 immediately going to make you co-host Michelle. When I'm sharing my screen, just a little reminder, I can't see attendees. So I'll keep an eye on that. Okay, perfect. All right. Well, hello and welcome to the August 23rd meeting of the Emmers Conservation Commission. The time is 7 0 7. All are here. Save Laura. And Dave. So I think, given that I have no comments, no comments from the chair, so we can just swiftly move on to our land use applications. Sure. I see so much attendees coming up. I guess I'll just say ahead of time, if you're here for 46, fearing that hearing is going to be continued to September 13th at 7 30. So I'll just keep remembering to try to announce that. So we're not hearing 46 fearing tonight. Okay, land use applications. I don't know if anyone kept an eye on the folders, but we had some additional materials sort of at the last minute for the plant surveys, which was great because we had some methods and objectives given to us. I mean, that all looked good, but did everybody have a chance to look at it or any questions? When did that, when was that sent out? I looked at the, I looked at stuff. Is it something recent, like last couple hours? Several hours. Yeah, it's a, it was an attachment to the application. So it's a letter from the organization just detailing what their purposes and details of the survey. So if I could just jump in too. So there's, there's one land use application, which is a plant survey. And that plant survey has been like an ongoing annual survey that I can't remember the name of the organization. It's a plant trust in Massachusetts that does it. It's like some volunteer botanists that go out and they search for endangered or listed species. We shouldn't mention what the species are tonight just because the NHSP requests that we not do that, but that's been an ongoing survey. And usually they provide us with their results, whether they find anything or not. So that's one of the items, one of the land use applications. And then the other is a a wedding that's taking place at the arbors. It's just the photos, right? Yeah, they just want to have photos taken at the arboretum. So those are the two that are for consideration tonight. Okay. Which one should we do first? We need motions on both, right? Yeah, let's look at the first one, which is the arboretum, I believe. So they're having the event at the arbors. And so all the parking and event space is associated with that. But the photos, they expect about 16 participants. All the parking will be at Applewood. They're not having any signage. It's literally just them walking out and having photos taken. So I think it's a pretty, I already let them know that we don't restrict public access during the event or during the time that they're having photos taken and they were fine with that. So it seemed like a pretty straightforward, kind of low key request. Commissioner, is there any comments, questions on that? Can you remind me where the arbors is? Yeah, it's up by Atkins Farms. If you take Bay Road going west, after you pass Atkins, it's on the left hand side. And there's an arboretum there that the Conservation Commission, I have to double check this with regard to ownership. I'm not sure if we just hold the CR or if we actually own it. But sorry, I'm drawing a blank on that right now. I think we own it and there's a CR on it. I didn't even know about this property, but I might need to visit. Yeah, it's an arboretum and it's really nice. Next to Applewood. I mean my only comment is like, you know, no climbing trees, monkey business, just standing on the ground. And then the usual conditions. Okay, well, if there's no other comments, do we have a date or? 826, I think. Okay. All right. Yes. So looking for a motion to approve the use of the arboretum for wedding photos on 826. Okay. Andrea on the second, Bruce. Oh wait, sorry. I need a second. Resty. Andrea on the motion. Alex on the second. Andre. Hi. Bruce. Hi. Alex. Hi. Jason. Hi. And I'm an I. Okay, so let me get back to my other screen. My computer, I've got two screens on my computer and whenever I open something it switches to my other screen. So I have to jump back and forth. Okay, so the second request is from the native plant trust to you to explore the Lawrence swamp conservation area for a state listed species. The dates are the dates that they're going to start the survey or would like to start the survey are August 17th through November 1st about four participants, two to four parking spots at the Norwatic Trail parking lot, which is I believe Amherst College owned. So that's not going to affect us. As I said in the past, they've done this survey and reported back to our results. That's typically kind of our requirement if there's any kind of survey work going on that that they would report back to us what their findings are if they have a report or paper that's published as a result of their investigations that they share the data with us. Maybe sorry, go ahead Andre. Which parking lot is that? It's the parking lot for the Norwatic Trail, which is located on Mill Lane. Yup. Yeah, on the corner of Mill Lane by the bike path. So according to the letter, they specifically said that they would share the results if requested. So I think maybe can we make that a condition just that whether or not the results are negative or positive that we just get the heads up on that. I don't know if it, yeah, I doubt, I think it's just a survey not going into some kind of research findings, but maybe in the future we could ask that the Amherst, you know, town lands could be acknowledged in the acknowledgement just for future research, but I don't think that's applicable to this one. Okay, any questions or comments on this one? I assume what you just said is that we want to know the results. Okay, that's an affirmative. And as a comment, I've run into these folks in the State Park in the past, and they seem to be very respectful in doing their job, so to speak. Great. Good to hear. Okay, with that I'm looking for a motion to approve the plant surveys at Lawrence Swamp. It's between August and November, I believe. So moved. Jason on the motion. Alex with the second. Andre? Aye. Bruce? Aye. Jason? Aye. Alex? Aye. And I'm an aye. Great. Do you want me to jump to some other business items? Yes, please. Okay, so there's just one other business item tonight, which is the request for certificate of compliance for 119 Linden Ridge Road. I went out and did a site visit. Work is active and ongoing on the site. The property is about to be sold. However, the reason that this is encumbered by an order of conditions is because the order of conditions applied to the entire subdivision, so like the roadway, the stormwater infrastructure, and as a result it's recorded on every single property that's associated with the subdivision. This particular lot, I did check the approved site plan and it is located in a location which is completely outside of conservation commission jurisdiction. If anybody wants me to pull up the map to show you where it's located in the subdivision, I can do that. I've got it queued up, but it's lot 61 in the hills, the Amherst Hills, and it's not even in buffer zone. It's like sort of landlocked between Concord Road and Linden Ridge Road, so there's no resource area or even buffer zone to contend with on the site. So it's kind of a administrative process to release the lot in this particular case. Thanks, Erin. Any questions or comments on that, commissioners? No? Okay. Do you mind sharing your screen? Okay, great. All right, so looking for a motion to issue a complete ticket of compliance at 119 Linden Ridge Road. So moved. Alex with a motion. Second. Andre with a second. Okay, let's see, I can't see everyone now. Andre? Aye. Alex? Aye. Bruce? Aye. Jason? Aye. And I'm an aye. Okay. I think we had some minute or what time is our hearing first? It's at 7.30. Well, at 7.30 we have a continuance and 7.35 our other hearing opens. Should we approve some minutes? Sure. So I apologize, I got these in the folder kind of late, but there are two sets of minutes that were in the OneDrive folder for approval. One was the July 12th meeting and one was the July 26th meeting. And thank you so much, Alex. For taking those on, really appreciate it. Yes, thank you, Alex and Bruce. Just a comment, I'm pretty familiar with them, but I couldn't download them. You couldn't, you could only view them or? Yeah. They came up as a, you know, word. Oh, I wonder if it's because I didn't export them to PDF before I uploaded them. I can do that in the future so that they can be downloaded. Okay. Anybody have any questions or comments on that? No. Okay. What are the dates of them? July 12th and July 26th. And you can combine the motion to include both dates if you wish. You want me to give a motion? Yeah, I moved to include the July, was it 26th and 12 minutes into the record? Is that what we're moving to do? That's my motion. Looking for a second. I'll second. Thanks, Jason. All right. Andre. Hi. Bruce. I'm going to abstain. I apologize. I didn't see them go by and I didn't read them. Okay. Alex. Hi. And Jason. Hi. And I'm an I. Great. And just for future reference, you don't have to attend the meetings to vote on them. So you can always vote on approval of minutes even if you didn't attend the meeting. It's just a formality. Just, just review them, right? So just look at them. Yeah. I just thought of one other item of business that I forgot about. Do we have all the signatures we need on the Laura CR? I sent an email to Michelle Andre, and I think Laura were the only three. I don't know if anyone's been in yet, but if folks haven't, if you could pop in before the end of the week, I think we've got three signatures already. And I think we only need four to record it. But we just need, we need to try to get the finishing signatures on that. I'm off tomorrow so I can, I can swing in. Thank you, Andre. Great. I think you're talking about the document that Bruce and I signed after our last site visit. Yes. That's correct. This is the amendment, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's for the IRS issue. Right. Okay. Just one quick matter there. I no longer have, have mornings available like I used to for, for site visits. Okay. So I don't know if we can do some afternoon visits or, you know, after three o'clock or so. So just putting it out. Okay. Yeah. So the next time that we get an application, I can kind of check in with folks, but does, what are folks schedules generally for availability for like the rest of the group? I know Bruce and Alex have been, have been pretty, pretty good lately about coming. But I didn't know if there was other sort of flexibility issues that folks that would help to get people to be able to attend. I'd be happy to send you an email with mine. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. If anybody else has any that they don't know of right now, that would be helpful for me. The other thing is usually, I mean, this is something that was kind of a standard thing that I inherited, which is a little different than other towns I've worked for. But in Amherst, the hearings are always the day of the hearing, which is interesting. So the site visits. Yeah, the site visits are always the day of the hearing. And for staff, it's been a little bit tough because it's like I'm out at the site, and then I've got to rush back and type up my findings that day for the site visit. So I'm open to another day, an earlier day or an afternoon prior to the meeting to try to schedule it a little differently. It's just kind of, and now we have a new board. So that's the great thing, you know, we can do whatever works for everyone here. But it's just something, an interesting thing I inherited from the previous folks. Is that by statute firing or is that by preference? A completely preference. Yeah. There are some conservation commissions that I've worked with who did their site visits on Saturdays or Sundays or even in the evenings, like four or five o'clock in the afternoon. And, you know, there's no requirement that staff be there with commissioners. So like, if I can't be there at five o'clock or four o'clock, but the rest of the commission can, I can always schedule my site visit at a different time. So it's, it's very flexible. That's very useful to have Aaron there in my experience. And I, when I was interviewed for this position, one of the questions that I was asked was, would I be able to attend site visits? And the answer was yes. So I've tried to do that every time I can. Mondays are open for me Tuesday morning is not good. Sometimes Tuesday is not good, but Thursday is usually good. Friday, I can send that to you, Aaron. Okay. Starting Friday, I'll be out of town until the 19th of September and unavailable. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, it's sometimes just works out that we can't get everybody's availability to align. So the other option is, and this is always a possibility, obviously dependent on the applicants or the applicants, representatives availability, but for example, for example, like I could go out with one or two commissioners who are available. And then if another commissioner can't make that and can come at a different time, we can always try to schedule more than one. And some cases it's really easy because you could, you know, visit the site in off hours and no one cares. In other cases, it's a little more tricky, but we can take it kind of case by case. I think site visits are extremely valuable. They've just been very valuable to me to be able to see, hear the applicant talk informally and to hear Aaron and see what we're talking about on the landscape. And I would encourage people to find a time when they could do it. I know we have a few minutes. Michelle, go ahead. I don't want to cut in front of Bruce if Bruce has a question. Well, I just was going to say we were going to appoint a vice chair. That was the first thing on the agenda. Oh, that might have been a carryover from the last meeting, but I think we, at the last meeting, appointed Andre. Yes, we did. That was probably a typographical error on my phone. There was a couple carryovers. I think Aaron was just focusing on other. That's in the July 26 minutes. The minutes I didn't read. Okay. Congratulations, Andre. So that's one of the reasons why I was hoping to just take like three minutes and give you guys a little bit of an update if I could before the hearing starts. So to anyone in the public, anyone watching this commissioners, for the last week, week and a half, I have been completely underwater. So I just wanted to put that out there up front. We have a large 41 acre solar project that came through that was submitted to the Zoning Board of Appeals that required review and comment from myself. And that was a four day process to go through that application and draft comments on. So I had to basically shut off email, not return phone calls so that I could focus on getting it done. The other thing is I have, I'm in the process right now of drafting the Notice of Intent application for the Hickory Ridge. It's a huge restoration Notice of Intent with some trail work associated with it, which I am in the process of doing the final calculations and finishing up the narrative for, but that's been another major project that has basically required me to just step away from my normal day to day tasks in order to actually be able to accomplish it. So this week and last week have been really, really unusual weeks for me. And that usually I keep up on my emails. I'm returning calls regularly, but I really had to make some sacrifices in order to get this stuff done. So I just wanted to be completely upfront about that. And as a result, like I haven't even issued permits from our last meeting. And so I'm hoping tomorrow and Friday, I'll be able to finish up the NOI, finish up and get my permits issued. But there are times where we have sort of external or kind of other board related things or other sort of projects that are outside the concoms bubble that I work on that you guys might not know about. So I wanted to make sure I mentioned that because it's been just a big time commitment for me to be able to get it all done. We appreciate all the due diligence and if you guys haven't seen the memo that she posted, please review it because that's going to be a big one coming to us later in the fall, I think. And just familiarizing yourself with the project will be very valuable. It'll probably take a lot of our time too. But anyway, thank you, Erin. Erin, is that the one that Chris Brestra, thank you for? Did she thank me in a meeting? No, in an email, she said that. Oh, okay, a reply. Yeah, yep, she did. Yep, that's the one. I read that. Good job on that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and at some point, I think it would be worthwhile for us if we have time on an upcoming agenda to just take 10 minutes to talk about that site and sort of the history of it. And just to give folks a little bit of a snippet here, back in 2020, we did an ANRAD and for new folks, an ANRAD is an acronym for abbreviated notice of resource area delineation. For sites that are over five acres in size, which this one is about 150 acres, folks have to file a permit to confirm resource area boundaries on their properties if they're going to be doing work on the site. So this applicant went through that whole process. We had a peer reviewer review those boundaries. And then after that was done, they filed a notice of intent. The notice of intent ended up getting withdrawn. And they basically did a whole revision process to change the project configuration. But it is important to note that on, let's see, what is today? My weeks are so messed up. The 25th, which is Friday, the ORRAD, so the order of resource area delineation that confirmed the boundaries of the resources on that site will expire. And as a result of that, the applicant has to come back and do it again. And so that is going to be happening and we can talk about that when the time comes. But since the original ORRAD was issued, some new information has come to light an intermittent stream that is originating basically under the access road was mapped by a butters to the property. And also there's potentially some other resources on the site that weren't captured with the original delineation that need to be captured and included this time around. So just to kind of give you a quick overview that there's a lot to it. And I want to make sure that everybody's comfortable. It's a big project and we have a lot of new board members, so I want to make sure that I answer your questions hopefully before the project comes to us in the form of a public hearing. I agree that it would be important to talk about that. Okay, Bruce. And there be a site visit before there's a formal request to do something? Could you say that one more time, Bruce? And there be a site visit before there's a formal request to do something? So as far as the permit process goes, generally that's our trigger to enter the site. Right now the site is posted no trespassing, so I wouldn't enter the site or you know, if there was a request by the commission to walk the site, we could certainly broach the owner slash representative and see if they were amenable to that. If that's a formal request we want to try to submit, but typically it's when the permit is filed. And I just wanted to correct myself that the ORAD expired on August 10th, not the 25th. I got the dates mixed up in my head, so it did expire last Friday. Alex. I think a site visit as Bruce is proposing would be useful in understanding the complicated letter that Erin put together and would help discussions. If we have 10 minutes, it would be informative and worth our time. I wonder if we should wait until there's a resource delineation so we can view it. And also there's the previous application that had a resource delineation. They're just, it's a very big property. That's what that's all like. I don't know if we'd be able to take in necessarily without flagging what we are looking at. I don't know, sorry. If I could go off there, Alex, did I? Andre? Yeah, I mean, and I understand it's also kind of a sensitive issue and it may be best for us to wait until we're officially triggered to do something like that. I don't know, but Erin, maybe talking to whoever you might want to talk to just to make sure. Yeah, absolutely. And just so you folks know, when this comes back to us in an ANRAD request, I will request a peer review again. And the reason for that is because the sheer size of this site for me alone to verify it and for the commission alone to verify it is almost physically impossible. It takes, I would say, four solid days of survey, like walking the site and checking each flag and each and every single flag. The whole site is encircled by resource areas. So it's, I think the last time I was out there three times with the peer reviewer, but our peer reviewer spent, I think, close to a week out there. So I've already talked to the applicants representative about it and they were on board and understanding. Also, just so that everyone's aware that this Thursday at 6 p.m., the Zoning Board of Appeals will be opening the public hearing for this project. So if anybody on the Conservation Commission or members of the public are interested in sort of getting a head start on what the proposal is and what the project is, that would be a good place to start to kind of wet your whistle with getting more information and a better understanding of the project. Just out of curiosity, this is, just to confirm, is this on Shootsbury Road right at the bend there? Is that, am I getting this right? Right. So if you're going, let me see, what's the direction north on Northeast Street and then you take a right, like you're going to go, there's like the Flat Hills Road goes to the left, Shootsbury Road goes to the right, you take the Shootsbury Road fork and it's maybe not even a quarter mile up on the right hand side, you'll see a coals tree farm sign and that's, that is the access road entrance for where the where the property frontage is located. I'm familiar with that area. So I still favor a cursory walk around the property. It doesn't take that long to walk 100 acres and I understand that things still need to be flagged or reflagged and I just don't want the thing to come in during the winter and have to walk the site with snow on the ground and not be able to see things. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll, the next time I speak with the applicants representative, which I'm sure will be really soon, I will reiterate that the commission is interested in visiting the site as soon as possible prior to the permit being filed, especially I think, I think it does make sense too before we have leaf off conditions like it would be really useful for the commission to get out there when we still have herbaceous vegetation before it starts frosting. Yeah, and we do have guidelines on solar projects, right? Well, that's another tangential thing. So I don't know, I heard it was a drafty draft. That's the condition of it. Yeah, so Laura, who's not here tonight is our representative to the Solar By-Law subcommittee and I'm not sure how much progress they're making or what the relationship of that will be to this project. Do you know, does anybody know? Well, what I can say is the by-law is not in effect yet. So the by-law would only apply to projects that are submitted after the by-law is accepted and integrated into the town ordinances. So any project that comes in prior to the by-law coming into effect wouldn't be subject to the by-law regulations. However, there are a slurry of state, federal, local requirements that they will have to adhere to. So from my perspective, it's just very important that we make sure they adhere to it, adhere to those regulations and the reason for that is because, you know, any project, we want it to be successful and that's how we make the site successful, make the project successful is doing it right. So Alex? Erin, what do you think the schedule is? Are we talking weeks, months, six months a year before we see something? Um, my understanding is that they are, they're thinking that they're going to be submitting like as soon as possible, but I know that they, after they, the ORAD expired that they were having a consultant go out and verify, check all the flagging and all the boundaries that were previously hung on the site and the areas that were previously flagged on the site, basically checking them, verifying them, seeing if there were any areas of expansion. So I believe that they're already out on site doing that process, so they would need to pick those flags up, preferably by survey, right? Because we're talking a very heavily forested area, which GPS coverage does not really quantify well for accuracy. So preferably by survey, pick those flags up and get them on a plan and then submit it to us. So I don't really have any more information than that, but I know that they're, they are feverishly working to try to get it done because I think that the expiration was a, something that they weren't expecting. Thanks, Erin. I'm just alluding to something Andre said, and because I think nobody was here for that previous ANRAD ORAD, we probably broke records with attendance to these meetings, so I encourage everybody to read up. There is about 80 people in attendance for these ones, so it was, it was quite, there was a lot of interest. Anyway, all right. Well, I think we, unless anyone else has any questions, we can move on to our continuance for 46 bearing. Okay, so if you're here for this, we're moving the public hearing for 46 bearing street notice of intent tonight, 1323 at 730 p.m. And I'm sorry, Bruce, did you have a question? Yes, understanding this. Our next meeting is the 13th, not the sixth. Two weeks from today is September 6th. Yeah, so we don't meet every two weeks. We meet the second and fourth Tuesday of the month. I'm sorry, I, I still haven't grasped that. No, no, that's no worries, no worries. It's, and that's why you get an invite every week because Zoom doesn't get it. It's like, you can either do every two weeks or you can do every week, but you can't do like the first and third or the second and fourth. And so anyways, yeah. You're welcome. Okay, I guess I'm looking for a motion. I move to continue the public hearing for 46 bearing street notice of intent to 913 23 at 730 p.m. I second. You have Alex on the motion, Jason on the second, Andre. Hi, Alex. Hi, Chris. Jason. Hi. And I'm an eye. And let's see, Aaron, just for the record, I won't have access down that day to join the meeting. I'll be absent, probably. Okay. Well, that's really useful to know because we're going to start running into quorum issues with 46 bearing. So I'll make note of that and let the applicant know that's very useful information. Thank you. Yeah. Alex is part of the needed quorum for that one, right? He is. Yeah. Okay. So it will likely be continued again. Heads up. Okay. So before we move on, I'm just going to do the general procedures for fairness to all applicants. Each hearing has 20 dedicated minutes on the agenda. We'll do five minutes for comments from staff, five minutes from the applicant, five minutes from public, and five minutes for conservation commissioners. All plans, revisions are required by Friday prior to the meeting at noon. Did we, we did get that or we got comments? Okay. So for all presenters, please clarify, clearly state your name, the address of the project, who you are representing, as well as if you have preferred pronouns for all members of the public, please clearly state your name, address, and preferred pronouns. Okay. This hearing is open and I saw Kristin and the attendees, if we want to bring her in. Do you want me to bring her in, Michelle, or would you like to? I can try if that's easier. Yeah. I mean, I just have to unshare to do it. All right. Kristin, I am promoting you to panelists. Okay. Can you guys still see my screen or did I lose the chair? I can't see it. And I'm just going to assume that you will walk us through this, because this is several multifaceted discussion. And hopefully everybody got a chance to read Erin's sort of last minute comments to this. Yeah. Erin, do you want to give us the, some background? Hi, Kristin. Absolutely. So, yes, thank you to the applicant for getting us the materials within the timeline. I did take a look through and I'll just do a quick share screen so that I can pull my memo up. And I'm going to try to just sort of roll through it a little bit. I'm not going to read it verbatim. Bigger. There. Thank you. That's better. Okay. I think you did read it last meeting, Erin, in its entirety. Okay. All right. Awesome. So I drafted an original comment memo. And then on Friday, the applicant gave us responses to that memo. And so this is another reason why I've been a little underwater is because I was trying to get my comments to the revisions to the commission today so that we could try to keep this rolling. So relative to, there was what I believe is a historic violation that I discovered on the site looking at aerial imagery for the installation of Olympia Drive, which happened sometime between 1974 and 1981. I did investigate to see if there was a DEP file pulled for the project and based on the file logs, wasn't able to identify that anything was. I did inquire with KP law about it just because of the vintage of the potential violation and sort of like, how do you deal with something like that? And I guess my recommendation to the board based on all things considered is if you do based on your review of the aerial imagery and or we can do further investigation into the matter. But I think that the greatest benefit here would be to install some hydrologic connectivity between the areas that were isolated by the installation of the road. So there used to be what appeared to be a stream system with associated BVW where the road now is. And when that was installed, it seemed to create some isolation of those resources. So some hydrologic connectivity in the form of culverts could sort of reconnect those systems and possibly make some improvements to the resource areas. So something for the commission to consider. I just wanted to clarify my comments relative. This is kind of a, I guess, a complicated discussion for a variety of reasons. So on the site, we have this historic, potential historic violation that I brought up. There was also a previous parking area, which was brought to us in 2020. And that was for the expansion of an existing parking area, which is on the west side of one of the parcels where the current proposal is to do a parking area. And I just wanted to clarify, I don't, you know, that proposal for that initial parking lot, which was on the west side of this location was submitted to us. We were notified of it. And at the time, I was fairly new getting my my feet wet in Amherst, so to speak, with the conservation commission and all of our general existing permits and their conditions. And so when this permit was, was the notification was given to me, I did notify the conservation commission that the project had come through as a, you know, project that UMass wanted to do and that they were proposing it under the bundled notice of intent for their operation and maintenance plan. But that was basically sort of where it stopped was just notifying the commission. There wasn't any sort of approval that I'm aware of to say yes, move forward or not. It was just a notification and we took it as that. There were a number of plan elements in the plan that we were provided. So for example, there was a 30 foot, there was a note on the plan that the the parking lot would be at least 30 feet from the wetlands. There was also some notations about removing a cart road that was within 30 feet of the wetland. And there was also notation about planting six red maple trees that were between four and six feet tall, as well as removal of bituminous roadway that ran through the parking lot. Based on visiting the site during this current review process, my observation is that the existing parking lot is five feet from the BVW and about 25 feet from the vernal pool. Let's see the access road that was within 30 feet, I'm assuming that was never removed by two minutes that was supposed to be removed. It doesn't appear that it was. And there was one tree planted and two shrubs planted, so not the six trees that were included on the original plan. So I'm pointing this out mostly to say that the plan wasn't fully adhered to as it was presented and given to the Conservation Commission. And these are some photos you can see. This is a photo of the parking area. You can see the bituminous road running through here. So it still exists, even though it was on the original plan that was provided to the Commission. These are the plantings. One tree, two shrubs. So to my knowledge, the other five trees weren't planted. Let's see. So the other issue that's sort of a little concerning about this application is, on the original plan that was given to us, there was no information about a vernal pool. From reading everything, what appears happened, there was an original delineation, which was done in 2020, and then an updated delineation, which was done in 2023. And so the vernal pool was actually identified in 2023. And it was apparently not noticed when the delineation was done in 2020. I think I'm a little uneasy with that, partially because if you look at the delineation that was provided to us on the 2020 plan, the dark blue dash line represents BVW. And then if you look, there's this very skinny blue line, which goes around the pool. And so I don't know. I just find it very interesting that that was not disclosed to us or identified. I do know that in 2020 was a historic drought year. 2020 into 2021 was a historic drought year. So it could be that the basin was just dry. But one of my comments was, does SWCA have any photos that were associated with that 2020 delineation? Because that might help the commission to understand why that wasn't included on the plan. Again, I don't want to reiterate this again. It's kind of reiterating the same thing that there were elements of the plan that weren't fully adhered to. And basically the question to the commission is, are you okay with the fact that the items that were on the plan weren't fully completed? And so that's something I think the commission should consider. And whether you're considering it as a condition of this permit or as a separate item, I think is entirely up to you or the applicant. But I think it's something that the commission should kind of keep in their peripheral as we do this review. Relative to stormwater, thank you to the engineer for providing. There was quite a few revisions that were submitted to the application. So I really appreciate that. There was one or two issues that I wanted to point out to the commission. The first is that one of the treatment trains is not achieving the 80% TSS removal requirement. And that's a state requirement. But the other thing I wanted to point out to the conservation commission is, and this is me learning as well is that the town did adopt a stormwater bylaw. I'm not sure exactly when the date of it was that it was adopted, but it was in the last couple years. And it was just recently provided to me. And the town for new developments requires 90% TSS removal, as well as 60% removal of phosphorus as part of as part of any new development in the town of Amherst. Those are federal EPA requirements, and the town adopted those requirements locally. So those are requirements that any applicant who comes before us should be adhering to. And they are requesting a waiver of those requirements. Do I think we should grant a waiver? I think the commission should seriously consider before we do that, because in this case, I think we'd be setting a precedent that we're not adhering to the state federal local standards. And I think that could be potentially troubling in the future with large projects that come before us that could try to utilize that same provision. Most of these comments are pretty, there was a couple things that I didn't get to verify. Just to note, I didn't get hard copies of the revisions. So be helpful for me to get a copy of those at some point. It's not really urgent. But I wasn't able to verify that every single one of these updates have been made to the plans. Some of them I did, but not all of them, because I just do to a lack of time, because I only got these comments Friday afternoon. And this is a general comment as well. One of the reasons why it was stated that they couldn't meet the TSS removal requirement was because they'd have to encroach into the 50 foot no disturb in order to install additional infrastructure associated with the stormwater system. And my comment to that is, why can't the parking lot be slightly reduced to move the stormwater system away from the wetlands so that the additional infrastructure can be installed to achieve that 80 and 90 percent TSS removal requirement? I think there's no reason for us to sort of put in a maximum size parking lot and push all the stormwater into the wetland if we can reduce the footprint of the site a little bit and move the stormwater away from the wetland a little bit. I think it would be a net gain. Okay, so I requested the wetlands delineation in this case. And the reason that I did the GIS data I should say is because the percentage of alteration seemed a little low to me looking at the plans. And so I wanted to basically do a little GIS analysis and see what I could lean from the information that was on the plans. So the applicant provided some and right here their estimation for what the percentage of the parcel alteration was with the proposed project. My numbers were significantly different, quite a bit higher. So there's actually three parcels that are associated with this project. So I did the calculation for each of those three parcels and came out with 32%, 100% and 64% respectively for those the alteration buffer zone alteration on those specific sites. Now part of the reason that our numbers might be different here is because in addition to looking at the GIS data that was provided by the applicant, I also geo-referenced the plan sets that were provided, the old plan set and the new plan set. And one of the things that jumped out at me was the fact that the delineation from 2020 was much larger than the delineation from 2023, which is a little counterintuitive for me because in 2020 we were going through a drought and in 2023 we've had historic rain. And so the configuration of the wetland appears to have changed dramatically and the size of the delineation seems to have changed as well. The previous delineation shows the wetland extending into the parking area and the new delineation shows the wetland kind of circling around the parking lot. And so just for the sake of highlighting this and the wetland boundary is, and I'm not following this exactly, but it's something like this on the old plan is like this is the wet area in here and then this polygon here is the delineation on the new plan. So it's smaller, it's further away, it's kind of configured quite a bit differently. When I ran my calculations I used the more conservative extent of the wetland boundary to run my calculation and so that's probably part of the reason why. The other thing I just wanted to point out was this polygon that's in the middle of Olympia Drive, that's a DEP wetland, a DEP state layer and it's pretty huge inside that area and I could just do a quick, this is the map that I provided to you all and I know that this is really confusing, but this little green piece right here, this little green piece is what was provided as the current delineation. So I don't really think that that little, I don't know if the idea was to just get the outer extent of that wetland boundary so that we could get the cast buffer off of it to determine the 100 foot setback from that wetland, but it seems that the wetland that's in the middle of Olympia Drive is more significant. This is also, I only had the eastern boundary of this wetland so I had to close the polygon, which again there's no work in that location so it's not really applicable here, it was mostly just to get a polygon to do a buffer off of, but I'm happy to explain that map a little further. So I did observe several fac wet species that were outside of the wetland boundary and they're listed in my memo. I also observed evidence of stain leaves and ponding. I included photos for everybody to view and also Bruce and Alex were out on the site so I think that their observations are going to be really important here, but these are some of the areas you can see the sensitive fern, cinnamon fern, and then there were patches of sphagnum moss and I did see some some rush in there as well. So in regards to soils, I'm not going to pretend to be a soil scientist, I can't really go toe to toe with a soil scientist, but what I can say is I did see some indicators that made me question and again I think some of these areas might be marginal but I think it would be important to potentially get a second opinion on them. I do think that it would be valuable for the commission to have a third party look at this site to basically determine whether the extent of the wetland, whether that a third party would agree with the extent of the wetland and I think viewing the GIS and geocoding the plans to see how the plans from 2020 are different from the plans from 2023 really highlighted that for me, but with regard to the timeline I just I laid this out because I wanted to make it clear that staff and the board have really tried to move this project along. We recognize that it was submitted at the end of May, but that the test pit data which is required under the bylaw wasn't submitted with the application, we didn't get the test pit data until early July and then there was an error with the posting in the Daily Hampshire Gazette which the Daily Hampshire Gazette did take responsibility for so we did our best to get this project heard as soon as possible. There were some glitches in that process but that's about all I want to say and I'm sorry for taking more time than I was allocated. Thanks Erin. Okay I know that was quite a bit but Kristen, Floor is yours. Thank you. Yeah I actually haven't had an opportunity to present our original comment letter which we submitted last Friday before Erin presented her response to comments but I did have just a little bit of time to look at your comments and I have responses to those so maybe I can just share my screen and go through our responses. I don't need to go through it line by line because as Erin's already read it kind of twice I can just kind of summarize and then maybe address some of Erin's comments because there were several inconsistencies that I think are really important for the commission to understand so if I can just share my screen. You should be able to now Kristen. And thank you for sharing all that information Erin that was really good background. Just dragging my PDFs over and it's gone to the third screen. Sorry there we go. Oh gosh it went to the third screen again. Sorry sometimes Zoom takes a lot of juice and things run really slow. Come on PDFs. Okay can you all see my screen with the response letters? Yes. Okay I'm going to start with our letter and then just for the record this is the EP file 0890647 and this was dated August 18th and we submitted just before the deadline I think it was 10 minutes before noon so it was Friday morning last week. The first comment which was about the historic wetlands alterations at this time we're requesting that those alleged wetland alterations be considered as a separate project since the parcels aren't part of this NOI application and then just to go back over to flip into Erin's comments and then she had requested that there's some hydrological connectivity. My response to that is at this time again we request the commission consider this NOI separately from the alleged historic wetlands alterations as the project lots associated with this NOI are undeveloped they're forested. But I will share this comment with you Mass and I will leave it up to them. Comment two was about the previous lot 13 expansion on the western side of the wetland. So I'll just actually just skip ahead and go back into Erin's comments. So I actually just talked to Mickey about this the other day because I wasn't really part of that and I can't really speak to what was provided and what wasn't. I don't actually have email records on my outlook. I know the agent should and I know Mickey should but from what Mickey told me he said there were several emails sent to the agent before during and after construction. I will ask you Mass about the plantings. I don't know if they implemented that planting plan and those plantings failed or if they were never implemented again. I just don't know but I do know that at this time you Mass is amenable to increasing a buffer zone enhancement plan and including additional plantings. If that's something that the commission would like to request as part of this NOI application jumping down to comment number three. So this was about the bundled NOI. I don't even think Erin really addressed this in her response. So we didn't provide a comprehensive list of intended projects as part of that 2019 comprehensive NOI. There were a couple of projects they knew were coming down the pike that we included but it wasn't a full list we just didn't know. That NOI basically outlined wetlands from Amherst Spatial Data back when it was publicly available in DEP wetland data and then existing New England Environmental and SWCA wetlands data and any other consultant data that we had access to. We ground truthed it but we didn't flag it so you know we didn't have some of those wetlands at the lot 13 site identified until later in 2020. I don't even think Erin commented on that one. Let's skip down. Can I just ask a question Kristen you're saying that the wetlands weren't delineated in 2020? So they were delineated in 2020 at this site in 2019 as part of the comprehensive NOI every single wetland and stream wasn't necessarily flat. Gotcha. Okay. It was ground truth but for this site it was delineated in I think the end of May in 2020. Okay. Thank you. So I think just addressing your comment that it wasn't this site wasn't identified in the bundled NOI project coming up because they just didn't know. Okay. Comment three. I guess I've got a response to your comments about the vernal pool in 2020. I don't I don't see a vernal pool in the 2020 plan. It looks like it's the northern limit of the BBW that's called out in a blue line and the gray line is the contour elevation. So here's here's your comment letter. Looks like they drew this in and that's blue and then this is a contour elevation and I don't see any text indicating that this is a vernal pool. So I don't know why I would assume that that's a vernal pool. Well I was referring to there's a there's a call out that says 35 foot setback from estimated wetland and you can see that the the line that's pointing to the estimated wetland is is like a light blue line which is different from the the darker blue BVW line which is also labeled and I was curious why was there different why was there a different if this was field delineated why was the whole delineation not just included as one solid BVW line why was there one BVW line and then another estimated wetland line that was drawn in separately. It just it just was curious to me there's a distinction there and it seems to correlate to some degree with where the vernal pool is and it just struck me as odd about the plan. Okay but it's not a vernal pool boundary I mean we we we fully disclose the vernal pool in 2023 and we have nothing to hide I don't think that was an intentional withholding of information. We provided evidence of obligate vernal pool information we delineated the boundary we described it in the NOI text so I just I don't know what this is I can't speak to it but it's all I can tell you is in 2020 when we did the delineation there was no vernal pool evidence documented we did not know about the vernal pool until 2023 as I said in our response letter this is not a mapped area by natural heritage as a potential vernal pool so you know there you know if you had done just on a desktop assessment there would have been no trigger to look at it and there must have just been no evidence in 2020 that indicated as such until 2023 and then as this photo shows down here you know I imagine this is your photo Erin but it could have been any of the photos from the NOI as well it's been a really wet year and there's a very obvious basin. The rest of this wetland doesn't even have surface water not even this year it's a really marginal BBW tailing off to the east but this is you know there is standing water out there this year. I'm sorry Andre did you want to ask some clarifying question? I do specific to the comments that we were just talking about. What's not clear to me right now and would help us figure out what these that line is who created that map that we're looking at right now? I honestly don't know this is not from SWCA so I don't know. All right so let me ask you then let me put it you put it a different way there's a that notation 35 uh foot set back from estimated wetlands who did that do you know? Whoever did the plan and it should be if you know if the agent provided this that should be in the title block. Yeah I mean the the plan was provided to us from Mickey Marcus at SWCA so information in the title block on who prepared it. Well if but yeah I'm kind of trying to figure out two things I mean so the answer one of the answers is the SWCA provided that as evidence or as supporting documentation for for the for your plans right and the next was yeah who who actually wrote that and I mean that would that would give us an answer to the question that we're discussing right now right? It says University of Massachusetts so it looks like it was made by UMass but it doesn't answer the question who did the delineation was at SWCA who did the delineation? We did the delineation yes but we did not do the plan. Okay all right so but um these so what we're looking at right now uh is the historic uh is what was um in 2020 in 2020 right? So who drew that up that's I mean that's the question. Well the question in this comment letter is at what Aaron was suggesting. I'm asking right now it's the question that I'm asking right now who drew that up? It should be on the title block and that should be a that should be in the record of at the conservation commission as well as probably on our server which I can dig into later I can't pull it up with this. Well okay if SWCA submitted it shouldn't SWCA know who drew that? Aaron can you pull that up um the title block it would be there's probably authorship on it maybe while Kristen continues but I maybe we should keep going and then I was just trying to address the vernal pool issue on this which it does not say vernal pool um yeah so it was prepared by by UMass um and I mean I suspect they went out there potentially hung flags and or picked up GPS data and then that was given to UMass who prepared the plan um but it's just odd to me that why wouldn't you just do a full bvw line and call it bvw why distinguish and especially because we have and at that time when that when that project went through we still had a hundred foot no disturb around vernal pools so if we had any inclination that there was a vernal pool or a basin in there it would have you know we would have required that that um parking lot to be smaller anyway I I won't interject any further I thank you yeah just to reiterate we saw no evidence of potential vernal pool activity in 2020 we didn't see any evidence of potential vernal pool activity until 2023 and when we did see that we obviously presented that to the commission as part of the next 2023 um application um so I'm skipping over the stormwater issues because I am not a stormwater engineer and I'm going to leave the remaining comments that you have Erin to Woodard and Curran but I will just say were you pending any further revisions we'd like to hold off on preparing hard copies just to be green but if you do want hard copies I can get them to you tomorrow it's it's just a matter of if there are any revisions that you need to see addressed on the plans um I'd rather hold on actually presenting 24 by 36 inch hard copies but again up to the commission yeah yeah I did I did comment in there that we should we should wait until the decision is rendered with regard to the wetland delineation before we we go there so that's fine okay let's just talk about that some more offline and we'll make sure that you get the hard copies when you want them um so skipping down to the wetland stuff so um Erin requested the GIS data and based on the last hearing I had assumed it was because she wanted to look at the buffer zone impacts um I will say that in her response um well let me actually back up so in our comment letter in our response we estimated 4.27 of the 100 foot buffer was impacted but I confess I wasn't looking at the previous project that was just for this application for this NOI and I don't know how the commission wants to define cumulative impacts um so right here where do I have the bylaw quotations uh the commission may allow the alteration of up to 20 percent of the area within the 50 foot to the 100 foot so this the outer 100 the outer 50 foot I mean um this is a total cumulative allowance so I don't know if you combine new projects with old projects if it's on the same parcel or if you just look at a whole project across a few parcels or if it's parcel by parcel I mean we we can talk about that some more offline but I I had assumed what that meant was this NOI application these three parcels and so that's how these came up when Erin responded in her comment letter um I have to skip down we passed the storm water issues hang on a lot of storm water stuff oh here we go um she has a very inflated number it's a 64.57 percent but um this is based on incorrect mapping and the plan is geo reference basically it's like it's like it's a rectified PDF and correct me if I'm wrong Erin but I think the way I used to do it was you make a PDF semi-transparent and then you kind of glue points onto an aerial photo using something that's stationary like a parcel boundary um and then you kind of superimpose like in this case the old wetlands with the new wetlands and compare for differences um but I don't think those plans were at the same scale because the well in line has not changed and if you look at the old PDF that was submitted in 2020 the well in line goes to about the road where um the eye like around the island and it's the same well in line so I don't I don't know what this is all kind of bananas to me um if I were a conservation commissioner and I am in greenfield and my agent presented these figures and those maps to me I would be so furious with the applicant this wetland needs to get moved over here so see this elbow right here that's right here this this is this doesn't line up correctly um I'm not really sure what happened but they don't match up um so I can actually pull up GIS directly and I did use about 15 points to geo reference this um layer I'm hoping that the geo referenced layer comes in but you know commissioners you can you can see for yourself here this is this is a uh a surveyed plan that I geo referenced onto a GIS uh map okay um you can see I mean if if this is inaccurate then the plan that was submitted to us is inaccurate this lines up with the aerial photo right underneath the the image it lines up with the property boundaries um so let me just zoom in here so you can see this is this is the plan geo referenced right on top of the and I'll pull up air I'll pull up the property boundaries so you can see where the property boundaries fall this arc which is the circle to the road is the only sort of error that I was not able to reconcile but comparing it to the wetland data that was submitted to us is distinctly different so I'm not saying that this couldn't have been a mistake um it could have been a mistake on the original plan that how it was collected or or however um that was done but this is the plan that it lines up almost exactly with the property boundaries and that's how it was represented to us um so you can see the difference for yourself um this isn't this isn't an error I created I don't think we provided due with spatial data from the 2020 delineation so you're going based off of a pdf which are stretching over an aerial photo this was the pdf submitted in 2020 so this right here that looks like the road is actually um the parking lot let me pull over Mike it's this line of trees it's this parking lot over here this is the road that I'm talking about the well and comes to about where that road is if you follow it to the north are you looking at your screen or my screen I'm looking at my screen are you not looking at my yeah no sorry you got to reshare or I I'll come back to it oh I didn't even know I stopped sharing you must have stolen control okay so this is uh ArcGIS online um so the eastern end of the wetland comes to about where the Olympia Drive just if you follow that north there's a little strip of trees between the road and the parking lot and I just pulled up the pdf from the original 2020 this is the parking lot this is that strip of trees and the road is right here this is the end of the wetland the flagging numbers aren't even different this is the new plan uh right here it's it's the same I don't have the parcel lines on this um but it's it's the same line I don't understand the only thing that I can think of is maybe it's at the wrong scale and you're trying to I don't know and I don't want to I don't want to get too in the weeds about it I just wanted to point out that um it's it's it's it that that is not right um the well end is right here and this wetland should be over there and it's too big to be shrunk yeah I mean what happened um so in in the spirit of full disclosure I'm pretty experienced with GIS and my suspicion is that the GIS file that was provided for the current wetland is is has an error of some sort and when I say that I mean the the GIS file that was provided by SWCA for this analysis if there's something wrong I think that that's where the source of it is um I that's very possible it could be in a different projection I yeah that that's the only error that I can come up with I've literally geocoded thousands of PDFs or in this case it's a it's an image file it's the accuracy is not off by by geocoding a a surveyed plan if anything I used parcel data and um stormwater data that's been collected by survey so yeah in the background it's possible I mean I know that sometimes so whatever I don't want to get in the weeds about it but I know sometimes people use state plane feet versus state plane meters maybe it's that that can be 33 feet off um but all I just want the commission to understand is this is not an accurate representation this isn't like the well and didn't change we're not trying to get one over on you and show massively reduced well ends it's further out of the footprint this is this is just an error and we would love to have the opportunity to discuss that with you further because there is absolutely that is this is the wetland and the same presented before is the same wetland line um we can look if you want us to look at the parcels as a whole and the 20 buffer zone outer buffer zone impacts for this development over here in conjunction with this NOI for the development over here just let us know if we're interpreting the bylaw incorrectly and we're happy to address that Chris I see you do you want to jump in I know we have a lot of things to talk about here so I'll obviously you've had your hand up for a while but I do want to give Chris a chance to keep going so go for it I would like the staff and the consultant work this out offline thank you okay Erin did you want to respond for me I was I was just going to say for the record that the analysis I asked for the records that the analysis of impact to the buffer was based on and those were the files that were provided to me so if there is an error with those files then that means that the impact calculations would also have an error in them and so I think there's a need to rectify that to make it right and verify the numbers because based on my check it's significantly higher and also just for the record the impacts are existing alteration on each parcel and typically the way that we break it out is what is the total amount of buffer zone on each parcel what is the total amount of existing alteration on each parcel and what is the proposed alteration on each parcel just to clarify that for Kristen because it doesn't seem entirely clear no it doesn't and is that by part so this project includes three parcels so is that yours we talked about this in the field so that's for each parcel is what you're saying not for a project right because you said you were going to look into that okay not project yeah and I would also just to go back to you I don't think there was an error in the spatial geodatabase I think the error may have been the projections were different between your analysis and what we provided so if you have a base map that's in like state plane feet and we gave you state plane meters or vice versa that would create an error but I don't I don't think that the the calculations that we gave you are incorrect we ran them three or four times I think that it's just there's something going on here something is skewed and basing this well in line off of a pdf is just not an accurate representation if we have old spatial data we'll get old spatial data but rectifying a pdf it's stretching it out and sticking it down I just that's this line I'd rather yeah I'm gonna agree with Bruce that I think that there's a lot of big standing questions and you know I do realize Erin has an advanced degree in GIS science so I it would be valuable that to answer those questions offline because we can do it here but maybe we can move on to the next so the the next question was about comment three so there were significant obligate wetland species outside the flagged wetland and we stated that there are no obligate wetland species outside the wetland there's a lot of glossy buckthorn shrubs and sensitive ferns throughout the site which is pretty typical for Amherst these are fact in fact wet and as listed in the US Army Corps delineation fact wet species can occur in uplands 33 of the time whereas an obligate plant can occur in a wetland I mean an upland 1% of the time and then Erin responded to that that she observed a stem of soft brush on the second day of this on our second site walk but the remaining species were fact in fact wet located throughout the buffer zone and again as we stated on our response letter I'll just reiterate the presence of hydrophytic vegetation alone does not qualify an area to be jurisdictional wetland under the Wellans Protection Act or the bylaw we need to have hydrology including hydric soils and I went back and took three additional plots in that area these are the three plots this is the soil pile right here this dark shading area is the north facing side of that soil plot because there's a carve out in that soil this is the property line right down here so this is slightly like on the nearer or edge of the property line took three soil plots there I submitted those data in with our response there's no hydric soil there is a stem of junk as a fuses and there's also other fact in fact what species there but there's no hydric soil we just don't have the data to prove that it's jurisdictional wetland again vernal pool it don't think anyone is denying that's a vernal pool this photo again in our response this was taken during a rain a pouring rain visit you can see the wetland I mean the the water on the vegetation it was just a really wet day and it's 2023 summer it seems to rain every single day um so this is the pocket that's been that was really called out to us in the field it's about three meters by four meters it's typical of a tree tip up it's really small it doesn't connect to any other wetland this is hastened in front right here which is an upland plant this is buckthorn which is a non-native fact plant and it's growing throughout the entire site right here in the center is where in the deepest part of this pit is where I took a soil sample and I think that was plot two and you know you can look in the response but it's a bright chroma so there are dark soils at the surface but then below that it's bright chroma it doesn't meet any of the hydric soil qualifiers it does look really suspicious I can't deny it but I did three plots one here one about 15 feet kind of behind me where I'm standing here and one where Erin saw the um the single stem of the junk is a few says and I in all three cases got non-hydric soils um skipping ahead this is kind of that tail area this is where plot one was taken kind of like right again this is that fence this is the property line right in the lowest spot I could find this is us in the field looking at soils where we did not see any hydric soils um this is the junk is a few says there are a number of other non-wetland plants in this photo and a number of fact plants in this photo so there's there's the junkus the single stem but then there's also pearly dock and nightshade and jewelweed and it's poison ivy and it's just this mix of like really weird vegetation and this is right at the toe of that soil pile this is the soil pile toe right there I think it's just an area of poor drainage it doesn't connect to any I poked holes all the way between this spot and the wetland to the west and did not find any evidence of hydric soils just again there there are no hydric soil qualifiers that we observed we went through multiple soil poles with the agent and the commission in the field and didn't see any evidence of hydric soils um we have five data plots so far submitted for this project including three for our response letter and two with the NOI um this is just again to reiterate this is for a buffer zone only project it's less than one acre gravel parking lot um we just hope the commission will consider our responses to these comments and we consider a request for a third party review which would just delay this project another month at least at the applicant's expense after several months of delays and I feel like these questions have been adequately adequately addressed I can't speak to the stormwater issues or some of the historic issues completely but we are happy to look into that and I can just tell you that university is more than willing to consider a buffer zone planting plan if the commission wants to see some additional shrubs and um saplings planted in the buffer zone on the western side I know they would be amenable to that they really just want to move this through at this point um that's all I've got if anybody has any questions so I'm happy to answer anything or pull up any other information I know this was a lot I just I wanted to get a chance to present something because I haven't had a chance to present yet okay um commissioners we're gonna get questions and comments um keeping in mind that there are several issues to address here so maybe we'll start with clarifying comments and then work through the components of this so go ahead Bruce I want to ask Jason his opinion about how to address stormwater issues that we're not discussing this meeting what's the mechanism for doing that I do know that we were planning on submitting a written response again by Friday noon which is your policy um yeah I would like to first see a written the response um I would yeah I would prefer to see a response first before answering that fair enough okay Andre uh public comment any public yeah sorry thanks vice um yeah public comment is any please raise your hand if you have any questions I'll keep an eye on it I see none thus far so um Alex I see your hand up thanks I did I thought we were still having commissioner comments I think we I skipped the public comment I was supposed to go there first oh I can wait if you want we don't have any so please continue okay thank you um I appreciate uh all the work that Christine has done and Aaron has done and um I support Bruce when he said if you would get together and try and figure out what the what caused the differences it may be something technical but we've heard enough and um time for you folks to get together and figure it out um I'll say that Christine submitted her comments timely on Friday I just got it this afternoon it's a long letter with lots of responses in it um I frankly I whizzed through uh Aaron's comments I didn't have time to sit down and read the whole thing and I would appreciate time to consider uh the whole letter I would also like to um address the the cumulative impacts and what happened in the previous project uh as part of considering law 13 and um not not handle it separately um we've got a project in front of us there was uh previous problems or issues and I think they should all be um taken into consideration as we go forward rather than separately thanks Alex Andre uh my first um comment or question would uh would be you know I know that uh Kristen um you you have requested that we and this goes right along uh with what Alex was saying um you've uh requested that we consider it separately I haven't really heard a reason for and a reason against um considering these two uh these two projects separately that's my first question oh I would just really quickly I was talking about the alleged wetlands alterations um because the the wetlands alterations I think were I haven't dug into it but according to the the initial letter from the agent we're associated with the development of Olympia Drive which cut off the hydrology between the wetland and the island on Olympia Drive and any wetlands to the north um but the last part of this NOI are undeveloped so I don't I I would like to see that um pursued separately I don't think I meant the eastern side the other part of law 13 um to be considered separately was I clarify Andre um it it does it does so fine uh lastly but more than any it's not not really a question but more of a comment is you know um and it and it came up when uh when I was reading through the uh the runoff uh issues is it just seems like um and some of the comments uh but that Kristen was making it just seems like um you kind of started out with or UMass started out with a request or a proposal for a certain size parking lot and you're trying to fit that within wherever you can fit it and including um protected resource uh or buffer zones and it seems to me like it would make a lot more sense to take the buffer zones and so on the protected areas and use that to start your plan from a start to start your plan for the uh parking lot from there um because now we're you know we're running into uh requests to make exemptions uh exceptions and so on and uh it's seems more like we're in the way of the parking lot rather than the parking lot is taking up um is making is taking up uh space that it shouldn't according to the uh the laws so comment well I can address that as well thank you Andre so I think um we have we have done exactly more than anything it was a comment it wasn't really a question um well just to address it that that was exactly what UMass did um the delineation did dictate where the parking lot would go it was specifically designed to be outside of the 50 foot buffer zone which is under the bylaw regulations should be for new parking lots and it should be 100 feet outside the vernal pool buffer zone so it's not in any resource areas right now um when we did the um geotextile or not sorry geotextile the geoborings they found that they needed to change the storm water design but instead of pushing into the buffers only they pushed into the parking lot shrinking the parking lot and I believe UMass wants that parking lot there because it's on a bus route and because there are a lot of student housing right there or apartment housings or something some kind of housings right there so I mean from from what I understand that's exactly what they did okay thanks chrisen jason yeah I'm maybe because I'm new but I am a little bit confused as to where specifically this project is taking place I see that we have a UMass lot 13 revised plan dated 77 2023 and the previous plan that we were looking at with the whole discussion about GIS and where these wetlands are is on a plan that is titled UMass Amherst UMA lot 28 improvements I think that might have been a typo because it should be lot 13 yeah there's other typos as well there's an incorrect road name down here um on the but 28 is part of the larger 13 and that's like the eastern portion of 13 is that right oh no so where where is Dionysus Drive Dionysus Drive is an is a typographical error and I'm so glad you brought that up because I was going to bring it up too um and and again this could come back to the errors that I'm fine you know that we're supposedly identifying with regards the wetland impacts but the this is Dionysus Drive labeled on this plan um so it's kind of questionable anyway but this is this is where the proposed parking lot is Jason over here on this on the you said we've got this plan titled currently titled lot 28 that shows this loop road over there to the left in your in your on your screen right now that kind of loop road there we have delineations in that area I don't see any delineations in the eastern was it the eastern the eastern portion of those delineations seem to stop roughly uh I'll say where the detention basin uh retention basin two is like there's no delineations east of or let me pull up specifically what this is called bio retention pond one there's I haven't seen anything that shows any delineations to the east of of that area where the bar that area had there are no wetlands over there we investigated all of that and there are no wetlands we walked it with the commission and the agent as well that's all upland it's an eastern white pine dominated forest but but to your point Jason uh the the area that that um I was sort of raising issue about the area with the water stain leaves in the area where I saw the rush and the sphagnum and and stuff is is on the sort of the north side I would say of the site which is where um Kristen took the additional soil samples but I wondered because um I know Bruce and and Alex when we were out on the site we identified another issue which is you know this wetland extends on to the parcel to the north and so it it kind of begs the question well is there anything else to the north beyond where we investigated um sounds like SWC investigated that but um we didn't investigate that area to the north or but Kristen went through some pains to say that the wetland hasn't changed and that in one of these exhibits it's being shown in a different place and the place I believe Kristen where you said it was that the elbow of that wetland is off you know is east of of the drive uh this this it goes in front of this fancy building Olympia Palace that drive that goes there you said that that the elbow of that is east of that I don't know can you guys see my screen I I tried to share but I'm not sure if I'm authorized yes yes okay I'm trying to scroll up to that figure and then I'll show you my ArcGIS online figure um oh shoot I don't know where is it is it just down so many stormwater questions grab I tried to be fast and I just made it slower um hang on I don't want to let your question get stale on our minds is that figure it must be below stormwater oh yeah here we go okay yeah so this yeah so this is that elbow and it kind of matches up with this chunk right here and you know the road you know Olympia Drive is there those are those trees and that's the parking lot and it's like right here and this is the eastern end of that wetland it's still the eastern end of that wetland if this was pushed over that would be how the wetland looks but it doesn't match with the parcel layout the parcel layout is correct I think this PDF is just too zoomed out um which is why it's not kind of fitting I don't I don't know why I honestly don't know why I really don't I don't I don't even want to guess but but let me just show you this hold on hold on hold on prison you're saying can you go back to that image please sure you're saying that the eastern part of that wetland if you take this building is reference right this very very obvious building yeah Olympia Place where is the eastern portion of that wetland right here right here right there so it's almost due north of that building so again here's that PDF that was used to georectify I mean it's not showing over here and neither are the parcel lines but you can see those trees and those trees are right here so the road must be right over here and you're saying then that the eastern portion of the wetland is due north of this Olympia Place building which means right here that wetland is in uh from what I'm seeing it's that wetland is in a portion of where you're trying to put the parking no the parking lot's over here so I'm I'm a little concerned that there's one a number of typographical errors on these plans there's a lot missing on the plans there seems to be a big discrepancy in where the actual wetlands are even in the the the information that we have doesn't seem to be accurate you're saying that the the wetlands here are due north of this Olympia Place building roughly right yes and that we're putting a a parking lot right here east of that right north of this building right here I don't see a set of plans that has sufficient information for anybody to make a decision on where the impact is where the wetlands are where even where the construction is I don't believe I've even seen a set of plans that has your daylight line on it um I'll let Aaron share that with you but I will just say that this PDF in the background is the older plans so that is from 2020 and it's geo referenced onto the aerial photograph okay whose responsibility is it to put the new plans on and geo reference that was Aaron's exercise so we had we did not pull we did not do this um sorry I don't know why this pops up we did not do this figure this is an Aaron's response letter um but I can pull up the plans if you want to see and we can talk about that but I know that they were submitted and they are evaded um I want to say August 9th um it's going to be slow to pull up because PDFs are slow um for some reason lately Alex do you have a quick one while we're waiting for the PDF yeah just for clarification um during the first site visit on both site visits we spent a lot of time west of the parking lot we often walked into the woods going towards the vernal pool and then walked east and both times we ran out of time and didn't actually cover the entire parking lot proposed for example we didn't make it to where the storm water control system was going to be located and that's because we had an hour for the site visit and we used it up without getting to the parking lot the first time we were out there the parking lot wasn't staked and um so we went back a second time so Bruce and I never really got to the parking lot we got to this this elbow but we didn't get to the eastern part I just wanted to clarify that I think Bruce um oh sorry I think that um when we were out here in the field there was an it there was an area of bare ground it was like right around here where they had done a soil test pit do you remember that because that was right here and then there was another one over here in the northwestern corner and then when we walked we walked out right here so we we did kind of walk this area but it's not just not very descript and then those that little pocket at the base of the soil pile this must be the soil pile you can see on the topo it must be like right here and then that one rush that Erin documented was like right here with some jewelweed right at the toe and the three plots that we did were like right along here we're then 15 feet of each other three right all along here right so we never we never made it to the eastern part of the parking lot we got like halfway through the parking lot I don't know how much of the parking lot we covered it I don't want to belabor the point but we didn't get we didn't cover the site I don't I just don't even know what difference it makes except we spent all our time um west of most of the parking lot right Erin I see your hand up I kind of want to let Kristen address Jason's finish finish this thought unless you want to okay sure so I just wanted to see Jason if you have seen this plan set and then also there was a revised response to comments that would have incurred in the project engineer submitted last Friday but this was the plan set dated august 9th um so there are some stormwater issues that haven't been addressed on this plan set that have been addressed on the ones dated I think last Friday um but have you had a chance to review these is this clarify anything I know it's not the same as you know what we were discussing in our comment letter um which is back here but that's because this is sort of like the pdf from 2020 kind of semi-transparent with an ortho photo over it and then the new wetlands overlaid this is like a little bit of an amalgam of different data so this is this is the plan yeah so um what I what I believe that I'm looking at is the same this same set of plans I see a date may 2023 down here above the revisions in the in the block there so I think I'm looking at the same set of plans that you have pulled up here okay so I don't see one where the parcels are where the parcel lines there's there's again numerous type of graphical errors you have your limit of work coming right up to uh this this dotted this dash line right the 50 foot yeah I don't see where your daylight line is you're gonna grade right up to that line they're going to grade right the work is going to be great right up to that line yes um but again it doesn't show where the parcel lines are um so I'm I'm not confident that where this is and where you're saying that that wetland is I think I I'm not confident that this is accurately represented with the 100 foot buffer where the wetland is you know you have a 100 foot vernal pool buffer on page uh on sheet C200 I'm trying to wrap my head around this and what you think is inaccurate I mean it was all surveyed I don't understand what you what you mean is inaccurate I I think that Erin did the best she could with what was available but I think the commissioners are I'm hearing that we need to see multiple pieces of information on one map zoomed out with the buffers the parcels the plans that um maybe something like Erin did before we can start even talking about the delineation there's a lot of just locational questions I mean am I hearing that commissioners that we need some spatial data with multiple pieces of information that's being discussed somewhat like Erin put together but maybe coordinate that with Kristen so we can have a view and better understand what we're looking at yeah I think it's it's uh totally confusing yes and you know for the more to that point I would advocate for having a third party review of the wetlands I would second that okay um I in an effort to just keep you know on track with our meeting here um I there are things that uh we're gonna need before we can move forward obviously like the mapping and some discussion of some coordination about what's going on with the historic and current delineations um but there are several other items um in this permit that we haven't even talked about so just in an effort to keep this project moving for SWCA maybe we can really touch on them and we can discuss what we'd like to see so for instance just consider the historical violation whether or not we want to I'm sorry Erin I forgot to the historical violation maybe consider if how if you want to consider this for this permit this is a rolled up operations and management plan but um there's the second one which is the previous alterations to the other section of lot 13 um and so the outstanding I don't know if they're conditions but the bitimidus driveway the cart lane and the planting so Kristen's talked a lot about additional plantings we haven't talked about removing that driveway or the cart lane um there's this whole stormwater issue and the waiver of it that they requested and some outstanding questions to that uh right and then there's the wetlands delineation so I think I'm hearing um there's some I mean we we need some map better maps to understand the wetlands delineation but does anyone want to comment on the stormwater component or considering the previous alterations on the western lot 13 it rolled in with this conditions okay Erin do you want to jump in yeah um could I just make a couple recommendations because I think we could be here till midnight talking about this and I really want to just sort of hone in so first would be take a poll of who wants a third party review on the wetlands that's number one number two take a poll on who's willing to consider a waiver for the stormwater number three take a poll on who wants the previous compliance issues with the westerly parking lot rolled into this no i number four take a poll who wants the previous violation issues rolled into this no i and take a poll on those things so we can see where everyone stands because we could go in circles talking about this all night and I think Kristen needs some clear guidance and I need some clear guidance obviously there's some error issues that we can talk about offline but I don't think we need to to go there just yet great idea Andre you want to comment before we do that yeah along the same lines um there's there's a bunch of different things going on here and and I think to take it all and now to diverge a bit I think to take it all on in one bite is is a little much and it's confusing so I my you know what I what I think we you know I think we it would be good for us to consider to consider the the prior violations or the other issues separately because this already has but I just want to before uh you know I do want to hear what you know how can we address for example these historic violations and have that uh have these the the um by two minutes uh deposits taken out and have the uh you know how can we address that um in parallel if we decide to take them separately can I just make a recommendation here and again commissioners may disagree on this and I do think we should take a poll on all those items but my recommendation as staff would be that we handle the violation the historic violations separately but that the issues relative to the parcel specific to this application that we deal with as part of this application so the historic compliance issue with the construction of the westerly parking lot that we roll that into this application so that it's clear to UMass what the marching orders are and then that we tell UMass that in the course of this review process that we discovered this historic violation and tell them what we would like for them to do now I don't know if you folks read the recommendation from KP law that was in the folder but I think that there is something to you know we're not we don't we're not asking them to restore and pull out all of Olympia Lane right Olympia Drive but I think that this project in some sense is a a catalyst for looking at this and also correcting a historic wrong that was done which was basically filling in a huge wetland system and cutting off the hydrologic connection between the whole system and that it needs to be resolved and this plan does provide some leverage to the commission to require that those issues get corrected and so I don't think we should lose sight of that okay so your recommendations we handle the historic violations differently but in consideration with these current permits before us but separately so do I have that right Erin yeah maybe maybe in tandem but not as part of this public hearing okay does anyone object to that idea or want to comment on it Alex I find it confusing yeah it's confusing it's an OMP which means all these things are related but separate so but it also means that we can consider them all on the same permit with conditions I find it confusing and we do have leverage right now because we got parking lot 13 in front of us I would like to consider the historic violations and see if we can't rectify them it does talk in our regs about when we talk about the hundred foot buffer it says that the applicant should show us that it won't affect the values of wetlands and the state has affected the values of the wetlands and the state should follow its own rules the university is part of the state and it should follow the state's rules so I think now is the time to take care of tidy this whole thing up as a package and so I I'm a little leery of separating out the issues I think we have I think UMass should be motivated to try and take care of this whole thing and if we divide it up they will lose motivation um anyone else want to respond to that okay um okay so I assume Alex then you also consider the other lot 13 sort of outstanding conditions in the same respect yeah okay anyone else okay um maybe we can start with those two um show of hands who would like to consider the historic violations and lot 13 violations from the western side as part of this project current project yeah okay um andre do you want do you have a more specific way to put it or are you you just want to keep them both separate no I was uh I would separate the historic one and keep in lot 13 so I couldn't really respond yeah okay yes to that uh last question all right so noted um all right waiver of storm water requirements is anyone in favor of that okay well not yet the question Jason was saying that he wanted more information right we haven't had an opportunity to provide any written responses yet I I had some callouts on Erin's comments that she provided me an hour before the meeting but we actually haven't had a chance to respond to any of these comments yet so Woodard and Kern I'm sure has some responses I just okay so that's pending more information um and I guess third party review I feel like we still need some more information for that one too as I even feel strongly enough to raise a hand or object I mean I've heard already that several people are in favor of that so maybe that's a heads up yeah I mean I think it would be also good to find out what the results of a meeting between Kristen and Erin yeah okay so I'm hearing that we need some maps some clarification about historic and current delineations and some responses on storm water and then I think we have a sense of where people are on considering the historic and the previous lot 13 alterations in with this permit does that give Kristen does that give you enough to I don't know move forward for our next meeting or Erin do you have any suggestions for how to be more pointed or efficient with this well the only suggestion or thought I have is that if the commission is going to consider a third party review I think we should do it soon like today or I mean obviously if you want to wait and try to work out what the issue was and and see and do it the next meeting but all we're doing is kicking the can down the road if there's anybody who questions the wetland delineation and the boundary based on the information presented I think we should do a third party review vote tonight and the reason for that is because it takes time to get a quote for a third party review it takes time to set up a contract for a third party review it it could take a month just to get it set up and so if we kick this two weeks or you know until September September 13th that's three weeks out then by the time we get there if the commission changes their mind that's another eight weeks away before we get the peer reviewer on the ground so I think that it's important for the commission to consider do you think the delineation is accurate based on the information presented and if you don't or if you have questions I think having a third party reviewer could give us a lot of clarity to answer a lot of the outstanding questions that we've talked about tonight and and just to reiterate the wetland boundary has not changed from 2020 there are no hydroxyls observed outside the wetland boundary as confirmed by the agent and two of the commissioners I think some of the mapping presented in the response letter is confusing and misleading okay thanks Aaron thanks Kristen Alex yeah we have talked about the third party but you didn't ask for a poll okay I'll take Andre's question then I'll pull yeah well my question is to Kristen as a response to what Aaron just proposed is us essentially taking the taking this poll and requiring a third party review Kristen what about you Kristen would you be let's suppose that we waited until until we got some further clarifications from you and Aaron and that would be two and a half more like three what is it three weeks from now or so two two weeks yeah and it's three weeks from now and then add to that the time that Aaron was saying would you rather we take this poll now or would you rather we wait until then I would rather the commissioners I'll have an opportunity to really dig into our comment response letter and wait because I feel that we've addressed all of the comments thoroughly and I feel like a third party review third party reviews are for large complicated notices of intent this is a buffer zone only one acre project it's at the applicant's expense I feel like that's so unfair I just you know I'd let and Aaron even said that she thinks that her original suspicions about the wetland line being inaccurate we're based on that GIS which okay no more an hour so then so then supposing that we then wait these three weeks and we dig into it and then we decide that we want a third party review I know that you were you know that in your letter you quoted the 310 cmr whatever it was 310 cmr 5.5 or 10.5 whatever the timing of it you're concerned about the timing so we're just adding three more weeks to it and that's okay with you honestly I would rather have the applicant not have to pay for another consultant to go and do the same exact information that they've already paid us to do okay so um it sounds like you're willing to wait for the commissioners to look at some more clarification with mapping and and provide a position in three weeks yes yes okay I'll herd okay um all right and I mean in that case I guess we're waiting for updated maps with more clarifications about the historic and the current so Aaron and Kristin will work that off outline and the stormwater information and as noted the the topographical errors and the type I'm sorry the typographical errors and the parcel data should be included on the on the plan sets because I don't rely on GIS that's handed to me from someone else I check it and I'm verifying it by geocoding the plan georeferencing the plan and digitizing it myself and so if the parcel boundaries are missing or they're inaccurate it's it it you know it doesn't help to so it'd be it'd be useful if that was added to the plans I agree yep absolutely was it on our figures um you know it should have been but no yeah all right Alex we still haven't taken a poll well I think Kristin asked if we I would like to you want to do it anyway okay I want to I would like to do it anyway but I would like to propose because of the time it takes that if the majority of the commissioners present favor a third party review that Aaron start those wheels from running turning with the option to cancel um if things come back and people are somehow satisfied with the wetlands and lineations the errors are explained and so on and commissioners change their mind that they don't think then I Aaron I I don't know how far down that road we can go and be fair to if all you're doing is soliciting a third party we could pull that back a couple of weeks out rather than waiting a couple of weeks if we get the balls rolling now there's a chance that we'll get out there before frost and we'll have plants and so on so forth rather than having somebody out there in late fall so I would favor taking a poll with some sort of an option to pull pull it back if commissioners are convinced in a couple weeks out after Aaron after Kristin comes back comes back with a different information and she and Aaron have worked out where these errors go from okay not knowing what the result of this poll be does that make sense to you Aaron and Kristin no it doesn't okay Kristin seems very much opposed the idea just close the loop so I don't know what we're doing okay Aaron did you have any comments on that I don't know how the time no but I I do agree that it's it's useful for me to know sort of the sway of the commission because I can seek out a quote and get you know get the ball rolling and if the commission changes that's mine then we don't have to enter into a contract but at least the pieces are in place to move forward more quickly once we reach the September 13th meeting so so based on what we know now we would be taking this poll yes okay okay commissioners polling hands up would you request a third party of you based on the information we have now and all the data that is known right now okay there you have it Kristin so yeah contingent on um specifically new spatial data in in in close now that we've taken the poll in closing I would hope that we pull it back that everything gets resolved okay all right well there you have it do we have enough information to continue this meeting so that Kristin can and Aaron you guys can talk offline and we can reconvene on September 6th yes September 13th 13th okay well we look forward to the stormwater information as soon as possible I guess and updated mats and with that I think I'm looking for a motion to continue and I've got a 735 open on September 13th for continuation okay so looking for 735 on 913 looking for a motion to continue the UMass lot 13 project for SWCA representing UMass to 735 and September 13th so move second Alex with the first Andre with the second sorry Bruce Andre with the second yep okay Alex hi Jason hi Andre hi Bruce hi and I'm an I okay well thank you Kristin for hashing that out with us yeah have a good night guys you too and fine thank you Kristin okay that's a complicated one um I guess we'll stay stay tuned for some more information um yeah I don't know I think trying to organize how we deal with the bits and pieces of this is going to be important for the next conversation so we can think about that yeah and as we sort of move into we're going to have a lot of big complicated projects that are on the horizon like dozens of big complicated projects on the horizon those polls come in extremely handy and there there is no harm or shame or it's okay to just jump into it and say what do people think and it can sometimes make things move a lot faster so thanks Aaron good tool okay um I okay first um I don't know how we do it but I think we need to collectively be really mindful of not allowing the conversations to get so deep into the technical disagreements but we are a policy-making commission uh I just worry that that we're being asked to to take to kind of wrap our heads in a meeting like this around really complicated stuff and I I can't do it so I'm asking us to be careful to not let us get into these spirals that take a lot of time yeah and um just to that you know like my original comments were were submitted to the applicant and they weren't able to turn around comments in time for the last meeting so when they submitted comments for Friday I wanted to make a concerted effort to turn around comments uh in time for this meeting because of especially the assertion that I had made some sort of error that slowed them down um so I just whenever that happens whenever there's some technical issue that or if you haven't had a chance to read my comments you need more time you should always feel 100 percent comfortable to say I have not received reviewed these comments and we need time to do that um I did upload Kristen's comments on Friday last Friday and the revisions last Friday um if anybody's unable to access those in the OneDrive please let me know um but they they should all be in there and then as well as their their responses my comments of course were only sent out this afternoon and that's because I was rushing to get them done in three days but but yeah your point is well taken Bruce and you should always ask for more time if you need it so the the things that are uploaded on Friday and June are not all in my experience so far four meetings are never complete compared with the packet that then is sent later so I how do we yeah so that's a good point Bruce um so yeah when I upload the information it's whatever is available at the time at noon by Friday at noon um there are there is information that like my review for example always comes in late because I'm always doing my review right before the meeting um to to try to get you guys as much information as possible to be informed and the reason I do that is because you know I spoke with Michelle earlier today she reviewed the responses and said oh well there's really nothing going on here this isn't really it seems like everything was addressed and this is all set to go if I hadn't have responded I feel like commissioners could have been at the point where they were ready to approve this and so I wanted to be able to provide information to make it clear there are still questions um but maybe what I could do within each folder is have a an updates folder so that if things come in after Friday like between Friday and Wednesday you guys have a place to look where you can pinpoint the documents that were uploaded after Friday afternoon um that way you can kind of like zoom in on the things that are updates from um when the original packet was sent out if that's helpful I think that's a good idea especially when there's lots of files but if you're going to have to make it a completely duplicate file structure just for updates I'm wary that that's going to be time consuming the way that I deal with it is I just check in on Monday Tuesday and see next the date next the folder if anything's been added and I just kind of know at this point that Aaron successfully adds files to those um find where I need to remember yes I could read it on Saturday but I better look at it again yeah morning because there are Wednesday afternoon there could be more yeah and I don't know Aaron how easy it is for you just to alert us to updates and then we can go sort of find them by date ourselves like I don't want to make more work for you but we could maybe figure out how to do this if just checking on our own isn't working out yeah if there's something like so for example if it's just a a PowerPoint update that's relatively minor stuff I usually just roll that into the PowerPoint update that I send out but if there are substantial issues I do try to send those in a separate email like I did today in this case it was with the with the PowerPoint but in other times other times I've sent it just as a separate email so I'll I'll try to do that if it's something substantial yeah so just yeah you know that that email that your PowerPoint went out around three o'clock I'm somewhere around there yeah I already had commitments in the afternoon so I did take the time to as you know because I called you Aaron to look through your response to lot 13 I called you with some questions but it made me late for a commitment right well so and so this is time-consuming Bruce keeping up with this stuff and understanding it I think are personally I think we are more than a policy body and we have to be able to rely on Aaron to do the the staff work but we also have an obligation to understand what she puts out to us okay thank you and we are Amherst is very lucky to have Aaron I'm sure the headhunter's out there knock on her door every once in a while and we are blessed that they haven't snatched her up yeah and Bruce we don't normally get into GIS analysis details I think that was sort of an exceptional atypical conversation there with so so that's not going to hopefully come up again but I do see it does come up it does okay well yeah periodically it does Bruce's yeah consideration is taken and I do see three members of the public so if you have any remaining questions please just raise your hand give it a couple seconds I'm not seeing any so unless anyone has anything I'm looking for a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn Andre the first Alex with the second Andre hi Alex hi Bruce Jason hi and I'm an I okay thanks guys that was our that was our first long one with some new commissioners thanks everyone okay good night yeah we're going we're going good night