 start recording. That would be great. You're all set. Have a good one, folks. Thank you, Athena. So we are going to get started. Seeing that we have a quorum of the committee, I am calling this meeting of the Community Resources Committee on October 27, 2020 to order at 2.03 p.m. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, MGL Chapter 30A, Section 20, allows us to hold this virtual meeting. This meeting is being recorded for future broadcast and all votes will be by roll call. At this time, I'll call upon each committee member by name and that way we can confirm that I can hear you and you can hear me. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Charlene Vaughn-Mellon. Present. Mandy Johanicki is present. Evan Ross. Present. Steve Schreiber. Here. And Sarah Swartz. Here. Excellent. So at this time, our first agenda item is general public comment. Public comment on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC will be taken at this time. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. CRC will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment. To participate in public comment at this time, you should be able to find a raise hand button in the participant window or somewhere else on your Zoom thing if you would like to participate in public comment. Raise your hand and I will recognize you and go through all the motions to unmute so that we can get you commenting. We will wait to see if anyone wants to make a public comment. See no one raising their hand. We will move on from general public comment to our presentation and discussion items. The first one up is zoning bylaw article 14 amendments. This will be, I also, before we start this, I will recognize that we have Dave Zomek here. We have who's our assistant town manager. We have planning director Christine Brestrup. We have the building commissioner Rob Mora and we have planner Ben Breger and they will be participating in many of the discussions going on today. It's a planning day today. So first up is zoning bylaw article 14 amendments. I don't know whether this is Chris or Rob that want to go through. The point of this one is to sort of see if there's any questions right now. Our hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday at 8 p.m. That's when we will take public comment on the proposed amendments. Chris or Rob, do you want to put up the amendments or would you like me to put up the amendments to show them? I think Ben has it. Yeah, I'll put that up here. And then Rob can give the presentation. Yeah, let me know if you need me to zoom in or anything or does it look good? For now I think it looks good if we're talking specifically about something we might have you zoom into that small section. Okay, so article 14, you know, we've generated a number of discussions with it over the last couple of months. It's only been used a couple of times so far for some seasonal outdoor activity at a salon and for some seating and also for an expansion of stackers patio area that we permitted about a week or so ago. So what we're looking at is a couple of additions to the article, both extending it to have it be in effect until the end of next year, but also expanded a little bit to capture other types of uses that we, you know, may possibly have the need for going forward. So in, you know, the first section there, it's the extension of time. Then we're going to affected uses and what we're proposing to add is office park and PRP district to those list of districts that are affected by the list of principal uses that are listed immediately below. We are proposing to add medical uses. Thought there is that we have a couple of active medical establishments in town, both in PRP and office park district and not knowing what potentially there may be for needs with outdoor tents or testing areas or just, you know, queuing of people waiting for services that we and parking possibly parking adjustments that we thought that would be a good one to put in there for potentially needing to make adjustments. Then we decided to, you know, really establish a temporary type situation and be clear that what temporary use would be. And we defined it at the end of this section, but essentially what we're they're talking about is something that goes back to the way it was before it was permitted for whatever, you know, short term is identified in the approval. And this we've included a list of potential uses. Farm stands are typically permitted by site plan review. We thought maybe going into the spring, if for, you know, chance that people want to visit farm stands more than stores or farm stands may not be interested in participating in farmers markets or, you know, whatever situation could occur that maybe we'd see the opportunity for additional or expanded farm stands in certain areas. So we want to have that option available without a lengthy process. Non-profit educational institutions certainly a number of different types of uses. Non-profits can fall into this category, but specifically we've had requests this fall from our public and private schools in town for outdoor learning areas, breakout areas, recess type spaces, tents, slight minor changes to sidewalk or walking paths. And in some cases we've been able to approve these and others they've had to go through the site plan review process with the planning board. So we feel like if it's something that will be turned back to its original condition at the end of this that we could consider not having to put it through that process with the planning board. We've also had the same exact situation with our library in town so we thought we should include that. Again, medical, residential institutions comes up as a possible temporary need for temporary uses or structures. That also includes if you look at our table three use classifications that's where the shelter would fall. So if there was any immediate need for isolation or some other purpose that hasn't, doesn't have the time to go through the process that we would be able to consider it under this article. And then we put ourselves in there because we've, you know, we've looked at a couple of options that not all of them have happened this year but with what the town may be trying to do in certain areas to help out in public areas, parking lots, sidewalks, public grounds. There might be a need for a tent, a structure or some activity that we're not thinking of right at the moment. So that would be something that could be considered under a temporary use. So other than that, we're not proposing any other changes. Anything that's considered to be longer term or permanent use under the first section of this article still goes through the designer view board for recommendations. The one case that's happened for so far, all the recommendations of the designer view board were incorporated into the permit conditions. And, you know, everything else following through application process and decision would remain the same. Christine. Rob, I wanted to address this question to Rob. He and I had talked about this temporary zoning or this article 14 earlier this week or last week. And we talked about adding churches because some of the churches are stepping forward and making it possible for people potentially to sleep there as a shelter. So that would be a church activity, I understand. And did we want to include churches specifically in the uses that we listed on the first page? So that, you know, that could be a great discussion to have. We haven't had any requests for changes to the site or building from churches. So it wasn't included in this draft that you're looking at today. If what you describe Christine was proposed, it actually could occur without article 14 because there would be no change to the building. And as long as we didn't have any other reason to send it for site plan review, it actually could be permitted under our emergency shelter provisions that we've used in the past with building and fire and health codes. Thank you. Do any committee members have any questions? I'm not seen. Okay, there we go. Shalini. Just a follow up question on churches. What is our current, I mean, I know it's not really, I'm sorry, it's not related directly to this, but what is our current policy for churches? Because I've been getting some requests about the use of churches. And I wasn't clear what our current position is regarding allowing gatherings in churches or outside churches. Can someone just very quickly clarify? And I'm happy to wait for it later if it's not relevant right now. So your question is to just a general use of a church under COVID precautions. Christine or Rob, are you familiar with whatever? I'm not familiar with the latest guidance on churches for COVID. So, you know, it's something our health inspector would be, you know, responding to if there were questions. So I don't even want to guess at that right now. Got it. Thank you. So I do have a question on churches. I listened to the planning board briefly discussed this last Wednesday, I think. And one of the questions was about religious institutions and the potential for some of their food pantries to need to be moved outside under a tent or something. And the response implied that the section 3.330 included that type of thing, but today it sounds like you're saying it might not include that. So it would need to be added, not just the words that 330.0 is non-profit educational and religious institution, but that it's a separate section completely that would need to be added. So I guess I'm just confused at this point. Christine? I'm a little confused too because sometimes non-profit educational and religious uses does include churches, but we also have a separate section of our bylaw which specifically talks about churches and it also specifically lists personages. And one of the reasons I brought up this topic was that I know that a shelter can exist in a church without going through site plan review if there are no exterior changes made. But my question was more like well what if a church has a shelter and then for some reason they want to offer meals and they want to offer meals in their parking lot outside of the church and they have to set up a tent to do that or they want to offer COVID testing or something like that. So how does that get incorporated into this? And does it come under the heading of non-profit educational and religious uses or is it worthwhile to add churches here? I would just add that I don't think it's included in this list currently so I think we would need to identify those other potential uses. Church or non-profit human service use if we felt like there were the potential for those locations to need to benefit from this article. So can I ask the follow-up then? Non-profit social service use we were the council seemed I guess it was implied at the council meeting that the survival center tent would fall under one of these. I guess I assumed it was non-profit educational institution but non-profit social service does it not fall under one of these? I believe any of them could fall under non-profit educational institutions but a church may not you know because we have this other use category that's specific to churches that if we think we want to have that opportunity for the church itself then we probably should include you know section 3.333 for churches or other places of worship but you know it certainly could be all of these are generally categorized as non-profit educational uses anything from substance abuse recovery to social services and so on you know usually kind of have that as their base core and educational institution. So you would think that something like the survival center would be covered under this addition of temporary use? I would guess we can go back and check for sure how they permitted the survival center but I would guess they were under this section. Yes they were. Okay are there other questions? Kevin. Yeah I don't this isn't a fully formed question so excuse me if I'm not super articulate but you know we're looking we originally put this out for 180 days now we're looking to extend it until December 31, 2021 so over a year from now I'm not quite sure what the thought process was behind that date versus any other date other than I assume we are making an assumption that we will still be in a similar situation to that we are now a year from now which is sad but likely true. But the other side of this is you know I think this was a really interesting experiment in a way in which we could learn whether there were better ways to permit things and so I know I was personally surprised and I think many of my colleagues were and certainly much of the public was when we learned that it took over 70 to 80 days for a restaurant to be able to put table and chairs outside on their own property. And so I guess I'm curious at what point do we start looking at this not necessarily as temporary in response to a crisis but start actually having the conversation of we've been doing this for some time now it's working well do we need to make that do we need to keep extending this as a temporary measure or when do we start having the conversation about whether some of these might be better off just being permanent changes to our by-law because I'll tell you right now looking at I mean even looking at temporary uses why does a farm stand need to go through site plan review why do we need to put the farm stand but you know some of the stuff to me I'm just wondering I understand doing this quickly for a temporary use in response to COVID but I guess I'm just curious do we wait for a year from now to start having a conversation about whether we just want to start making these changes start thinking about these permanently or you know a year from now if we're still in the COVID crisis do we just keep extending again at what point do we feel like we have enough information to say you know what maybe we don't need to go back to it taking 70 days or more for a restaurant to put tables outside on their property Christine so I think that Evan has a good point but I also think that some of these things can morph into something else or can even start out as something else for instance the Amherst nursery on Belcher Town Road I think started out as a farm stand maybe it still is considered a farm stand but that's a much larger operation than what you would think of as a simple table with a canopy over it and a box where you could put your money so there are different sizes of farm stands and the reason that that one had to go through the site plan review process was because we knew people were going to be coming in well initially we thought that people were going to be coming in larger numbers and needing places to park and they would need adequate circulation in a parking lot so I think the building commissioner goes through some process in evaluating different things and doesn't require every farm stand in Amherst to go through a site plan review process but there are certain types of farm stands that are large enough or active enough that would require a little bit more closer look and that we might want the neighbors to get involved in a public hearing so that's just addressing farm stands but I just wanted to give you an example of something that may be seeming to be minor but actually could be pretty big. Any other questions or comments? There was a question and I don't know how to deal with this a question last time this came up on the part of one of the planning board members about notifying a butters and in a sort of temporary situation emergency situation how much effort or time or money or whatever you have to spend should there be spent to make an effort to notify a butters and normally when something goes through site plan review or special permit we put an ad in the paper two two weeks in advance and then one week in advance of a public hearing and then we send notices to all property owners within 300 feet and they can choose to notify their tenants if they want to and even don't but anyway we're notifying the property owners and so the concern on the part of this planning board member and I think she's actually in the audience was that should we make any effort or actually she was suggesting as we should make an effort to notify business owners and property owners within a certain number of feet of these things that are proposed so I just wanted to put that out there because that is a concern and you may want to hear from this person who's in the audience if you choose to examine that possibility and it will come up at the public hearing so it might be good to examine it now thank you for bringing that up my understanding from watching the planning board meeting was that there was going to be some thought on the planning departments side put into whether that might be possible either put into the bylaw or sort of on a regulatory informal basis to figure out what might be possible and is that is my understanding correct that we might hear more about that about the possibilities next week may I yeah so I did talk to Rob briefly about it and we didn't come to any definite conclusion but I did try to imagine the logistics of it and first of all you would need to know you'd need well you'd need in a butters list and then you can notify the property owners but then you'd also need to know who in the building that you're thinking of who's renting space in there and that's not always clear you know sometimes it's clear because there's a restaurant on the ground floor and a sign outside but there may be people upstairs that we wouldn't really know about at all so it would take an effort on the part of somebody to find out who is in these buildings and then to make sure that they received a notification and would the notification be hand delivered or would it be mailed and if it's mailed then we have to know where to mail it to so from my point of view it involves a lot of effort and I'm not able to immediately figure out how it might work and I imagine that it could cause more work for the planning department so that's my point of view but you may wish to hear the point of view of the person who was bringing this up in the first place and see if she has any suggestions thank you for those thoughts Shalini so I have an office downtown and it's above Bistro 63 which has extended outwards and as I'm speaking now as a business person downtown and I have the I mean they have it is sort of I wouldn't say blocking but it's like right in front of my space and but the fact is I'm not even using my space right now very few offices are using their inside space and I just want to also bring the idea that many of us are empathetic towards each other we're all struggling and so having the planning department take on this additional expense and effort and all of that to address maybe someone who's going to have some issues seems like it's not it's it's very in an emergency situation right now and I don't know if all that effort and expense is justifiable at this point of time when we're all trying to work together and then the other question could be just empirically speaking what I did hear Rob say last time and I may be wrong Rob you're here you can clarify but what I heard planning department say is that they have enough experience of having worked through so many cases that if they're going to do something that's going to be an annoyance to the abut abut abutters then they already are aware of those based on the experience and they're going to do it in a way that they're already including that knowledge so there's that that's a second piece that I wanted to say and then the third is we could empirically ask the planning department like right now how many people have complained about how many abutters have complained about these changes Rob would you like to respond to the question Shalini just proposed post yes so a couple of those points we we do feel like we can anticipate issues with these permits we we all sit with the various boards and draft these decisions and have been through quite a bit so we feel like we can incorporate the proper conditions into these types of approvals as far as complaints go you know there's been so so little discussion about it everything's been really positive I can only think of one complaint that I received and it had to do with the elimination of the bike path on south pleasant street when we expand initially expanded the parking out there and it came with a request to allow biking on the sidewalk but as a result as you see the most recent changes the bike path has been put back restored in those areas that that's the only not non positive comment I've received thank you Rob Steve so I I wouldn't make this any more complicated than we have to but I do have a question and I I've had many years to ask this question but why doesn't Amherst have the practice of requiring somebody who's applied for a special permit or a site plan review to put up one of those signs like a very visible yellow sign that says this property has applied for you know something a special permit a site plan review a variance whatever so North Hampton for example requires that so that's just a general question that I have because that would seem like that would address some of the concerns that are being raised Christina Rob do you have an answer to that it seems like it's not a bad idea but I haven't thought about it yeah any other oh Steve oh I just I did a small project in North Hampton that required a zoning review and we had to put a yellow sign in front of the property for 30 days or two weeks or something like that so that just seems like a good way of notifying others who might be interested who aren't defined parties of interest by mass general law say renters or people in the vicinity that are outside of the immediate abutter range thank you for that suggestion um any other questions or comments shalini oh um can we put the question that Evan had on a future agenda topic about considering some of these changes and at least figuring out if any of what's happening now can be shifted to a more permanent way of permitting or can it be expedited or having some discussion at some point about it putting it as an agenda item thank you I will make that note um for future discussions sorry about the phone call um I'm not seeing any other hands as a reminder to both our committee members and those in the audience there will be a public hearing on these proposed amendments um on november 4th at 8 p.m by zoom the zoom links are already on the website um it sounds like we might be facing some potential changes to the bylaw particularly with the potential addition of 3.333 religious uses to the temporary portion of this bylaw where the whole big set of uses was um on that night um given the concerns of both planning board and crc that we've heard uh without with no one else having any questions and all 8 p.m next wednesday public hearing and we will move on on our agenda which is now up to the zoning priorities recommendations and this is going to probably be the next hour at least of our meeting um i think ben we can remove this one and put up your very handy um i think you had an excel chart i don't know whether that's what you guys want to start with but um i think chris and rob wanted to give an update first and then we would be getting into some more of the prioritization we might want to look at the new format and the use chart and the standards and conditions before we um okay at the prioritization so ben could be able to talk a little about yeah i can share my screen i have it up um um so yeah i um i've been continuing my effort to uh recodify and reformat the zoning bylaw um and i uh first off i changed the um numbering sequence from last time um incorporating some of your feedback to uh go to a more traditional like outline um format which is what you see here so we still have like the three uh number chain to kind of um stay consistent with what we have now um but then from there it breaks down into roman numerals uh capital letters you know numbers lowercase letters and very few times we actually get down into this level but it's there just in case uh for those few times that we get down into you know heading level seven um so this is the uh changes i made um since last meeting uh to the actual numbering and formatting um and so i i applied that to oops uh yeah here it is i applied that to the bylaw revision so um basically you know this is our same same bylaw um word for word but just in a new format following the uh the updated outline that i that i've created so um yeah i guess i'm still you know still open to suggestions you know i still have some some sections to work on um you know uh chris and rob you know told me to wait a little bit on the you know section six and section or sorry article six and article 15 amongst a few others because there might be some changes there so um it's mostly filled out um and i you know i find whereas our current i can actually i have the current bylaw open as well just to kind of give you guys a sense of what it looks like now this is the use table which i'll get to but currently there's just kind of inconsistent oops inconsistent uh indents between and and inconsistent numbering uh throughout the different sections because currently each each each article right now is a different like word document so they're not like and then when they're made into a pdf they're they're then combined after the fact and so um when they're all in a different word document you get some inconsistencies um and so you know i'm just going to scroll through quickly just to give you guys a sense of the the bylaw and you know you also run into these long number chains which are you know useful in a sense for locating where a paragraph might be within the bylaw but it also just you know they get they get pretty long and they're you know they're um it gets it turns into a lot of text we find here you see like a you know different indenting than you saw before um so yeah and then um what i've been working on most recently was updating uh the use table section 3.3 so i'm just going to go to the beginning here and so um i don't know where to begin with this section three uh use table 3.3 um one of the first issues is that there's just so much text you know that the purpose of this table is to be a quick reference for people to see what's the use and what do i need to do um for or based on which zone i'm in and then um that's the main purpose of the table and then we there's also all of these standards and conditions which just add to the complexity um and so what i did is let me just horizontal format then yep yeah so currently this where the where as the rest of the bylaw is um portrait uh this is landscape so when you have the paper version it involves actually flipping flipping it um and so i cleaned up 3.3 um and basically you know found a way to make it a portrait mode and um stayed consistent with the new numbering format as you see here and then um really just focused on the uses uh the zones and what what they're allowed you know whether they're allowed by right site plan review special permit prohibited um and then all that text from the standards and conditions um is brought to um a new section 3.4 in the bylaw um started to scroll through this quickly um another slight change i made was just i made a marijuana uses kind of its own section just because it had been in retail and it kind of just you know uh it has a lot of standards and conditions that only apply to all to marijuana uses so it was easier to kind of call it its own section and then let me just find the new section 3.4 just so you guys can see that sorry too many tabs open um so where am i sorry for all the scrolling um so yeah here we go section 3.4 um basically each of the uh uses from the table um now correspond to an entry here and so for each of the um uses you know whether it's class 1 farm stand you would look okay it's you know allowed by by right in this zone but let me check the standards and conditions and then you'd come to section 3.4 and you would just get a you know um information about the types of you know dimensional requirements and uh um different use uh you know types of agriculture that are allowed for example um you know uh some of the you know many of the uses don't have any standards and conditions um but i still put them in here just to kind of just keep the number inconsistent with the use table um so you know here's you know two fast two family detached dwelling and so yeah i just found it easier to or more coherent to split them up rather than keep having all the language of the standards and conditions in the table itself so um that's where i'm at with that right now um and trying to think uh yeah i basically finished the table um i think i've you know put all the uses in there and um at this point uh just one minor thing i'm trying to figure out is you know i did this in excel but i did the rest of the bylaw in word and so how do i like key i want the header um where do we go i want this header to like also show up on the use table so i have to somehow bring it into the same document so just like little things like that i'm trying to figure out at this point but um hoping to have a recodified and reformatted bylaw to you all um quite sooner rather than later thank you ben christine so i just wanted to note um for steve's that ben was trying to um accommodate steve's comment the last time we met about not having a standardized um what do you call it outline um numbering system and so ben went back and did adopt the standard outline numbering system once you get past the initial um number in uh arabic numerals then he went to the roman numerals etc so i i just wanted to um let let steve know that that was a response to his comment and if he has any further comments we'd be interested in hearing them uh no and i really appreciate that seems much clearer yeah yeah i agree any other comments on the re or questions on the recodification progress ebb and i guess just a process question so none of the changes are substantive so is this just a completely internal playing department thing no this is something that would be adopted by town council once we insert whatever changes we are recommending um and i think there will be two different levels of changes that we're going to recommend rob and i are going to go through the bylaw and change wording where it doesn't make sense and reword things etc but then the um planning board and the crc are going to take whole sections and just completely redo them and so it's going to be an ongoing process it's going to be a little messy but i think that we can work together to get through it and i've actually started i don't know if ben has this section available but i've actually started based on the model flood plain bylaw that i received from the state recently i've started to go through and enter um an earlier version of this format um we're rob and i are sharing an earlier version of this to put our comments our substantive changes in but i've i've started to do that inserting the um the new flood plain district into that bylaw so i am working on a substantive change there i'm going to follow up with with evan's question so you know it sounds like from ben's presentation that most of this is just changing of numbers that at this point what we're seeing has no changes in words although some stuff was moved dramatically which would require probably because of that moving um a passage of a revision somehow through through town council with hearings and all um the first time we get are we going to get this recodification with essentially no changes as a separate hearing i think this is where evan was going as a separate hearing and a passage and then are we going to get the flood plain or the first time we get amendments whether it be major things like the flood piling or minor things more minor things i think rob was talking about some inconsistencies in language and all is that going to come through now or after sort of one whole fell swoop of repeal and replace to get to the new look i think that's open for discussion i don't think we've totally landed on a on a method there i think rob would like to wait until all of the changes have been made and then bring it all to you as one package i'm a little bit less enthusiastic about that because i think we'll be making changes along the way that we have to make sooner rather than later so you might want to ask rob for his opinion but i'm not i'm not imagining that this format is going to come to you as a changed format with no substantive changes for you to vote on at this time unless you wanted to proceed that way so does rob have something to say about that rob i think i think i agree that we weren't intending to bring the reformatted version without changes for adoption that we'd like to if we're comfortable with the formatting and ready to start inserting those changes that we see are necessary we want to start working on that and and that would be the first kind of complete document before the bigger changes start to get inserted and and wherever you know along the way we decide is the appropriate time to consider adoption of it is fine uh i don't think we have that decided yet what are crc's committee members thoughts on i i see in some sense two options there's a third but one is a repeal and replace with pretty much no language changes at all um a repeal and a replace but including a number of language changes that are the smaller stuff that rob just talked about and then the third is i guess a repeal and replace with whatever comes forward first whether that be floodplain or there's a lot of other ones i think in the pipeline um you know and so thoughts from the committee on on that Evan yeah um definitely have thoughts we are uh busy the planning board is busy i would prefer to reduce the amount of public hearings that we have to have um for people's time staff time committee member time for expense i mean it costs money to put those legal notices in um and so to me it's sort of a lot to go through of uh just to do essentially um a reformatting um and even just minor language changes so my preference is actually uh and i'll defer to the planning department but my preference would be option three um with a small asterisk being um if whatever that change is is something like floodplain maps or something something that wouldn't be seen as um a real drastic revision um but something where we can get something where we can combine the reformatting the wording changes and an amendment sort of in one hearing that's kind of what i'm imagining other thoughts so so i think i'm i might be somewhat with evan um and somewhat a little more conservative i don't think that just a repeal and replace with no wording changes is time is a wise use of time and hearing time um i don't know how quickly the smaller changes that rob's been talking about would be ready um but i do think if this as ben has seemed to indicate is nearly ready and set and formatted whatever the first thing um after article 14 um that we're hearing on next week um whatever that next group is when that comes up whether that be flood maps or floodplains or water districts or sewer districts or i don't know what all we got water drainage i don't know what else coming um i think that if it's if it's perceived as generally non-con i mean maybe it would be multiple amendments um or multiple motions but i don't want things if this is ready to go i don't want large stuff coming in a new format while we haven't adopted the new format or coming in an old format to then have to re-adopt in a new one um at the same time depending on what that first thing is it may be wise to split them out separately in case whatever that bigger thing is doesn't get nine votes on the council i'm not sure we would want the the recodification to fail because someone you know because we combined it with something that in the end did not pass any other thoughts christine so i have the sense that some of the changes that rob wants to make are non-controversial they're clarifications of things that you know i've been knowing at us for years and so you know maybe it makes sense to bring this with um those kinds of changes and then come back with the more substantive changes and i'm just saying that now but i haven't really convinced myself that's the right thing to do but i do think that many of the things that rob is going to be proposing are not controversial and wouldn't get a lot of um of negative feedback i would ask that if that's the way we go that when the bylaw comes to us in this new format with those changes that we be given a a reference to where those word changes are because i know when we did the repeal and replace of the general bylaw being able to see where those changes were was a big when when all you were doing was presented with a brand new document and you had to go back three or four documents to figure it out and compare the two it would be really nice to have a handy sort of cheat sheet of here's the sections that actually have wording changes versus here are the ones that don't um for for review purposes i think would be helpful any other thoughts shalini if they're not controversial changes but we still have to go through public hearing and all yes yes so what is the advantage of separating that out i'm still not clear given what haven't pointed like time of everyone involved and so just for non substantive changes why do we need why don't we put it all together but we can vote separately but it's on the same day so the public hearing will be on the same day and i wasn't talking about separate hearings i was just talking for the purpose of us knowing what those changes are that are wording changes versus just the recodification a little cheat sheet yeah yeah not a not a speaking to your problem but just generally like why i'm still not clear what is the advantage of having it separately if it's not substantive i think um before i recognize christine i think what evan and i were saying were the non substantive sort of changes where i was talking about should probably be brought at the same time if they're ready or at the same time as floodplain or whatever the first thing is okay so it's combining it with other things yeah okay yeah okay as long as we're combining it and not just okay yeah i'm i'm agreeing with that then i think it looks like we might be ready to move on to the next part of what you guys wanted to present talk about what you're working on and then move on to the chart am i right um i think i don't know if rob has anything else he wants to present um other than the flood plain text you know i i guess i should explain about what's going on with the flood plain text um can i interrupt you one second christine sarah just raised your hand so i want to see if that's related to the last one before we move on sarah you are muted sarah we're gonna ask you to unmute we'll come back to sarah once she figures out the unmuting uh you can go on christ well i wanted to go back actually um to the previous conversation and to say that my understanding is that we're going to be meeting with you regularly and we will be presenting things to you as we change them and then you can help us figure out what is controversial what isn't controversial and um help us figure out you know how much can we bring to the town council the first time around and what things are going to need to have a separate um public hearing that's going to be part of our mutual conversation i think okay thank you for that um next is what are we we're moving on to i don't know whether it was flood plain or other projects you're currently working on and the status of those so next i would like to just give you um a sense of where we are with the flood plain zoning i've been talking about it for two or three years now and you're probably wondering what the heck's going on so um we had at least one appeal i can't quite remember exact sequence of events but we received a set of um a set of plans from fema and our consultant and um they were appealed by one of the property owners and then um we got a new set of plans with seeming to be uh responding to that issue and then that property owner um remained concerned and right now i can't exactly remember if we've gone through two appeal periods or not but in any event we're about to start our third appeal period and what that means is that the town has um 90 days in which to review the plans and make them available to the public and um ask the public if they have any issues and if they don't have any issues at the end of the 90 days the appeal period closes and then we move into a period where um fema sends us uh the preliminary maps as they are not appealed and um we have six months in which to adopt the maps and adopt the text the zoning text to go along with the maps so the text and the maps are going to be adopted simultaneously and that is going to happen somewhere between you know we haven't started our latest 90 day appeal period so it's going to be at least three months starting sometime soon before we get the final maps and then we have this six month period so i just wanted to give you that frame of reference so i'm working on the text acom is working on the maps we should have the whole thing available to you in three or four months and then you might choose to just adopt that whole thing all at once fitting it into this new format of course for the text i'm not sure that's exactly gonna work but maybe we have to um adopt format first and then fit it into the format but anyway i just wanted to give you a sense of what the the time frame was for the flood maps because i've been talking about it for a long time and it's a little complicated and it's not in our control it's in the control of people who want to appeal and it's in the control of fema and our consultant so that's it on flood plain okay thank you for that i just want to note that um sarah did drop off about four minutes ago or so um her internet went down she is working on calling in i will be watching for that and bringing her in on the phone call um when she can get called in to the meeting okay do you want me to go ahead yes please so um rob and ben and i have looked at the the priorities that mandy joe sent us and ben put them into a matrix format and ben and i have been working on filling out this format we actually haven't met with rob um yet um so we may have a little bit different idea about some of these things than we had but we can start to go through this priorities matrix um if that's what you would like to do next um yes uh did you just make this bigger please yes thank you so much yeah thank you and and sarah you're the five thousand number that just called in so i'm going to hit allow to talk so that you can um and and i will i don't know what you have to do to unmute but um i think you can now talk you can't raise your hand sarah um but i think i know okay so just interrupt us if you're ready to talk we can hear you so welcome back sarah did you have a comment on the um we're moving on to the priorities matrix um which was in the packet it's more filled in now i can't i but i hope you've got an idea of the matrix did you have a comment on the prior item before you lost internet no i don't okay okay so so we are going to hear from ben i believe on this matrix ben is this the matrix that we filled out today or is this the old version yep yeah this is the one we worked on today this afternoon um yeah i guess just a little bit of background uh i mean all all this information is from uh i believe from andy joe and i i just put it into an excel format and a table just to help with the organization and you know eventually perhaps you know some sort of analysis and evaluation of next steps and priorities but um the idea you know just briefly it's the you know source of the item you know so it's planning department pd planning board and town council um the actual young zoning item itself um you know it's it's interesting some of these are very specific you know footnote a but others are you know improved downtown zoning so it's you know very specific to very broad items and then these these you know headers are um from andy joe's email just about kind of different ways of analyzing these these various priorities in hopes in hopes of you know ranking and hoping to determine next steps so you know whether it could be completed by the end of the year you know time frame is it three months or is it over a year and in between um you know some way of analyzing the impact to the town um and you know chris and i worked on that today kind of you know is it just a few properties you know in one district or is you know is it a change that affects the entire town um you know whether we think we could work on it in-house or whether it would involve hiring a consultant and you know some sense of you know what that consulting work might cost um mandy joe had put in her email like you know some assessment of is the zoning item a covid priority is it something that could definitely help the town you know rebound stronger after coronavirus subsides um and then one thing i added just because i noted a lot of crossover between the planning department planning board and town council is just is it a priority that's shared with another body um and so either yes and if it's blanket it just means no i didn't say yes and no but uh so yes if it's uh kind of consistent with something else that was mentioned by another body so yeah that's um just kind of a overview of the matrix itself um chris i don't know if you do we want to go line by line or how do we want to approach this um i'm happy to go line by line if the crc thinks that it's useful um you know we're we're seeing that our first look at this filled in right now um i think um if we could if for i'm getting messages from sarah too um i think line by line because we definitely don't have someone looking at it right now with sarah might be helpful but quickly you know some sort of just and then your thoughts on whether you wouldn't where where you might prioritize it if we had to pick five to start with because you know there's there's like 20 some listed here or something um and we can't have you know the planning department can't work on 20 at a time i'm assuming so um something like that we can give you we can go line by line and give you some of our thoughts about why we said various things so comprehensive review and recodification i think that's going to take a pretty big effort um depending on how much we include in it and again i haven't really spoken with rob about the exact time frame on this but it seems like it's probably going to take at least 12 months maybe longer i hope not too much longer um overall i think it's going to have a medium impact on the town as a whole but it will have a huge impact on our department and the planning board and the zoning board of appeals it'll just make our zoning bylaw make much more sense and people will spend less time dealing with conflicts and they will be able to move right into um working with the bylaw instead of trying to understand it i had a couple of conversations with someone the other day about the converted dwelling section of the bylaw and um whether it would be useful to this person in the case that he's talking about and it was so hard to explain what it says and then almost impossible to explain whether it would be useful to him or not so i told him to read it himself and then come do whatever calculations were involved and then come back to us with what he was proposing because it's just inscrutable um so anyway that's an example of something that really needs to be addressed and um but in in the long run the impact to the town is probably not going to be large it's going to be for people who are specifically you know trying to use the bylaw um and then we can do this in-house and that'll be you know a joint effort of all of us the demolition delay bylaw is already being worked on by the historical commission i understand that they have a pretty good draft that they're happy with um it hasn't been circulated widely uh among the planning department and i don't know if the building commissioner has actually seen the latest draft but it's probably not going to take too much longer to um pull it together and i would think that the historical commission would want to hold a public hearing on it and then it could possibly move to be being one of the first things that um the town adopts it's probably going to have a small impact in the sense that not that many people are demolishing all or parts of buildings in town but for the people who do want to do that it will it will have a it will be very helpful it's something we are doing in-house we don't need a consultant and doesn't have any covid priority and nobody else cares about it it's not a shared priority with another body just us um flood maps and text i talked to you about that already i think it's going to take at least nine months to get through this process um it could be could be shorter it could be like four months we'll see how it goes um but i'm not i'm not going to be overly optimistic about the time frame it'll have a medium effect in the sense that it will affect those who have property that is in the floodplain um and it will help the conservation commission to do their job better not that they don't do it well now they do but this will be more information for them and we don't need help with it other than the help that we have right now the parking bylaw is really a challenge because we know that um people's driving habits have changed people's use of public transportation um people riding bicycles etc so how many cars do people really need um that's a question because our parking bylaw was really written for a time when there probably wasn't as much public transportation it was i believe it was essentially written in the 70s and since then it's been tweaked so it it isn't hasn't been brought up to date it is going to take a while to um to figure it out it's got a lot of detail in it um it will have a large effect because just think of the effect that it would have on the downtown or even on neighborhoods or developments we had extensive conversations about parking requirements for a couple of the new projects that have come through lately and um the bylaw says one thing but if the planning board wants to waive what it says then they have to go through a lot of discussion and justify it to themselves and justify it to the public as to why they're granting waivers um so we need a consultant to help us with that somebody who really knows how other cities and towns are dealing with parking and i'm guessing $40,000 because um when we've hired nelson nygard in the past to do a couple of different things for us and generally speaking their fees are around $40,000 for whatever they ask us whatever we ask for them so that's my just off the top of my head estimate um the inclusionary zoning bylaw is a challenging one because people have very different views and approaches to this one um some people think that any development over 10 units or 10 units or more no matter what kind of development it is should be required to include affordable units um in the past we've said well is that really fair um some places some properties are a lot more expensive than other properties particularly properties downtown are we also going to burden developers with the burden of providing affordable units um on the other hand we've seen development in the outskirts of downtown in the last few years that has included affordable units and people don't seem to be balking at that and they seem to be so interested in developing enamors that they're willing to include the affordable units so there's kind of there are various methods that we could use one is just to say across the board 10 percent of your development is going to be affordable there are um complications with that but i won't go into those now and another one is to say well if you're going to provide affordable units in some places you will be required to but in other places you may be offered a cost offset so in other words if you provide an affordable unit maybe you'll get two more regular market rate units so there are lots of different ways of approaching this so if we do the simple version we can do it in house if we go we do the complicated version we need a consultant and we're kind of still grappling with this and i think the planning board is going to have to have a discussion about this but again if we did hire a consultant i would expect that probably have to pay them 40 to $50,000 to help us with this i'm going to stop you right here we're going to take these in chunks i think it'll be easier for our committee to ask questions that way they don't have to remember them so for the first five that chris has just run through questions shallony um yeah it i really love this thank you so much for creating this i was thinking almost that having a column for impact to the planning department would be helpful like you have a column for impact to town because that would help us explain or understand why you're asking for a certain thing like if it has low impact and no one is really asking for it but it's really like you said chris said it's really impacting the planning department so then it makes us i think just putting another column there or that would be helpful and then the impact for the town you said um that it was based on the number of units or people that are impacted and so that's just a clarifying questions is that the basis for deciding the impact because it seems like there must be some other criteria not just the numbers i wasn't really thinking of numbers of property i was more thinking of who do we have coming through the planning department asking us about things and um for the most part we don't have that many people coming here asking us about demolishing buildings um and so that item probably wouldn't affect a lot of people unless they happen to be really fond of a building on a main road that they pass every day and all of a sudden it's gone but in in general terms it's not um it's not a topic that people think about a lot and it's not going to affect a lot of people whereas if you move down to improve downtown zoning and i'm skipping ahead that's going to have a huge impact on a lot of people so um so that's kind of how i was imagining not so much based on properties but based on numbers of people who might be affected by it so the third question that i mean the first one okay the question then is what is the criteria that's seen you that we that you have been using or maybe we need to develop because that's the purpose of this is like if something is of low impact and not the planning board and town council have not put in as a priority and hopefully we're representing constituents i mean and you're not hearing from residents that that's important to them then why are we spending time doing that well in the case of the demolition delay by-law i think that when it does become irritating it becomes really irritating for our department and we spend a lot of time trying to um cope with it and um it it can be very difficult to interpret the by-law the way it is and if we interpret one way we end up getting flooded with applications if we interpreted it another way we don't get many at all but then something might get torn down that people wouldn't like so it's it's a little bit of an irritation factor as well as a clarification factor and i think that um mandy joe uh brought up um issues related to the demolition delay by-law a few months ago and um and expressed you know concern about how it how it is interpreted and so we want to kind of clean it up and make sure that everybody can interpret it the same way and that people who do need to use it are well served by it but that the staff is also well served by it so does that make sense thank you steve yeah um so thank you so much for the clarity here also appreciated so just a couple of comments that means now that we're going to add columns so another column might be essential or not essential so like the parking by-law you noted that we have a parking by-law but and so there i should mention that there's a parking by-law versus the downtown parking district which is a whole different issue but the parking by-law like number of number of cars per unit or number of cars per square foot of you know retail or whatever is largely waivable and it's waivable on purpose so that the whatever the special permit grant and authority can use actual data provided by the developer or for their own experience can waive parts of that so in a way that's a very important discussion but and to me it's also not essential because it it um i think it usually actually is we or at least reduced based on you know evidence provided by people who are trying to develop things so there are other ones that are not waivable you know so there's parts of the that are things that are on the list that are not waivable and to me those would be kind of a higher priority to have those discussions about you know things where there is no discussion allowed the other one more thing is things like the demolition delay seem like they don't affect many people but actually they have an enormous number of people so they kind of it's something that sneaks up on a lot of people because they don't realize that the garage behind their house or the addition on the back of their house that they want to take off in order to expand their house actually is subject to demolition delay if it's older than if it has certain characteristics so that's probably the one that surprises a lot of people to discover that their property is actually subject to that so it's not just historic houses that are beautiful houses on a tree line street it's often a outbuilding or you know or something like that and then you you didn't you had your hand raised and then you took it down so i'm assuming you don't have any more comments i can just say quickly um it's sort of built on what we're picking up on the demolition delay impact of town being small um because one thing i want to make sure we're also thinking of is um the message that we're sending about our community and about um the ease in which people can invest and develop in our community you know i know if if even though there might not be a lot of people who are seeking to demolish buildings if the feeling amongst people is um that they will more than likely be slapped with the demolition delay for a year simply because they're seeking to redevelop that might discourage people from trying to develop and so um i think the problem with the demolition delay is it's it can easily it can be a canon and probably has been used um to as an anti-development tool and i think that the message that sends has a bigger impact than any individual building right and so um i i would also push back on the impact of that one being small can we change that yep and for the for the record i think we're proposing to rename it the preservation for historic or preservation for historic buildings by law to kind of reframe it a little bit and it might actually be taken out of the hall we might make a recommendation on that but i also wanted to say about parking i agree with steve but i think um there have been lengthy discussions about whether or not to waive the parking by law with regard to projects and i can think of two of them recently where there are members of the planning board who are really reluctant to waive sections of the bylaw what they want is the bylaw to be clear and to state what is required and not have to go through a waiver process again and again and it does prolong the hearing process um so making it more um more clear what is required would be helpful so i i have a couple questions more generally in this and then i i want to be mindful of time and we do have sarah back visually it looks like so we might not have to go line by line anymore um but one question i have is i know there's some money that's been appropriated out of capital for consulting costs related to zoning and planning um do we know what that number is whether christine or david know that number um yep what what is that number 40 thousand dollars that was um appropriated in number of years ago for what we called the gateway and downtown zoning so that was after we did the gateway study process which was jonathan tucker was the planning director back then and so it's got to be at least six or seven or more years ago but we do still have that pot of money it hasn't been taken away from us yet um so that's available and then i had asked for an additional uh 60 thousand dollars for um for consultants to help us with zoning as part of our capital request for this year um but we haven't gotten to the point of talking about capital requests so so we right now we have 40 000 we're holding on to it with our little hands and we may get an additional okay that helps me as i'm looking consultants to to think about how we might prioritize those the next question i have is covid priority and i'm actually going to bring up parking again um again a big issue with everyone um you know we we had asked and i noticed that none of this is the covid priority column seems to be empty because it's really hard i'm guessing to determine what might be most important coming out of covid um but with parking in particular is this something that you know despite what evan just said um which contradict what steve just said is this something that is that we should be asking is it appropriate to be doing now because we don't know what post-covid is going to look like and what post-covid is going to look like with driving and parking and all of that you know is are there some things that could go under the covid priority or maybe it's not a covid priority column it's more of just a covid column that says hey maybe this is something that should be delayed until we know where we are out of it versus working to modify it in the middle of it um and parking came to mind and simply because of potential differences in travel and stuff but i'm sure there are others on this list that you know um mixed use building definition in terms of what can be on the bottom floor might be something that maybe we need a little bit more experience coming out of covid before we try and define what needs to be on that bottom floor as a mixed use because we don't know what our downtown is going to look like or maybe we need to do it now to better um you know better signal what we want our downtown mixed use buildings to look like even though we're in the middle of a crisis so those were my comments on this um i guess we can go on um we've got about 10 minutes or so this is not going to finish the conversation obviously um we'll start with shalini and then we'll probably be continuing this conversation at the next meeting as we get through these so shalini um talking about um prior priorities and impact i was thinking one criteria we could be you thinking as we make these decisions is uh which includes the covid impact also is i think when dav talked about it in our meeting it was in reference to economic resiliency and what can we do to support um the local businesses and so so just bringing that lens to making these decisions and i started to create a similar matrix not as all encompassing as this but the two things that i was using was our town manager goals like from the town council perspective what are our goals and priorities so the town council goal town manager goals and so that had economic vitality and affordable and mixed income housing were two priorities for our town manager so which i was using that those are two important criteria and i think both are impacted by covid so i just want to bring that as criteria that we or lens we can use when we are making these decisions or add to the criteria i mean i think that's one thing we need to do is like what are the different criteria in addition to the number of people coming to the planning department to ask about it or so forth so what are really listing out what are the different criteria we need to be looking at to assess impact and i had a question about covid priority yep how to express that because mandy joe mentioned um a way of thinking about that that i hadn't thought about which is should we put some of these things off until we get finished with covid um and then how would we say so in other words covid priority you could say yes but if you're going to put it off how do you express that do you express it as delay or maybe something like immediate would be one way of dealing with it and the other way would be no delay it until later so we have to think about um what how to rank covid priority if we're going to use that as a as a criteria for figuring this out and i don't have an idea how to do that yet i think we're all trying to figure that out all right so do you want to go back up then yeah let's go back up to some of the green we were signed by law the signed by law is another thorn in the side of the planning department and the inspection services there are signs that are you know proliferating all over the place and there was a there was a select board member a few years ago who was really on a tear about signs and just wanted it to be dealt with and not to have all the windows in downtown plastered with signs um the other thing is that parts of the signed by law conflict with other parts in other words at the very end there's a section that says any section of the signed by law can be waived by the planning board of the zoning board of appeals but then somewhere in the middle it says but for this particular thing you need a special permit from and it's essentially a special permit from the zoning board of appeals to do this thing so you can't really waive a special permit requirement so that's the kind of thing that the signed by laws is has a problem with and the other thing is just trying to understand what it says um along a highway if you're you know 10 feet from the edge of the road the sign can be this big if you're 20 feet it can be this big if you're 30 feet it can be this big so it's very complicated and we need some way of simplifying it and also making it clearly understandable and also not conflict with itself um and the building commissioner and I are very interested in that the other thing is that there was a legal case I think it went to the supreme court and I forget the name of the case but it has to do with content and if your bylaw if your signed by law talks about signs in terms of content then um they are not considered to be constitutional there have been other legal cases subsequent to the supreme court case that have kind of toned down on that a little and these are non-commercial signs if it's commercial sign you can regulate it much more strictly but if it's a church sign or a sign for a hospital or some some other thing it's harder to regulate them and it's also hard to regulate even things like electoral signs election signs people have them all over their front lawn but that would have to be regulated by content if you had a a rule against having election signs or only having them for a certain period of time so anyway the sign by law is complicated it probably doesn't rise to the uh level of interest on the part of citizens unless they're irritated by how many signs you know subway has in their window or something like that but um for us here in the planning department it is uh it is a difficult uh bylaw to deal with and we think we need a consultant to help us we asked the town meeting a number of years ago for a consultant but they didn't approve of the money so now we're coming back and saying yes we need a consultant to deal with the sign by law and I'm guessing it might take $30,000 but it might take more than that and there are consultants who are very adept at writing sign by laws and also making sure that they comply with this new Supreme Court case so that's that and I don't know if that has any COVID priority and it's not shared with another body the the importance of it isn't shared with another body the need for housing and increased density I think we're all um on board with that one that's a planning department um priority we think it would take six to 18 months depending on how complicated we get with it it would have a huge impact on the town in that we'd be able to house more people in um in a small amount smaller amount of space instead of going out and building suburbs in the hinterlands we'd be able to um increase density in already developed areas we think we can do it in-house um and I'd like to give it a try our planning board is um has a a very good person who knows a lot about housing on it she's an architect and she could probably help us with this and I don't know what the COVID priority would be for that and the concern is shared with another body I think it's a shared with the yeah it's similar to a few I mean it's broad but you know planning board has unlock housing development and town council has expand types of housing both by location and permit type so yep um what else okay mixed use building definition I think we're all aware that the mixed use building definition doesn't really see less right now because we allow mixed use buildings to be built with very minor retail and commercial space um and we but we don't have a definition for how much space is required and what other kinds of uses could be in a mixed use building um so we need to think about that we do have a bylaw that was written a number of years ago and we'd like to pull that out and um dust it off and see if that would be applicable now I think it would have a a medium impact on the downtown but also on outlying areas we can do that work in-house and again I'm not sure what the COVID um what COVID priority is but it does resonate with other groups it is a priority for other groups footnote a has to do with the waiver of dimensional requirements so that's where you get a developer coming in and saying well um I I can't build a five-story building in downtown and have it be 55 feet tall because I need 12 feet on the first floor for a restaurant and then I want my ceilings to be tall I want them to be 10-foot ceilings instead of seven and a half foot ceilings so I need my building to be taller so I'm going to come to the planning board or the zoning board of appeals and ask for a waiver of the height dimensional requirement or they might ask for a waiver of the setback requirement and these are things that are commonly requested thereby special permit for either the planning board or the zoning board of appeals depending on who's um dealing with the major permit um I think it causes some people uh some angst um I know that Hilda Greenbaum has brought it up again and again and she says that we need to be clear about what our dimensional requirements are and not grant waivers if we think buildings can be more than 55 feet well then we should put that in the in the use in the dimensional table but not have the ability to grant waivers with every um application and I think that is conversation that we really need to have um I'm not sure I think it's a medium impact although some people may think it's more than that we can do that in-house and I don't think that the importance of that is shared with other groups but it is something that comes up quite a bit in the planning department and the planning board and here's one that we added today because Ben and I went to a seminar a webinar on small cell and 5G installations and the municipalities in Massachusetts are facing um wireless telecommunications companies coming in and really trying to build up their networks and many of them in the vicinity of the Boston area are struggling with how to control this and so the webinar today was all about what cities and towns can do to to create 5G regulations that are or not not only 5G but small cell regulation and 5G that are reasonable that allow um the telecommunications companies to operate but don't cause a proliferation of ugliness and um so we think we have some ideas about how to deal with that and Paul Backelman has flagged this as an important thing that he wants the planning department to work on and um so we we think that we want we want to add that to the list and I think it would have a huge impact because if we start to see these things coming into town people are going to be complaining about them they're they're kind of like ubiquitous once they come and so I'd like to talk to you all more about that and it probably would take us I would guess three to six months to develop regulations there are other cities and towns who have model bylaws that we could borrow from so um and I think we'd have to probably develop a working group or a task force to help us deal with that maybe the CRC is that working group um but this is going to be a big topic and um and we should move ahead and deal with it so that um we're going to stop here we're going to take questions on this I think then we're going to move on to our next agenda item because we'll come back to this we'll have time for the uh I'll get this out to the whole membership so that we can review it ourselves and come back with questions for other things but any questions right now comments like Steve yeah so I think the um footnote a I would say that high and large impact to at least the parts of it I think it's a large impact item and worth discussing so whether or not there should be a footnote a is one question about where footnote a is applied is another question so it also is worth noting one of my favorites is that not all footnotes footnotes a result in bigger buildings sometimes to do a smaller building you need footnote a and that has to do with places where there's a maximum like there's a place in the zoning bylaw where you either have to be zero setback or 10 feet setback so it doesn't always result in bigger buildings sometimes it results in more sensible buildings so I and you know honestly that's also linked to some of the other issues above you know that particular footnote is linked to you know unlocking certain sites for for you know development etc etc so that's my my uh what I had to say any other comments or questions Evan yeah I just wanted to also jump on the footnote a conversation because I think that um you know the time it would take in here is uh three to six months and I guess it's sort of like well it depends on what you're um what you're trying to do right if if the conversation is about should we allow these waivers and do we want footnote a then it takes no time at all you just it's a rescission right I mean you don't need to develop anything the bigger question is if we don't want footnote a then are our other dimensional regulations in a condition in which we'd be okay having them without waivers and that's a much bigger conversation and so I'm just going to put in the plug that footnote from me footnote a is not anywhere near a priority right now because I don't even think it's a conversation we can have until we've looked at the dimensional regulations for everything else and had some agreement about what we want density to be in these areas before we have a conversation about removing it in fact I right as we stand right now um I'd actually be in favor of adding footnote a to more things in the dimensional regulations than I am to removing it so I'm going to take my comment and say maybe another column and you know we actually a column and then also maybe a consolidation um you know the town council where you've got the shared priorities with other bodies maybe if we could group them despite the color you know put all of the I think inclusionary zoning might have actually ended up on a town council list to put them up together or the source be planning department and town council or something like that so that maybe the charts a little shorter but so that's like a combination but the column idea was maybe we need some some guidance or some thoughts from the planning department on which of these go hand in hand you know and I don't know whether that's another column or something you know as Evan said maybe footnote a shouldn't be dealt with on its own it should be dealt with with something else um you know the need for increased housing and density might directly relate to mixed use building definitions and so are there certain things on these lists that you wouldn't want to do alone that you would want to combine into two or three together because they are so interrelated and I don't know whether that's another column or whether that's numbering these with a's and b's then I I I don't know how to look at that but I think that would also be helpful as we're trying to say yes on these maybe wait on some other things Steve so I've read something that council Ross wrote about footnote a who knew that a footnote would get this much attention but um he correctly points out that footnote a isn't a waiver it's a waiver that it's a waiver that allows that allows a special permit and then that special permit then triggers things like inclusionary zoning so like the the existing model when we changed the inclusionary zoning bylaw I think was under town meeting under one of the last things that town meeting did it brought greatly broadened what special permits triggered inclusionary zoning so by allowing more judicial more more expansive use of footnote a that would also trigger more special permits that would also trigger the inclusionary zoning bylaw more often it would should be a one way of unlocking affordable housing that was actually true of the Barry Roberts development on university drive they needed a footnote a waiver and therefore they were required to have affordable units in there I forget which waiver it was but yes some of some of the waivers don't trigger inclusionary zoning and some of them do any other comments at this time shalani yeah I I wonder if you need the definition of inclusionary zoning because I was reading up research on inclusionary zoning and and it's different from incentive zoning so I feel like we are using it interchangeably because inclusionary zoning mandates that residential developers make some of their housing affordable an incentive zoning provides the developers seeking special permits may obtain favorable zoning such as increase in density in exchange for providing affordable housing so to me it feels like we're using inclusionary zoning whether it's a carrot or a stick so in our case it's a stick excellent to do it and in your case what you're talking about is I forget the word you used but that would be more like a carrot if you do it then you get this right and you were using it as a we're using it as a stick oh we are well if you want these special permits then you must do it it's not like it's not like an offer it's like if you want to do this then you have to do that yeah but it seems like inclusionary is just that you just have to do it and incentive is that if you want those special favors then it gets triggered only when there's some special permit isn't that how our inclusionary zoning is right now I guess you could say that yeah so then that's more and I like that because it's more incentive zoning and it's you know it just so should we change the name of it yeah go ahead I was gonna say I think ours is both right now I think for some things it's required no matter what and for others it's it's that if you want that extra dimensional waiver you then need to do this but I think it takes us a good segue Shalini into our next topic of conversation which is 40R because that's that's part of what I think 40R is is that incentive sort of zoning so I think you segueed us nicely into the 40R topic that that was the next thing so I think then we can unshare this I don't know whether there's any plan for any sharing of 40R stuff I'm not I don't think there is you know and and so I put this on the agenda for and before we go into 40R we will be bringing zoning priorities and all of this back I will get the most updated table from the planning department to send to CRC members so that we can look at it a little bit more and think about it and but 40R Steve Schreiber asked that we put some sort of discussion of 40R on the agenda I don't think this is what he was intending at this point but I talked to the planning board chair about 40R and the planning board will be continuing to discuss the 40R proposal at the next couple of meetings was what chair Jemsik indicated to me he seemed to want to have CRC hold off on a very big substantive discussion until after the planning board had been able to discuss it on their own I think part of that is there is it is unknown right now whether the planning board is in favor or not with 40R so there is a potential for the planning board to say we don't want 40R and then if that is the case then there's a different discussion going on at CRC then if the planning board says hey we want to move forward with this and at this point I think it's unknown which way the planning board may decide to go I think some of us attended last week or the week before forum others of us watched it afterward to give us an idea of what 40R is and where the proposals are right now I think at this point I'd like Christine to talk about the next process with the planning board anything they're going to do if they're planning on recommendations and requests back to the consultants where the consultants are when that report might come and then we can have as a committee a discussion based on all of that with whether we want to try and get recommendations in or not prior to consultants or after or how we want to deal with it from our own end so Christine. So yeah I wasn't really prepared to give a presentation about 40R but I can not not on what 40R is but where the where in the process we are with the consultants. Fultons had their final fourth and final public forum I think it was the 29th of September and they presented what they think is their final package they did hear some comments from the planning board and others and they will incorporate those comments but they're planning to come back to us with a report that's essentially showing a map of where the 40R is proposed giving us a zoning bylaw that we could then take and use tweak it or do whatever we want with it to make it our own and of course we have all of their power point presentations so I don't know exactly what the timeline is but I have the sense that it's sooner rather than later they've been working on this project for more than two years and they'd like to be finished with it and give it to us now to work on it so I'm guessing that this is going to happen sometime in the next month but I haven't been I haven't actually had that conversation with them so I should probably be in contact with them and check to see when they're planning to submit their final their final report. In terms of where we are with it we have a proposal for a 40R in the downtown and in the BL districts immediately adjacent to the downtown which would be the area north of Triangle Street most of that area although we pulled it back a bit and the area west of Kendrick Park a little corner down by Halleck Street and then there's a strip of a BL district along North Pleasant Street so those are areas where we're proposing that a 40R could occur. There are issues with it there are issues with all of it how can I express this? The consultants have changed their proposal to only include two types of districts one is an urban district which is essentially the BG district and the BL districts that are surrounding BG would be called residential 40R and those are downscaled from what had been initially proposed they wouldn't be any more than three stories as you get closer to residential neighborhoods we would perhaps not have any mixed use as part of the buildings they would just be apartment buildings that would be three stories in height. The benefits of 40R as we've all heard are that it brings affordable housing into the downtown if we choose to go with the downtown location and we've struggled with trying to get affordable housing in downtown although if we look at a inclusionary zone we might be able to do that. There are also benefits financial benefits with regard to if you increase the density that's allowed in certain parts of the in the 40R over and above what is ordinarily allowed based on underlying zoning you get a financial benefit from the state. The other thing is that when you go for a massworks grant or any kind of a grant from the state you can check the box that says yes you have a 40R district and the state is really promoting these so so from the standpoint of relationship with the state it's a good thing from the standpoint of trying to get affordable housing into more types of development it's a good thing and the other thing it includes is it includes design guidelines so we feel like yes we need design guidelines in the downtown I think most people feel feel that way. There are people who are not happy with the idea of having the 40R downtown for various reasons and they're proposing that we look elsewhere I think that it might work in East Amherst Village Center or a primary village center but we haven't looked at those yet so the report that we're getting from the consultants will be focusing on the downtown and the area that was presented on September 29th. It will have adjustments to the text to the extent that the residential portion of the 40R will be no higher than three stories but the zoning in the central portion is going to remain pretty much as it is and I think where the planning board is with it some members of the planning board don't think we need 40R some members think we can tweak our zoning to give us many of the advantages of 40R without going that route. Other people think it's a great opportunity to have a development that has design guidelines that includes affordable units and that we can kind of map out ahead of time exactly kind of what we want it to look like. What more can I say about so the planning board is going to have a discussion about that I think that there are some members of the planning board who are really against having it downtown I think it could work elsewhere and we haven't taken any kind of a vote on that but I know that at least two members are fairly enthusiastic about it so I think that's all I can say at this point. Thank you for that update that helps me at least Steve. Yeah so thank you so much and I assume it didn't seem like September 29th the forum it seemed like it was two weeks ago but I don't have my calendar in front of me but that was the one that went till nine o'clock at night or yeah okay so yeah so I thought it was October 14th yeah yeah sorry okay it was two weeks ago okay so my concern is that there's a prospect of this goes to the planning board the planning board it actually kills it or or you know that's the end of it without it ever having come to this group or any part of the town council which may have we really haven't had the opportunity to discuss it amongst ourselves yet we would be the ones along with the planning board that would be entrusted to advance it so I guess when I'm asking or wondering this shouldn't we be given the same opportunity that the planning board is to have kind of a thorough discussion of it and in particular this seems to be the time to have that discussion rather than the final report but now where we could possibly influence the report you know before before the final version so there was this forum there was public comment at the forum some members of the council or at least one member of the council spoke as a private citizen but there hasn't been and I know that maybe one member of the planning board also spoke but it seems like giving an opportunity for the council to weigh in more directly would be useful before and I haven't seen the contract but before the final draft is submitted that was really the reason that I was asking Mandy about this Christine so the consultants did say to us when they when we wrapped up that meeting on October 14th that they would be happy to receive further comments from the planning board or others about this project and they would try to whatever degree is possible to incorporate those comments into their final report certainly if we said you know we want to not go in downtown we want to do it somewhere else in town they're not going to be able to accommodate that but if we have some relatively minor changes to what is being proposed currently I think they could accommodate that. Shalini, one of the questions that I had that was asked at the meeting was or hearing whatever that was was about the village centers and I heard one response why are we not considering village centers was that they were not hired to look at it for the village centers but then I feel like I also heard the consultants give some reasons why it was preferable to consider downtown so is that a question we could if it's not already in the report what from their perspective is the advantage of it being downtown versus village centers which doesn't mean we're not going to do it in the village center but it would be helpful to get more I think they did have specific reasons why they even though they didn't study the village centers they seem to have some reasons why they provide yeah thought it was good. Evan and then Christine. Yeah so I'm trying not to get to two substantive discussion but one question I will have at some point that I'm curious about is we know that the idea behind this is that the developers get higher density in exchange for essentially giving us design guidelines and affordable housing you also mentioned the potential financial incentive for the town if we increase density under underlying zoning you said that we've seen that with regard to the BG district there's essentially no difference in the zoning and so where it's different is the BL but now that a good portion of the BL has been relabelled as the sort of residential zone and I'm just quickly looking through the dimensional requirements in the proposed bylaw and in our existing bylaw I'm having trouble really seeing where they get the density now that because before when they could build maybe four or five stories in the BL which I was supportive of then that was a dramatic increase in density but now that it's down to three well the BL already has a cap of three and a max height of 35 right which is the same as there the only and a good this is a cursory skin the only real difference I see potentially is in the front setback that it allows less of a front setback so I guess I'd be curious at some point to know exactly what dimensional requirements are being changed that would allow us to get more density because right now it just doesn't seem like you can now that they've done it doesn't seem like even in the BL you could get that much density except for the fact that the BL is a broken district and right now you can't do anything but if we were to pretend like the BL wasn't a broken district and it was actually operating as it should be what's I'd be curious to know what the actual gain is Christine so right now you can't build you can't really build residential use in the BL because you're required to have 20,000 square feet for the first unit and then some number of square feet for each additional unit which escapes me let's see BL oh 4,000 so in order to have a two-family house in the BL you have to have 24,000 square feet hardly any of the properties in the BL have 24,000 square feet so you have to amass a lot of property in order to be able to build anything of any size so the idea would be to not have that requirement to one one idea is to just make the BL the same as the BG in the sense that you wouldn't have a requirement for a lot area per dwelling unit and that's the advantage of being in the BG and that's why you don't get any density bonuses or any financial advantage from the state for allowing greater density in the BG in the BL you would get a huge amount of density for instance the development that was proposed a few years ago by Barry Roberts and Kurt Shumway it was going to be a building on the corner of Halleck Street and I think North Pleasant and they had to design it as an office building because the site I think was only 15,000 square feet even though they combined two lots and so they couldn't even have one unit there but if it had been if the zoning were changed with regard to a lot area they could have had as many as 15 units in that building that they designed if they wanted to build a four-story building with three floors of residential and you assume there might be five units on each floor they could have gotten 15 units in that building so it would have a big difference now whether you want to go the 40R route or whether you just want to change the zoning in the BL that's a choice that the town is going to have to make the 40R is kind of a package of things that you get altogether we could choose to go an alternative route which is to change piece by piece and perhaps get some of the same advantages. Thank you for that explanation. Given the tenor of the questions I'm going to take it that CRC would like to discuss this further at the next meeting prior to when the consultants come back with their report so I will put this on I would ask that Dave or Christine maybe touch base with the consultants to see when their report would be out to see if we have a chance of getting something in our next meeting is in two weeks I believe of getting something in prior to that report or whether it's not going to be prior to that report but even if it's not prior I think we'll still keep it on an agenda for discussion and all so I that's I'm mindful of time I want to thank Christine and Ben and Rob for being here today for zoning day it sounds like next meeting might be zoning day two we're going to skip minutes for now we'll just do them next time and are there any announcements I don't see any I will just make for like the sixth time there is a hearing on November 4th at 8 p.m. on the proposed changes to the temporary zoning article bylaw 14 zoning bylaw article 14 next agenda preview we will put 40 r back on we will put zoning priorities on I will see that that is a full agenda right there I know so I might have to decide whether to do I actually I'd like to hear from you guys we also have housing policy so those are the three at most we can do two of those three in a meeting I believe given the the length of the conversations needed given a timeline on 40 r we'll keep that one on would people would the committee rather have housing policy on next meeting or because we'll have our zoning people here for 40 r would we rather I think it would be more logical to keep zoning priorities on just because we'll have everyone here and I'm seeing a lot of nods and heads up for that so so that's going to be from my idea that's that's my plan right Sarah's nodding too so so that's where I am on next agenda preview any other requests for agenda items or anything Shalini not not related but what is our policy for participant attendees if they raise their hand after the initial public comment here we have been doing one public comment period if people would rather I try to do different public comment periods at different time then I can think about that I could also move the public comment period to the end of the agenda instead of the beginning which might allow people to comment on stuff we discussed instead of pre guess what the comments are so I will consider that but in general once our public comment period is over we are not going to engage in a dialogue or discussion with the public after that period I do recommend anyone who has questions to email either the individual who they had questions for or myself as chair and we'll make sure those questions get forwarded to the right people if they were not addressed eventually during conversation between the committee does that answer your question Shalini yeah although I personally feel I want I know Evan but um I know but we're not getting I mean it's not like we're flooded with questions and if people are coming and they have um I mean if you I mean that was one of our values was inclusion and inclusive and so what can we do to I'm not saying at any time every time but I don't know it just feels like they should be either one other point where they could maybe at the end so we could see in the beginning and at the end if anyone has or yeah or something like that which just gives people an opportunity to just putting it out there thank you for putting it out there I will think about moving public comment back to the end of the meeting to allow for that at this point and then think about some other possibilities any other comments Christine so the next meeting is on November 10th is that correct let me check to make sure no no 17 17th we have three weeks I guess okay between meetings so 17th I'll touch base with with you and Dave and and Rob and all but I think it's going to be another zoning meeting any other announcements questions anything we will make sure we pass the minutes next time um and get to that without anything else I didn't anticipate I don't have any unanticipated items it does not appear anyone else does so I will call this meeting adjourned at 4 0 6 p.m thank you to Chris and Rob and Ben and Lindsay and Dave for all being here I know Dave was very quiet today but he sat through the whole thing so thank you all and thank you to the committee thank you bye