 We're being recorded. Okay. So Amherst media is there. I get a pull. I get a pull the, they're definitely in the attendees at the top of the list. Okay. Yep. Um, so welcome to the planning board meeting of what August 19th and based on governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and signed Thursday, March 12th, 2020. This plan board is being held virtually using the zoom platform. My name is Jack Jumsuck, and I will be the acting chair for this planning board meeting. I am calling this meeting in order at what 6 31 PM. This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst media live stream. Minutes are being taken as normal. I will now take a roll call. Board members, as you hear your name called, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and then please place yourselves back on mute. Mike, Bert was here. Maria Chow. And myself here, Dave Levenstein is not here. No longer on the board. Doug Marshall. Present. And Janet McGowan. Here. That's everybody. We're down to all right. Board members, if technical difficulties arise, we may need to pause temporarily to rectify the problem and then continue the meeting. If you do have technical issues, please let Sean or Pam know Sean online. Sean is not, but I can at a moment's notice. Okay, go good. Discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed. And the minutes will note if a disconnection has occurred. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see you raised hand and call upon you to speak. After speaking, remember to remute yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment period and at other appropriate times during the meeting. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. So a note there, you know, the public comment period is going to be on items that are not on the agenda. So, and that's one of the first items of the meeting. If you wish to make a comment during public comment period, you must join the meeting via the Zoom teleconference teleconferencing link. This link is shown on the slide and can be entered into a search engine by typing, do I need to read all this? You know, I usually have a screen up, don't I? Yeah, I, you know, I can't read a link. So. The link is right here. Okay. So that's the link. The link is also listed on the meeting agenda, which can be found on the town website in two ways. One way is through the calendar listing for this meeting from the homepage, where you can find the link within the event details. The second way is to go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda link and on the agenda there is a link towards the top of the page where it states virtual meeting. Please indicate if you wish to make a comment by clicking the raised hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes and at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. Moving on, the slide will now show the meeting agenda. So we have the minutes from July 15th. Are there any comments on those minutes? None? Okay. So I've moved to approve the the minutes. I move we approve the minutes of July 15th. Sorry, let Mike move for that. Any second? Second. Okay. All right. This requires a roll call. Right. Yes. Right, Chris. Okay. Okay. Mike Burr-Whistle. Approve. Maria. Approve. Doug. Approve. Janet. Approve. And myself approve. All right. So that's five zero. All right. So a public comment period. And you're going to have to help me out here. Pam, is there any input? I'm going to stop sharing my screen. Okay. I see Maureen Adams. Yes. Okay. So it looks like just Maureen. I will allow her to talk. Is it Maureen or Maureen? Maureen. Maureen. Okay. I'm sorry. Maureen is muted. Maureen, can you unmute yourself? Yes. There. Am I unmuted? Yes, you are. My comment has to do with new business item A. Would you prefer to take it then? Stad. Oh, we're definitely going to discuss that. Yes. Yes. But you would rather have it at that time and not now. Oh, definitely. Yes. Yes. Good. I'll lower my hand and talk later. Good. So I guess before I started the meeting, I was... We have one more, Jack. Okay. Gene Hardy. Hi. My name is Gene Hardy. And this is my first time being at a zoning board meeting. So I'm hoping you can give some clarification. I would like to provide public comment on the old business item on 40R. But I'm confused. I have to give that comment before I hear your board discuss it or I will be able to discuss it. Yes. As we said, if it's on the agenda, we're going to discuss it. And then there's a public comment period. If there's time, time allowed for the public to comment. So public... But according to the agenda, we're on public comment right now. Right. But that's for non-agenda items. I see. Okay. Thank you. All right. And I failed... Let me see. Where are my notes here? Here they are. Actually, I wanted to propose before we got started. And this meeting seems like it's manageable. We have one item, A, for old business that is going to be delayed till the next meeting. So I'm wondering if we can keep this from being a four-hour meeting because we're going to meet again every two weeks. And I think all this stuff, there's a lot of heavy lifting here with the 40R maybe not so much the priorities, but the zoning subcommittee and things like that, that we don't take this into the wee hours of the night like we have because we moved the time up to 6.30 for a reason. And going to 10.30 is just... It's not feasible, at least in my eyes. And for the members of the board, when we were looking at to get a resolution to keep these meetings more in a manageable time. So I would offer that we have like a stop, say at 9 p.m., if we need to go longer, but try to conclude by 9.30. And if everybody is okay with that general concept for this. Okay, because we're going to meet, we're not going, we're going to be here every two weeks. So, but I just find like for me, it's really difficult to go that deep into the night and try to do what you need to do the next day sort of thing. So, and again, that's, I'm not going to take a vote on that or anything, but it's just that's what my hope and wishes and dreams are. For this evening's meeting. So, with regard to all business, we have the Chapter 40, our smart growth overlay zoning issue that we're going to revisit. There's no presentation other than our discussion amongst the planning board on this concept. Planning board, you know, we'll look at the amendment. I'm going to hand it over to Chris here immediately, but we had the presentation on May 6th from the consultants. And we didn't really resolve any sort of recommendation from that presentation. So we're now we're taking it up again. And so at that, I will hand it over to Chris. Can I, can I just mention before Chris, you start, Mr. Burt Whistle, Michael has his hand raised. And I'm not sure when it came up or if it's up by default. But if you wanted to recognize that, Jeff. Sorry, I was on the panelist or the attendees view. No, you're so sorry, Mike. Did I understand you to say that you were going that the new business item for a is not being discussed tonight? No, three old business, old business three a is being moved to the next meeting. Old business a so new business is has not changed. Okay. So we're going to talk about the zoning subcommittee and other topics. So Chris. Hello. My name is Chris Brestrup. I'm the planning director and I just wanted to give you some context for this discussion about chapter 40 are both for the planning board members and for the public. In 2018 prompted by the Amherst municipal housing trust, the town applied for and received a grant from the state entitled planning for housing. Actually, the goal of the grant was to investigate. Excuse me. Can you be quiet? Please, Daniel Frank, please be quiet. I'm on TV. Excuse me. The goal of the grant was to investigate sites that might be appropriate for affordable housing and to study the issue of chapter 40 are overlay zoning, which is often called smart growth zoning and determine to determine if it's right for Amherst. The town hired consultants Karen Sonneberg and David Eisen, who helped us with our housing production plan in 2013. Karen is a planner and David is an architect and they've been working with us since the summer of 2018 on this project. The town has held three public forums in 2019. The first one was on April 4th and there was another one on June 4th and a final one on December 19th. And we heard about what 40 are is and what is smart growth and why is the state promoting this type of development. And we heard about how this type of development might or might not fit into Amherst. The consultants and staff received a lot of input at the public forums, but some of the planning board members weren't able to attend either some or all the forums. So at the request of the planning board, the consultants gave a presentation on May 6th about what this project is all about. The planning board wanted to have an opportunity to hear directly from the consultants and talk to the consultants and among themselves about what is good and what isn't good about the chapter 40 our proposal. After the consultant's presentation on May 6th, there wasn't much time. In the evening, I think we were pushing 11.30 that night. So they decided to hold another meeting for the purpose of talking about what they'd heard. The planning board invited members of the public to submit comments and some of the planning board themselves also submitted comments. These comments have been posted on the town website and they've been circulated to planning board members and to the consultants. A public forum is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, September 23rd for the consultants to present changes that they've made to the project based on input that they heard and comments that they have received. What's being discussed tonight is not a final proposal. It's an opportunity for the planning board to discuss the pros and cons of chapter 40R as it has been developed to date and make suggestions and recommendations about whether it's worth pursuing and if so how to improve it. The planning board will not be making any decisions or recommendations tonight other than possibly to decide whether this project is worth pursuing. Some people are worried that this project is a fey accompli or something that has already been decided upon or that the process is happening too quickly and they didn't have a chance to participate. There's still plenty of time for the town and the planning board and the public to consider this proposal and to decide if it's right for Amherst. Among the things that still need to be decided are is chapter 40R right for Amherst? If so, where should a 40R district be located? The town may decide that the downtown is the right location for 40R but that the current proposal needs to be revised. The town may decide that another location such as East Amherst Village Center is a better location. Once we know where it will be located we can start to map out the edges of the district and begin to put together a zoning amendment that will include a set of uses that is appropriate for the location, dimensional regulations and form-based guidelines also known as design standards. At that point there will be a presentation to town council who would then refer it to CRC and the planning board for a public hearing and then the town council would eventually need to vote to adopt the plan as a zoning amendment. So tonight we're nowhere near that point. So with that I'd like to suggest that we listen as the planning board discusses the pros and cons of this proposal and begins to think about whether this proposal or one like it is right for Amherst. Board members and the public are invited to attend and participate in the public forum on the 23rd of September and an announcement will be posted on the town website and we'll do our best to notify those who we know are interested in this topic. So with that I will turn it back to Jack. Thank you. Very good, thank you. And so I'm looking for comments from from the board and again I don't feel like you know I don't feel like this is a planning board. I mean this is so early in the process it was kind of born of funding that we got to explore this concept and there have been forums whether they've been advertised whether they were intended to the extent that we thought was appropriate or not. They were advertised and things like that but it's just really early in the process. Conceptual but I guess we're being asked to provide recommendations to town council. Is that correct Chris? You're being asked to provide recommendations to the consultants and to the staff working on it. It hasn't been more near town council yet. We are so early in this process so there's no real you know urgency early process so you know we have to make sure we stay calm on this and again I think we all have have questions and concerns and and you know want to make this right. So I'm sorry I did not all right so I'm just going to go with the top of the list here. Maria? So okay since we're not doing deep sort of discussion I just if we are trying to give advice or feedback to the consultants mine would be I'd love to see more sectional drawings that describe the streetscape. I understand how they're trying to divide things into different divisions and I think that from a lot of the feedback it seems a little rough-handed maybe not like you know more fine-comb examination of you know the neighboring streets but but they're you know coming at it from a big perspective planner kind of viewpoint so so I think that yeah it just it will take more time to really get into the nuances of the you know adjacent neighborhoods but but my biggest advice is just I I'd love more form-based zoning more information on what it is they're proposing other than just maximum heights and minimum setbacks and you know everyone can you know focus on particular streets and whatnot but I think that overall what they're trying to do is create a cohesive idea or plan for for the parcels they are highlighting and and I think that you know their goals are right it's just that path to that goal is probably a longer one than they probably thought they were gonna have and and yeah there's a lot of very near public to give input and so I guess you know it just it will take a lot longer but but my biggest critique of what we were given was it just didn't feel like enough information I think that's where a lot of the worry and the contention is coming from because we just you know we have these sort of abstract big picture kind of models and numbers but it's not really describing in more detail like setbacks and streetscape and how a building might step or you know change depending on what side of a street it's facing or what neighborhood it's adjacent to so so yeah I would just I want more design more information from the consultants um on that note um Pam did we is there a powerpoint that we kind of wanted to I have the packet available um so what you received in your packet I have available and I can try and share that so I don't know if that would be uh I don't I didn't know if it was going to feel helpful at this point um I wanted to make a suggestion um and I may have misled people this is Chris speaking um I am not suggesting that you avoid the details um if you have problems with heights of buildings if you have problems with recommended setbacks this is the time to bring those forward um if you have specific recommendations for how things can change um one of the recommendations that I've made is that the area north of triangle street either be removed from the 40R or that it be changed to a district three sub district three instead district one so those are the kinds of things that I think are going to be helpful for the consultant when they're putting together their final product the final product is expected to be handed over to us sometime in the fall and what I mean as final product is it's the final product of this consultant for this amount of money hired for this contract it doesn't mean that we are going to accept this and run with it and bring it to town council all it means is that the consultants have done their job and they've handed something over to us and then it's up to us to figure out what parts we like what parts we don't like but at least we'll have um we'll have a framework for how this could work so please don't be discouraged from um talking about this in detail I didn't mean to discourage you from that in fact I'd like to encourage you because I think it would help to make the consultants product better and then hopefully it will also help to make our product better when we eventually come up with what we really want thank you uh should I be calling on you Chris if you have your hand up and you know it yes you should not not put you in the queue yes okay did not have spoken up right yes okay so Doug Marshall please okay so um I did provide written comments back in May I think it was when we were asked to provide written comments on the presentation we got at the beginning of May my views have not changed um if if I were to advise the consultants uh what they should do between now and the and whenever they are to be finished um you know they've been working on this for two years with us and I presume they've done kind of what they think they should be doing for this kind of for the fee and the scope of work that was originally laid out so my advice would be just to tell them to wrap it up and go on their way to the next uh project so that we can in fact deliberate about what they've produced um I I view what they've produced as not ready for prime time uh kind of like Maria was saying um whereas she was focusing more on the details of the form-based zoning I I don't understand the form of the draft that they've produced there's a lot of of of wording in there about the intent uh and you know it's not the sort of dry set of rules that I would expect from a zoning bylaw so um you know I would I I guess it seemed like there's a lot of commentary in there that I don't think we need to carry forward maybe it's useful for people who are not familiar with the current thinking and and frameworks that planners are using for putting zoning together and in that case you know great that's commentary that could go in an appendix deep within our website somewhere um but it doesn't need to be part of his of a bylaw um overall I think the zoning or the um massing that they're proposing is is fine and appropriate um it doesn't get to the fine grain um level that uh I agree we'd be well served to think about um but I also don't really understand why we need to do 40 are in in downtown um I uh you know based on my limited understanding of it um it's used to induce people to build more housing um and we don't have a demand problem downtown for for housing we have plenty of people that would like to build housing down there um at however high we allow people to build so I would I would use 40 are in a different part of town outside of the center of town where the demand is highest I'd use it as a a carrot to induce people to build more housing in in areas where they may only want to build you know two or three stories maybe we let them build in an additional story so so I I think the the massing that these consultants have proposed is a good starting point for us as a town to think about how we might better clarify the zoning downtown with our own regular as of right zoning bylaws and then we use the 40 are program somewhere else uh outside of downtown where maybe the demand is lower that's all I'll say for right now thank you so I would uh I I I just want to say I agree with dog because you know downtown um and you know 40 are you know 40 are being more of a housing you know initiative affordable housing um that is an area where we only do certain things and and it and in terms of you know we also for housing you know I'm just I'm just going you know putting my two cents in here but um we're looking at uh you know young families you know and for me I feel like housing we can provide all this you know uh the studios and one bedroom but I would like to see 40 are be used to enhance young families being able to to be you know with an Amherst and I don't know that that's a great fit for downtown and again you know Chris has hinted that you know in terms of maybe East Amherst but I'm just interjecting but I just wanted to say I do agree uh with what Doug has said pretty much at the bottom so Mike please yes thanks I also agree with much with much of what Doug and Maria were saying particularly with regard to the relationship of the proposed district to the downtown area the the district lines and the very concept of this in downtown um I'm I'm also concerned with uh the way in which this entire project for me seems not to fit into the requirements of the master plan or the suggestions of the master plan but let me just read from uh section two goals and policies the very first goal and policy suggested by the master plan is maintain Amherst's existing community character uh and it goes on at some length to describe what that community character is but it focuses on the way in which things are now uh as part of the the goal that's one of that's the key goal key directions for the community to maintain Amherst's existing community character and I believe that the proposal uh even though it may be in the preliminary phases is still pretty full of bricks and mortar and 29 pages of zoning bylaw and lots of PowerPoint productions it's pretty well along it seems to me in terms of what the consultants have done and I think they've missed the point of of uh maintaining Amherst's existing community character particularly in relation to the areas on the west side of East Pleasant Street and North Pleasant Street um and on the north side of Triangle Street those areas seem to me to be uh particularly the areas all west of Pleasant Street seem to me to be much of what makes Amherst a walkable interesting place to be um if we move from the Amity Main Street North Pleasant Street corner which is the old part of town the old downtown part of town move up toward Triangle Street we're going through a variety of areas in terms of the architectural and the feel of the street some are dense some are solid walls some are old-fashioned buildings that have been adapted some are civic buildings like the fire station and the churches and the post office this is a wide variety of buildings in that stretch uh it's a very short stretch for the amount of variety there is there uh but much of the much of the uh pleasantness of walking through there and it being a pedestrian friendly place has to do with the small shops and the small scale architecture which in the given the proposal that the consultants have given us uh is pretty much just uh eliminated um now I would regret this that for that to happen and I think this is a question of scale and it's a question of location and I definitely agree that a four-yard district if we're going to have one in Amherst and that's not a bad idea I think it's probably a good thing to have an Amherst probably not shouldn't be there and if it's going to be there it certainly shouldn't be with it with the boundaries that have been suggested by the consultants so I think I'll stop there and maybe I've had more to say later thank you uh okay so I yeah before I uh Chris you speak I forgot that I also agree with Maria and what she said I didn't want to you know give I recognize Doug but Maria I also agree with everything that you've said I think we we have uh a somewhat of a consensus thus far so um oh Chris are you to speak oh you're okay uh so Maria please yeah I know I think we all generally want a really careful look at our town but I do also want to be careful about um not encouraging different ways to unlock more affordable housing downtown I think that um saying downtown might not be a place for um I don't think that's what people are saying I think saying a four-yard might not be a place for downtown um I hope that's not assuming we're not encouraging you know the social economic diversity that I think downtown really should have I I feel like there needs to be um opportunities for all different people with background different backgrounds different economic situations different family situations to um live downtown in a walkable driving downtown and the way to do that is to unlock a lot of parcels and that's exactly what 40R helps do because a lot of our zoning currently um as we know from notorious BL you know um 40R provides uh quite a bit of opportunity for housing um this was from three years ago December 29th 2017 one of the planning staff did a study of the BL and um did the for the zoning subcommittee actually um because we were just curious what that would unlock and help for the um those three BL parcels downtown and it was surprising you know I could you could put 29 units for multifamily dwellings on the one east or sorry west of Kendrick and then on the one that's between Hallock and um I forget the lower street 40 units for multifamily dwelling so 40R you know would help bring diversity to I think a place that actually deserving of this sort of um changing of status quo where you know it's a really valuable property obviously downtown but it really should be more um there should be less of a wealth gap I think I really feel like downtown there are certain parcels that should be considered for 40R maybe not the breadth that um this has shown on on the the map that we're giving but um I don't I don't personally would would not want to discount 40R for downtown um and of course I'd love it in other areas but um in particular I would not want to say that downtown is not a place for it um I forget there okay um I agree Maria and actually the thought went through my head that you know seeing how the BL it would if it was more restricted um to say parts of the BL that are presently unworkable that that may loosen some um you know opportunities that you know the 40R is is is targeted at but um I'll just leave it at that um I don't see any other hands which means we have uh definitely an opportunity to hear uh from the public yeah let me hear from Janet please I mean I can't see her there we go okay I hope I'm unmuted I'm I'd like to agree with a lot of people that I think that this is the 40R is not a great idea for downtown and um if we come to like an agreement on that in this proposal that will save me hours of time going line by line through the zoning um by-law of their proposing I I thought it was kind of a nightmare to think about you know we have the underlying zoning of downtown and there's problems with it there's problems with the BL which could be remedied maybe by a zoning change or a change in the definition of BL or dimensional table but then so those problems will stay there even if there's a 40R overlay district on parts of the downtown and then we're going to have you know 100 pages of our regular zoning by-law and maybe 25 pages of an overlay district per sections of the downtown um and to me that just looks like a just a nightmare of complexity and I would encourage the planning board and the zoning subcommittee and the planning department and the whole town to sort of look you know look at the downtown in a cohesive way and try to fix the problems that we see um you know unlocking some opportunities for housing, protecting neighborhoods, looking at the form of buildings which I think is really important to people the size of them and looking at the form-based zoning so I I just this proposal you know shows away and has sort of sparked this discussion but I don't think this is appropriate for downtown and I agree with Doug that if you're trying to spur housing demand and people to build that doesn't seem to be an issue in our downtown there seems to be a lot of people a lot of groups doing that we're seeing that um although there may be a small hiatus now because of our strange situation we're in so um so I I have a lot of remarks to make about the map and things but if you know I just wanted to say I just the idea of these two different an overlay district with a whole different set of regulations on top of the current zoning which still has problems and some strengths just to me is sort of a legal or a planning board nightmare or any kind of to sort of sort through and I don't think we need to make our zoning vial or more complex I'd like to see more simplest simplicity and flexibility so um I see no more hands but it again we have a September 23rd form on this 40R proposal so that consultants can wrap up their work um and then you know I'm just looking at you know you know what what is the the gist of of our discussion of this at this point in time um but I think we've uh okay Doug I just wanted to maybe I missed it when Chris uh introduced that forum on the 23rd but is could she clarify at least for me is that a one of these regular public meetings or is this a CRC hosted event or is this a planning board hosted event thank you may I speak Chris yeah um so it's unclear who's hosting it um the other events have not been hosted by a particular group I think they've just been sort of a community meeting um if the planning board would like to host it or maybe the housing trust hosted the other ones I don't exactly remember but um it was really kind of just an opportunity for the whole town to get together and talk about it and I think you know after the event on the 23rd the consultants will take whatever they get out of that meeting and wrap up their project but that doesn't mean we have to wrap up our thought about 40R you know I think that there's a lot of meat here that we can use to come up with good ideas either for the downtown or for elsewhere and um the planning board can still discuss this you can still have this on your agenda um going forward if you think it's worthwhile pursuing um so I'm not sure did I answer Doug's question yes I think that's that you did thank you good um so I see no more hands amongst the board so I think Pam we can look at the attendees yes I'm going to stop sharing my screen so I can see everybody we do have three raised hands so there's Kathy Schoen, Ken Rosenfalt, Gene, Nihardi, Pam Rooney can you see them Jack? Yeah I do I do okay so uh Kathy uh is at the top there so perhaps that's where you want to start yeah so I wasn't keeping track of who had their hand first but she's at the top there okay yeah hi Kathy hi can you can you hear me yes okay I'm Kathy Shane um I'm I live up in Northam or some Montague Road I'm also on the town council but I'm speaking now just as Kathy who lives on Montague Road not in the downtown um I wanted to make a few comments I had not sent in public comments you know trying to make sure that the council is not weighing in in some way so it's just me but then I muted her unfortunately I think or she did okay no I didn't touch anything am I back on you are on yeah I'm not going to touch anything Pam so if you you just you're in control okay um so I I thought the comments you all made were excellent and many of the um public comments were as well so I just wanted to um offer a few thoughts because when I first read the consultant report I had to look up a bunch of terms like transects transects one two three four five form based and many of the designs um that they put in the specifics of the zoning changes don't seem to me to go with the concepts that were conceptually discussed when you get to the quasi-urban all of them are assuming a certain amount of public way away from the curb so I didn't see anywhere where we were measuring how far is the current sidewalk you know how far is the current public way because typically in the urban it's 20 feet back before the building starts so it may be able to build right up to the edge of it for zero clearance but it's got a greenway and it's got a sidewalk so a six foot sidewalk a six foot greenway and that's to if you let something go taller to diminish the sense then it's um overwhelming someone who's walking by and it goes with this whole notion of walkability and people friendly and benches um so I went and looked at a few towns that were putting something in downtown housing complex and if they didn't already own that public way they said to the developer if you want to go taller so taller than two two stories then you have to give up some of your land in front to create a wider sidewalk and I can I can send in the places I found so it was negotiation to try to create um a bench a place to sit and meet um a place what we're seeing downtown now to put out a table um and I think that's particularly important if there was ever a thought that this would be families as fall or as opposed to students living downtown so the kids could go outside and not be right away in the street um and near it so that was one thought and then the other is on form-based code um since it seems to be on everyone's top of their list it when you read the people who are advocates for it says form-based code is whatever form you want it to be that you have to decide what form you want it to be but it's supposed to be inviting comfortable public spaces walkable streets um uh and a specific vision and intended use and so I didn't see any of that in this and 40 or when you read about what other towns have done they're trying to think of what's the space they're creating especially as for its families with kids what does that space feel like to the people who are going to live there and the people are going to walk by it so um as Janet said rather than going into criticism of specific line items and the zoning changes I think wherever you put a photo are it's going to be what it what does it feel like to the people who live there when Northampton did their 40 hours they had the luxury of an old mental hospital but they built a large amount of green spaces so people could walk out of their apartments and find not necessarily even a big park but just someplace to sit down with a bunch of kids at a picnic table um and we certainly don't have that kind of space downtown but we do have Kendrick Park so if you were setting it back further than Kendrick Park and had easy walkways so my last point is to think about the streets it's not building but we have um smart streets and designs and we're supposed to worry about where is the bike lane can two wheelchairs pass on a sidewalk can you put a bench out what does that feel like and um two of the places that were proposed downtown didn't ever mention the streets um you know what is the current street look like how wide is the street is it a little narrow street um do we create a wall our corridor and shadows so I think as you go forward on this some of it has to do with zoning downtown more generally but if a building grows taller Buford said by the time you get to the third story the whole story steps back so sunlight can come in um so it's it's uh again it's a negotiation you want to go taller move away from the street as you go taller step it back and just thinking of sunlight and I'll stop there I took a picture um a year and a half ago when I came downtown on a beautiful sunny morning and had to put my headlights on because one east pleasant completely had the street dark and it didn't get light again till I got to burgers bagels and it just completely blocked the sunlight so if you think of that happening from both directions from both the east and the west we have um no sunshine on kendrick park on a on a whole thoroughfare so I think the entire space since you are the planners needs to be taken to consideration and I'll stop there yeah I'd have to agree again with Kathy's you know reference to the hospital hill where that was an an area that that was you know requiring some incentives for development and that just brings the mind like downtown is doesn't necessarily need the incentive but we need the housing and it's just like trying to you know fit um 40 are things like a great tool uh incentive but I guess we you know from what I've heard that the board has questions with regard to location so um oh Kathy has her hand up I think I thought I took it down sorry oh okay all right so uh Ken Rosenthal hi Ken thank you very much I'm Ken Rosenthal I live on Sunset Avenue uh and I'm a former chair of the zba and involved in Amherst planning and on various committees for a number of years I I want to say first that um thanks for this opportunity I do agree with the comments first by Doug Marshall and by others of you about the appropriateness of 40 are in town yet there are many things in a 40 are proposal that could make sense for Amherst I'm not going to try to talk substantively now because I want to talk to you about process for just a moment I was invited and I was very pleased to have been invited to a small conversation a couple of weeks ago that was summarily canceled I looked at that as an invitation to me not because I represent anybody but myself not because I represent where I live or or what I might stand for and what else I might represent and I thought of it as an opportunity as the beginning of a series of conversations that I would not be involved in that would involve representatives of your board to hear people from the neighborhoods in which some of these changes are being proposed I think that's a great idea and I think that having a community-wide forum every six months or so on this subject this goes back as Chris said a couple of years we forget what we've what we've heard we forget what we talk about and and the ideas are lost and not followed up you need to hear from people who are experienced you need to hear from people who are inexperienced but just concerned you need to hear from people in the neighborhoods where these ideas are being offered and we have a wonderful opportunity now with zoom to do that I can see you but you can't see me you can't see that I'm holding up a book called essays on Amherst history which I've mentioned to Chris as a wonderful resource for understanding how Amherst became what it is and and the problems it had in becoming what it is and the mistakes that it's made in the past I would want people to have an opportunity to read that book I'm sure there are copies in town hall my copy was given to me by Alan Tory in 1978 and and I love it I refer that to you essays on Amherst history but you could see me because zoom can allow you to have a meeting in which you can see everybody who's attending just the way we would in a room in town hall but not to hear us Pam can control the opportunity for us to speak so there's no zoom bombing allowed but we can see each other we can have a gallery view you can know who's in the room I can know who else from my neighborhood or from the town might be there and you would know too but you'd also be able to see me we'd be able to see the expressions on our faces you have an opportunity to do this better so two things I'm suggesting one is to improve the way you do your zoom meetings and I'm talking to Brianna Sunred about this and I hope we can make some changes that will give that will make this more realistic and the other is not to give up on the idea of having small gatherings they do not have to be open to the public for participation but they could be open to everybody for listening just the way I'm suggesting you do your meetings allow us in but not to talk you can hear five or six people at that meeting for instance that I was invited to John Kuhn who's a planner and was a retired architect was invited so there are opportunities that you can use this peculiar time this pandemic time to do things better than we ever have before and I hope you will not miss those chances have small meetings have gatherings do not try to have massive forums every six months but have meetings much more regularly that other people participate that the community watch but not intervene and you'll get some good ideas and I think it will help the process and I thank you for listening to me tonight thank you Ken before you sign off I you had two points I understand the second but you said I think the first was improved meeting and I'm not the second was like small gatherings for listening and having experts involved and things like that so I'm just wondering if you could clarify your first point Jack the I've just been taking a course of all things in jazz at Lincoln Center it's taught by it's offered to 150 people who are attending this meeting we can all see who's attending none of us can talk unless the monitor allows us to unmute our screen so that you would be able to see just the way if you were sitting in town hall in a meeting room you could see the 75 or 35 or 25 people who are gathering in front of you you wouldn't hear from them until you wanted to mr chairman because you would have control over when they spoke but when they spoke they could see you and you could see them being able to do that with not not being able to do that not being able to see our expressions not being able for us to see who else is there so we know whether perhaps we might not want to talk I don't know for instance how many other people are going to put up their hands today and so I don't know whether I have to cover everything that all of my friends who are may or may not be present might be wanting to say it's an easy thing to do it doesn't cost any more than than this does and again I don't want to take your time in doing it but I can I can show you how it's done because I've been doing it as a student in a course of 150 people and it works thank you thank you uh next we have uh gene hardy is that correct there she is a gene and can can you unmute yourself so we can hear you thank you so much for giving me the chance to talk as you mentioned my name is genie party I'm a resident of amherst I live on east pleasant street near the proposed 40 our location I would like to echo the sentiments which were just raised it does feel a little bit dehumanized to just be a black box and not be able to you know actually share as a human being with a face and everything so if you could change to allow us to see each other that would be terrific I do want to thank the the zoning board but I can tell that you guys do a tremendous amount of work and put a lot of work and effort and hours into this job and I really want to thank you for that and I also want to thank you for your thoughtful comments I can tell that you've thought about this plan and you are keeping residents of amherst in mind and I really appreciate that but there's are still a few things that I want to say even if some of these have been covered already because I think it's important for residents to be heard because when you make these decisions you are impacting our lives when a five-story building gets built a block from my house and I can no longer grow any plants or send my kids out safely to play because the traffic is worse and the visibility is terrible it really impacts my life so I live right next to the limited business business district I frequent those stores all the time and I'm happy with them I like the integration I like the way these buildings are short it's a transitional space from downtown amherst to the residential neighborhood where I live I am really thrilled to hear that the Amherst master plan wants to maintain the character of the town and I've looked in depth at the 40 r plans that have come from the architecture architects and I agree completely that these do not keep the character of the town in mind the setbacks I know you don't want to talk about details but the details matter to me because the setbacks at what at Kendrick place are so small that it's already made a wind tunnel before we get another huge five-story building on the other side when you look at the architectural drawings you see a five-story building around 20 feet from the houses that it sits next to and so when you're thinking about putting a 40 r in downtown Amherst would you please remember that in addition to thinking about the new families who will be able to move in if that happens and I would like to pause to say I haven't seen that happening I live very near where all of these apartments are the new apartments are and I have not yet met any families who live in those apartments whereas I know many many students and young professionals who live in those apartments so it does not seem to me that if we are trying to build a place for families to live that the developers are choosing to build buildings that attract young families but getting back to the human nature of the people who live in the neighborhood next to the proposed 40 r location I would like to ask you to please remember that it could be your house that was going to have a five-story building eight feet from your property line built on it and I'm I'm grateful that many of you are saying that 40 r should not be in downtown whether 40 r happens in downtown or not as you make planning decisions please bear in mind that these are our homes and we don't you know we didn't choose to move to the middle of Manhattan we chose to move to Amherst which had a particular character and if you change a limited business district to to allow massive buildings it really does change the character when I looked at these they looked like these plans were designed for the middle of a very density there were no greenways there were no open spaces there were no playgrounds the setbacks were extremely this extremely small and if we are going to build buildings in in this transitional zone between a business district and a residential district they need to be on the scale of the residential district so that the people whose homes are next to it do not get dwarfed by a giant shade producer thank you thank you Jeannie we have Pam Rooney please hello can you hear me yes great thank you so much for for allowing some public comment tonight I did I did happen to submit a number of comments earlier and that was back when we thought it was going to be discussed in July and all of the comments still stand it's it's hard in a way to sort out what the most important comments are to sort of reiterate and recapture I think there are not many people in town who do not support some increased density in areas that are poorly designed and poorly laid out just sort of residue from the 50s and 60s when Amherst grew so rapidly rapidly I think I think 40R could be a tool that could be used but I also think it's it's one of several zoning opportunities that could be considered I know the zoning subcommittee has worked on doing some pros and cons of various tools such as inclusionary zoning form-based zoning 40R a whole discussion of of zoning within the town center I think these are all really important tools to sort of lay out on a table and and sort of cut and paste and review I really enjoyed hearing I think it was Janet McGowan say that it would be appropriate to try to simplify some of the zoning rather than creating more complexity and I I think that's a really good goal I totally agree with the fact that the the concepts behind 40R the smart growth the the livable and walkable and and friendly scenarios are are wonderful it's exactly what you know the kind of town I want to live in but the details that were provided by the consultants missed it by by miles the the math I would have to say I believe that the massing and the scale of what was proposed is is inappropriate to the context that they're being put into again I agree there there's it was not it was not a new town plan that we saw from the consultants it was simply what would be what are the what are the largest Kleenex boxes that we can fit into the area between triangle and and North Pleasant Street for instance or or on on Halleck Street what are you know how many big boxes can we fit in there and if we maximize five stories then we get x number of units out of it we we can continue to increase the number of housing units in town I would like very much to see more affordable units in town I think I think we need to almost go block by block if if a 40R concept or a zoning tool was adopted in which you really do create transitions from neighborhoods into the town center the the transitions that we saw in the consultant's dimensional requirements were laughable they there was no transition there was simply we have a we have oh we have a we have a limited business district we could fit five of the big Kleenex boxes in in that zone and over here we could fit too I'd love to look at it in more detail and and really understand how to create the type of the place that we want to live in and a number of people spoke much more articulately than than I can on that we do want to create place we don't want to simply maximize floor area and height it's not the way to create the the college town the look and feel of a new england town so I've lots and lots of comments they're all in writing but I think I think really this this particular document so misses the intent that was stated that I think um I agree with someone that it should probably just be wrapped up comments all comments noted and just say thank you very much let's not do any more damage and and um let's let the zoning subcommittee start a new process of of starting to pick this thing apart thanks thank you uh Dorothy PM please hi Dorothy she's muted she's muted okay so now here I am this is a topic very dear to my heart and I really do agree with much that has been said um Kathy is so correct about green space wide sidewalks walkability uh right now we have a situation where the building some people feel almost impossible to walk on the sidewalk uh I would hate to try to walk that with a stroller and a young child it is very unfriendly to families and children the question of shadows is a serious one I've seen the shadow and it was I was shocked the first time I saw the shadow come across the street um I'm very excited about the new playground at Kendrick Park and I see they're working on the new drains but then I began to fear that because we have this lovely park that somehow that will be an excuse for not having any green space in front of the buildings which might be built on both sides of the park so I don't I don't want that but also it is it is a playground uh so it would be nice if in fact there was some family housing that could be there one of the things that we've talked about is a 40 r has a lot to offer in terms of I think is it 25 possibly of affordable housing and I do agree totally that the downtown is not that space because it's not a group it's not a place for a large large number of families but if we just made that simple zoning change of inclusionary zoning 10 to 15 percent of all construction of units or space of all new construction would be affordable which as we know has a wide range of levels so that affordable comes to be to do with the middle class as well as people at lower levels of income so um so many people have expressed fear to me that form-based zoning which is to kind of zone I guess you're going to interpret it in many ways but one definition I've heard is that you make the housing fit the area that it's going into but now they're afraid that the brand new buildings that have come up will then be the dominant force and the small lovely new england houses which are on the west side of kendrick park will no longer be considered oh that's part of amherst I mean I think the discussion started off really correctly um with Mr. Burtwistle's reading of the master plan which said don't lose the feeling of amherst but yet I do know that we need some more building I know that we need some new tax revenue so it's a challenge it's a it's a really big challenge to see how this is going to be done I agree with the suggestion of having filmed a forums I went to most of the forums and the last one I went to there was so much distress in groups all around the room people were saying no not that when and that gets lost people were not happy with the slides they did not see that as something that they wanted in amherst um and I I felt wow couldn't they found some better pictures of affordable housing that could have put could fit in with 40 are that could be appropriate to amherst I'm sure they exist but the pictures unless it was a building we don't have the only ones I liked were when there was an old building that they repurposed an old building that represented something that had been there that looked like the town of amherst but we don't have those we don't have the old factories to redo so we can't do that so if it's going to be new stuff I think it should have some relationship to the town of amherst and I am for new family housing but I also agree with uh one of the speakers we shouldn't forget the people who live here now the families who live here now and make their their sense their feeling their enjoyment appreciation of amherst as important as that of new people as well thank you thank you Pam um and that's all we have with regard to uh hands up for the public attendees and I guess if there's any anyone on the board that wants to respond to what we've heard uh or expand further but um I'd like to I think there's a general consensus here and again it's um seems like it's not ready for prime time as proposed but we need to support the consultants to the extent we can and make their next form beneficial to us all um but they're locked into the downtown area and I'm just I think that's probably the main you know number one sticking point uh there so any other board members have comments on this subject good so uh Chris can uh you comment in terms of where we go from here um I am seeing Michael's hand oh it's gone well um there it is yeah uh I wonder though are we are we locked in to the downtown is there any reasonable approach to shifting the focus of this project to some other point other place in Amherst as several people have suggested uh I think we all agree that there is a need for this kind of housing uh we all agree I well I don't shouldn't say that I think it's uh many people seem to feel that the the character of the of the area called downtown perhaps a misnomer uh is worth uh considering and preserving and enhancing uh so it seems to me that a possibility exists of uh shifting this proposal to uh perhaps the east Amherst area that we have some of us have been talking about uh and uh perhaps the if if that seems to be a good idea to many or most of us uh the consultants might in fact take that as uh not necessarily a directive but a suggestion in terms of what their next proposal ought to look like so I don't know whether that's that's given or not um Chris please um I I think that consultants are getting towards the end of their project so um for now we're probably going to see the downtown as the you know location that's being suggested but that doesn't mean that we have to adopt that suggestion and we can go ahead and investigate whether this would be appropriate in east Amherst the east Amherst village and that may be a conversation that the planning board wants to have but I I don't think it's going to be possible at this time to shift the consultants location and I regret that um but we've been working on this for two years I think they were expecting to be done with it after one year and I'm not actually sure of how much money they haven't left in their contract I mean that's something that I can investigate but I don't think that they're going to be able to shift at this late time so I think probably what we're going to end up with is um you know a suggestion for how this could work in the downtown and then we'll have to take the parts of that that we like and try to figure out how to make them work in another location that is agreed upon thank you uh Doug yeah kind of following up to what Chris was saying I don't see any reason that we couldn't put together with Chris's help and the planning committee or the planning uh staff a proposal to institute 40 are somewhere else in town whether it's east Amherst or somewhere else um I think you know we've uh as we've been talking about the zoning subcommittees future we've been talking about uh potentially setting aside some time each meeting of the planning board to talk about you know kind of nuts and bolts detailed planning ideas and um you know maybe that's the first one we want to talk about um and then I think the conversation would probably need to involve Chris and whether her she and her staff can can can help us put together a proposal to send to town council or whether we'd need to hire a consultant for that Chris do you have any response for that my sense is that um given our workload that we already have it would be challenging for the planning staff um particularly with regard to the graphics to come up with a proposal for another location but I think it would be really exciting if we decided on another location to try if we can possibly do it to hire a consultant to help us with that I think you know we all seem to think that maybe this is a good idea maybe the concept of 40 r is a good idea but we don't like the details that are being proposed right now and maybe there is a location that would work better so um I'd be really interested in exploring that but I can't promise that the planning department staff would be able to manage that at this time so Chris when oh uh Janet so I could see how the 40 r would be especially for starting for Amherst like a 40 r project in a smaller site or a smaller um you know not like we're going to rezone the village center or anything like that but I kind of go back and forth between this idea of you know you know like let's do some village center zoning maybe an east Amherst or a different village center and use that as a kind of like how could we do the village center zoning that we're supposed to be doing for the last 10 years according to the master plan and just address the problems in the underlying zoning and not layer again the 40 r on top of zoning that's flawed and so you know do we you know like I know in east Amherst some things are zoned commercial so there can't be any residents or maybe there can in these certain circumstances it's just very dense and complicated and to me it seems simpler just to say let's take a village center that a process for looking at the problems in the zoning working with the community and saying hey what do you want to see in your village center let's fix the underlying zoning so we can get there you know like more housing you know small shops you know you can walk from building to building without going over curves and you know snow snow banks and things like that I would I would rather do that than layer of 40 r on top of an entire village center saying we don't like your underlying zoning and then we're going to put this thing on top and then we all have to wade through the nuances of that but I can also see the small 40 r project you know going in a small place and saying okay let's do this as a demo to say this is how you can increase density and maybe building heights and everybody likes it you know it doesn't feel like it's coming at you or over you but if into your neighborhood and so you know my my first preference would be let's get the underlying zoning in a nice community planning process but look at 40 r is kind of a tool in the toolkit that could be appropriate in select areas and uh chris so I just wanted to say that um you know we've been talking about this um in the planning department among the staff and I think there's a certain amount of enthusiasm for aspects of the 40 r I think you know deciding partially what we'd like these buildings to look like and that involves form-based code and design guidelines and really looking carefully at the relationship of the width of the road to the width of the sidewalk to the height of the building I think that's something that we really want to look at and we really want to explore how we can um encourage or require affordable housing in these areas so I personally feel like we have learned a lot from going through this process of the 40 r and I kind of agree with janet that the 40 r may be kind of too big an animal for us and that maybe it's more um uh appropriate in a place like um you know wall fam or water town or summerville or some place that's closer to the downtown of boston and it may not be appropriate um for amherst even in north hampton where it's been used it's been used in very selective ways it was used on hospital hill for um property that you know really didn't have a lot of people crying out to develop it in its current format and so by using 40 r they really managed to do something good there but that was outside of any village center or downtown they also used 40 r to develop about an affordable housing development on pleasant street but um again that was um you know specific to one building it wasn't really a whole neighborhood so my personal opinion of 40 r is that um it may not be the right tool for amherst but there are aspects of it that we've learned from and um I would like to take a crack at you know looking at um the east amherst village center certainly in trying to figure out how we can improve that but also um the bl district around the downtown I think that's crying out for attention and there are um you know restrictions in the bl district that just make it impossible to build anything there or anything that is um really useful for the uses that we need so so that's my opinion that I think we've learned a lot from this process and there are tools that 40 r provides that we can um think about using in other ways but we don't necessarily have to go down the route of 40 r but that's not a decision that you have to make tonight you know there are opportunities to think about this as we go forward if we all go to the forum or listen to um a broadcast of the forum and then come back together maybe in october and have another crack at this um maybe we'll come to some different conclusions or some more solid conclusions so chris um again this this is coming before us because more of the effort is of the housing trust or former housing trust program and then finding funding and this exploring this um because we had the ability to do so so the housing trust isn't really equipped to um think about zoning um it's really a planning board thing to think about zoning so i i spoke with the chair of the housing trust about a week or so ago and he you know i was trying to say well the housing trust initiated this project why doesn't the housing trust carry this forward and his response was really that they didn't feel equipped to deal with all the ins and outs of of zoning that and planning that are required to either make this work or decide that isn't it isn't going to work so they would prefer to have it be taken up by the planning board his response was more like well if if anybody's going to do it you know probably the planning board would be the group that would be the the proponent and um from what i'm hearing tonight i'm not sure that the planning board is ready to be the proponent but maybe after the forum on the 23rd and after talking about this more you would be willing to be the proponent of this in some other location or in some other form so i think that there's more conversation to be had okay so i i'd like to wrap up our conversation on this but i do see one uh public comment hand Kathy uh Doug's hand is up and Mike's hand is up and maybe you could just do one last round and looking for a protocol here uh for Kathy's hand being uh being on the public side when would we let her take one more public comment and then wrap it up with planning board comments how about that okay so i'm going to uh let Kathy speak and then we'll wrap it up with the planning board comments i just had a question um about the public forum since you came to a conclusion not this design maybe not this place do you really want to have the consultants presented a public forum or you want to use that to talk about here's the concept and we're possibly thinking of some other directions and get feedback on that because otherwise you're pulling a lot of people in to react to something that you had more questions than positive statements so if you want to have the public forum i would suggest switching the focus good point uh thoughts on that chris um well i know that the consultants are planning to change their um proposal based on what they've read what they've heard from the group um i think it's legitimate to talk at the forum about do we really want this but i i guess i'm reluctant to just um have i kind of want to actually have an end to this project so i'd like to have the consultant give us something and maybe they'll give us a revised version of what they have already given us with an addendum that says you know more study needs to be done different locations need to be explored or whatever but i i i think i kind of feel like if we take the route that kathy's suggesting that the project is not going to end that it's just going to keep going and and i feel like that's not the right thing to do at this at this time but other others may have a different opinion about that at some point we have to cut the consultants loose and just say they finish their project yeah i mean i i question the the forum then if it's just going to be based on the downtown proposal uh not sharing it it is going to go anywhere and is it of any benefit you know to the town to go through that process and have the consultants do that you know so anyway uh i'll call on uh doug yeah um i guess my this wasn't my original comment but based on the two previous comments um i understand well chris's desire to close the bring bring the the process with the consultants to uh close and that they're probably at a point in their process and fee that they're not going to be able to really substantially change direction however um you know i i i would view their their their final presentation as an opportunity for me to be persuaded if if in fact downtown is the right place uh for the 40 r i did not attend any of the public meetings i know there were there was originally a long list of potential places for 40 r to be done i assume east east amherst was one of those and you know i'd be interested in maybe a recap of the comments from community or from the consultants that said no we don't think east amherst is the right place we think downtown is the right place so you know i think i think it's worth bringing the consultants in at least to do a videotaped recorded presentation that we can use as a reference going forward um even if it's not worth the time of a lot of other uh community members to attend because they don't see why we would do that um i guess the other comment that i was going to make earlier was uh you know i think this has been a valuable exercise it sounds like chris's staff got so has gotten a lot out of it and it seems like it has jump started this conversation at a time when you know we have the new form of government and you know maybe this is the right time to be thinking about some new uh zoning structures and districts in town so you know i applaud the housing trust for for for and you know it's getting the grant and and leading this process that's it thank you um mic bird whistle yeah i um i think the uh i think the planning board's gotten a lot a lot out of this as well and i think it's appropriate for us to take the ball and run with it in whatever shape the ball is and in whatever direction we want to run uh but i think it really is up to us now to figure out what the next step is and draft some kind of uh revision of the zoning bottle or addition to it that encompasses a lot of the ideas that have been brought forward in this process uh for the improvement of downtown or and or for the improvement of one of the neighborhoods whichever one we turn out to want to uh focus on uh but i do think it then becomes the planning board's uh responsibility and i uh i think we're up to that so i i guess chris i'm wondering in terms of this forum if it's going to be the the last straw so to speak if maybe they step back and recap everything they've done and and with regard to all the village centers they've looked at and and they just kind of you know allow you know a step back versus like the downtown proposal but i just i just don't see it you know having the support um but yet we're all very interested in the 40 r in perhaps other districts in the town well your thoughts there may be aspects of the changed proposal that you might like to hear um so when they i'm going to write up what we've heard tonight pam and i will write it up and send the minutes to the consultants or at least draft minutes and and they've heard a lot of comments from the public and from others so they may you know decide that the buildings should be shorter or that certain parts of the overlay district shouldn't be as they were proposed i guess i'm reluctant to just cut it off at this point without seeing what their final proposal is and i think i like the idea of having them go back and recapping why the downtown was chosen but then you know just having people talk like they're talking tonight i don't know if more people would come to this forum or if it would be the same people but i think it's worth having the consultants come back one more time show what they've done i will you know relate to them what we've talked about tonight and there's not a lot of enthusiasm on the part of the planning board to um to take up the the flag of this 40 r project and go forward with it but there are aspects of it that we really like and we may choose to you know locate a 40 r in another location so i'm going to try to give that the consultants a flavor of this meeting and it could be that um you know what comes out of the forum will be useful um so i don't think we should abandon the forum and i don't feel like we shouldn't have them wrap up their proposal to the best of their ability does that make sense are people feeling like they shouldn't even come back and we shouldn't even have a final meeting we should just get a final product and then do what we will with it my feeling is like it's like let's move on i mean the forum unless it includes like a big picture i'm not i just don't see the downtown thing being fruitful uh although there there are potential little you know like bl zone segments and things like that seem fruitful but i see a number of hands up uh dug i guess um in response to chris i think it's worth bringing them back one more time i was also going to ask whether uh this would be a whether it would be appropriate to have a motion to continue this conversation to the first meeting in october so we can wrap this item up on the agenda for tonight and continue it in october after the forum maybe i should just make that motion okay we have we have janet we have janet and mike stands up fine i'll i'll wait okay janet it just seems awkward to me to it to have if i was a consultant coming to present this proposal to a board that and a group that isn't enthusiastic about it or interest it just seems like very awkward to me for the consultants and i wonder um that's all that's my comment it just seems like a very awkward situation for consultants to walk into although i i see your need you know the desire for a final written product at least thank you janet uh mike i i agree with that on the other hand um the last document the list of one page document that we got from the consultant uh shows a whole bunch of ideas that they have uh suggested that they're going to incorporate in the next proposal some of those have some significance at least uh one appears to be uh eliminating the uh the north of triangle street from the uh from the main the urban zone uh so it could be that what they come back with is significantly different and they're and then different enough so that it gives us more information to work with so i i think i agree that it may be a little bit awkward for them but you know they're working for us uh and uh i'm not all that concerned about whether they feel awkward or not i've been concerned about getting something of value out of them and this may be something of value i don't know for sure but it might be and then again uh are they work they're not really working for the planning board they're working for the planning department what we have to say here uh chris i'm not even sure we have you know the authority to kind of like dictate you know the form you know substance and and all that so again clarification on your part be appreciated well you know i think um i am not noticing anybody else who might take up this banner and run with it um i i'm not hearing from the developers um and i'm not hearing from the housing trust so i think the planning board is probably the you know point person if you will who is being looked upon to um take this to carry this forward so um i think you can you know make a judgment about whether you want to hold the forum or not but i agree with michael that um i think it would be worthwhile to hear what they finally come back with because there may be parts of it that would work we don't have to accept this whole area that has been mapped we can accept parts of it like janet was talking about um there may be you know little pockets of this that would work belmont for instance has a 40-yard district that only has eight housing units in it so um it could be that um you know we could carve out a place in the downtown that might work for some um some property owner and that would be a conversation that the planning board could have so i would recommend going ahead with the public forum seeing what they're proposing having a conversation maybe similar to what we've had tonight and then having another conversation um the first week in or the first meeting in october and i don't know what the date is but pan might might know it's october 7th according to my list so that that seems to be a good plan to me okay um so uh do we need to take a vote on this because you don't yeah we don't okay so i think we'll revisit this at the forum and uh we can move on is that okay all right so um it's at eight you know about eight ten uh two major items we have left is the priorities list for zoning amendments and then the status of zoning committee so um maybe you know a half hour each maybe 15 minutes for the priorities list because we already talked about that the zoning subcommittee might mean you know need a little more time but that would get as close to to nine o'clock so with that uh the next item on the list is the priorities list for zoning amendments and we received a summary obviously um well we we were we discussed this uh mic vert whistle had you know modified the table the table is it seems like it's quite old uh are you bringing something up pam dead okay do you want that in front of you so we have we have the chart we have um the chart with michael's suggestions we have um janet mcgowan has sent in some comments so we have those um so anyway i guess just leading into this uh you know we we can you know this can be uh pages and pages of of details but i think um and correct me if i'm wrong chris but what this has been requested from the town council that the the the crc and that they just they want to know what our top priorities are and and so i i figured that okay that's correct all right i see you shaking your head so i mean so let's get our our top three if we have to make a four we can make a four but then i suggest and let's get that to them sooner than later like tonight and then develop a secondary list of future matters that will be much longer that will include pretty much everything on that table unless we know scratch things off but we're not going to get to that tonight but we really should be able to address the top three or four items tonight and then get into the weeds in later meetings that we want to make sure that that is in front of the town council and crc uh and that that's that's my take on this um any comment i'm gonna call on maria um i don't know if you had time to look at this i uh basically summarize the top three from our last planning board meeting and i started to add a fourth one and then like you said jack maybe we table the adding of five through ten till later but the top three i wrote down were improve downtown zoning number two unlock housing development increase diversity of housing stuff in number three recodification of zoning bylaw i think that was the consensus of the big points that we all kind of um had and then there were a lot of other outliers like i remember jack you said there was um fixing of the um the sort of water demands in north amherst area and some other people had parking but i feel like the top three were those three and if we can sort of hone in on that maybe i don't know if you guys agree with this summary or not but it was sent out uh monday or friday i can't remember yes i mean that that's my recollection that we i we almost were to a point where in general agreement uh i and then we had uh a submittal by janet uh if i'm not mistaken i have not processed all all of that maybe janet will want to speak to that but again i think that is if there's more detail be beyond that you know like the major items i i think that we should continue that discussion for for you know you know later meetings but i don't think we want to drop items off necessarily but keep it on on a list um but i think town council was looking for us to provide you know more focused um uh concerns which i think we we arrived at last meeting but i guess we didn't vote on it or and that so i'm i'm kind of uh marie your list is not in our paper copy so i'm kind of looking for it here it is it is okay good all right um so the you know first one being improved downtown zoning i think we were all kind of on board with that and then housing development increased diversity of housing stock we were pretty solid on that and then the recodification of the zoning by-law was kind of a mixed bag but it's just overall like let's get a zoning to where it makes you know makes sense and so that's already being undertaken by the building commissioner um so with that said uh uh janet you want to speak please so um marie i really i really liked your list and my my confusion me not my confusing like i see nothing's that clear to me in sense of our is the town council saying if we had to do three zoning by-law changes in the next year what would you pick because when i look at marie's list there's really like about 12 different section 12 different changes that would take place when i look at my list i see that i've seen the same sort of complexity um you know i had sort of the um housing package as being look at mixed used buildings apartments affordable housing and parking as a package because it's kind of and that would be town-wide so if you have an apartment doesn't have to be 35 units can it be bigger if it's a mix you know there's problems in the mixed use buildings so that's like a housing package of buildings um you know building apartment units and then your your package in number two is unlock unlock housing development and increase diversity and so that's looking at the different residential zones or the different places and talking more about lots and things like that i just think all of this that once we start on it or the town council is we're talking about like 10 or 15 different by-law changes and so i'm kind of at a loss for how to summarize like you know my number one would be affordable housing because i think it's long that's due and that wouldn't just be downtown but you know any residential any any project that leads to 10 or more housing units there has to be at least 10 percent affordable units and so wouldn't that go under number two yeah i sort of saying are they looking for very specific changes or no i think they're looking at big picture just big picture from the planning board and then um i mean we are you know we're going to probably talk about zoning subcommittee too but you know there's going to be a lot of details behind it but i just i feel like we need to get past this with several big picture items and then you know work on the details of the nitty-gritty of zoning in our next topic there perhaps with you know the zoning subcommittee so it's hard to work off of two documents so working off of maria's document i would say the definition of mixed-use buildings and apartments and include inclusionary zoning i would move that from downtown zoning into number two because those kind of belong in there more um and then you know one thing that when we were talking about unlock housing you know in different residential areas to keep on thinking you know in the zoning subcommittee we've talked often about the need for owner occupied housing so if you have a two family or three family building or more that at least one person living in that building is an owner because of the issue of student students living in different parts of town so you know in my in my neighborhood if there was a three family house and there was no owner living there that could be 12 students or more because we know that landlords rent to more than the four students per unit so i think that kind of balancing of all the occupancy and but that's kind of going into the weeds a little bit but i want to raise that issue about student versus not i mean i've i've heard with with owner occupied housing you know from folks on the on the zba that it doesn't really that concept kind of doesn't really hold up although ideally it sounds good but not you know that that's all i'm going to say but uh who else do we have dug yeah i guess i viewed uh whatever we send to town council and crc as part of a conversation and i i feel like we're early in the conversation so we're talking broadly about general topics and we're looking for them to either say yeah we kind of agree that those are the broad priorities or not and then we so we'll hear that back from them and then we can work with chris and her staff on whatever priorities probably overlap between what we think should happen and the town council and crc think should happen and then we send specific things back as we finish them and uh as they're informed by further conversation with crc and town council so i view what uh maria put together uh particularly the first three items as broad topics that we think the focus should be on over the next say year or something and i would simply be looking for kind of a concurrence back from them that yeah we think those should be the priorities or not and then if they're not then we need to find a way to have some more conversation with crc uh but if they are then you know we're sort of good to go and we can we can get into more into the to the weeds so i don't i would be happy to vote for maria's especially first three and say let's send that to town council thank you thank you Doug um and we're already working on number three is that correct chris yes it is yep okay the first two not so much other than well it'd be nice to know the town council agrees that the building commissioner should be doing what he's what he's working on okay so uh we have mike's hand up mike yeah um i like maria's list a lot i'm wondering whether uh the town council would be better off hearing specifics from us or hearing generalities and i'm not sure uh i like the notion of picking three from maria's not three of the bullet points from maria's number one and i would pick uh fixed uh dimensional requirements um define mixed use buildings and apartments and and fix inclusion or deal with inclusionary zoning i would pick those three as my top areas of concern uh and it seems to me that if we pick three things that are relatively specific you might have some chance of getting something done if we if we pick uh generalities and i think i mean i agree with all the things that maria's listed here but i think the categories are so broad that we might tend to tend never get to the weeds i think we need to get to the weeds and pick three things that we want to work on or four uh and ask the town council uh and the and the zoning and the uh crc whether they want us to work on those things so i'm gonna ask for clarification from chris because there's a history here i know the table that was passed around uh with the three columns and three rows is is pretty antiquated it's it's extremely busy and and and so what are we trying to do here chris i think you're trying to start a conversation with the crc um you've asked for guidance from town council and they've asked for your opinion about what you think is important so they can give you guidance so it's sort of a round and round conversation i think if you give them something clear to consider like maria's list of one two three then they can um take that and respond to it and say yes these are the kinds of things we think you should be working on i don't think that they want you to get really specific about you know we think that you should work on mixed use buildings in the downtown and what their first floor should be i don't think they're gonna be that particular um you know and the other thing is they haven't really had that much exposure to zoning so i think they're looking to you for um your opinion and i think these these three broad topics are very um very timely and very important and so i would i would agree that these would be the three that i would vote for but but they are looking for this they've been looking for this because because i'm wondering we we could deliberate this further and i'm i'm i'm thinking like if we can just give them the you know something i think we'll be doing ourselves a favor and seriously and the broader we keep it the better but again the details will always be there for us as we are you know tackling how we're gonna you know address zoning issues within the planning board you know moving forward yeah excuse me if i'm interrupting you but i think this really rolls into the next conversation because i think that the um crc um sees itself as having a greater role in um developing zoning amendments and um so i think that they are going to be um they're they're going to be taking some what's it control they're going to be taking some actions and they want to make sure that they are not um out of line with the things that you think are important so i would go with this list not get too involved in the weeds i do agree that the multicolored list is outdated that was started in i think 2015 or 16 by um a former planning department staff member as a way to get a handle on all the different things we were working on and try to figure out which things we thought were priorities but um and this has been carried forward year after year but it some of it may not be applicable anymore some of it may not be the priorities may not be what we really think we need to do the other thing is that in doing a recodification we're going to be sort of you know probably rolling some of these things into that recodification so i would just go with maria's list as a first um a first offering to the crc and so maria i think would like to speak on this too as thank you chris yeah i can remove number four and then you chris you think i should just remove the bullet points it's getting into the weeds too much i mean that's fine if that's this is the beginning of a conversation that's going to continue we can just have those in our back pocket you know um and then they may reach out to you and say what do you mean by improved downtown zoning and then you can come back with the bullet points okay well then i probably don't really need to revise this right it's literally those three i think okay so you know okay i mean i don't need to revise it in that you could just send those three bullet points to the town council you don't need me to create a document for it i don't yeah okay uh so someone want to you know move that we those the three bullets that we have one two and three um are good at this point in the process that we can send as the planning board's opinion on their priorities well it's maria's document she probably should move it no this is this is all of our work it's literally a summary of what we talked about at the last plan where we the three bullet points okay i'll move that we push these three bullet the three main points to town council as next steps on zoning priorities i second that very good okay um we'll do a comment on the board okay so let's uh oh janet so i was just just to make the point that in improved downtown zoning you have definition of mixed use buildings and apartments and inclusionary zoning those aren't downtown issues exclusively so i was hoping you drop them to number two because i don't want the crc or the planning i mean the town council to think we only think inclusionary zoning i mean i hate to draw an inclusionary zoning bylaw that adds another strange layer of detail instead of just saying let's just you know go across the board like the housing studies recommend that's a good point good point those two i think are just town wide and so they maybe can drop them into a box too that would just help me because i don't want to create more confusion um sorry i'm just dumping i'm not going we're not i didn't propose that we would show any bullet points we're only going to show items one two and three where it's underlined and no bullet points oh okay i'm sorry i misunderstood them thank you yeah but for our for our own purposes we should make that change i think because it makes sense i agree future work so we're again we're just like improved downtown zoning unlock housing development and increased diversity of housing stock recodification and zoning bylaw that's that's what we're we're voting on that that's what the motion is on um okay so janet you still have your hand up okay uh maria do you have anything to add okay uh and doug yeah i'd like to call the question okay we're good um i again i'm here i'm getting my my rules here so uh we're ready to vote with the call to question technically you're supposed to have a vote on calling the question okay so the call a question so uh anybody want to uh second that doesn't need a second it doesn't need a second all right see there we go all right okay so let's so we shall vote a grow call right yep okay so um uh mike yes and maria yes and doug yes and janet hi and i am es as well thank you all but now you have to vote on the motion on the motion okay okay and uh so mike yes and maria yes dog hi and it hi and myself uh as and i as well and i see one hand up in the attendees uh he and i don't know how long it's been up um my apologies it's dorthy p.m is yes okay i've asked her to speak okay i just wondering if the the the list you're sending to crc does not reflect in its simplicity the conversation that was had tonight so i'm just hoping that you can include some aspect or flavor of conversation you had with that with those suggestions again should we have an individual okay yes should we have a representative of the planning board available for questions or or chris obviously uh had chris present for questions in lieu of more detail uh during your your meeting with where this is presented dorthy well i think you could write a very brief report that's that included some of the um sense of consensus that happened tonight otherwise we're just going and starting from zero again and and you know we've been through this just these discussions many times i feel tonight was very important discussion um that reflected the thought that has taken place in the arguments over a long period of time and we want to move this thing forward so absolutely i can put together a memo and um for for jack's signature how's that great thank you and uh marianne um i assume is on this topic marianne i believe you're muted it is because it's always the now am i okay you are good i just i do comments on this i had anticipated making uh one was i want to build on what dorthy says i think that janet's point about taking inclusionary zoning and possibly also fixing the bl i've heard the fix the bl come up time and time again and certainly inclusionary zoning has been a very long issue for us i would really like to see them in some way heightened and generalized as town-wide issues and not just as issues that kind of come up through 40 r so maybe you can do that in the discussion that that really emerged as important for us um yes i don't think the bl that has to be downtown because that's only where yeah that's what okay i yes but i was just kind of yes certainly inclusionary zoning okay as town-wide the second thing is uh i i don't know if this is correct but it seemed to me that the driver for 40 r that came from the housing trust had to do with affordable housing i think that that was really the driver for that group and i think that if the planning board can take up you know i z and other affordable zoning issues as indeed you'll remember that uh john hornig had come to you months ago kind of asking what you could do as a planning board i think if you were to go ahead and do that that might pull some of the pressure off of 40 r and let 40 r simply be an instrument and not have that kind of energy behind it so that was just the thought done thank you okay so uh we have you know 25 minutes till nine o'clock and we can move on uh to topics not reasonably anticipated 40 hours 48 hours prior to the meeting as part of old business none none okay so new business and then the status of the zoning subcommittee the shifting papers around here pardon me um yeah i just say this is another topic that doesn't need to conclude tonight there's nothing resting on this um decision so you can have your conversation for the next 25 minutes and then carry it over to a future meeting which could be the second of september if you want to yes and again my um i don't think we have in our packet uh maria's uh memo do we oh wait a minute i think you did um or maybe it came later and pam put it in um the event it came later actually but i can summarize yeah absolutely thank you um and actually i had a minute this afternoon to quickly read all of the emails that were circulating about this i'm chris from public and i'd like to just summarize so that maybe we can in the interest of time shorten it in that um i think janet's point about tabling the zsc until um after like maybe december so it makes a lot of sense i'd like to go through from my through my four points really quickly just to express why right now the zoning subcommittee um is not going to have a lot of traction but that may be in the future after town council sets up priorities and direction and mr rob mora goes further with the zoning bylaw amendments that maybe there is a time for the zsc especially after new planning board members join but that right now like we said because town council and crc are setting um zoning amendment priorities it doesn't make a lot of sense for zsc to be working on things the second being rob mora is working on zoning revisions as well um to what scale i'm not sure yet but um hopefully we'll find out soon the third point being a lot of planning board members um have shown interest in discussing zoning and i would welcome that especially since um my point number five is that the current zoning subcommittee staff uh sorry zoning subcommittee group is not the strength that all these people emailing and um chris about you know the zoning subcommittee brings all these amendments and has brought it for decades yes they did and we are not that group um that was a group of people who actually really understood the zoning bylaw from not just know where to look at look things up like i do but they actually understood it at a different level where they could take a problem and think through all the different implications and where things could sort of um interact to work toward a goal and that was a different i mean they literally had almost 30 years of experience writing zoning amendments and bylaws and presenting them to town count uh town meetings so we're not that zsc um could we be one day sure right now we're not there and so that was another point why i thought the zsc should dissolve but hearing all the feedback about how important you know um the work has been in the past and could be in the future i think janice point about like let's just hold off um wait until town council gives us priorities and directions and then regroup and think about how to move forward the best way possible especially since it's a big workload on the planning department staff they have to do a lot of work just to prepare for a zsc meeting it's not like they just show up so that's a burden i don't want to put on them right now especially since priorities are not set up and especially since a lot of planning members are showing interest in having more in-depth zoning discussions so um in the interest of time if people are agreeable to that then that we are not dissolving the zoning subcommittee but we are thinking about next steps after we get priorities pushed our way from town council and from crc that we will then um maybe it'll reform in a different format because we have new members um maybe uh it'll be more targeted because we'll have priorities set up maybe we'll be working with mr morrow more so um yeah in the interest of time rather than discussing whether or not to dissolve it i'd like to just see if people are open to cabling the status of the zoning subcommittee for what is this august for like three four months until everyone gets their feet under them as far as you know setting up priorities and coveted and all the extra um burden that the planning staff has on them right now thank you that's basically it so i'm i'm wondering if mike had brought up uh last week he has his hand up but i'm is i'm wondering if we can you know dedicate like a half hour of our agenda for each meeting to discuss zoning issues and making it uh number five you know in our agenda just so that we're like touching it you know until that time that's my hope i mean i'd rather have a more fruitful discussion with the larger group than right now the zoning survey is jen and i yeah yeah i mean i know i went when this you know i back you know a year ago to you three years ago you know you guys were meeting at five and then you know the regular planning board was meeting at seven and we would go to i mean it's like it was a marathon and but we all have i think valuable thoughts and and input and so uh with that i'll let mike speak yeah yeah thanks um i um i have certainly no objection to the notion that the planning board as a board would discuss for half an hour or an hour each meeting whatever zoning issues seem to be uh on the front burner um however i think it's important not to even put the zoning subcommittee on a hiatus somebody has got to write any changes that we're going to submit to the crc and i don't want to try to write something like this with seven people around the table i want to write it with two or three people around the table at the most or with one person writing it and then two or three people editing it uh so that's what a subcommittee is all about is is getting into the weeds and doing the writing now to be sure we don't have the expertise that uh former uh zoning subcommittee members may have had um but that's not to say with uh modest and i don't mean extensive staff help but modest staff help we can't come out with uh zoning amendments that will pass buster uh once we decide what we want to write about uh and it seems to me that the planning board itself ought to decide what we want to write about and zoning subcommittee ought to write about it uh and if we don't have a zoning subcommittee on the table working then we've got nobody to do the writing now i i suspect that there will be new members of the i know there will be new members of the planning board coming soon some of whom may have extensive experience in this area um so i think it's unwise to decide now what we're going to do about uh this issue when we'll have two or three new members on the board uh let's see what happens with those two or three members and see where we are but let's not take any action about dissolving the zoning subcommittee now good points uh janet so um am i can i hear me yep so i i would like to hear from chris sort of the history of the zoning subcommittee because i think it's been sort of a long and storied one um you know way i you know it feels like it was a different era but i think it was in january or february where rob mora came and met with the zoning subcommittee and outlined his proposal for a zoning bylaw overhaul and he said over and over he would work closely with the zoning subcommittee he would look to the planning board for priorities and direction um there would need to be consultants for certain issues like you know downtown building heights um parking signage and he repeated over and over again that he'd be working with the zoning subcommittee i don't think you have to be like an expert legal draftsperson or to have the zoning bylaw like in your head you know you know the way you had your multiplications tables to um to be effective on that committee and so a lot of it is kind of you know i could see when you're getting down to actual language going through it and going through different parts of the bylaw it's good to have a back and forth i mean people on the planning staff know the bylaw you know david levinstein brought up an issue about appeals that he developed from the familiarity of working with the the zoning bylaw um the planning board has a lot of expertise and people you know as i understand the zoning subcommittee would bring issues to the planning board and be discussed and go back and do some drafting i would dread us doing that as a board of seven you know just the subsection a reflecting to you know article four you know 105 point c so you know i mean i that i mean i i can do that and i you know have been paid to do that i don't think that's an effective strategy for seven people i don't think the town council has more experience at it than us for the c or c i think they have less and they have larger groups of people um so i you know rob more also came to the planning board and kept on saying how he wanted to work with the zoning subcommittee very closely the same message if that has changed we should talk to rob more about the whole you know i i just want you know i've only been on the planning board for a little bit more than a year and i feel like we changed directions so many times in responding to the town council like that was kind of the purpose of my memo about you know my six months in the zoning cup sub committee where we're just like okay we'll do this we'll do this and you know stepping back of course we're going to work with the town council of course they want to know our priorities of course we want to work with the crc but we we're a planning board we're independent we have a master plan that we haven't implemented very effectively for 10 years we actually have zoning bylaw changes sitting around um a multi-use buildings that we could put forward you know after a few zoning subcommittee meetings we're talking to rob more so i don't really get why we're stopping the zoning subcommittee except that we did because you know because of the covid crisis and you know i think if you know in you know a few weeks we'll have more members of you know on the planning board and let's just say who wants to be on the zoning subcommittee and let's chug along and work for a few months if it looks like we're just going off a cliff and the planning board's like oh my god these people are so inexperienced then let's have this discussion but i don't i don't feel like i feel like this has been a good committee with a lot of power and a lot of intelligence and then we have the intelligence of the planning department consultants and the planning board to look to and obviously we have a very deep um group of people in our residence so i'm not sure where this kind of move comes from i i don't maybe i'm overconfident but i think that starting september we could figure out a zoom thing add some members i don't know if michael was coming to meetings i don't know if jack wants to come but just let's let's just start going again okay that my only comment is i'm not i i'm not sure i agree with we haven't been implementing the master plan effectively that's my only comment but we have uh chris would you like to speak yeah well janet asked a little about the history of the zoning subcommittee and you know for a long time it was sort of a loose group of people who met with jonathan tucker on um wednesdays before the planning board meeting and jonathan would bring things to them that he had written and they would talk about um you know what they had written and then they would bring it to the planning board afterwards so it was really um jonathan tucker who wrote most of the zoning amendments and the zoning subcommittee was a group that you know discussed them with him and made suggestions and that type of thing and the planning board used to have part of its meetings especially before town meeting but i would say for you know two or three months before each town meeting discussing what was being proposed discussing zoning bylaw so the planning board was you know fairly involved with developing zoning amendments and then when jonathan tucker left rob crowner took up the the um whatever you call it and started writing zoning amendments and um he was very effective and he was the chairperson of the zoning subcommittee for a while but he was a member of the zoning subcommittee for years and he did most of the drafting of the zoning amendments so um you know those were two really strong people who did that um right now the planning department i don't think um it's going to be hard it to manage i'm i'm being asked to um help to staff the crc and help them to understand zoning and help them to uh work on zoning and for me to um work with the zoning subcommittee and the planning board and do all the other things that i do it would be a really heavy load so um i am getting strong sense from uh town council and the crc that the crc would like to be more active and more directive and more of the principal um writers and determine determinants of the uh zoning bylaw and the zoning amendments and that um you know they'd really like to take the reins and that's the message that i've been getting from the chairperson of the crc and also from Dave Zomek who works with the crc so um i think it's you know potentially working across purposes or redundant to have both groups working on the same thing um so i would really like to promote maria's um maria's support of one of janet's ideas which is to the zoning subcommittee on hold for a while um wait and see what happens this fall find out what the building commissioner comes up with i know he's actively working on reformatting the zoning bylaw and um probably coming up with some specific changes so um and his intent now now that he's heard from crc and he's heard from um Dave Zomek the assistant town manager who is also the staff liaison to the crc um rob has gotten the message that i've gotten that the crc would like to take the active role in um in writing the zoning amendments with staff so um yeah so so that's it's kind of an evolving situation i don't think anybody has ever actually stated this in public i'm probably stating it in the public for the first time but that's the direction that i am witnessing things going in and um as i said i think it's going to be a heavy lift for me to staff the zoning subcommittee help to staff the crc and staff the planning board and do all the other things that the director of the planning department does um i would love to at some point be able to tell you about all the things that the planning department does but um i'm reluctant to jump in with both feet right now and say oh yes we're ready to work with the zoning subcommittee to draft zoning bylaws so i would almost make the suggestion that if you wanted to continue as a zoning subcommittee um that you take on the role of um you know kind of staffing yourself and if you have agendas and things that you want me to post i'll do that but it's i don't think i'll be able to attend the meetings take the minutes refine the minutes bring the minutes back make packets all of those things it's just it's too much that's my my two cents right now thank you chris um um okay so we have maria and mike but i and i'm wondering about uh pam have you identified someone in the in the public we have at this person there's one person uh one person who wants to speak and from you know mike has already spoke maria has already spoke should um i'm wondering um if if we are raised chris might be ready to guide us on this question there are two people in the attendees who want to speak maria and adams and pam rooney so um i would say you know let them have their say and then go back to the playing board members okay i assume uh you can just shake your head mike you okay with that okay all right so uh maria there you go hi maria marian you're muted now do you hear me yes we do thank you okay uh i think you have my memo that expressed some of my thinking on this because uh did you have you had a chance to read what i wrote yesterday uh because what i wanted to do was was express my very strong concern that the council take this kind of initiative on zoning issues i think that's wrong for a number of reasons first of all it's the state regulatory role as i understand it that the planning board is in charge of zoning i'll need to check that with rob more or others to find out about the actual legal status that is the state status of the planning board vis-a-vis the municipal status of the council so that's a question as much as a comment but it really worries me the second is as chris certainly knows i've been a planning board junkie for probably the last 10 years i'm happy not to be in your position but i have observed you very very carefully for a very long time and i have been impressed by the range of viewpoints by your independence of thinking by the very by the real technical knowledge that some of you have of the bylaws and the kind of connection and empathy that others of you have with the citizenry of amherst and i think that's exactly the kind of balance one needs in a planning board and i should think it must not be preempted by the town council which is a different entity has a different legal status and serves a different purpose i've observed the last few months that at least in my view your work has been muddied by the confusions raised by the crc and the council and it's really made me sad to see that you kept asking what do they want who's in charge it's you know it's like the joke who's on first and obviously the town council is the new kid in town and needs to be edified but i don't think it's the role of the planning board to defer to them i think it's the role of the planning board to figure out what are the keys zoning issues and go ahead with them i also think it's a conflict of interest for the town council to think that they can initiate what they believe should be the priorities for the planning board and then be the group that votes on that at the end they can't have both of those roles the initiation of zoning issues has to come from you and the public and it seems to me that if the council has some good ideas i'm sure they'll find a way to communicate those to you but the idea that you stop your work or delay your work because of their confusions and i'm not saying this an antagonism to the town council i've been tremendously impressed by the heavy lifting and the startup work that they've done but they are the new kid in town on zoning and you're not and it's not your job to educate them about zoning if they want to have a key role in zoning i do believe it's a 40-year professor that one learns how to educate oneself on those matters and to see the work of the planning board delayed and of the sub of the zoning subcommittee sabotage because of that confusion really breaks my heart as a fan of the planning board even though you know i've often disagreed with many of your decisions so i'm going to need to find about about the regulatory issues i think you are the people who are in charge of zoning i think you should be very firm in explaining that to members of the council who don't appear to understand that and i think you should firmly maintain that separation of powers thank you i'm done thank you and and one more public comment would be from pan rudy wow morian's comments are are right on point uh i i had no idea that crc was was looking to get that engaged in development of zoning and i i totally agree with morian that that it is the role of the planning board to do that um i did send in some comments saying simply that uh i see the zoning subcommittee as a workhorse and i think your the planning board itself is not terribly large right now you're kind of under undersized but uh so the zoning subcommittee is a is a pretty good portion of your of your membership but perhaps with some new members uh coming in there will be some people interested in this um i would i think what my reaction will be is to express my dismay about the crc's uh engagement in the weeds i feel very strongly that council should be an executive level they are our government government um they should not be doing the legwork and the the drafting of of bylaws period um they certainly can express interest and they can um if there are some priorities that come out of their desire to improve the town in certain ways that's great and you can put on your agenda to talk about it and and decide if you want to really uh go in those directions and i think hopefully there's enough consensus in town that that maybe your your priorities will overlap anyway long story short i just think they are an executive group you are the workhorses and the sub zoning subcommittee is even more of the nuts and bolts let's get the details in order thanks for letting me talk thank you okay i'm gonna put mic oh we're in the queue and then uh okay um all right uh i see the top list maria um i'll try to be quick i i don't feel comfortable saying crc in town council or not in the right place to set zoning priorities i agree yeah writing zoning bylaw that's not for anyone other than planning department i imagine i can't imagine a normal human is taking on that role other than rob counter and chris breaststroke um and anyone else in the planning department so i don't think literally crc are going to be drafting bylaw they're going to lean heavily i mean chris breaststroke is basically going to be writing it um but i just like to keep it short in that i still support tabling any more zoning subcommittee work until priority until we know where mr mora is going with his work until the load is lightened a little bit more for the planning department um i'm not interested in i've already been through this for probably three years now i'm not interested in drafting more ideas for zoning amendments and articles until we know it's actually gonna get traction um when we transition between telling the town council we i tried this i try to be proactive and set up a lot of zoning amendments i delved into housing we janet delved into inclusionary zoning uh dated levin seen delvin to several other i think was mixed use and it didn't go anywhere and i i just don't i i don't want to do that again until we have a clear direction and i'm happy to try to help facilitate that but until then i don't want to do what i've been doing for the last two to three years that's it yeah i i i can see you know kind of a sanity issue here where you put all this and it doesn't go anywhere and and like let's let's let's be realistic here um and i see dug okay um i mean i guess it seemed i i i had nothing to do with the previous regime back when we had town council uh or a town meeting but you know the problem with town meeting is it didn't matter what came out of the planning board you really didn't know whether it would pass town meeting until you put in all the work so now we have the benefit of having a town council that's a discrete number of people who can answer questions and engage in conversation so you know whether it's our zoning subcommittee that works and kind of in the room with chris breastrup and her staff or whether it's crc you know we now have the opportunity to have conversation with crc and town council to find out if anybody's wasting their time before most of the work is done so that seems to me to be a benefit of the current situation as far as the priorities go you know maybe our priorities will be different than town council and if we want to put their feet to the fire we can work on you know proposals that are not their priorities and they have to vote on it that doesn't seem particularly diplomatic to me the chances of success seem low kind of in the abstract but yeah we could do that but now that we've got a group we can converse with i think we ought to take advantage of that and figure out a way to work together thank you thanks uh janet so i'm all for talking directly with people and um i've often asked the planning board to consider having a liaison to crc so we have at least some information going back and forth um so i've gone to a lot of crc meetings and i don't remember when this was it was sometime in the winter where they were talking you know like the reason we haven't given any zoning to town council is that we were told all fall not to extend zoning to town council even though we had some things ready because it wasn't the town council wasn't ready to handle it and then i've been at a crc meeting where dave zomac suggested to the crc getting rid of the zoning subcommittee and the crc took that up and talked about it for 20 minutes until christine breast strip kind of kindly and gently pointed out that zoning subcommittee is a meeting of the planning board um and so you know we haven't i can see your frustration maria in waiting for years for stuff to go for we were sort of gracefully holding back on a few things because we didn't want to tax the town council and we seem to have gone from that to the crc sort of saying you know anyway so the next thing i've heard about the end of the you know zoning subcommittee was i was talking to christine bray mollins about some issues about the website from the planning board i mentioned something about crc and she said oh crc is dead you know planning board's not going to do any more zoning that's all going to be in the planning department and town council so obviously conversations have been going on in town amongst town government amongst our leaders they haven't directly engaged with the planning board of the zoning subcommittee so i would invite people to come talk to us um the last time we talked about zoning changes with rob morrow he was going to work with the zoning subcommittee if we get rid of that committee or put it to sleep who is rob morrow talking to can we put together a planning process and execute it for six months you know i just i feel nothing but um confusion and frustration um you know i'm a very blunt person i come from a blunt region i come from a blunt economic class i come from a a family of blunt people i don't really understand this kind of maneuvering and if the zoning subcommittee isn't useful and the planning board doesn't have a role in suggesting zoning changes for the town that's a huge role for planning boards and it's it's a power that's given to us by state law and so i i just want to know what are the waters i'm swimming in i'm sorry it's taken away from us because she's invaluable but we do write our own minutes and we can post our own agendas and we can work on what the crc is working on side by side in in parallel play or together or meeting but i don't really want to diminish the role the planning for the zoning subcommittee in zoning it just seems like we're an independent board we're supposed to be people from the town we're not elected officials we live in different neighborhoods we have a lot to offer and i'm sorry i mean it's been a very frustrating process for me in the past year and i haven't been on a two-year situation so i think we should just continue talking about this and get some perspectives but i really would like the crc or mandy johanna key or somebody who's the head of something come talk to us about how they like to work with us and things like that i prefer a direct communication and trying to read tea leaves and statements thank you thank you um and chris please so i've been trying to thread my way through this whole process too and um i i think it has been you know fairly confusing i did want to say that um the planning board's role in zoning amendment zoning bylaws is really to hold a public hearing about the zoning amendment and make a recommendation to him ever the legislative legislative body is in the past the zoning the planning board has been the body that generates zoning bylaws but that's not always the case it's not the case in north hampton the staff generates the zoning bylaws and brings them to the city council and then the city council refers them to the planning board for public hearings so it works differently in different um cities which we are now a city where even though we're called the town of amherst we're operating uh as a city also i wanted to say that um i think one one speaker mentioned that um she thought that the town council was the executive body of the town really it's the legislative body and the executive body is the town manager so that's changed that's you know different from the way it used to be the select board was part of the executive but that's not no longer the case the town council is the legislative body which is the same as what the town meeting was um i think that it's worth having the conversation and i would love to have um mandy joe hannicky or representative of the crc come and meet with the planning board and talk about what their view of the process is because um you know i get a lot of this second hand too um but i work for the town i work for the town managerial staff and so my um direction comes from them so i i do what they um want me to do and um so i yeah i i what i would really like to do here is is say that we will continue this conversation um we can continue the conversation through the fall and then try to figure out does the zoning subcommittee still have a role and if it does have a role then who's going to be on it who's going to support it is it going to have a staff liaison etc but right now that doesn't seem possible at least from my point of view um would you like me to invite mandy joe hannicky and perhaps dave zomek to come and talk to you about this topic at one of your upcoming meetings uh i would say that's um i actually i i i thought maybe dave might be here this evening uh but um that seems very you know reasonable uh to me and you know we are after nine o'clock and um and there's a lot to this there's there's definitely um you know a lot for us to think about in terms of the history and our our mission and then you know the new town government and so we really just started talking about this what last meeting uh in terms of the full board okay so uh but i i think you know maria's you know spot on and we don't want to you know like drop the ball you know per you know what i think the points that janet has uh has made if that is part of our our function but again it looks like it's it's complicated i think there's professionals that you know consultants that do perhaps this work and then we review it sort of thing but we've been blessed with uh you know members that that have gotten into the weeds uh you know rod crowner was mentioned um and and it seemed like that you know kind of um forming it you know in terms of presentation to the town meeting and now we don't have town meeting and now you know the crc just formulated well one one committee was dissolved right the crc was created chris split into two groups that uh forget what it starts with a t so that was one group and then the crc remained and then oh oka was done away with so the okay some of these and it's let go of other responsibilities yeah so i you know i suggest that we we we talk about this again uh next meeting and perhaps have uh joanne and and dade joe mac as he suggested speak to us and just so we can get our arms around this better um um yeah mic yeah um sooner rather than later in terms of a meeting with uh mr zomek and masoniki okay it seems to me that uh if in fact the crc is assuming the role of primary uh adjudicator of zoning issues uh that leaves very little for the planning board to really do in terms of uh of planning which is the name of the board uh and that the sooner we know that the better we are and we can uh turn our energies to something else yeah well it just seems like so whatever happened it was like it was a heavy lift where rob mora in addition to uh chris uh because we're talking about a rewrite and that's you know prior the zsc was looking at small changes language kind of things and just you know imperfections that you know simple maybe to the planning board but the town meetings seem complex and we just inclusionary zoning is not a simple little thing it's a major thing and that we've been working on that that's different we have we have assumed the responsibility for forwarding those kinds of issues to the next level the next legislative level and we have in my view abdicated that responsibility and that's part of partly because the planning board has not written the zoning subcommittee hard enough to make those things happen and i take responsibility for that i've tried to go to some of those meetings but i haven't been to all of them uh and i you know i've brought up several times that we needed the we as the planning board needed to instruct the zoning subcommittee our zoning subcommittee to do this or to do that uh and for one reason or another uh the result of that instruction has not paid off uh it's not gotten past the um writing stages and it's not been forwarded to the next level to the legislative level at town meeting level or at town council level it's works has worked both ways and uh i you know i i think that's that's wrong i think that's zoning is the responsibility statutorily of the planning board i mean not the final responsibility but the responsibility for initiating proposals and if we don't do it and the crc is going to do it okay um fine let them do it and let's not bother with it i mean why do we why do we why do two groups have to do it right i did i did i just there's a lot of frustration i think uh as maria has hinted um so i guess you know either we put it on a hiatus or we are we will reserve a half hour a meeting to the to discuss about zoning but for sure it seems like we need to have more input from the town which would be uh uh date zone mac maybe you know chris can attend to this uh more and then and then mandy so uh i suggest we table this perhaps and then take it up next meeting and and try to get some clarification on you know what the town is looking for from planning board i know there's state laws and and all that but um we have a new government and we're just trying to figure this out so does that sound a reasonable thing to invite a couple individuals to speak with us next time because i think we have a light uh you told me we have a september second you said the survival center has a shed coming in and then the high school has a couple of tents so this is september second meeting so it's not it shouldn't be a full meeting and you know it seems like we can discuss this sounds good further at this time okay any objections on the board to that plan okay Doug marshall has his hand up oh sorry Doug please yeah i was just going to comment that we still are the ones that originate the master plan for the town so presumably all the zoning changes that somebody else might originate need to be consistent with the master plan so maybe we need a master plan that's a little bit clearer and makes harder choices about the you know uh pleasing everybody uh in its writing so i mean we're it's going it's going through some edits right now theoretically you know but that was actually put on hold yeah higher priorities with covid um uh mike did you have yes um if we're going to think about the master plan we really need to think about the implementation matrix of the master plan which is the thing that makes it useful um and uh i've said several times that we need to focus on the implementation to have an implementation subcommittee it didn't be staffed by the planning department it seems to me i think the the existing matrix can be reviewed by two three four people who ever want to be on that committee and begin to develop ways of exploring the degree to which the master plan has been followed or not followed in town operations for the last 10 and the future 10 years um and if the master plan is going to be the planning board's only job well then we better get on it so perhaps we could have a section uh five that as a zoning and slash master plan you know breakdown or update that we can at least spend some time you know during this hiatus um in addition to having dave zomac and and mandy joey anarchy speak with us for the next meeting anyway okay very good um no not not really um i think if we're going to do the the the implementation uh is something that we can look at for five minutes and decide whether or not we want to have a committee to do something about it it doesn't need a discussion at the planning board level i don't think i mean we could do that but i think that would be a big time waster and if you want it sounds like we want to make the meetings briefer and more organized i think the more we want to do that the more we have to rely on subcommittees and small groups okay well so the master plan is is is on hiatus correct chris i mean we already decided that the planning board decided that they wanted to focus on zoning or have staff focus on zoning have the town focus on zoning rather than focusing on the master plan at this time um that is coming before the town council at some um one of their upcoming meetings where they're going to be asked to rescind their request to the planning board to continue to work on the master plan um for for us you know some set period of time until after a chunk of work is done on the zoning bylaw um i think that's a recognition of staff and how far staff can be stretched to work on both the master plan and the zoning bylaw at the same time um so anyway the request was made by the planning board to ask the uh town council to put the request to work on the master plan on hold and then i think part of that was to suggest to the town council that they actually adopt the master plan in its current form and i think there's going to there has been or will be some pushback on that i think that the town council is not necessarily ready to adopt the master plan in its current form so i think that there will probably need to be some work on it but um in my mind i really agree with michael that um you know there's so much in the implementation matrix that can be done that is right there that are you know things are already spelled out that can be acted upon there are already many things in that implementation matrix that have already been accomplished so um you know if the planning board wants to continue to work on that that's that's reasonable to work on the matrix but not to necessarily work on the rewriting of the master plan because i don't think the staff is going to be able to handle that to do that at the same time as we're doing zoning so this this is all conversation that started sometime in the spring and it's been brewing um and i think you know christine gray mollin talked to mandy johannikey and and things and and things have evolved as a result of those conversations so um so we're sort of in transition right now but i'm hoping to get some solidity in some direction and um you know really put our all into working on zoning of course we would bring zoning to you even if you didn't have a zoning subcommittee we would be bringing zoning to the planning board to update you on what was being worked on um but we would also be working with this with the crc so i i kind of lost track of what you asked me but um well again i i feel like my target was nine it's nine twenty five if we can put this as an item on old business and continue it the next meeting and hopefully have the guest speakers that we mentioned i would be very appreciative of that uh i'll second it okay um roll call necessary on closure of the discussion okay they're shaking their head yes no i'm not sure what we're what we're voting on what what we're going to discuss this we're going to discuss it next meeting we're going to continue this motion we don't have to vote on it well then why are we second i'm confused about where we are i'll withdraw the second pre-emptory okay so just put it on the agenda and uh that's good okay so topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours part of the meeting with regard to new business none okay um form a in our in our subdivision applications we do have one and if pam can the drawing we can look at it um it is a subdivision uh excuse me it's an a and r on bay road um don allison who's an attorney in town owns a pretty large piece of property on bay road just east of the um the roundabouts down by atkins corner and the yellow the yellow parcel is one parcel and the turquoise parcel is the other parcel so um what he is planning to do is to um have kestrel trust acquire the land that is outlined in turquoise and then kestrel trust will gift that land to the town as conservation land um and that will be connected with other conservation land that the town owns in this vicinity now the issue about the a and r if pam would bring up that map um is that don allison has some parking spaces that are to the east of his existing property line so he wants to be able to claim those parking spaces as his own as part of the um house lot and not have them go to the conservation lot so he's asking to redraw the property line that separates these two properties by incorporating those parking spaces into his house lot so i think it's a pretty simple a and r um and if you would authorize mr gemstick to sign the a and r plans um that would be what we're looking for move that we so authorize okay very good janet no i'll second um could somebody can you christ can you tell us what these these kind of um square rectangles are these little blots um that's a good question three big one there may be um maybe just uh what am i trying to say a survey i think they're just descriptions they're they've got writing in them i'm looking at the oh i see i see yeah descriptions of parcels there's parcel a parcel b and parcel 25 b 60 okay okay parcel b are the two new parcels that come out of this i have a super faint map here that i couldn't quite read okay and the the one that's down in the lower corner is a description of um one of those lots okay so i think uh doug seconded so we can um have a vote um mike yes i'm rhea yes dog all right uh janet hi and myself yes thank you so i'll call mr gemstick to or contact mr gemstick to come in and um sign these plans thank you very much and the next is upcoming zba applications i don't have anything new to tell you do you chris well did we tell you that there was an appeal taken against the decision of the building commissioner with regard to uh whether he was correct in um his interpretation of the zoning bylaw with regard to the front setback issue on emerson media i don't know if we told you about that but it's probably not something that you would want to review um it's it's kind of a technicality it's the uh the butters to the emerson media property are um you know they have a very good lawyer who's working very hard to uphold their point of view that they don't want that building there and so they're trying all different kinds of things to keep the building from being good i see doug's hand didn't we hear that that was not appealable um the attorney for emerson media believes it is not appealable and we believe it is not appealable but the attorney for the butters believe it is appealable so they're appealing it on a different matter what's the status of uh the northampton road the the valley cdc they were they were supposed to have their um third or fourth meeting tomorrow night but it wasn't posted properly so um they're going to have that meeting on tuesday um and they're going to be um hearing responses to questions that were asked last time and discussing um oh i forget exactly what they're going to be discussing but the agenda will be posted in fact i think it might have been posted tonight um so tomorrow the chair of the cba and the staff person are going to meet in the zoom meeting and announce to everybody that that meeting had to be rescheduled because of lack of posting i see thank you um next topic uh upcoming spp spr and sub applications it's all about tents and sheds i think jack told you that you were going to have a shed for the survival center and three tents for the high school on your september second agenda and then for september 16th you're going to have a tent for the um jones library which is going to be erected on their front lawn they'd really like to start doing some of the things that they've been doing inside or had been doing inside the building they want to offer more services to people so so that'll be coming on the 16th thank you and uh plenty board committee and liason reports pioneer valley planning commission i have nothing to report uh community preservation at committee mic no nothing thank you okay and the aggregate commission uh is vacant design review board nothing again uh and then the zoning subcommittee maria nothing okay uh reported the chair i have nothing uh reported staff i'd like to thank jack for chairing tonight i think you did a great job thank you very much and um thank you our leader for the next few meetings thank you and we can adjourn at 933 hey good job jack it's a record oh yeah hey hey we just gotta we just gotta like talk about the clock a little bit yeah lay down my hammer i like that nicely done thank you thank you all righty well everyone enjoy and uh september second okay see you guys thank you stop the recording