 Good to go. The chair notes the time is 6.01. I call the meeting of the Amazonian Board of Appeals to order. My name is Steve Judge. As ZBA chair, I wanna welcome everyone to this meeting. We'll begin with a roll call of the ZBA members. Steve Judge is present. Mr. Craig Meadows. Present. Mr. Everald Henry. Mr. Phillip White. Present. Ms. Hilda Greenbaum. Present. Four members answered present. A quorum is present. Also attending the public hearing tonight is Christine Brestrup, Planning Director for the town and Mr. Rob Wachilla, Planner for the town. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, extended by chapter two of the Acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to observe the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of a members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 48 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth, for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws chapter 48 and article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst Zoning By-law, this public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. And they may be viewed via the town of Amherst's YouTube channel or its ZBA webpage. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarifications or for additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raise hand function on their screen or by pressing pound nine on their phone. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered, followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information and time, it will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. Tonight's agenda, ZBA FY 2024-03, Valley Community Development Corporation requests for a comprehensive permit under Massachusetts general laws, chapter 40B, to construct 30 owner occupied affordable residential units located in 15 duplex structures, parking areas with 58 spaces, common areas and other site improvements on a 9.047 acre site was requested waivers from the zoning by-law, general by-laws, subdivision regulations and sewer water connection approvals at 20 to 40 ball lane. Map 5A, parcel 56, RN neighborhood residents and RLD low density residential zoning district. FSCM, Farmland Conservation Overlay Zone District following our discussion of that application, general public comment on matters not before the board tonight and other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours. Tonight's first order of business is a consideration of ZBA FY 2024-03, Valley Community Development Corporation requests for a comprehensive permit under Massachusetts general laws, chapter 40B. Are there any disclosures for the board? We had a site visit on Tuesday, October 31st. We walked the site from the entrance off Montague Road. We observed the closest existing houses. We observed where the new houses are planned to be constructed. We walked the property line, observed the wetlands, went back to the proposed parking areas and observed the meadow. And we also walked and observed the stormwater infiltration basin. I think that adequately summarizes our site visit. Mr. White, do you have anything to add to that? I do not, Mr. Chair. And then we do have one new submission, and that is the memo from Rob Wachila, listing the questions asked at the site visit and the schedule of the hearings on this application and the topics for each meeting. I understand that the applicant's gonna respond to those questions that were raised. And we'll deal with that in the presentation. Before I go any further, I noticed that Ms. Brestrup has her hand up. Did you need to say something, Ms. Brestrup? I wanted to note that Carolyn Murray, we have KP Laws here. I don't know if her name was mentioned and I wanted to welcome her and thank her for attending tonight and just acknowledge that she's here. Thank you. Well, thank you. I meant to do that and I should have put that in my opening remarks. And I'm sorry, Carolyn, thank you for attending. This application proposes a significant housing development including three new homes. As such, it will require several meetings to deviate a complete consideration of the comprehensive permit. Members of the ZBA have agreed to meet on alternate Thursdays when we do not normally meet to accelerate the consideration of this proposal and to avoid delaying other matters that will come before the board in the next couple of months. Tonight's our topic includes site design, landscape and screening, lighting and parking. Future meetings will have specific topical focus. On November 30th will be architecture and mechanical systems. On December 7th, stormwater management and stormwater infrastructure design. On December 21st, property management, income restrictions, financials, the application selection process and local preference. And we will have to have a final meeting, the date which will have to be determined because of schedules of myself and other members of the ZBA. But sometime in January or early February that we'll deal with waivers, conditions and findings. Consideration of a comprehensive permit is a little different than a consideration of most of our other special permits. For example, under 40B, all of the municipal permits and any other matters not governed by the state are to be decided by the ZBA. So are there any questions from board members regarding the process for consideration of the comprehensive permit and what we intend to do tonight? Okay, so who's, and before we continue, I note Mr. Henry's presence. So we have all five members and panels for this subject on the hearing tonight. So who's representing the applicant tonight? Please identify yourself and give your address for the record. Hi, my name is Jessica Allen. I'm real estate project manager with Valley Community Development. I live in East Hampton. Great, thank you. You can proceed. Sure, I would like to ask the chair to promote two members of my design team to the webinar that would be Peter Flinker and Lee Jennings. They are representatives of Dodson and Flinker and the landscape architects for this project. Great, we'll do that. And before you, when they come on, they can just give their name for the record. Okay. Ms. Jennings, you're muted. Hello, I'm Lee Jennings. I live in Amherst, Massachusetts. And I'm Peter Flinker. I'm president of Dodson and Flinker in Florence and I live in Leeds, Massachusetts. Thank you. All right, was that Allen, go ahead. Sure, I'm just gonna turn the presentation right over to our landscape architects and they can walk us through the site design concepts and get into all the nitty gritty details of the site plan, landscape plan and lighting plan. I'm just gonna share my screen. So I'm gonna start, give you a little bit of an overview sort of how we ended up with the master plan approach that we've taken. And then Lee is gonna go into a little more detail about the details. We have to- Before you go any further, I'm not operating on my normal computer. And so Rob, if people do have their hand up, members of the board or Ms. Brestrup have their hand up, I won't see it the current way my screen is. So will you please recognize them and use my, you have my permission to recognize people who've raised their hand. Okay, do I also have permission Mr. Chair to interrupt during the presentation to do so? Or would you rather- Yeah, I think we should let them, let them make the presentation. But if there's a question for clarification, I think it's valid to interrupt. Yep. Okay, I'll keep that in mind. So you heard an overview about the provis project previously, we've been sort of working closely with Stonefield Engineering to revise the plans. And so what you see tonight is the current version. One to start with kind of an overview of where the site is in North Amherst, particularly in relationship to the rest of the landscape. It's on the corner, as you know, of Pulpit Hill Road, Montague Road. But it's really surrounded by open space and sort of the surrounding block. And you have the Mill River Recreation Area along Montague Road close to the center of North Amherst and then the Mill River going up to Pulpit Pond. And then to the north, you have the Cherry Hill Golf Course. And so we're really responding to this in particular, as you know, trying to protect the large open meadow on the site because it's really part of this larger landscape complex. And this is zooming in on the site itself. As you know, a few years ago, there were additional houses and a large structure which had been demolished since the time this photograph was taken. There is an existing house on the site which will remain, which will be split off as a separate parcel with frontage off of Ball Lane. But we really, at the start of the project, we really looked at lots of different options for accessing the site, providing parking and so on. We looked at using Ball Lane itself, have a parking lot right off of Ball Lane, have a road perhaps connecting Ball Lane to Pulpit Hill Road, have a road connecting Montague Road to Pulpit Hill Road. And basically we ended up on, which we'll see in a few minutes, a plan that really tries to respect the most important parts of the site from a public perspective, which is literally the view from the road and also the protecting the wetlands on the southeastern side of the site. And then truly might try to make as good use as possible of the area that was already disturbed and protect the large existing trees that are along the frontage. So we have a few photographs of the site, you're familiar with it from the site visit, of course, but on the left, the view from Pulpit Hill Road, Montague Road intersection is really key in trying to keep, you know, from the beginning we're trying to keep the village of new homes sort of behind that tree line. So that as you look down Montague Road from each direction, you don't really see the project, you see the trees, and behind the trees there's a cluster of new homes. The next slide shows the center of the site and this you will see the project from the center of the site, but we're really also trying to take advantage of the sort of a gentle knoll with beautiful views to the north. That many of the houses will enjoy and really trying to preserve that essence of that landscape while making better use of this, which is the foot footings and parking areas of the former truck trucking depot. So the next, oh, and then also the riparian corridor, this is an intermittent stream that flows on the southeastern port of the site. It's sort of a lovely little dell with a lot of maple trees and skunk cabbages in the spring and this intermittent stream that flows down toward the Mill River. So this is our overall site design. And as I said, it's really trying to cluster parking on each end with a very short entrance road so that you get people out of the cars and then the interior is entirely pedestrian. So that allows us to preserve the big meadow along the roadside, which is outlined in dashed yellow line. And then we're using the stormwater to really extend that open space. So the stormwater is integrated as the edge of the meadow, several different basins, but it'll be planted with native species that'll extend the sort of natural native cover of the preserved meadow and really block a lot of the view of the bottoms of the detention basins from the roadside as well as from the upper side where the houses are. So we're really concentrating development. One of the things that's driving this is the passive solar orientation for the houses which resulted in sort of the ideal arrangement for that is to have the long side of the houses facing south. So you'll hear more about architecture later on, but really there's been a lot of attention to trying to, while lining up all the houses in the same way, also break up the way they're arranged so it doesn't just look like a row of barracks lined up along a straight road. So the central pedestrian spine sort of curves gently provide a series of different views. And part of those views is this orientation around several different common lawn areas. So as you travel down to get from the parking areas to the homes, you'll come to these small open spaces which will be defined by vegetation and some fencing. And that really will separate the public space from the private space of each of the houses. Again, the parking is consolidated in the two separate lots with access off of sort of split in half, half of it from Puppet Hill Road and half from Montague Road, 28 spaces on one side, 30 on the other. So we're providing essentially two spaces per unit. And then that central pedestrian path will connect the two, which while also serving as sort of public safety connection will be 12 feet wide with reinforced turf shoulders of a, if and when the fire trucks have to go they can use that whole area, both the 12 foot in the center and three feet on either side. And then the secondary paths connect to all of the units. They'll all be essentially accessible from ground level without going over 5% grades, I think. And then there'll be a separate sidewalk connection to the left-hand side of the picture here. That dash line shows a new sidewalk connection that will lead to the bus stop at the corner of Puppet Hill Road. And then around each house, we've set aside limited use area, which will be exclusive use for the owners of each of the units from 2,700 to 3,900 square feet. And basically the red dash has just showed two of those, but all the houses have a limited use area. And within that, the homeowners will be able to take care of their own yards. They could put up fences and plantings and so on and really work that up the way they wanna see it in the future. So now Lee's gonna take this a little further and talk about some of the details. Hello. So I'm gonna pick up and talk about the parking. As Peter mentioned, we have two parking areas and each of them will have EV spaces. So we'll have eight EV spaces and four EV ready spaces. Adjacent to each of the parking areas will have our dumpsters and dumpster enclosures and later we can show the studies that show how the trucks can get in and out of these spaces. And there's also pedestrian access to these dumpsters. And then nearby the parking lot will also have two mail and cart storage areas. The idea that residents can share carts to transport items from the parking lot to their residences. There's also a bulletin board and a bench in these mail sheds. It was important to preserve the existing large trees on the site for screening. And so we were able to project the large maples along Montague Road and the hemlock head along Ball Lane. And there's another Arbor Vitey and Prasithia hedge along the Eastern property line. And of course the woodland and the riparian area are not disturbed. Because of the solar panels on the site, we wanted to make sure that we weren't planting trees that would block them over time. So we're using smaller flowering species closer to the homes and then larger, larger shade canopy trees along the Meadow Edge and near the parking lots where we can have larger trees and not impact the solar panels. It was important to provide screening for the abutters. So at the northeast corner, we'll have an eight foot privacy fence and evergreen planting. And then we also have six foot privacy fence that will be installed adjacent to each of the parking areas to screen those residences from the parking lots. We are planting, we're calling it a Meadow Edge Pollinator mix, so it will be containerized plant material that will be installed adjacent to the parking areas and along the edge of the residences, along the Meadow that's existing and that will be a mix of pollinator plants and taller grasses to provide screening and to help blend the planting into the existing Meadow. Looking more closely at a grouping of units, we can see that each unit will have its limited use area which is shown by the dashed lines and there will be a front entry walk to a porch and then a shared garden space in front of each residence that would be under the purview of the Homeowners Association. Each residence will also have a rear patio that will have a connection to their outdoor storage area that's part of the building but accessed from the exterior and there will be a 16 foot long panel of six foot high fencing to separate and provide privacy between the two rear yards. Overlighting, it was important to provide a sense of safety and security on the site and to not overlight the site and so we identified three types of fixtures to use along the central spine, which is the darker orange, we're using a 12 foot tall post-top fixture and then to light the secondary pathways, we're using a 42 inch tall bollard and in the parking areas, we'll have a 14 foot tall arm-mounted fixture that's the same type of luminaire as the post-top and we will have all of these on a photo cell and it will also have a motion detector. So that it can be set to be more dim, late at night or early in the morning and then get a little bit brighter when motion is detected. We were targeting the IES recommendations for parking lots in terms of our foot candles and the recommended pedestrian path foot candles that we've found to be standard in many locations. All of these lights meet the town's lighting standards, they're dark sky compliant and also there's no light trespass onto the adjacent properties through the use of different shielding techniques on the fixtures. So Lee, I'll be interrupt, but we actually do have a hand raised from Emerald Henry. Okay. If you can hear us, I don't know if the screen's frozen. It looks frozen a little bit. I can hear him. You can? I can't hear him. I can't hear him. Thanks, Rob. Ms. Jennings. Yes. I hear Hilda. I can hear you now. So in looking at this diagram, is there more than one parking structure structures or is it just the one at the front on my screen to the left or is there more based on? There's two parking locations, one off of Hill Road and one off of Montague Road. Okay. And are they, is it intense to designate based on where the house is located or are they open to the entire community? I don't think we've gotten that far. That's a good question. Can I jump in? Lee? Okay. So the intent is that these are for residents parking. These parking lots are not open to the public. Are you talking about the EV specifically? Oh, I think we both. I thought he meant depending on which unit are you assigned a parking lot? No, I don't think we're gonna, that is not the intent. Again, if it makes sense to do so, we could but that has not been the approach that we've been going with in terms of assigning parking spaces to individuals. So we do have another hand raised by Craig. Everett, can you hear us? I can't see the screen anymore. Now I was, I'm asking because I was trying to understand where the parking relationship to the houses were. And if the person to the farthest house has to go to the parking structure farthest to the left but I understand if it's not assigned yet or haven't been discussed yet, as we understand. Yeah, and I will note though that we did make sure that the buildings that are accessible are closest to the parking areas and closest to the handicapped parking spaces. So that was an intentional siting of those homes to be closest to the parking areas. Okay. So Craig, did you still want to ask your question? I noticed you put your hand down. I can ask it later. I don't want to interrupt the flow of what they're talking about so that they can go on and finish what they're presenting and then I can ask the question about the EV that was just mentioned. Okay, Hilda has her hand up as well. Yeah, I thought that what Everett was talking about was number one, guest parking, whether they could park there, but the proximity to the bus stop is could be an issue of people of parking and not paying and going on to UMass. It's North Amherst and very near to a bus stop that takes Goodstone to UMass. So I thought that might be what he was listening. How to control a parking lot to visit to residents only and how do you designate who's a real guest? Just to put them on the table to think about. Okay, we will note that and I'm gonna move on from lighting now. This is just to show a view with the homes in it from Pulpit Hill Road showing how they're tucked behind the existing trees and the stormwater basin and another view showing that central spine with the reinforced turf shoulder and the common lawn area. This gives an idea of that central spine looking at the site from Montague Road side and another view looking towards the northeast and where you can see the common lawn areas. So I have a full set of landscape drawings that were in your packet and I'm just gonna touch on a few important things in those drawings and then if we need to go back and reference anything, I'm happy to do that. So we've covered the materials in our earlier discussion. In terms of the planting, I wanted to point out the large area of the site where the existing plant material is preserved, the meadow and the wooded area and the large trees and then everywhere else that's disturbed for the most part on the site will be planted with a no-mow turf, which will allow residents to have a simple, easy to maintain starting point for their own limited use areas. There will be seeded turf lawn in the common lawn areas which will be maintained as a lawn typically is with more frequent mowing so that it's easier to recreate in those areas and then we'll have that reinforced vehicular turf to provide the necessary width for the fire trucks along the central spine. In the stormwater infiltration areas, there'll be a moist site native seed mix planted and that will be maintained through mowing twice a year and then in the areas outside of that that will be disturbed because of grading on the site, we plan to replant with a wildflower seed mix and in the areas closer to where people are living and parking, we're planting container plants and we're calling it the meadow edge pollinator mix that is the mix of taller grasses and flowering perennials. Looking at the planting plan in a little bit more detail, we can see the smaller flowering trees along the central spine and near the homes and the larger trees near the parking area and masses of shrubs to help define some of the corners and edges of these spaces. And this is a good view to see the evergreen planting along the northeast of Butters where there's a mix of white pine, arborvite and American holly and juniper. Our planting pallet is all native with the exception of some crab apple and cornice cusa dogwood. And so it was important to us to use native plants with a lot of habitat value. The gnomo is a type of turf that's installed as a seed and it's a mixture of different types of fescue and so it only needs to be mowed two times a year, usually in June to remove the seed heads and then again in late fall. If a homeowner wants to have a more clipped looking lawn then they can mow it about once a month to keep it at four inches tall. We talked about the central spine as a pedestrian spine but it will have emergency vehicle access. So at each of the entries, there will be a mountable curb and granite ballards on either side, which if it becomes necessary, a chain could be added to prevent vehicles from driving. There will also be signs at each of those entrances indicating that only emergency vehicles are allowed. We have a couple of different types of fencing, the privacy fencing at the butters and then when we're installing privacy fencing between the two units in the rear yard, we're using a slightly different style that is more of a two-sided fence. And these are just from the drawing set showing how we've studied the fire truck access and how that can work along this curve and also the trash truck and accessing the dumpster. And you'll notice at the pulpit hill road parking lot, one of the reasons why we have the temporary spaces in that location is so that we can get the trash truck in and out of the dumpster enclosures there. And the hatching is showing the snow storage locations. This is just showing, I know there was questions about the wildlife. So this is the designated wildlife corridor. And so our site is right along that southwest corner of the pink area. And we have spaces through the site that will not be fenced. So there, it is possible for wildlife to pass north to south on the site. And I think that's it for me. We've talked about this already. So I'm gonna stop and open up the floor. Great. Thank you very much. So I just had a couple of quick questions and then open it up to the rest of the board members. Can you, do you have a drawing of the containerized pollinator planters? And what are they gonna look like? Are they gonna be, is it a row of planters as an individual planters? And how do we expect the, if so, how do we expect the tenants or the new owners to take care of those and maintain them? So then I guess it's probably using too much jargon, container plant meaning that when we install it, it comes out of container as opposed to being planted as a seed. Oh, so you don't have it, you're not planting them in a container. Correct. And so it's planted in the ground. Okay. Yes. That makes more sense to me. All right. And then the other question I had is, let's go back to the, what is reinforced vehicular turf? Is that just cement block with holes in it that grass grows up through those holes or is it something different? Well, it's a little bit different. It's a plastic grid that the grass grows up through. So it's not concrete and you will, if it, once it's grown in, you won't see that plastic. Got it. Okay. But it provides a more, traffic-resistant surface that won't be depressed by heavy truck driving on it. Right. As an emergency vehicle. Yeah, okay. And it's really there for the supports from the fire truck when they need to put those out from the truck. Right. And it's, most of the structure comes from it being installed on about 12 inches of gravel below. So that, maybe four to six inches of topsoil with a plastic grid. And then below that is the gravel. And so that gives you like a six, is it would be a 16 foot wide path then for the, in effect, you have a 12 foot wide walking path and then six feet of three feet on each side. Yes. Okay. So you get 16 feet of, all right. 18 feet. 18 feet, yes. 12 plus six would be 18, yes. Good. Thank you for catching that. And the last question I have is the concrete bollards, where are they gonna be placed? And if there's a potential for a chain, are they across the pedestrian walk or are they along the pedestrian walk? So they're placed on either side of the pedestrian spine and the chain, if needed, would go across. And so then there would be some way for emergency vehicles, the emergency first responders to open up that chain? Right. I mean, I think the idea is that anybody can open up the chain, but it's there to deter people. Got it. Okay. All right. There'll be granite. Granite, all right. I don't have any other questions right now. Mr. Meadows, I see your hands up. My question relates to something that was said at the last meeting, that the EV stations were going to be wired, but they weren't gonna be put in and my understanding is that the state has $50,000 per EV station available. And I found out this last week at a conference I went to that the federal government has $100,000 additionally available. So if you were planning on not actually putting the EV stations in, I might suggest that this is a good time to actually find out where that money is and make use of it. So that you have EV stations. Thank you. Yeah, just to clarify. So we were planning to wire for eight and then leave and have eight spaces available with EV from the beginning with wiring for an additional four. So a total of 12, but eight being available at the get go. But I will look into that money and see if I can find some more information on it. That's good for us to know. Any other questions, Mr. Meadows? No, thank you. Okay. Mr. White, your hand was up next. Yes, forgive me. I'm not super familiar with it, but do you know what are the watering requirements for the NOMO? Just because my concern is since we're looking at costs after the sale and trying to keep them as low as possible are you from it? Do you have that information right in front of you? Well, like all grass it will need to be watered during establishment regularly. And so that will be for a period of a couple of months. And then after that it performs like typical native grasses and it should be okay except in periods of extreme drought. And then my other question is related to the NOMO grass. Sorry, I've never heard of it before. Are you aware of it has any sort of negative effects on any sort of pollinators in the area? Well, I mean, it will be cut to not have its seed heads. So turf grass and all types of turf grass have less pollinator value than other plant material. But to provide a kind of base level of ground coverage around the units, we thought that this was the best material to start with. Yeah, it's sort of a compromise between just having a ground cover that never gets mowed and the practicality of people, you know, everybody wants a lawn, at least somewhat, especially if you have kids. I think because it's kept longer and it's the sort of fescus, it's gonna have naturally better insect habitat than a traditional, you know, bluegrass heavy turf that gets mowed short. But it is gonna depend on the maintenance. Basically how often it gets mowed. That's all I've got. Thank you. Ms. Greenbaum. Can you hear me? Yep. Once you've disabled my video, that's why you can't see me. Okay, I have two questions. If I had mentioned this in the fight for the report or not, did you mention that we need to remember the dual waiver for the ANR? Was that a part of your site report? Because I don't remember hearing it. You might have- We did, I did not mention that, Ms. Greenbaum. That is a good catch. I think it might be, was that in the questions, Rob? So it wasn't the questions. I guess we could discuss it now since it's been brought up by Hilda. So, and this question is also for Carolyn, who's the council on staff for this particular permit. So the current building on the property is occupied by tenants. And the applicant is intending the section off that parcel to be sold separately from the lot that's gonna be carved for this project. So I guess one question we wanted to clarify was that essentially they're creating a new lot that doesn't have the required frontage to be considered a billable lot. And the applicant was hoping to go through the ANR process so they could sell that lot to somebody else. And we were having discussion about this earlier, just a staff as to whether, you know, what would be the process to move that forward if they don't meet the dimensional requirements per local zoning to get their ANR plan endorsed by the town planning board or to have it submitted with the registry deeds. I know this was brought up a while ago, Carolyn. I'm sure you're familiar with this question. So we figured we'd ask and see if there is an appropriate avenue to go for that sort of thing. Right, thanks, Rob. We did discuss that a while ago. And I think at one point we also talked about the possibility of it being treated as a flag lot. We don't remember quite where we landed on that aspect of it. But to the broader question about the ANR plan, by definition, you know, an ANR plan would need the requisite frontage on a way in order for the plan to actually be endorsed. So if it's left without that requisite frontage, your only other option then is as a subdivision plan. Now, the zoning board in the context of a comprehensive permit could actually consider a subdivision plan or an ANR plan, you know, if this lot to sort of be carved out had the sufficient frontage. I will say that there has been a little difference of opinion in some of us in the legal community as to when the zoning board, as you were saying at the outset of the hearing tonight, Mr. Chair, you were saying that, you know, the zoning board acts in place of all local boards acting under local regulations, but not necessarily state law. So typically when it comes to Title V, you still have to go to the Board of Health, the Wetlands Protection Act, you would still have to go to the Conservation Commission. There is, however, a slight difference of opinion as to how the subdivision control law comes into play. Because while the subdivision control law is in fact a state statute, the subdivision control law doesn't actually have any particular standards. It just allows each city or town that adopts the subdivision control law to develop the subdivision standards. I know that I have seen both subdivision plans as well as A&R plans endorsed in the context of a comprehensive permit application. I have seen sometimes where the zoning board will actually endorse the A&R plan and has actually signed it saying, pursuant to the authority vested in the zoning board of appeals under Chapter 40B, we hereby endorse this plan. I've seen other situations where the comprehensive permit decision has included a condition that basically says the planning board shall endorse this plan. And I know back a few months ago when Christine and Rob and I were talking about this situation, the Housing Appeals Committee has also said in its decision that it does believe that an A&R plan or subdivision plan or subdivision requirements could be considered by the zoning board in the context of the 40B. Having said that, I will also tell you there is a case that's currently pending with the Superior Court that's challenging exactly that issue. I doubt that that is going to be decided by the time this board reaches any kind of decision on this matter. And even if that court did reach a decision, it would only be a Superior Court case decision. It wouldn't have any precedential value to Amherst or to this particular project. But in my opinion, the zoning board can look at an A&R plan, can consider ZBA regulations in the context of the 40B. Yeah, I guess it was because that particular law is part of the larger parcel. Then it came up that they need to absolutely. Second question has to do with most of the site is in plant material except for the walking roads. And this is a family subdivision, or family project of presumably children of various ages. Some might wanna have a basketball hoop. Little children might want a place to put the little vehicles, the three and four wheel things to ride around. And the only seems to be there is the public way. And in the past, the precedent has been for family housing to have a place where children can play with other children. It doesn't seem to be a place in each yard for basketball hoop because everything is brass or some other flowers. And so I'm asking if there is a place where children can ride their tricycles. That's one question. And big kids can put up a hoop. And then the issue of visitors, teenage visitors or younger or whatever who come with bicycles, shouldn't they have a place other than in somebody's shed to store their bicycle with a bicycle rack when they come to visit? And in the past, we required these things to be available where there were families living. And we should put out that on our list to think about. That's it. Ms. Allen, do you wanna respond to that? Sure, so I'd like to first respond to her comments about placing for kids to ride tricycles and a place for a basketball hoop. So one of the things we feel pretty strongly about in terms of this development is that we want the people who end up buying homes here to have some ownership of their space. We don't wanna pre-program everything for them. We don't know if they want a basketball hoop or not. Maybe they want a play structure instead. We don't know what the desire of the home buyers are gonna be. And so we'd like to at least leave some flexibility for the home buyers to decide where it makes the most sense for them to put a basketball hoop, where kids would ride tricycles. Maybe they're allowed to ride them up and down the pedestrian way. I don't see a problem with that personally, but I'm not living there. So we wanna leave some flexibility to the home buyers to be able to program their common spaces. This is their community. So give them the ability to create their community rather than having us come in and say, this is what we think you should be doing in your extracurricular activities. So that's one point. And then in terms of the bicycle storage, again, this is not a rental project. This is a home buyers. And so there's storage space inside the buildings. There is storage space that's exterior. Again, we don't feel like it's necessary to have bike racks available when it's a home ownership project. Can I respond? Sure. You're not gonna like what I say, but I think that's a cop out. I think when these units cost $671,000, you guys should be responsible, not the home owners who are getting subsidized housing because they can't afford it. Somebody's making that $671,000 per unit. It should include a place for the kids to play because we make it a given for the rental housing. I think that you guys gotta find some money in your budget to give the kids a place to play. These are very, very expensive units. You can build a very nice house for $670,000 in a very, very nice neighborhood. And these are 995 square feet to 1,275 square feet, a very small house. They're gonna be outdoors a lot, ployant. So that's just where I'm coming from. I don't know whether anybody supports that or not, but I'm letting you know what I think about that. It's a long way to Mill River, two-four-two-year-olds on a tricycle. Ms. Greenbaum, I think one of the areas that might be available for the homeowner association to decide what they want to do. I mean, this doesn't answer the question that you have is that it should it be all provided by the developer or should it be provided later on by the decision of the homeowner's association? But there's an area that for the possible community garden is set aside. Could that be, that's a flat area, is it not? Could that be used for recreation hoops, perhaps other kinds of recreational areas? And staying off of the meadow itself where you don't want a lot of traffic and the wet area where you don't want a lot of traffic. But there is some space that could be dedicated to a play area if that's something that the, again, that the homeowners want, but it doesn't speak to your question of when it's finding. Good place, I live in the center where you have that Green Park area. It's sort of like an oval on either side of the pedestrian road. One of those, maybe the little one can be paved with a safe pavement for kids. Yeah, if I could jump in sort of. On the north side, yeah. Yeah, we have been thinking about this a lot and the play structures themselves are not yet in the picture in terms of purchasing those and installing them. But we have been working hard to try to create a structure that can accommodate play structures or as just said, any different kind of things. It could be little basketball hoops. It could be for younger kids. It could be for older kids. And so we have these sort of three large turf areas set aside, each of them surrounded by paved paths that are incorporated into the pedestrian network that goes to each of the houses. There are a number of exterior loops that allow people if they're walking their dog or riding a tricycle to make loops around the whole project to get out of the landscape to look at the beautiful meadow to pass all the different shared spaces. We're trying to carve out those three big spaces so they serve sort of smaller clusters of units. So each within the 30 total units there are smaller neighborhoods that surround those shared spaces. And so as Jess said, we're expecting that the owners will sort of program them themselves. Maybe they'll put out some picnic tables, create a place for a fire pit to plant more trees and plant an orchard or dig the whole thing up and have a wonderful vegetable garden. And then we do have a separate space set aside on the edge of the meadow for a community garden space which will include the provision for a shed and a water tap to serve that. So all of the pieces are in place that just need whatever equipment they want. There's a place for it. I'm just asking for a paved area where kids can safely ride their bicycles and the old people aren't gonna follow over them. And as far as a basketball hoop that you can buy and it's on wheels and wheel it around wherever they wanna have it. But I'm not asking it to put the equipment out there yet. Though I would if it were one of the rental projects. Give them a place to do it because everything is grass. Yeah, it's a really good place. They can fight on a grass very well. Right, one of the things we realized in terms of hard court, whether it's basketball court or pickle ball, there's a lot of pavement that has to be reserved for the turnaround spaces to get into the and the dumpsters. So that's gonna be temporary parking only and those are gonna be ideal spaces to put up a basketball hoop or to mark on the pavement for games and so on. So again, I think there's, I think it's gonna be a really cool place to live and lots of possibilities sort of built into the structure of it. But we did wanna give the flexibility for people to shape those areas the way they feel fits their own community the best. Lily, Ms. Greenbaum, do you have another question? Oh, I just think that in that central area, there's a little place just north of the walking path that could be hard for little kids in a hard surface. Ms. Perrestra, if you had your hand up, did you wanna comment on something? Then I'll go to Mr. Henry if you have something that's commenting on a question that we had raised. Yeah, I wanted to comment on the A&R question and we have talked about it internally and we've also talked about it with Ms. Murray in the past and I wanted to make the suggestion that the staff could meet with Ms. Murray and with Rob Mora and come up with a recommendation for the zoning board as to how to handle this. And my memory of our last conversation was that we would try to treat that lot as a flag lot because it doesn't have 120 feet of frontage on ball lane. It's got frontage on ball lane but doesn't have enough frontage. So we could treat it as a flag lot and then we could ask for a waiver from the requirement for a special permit for a flag lot and we could also ask for a waiver from the lot area requirement for a flag lot. That's kind of how I remember concluding about this but that was several months ago. So I think it would be good to have staff meet with Ms. Murray and really, you know come up with a firm approach that we could recommend to you. Does that sound good? Yep, I think that makes sense. Thank you. Good. Mr. Henry. I wanna make a comment and then ask a couple of questions. So in reference to what Ms. Greenbaum was saying I agree with her in part. I think these are, this is the appropriate time to have those kind of conversations because we're assuming that when people move into this community, they will all agree that's gonna be problematic. So I think that they will all come together and agree on the same thing. It's possible but different opinions mean that somebody may want something different. So I think if we have something on paper some intent not binding but to say here is what we were thinking that may be helpful. And I think that is potentially what Ms. Greenbaum was alluding to. My question now is understanding there's all this community property. How much individual outdoor space does each house get for their own personal use? So it varies between 2,700 and 3,900 square feet on this slide you can see in the dark red that shows kind of a typical amount of space for each unit. Okay. And thank you. And my other question is for Attorney Murray. The case in Superior Court why would it not be precedent? Is it a specific issue being argued by a town? Why wouldn't someone pay attention to that case come back and say to the town of Amherst can I do this because of that case? It would not be precedent setting because at this point it would only be a Superior Court level decision. It would have to be appealed further to an appellate court level. So I was gonna say is there no possibility that one of the Superior Court makes a decision once I've made it accepted and then I understand to your point, appeals take years and this probably wouldn't have been already done by then. Right. Yeah. And the Superior Court case was only argued I believe back in May. So I think we're a long way away from an appeal. And I actually wouldn't be surprised given that it's also within the context of a 40 B case that has been out there for, I think it's been close to 15 years. I wouldn't be surprised if the parties just come to some sort of resolution rather than appeal it further. But I've been wrong before I could be wrong again. I'll certainly keep you posted if there's any development on that case. And given that this, we have this in our issue and if the zoning board votes to allow this with the current issue as it stands, does that create a precedent to say if another project with these similar sort of circumstances come up again, someone wouldn't challenge and say you can't do this or would the board still be allowed to do this on different sites with similar issues? Unless between now and whenever your next application comes in, unless there is actually an appellate court decision that definitively tells us what the zoning board can or cannot do in the context of a 40 B, then is it possible that another application comes in and someone challenges whether you can or cannot do this? Sure, it is possible. But as I said, I can also point to other 40 Bs where an ANR plan has been endorsed or even a subdivision plan has been endorsed. And when those have been appealed to the Housing Appeals Committee, there is no issue raised by them as to whether or not the ZBA has that authority. Thank you. Sure. I'd like to return to the thing that Mr. Meadows mentioned and that is the potential for additional subsidies both state and federal for EV stations. I assume that, and perhaps this is a more appropriate discussion when we talk about the financials later on, but I wanna get you started to think about this in case we can address it later. But I expect that you did not incorporate into your financing that there was a bill, there were certain subsidies available from state and federal governments or maybe you might find that there's more subsidy available now than you plan to begin with. And if that is the case, that would mean there might be some additional funds left over or a reduction in your construction costs and your development costs. And I don't know if there's been any thought given or maybe you could give some thought to whether there's an ability to capitalize some kind with that savings to capitalize something for the homeowners association for development later on and then have that be part of the homeowners associations when they get it, they have a certain amount of money that comes from either the contingency fund or from additional subsidization that you didn't realize was available. And if that is combined with some kind of here's some possibilities for play areas or other things you may wanna do not doing them right then but also giving them some means to do it it might be a really an advantageous thing. So you can't answer that right now I'm not expecting that an answer from you Mrs. Allen right now but I think that if there is additional money available some thought could be given to capitalizing the homeowner association to give knowing that these are moderate income people they probably are not coming with a lot of spare income right now but if there's some kind of a capitalized fund to start it might make the ability for them to decide what they wanna do the thing that Mr. Henry talked about might make it easier to come to a decision. So maybe we can talk about that and I think it's in December when we deal with financials. Sure, absolutely, thank you. Are there any other, oh Mr. Meadows. Well, I was gonna go on that same vein and I was gonna wait until we talked either about financials or the architectural but just to give you some information that I've learned in this last week. Ground source heat pumps are overall less costly than standard air source heat pumps primarily because there's a 50% tax credit for them and if they're affordable housing then it's an additional 25% on top of that. So by the time you take a 75% tax credit your costs have gone down considerably. There's also up to 70% tax credit for solar on a federal level lighting. There's money available for lighting that there wasn't available before. And I assume you've looked into all of these things but just to give you a heads up they are available now. Sure, what makes it a little complicated is that in our rental deals when we have tax credit and we're doing low income housing tax credit there's a partnership because somebody needs to be a taxable income. We are a nonprofit so we are not taxable. So the idea here is that we're a nonprofit building these houses and then we're selling them immediately to home buyers. So there isn't going to be a taxable entity as part of this project. It's different from a rental where somebody is a taxable entity for 15 years for that project. Sorry, you keep jumping around on the zoom. I'm looking at one place and then you shift. Sorry, if I look like I'm a little dazed here. So that has been my initial look at the federal money that's coming down for home buyers with solar is that you need to have that taxable entity and we're a nonprofit. So I need to dig into it a little bit more whether the homeowners association itself becomes some sort of LLC which I need to talk to my attorney about that could be a potential opportunity but we haven't been able to dig down that far into it and our initial conversations with our attorney was that it probably shouldn't be an LLC because there's too many filing requirements and it didn't need to be. But again, it's something that I can look into when we get to the financial piece a little bit more and I'll dig into that. So there's that. My understanding is that prior they were not available but now the credits are transferable. You can sell them, you can sell a lot of the incentives that are available and the deductions that are available at the same time. So a consideration, we're working with a group in here in New York city area that's called energy tax savers. And I think their address is energy tax savers.com. I don't think your attorney is gonna be a good focal point for looking at this stuff. I would think that you wanted to have a good accountant who's used to what the federal government is doing. Sure. Great, thank you. Ms. Greenball. I was gonna say exactly about Craig so that apparently Jones library is selling tax credits to support their enterprise. I've been trying to email Rob to please turn me back on. You guys got me locked up in a cage. I can't stop video from my end. I'm locked out. There should be a button at the bottom of your screen, Hilda. No, I'm on my iPad, it won't work. If you tap on the screen once to come up at the bottom. You cannot stop your video because the host has disabled it. Okay, it's you got, you locked me out. Let me see if I can fix that for you. We can continue with the meeting, but I can, let me fix that. Yeah, no, I wrote your email because there's no chat. All right, he'll work on that, Hilda. I'm sure that was not, nobody intended to lock you out. It wasn't meant to be. I'll stop my video. Okay. There we go. Okay, nope. Oh, it was there for a second. There you go. Okay. Thank you. You bet. So I guess I'd have a quick question for Ms. Brestrup. So if we're looking at it as a flag lot, the potential that we're going to discuss is the potential is for you to come back to us with a solution that we may be able to resolve as the ZBA and not have to go to the planning board or other entities in town to do this, right? So that we can use the authority or the authority given under 40B to make these decisions ourselves. Is that correct? Well, I guess what I was thinking was that you would grant waivers from the requirement for the special permit for a flag lot and the size of the flag lot, but that the planning board could still sign the ANR. I would be comfortable with that if attorney Murray would be comfortable with that. But I think we need to talk about it internally with Rob Mora, the building commissioner to make sure that he's comfortable with that so that we all have a plan to move forward. But that makes the most sense to me. I just wanted to kind of understand where you were heading. It makes sense to me too. But I know you guys will discuss this and come back to us with a recommendation that we can then evaluate. All right, Mr. Meadows. I'm sorry, there's one other thing that's bothering me and maybe it's inconsequential, but years ago when the Matusos had the property and that was a truck stop Kipper who was Chet Matusko's younger brother on the east side of the building did all of his truck repair. And I just wanted to make sure that you had tested the soil there to make, there isn't anything, any contaminants in the soil that are a problem. No, so before we acquired the property we did due diligence for environmental. So we did a phase one and a phase two report. The phase two had 12 test pits that were conducted. They were conducted where the records had shown that there had been underground storage tanks and some other industrial activity that had been flagged at Mass EEP. So we did testing at 12 different locations. All the soil came back clean. That being said, we don't know what's under the slab. So during construction, once we get into construction if we hit dirty soil there's a whole process I've gone through it before in my previous job on another project. It's pretty straightforward. You get a tested, you figure out what the contaminants are. You take all the soil out. It gets shipped off far away usually like Michigan, New York, not Massachusetts. There's a trip register that has to be done. It gets weighed, it's very expensive but we've got contingency money and also in the budget Commonwealth builders has additional money that they're recently providing above and beyond the subsidy which is for any soil work. So anything having to do with site work. So they have already, and I believe it's in the pro forma that was provided to you but there is money that they have already identified it's up to $2 million. So that's an additional resource that we can utilize if we hit dirty soil and there's a whole process that we need to do to get rid of it. So as far as we know, we've done testing we haven't come up with anything. If we had we would have negotiated that before we acquired, but we've got a plan in place. We've got contingency money just under construction and then we have this additional money under Commonwealth builders for soil work. Mr. Wachila. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So this issue arose before the application was submitted and a staff kind of heard about it for the site. So we understand that before you guys submitted Jessica there was an issue with a high water table on the site. And we understand that you might have to do an extra layer or two of fill to essentially raise the grade above that water table. So could you explain that a little bit if you have the information handy just because... Yeah, if you could promote Josh Klein to his meeting and he can address that. I will do that right now. Okay. Hopefully he's not in the middle of dinner. Thinking you could just get Scott off for you and just listen in tonight. All right, he's rejoining now. Thank you. Hello, I did catch the majority as Rob is there anything specific you want me to go through or? Sure, show them. Just give us your name Mr. Klein and address real quickly for the record. So Josh Klein, I am the engineer for the project Stonefield Engineering and Design. We're located at 120 Washington Street in Salem Mass. Great, thank you. Go ahead. So I guess just to rephrase my question Josh to make it easier for you to answer the question. So we understand that there might be the possibility of a high water table on site and there might be extra fill that's needed to essentially raise any structures above that or at least to change the grade to accommodate the high water table. So could you just kind of give us like a brief background on that and then maybe what will be done during the construction process? Just because that that's something that kind of deals with the site design but also might go into the stormwater aspect as well. So just because it was something that was discussed a while ago and I feel like it wasn't addressed yet during this public hearing process. Yeah, it's a problem. Maybe what I'll do is I'll give a shorter version tonight and then during the stormwater presentation I'll show it like an exhibit and kind of speak to it a little bit further but the overview is you are correct. We do have a high water table in this area. We've done two rounds of test pits kind of one round throughout the site and then one round a little bit more concentrated where our stormwater facilities are gonna go. The good news is we really worked really hard to design the site in the location of the stormwater facilities as best we can to minimize unnecessary earthwork. There's also kind of a second driver in terms of where the elevations that a site sit and it's driven by the sewer and being able to maintain a gravity sewer from Ball Lane. So we do expect there to be a fill condition especially on the Eastern portion of the site but what we can do at the upcoming hearing we did prepare an earthwork analysis that we can even kind of colorize and share with the board and I can get into a little bit more detail during that time period. Providing that color analysis will definitely be helpful at least during that portion. So thank you for clarifying that and bringing that to our attention. All right, there are other questions on the topics questions from members of the board on the topics that we have before us tonight. Lighting, parking. I guess I have one question on parking we're talking about and I confess I haven't read everything that I need to read but have you contemplated a parking space control measures? Are you setting that up for the homeowners association such as stickers or how do you control how do you anticipate controlling either guest parking or random people coming and dropping off their car and then jumping on the bus? How have you, what have you been thinking about that? We haven't gotten to the details of that yet. A sticker system certainly makes sense but that would have to be managed by the condo association at the end of the day. It's not something that we would be managing but we could certainly assist the condo association in setting up a parking control system that makes the most sense for them. Valley will be one of the members of the condo association until enough of the homes have been sold and it can be transferred fully over to the homeowners. So we will play an active role in the condo association at least at the startup until enough of the homes have been sold. So then I guess the question I would have is assuming that there's something at the beginning of the inception of the homeowners association there's some kind of a parking plan. If that parking plan is changed later on by the homeowners association Rob, will that be something that has to come back to the ZBA to approve because it's like a management plan. We'd have to come back, they'd have to get approval from us at a public meeting for a change in the parking. Is that, so that's kind of the management of this over time. So the way that you're thinking about is how we attribute it to special permit applications. And the one issue is, so when you grant this comprehensive permit, I don't know if it's an easy process to come back to modify it as it is for a special permit. So we might have to work on a condition that slightly alters that. So instead of having to modify the comprehensive permit itself we could require the homeowners association if that parking plan were to change they would have to file a special permit to submit that new parking plan for the governance of the site. It would be something that's not connected to this comprehensive permit directly. And Chris, please feel free to jump in if I'm missing something here. But it seems that having it be the traditional come back to the ZBA for a public meeting to discuss any change to the parking plan. That might be a little bit tricky to do in the situation. Chris or Ms. Murray, Ms. Bressrop? I'll try first and then maybe Ms. Murray can jump in. So I think the way we've handled this on North Square is that we had conditions that allowed certain things to happen without any change to the comprehensive permit certain things that had to come back to a public meeting of the zoning board of appeals and the zoning board would determine if it was substantial enough to come back for a change or an amendment to the comprehensive permit and then certain things that would clearly need an amendment to a comprehensive permit. And I think the amendment to the comprehensive permit is not as monumental an operation as this first acquiring of the comprehensive permit, but I'll stop now and maybe Ms. Murray can jump in. Ms. Murray, please. Thank you. So I agree with what Christine was saying. You could certainly craft a condition where the board could even go so far as to say that if there are changes, you could request a parking management plan outright and maybe that just gets incorporated into your decision. You could request that the applicant is required at some later date to bring back before the board a parking management plan for the board to consider. You could even go so far as to say that the board would not consider an alteration or addition of a parking management plan would not be considered to be a substantial modification. And in so doing that, they could come back to the ZBA just through a regularly posted meeting. No need for a public hearing or a legal ad. They could just come back before you as an agenda item and present the parking management plan to you. So I think we could work through it to try to set that up to make it an easier process if anything is required to come back after the permit issues. We'd be able to figure out a way to do it. Okay, thank you. So I don't know who had their hand up first, Ms. Greenbaum or Mr. Henry, but I'm gonna go with Ms. Greenbaum. I have to hand it to you, Blonde. I can yield the- No, go ahead Ms. Greenbaum. I wanna mention another thing about children. If you looked at the first aerial map that the Dodson Flinker presented, you could see a bunch of fields with solar panels on them. That's in the PRP rate region just to the west of me. And on the maps is a subdivision that was denied, but it's still on the maps. And the reason it wasn't built is because it's just too wet. We're supposed to go from Montague Road all the way back. Actually, there was a cluster and a standard subdivision that was proposed for this site. And they were turned out basically because one of four reasons that their land was too wet. So that land all around me, south of the solar panels is Haid, which is Haid basically Memorial Day, 4th of July Labor Day, well, three or four times during the summer. I can't walk- Can we get that, Rob, can you put that up so we can see what Ms. Greenbaum was talking about? I can do it. Okay. See the solar field way up in the left corner. My house is the two roofs there of my two barns right there. You can't see my finger, sorry. You see the golf course right there? I'm right across the street from a golf course and there are two little barns down there. And there's a solar field. So everything south of that is mowed, at least three times a year. And it's probably the same kind of soil as on the Matushka site. And nowadays with all of wildlife going through there with the insects that attach to them with Lyme disease and various other things, I'm thinking about in the grasses that are gonna be surrounding always including people's backyards. How do we know that it's safe for kids to play there that they're not gonna get ticks? Or if the dog, if they have a dog and the dog runs on the field, the dog come back with ticks and give it to the baby. I don't know anything about this, but I'm bringing it up as an issue I thought about. Let's see. My house is right there on the barns and everything south of there is mowed as I say every couple of months over to solar tech. So I'm just raising it as an issue. I don't know whether it is or not, but if you don't have mowable grass, is it safe for a baby to crawl around on it and not get tick bites or other things that you can get from what insects are attached to animals? I don't know. Somebody tell me. Think about it. I wanna say that one of the great things about the no-mow is that if you only wanna mow it twice a year, that's okay. And if you wanna mow it more frequently because you have kids that will be using your limited use area and crawling around that you can do that. But what about the fields that you want on a mom one-on-ones or twice a year? It is a drawback. I mean, we do a lot of school projects and everybody's excited about having pollinator meadows, but you do have ticks. So one of the things we've learned is to carefully separate the paths of movement from the long grass. So if you have grass along the edge of a path that we will hear is to mow a strip. So that as you're walking down the path your pants are brushing up against the long grass. So you don't get ticks unless you get right out into the meadow. And it's obviously a drawback, but this is beautiful North Amherst. It's an agricultural area, a natural area. And I think the idea is to celebrate that to some extent and not try to make it. Blackberries and everything growing down on the wetlands there, but I don't get dare use them. I mean, we used to do it all the time. Well, I don't know how much, is it anticipated that people are gonna be walking back into some of the unmowed areas and to the meadow and you don't know what we're gonna do. Yeah. We used to go on fields catching butterflies, but there aren't any butterflies anymore. I mean, when I was a child. Yeah, well, you know. The way we've designed it, you won't have to walk into the meadow unless you want to. So it won't be an accidental encounter with whatever's in the meadow. And so that gives people the option. So do we have to put in a term that a condition requiring them to mow close to the path, a certain number of feet? I'm leaving that out of the question. I mean, that could be the kind of condition we could consider, we can contemplate. Somebody write it down, cause I won't remember. I've got it. Me too, Hilda. I'm writing it down right now. Okay, I can't see the rest of the people. So Rob, if there's any other hands up, would you please recognize whoever it is? The Mr. Henry, I think. Had his hand up earlier. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Rob. I had a comment slash question on the revised parking plan. It seemed a little bit overly burdensome if after this project is built and the parking spaces are there, that the homeowners have to come back before the ZBA if they decide to do something in terms of how people park on the property. So I'm starting to understand why they would need to come back before the ZBA for us to give them permission to, quite frankly, allocate how they use their own parking structure. Given that there's nothing structurally changing that seems overly burdensome to me. Is that absolutely necessary? Wouldn't that be something that the HOA decide on their own, how their parking is used? Well, I think that's a good question. I mean, the question is, is there a parking plan to begin with? Since there's not the, a homeowners association doesn't exist until later on. So, I mean, I think it's probably beneficial to require a parking plan because we could be seeing lots of itinerant parking for lack of a better term in there and you'd wanna have some kind of, you'd wanna make sure that the development has a parking plan identified because we do that almost any kind of special permit when there's parking provided and there's potential for parking to be misused or students to park in it or there's to be parking outside the parking lot. And that's what we do it in other cases. I guess, but I think the problem is that you don't have a parking, we probably won't have a parking plan ahead of time. And this might be, we might be jumping ahead of ourselves here a bit about whether something's gonna be overly burdensome because I don't think we've really gotten into the, we haven't seen the parking plan yet because I don't think one's been created. So I understand, I think I understand where you're coming from that we don't wanna burden that every time the homeowners association wants to do something, they have to come back to the ZBA. I don't think that's right. But if they don't have one to begin with and we wanna require a parking plan then they probably have to come back and show us that parking plan has been done. And that's what we wanna impose a parking plan on them to begin with. And then that's another possibility, I guess, Mr. Henry. Does that respond to your concern or not? Oh, it is, you're welcome for a second, but it does. I just, I think, you know, we're going through this whole comprehensive permit thing. I think as we consider this, we should think about ways where if this is approved that we alleviate some of those administrative burden on the homeowners so they don't have to be back here. I think that's a good point. Mr. Ochilla. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to kind of respond to what Mr. Henry brought up to, you know, you might wanna consider, you know, if for some reason the HOA decides to reconfigure the parking lots, if they decide to add more spaces or to redesign them or to take away certain spaces or to reconfigure any of like the, I guess, the design of the entire parking layout that would also require a change in the parking plan too. So I guess having a parking plan in place would be the most logical thing to do, but again, that's up to the board. But usually when you have four spots, you know, parking plan says you have four spots, but then when you increase that to eight spots, that means you also have to amend the parking plan too. And even if you were to do construction on something like that, that means you have to come back to the board anyways, because you're changing the site layout. So I could see your point that it does seem overburdened some for this type of project, but it's something that the board should consider because that could also address, you know, guest parking policy or the sticker policy and stuff like that, that you would normally see in a management plan. So that's just something to keep in mind. Let's brush it up. So I think we're talking about two different things. We're talking about the actual parking lot on the ground and whether that gets changed. And then we're talking about a parking management plan and whether that gets changed. And I think Ms. Murray gave us a good idea about setting conditions that could deal with a parking management plan and whether it gets changed or not. But I think if you actually changed the parking lot, that you probably would need to amend the comprehensive permit because it would be a change to the actual plan of the project. Yes. Yeah. And it could determine that the change to the parking management itself sticker or some other thing is not necessarily significant so that it requires the approval of the ZBA. It may just be something that the building commissioner could approve. It could be a non-substantial change. We could establish that. Yeah. So they got users called town staff when we look over real quick and then give them an answer. Let's burn some. So just for clarity, for me the overly burdensome part was not about physical structure because I agree if it's a change to any physical structure, they should get an amendment to the permit. Yes. But if it's something that it doesn't physically change anything, I think we should give them the right to make those own decisions while coming back here. Okay. Ms. Greenbaum. Oh, I didn't take my handphone. Sorry. All right. Ms. Breschbub, did you just leave your hand up or did you have something else to say? No, there was one other thing. I don't know when you're gonna go to the public for their comments but I wanted to note that the planning board met last night and had a presentation about this project. And I do have some... I don't have anything written to give you but I have some comments and recommendations if you'd like to hear them tonight. Otherwise, I can just put them in writing and send them to you. No, I didn't tend to do that before we go to public comment and so this is a perfect time. Just give us a summary of what they're... Yeah, give us a summary would be good. All right. So, well, I wanted to tell you that the planning board was overall very impressed with this project. They were impressed with the site design and the architecture as well as the applicants outreach to the community. They thought that was all really good. They did have some specific comments and recommendations and I'll give them to you in a letter at a future date but here are some of the things that they said. In terms of recommendations, they looked at the lighting plan and they questioned whether the amount of lighting proposed for this project is too much and they asked if it could be reduced and be more consistent with the character of North Amherst. So that's something for you to consider. They suggested that the applicant review the level of lighting that's proposed versus what is actually needed and I think as Ms. Allen said that they base their lighting plan on certain standards that are nationwide standards but some of the planning board members felt that perhaps the nationwide standards were a little over ambitious for this type, for this project in this location. They suggested that the applicant and also ZBA members if they choose to do so could look at the Puppet Hill co-housing and Pine Street co-housing as far as their lighting levels and also drive around some of the neighborhoods in town like Amherst Hills and Amherst Woods and see what their lighting is like. They also wondered about whether lighting should be controlled by an automatic system with a photo cell turning it on and off. They felt that that might be complicated and it might be too sophisticated and expensive to maintain. And they suggested maybe it should be controlled by a simpler, more traditional system that's less expensive. And that was a comment that was given by an architect who lives in the Pine Street co-housing who said that recently their system has started to fail and they're facing large expenses to fix it and update it. So that's something to consider. They talked about the vehicular access to the pedestrian path and being able to control it. They wondered about homeowners being able to control Amazon trucks and delivery vehicles like pizza delivery from driving on the pedestrian driveway. And I think we heard from Ms. Jennings tonight that there is an opportunity to put a chain across between the two bollards and that someone could open the chain, take the chain off if someone really needed to get through, but just to think about is there more that could be done there besides just the movable, the mountable curb, some signage and that chain. One of the suggestions was that there be a delivery vehicle area to park at the head of the path. I don't know if there's room for this, but someone did suggest that so that a delivery vehicle could park at the head of the path and then walk whatever they were delivering up to the residential unit. In terms of the mailbox area and the sheds, they, the sheds that are kind of communal sheds, they said that this area, you could consider it as a gathering place for community members. And so are there any types of amenities? And I noted Ms. Jennings tonight said there is a bench there. So maybe that's sufficient, but they also recommended potentially putting some recycling containers for paper because people might wanna just sit there and sort their mail and eliminate things before they bring them to their homes. So just to make that area potentially more usable and more welcoming. And then they also said, well, if you have two mailbox areas, isn't there a problem with someone who's delivering mail to know, should I go to this mailbox area for this residential address or this one? So they suggested it might be worthwhile considering consolidating the two mailbox areas into one and then they would have one address and everybody would know where to go to get their mail. Let's see what else. In terms of storage sheds, they, some of them thought that the storage sheds that were proposed next to the units or as part of the units were rather small. And if people wanted to store yard equipment and play equipment in there, they might not have enough space. So they said, well, you could consider making the sheds larger. And then they also said, in terms of the future, they thought, and this was a suggestion given by someone who lives at the Pine Street Co-Housing, they've recently decided to put an additional building on their property to store things that can't be stored in their personal sheds or their personal storage areas. So they're putting up a common storage building. So they said, well, maybe the applicant could designate a location on the site where the homeowner's association could build one or more common storage buildings in the future and where they could keep yard equipment and play equipment. And that way that if that location is designated on the plan and approved by the Zoning Board of Appeals, possibly the homeowners wouldn't have to come back to the ZBA for an amended plan or an amended comprehensive permit. So that was a suggestion. In terms of the heat pumps and mini splits, they said they would really like to see those screened. They can start to be kind of an eyesore and so that's something to consider. And then in terms of questions, there were some questions that they asked, but these weren't really recommendations, but I'll go through them anyway. They asked about snow storage and it looked like one area of snow storage at the northeast corner was potentially displacing some parking spaces. But I understand from Ms. Jennings tonight that those parking spaces are, I don't know the phrase that she used, but it seems like those are temporary parking spaces or somehow not permanently used by tenants. They're spaces where the garbage truck uses them to back up, but when the garbage truck isn't there, somebody could park there. So maybe that is a good place for snow storage. Anyway, that's something that the Planning Board had questions about. They also had questions about the maintenance of the exterior of the buildings and will individual homeowners be responsible for the maintenance, including painting their siding and repairing their roofs, or would it be better to have the Homeowners Association responsible for that so that one homeowner doesn't maintain his side well and the other homeowner doesn't and it's just gonna cause differences in the way the property looks eventually. And let's see what other thing did they talk about? Oh, they asked about electrical vehicle charging stations and how they would work and whether they would be operated by a company and the residents would have an account with this particular company. So anyway, those were things that they asked. So I will write this up and send it to the Zoning Board of Appeals, but I wanted to bring those issues up tonight since you are talking about site issues and that's what the Planning Board really focused on last night. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Brestha. Mr. Henry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I have a couple of comments and since we touched on exterior maintenance, I'll start with that. I was gonna bring that up in the financial part of this presentation and because I had the same concerns and share my own example as someone who lived in a condo with an HOA, we were responsible for everything interior, everything exterior was the HOA and it worked really well because everyone paid into the HOA dues and I was gonna suggest that approach that we're taking here to Ms. Brestraub's point that alleviates 37 people doing 37 different things. Because we've had issues with that but going back to the lighting section, I would oppose less lighting for different reasons, but this is North Amherst. It is very dark. There's not street lights there. The intended target here is a BIPOC community. I'm concerned about safety, police interaction with people, potential non-residents going there causing issues that creates things. I think there'd be more comfort if it was properly and well lit with the residents that are there. I think that should be considered rather than go with less lighting. So I would suggest that we don't reduce the lighting. We think about safety concerns, not just residents but potentially what could happen. And as someone who lives in South Amherst, where it is extremely dark all the time, I wish there was more lighting. But I think with this community, I think having appropriate lighting, it is a bit isolated where it is. And I think there's a safety and comfort concern, I think from the intended target audience here. And I think people will feel better if there was more lighting rather than less lighting. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Henry. Ms. Greenbaugh. Yes, I have lighting questions also. And I agree with Mr. Henry that in front of my house, I tell people where my driveway is by it's the first streetlight on the right-hand side of the road coming up from the intersection. That's the first one and it's six tons of a mile. So maybe they can have the same amount of lamps but much lower in height instead of, I don't think you need 14 feet in that highway, maybe eight or 10, there's plenty with some kind of a designer motif rather than a streetlight. I don't know how to say it, more domestic looking design. Getting back to the discussion of the lighting. Did we talk about lighting for each unit so people would find the front door at night if guests were coming? I don't recall hearing that. I don't think it was discussed. Let's ask Ms. Allen about that. Or do you have lights on the front of the buildings? Yes, we do. We've got porch lights on the front and the back that'll be controlled by the homeowners themselves. Okay. Mr. Wachiller, do you have something to add to this topic? Yeah. So the question I had to ask focused on kind of like the architecture of the building. So I guess the presentation was given to us tonight focused on site lighting. Instead of the lighting on each of the buildings themselves. But still a good question to ask. So I just want to make that point clear to people. Yeah. The other thing in terms of the lighting for the parking lots and whether it's 14 feet or eight feet. When you look at the lighting plan, it gives you the number of, I don't know what the, I don't forget what the measure is but if you have a lower, if you have a lower light it has to be brighter to cover more area greater, you know, wash a greater area of the property. And if you have a little bit higher light will flood more of the area. And so I think, you know, I have to go back and I think I want to rely upon the lighting engineers to give me what is the best lighting for the parking lot with the least number of fixtures because I want to keep the price low. And yet I want to have enough light for people to safely be able to negotiate the parking areas. So I, you know, I think if you look at, if we look at that lighting, I'm just trying to draw it up here. It's really hard for me to read it on my iPad but we should take a look. I'm not just, I'm not saying we shouldn't consider it but let's take a look at the number of foot candles that each that are there for the parking lot and see if that's sufficient. And then let the, my thinking is let the developer decide what they want to do with the style of lighting but I want to make sure that there's enough foot candles to safely light that area and probably have fewer light poles than more. So that's very urban looking for a farmland. Yeah, the 14, I can see that it may fit with the, it's also something we can talk about whether it fits with the design of the architecture of the plan. I'll look it up on my big plans. Yeah. But I'm reading this because I'm on an iPad so. Yeah, it's hard to read. Anyway, that's my thought on that, it's my response. We'll talk about it again. I'm sure, that's great. So Mr. Chair, Philip has his hand up. Okay. Thank you. So I have two kind of real quick things. One, right now I am in agreement with Mr. Henry about the lighting and kind of the purpose for safety for the residents. But my second thing is for Ms. Allen. You had stated earlier that Valley would brightly so take a position in the HOA initially until enough homes had kind of been sold. Do you guys have any specificity on that? Like what, how many units would need to be before, you guys kind of take a step back yet or? I'd have to go back and refer to an email correspondence that I had with our attorney. She is on the call. I don't know if she's prepared to speak but I can certainly see it's Rebecca Thibault. She is our attorney and you could promote her and see if she'd be willing to speak to the conversation and how that would work in terms of the number of units, what that number is. So there's slightly one issue. There's two Rebecca Thibaults and I don't know which one to promote. So whichever Rebecca needs to be promoted, could you please kindly raise your hand? Oh, their mind made it easier. All right, so I'm going to promote the panels. And they both went up now. All right. Okay, hi. Nice to see everyone and thanks for the thoughtful conversations. Sure. Just before you just give us your name and address for the record. Sure, Rebecca Thibault from Dordi Wallace, Pillsbury and Murphy. I live in Northampton. So yes, Jess is right. That will be something that will be addressed in the condo documents. We've got several documents that I'm working on preparing. They'll include the master deed, the bylaws as well as the rules and regulations. And they'll develop a structure for how the condominium association will function. And I mean, in addition to the parking issues and such and other inability to change things in the future, they'll also address how the board of managers, I think that's what we'll call it, will function. How are they elected among the members? And then built into that master deed is how the board of managers changes based on the developer's role in the project and as they transition out of the project and it's sold. And so there are various ways to do it. 75% sale, then they have zero roll or other amounts. After X amount of number of units are sold, then they have the right to control X, Y, and Z, but not everything. And so we just haven't gotten that far but I do intend to get that far by I believe it's the December 21st meeting. Yeah, and the reason why I bring this up is it's anecdotal, but I have personally dealt with a situation similar to this and by no means am I comparing you guys to my experience but had a condo association with the condo that I owned. The developer had kind of said something similar as we sell units or remove ourselves from the process. They had some issues selling the property, the properties and the owners who actually lived on the property, essentially just felt like our needs and wishes after a while were being steamrolled over. So that's why I bring it up. Just want to make sure that since, you know, with our target audience for these properties that we're empowering them to be homeowners. So that was the kind of logic behind the question. Yeah, good point. Mr. Henry. And if you all understand in that you're working on the HOA document, can you commit to getting us something, a draft review by the 21st of December when we're discussing the financials and the HOAs and those documents? Yeah, that would be the plan that I would, you know, we would review it with the client and have drafts that they feel are, they're comfortable with proceeding with and we would get them to you before the December 21st meetings. They're pretty lengthy and not that fun to read. So I wouldn't throw them to you right before the meeting. Yeah, on something like that, Ms. Peebo, we'd really like them a week ahead of time. Okay. Yeah, for sure. That would be the goal. I also have condo association experience and those are thick and dense and they're not fun to draft either. So they're not fun to read, but it's important. I disagree. I disagree on the fund to draft work. That's why I'm over it. Yeah, that's why you do what you do. That's why you do what you do so well. Yep. All right. So, yes, to Mr. Judge's point, if we can get them, I would like to review them. I did with my prior HOA redraft or bylaws. So I do have some experience with HOA agreements. So I would like to review them before we vote on this. Yeah, before we have a discussion about them. I mean, that's a really, yeah, cause we won't be voting until later, but that's we need to be have access to them before we start discussing them. And thank you for your commitment to do that. All right. I would like to go to public comment. I don't want to shut off the board comments. If there are more questions, concerns, I think this is the time to deal with the issues on the agenda today, but I'd like to get to the public comment and then we can return if we have additional questions, but let's open it up to public comment. As per our normal procedure, if you wish to speak, please indicate so by raising your hand on the Zoom app or if you're on the phone, I think it's pound star nine, get you into the queue. When you're recognized, please give your name and address for the record. Try to keep your comments to about three minutes. I'll try to help you do that as best I can by using a timer, but Rob, why don't you identify the first person who has their hand up? So I'm not seeing any hands up yet, Mr. Chair. I guess we'll give people a few more minutes to- Yeah, let's give them a minute or two. I know we had, I looked at, there were 21 or 22 attendees at one point when I looked at it. Now it's seven, but maybe, you know, they had the questions answered throughout this process of site design that they decided not to say anymore. Or they have better things to do. There you go. Or they're actually all just on the call on video. A lot of them are also Valley staff. So, three of them are Valley staff. And one is our architects. So- It couldn't be- That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm just saying the dot com blog. It couldn't be because they're watching the World Series because that's over. So there's others. All right. Not seeing any hands, Mr. Chair. All right. Well, then we'll move on. One last shot for people on the board or the staff need be to ask other questions, raise issues, or mention things that you wish to deal with in the coming hearings we have on this. Okay. I guess what we need to do is continue this until November 30th. So what I'd like to do is entertain a motion from a board member that we continue the public hearing on ZBA FY 2024-03 until November 30th at six o'clock. Do I have such a motion? I'll move Mr. Chair. Do I have a second? Welcome. Any discussion on the motion to continue the hearing, the public hearing? If not, the vote occurs on the motion. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows? Aye. Mr. Henry? Aye. Mr. White? Aye. Ms. Greenbaum? Aye. The vote is five to nothing, unanimous, it passes. Is there any new business, Rob? Do we have anything that we need to discuss? We've gone over the schedule. You made that available to everybody. The only thing we have, I know that the only thing on the schedule that is still kind of up in the air is the final meeting because of members travel in January. And the fact that I know that myself and Mr. Meadows are gonna be unreachable for some portion of January. So we'll have to come up with a date, a final date later, I think probably the first part of February, but I will not be able to participate for about 10 days in the middle of January because I'll be outside of you from cell service. So we'll have to come up with a date other than that. I don't think there's any other scheduling issues. And you can talk about what we got coming up next week for the regularly scheduled meeting. Sure, Mr. Chairman. So basically in terms of that final meeting date, we'll have to, we don't have to decide that tonight, but we will have to figure out eventually when that last meeting date's gonna be for conditions and waivers. But also we have to ask the applicant and have an agreement with them that they're willing to go beyond the statute limitations for how long the public hearing can be open for. So usually we'd need like a signed letter from them. And when we have that letter, that's when we can officially continue it I think it's day 120 or something like that. I'm not sure how many days total. In terms of the upcoming schedule, we do have a three hearing scheduled for next Thursday, November 9th at six, the first of which is a continued hearing from the October 12th meeting. And then we have two new special permit applications, both of which are residential permits. One of them is a change of management for 320 West Street and the other is 318 Lincoln Avenue convert dwelling. And then as I mentioned, the continued hearing in 62 Taylor Street, the non-owner occupied duplex building. And then for the time being, Mr. Chair, we don't really have anything else on the schedule. It's getting a little bit light for December aside from these 40B hearings. We do have way down the road, Chuta Road Solar hearing has been continued to early January. The date is escaping me, but other than that, that's the schedule for the next several meetings, Mr. Chairman. And then there's another 40B coming up, but that's not going to be on the agenda until spring. Is that correct? We're anticipating like late spring, early summer. We're actually meeting with wayfinders in a couple of weeks to discuss it with them. I think they're still in their planning process for this project. So they're still pretty early on, but of course we'll update the board as more progress has been made on that specific project application. So I guess I wanna just again, thank the board members for participating on these alternate Thursdays. We normally don't meet on every week, on every Thursday, but we've been doing it now. And the schedule isn't as full as we thought it was going to be when we first planned these hearings. So I know you're putting an extra time. I appreciate it. And we may have some regularly scheduled Thursdays that we don't even have a meeting, but we have a meeting scheduled for this one. So your willingness to do that is making this easier to process this 40 BI application than it otherwise would be. So again, thank you very much for your additional commitment and time on this project. Is there anything else that people wanna bring up before we adjourn the meeting? All right. If not, I didn't entertain a motion that we adjourn. Still moved. Is there a second? Second. The motion to adjourn has been made and seconded. This is not a debatable motion. The vote occurs. It has to be a roll call vote. Chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Mr. White. Aye. Ms. Greenbaum. Aye. Thank you all again. We appreciate your work. Thank you. We'll see you next week. Thank you for appreciating our work. I know I didn't get that for a damn amount of.