 I am not the co-host. You are the you are the host so you can start recording. Thank you and we'll see if folks come in. So it is April 9th, 2024. This is a regular meeting of the Community Resources Committee of the Town Council. We seem to have a quorum. Let me just read this and then we'll call to order. Pursuant to chapter 20, the acts of 2021, extend by chapter 22 and 107, the acts of 22, and extend by chapter 2, the acts of 2023. This meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. Nope. In-person attendance of members of the public is possible, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. So let's let's take a head count, see if you can hear us and be heard. Cameron is here. Pat D'Angelo. Present. Councillor Ate. Hi. Good. Jennifer Taub. Present. And we have three wonderful staff people with us tonight. Dave Zomek, our liaison and host, and Christine Brestrup, Director of Planning, and Stephanie Ciccarello, Director of Sustainability. So we are going to reorganize our agenda so that you all come right after public comment. So you don't have to hang out if all we do... There are no attendees in the audience. I'll wait for 20 seconds, and then we'll call it no public comment. Okay, that's enough. No public comment. We will go to the action items, and Christine has a message she would like to share with us, and you might just give the background that you spoke with Mandy Jo, as we, as you had requested to just talk about strategies for organization of this document. Yes. Good evening. I'm Chris Brestrup, Planning Director. I'd like to introduce myself to Freca Ate, because I haven't met him before. Hello, Freca. Councillor Ate, nice to meet you. Everybody else. So the last time we met was on March 26th, and we introduced the Solar By-law to the CRC, as they had been drafted by the Solar By-law Working Group, and it was presented to Town Council last fall. The CRC has been charged with refining and preparing a draft document to present to Town Council for referral for public hearings. So following up on the CRC's discussion on March 26th, Stephanie Chickarella, Sustainability Director, and I met with Mandy Jo Hanneke this morning to discuss the draft Solar By-law. We wanted to hear more from Mandy about her thoughts on organizing the by-law, as she had started to talk about that at the CRC meeting on March 26th. Assistant Town Manager Dave Zomek joined us for part of the meeting, and we talked about a number of things. Mandy shared her thoughts about the current draft by-law and how it could be streamlined and clarified. We talked about separating the material in the by-law into topics, and some of which would be included in the zoning by-law, and some of which would be included in rules and regulations of the permit-granting authorities. We also talked about creating a boilerplate list of conditions that would be imposed or could be imposed by the permit-granting authority on projects that they're reviewing. We already know that the Conservation Commission, the Planning Board, and the ZBA have lists of boilerplate conditions that they typically apply to almost every application. Conditions related to solar projects could be added as part of the boilerplate conditions for the zoning board of appeals and the planning board, which would be the permit-granting authorities for solar installations. In addition, this morning we talked about preparing a cover memo that would explain what the by-law and regulations and conditions are meant to do and how we separated the topics MY. The cover memo might also contain some of what is now in the intent and purpose section of the solar by-law. We discussed how to incorporate requirements related to battery energy storage systems, both as standalone installations and as part of the solar array, as part of our solar array. The people who met this morning, it was a small group, but we would like to recommend incorporating the requirements related to battery energy storage systems into the solar by-law so that we would all have everything in one place. We discussed consolidating requirements related to certain topics, and this is not an exhaustive list of topics, but it's illustrative. We have vegetation requirements, we have setback requirements, we have reporting requirements, and we have a number of other requirements. Mandy's suggestion was to consolidate those requirements. We also touched on the topic of consolidating definitions related to solar installations into Article 12 of the Zoning By-law, and that's the portion of the Zoning By-law that deals with definitions. Most definitions from other sections of the by-law are contained in Article 12. The only deviation to that kind of rule is in the FEMA floodplain overlay district section, which is Article 16, where we included definitions in the body of that article because much of what is contained in Article 16 is governed by state and federal requirements. We discussed the topic of ecosystem services, which is one of the definitions in the by-law, and that is noted as something in the draft by-law that the solar by-law seeks to maximize. There were questions about this term, what does it mean, and how do we measure whether we have maximized these services or not. There's also a list of guidance documents that is included as resources in the section on stormwater management, erosion, and sedimentation control, and we this morning thought that these could be included in the memo or in the rules and regulations rather than being included in the by-law since they're really resources more than requirements or limitations or regulations. Let's see, at the end of the meeting we proposed that the CRC consider developing a package of four documents, and these would be to bring back to the council, and one would be the draft zoning by-law on solar installations including battery energy storage systems. The second would be draft rules and regulations to add to the ZBA and planning board rules and regulations. The third would be draft boilerplate conditions that would be used by both the ZBA and the planning board when they were reviewing and permitting solar projects, and the last one would be a cover memo. So as we take the first step in separating out the various parts of the draft solar by-law into by-law rules and regulations and conditions, we thought it would be a good idea to keep the wording of the draft by-law as it currently exists in order to send it around for review by various boards, committees, and staff members who will be asked to review it. Then we would take their comments and recommendations and begin to revise the language of the by-law rules and regs and conditions. We look forward to working with you on this project. Thank you. I can send this memo or this, you know, list of notes around it. That would be great. I was writing really quickly. Yeah, I've got a whole page already. That was an amazing summary, Chris. I feel like I was at the meeting. They said you were. It was really good. I have a quick question. Chris, you said moving the intent and purpose sections into the memo, and I was talking to Martha Hanner and she thought that some of the nexus statements were put in there, and I don't know which it should be. I'm not the nexus statements were put in for the state so they could understand why we were doing this, so that it wouldn't, how it related to health safety, etc., and it wasn't just whimsical stuff that the town wanted. So I'm just asking about that, and which way, I don't, it's too early to know which way we'd go, but. Is this a conversation or should I raise my hand? Raise your hand that I can make sure that you get kind of a don't, don't wait for me. Yeah, so I think that the nexus statements and the intent and purpose are two different things, and you're right, Pat, that the nexus statements were put in there to bolster or support the regulations that we might have, particularly about forests and farmland, and we didn't talk about taking those out and putting them elsewhere. We talked about the fact that the intent and purpose section of this bylaw is really long. It's like a page in the middle, and so some of those things could be summarized or consolidated or put into the memo rather than having them all in this owning bylaw because they're supportive rather than regulatory or. Thank you for clarifying that for me. I appreciate it. So if it's in the memo, does that stay with the document? So to speak, I mean. You with the bylaw? With the bylaw, yeah, or. It wouldn't be part of a, it wouldn't be part of the bylaw. It would be part of a packet that the town council receives, and then it would be part of that, you know, set of documents, but typically a memo, you know, when we send memo, when we send zoning bylaws to town council, we write a memo and then the town manager writes a memo and those are not included in the bylaw that's eventually adopted, but those are things that could be accessed later on if people wanted to read them. And we'd be asking the permit granting authority to do whatever would be in the memo to consider doing it. We can't require them. Well, I think we're, I'm going to go to Stephanie, but I'm just going to answer that. So the memo, I think that Christine is talking about is that as we package, as we package up documents at the end of our iteration here and we report a CRC back to the council, there's a suggestion that we that we look at these, this four parts, these four documents that we might consider to sort of pass over to town council to say, okay, this looks pretty good. Now you go hold your public hearings on it. So I don't think our memos are going to dictate anything that's actually content of the bylaw. That's what you meant. Yeah. Okay. It's just a guidance, a guidance or an introduction document, I think. Stephanie, you have you. Yeah, I just wanted to add to that that the idea is that they will be, the memo will be part of the record. So as you stated, you could access that information later, but also because there's there are several references, guidance, reference documents that don't really have a place, as Chris mentioned, in the bylaw itself. I mean, one of them in fact even references guidance in from Minnesota that really doesn't belong in a Massachusetts bylaw. So the idea is that they would be incorporated into the memo so that they can be referenced later, but also so that we can try to maintain the work of the solar bylaw working group and these respective documents. So the idea is that we're not taking and changing all the language, we're just synthesizing, organizing, and creating really the the appropriate place where some of these things should go, like the regulations and the boilerplate conditions. Those things are definitely things that we want to ensure that the original language is at least available for review, but in a place that makes sense and doesn't have everyone feeling like they have to completely unravel the bylaw itself. David. Yes, I was just gonna add it was part of the conversation this morning and very impressed with Chris's summary. But I really liked that I wanted to just comment on, you know, having the meeting this morning with Mandy as the CRC wanted us to do. It was a very iterative, you know, nobody came in with this preconceived notion of how the conversation would go. And I think it went really well. And I like this package, this family of documents. You know, we have, we have a lot in the document that was transmitted to the council. And I think, to some degree, you know, taking a little time to pull out those elements, not lose any, we're not talking about losing any of them, any of that hard work that happened over 18 months or so. But trying to figure out, okay, what goes under the bylaw, what goes under rules and regulations, what goes under conditions. And then the memo to me, you know, as has been indicated here, kind of sets the stage for transmitting it to the council, you know, how, how it was arrived at and all of that. But those first three documents, I think, you know, we can tease with all of us can tease out those elements that belong in the bylaw, belong in the rules and regulations, and then belong in the draft conditions. So, you know, I think it's, I think it's going to be very interesting and we're going to learn a lot through the process. So I'm excited about it. Yeah, Pat. No, I'm, I'm just putting my hand to my mouth. Your box, your box lit up. That's my personality. I'm going to mute myself. I think it sounds like a very sound approach. And what I was going to ask is for the benefit of all of us here who are on the committee, wondered if Christine, you might give us a couple of examples. So we've talked about rules and regulations, and that was sort of the intent of having a discussion with Mandy was to, to see if some of these pieces might come out as from the bylaw and, and show up as a ruler regulation. So in our, in our town bylaws, we have, for instance, parking regulations. Article seven is parking regulations. What are the elements that you might have talked about that fall under that category of rules and regulations? So we have a long section of submittal requirements in our draft solar bylaw. And we also have submittal requirements in the rules and regulations of the planning board and the zoning board of appeals. So we can take many of those submittal requirements and move them to the required, the rules and regulations of the ZBA or the planning board having, we can have them, you know, separated out from all the other rules and regulations, submittal requirements. But they are more appropriate to be put in the rules and regs than they are to be put in the bylaw. Now that's not to say that there weren't examples. I looked at a lot of examples of, of bylaws of throughout the state, and there were certainly examples where, you know, towns and cities did have requirements, submittal requirements in their bylaw. But, you know, having thought about it now and having heard Mandy talk and discussed it this morning, I feel like it, those things really are more typically found in rules and regulations. Okay, so that, so I'm looking at our list of, of the categories that are in the draft document, and that was 17.04 submittal requirements. And so that's quite a list. Would that include things like special requirements or design standards? Or is that better in the bylaw itself? I think design standards are more typical to be in the bylaw itself. The submittal requirements, like you said, is in 17.04. And, you know, a lot of it is existing site plan. And then what do all, what does the existing site plan have to include for a solar installation? And what does a proposed site plan have to include for solar installation? Documentation of, about accessing control of the site, in other words, whoever's going to build this thing, he needs to show the town that he's got access to the site and he has control of the site plan for operation and maintenance. So those are things that would be more appropriate to put in the rules and regulations than in the bylaw itself. An access plan. How about monitoring? Monitoring I think should be in the bylaw. Yeah. Stephanie. Yeah, I just wanted to point out that, you know, the idea was also that there are some of the some of the items really speak to conditions as well. So we'd have the regulatory document, but then the special boilerplate, and I'm looking specifically at the requirements regarding soils management and conservation on farmland. I mean, that whole section is just screams of primarily regulatory and special conditions. So I think we could go, you know, I think we don't know exactly which items would be specifically regulatory and specifically conditions until we really sit down with it and start to tease it apart. Yep. Good. Any questions from the council? So yeah, just so what Stephanie just how I'm just trying to think of how we do it as a committee. So like trying to go through and tease out those items. It just seems like you got a lot done in a meeting this morning that could take a whole committee a few much more time. So I'm just trying to think of the how we organize our work to be yeah most efficient. Well, I wonder if it would make sense for staff to take a stab at this first and try to tease those things out. I think, you know, primarily the bylaw is the biggest focus. I think the other documents are accompanying documents. So maybe starting with the bylaw and at least getting the bylaw in some kind of shape and form that would be more easily reviewed by the committee. And then the other sections would would probably follow because I think my guess is this is not going to be a very quick process. So, you know, there'll be plenty of time for those other things to be reviewed and come back to you. And Chris may want to comment further on that. I think that we would have to reassure people that the things that we're taking out of the bylaw aren't getting lost. So you would kind of have to be parallel effort to refine the bylaw, but then also show people, okay, well, we're taking this out of here, but we're going to put it over here. So it would be like showing them maybe not a refined rules and regulations, but a place, a place holder or a basket where we're going to place these things until we get a chance to work on them in more detail. So in other words, just not to have people fear that we're losing certain aspects of this. Thank you. Oh, Pat. Yeah. I mean, it feels to me like once we recommend a final version of the bylaw to the town council, all the rules and regulations wherever they have been moved to need to be approved as well. And you're saying they're not going to get lost. But so it does seem this group ultimately needs to be working on those as well. And I think you're saying that I just want to make sure. Yes. The rules and regs, though, would be adopted by the board or the board that has those rules and regs. So you're saying that the council wouldn't vote on the rules and regs the planning board would. Normally, the plan means they could change them, which makes me very uncomfortable. So Chris, why don't you why don't you do sort of a quick step by step of what you're imagining? So make sure that Pat has her her pieces still in the in that mix. Yeah, I'm not sure what I don't think that town council has a role in you know, adopting rules and regulations for the planning board or the zoning board of appeals. But you would receive these documents as a package. So you would see that well, here's the bylaw and here's the proposal to put these things into the zoning board of appeals or planning board rules and regulations. And although you wouldn't approve them, you would then see them move along to either planning board or ZBA for their adoption. So that's how I'm I understand why you're uncomfortable because that means that the town council doesn't have complete control over these things. So that's a discussion that you need to have among yourselves. Definitely need to have that Dave and then Jennifer. And then I want to try to draw some parallels between rental registration and the bylaw there and the regulations. And I think what Pat said a moment ago kind of resonated, which is, you know, we kind of need to be working on these in parallel. So I but stepping back from that a minute and again, recognizing that the conversation with Mandy just happened this morning, and I was kind of advocating for a little time for Chris and Stephanie to kind of get together themselves if the CRC is comfortable with them beginning to tease out these categories and and maybe putting them in in these buckets of bylaw rules and regs conditions, those three buckets for now to to address issues that have been raised, like we don't, no one wants to lose any elements of the document as is, but at least trying to separate those a little bit with a focus first, as Stephanie said on the bylaw, I think makes a lot of sense. I also wanted to just kind of put something aside for a moment because I didn't want to come back to battery storage because I think, you know, what we recognize this morning is that battery storage was not a major emphasis of the solar bylaw working group. I think I was not part of that group, but I understand it came in a little late. But I think from a staff standpoint, and I believe Mandy agreed this morning, but I think it's a good discussion point for us to maybe touch on tonight is we think it makes perfect sense to move to have that battery storage be part of this bylaw, not develop to because we all know, I mean, solar projects are now coming to us as, you know, a dual project solar and battery storage. We all kind of doubt that we're going to get standalone solar projects any longer, or either going to get, we're going to get battery storage and solar, or we're going to get standalone battery storage. So we need them both in this, and, you know, happy to discuss that, but that was the feeling coming out of the meeting this morning is that we not wait and do another bylaw later on battery storage. So I just put that out there for part of the discussion tonight whenever it's appropriate. Yeah. And I think what came out at our last meeting, which I hadn't totally gotten before, is that the rental bylaw is a general bylaw. And because this is a zoning bylaw, that that's also why we as the council don't really adopt the rules and regulations. So the most we can do is, is recommend make, we can make recommendations of what should be considered to, to the permit granting authority, the wordies. At some point though, doesn't council have to accept them and make them official documents of the town? Chris was saying no. No, they're adopted by the board that they are related to. And most of what's in those rules and regulations is procedural, you know, just the chair, do what does the vice chair do? How do you hold a public hearing? How do you grant a per, you know, how do you vote on a permit? All these procedural things. But they do contain some, some other types of regulatory things. So in, for example, the, the bylaw changes that, that Mandy and Pat were, were recommending, that seemed to me that was pretty clear that the ones last year last year, right, that the council was, was supposed to be the adopting party. Wasn't that right, Pat? Yes. The town council always adopts a zoning bylaw. Boats on it. Yes. May I speak? So basically what I hear you saying, Chris, is once the zoning bylaw is written, the council accepts it or, or whatever, what Chris is separating out are the regulations and the procedures. That still makes me nervous. There's such, there's been a lot of really good work on this bylaw and by a lot of different people. And I, and I feel concerned that it can be shredded in areas that I would prefer it not to be shredded. That's my fear. It doesn't mean it's a reality, but I think it has the potential to be. Stephanie. Sorry, I just wanted to speak to Pat's concern. I think the reason why we suggested that the, the documents sort of be divided up into these sections is because the way it's written, it's really not reflective of bylaw language, really. It's, it's just, there's too much. It's way too lengthy. It's not general enough. It's way too specific. And it just gets into the weeds in ways that even though that is great work and I agree, we didn't want to lose that, which is why we made the suggestion that we just separate these pieces out so that we don't lose them. However, I will say that even from the beginning, the idea was that the bylaw, now it would be sort of a packet of information, gets distributed to the various committees that have some stake, if you will, in this bylaw and the regulations and the special conditions so that they get to review and comment on it. So there may be some recommended changes that would come on, you know, the bylaw, the regulations, or even the regulations or even the special conditions based on staff review of what they think is something that can be held up on, on challenge. So I think that's, you know, there's, there, the idea is to, so I just want to again reassure you it's to maintain the language, but after review by various committees and staff, there may be some suggestions for revision and change. Of course. And that's, you know, I think that's, but I don't think there's an idea to whole skill, just delete sections. That's not the idea of this, it's just to delete everything. It's just to put it in its proper category, if you will. So we could take a pass at taking the draft solar bylaw as it exists now and marking it up to indicate where various parts would go, whether they would remain in the bylaw or whether they would go to rules and regs or to conditions and then show that to you next time we meet with you. If you think that would be helpful. That would be very helpful. Yes. I think I wrote up my own list and I would be very curious to see how we match up. Sorry. Um, I'm going to actually while we're talking about this, I'm going to open up the floor to we have two participants and I know they're both engaged in this conversation. So I am going to ask if, if either of them would like to speak and looks like Martha Hanner has raised her hand. So I guess I'm the host, aren't I? So Martha Hanner, uh, let's bring you in. Can you, can you unmute? Yes. Thank you for letting me speak. I admit I got in a little bit late because I thought that this item was further along on the agenda. I know. And uh, but I must say as a former member of the solar bylaw working group, I'm very concerned by what I've heard and that, you know, a couple people went off and, you know, had a discussion made some, some decisions, you know, where is the transparency? And, you know, when we did the bylaw, yes, maybe some, there's some details like how high do you have to put the hedge for the border or, you know, things like that. But there were a lot of points that we based on experience in other places plus some, what's in the state documents and in other bylaws, owning bylaws from other towns that I would be very concerned to have be relegated just to regulations. And one of my concerns in very general way is these arrays are large areas of land, right? And what often happens in any kind of construction project is the first step is the contractor comes in, levels the land, you know, digs up everything, scrapes off the topstall and gets all ready. So it's an easy job. And I've seen two cases right here in the neighborhood where I live, right down on Wildflower Drive just this past month, a developer came in and completely clear cut a section of land right next to where it drops down to a stream bed. And it turns out it was illegal. He had no permit. And so I would like to make sure that things that have to do with construction in particular are very strongly in the bylaw. So it's very clear, you know, things that we put in you might think are detailed regulations about not disturbing the topsoil and different things like that need to be very clearly in the bylaw. And so that's just an example of some of the details we went into in discussing different topics. And, for instance, in the farmland section, we went into some detail and before changing anything, I would strongly recommend that folks on the council would review the session that we had with the agricultural experts. It was sometime in July, it was one of our meetings. And that the requirements that in the bylaw in the agricultural section came straight from there. And Stephanie and Chris, that was the meeting you folks missed. So I don't know if you went and listened to that. Okay, well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Martha. Appreciate it. Steve Roof, do you want to raise your hand and speak? Can you hear us? Can you unmute? There you go. Yes, thank you. But no, thank you. I don't have anything to say. I'm just enjoying listening to you guys get into the weeds and figure out how you're going to process this complex issue. So thanks and keep up the good work. Okay, thank you. Thanks for attending. Okay. Sounds like we're at a point. So I've heard some... Can we move them back into the audience? Yep. I'm not sure I know how. How's that? So we've heard good consideration and appreciate the reminders from the working group itself that there is a lot of information that we don't want to lose. If staff is interested and willing, we have a meeting on April 30th. And this certainly will be a topic. And I would certainly appreciate if you have a draft of literally which section moves to which component. I think that may be a very good starting point for conversation. At that point, I would also, though, like to have a longer conversation about getting that input from the different committees and boards for those with some jurisdiction and oversight for those topics. In particular, the drinking water group and concom and things like that. So that'll be somehow to structure it. Dave, you had your hand up and then Chris and then Stephanie. Yeah, thanks, Pam. Two thoughts. One is that I guess my thinking would be it's... I don't know where you were going with getting feedback from those other groups, but wouldn't we wait until we have some drafts on that? I mean, it seems premature to get them involved at this point when we're just drafting, right? I mean, this could be... I'm trying to say let's be ready to talk about that, not necessarily have them all. Already have their influence. That's great. The other thing I just wondered, we didn't touch on battery storage and I put that out in the meeting. I just wondered if people had thoughts about... Again, I was not as involved clearly as Christine and Stephanie and some members here in the working group, but I was curious what your thoughts are on including battery storage in this process. Does that make sense? Is that consistent? Is that... I think we're also trying to be efficient here and get a product that we can all be supportive of and proud of as quickly as possible and not have to come back. There's so much to talk about with regard to solar. We talked this morning a little bit about the impacts of, as Martha indicated, clearing land erosion, but also battery storage has its own unique set of conditions and concerns, but I would hate to kind of leave them lagging behind and have to catch up with battery storage. I'm just curious if others... Let me hear from Chris and Stephanie and then get some responses from the counselors. So I wanted to say a couple of things. One, I wanted to reassure Martha that there was nothing going on behind the scenes. The CRC agreed last time we met that a small group of us staff people would meet with Mandy Jo and hear from her what her ideas and concerns were about the draft bylaw. So we did that this morning and then I gave a pretty lengthy report to the CRC before Martha joined us and I can send my notes to Martha to reassure her about what we reported. So I feel like we said everything that we said this morning in this meeting and the CRC has heard all of that. So I just don't want Martha to think that we're doing things aside and then not making them public. The second thing is I wanted to say we already have a battery storage bylaw that was drafted last fall and it was based on a couple of other battery storage bylaws that we had become acquainted with. Excuse me, you can come in. And so I can send that out to all of you and I think some of it is redundant with the solar bylaw as it's drafted and that's why it seems to make sense that we could combine the two. So I'll send that out to you and you can review it between now and the 30th and meanwhile I'll take a crack at marking up the bylaw that we have now to say well this could go to rules and rags and this could stay in the solar bylaw. The other thing is that you all have control. We don't have control. We're making suggestions to you about what we think would be appropriate and how to manage this process. You could take the bylaw exactly as it is and send it on to Town Council but that's not what you were charged with doing. So you were charged with putting it into a format that makes sense and that's organized and that will be appropriate. So I don't want you to feel like you don't have any control and that we're telling you what to do because that's not our intent. So anyway that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Stephanie. Yeah I also wanted to reassure Martha that our proposal to separate out the regulations and special conditions were an effort to maintain the language and the work of the committee so that it doesn't potentially get lost because the bylaw as written as much as it is wonderful work it's also not reflective of the rest of our zoning bylaws and the way they're written. So we didn't want the language to get lost and which is why we suggested that an accompanying regulation packet and special conditions packet be assembled because it maintains that and that essentially this is a packet of materials that go together so they're not lost and I was also going to recommend in terms of process that I'd be happy to work with Chris on separating out the the elements and working with her on that. I can work with her together and then I think once we go through that and you review what pieces and parts we're proposing to to put into these other documents that we actually do that and I might what I propose maybe is that working with Chris, Chris can I outline them in the document but that maybe I can then pull them out and actually have a draft of those documents as separate documents so that you have one document that shows what would be pulled from regulations and special conditions but then you also have the regulations and the special conditions as standalone documents in the bylaw to review kind of at the same time if that makes sense. Can I just ask if you do that that you keep at least the to the current numbering system in a way so that we can track what was originally 17.08 and where does 17.08 show up? That would be helpful and then you can rename it but but some reference to that original numbering would be very helpful. As this will be just a draft then it would be easy to just sort of have you know a sort of parenthetical locator of where it came from. Good thank you. So I think I grabbed what's the true in the air regarding the combining the bylaws and including battery but this is a topic that is new to me and so on one hand Christine has answered the question that I had in my head which is how much more work would that be in the combination but if Dave could expand on how much more work it would be practically that would be helpful and another question that I have is what is this third bucket that is the special conditions. I think I have a sense of what bylaws would be and rules and regs but what the special conditions are is those are a bit unclear for me thank you. Chris do you want to answer that right now what constitutes boilerplate conditions can you give an example? Yeah so there's every site plan review and special permit that we do includes things like well here's what you have to do during construction and here's what you have to do with lighting and here's how your drainage should be handled and just things that are sort of typical of every project and I could send the committee the latest document that I have which I guess is probably the library or something like that and show you what kinds of conditions we put on the library project for site plan review and probably for special permit and that would give you an example of the kinds of conditions that we put on and you can see that some of them are particular to that library project but some of them are typical things that go into all application decisions would that help? I think it does from what you've described it then seems that special conditions are more aligned with regulations than with the bylaws okay thank you. Can I address Councillor Retez? Yeah put my hand down actually that way. I think the answer is I don't have an answer I think I would defer to Christine and Stephanie who were much closer to the solar bylaw working group process. I just posed it out there this morning and posed it here to you now it's just in my mind it's hard to separate these two and I guess I would ask them to either comment tonight or think about that between now and the meeting on the 30th what are some of the pros and cons of having parallel bylaws and what does that entail not only for staff but for you all and the council. Can I respond Jennifer to that? Absolutely okay yeah so I had been thinking a little bit about did we want a separate bylaw and I understand that there was one drafted that we could take a look at at least. My question would be maybe the more important question is would there be a whole lot of redundancy between the battery storage portion of it and the general bylaw that's dealing with solar arrays and storage or even if it's just solar arrays how much redundancy would we be building in if we had two separate documents. I'm actually very happy to have two separate documents if it is not so redundant that we have again a whole separate package of rules and regulations for battery and a whole separate rules and regulations for solar arrays that's where I'm coming from how do we keep it simplified Jennifer. Yeah this is kind of a little getting back to maybe in response what we were talking about is how it came about that the meeting happened this morning with Chris and just one representative from CRC and that's because at the last meeting we talked about forming a subcommittee but we can't do that that if even two of us were deformed then we are subject to open meeting law and having it be a public meeting so just I just wanted to provide that context for you know that's how we designated one member of CRC to have the conversation with you because we couldn't have a subcommittee and then I just wanted you know yeah I just wanted to I guess echo what Councillor Ete said that when we were working on the rental bylaw that was kind of we were finishing up the work from last time but a solar bylaw and battery storage is completely new terrain at least for me so you know so yeah Chris if I'd love to see the special conditions that you know for the library I guess this is I'm excited of working on the bylaw but it's totally new territory and it's not something that really impacts my particular district so it's not something I've been involved with the way Pat has. May I ask to whom should I send I've made a list of things that I'm going to send to you all should I send them to Pam and then Pam will distribute them? Yeah that may be. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. I'm just going to jump in quickly Pam. Yeah I don't feel like I have a strong horse in this race of two separate bylaws but something you know Pam you said about redundancy and so in my mind I'm thinking about our time together staff and council all the way to adoption and then working through you know the other boards and committees but I'm also thinking about clarity. We need whatever we do with bylaws and rules and regulations we need clarity we need consistency and so I'm thinking about the boards and committees who will need to enforce what these bylaws and rules and regulations will ask applicants to do. I'm also thinking about applicants you know how do they navigate you know our rules and regulations broadly defined in town and we often hear concerns about how many rules and regulations we have in the town of Amherst so again I don't really have a strong horse or voice in this but I just want us to think carefully do these two things belong together and is that the way to go versus having two separate documents because and again I'm hoping at a future meeting and I'm sure this will come out as we as a group talk about the bylaw taking all the good work of the of the working group is you know what do we want to achieve what does the town want to achieve through the bylaw and the rules and regulations what are our goals in other words you know I think you know in my own words I might say I think we want the town to be open to generating green power for our community and the region while at the same time safeguarding residents their livelihoods their health and safety while also safeguarding the the environment streams and wetlands and farmland etc so you know I think we want a lot out of this bylaw we we don't want it to seem unfriendly to solar but we want to present a a playing field for solar developers to commend and say okay here's what Amherst would like they you know and and that'll determine size and and clearing and and all the things that I know the the working group focused on so anyway that's for future meetings yeah and hopefully the working group put a very nice summary and purpose statement in that document so we have it already I was going to ask Chris if you could for our benefit tell tell us where in our in our documentation in our town in our town records where do regulations and general conditions end up because because there are some people who just don't deal with zba or planning board so where do those regulations show up so the regulations we have to give regulations to the town clerk so there's the town clerk has a copy of the regulations we also have them available on the planning board website and the zoning board of appeals website on the planning board website they're pretty clearly there there's a list of things in the left hand column and one of them is planning board rules and regulations in the zoning board of appeals it's a little bit more obscure you have to go click on resources and then it comes up under resources as zoning board rules and regulations but they're definitely publicly available the second thing you asked about was conditions and conditions are for every project that goes through site plan review or special permit either with the planning board or with the zoning board of appeals the conditions are part of the decision and all the decisions are filed at the registry they're recorded at the registry of deeds they're easily accessible if you know a particular one that you want you you know search the the the address and then you can get to all the documents related to that address and if there's a site plan reviewer a special permit you'll be able to see it from there you could also email me if there's a particular one that you wanted to see they are also with the town clerk but she has paper copies and so they're not as easily searchable with the town clerk and unfortunately we used to have a mechanism with our GIS system where we had a link to all of the decisions but they took that down because of security reasons so um so we don't have that anymore but um you can go to the registry and look for a particular property or you can you know contact me and I can send you whatever you are interested in so I may I may put together a list of those kinds of resources and and double check it with Chris and then send that out to everybody so that we have for instance just a way to go look to see what other general conditions have been put out there so we have a better sense of what to expect um Stephanie and then I think I think we're kind of wrapping up this conversation so you all can go home thank you Pam um I just wanted to say with that with special conditions I think the idea here would be that there would be a boilerplate so um very often for the conservation commission I know has a set of boilerplate conditions the state has a set of boilerplate conditions that are available that um various municipalities can pick and choose whether some of the conditions are relevant to a project so I think it could be an accompanying document to the regulations as either maybe an appendix as you know identified as boilerplate conditions so they don't have to be specific to a project in that case they're just general um for any solar project that the committee or the PGA could actually choose those conditions from so I think the idea was to have them available as they're currently written now in this draft there are many that we can sort of pull out and make part of that boilerplate so that they're available and they can accompany the regulations as an appendix so the the conditions would be would be an appendix to rules and regs correct any other questions from from CRC and before we let these folks go with the understanding that hopefully on the 30th of April um we will get a nice breakdown of potential restructuring of material that's in the current draft bylaw in in a different organizational form great and thank you for doing that um I'm going to actually offer myself up if you need to meet with CRC or ask questions of CRC of any sort let me know I would be very happy to sit and meet with you in fact it'd be great to do it on a regular basis maybe that just keeps things rolling but that's up to you think about it good thank you thank you so much both of you thank you thank you and the sun is setting Pat how are you feeling I am just I was gonna I raised my hand I'm gonna leave the meeting there's still a quorum and I apologize but I'm having a hard time with my knee oh sorry I will see you all soon so just so you're aware um we were gonna talk about planning board we're gonna do the same process we need to update that bulletin board notice yeah can go out and and probably go extend maybe into halfway into July just in case that makes sense and then and then um we'll do the same process reaching out to those people who have sent in a calf within the last two years the current people are reaching out to the chair for input to see if he wants to update the input that he gave last time but that's generally it's pretty much housekeeping yeah that's what I thought so I don't feel too bad leaving right now especially in four good hands eight good hands feel better thank you yeah drugs bye bye bye Pat feel better so you just got the speech yeah I might leave you as well if you're just going to talk about interviews I don't think you it's not something I would generally our feelings won't be hurt so I guess I am the host is there anything I need to do at the end besides just stop the webinar stop recording stop the webinar and you're done as much as I would like to spend this evening last evening there's meetings tomorrow and Thursday night if anyone would like to join us there's conservation commission tomorrow night and housing trust on Thursday so we should all look for never stops okay thank you have a good night very good conversation tonight thank you Jennifer yeah I feel bad I shouldn't have said that get solar doesn't apply to my district of course we're on the same planet of course it does they're just we get up but not clear cutting forests there are none we lose a tree we get upset right that tree on the corner of right so well let's move on to our other action item which is just planning board vacancies I kind of spelled out everything but I did but I think I did put in the share point and I don't know if they got posted on you know the public the public forum did you all see those documents I don't think they're in the public forum but okay so then they're just simply sitting in our in our share point site Councilor Ette do you have you have access to that of course the share I do and I have yes I took a little bit let me take a look and see so in that just pull it up because I would like us to review the the planning board notice so I'm going to actually pull it up and share it if I can so I'm not seeing it in mind I put it in well it it says planning board bulletin board notice 2024 so let's see if I can let's see if I can share share screen sorry I'm not more fluent about this I think it's this one can you see it yes that's great but I and when I can't I can't see the call except it's on my big screen yeah is it in large as much as it needs I can read it okay I'll read it if if you okay can you see it or read it my mute button disappeared so I was looking for it yes so it is in my folder and I can see it here thank you oh okay so can I just read it quickly and I think um the only thing I changed was who the current chair was because it used to say Mandy Jo Hanakie but it's basically will be filling two vacant impending vacancies seeking residents interested in serving currently accepting applications interested in serving on the planning board applicants have experience with aspects of planning development design architecture construction zoning and a real estate I would put in law as well the town council is especially seeking individuals of diverse backgrounds including those who have no prior municipal government experience for more information read the information handout that we would that we typically provide them if you're interested in serving fill out your calf and those who this is the the weird sentence so those who have submitted a calf expressing interest in serving within the last two years do not need to submit another and I pointed this out but in fact we've been asked to have people submit a calf after the bulletin board notice is posted so Mandy told me last time that that if they've submitted a calf in the last two years they still have to submit another one after the bulletin board announcement goes up so then we should take that out so they don't think yeah it's to me it's it's contradictory and I would think there's some people that might not recall if it's been two years it's so I think maybe we could say if you have submitted a calf expressing interest in serving within the past two years you will be contacted regarding that submission to confirm your continued interest does that make more sense and given your formulation that leaves open the possibility that upon this contact you may be required to submit it again um yeah okay yeah that seems clear to me so those who have submitted may be contacted regarding the preservation okay yeah so we will we will we will strike we will strike that yeah that would be helpful we will be contacted and then if necessary we will ask you to submit a new calf or or you may need to I will I don't want to I don't want to muddy it up uh then it just says if you have questions reach out to Pam Rooney and I would say or Jennifer Tau at or the town community participation officers and then it just says the council appointment of planning board is in accordance with us thus thus and the references are cited I have checked the documents that are linked here they're still active um and I think with your permission I would forward this slightly amended document to Athena and ask her to post it on the bulletin board Councillor Ate simply a matter of style those who have submitted a calf expressing interest in serving within the past two years will be contacted regarding your but since those so could we say if you have submitted a calf within the last two years you will be okay yeah you if you have submitted if you have submitted a calf within the last two years comma comma you will be contacted regarding that could I just say regarding that prior submission confirm your continued interest so Jennifer did that with all the zba people she said you know are you still interested in serving we're going to need a statement of interest etc Jennifer you got your hand up yeah so just um so I actually think you sent out the initial letter on the zba and then I took it from there so just to go just to confirm this has to be posted for a certain amount of time before I can write to the people for whom we've already received calves or I could do that right away um I'm trying to Mandy Mandy would know this yeah oh look I don't want to take up our time here but it's very everything it's a requirement how long each stage phase of the process has to be I guess what I'm trying to figure out is as long as this gets posted on the bulletin board she could do it you know probably by Friday right or by Thursday even once it's in the bulletin board a it's visible for people who are looking around looking for opportunities but b it just means that we have opened the door officially to seeking applicants and my next question is could the seats will become available on July 1st could we potentially have them filled by then yeah I mean we should be able to write right right so if we have we have two positions I'm going to ask both of those people if they are interested in renewing and um so either way will they still have to be considered along with everybody else so it's not it's not just a shoe back into the into the slot so we would like to have the interviews in June yeah yeah we could do with time to go back to the council yeah end of May early June June gets really really busy so if we targeted for trying to get it all done in you know mid-May that's um that's actually about the time we did it last time was May okay okay thank you okay yeah it starts over but there are fewer people right there's only two openings so yeah but it would be nice to have six applicants at least it'd be great it'd be great great okay so I will save that I will make those changes and then send it to Athena let's see if there's any other documents the planning board guidance selection guidance can you read that so it's criteria for a healthy and effective body and then the second part B is input from the from the body's chair so maybe when I write to the body's chair to ask if he's interested in reapplying I will say at the same time to save time would you uh do you want to update any of this for the minimum qualifications how's that sound it sounds good we want one okay so I will ask for the for the chair input check okay and if there's a little bit of change we'll just adopt it as revised on a whatever date I'm guessing we could accept this on the 30th that would be another good topic to just get done and then the last item is the interview questions very guys I'm sorry it's picking up the one that I had before okay what can you see just the two of you okay we're gonna start again share screen there it is it was lost in the ether so these were the 12th question I was hoping actually there's no reason that we can't vote we have a quorum we can at least accept interview questions right and these are the ones that we have that we used last year can I read them to that easier than trying to read the spine funny text one what do you feel you bring to the planning board that can make make it successful please include any experience you have appearing before or serving on the planning board or zba or watching one of their meetings tell us about an experience you have had collaborating with a group particularly where opinions conflicted for the decision was controversial three describe how the planning board can help achieve the goals of the master plan four please describe the considerations and objectives you'll use for considering proposed revisions to the zoning by laws that's pertinent five what's your opinion of waivers exceptions and special permits in the zoning by law when should they be used and when should they not be used six what is your approach to incorporating public input into your decision making seven what else would you like us to know about you that makes you a strong candidate for the planning board eight confirm you have the time they're very similar to zba and you thought comes with it it appears to be fewer candidates and so there might be more time and so I think I'm fine with these questions perhaps I don't really I'm uncomfortable expressing my feelings and so question number one what do you feel you bring um I think I'll be fine with what do you bring as as as you are you feeling it is inappropriate it is an appropriate question or an inappropriate question oh no I think it is appropriate I just um if I'm sitting down for an interview I want to be out of my feelings as much as possible and so I guess I'll tell you about what I bring should we take out the word what do you feel you bring and yeah what do you bring that's perfectly okay it's no you're right it's it's there's no reason for that to be there I think it's a it's a softer way to say tell us about yourself okay tell us how great you are yeah what maybe it's just it's just me that's no no you're right it's um how about if we said what what might you bring to the planning board that can make make it accessible that works for me okay but I have my window open it's very noisy oh really can you hear okay okay so what might you bring to the planning board that can make it successful please include any experience I like the collaborating one that's always a good conversation that's really nice um people people sometimes are not aware of sort of the master plan and and actually the responsibility the planning board has to maintain and update it um yeah and that's sort of a it would be sort of a suggestion to someone that they look at the master plan yeah exactly and they get these questions ahead of time yeah which is very helpful so I think it's it's great if we could um vote on it tonight because then we if as we're corresponding with people we can get to them sooner yes exactly yeah we don't have to wait till April or end of April to do that um any other thoughts on the wording council ete you don't need to put yourself on mute each time unless you've got noise in your background because there's three of us no I I don't have noise at this point but I I think it's good practice so that I don't speak out of turn thank you practice well you're very self-control so I don't expect a flare up from you any any other thoughts on um on any of these if not I'm willing to entertain emotion so I will move my oh I actually thought I was muted um hold on I hold on I have just a second I have to change um the panmarini down here it was it was Mandy Johannke okay that okay so there you see it I have to change that one as well okay and now I'm ready for a motion so um I move that we accept the planning board interview questions that were would they be adopted today or still is adopted May 25th no we can adopt it we can amend it amended I guess as amended because we did make some changes yep and today is four nine April 9th 2024 great any more discussion if not uh councilor etay since it was a motion was this supposed to be a second there is yes thank you I second second excellent thank you keep us legal here um so we'll go we'll go to the vote council etay now that you've muted yes Jennifer Taub yes panmarini yes so it's unanimous we have adopted the interview questions it will be for whatever date so I'm again I'm very sorry but it's going to be it's going to be whatever the new date oh uh today's April 9th yeah so this is this is amended April 9th 2024 great okay and I do want to confirm we don't meet again till the 30th that's right we were gonna otherwise meet on the 23rd you're away um it's also the second night of Passover so we probably shouldn't right and that's why we ended up moving it okay good I didn't really think thank you it's the 30th for sure it's like two weeks off I can't believe I'm really excited what kind of makes up for meeting three we've met three weeks in a row now yeah okay so that was unanimous um I can't do chair input tonight because I don't have new input from the chair so that's that's a that's a an April 30 discussion and then the bulletin board um I was told I'm authorized to send it to Athena um and just get it in and I don't know why we didn't have to vote on that one like we did everything else but maybe it's just administrative I don't know okay but we know we don't have to right right thank you good council ate I didn't notice you said they maybe follow up questions from CRC so this would be in a way departure from what we had um with zoning what would be the time limits and would that be confined to since the questions or the the group will be interviewed together will follow questions be for a specific candidate or will those questions that would be for all candidates to answer I think and Jennifer correct me if I'm wrong when we we had to go ask town council to allow us to ask a follow-up question and I but I can't remember is if that made that possible anytime so we don't have to keep going back to ask if we're even allowed to do a follow-up question um but the follow-up questions that we did ask were if any if any counselor had some clarification that they needed to make on an answer that someone had given it was not it was not a carpet um same question to everybody right I don't think we need to go back again I don't I don't I don't think so either I guess I can double check with Athena would know you know would know yeah yeah I'll ask her um that's a good but that's that's excellent because we did at one time need there was there was concern that somebody had brought something up and they wanted to really clarify it yes and we definitely didn't need permission from the council yeah it's just so odd okay I think I think folks that's oh hold on it's thorough here let's do it the diligence okay we have no meeting minutes but I'm aware of did you see any meeting minutes no neither we haven't had any for months um I have no announcements anybody else have announcements um what answer etay has oh sorry and I was looking at my paper yeah um I this isn't an announcement but for next the next g ol meeting there may be a need for clarification on some parts of the news and spider and so I wanted to crave you know indulgence um for whoever would be able to make it to that meeting just um if need be so we could have some ask some questions and get a few answers yes thank you councillor etay for you know jogging my memory just from last night I don't know but the chair g ol did say you know after the meeting just that after the council meeting she said that because the um comments on the nuisance bylaw were more extensive from kp law than they were anticipating that they may want it to come back to crc even but maybe if you know you were you know somebody's at the meeting from um if that question can be answered if g ol maybe they wouldn't it would need to come back to crc I'm not able to be there on the 18th wonder if mandy joe is able to be there on the 18th counsel etay it may not be necessary but it would be preferable what um was also proposed though a different proposal would be that rather than have the nuisance be referred back to crc to come back to g ol that um there might be some um changes made and if the points of clarification those could be put in the form of a question or a memo and um they'll be emailed to the chair which the chair given some answers I think that might actually work better so let me understand so g ol might might make comments or um or questions that they simply want they want an answer or they would like to have addressed and that um crc could respond to those questions or could respond as we did with the rental registration we actually made changes in the tech and said this is in response to g ol okay yeah so there could be changes to the text but in addition there might be some that would adjust the entire tenure of the work and in that case have been some questions that could be sent to the CRC chair um for clarification but that wouldn't require sending every entire yeah okay and I can always reach out to Rob Mora because I think that would be and and and Chief Ting as well so it wouldn't need to come back to the full committee we wouldn't have to maybe wait till April 30th hopefully that would be the preferable way the most efficient way so we'll see okay so can I ask another sure could well could questions be asked of the chair before g ol's April 18th meeting probably not likely probably not likely people are people are you know no I'm just thinking if the chair of g ol I don't know I could get asked the chair of CRC I'm just trying to think how it I don't think there's a problem with it but I don't know Councillor Atey given that they will be an acting chair who is unfamiliar with the role I I doubt that that would be a possibility this one time okay thank you thank you good good to know that's right I forgot about that too so um just in conversation about actually this is not on our agenda tonight so we really shouldn't be deliberating about it but um that said I think I will ask around to make sure that somebody can be there on the 18th to answer questions as as you being chair I think it would be um I think it would be helpful if you reached out to Athena and said could we have Rob Mora and possibly acting chief Ting attend that g ol meeting to discuss this I think I when I read I shouldn't be deliberating anyway I didn't think they were KP law was KP law was referring to things that we actually had in the previous bylaw so that in fact hadn't been changed so I you know maybe they just never read the earlier one I should stop because we should be talking about it but I will put I will put nuisance bylaw on the agenda for for April 30th just in case we end up talking about it okay thank you thank you for reminding me that's good okay so next agenda I'm thinking we will have nuisance we will have a solar report and we should we should do the remainder planning board documents that I should have feedback from the from the chair and everything else should be in pretty good shape at that point so I think those are those are the three topics and we can all you know get the word out however we do to the public too that there are openings on the planning board yeah any other topics that we should consider I think we have enough I'm not going to add housing policy it's just like a whole brand new topic okay there were no uh there were no items anticipated 48 hours in advance and I think it's time to adjourn Jennifer we have to move I saw that written that it said even for committees really oh that drives me that okay uh would you like to make a motion yes so I move that we adjourn I second that let's take a vote Jennifer yes yes council entei yes and Pam Rooney says yeah so I am going to I believe stop the reading and and end the meeting thank you very much bye thanks for sticking with this bye bye thank you bye