearing we would really like to work with everyone to get something that is a positive recommendation that the planning staff can get behind and given what she said tonight. We're not sure two weeks is enough for us to not only meet with them, but also then come back with the changes, right. I expect it will take a little longer than two weeks to get through all of that. And so we were hoping that it might be not the next meeting but the meeting after that I'm not sure whether you're on the fifth or whether you're on the 29th. So that's why I don't know a date, but I'd like Chris's thoughts on that. And what may I speak. Sure. Yes. Okay, so you could continue this meeting this public hearing to the, to the fifth. We have reserved the March 29 date if we absolutely need it. So, if you're willing to meet March 29. That would be the fifth Wednesday of the month. And usually we reserve those for kind of emergency situations. Otherwise, you would go to April 5, which I don't think we currently have anything on the agenda for that night. Okay, many Joe does that seem reasonable to you April 5 at 635 does seem reasonable to us it does. I wonder what Janet. Yeah, I was going to come. Thanks, Tom. Thanks. Thanks, Mandy, Joe. I wonder, is there a way that other people like some planning board members can also participate in sort of workshopping. I've been. I know this has been sort of a struggle for since the town council to figure out like how to work together or how to kind of take next steps together because I'd be interested in being part of that process and I think maybe other board members might want to make some drafts or make suggestions. Chris, how does that complicate the process. It would have to be a public meeting. So, I feel like it would be more beneficial if staff met with the proponents and talked about our concerns and then came and presented something to in the public and then you can have a working session as the planning board but I think it would would complicate things if you tried to have members of the planning board be in that working session without making it a public meeting. Is that depend on the number because I know, I mean I've worked with you and on different drafts of things. But I don't want to say just me but I just think it's if it's less than a quorum because I've done that with you and Ben when he was around so manager. So, it depends on if the planning board says these two members go work then it becomes a public body. And so it, it, it doesn't depend on quorum versus not quorum it depends on sort of if a public body sort of assigns a subgroup to work on something. Then it becomes a public body that has to follow open meeting law. And then the board if a public body assigns one person to work on something it's not because one person is not a group. So, that's that's as much as I can say. I genuinely offer my services or ideas. If the board wants to put actually say we'd like a few people to come. I think that also be appropriate. Janet there's also consideration about having another very productive working session like we've had before and maybe there's an opportunity for Mandy Joe or others to join us in one of our planning sessions so that's something that's going to be up for discussion, possibly later today so I guess I see your hand. I was just going to say that because I know Janet's concerned about this and his. I personally don't have any problem with the idea that a single member of the board, who's, I mean I've got my little project that I don't need to. I don't need to talk with that. I don't need to engage with anybody other than people outside of the town. But from my point of view Janet if you wanted to join with Mandy Joe and the planning staff if there was agreeable to those that I would just say one person from the board who was particularly inclined. When it's just when it off your off your services to the to the to that crowd and see whether they say yes. Chris is that possible or does that create another open meeting issue with one person. No, I think we could accommodate that as Mandy and Pat and me and Janet and need and and Rob we could have a meeting of that group. Is there anybody on the planning board that objects to that. I'm seeing. This from a wise hand. Nate. Hi, thanks everyone you I've been listening I, I'm going to caution about trying to make a quick fix to the zoning amendment. I think there's a lot to it and when Chris and I and other staff met. I think, you know, as we pointed out there's a lot of unintended consequences so you know I, you know that's not saying we can work with something we can't figure something out but I don't want to think that we can do something in two weeks and now we have you know a change the zoning amendment. I mean I would almost recommend referring this back or something else and then you know having these conversations without the time pressure of trying to come up with a fix to the zoning amendment. I think there's a lot of pieces to it so some of it might be redrawing zoning districts on the ground, right if RO and RLD for me those centers maybe they need to become RBC or BBC. Maybe we do need to tweak duplexes. And you know I like the idea of allowing them but I think we could have design standards for duplexes to say that they need to look like single family homes. In terms of massing roof lines and entries and you know North Hampton and other communities have designed guidelines like that I just think it's, it's a lot to try to squeeze in in two weeks. You know I think we can continue to work on it but I just I'm not, I don't want to promise we're going to have, you know, something that's ready to go. I feel like it, you know some of these are pretty big things that have a lot of a lot of pieces to it. And I think that Chris called out several key items that are workable that Mandy Joe is interested in and Pam rich pattern interested in following up on so you know maybe those three things become a focus, maybe they're simpler to address in the short term and we have longer term discussions about as you're saying, you know some of the implications to this as a whole. But I think in either case we probably want to continue this, this hearing until what we have as March 29 at 635pm. I think we said April. Can I just say one thing. I have a lot of respect for Janet and she knows that but at the same time. I feel like I would really like the opportunity with Mandy to meet with Chris and the rest of Nate and Rob more without anybody else because I temporarily, and then have Janet join us because I feel like there's a lot that needs to be said can be difficult for people to feel completely comfortable throwing ideas back and forth. So I would like to not that's my preference I will go with whatever you decide as a planning board but I would like to see Janet join us later, and not initially. I agree with Pat in that statement. And I saw Bruce's hand in agreement with that as well. So an initial conversation with Pat that okay with you Janet and then a follow up conversation. Okay, that seems like a reasonable plan. And we need a motion to continue this hearing to April 5 at 635pm. I see Andrew. And Bruce. I'll do what you do Tom, I shaken. Excellent so I believe we need to take a vote on this. So I will do a roll call and I don't have a master list as Doug had so I'm going to wing this one and we'll go with Bruce. Hi. Karen. Hi. Janet. Hi. Hi. And Andrew. Hi. And I am an eye so that is unanimous. And we will continue this hearing in about four to five weeks. Thank you again Mandy Joe and Pat and thank you. Thank you. Thank you Chris and Robin. Thank you very much. All right. Our next agenda on the item on the, my next item on the agenda is all the business. Do we have any old business. I am not aware of any old business. Okay. Number five on the agenda is new business. Any new business. Is there a Doug and I had spoken about possibly putting another working session on the table for everybody in regard to some of the. I guess village center districts that Chris pointed out is being important and also came up today is being important. I'm not sure if that's something that anybody on this board would be interested in meeting on an off week to have a conversation about village centers. I could consider meeting on March 29, since that's already a date that you have reserved. Bruce. That's exactly what I was going to suggest. Okay. Anyone else have an interest in meeting in person with a real map and talking about village centers. Doug and I great. I see everyone's thumbs up. So Doug and I met via zoom yesterday and kind of looked at the east village center. We had some different things that were possible there just as a conversation so we might come with some ideas or things we want to bring up in terms of how to start thinking about that particular area as a case study for other areas. So we'll try to put that on the agenda for March 29. Shall we say seven that was when we met last time because that seemed reasonable for people to digest some food ahead of time. Great. Next on the agenda number six form a in our subdivision applications. We don't know. Wow. Number seven upcoming ZBA applications. Well, I don't think there's any new ones that have come through the pike. We've told you about the new ones yet that we have in hand. Yep. Okay. Number eight upcoming SPP SPR and SUV applications. We do have those in my mind is blank right now so Pam, can you remember what those are. Yeah, we actually talked about the. The pavilion at the book and plow. At Amherst college, that's what's coming and we expect that we think it's going to be on the agenda on April 19. Okay. But that's the only one that I'm aware of Chris, you, you, you spoke as if there were more than one. That's the only one I'm aware of. So, let's go with that for now. It's just that one. And that's coming to us, or that's going to. That's going to come to the planning board. It's exciting to you. It's a property off Southeast street. Yeah, they're proposing to make a pavilion there for, I believe it's for employees. And so you'll be seeing it it's Tom Hartman and heart called them in Hartman. See, and see an H. Is it, is it Southeast Street or North Pleasant. There are two different proposals the north or the East Pleasant proposal was a proposal by UMass to build a pavilion on the Renaissance center property. And Amherst college is proposing to build a pavilion on property that they own. That's just off Southeast street. It's up the hill. Yeah. Which has a great view, by the way, so if you ever hike up there, it's gorgeous. Okay, and moving on number nine and our agenda planning board community liaison reports planning a Valley Planning Commission Bruce anything to share. No, no meeting, nothing to share. Okay. CPAC Andrew anything. Nothing. Okay, my self and design review board we had a meeting on Monday. We approve some signage for Amherst market which is on triangle street. I guess an update to their signs no big changes. We're getting graphics for the front of the white lion brewery that is taking over where the high horse was underneath the Drake and some some signage there, which is pretty exciting to see come to life. And we approve some signage for the spoke live and if you hadn't known this spoke is looking to try to. I don't know if they have permission to do this yet. Chris can probably clarify but they're taking over an adjacent building on that lot for a live. Music venue, and then opening up the existing entire spoke building for just the bar and lounge so that's happening and we approve that signage as well. That's all I have solar bylaw working group Janet anything. I'm just reading more minutes to since I can never remember what we talked about. So our next meeting is on Friday at 1130 and people might want to attend it's it's the first look at the solar assessment which is kind of the consultant saying, you know where could solar go in this very kind of giant way. It's not like a granular like no you can't do it here or there but so it might be an interesting presentation for people to watch if they're if you're interested. We also worked on parts of the solar bylaw Chris had drafted a thing on abandonment and decommissioning a little little doll, and then I'm also the submittal requirements but you're really quite extensive and so that we went through that and had a lot of questions and ads and it's still all in these pieces and so I know, I don't know if you're anxious to see it, but it's, it's getting put together piece by piece. And that's about it. The, the solar assessment survey is going out in the next few weeks and so I don't know when that goes live but I'll know on Friday probably. And then that's it. And what's the date for that next meeting with the presentation. This Friday for we meet from a every other Friday 1130 to 130. And it's zoomed. Okay, great. Thank you. And then also, there was a presentation to ecac probably today. So, all of all these are recorded. So, okay, the website. Thank you. I see you Chris. Anything deputy. So the CRC is holding a public hearing on this zoning amendment tomorrow. That starts at 430 in the afternoon. So you may want to tune in on that. I think other than that they've been reviewing the rental registration bylaw which Mandy said is just about ready to go back to town council. And they are also working on a nuisance house bylaw. Thank you. Number 10 we have the report of chair. I'm not the chair. He is not here so we have no report. I would guess. Number 11 is reporter staff. Chris. Pam. We think we're close to hiring someone to take one of our planner positions and we're very excited about that we hope it comes to pass so that's good news. Congrats. I think Pam and Nate and also our permit administrator Jennifer Mullins who's not here tonight but she, the three of them have really stepped up to fill the needs of our department we've also had two administrative staff who have been out with family problems so it's been challenge but people have really stepped up to help out so thank you all. Excellent. I think that seems to be it for the day. So, we need a motion to adjourn. I don't really pay attention right now. I'm usually checking out. So, motion to adjourn. No. We need a motion to declare the meeting. 856 p.m. Thank you everybody for this thing and we'll see you in two weeks. Good night. Thank you, Tom. Thanks, Chris. Bye, Chris. Bye, Janet. Goodbye, everyone. And I have to stop recording.