 Here we go. Okay. I'm Judy Strayer and as Chair of the local Historic District Commission, I'm calling this meeting to order at 3.06 p.m. on Tuesday, August 9th, 2022. Meetings being recorded and minutes are being taken. We'll take roll call now, Bruce Coldham. Yes, I'm here along with my grandchildren. I'm Peggy Schwartz, Greta Wilcox. Here, President. And I'm Judy Strayer and I'm here as well. Car in winter is absent. So in accordance with the provision of Mass General Law Chapter 40c and Section 3.49 local historic districts of the Amherst General By-law, this public hearing has been duly advertised and noticed thereof has been posted and mailed to the party's interest. Based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law General Law Chapter 30a, subsection 20, signed Thursday, March 12th, 2020. This hearing and meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. So we have one applicant, Mr. Sutter. Great. So, yeah, we're just reviewing a, it's a new fire egress at 36 Triangle Street. And Mr. Sutter is here as the applicant. And I'm going to ask him to unmute if possible. Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, wow, that's some glare. Change that somehow. It's usually just the glare off my forehead. Yeah, we're proposing to really just reconstruct an existing two sets of stairs and two landings that are on the house currently. They just don't meet current professional building standard. They're too narrow. The landings are a little small. And the client would like to reconstruct what's there just in a more structurally sound and, as I said, current scale, we'll say. Great. I can bring up pictures of the existing here. As you can see, it's just here's kind of like the top section from the, I guess this goes from the third floor down to the second floor. And there's a landing here, which is really the roof of the porch as well. It is. Yeah. And then here's kind of the full flight of stairs. So what we're proposing is increasing from two stair stringers to three stair stringers, as is currently the professional standard for constructing stairs like that, and increasing the landing size at the bottom. But I want to say it's roughly 16 inches in each direction just to afford the similarly, the code approved amount of space for a landing. Mostly they just wanted to clean them up and update them. Replace the railings. We're going to get rid of the black cheap railings and put in wood current standard railings. I guess that's most of what I've got. What questions would you guys have for me? And I can show the, you also shared with us the PDF of the proposed perspective. Instruction drawing. Can you, I don't know the term stringers. Can you just explain? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wish I had a cursor too. Yeah. They're evident in the stand and now you can see them. So the kind of sawtooth things on the stairs. Yeah. Right. Yep. That thing. So you'll notice the current arrangement only has two of them. That makes for less stable and strong stairs. You won't see two stringer stairs built really anywhere nowadays. It's just insufficient. Similarly, the footings, for instance, the concrete footings are really small. They'd never meet current standard for load. In fact, now they have to be, you can see, if you scroll down a little farther for everyone, we've got them with the, they have flared bases now to carry loads. There's a whole bunch of stuff that just was not built originally to what is current code. And while they are using it as a single family, they'd like to retain the stairs. And I generally, I agree with people, you know, when they don't want to remove a fire regress, you know, that's usually most people agree with fire safety being a priority. I think noting, noticing here, I'm looking at the drawings are also are insufficient railings. We're putting a railing on each side of both stairs. And I'll say too, just for a little historical information, it's a, it's an old house, 1903. I didn't see anything about, you know, the fire regress when that was built or what role that played. It seemed like a more modern fire safety. It is. At some point there was an addition put on the rear of the house that includes a new larger open floor plan kitchen and master bath. It would be the garage. If one could scan left one can't in that image, it's right the left. Yeah. I think this was all part of a similar renting an attic room, doing some sort of arrangement in I'm going to say probably the 80s judging by the construction of the stairs in an era when there was less stringent scrutiny of the construction. And that was the year of Chet Penzer as the building inspector and he was one of the most pedantic officials, I think that ever existed. Oh, certainly. But debt codes were much more in fact until really only last probably five or six years have codes for decks and landings and things like that exterior like that on residential locations really gained any flesh, which is one of the reasons why you can see people's decks and landings are all over the place, you know. But anyway, I digress. Chris. Couple of questions. The wood railings hand rails and balustrade on both sides or hand railing on one side of balustrade on the outside. Is that the intention? Yes. Yes. Hand rail against the wall, balustrade on the exterior side. And do we understand that these would be painted as opposed to being pressurized and left? Okay. That's pretty much all I have, I think. It seems to me as being represented a very sound and intelligent thing to do and to maintain. It's already there and we're talking about something that is improving what's there without widening it. It's making it a little bit bigger, but there are very sound reasons for making it a little bit bigger. So I'm, I don't think I have any further questions. I'm happy with what's proposed. Would the painting, would the steps for painting, would they be finished for it? How would what would be the look of the steps? So I'll go a little more into detail about the materials. The code on these is that you have to use something that is water-resistant. Generally, we use a ground contact rated lumber, pressure treated, as people call it, though it's not pressure treated per se anymore. The client would like us to stain all of it as it is currently with a white stain, again, to match the existing appearance. As I said, they really just want, some of the treads are getting a little soft. It's visibly deficient. They probably wouldn't enlarge it really even significantly if it weren't for really my insistence that it should meet current code. And a couple of locations where bottlenecks down. But other than that, yeah, it will look nearly identical to what's there. Same stain colors. We'll probably wait a few months before we stain it just to let it dry out because pressure treated wood can be very damp. It starts its life very damp. As you know, as you saw this morning, it's right on the directly across the street. Absolutely. Front door view. But it sounds like we've designed it so it looked very much like what we see now. Absolutely. Better. Cleaner. Yeah. Great. Did anybody else have any questions or thoughts? I think that is one of the shortest meetings. Yeah. I guess I would just add, James, if there's any other exterior work that you're doing that you think might be visible from the street just to make sure that that we're approving everything. If you could see the inside of the bathroom, I'd ask you for approval of that one too. Yeah. That just gets a regular building permit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's it. I actually, as I was saying this morning when I was talking to you on the street, I live in a local historic district in Holyoke and sat on the commission. So I'm familiar with the whole process. That's great. Any suggestions for us as a local, as a previous member of a local historical district? Yours is somewhat smaller than ours. ours has, I want to say 85 homes. It's one street. It's a Fairfield Ave in Holyoke. A beautiful area. It is. And the street was laid out. The original lot lines and center islands and everything were laid out by Frederick Lawmstead. So it looks pretty sweet. The biggest thing that I have found as a resident is that people would just like access to resources. They have antique homes. They'd like to fix them. Most of them bought antique homes because they like antique homes. And I'm constantly talking to neighbors about where to get materials where, and we live in a great area where you can get all make and manner things. We're in a very, like a high Victorian street and you can't buy these moldings anymore. You can't buy the trim. You can't buy the shingles and half of it's just finding some weird manufacturer or mill that can cut you a specific profile because they're all bigger than anything you buy now. So, but that's my only, that'd be my advice. How long have you guys been in existence as a district? It's not very long. How long did you say, Judy? Maybe five or six years, maybe? I think we're on 12 or 15, something like that. I do know that after we got past the initial pushback from some of the neighbors, everyone seemed to be very respondent and invested in the long-term outcome because it does really improve and retain the character of a neighborhood. When you've got a great area, you want to try to encourage and encapsulate that as much as you can. I noticed that real estate agents now put that on their advertisements. Yeah, I noticed that too. And we did have pushback initially, so for certain areas. I find people are a little intimidated by the concept of an extra level of investigation, we'll say. But I know that we were never particularly aggressive or confrontational. We just wanted people to like not tear porches off houses, things like that, you know, whenever you can retain original details. And yeah, as you said, I think 20 years ago, saying something was an historic district might have seemed derogatory. A realtor might not have wanted to represent that immediately to a buyer, thinking that it was a negative, where now it's viewed as an item of cashier for a neighbor. So. That's an aside, we've removed some of this. This has nothing to do with, let's finish up what we're talking about. All right, are there any other questions or comments about this specific project? I guess we could ask for public comment on the. Do we have public comment? Doesn't look like any commenters. I think we're all set. Well, in that case, I guess I would move to close the public hearing. Is that the next step? I think it is. Okay. A second. Somebody want a second? A second. So do we need to make a decision to approve this? I think we need to vote, don't we? Correct. Yes, yeah. Yes. So we'll take roll call to approve Brutalum. Aye. Schwartz. Approve. Greta. Approve. And Judy, I'm Judy Strickland, I approve also. So we will issue the get. Well, I'll make a motion to grant a certificate of appropriateness for the applicant at seventy four is a triangle street. Thirty thirty six. Thirty six at the address triangle street for the resurrection of the existing escape stair according to the finding it's consistent with sections eight point whatever and eight point whatever and and and consistent with the standards of the Dickinson historical district. No conditions other than that it is consistent with the documents submitted. That's the motion. Second. I'll second the motion. I'm on mute. Now do we vote on the motion? Yes. Yes. Nessa's discussion, but we probably had that. Okay. So if we're voting on the motion, we'll vote on Bruce Holden. I approve. Peggy Schwartz. Greta Wilcox. I approve. Judy Strayer and I approve. Thank you, James. And thank you for your extra official extraficial contribution. My pleasure. I'd like you to stay for a minute. Question about the corner of Leslie and Triangle. This is not a very corner, there's a bush and you've done some further plantings and it's going to get harder and harder to make that look. Visibility around that corner. I brought your point up with the homeowner. That's about the most I'm in a I could say an awkward position trying to complete my work without pushing them too far on their landscaping or lack thereof. I'm a like mow my lawn every five days, trim the shrubs four times a year kind of guy. So it's all a little different from my yard. But I have brought up the point with them. I think your best bet though is with the DPW or somebody like that because visibility and clearance on roadways is their bailiwick or the Board of Health. Not that you're a neighbor. I mean you don't want to go to the Board of Health about your neighbor, but I'll bring it up with them again for what that's worth. I'm wondering if Nate should bring it up as a historic district something or and it's not really. It's a general housekeeping item really. Yeah, it's nothing but historical. The zoning commissioners probably but those which is to say Rob Maher. So who would bring that to the zoning commission? Yeah, I mean I guess it's like a clear clear site issue. It sounds like so that that could be a zoning or or matter I guess but yeah I'm not I'm not sure. I think I think James is right that it would be a DPW Department of Public Works matter. So you can email the DPW department. Yeah they just have a generic email you can send to public works at Amherst MA. So anyway, well thanks. Thanks James for coming. And I'll move the building permit along and then also get you the certificate of appropriateness for the local historic district. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. You guys have a great day. Take care. Bye bye. Great. Thanks everyone. We did have one more agenda item which was just I don't know if folks have given any more thought to whether we wanted to submit like a CPA application for hiring someone to look into the district enlargement study. But that's I guess that would be due September 30th. So we've got kind of the end of next month. So we have some time but I put that on the agenda for today just in case folks wanted to discuss that idea any further. Is the application available yet? No it's they're released on September 1st. I would probably be helpful to get a quote or like a cost estimate. I think I was thinking that might be the first step is to reach out to some potential people who do that kind of work and get a sense of the cost. Yes. I think you'd have to know what you are asking for and to be able to defend that request based on a certain certainty as to that it's enough or that it's not too much. I guess one thing I would ask is we're kind of just going forward with this along the same lines of what was requested from the Historic Commission that section of North Pleasant Street. And as it's kind of grown into something to go for fun, I guess is that the extent of what we wanted to be? Good question. Are you thinking of going a little bigger? Oh I don't know. I'm just thinking we've never actually and I don't know how we can do this. I mean we've never actually sat down as a commission and kind of talked about our you know talked about our goals and like where we would see expansion in town and that type of thing and ranking them because right now that's kind of the highest one because that's the one that's been brought to us. So and it may be but just I'm just wondering if that's the right way to go about it. Without looking at other neighborhoods in town or you know. Yeah and that almost ties into the larger preservation plan effort which is well I'm sure that'll include exploration of you know different you know certainly the national registered districts but then exploring the idea of like whether there's any areas that should be considered for local historic districts. So that might be actually accomplished in the next you know coming months even or with by the early 2023 as part of that process. But no I guess I would agree with you Judy as well that it's definitely worth. It's a good opportunity. Yeah thinking about townwide. Yeah so how do we want to I mean but I want to miss the opportunity if we need to apply by the end of September because that's the only during the year you can apply right. Yeah so I'm I'm wondering if there's a little dirt road at the bottom of lesson street as the road turns toward the police station if you're going down the road. There's a little road to the right that houses two large white houses that have been used as student interest. Those that's right now it's been dug up and it's being repaid. And it just reflects that there are a couple of major proposals. I'm having trouble hearing you Peggy. I can hear everybody else really clearly but I can't understand what you're saying. I'm sorry oh dear it's a closer does that help can you hear me better. Huh because it's this said hi. There's a street down at the corner of lesson street and this reflects us to how the town has come has made some decisions and I don't know who to even go to. They're repaying the road that front says to the houses that are student rentals. Even though there's some major platforms on lesson street itself that would seem to me to be a much higher priority for repair. Given the amount of traffic and especially that the police traffic that comes up less when connecting to the university neighborhood it's always uplifting. But we often are necessary. Anyway I don't know if something like that falls within our purview the historic district, the scheduling of things, the community itself and not confined to housing and renovation and repair. Is that what a conceptualization we're trying through this through our group to get some agency. Right. Sorry I also have trouble I didn't quite get everything Peggy was saying sorry. Oh I'm so sorry huh well there's a small street. Where is your muted? Unmuted? No Bruce is muted. Yeah yeah so I don't I think the purview of the local historic district really is on architectural changes and buildings. I mean we could advocate for better maintenance of roads being a historic district but it's not like there's no like regulatory power or special significance given to the historic districts. I mean you might consider conducting your town council member they might have insight into kind of how things are prioritized and and what repairs are being made. Thank you for the follow-up. Yeah okay we've got a huge pot to drive into a pothole to drive up there so be careful. Um Peggy I think that the sound system on your computer whatever you're using is is somehow muffled or needs I wonder whether you might not try plugging in something like this that would perhaps improve the quality of your your broadcast. Right now do you want me to try that now? Well I've noticed this repeatedly from one meeting to the next so I think that it would be if you could I think it's important that we can hear you and it's it's it's very difficult so I think that some if you could figure out how to improve your sound quality I think it would make a big difference to our ability to respond to what you're saying. Thank you for letting me know well I'm using my iPad I do have a computer I don't use it that much anymore. Oh then plugging in the earbuds would probably with a little microphone wherever it is would probably make a big difference. Uh-huh well I'll try I'll try using the computer next time and see if that makes a difference. Thank you for learning me. Yeah. All right and then uh I guess I just wanted to make sure we scheduled our September meeting I don't know if I have that in my calendar yet. Uh I don't I don't know of any pending applications but might just be good to have something on the books. Could do we have yeah September 5th is Labor Day that's a Monday. We could do the 12th potentially. The 12th would suit me best. We won't delay. I'm out of town till the 10th so. I'm well I'm not sure I would be going there's a an Amherst neighbors open party type thing at the Mill River pavilion in the afternoon from three to six. I don't know if any of you especially those with families might want to be attending something like that it's kind of that the full season rolling in Amherst type I don't know if that that would affect anybody here who would want to attend that or people who might want to apply for the change. So that's your that's your call I guess then. Um well if we held it at three I mean I guess I would still give people an opportunity to attend you said it goes until six maybe but was anyone else planning to attend that? I didn't hear what the I think it was that it was the Amherst neighbors was having an event at Mill River on that day. I don't think so there's a there's a donor picnic the day before I'll probably at Mill River I'm sure I'll probably go to that that will be my neighborhood yeah okay that's fine so we'll have our meeting on the 12th. Say again I think Brisha said it works for him so I think yeah let's let's go with that date then September 12th all right yeah that was a straightforward application I like those really nice that he's on a historical board so yeah he was good yeah yeah that was good insight definitely. I have to say I as far as the the CPA application for consultant support for the consideration of expansion of the historic district I thought that we were waiting for I think each of you or those of you on the subcommittee were creating form B's for the form B's drafts for the for the various properties and my understanding was we've been waiting for that those drafts to be completed before we as a commission have deliberated so someone said we haven't really done much so far and I think as a commission and I think that's true because I thought we were waiting for the reports on the various properties that were in the considered expansion. Oh I think that almost everyone is done and has put them on except me because my computer I'm getting a new computer and it's left click is and Peggy that might be a good place to ask about your sound quality it's left click they're taking my old computer and moving everything to my new computer and I get it tomorrow so I think I will turn mine in. I have research and I have the form B's and stuff that I've I've located but other than that I put it into any narratives form of writing and I don't know if that's going to happen from me Frank in the next couple of weeks. Well if we're going to be considering a scope of work for a consultant it's going to be difficult for us as a commission to do that unless we've got some basic data on the properties we're considering. Isn't that true or am I missing something here? Well first of all Lauren is the chair of the yeah not here too. Oh okay so she's yeah okay. I'm not the committee and the and I'm just the only reason I even looked up this work was because Jennifer had taken it on and had not gotten to any of it. You know it's not in terms of you know I'm not sure how like I don't understand what the process is it seems a lot more complex than any of us have time for right now. So I don't know I don't know what to say about moving forward with it and also it was presented to us by the historic historical committee for the ones who selected the properties and said we want you to look at this. Yes and we've we've got two new people about to join so it feels to me as they we're not going to be ready to make an application a defensible application to the CPA. Well let's check and this Karen and this Karen's got it all thought out in which case that only takes one person only takes one person to do this to you know to have it in their head to be able to get up but it does take at least one person who's going to appear you know who's going to stand up before the CPA committee and make the case and if we don't have one of us who's prepared to stand and make the case then it's not worth we shouldn't make an application that I I know because I've been I've made the case many times even though many of the people on my my NACF board wouldn't necessarily be able to do it one of us could and one of us did and we were consistently successful that's all it takes one person who's got it figured out who can make the case and you've done it before so maybe Karen could check with you if she has problems but I think she's been working on it that's what I think I can I can talk about the process for for applying to CPA I know favorite about that unless it's changed I don't think it would have so that the context of application yes I can be helpful okay I'm you know the only I mean the only thing I even brought up going to a consultant a few months ago is because we don't see we don't seem to have time to do it as right as a commission yeah makes sense and they had originally hired a consultant which was right you know and frankly it's it's you know it's it's something that I think deserves one and I guess for me I've never because I've never done this before applied for it I I don't see the reasoning in doing research on things that aren't necessarily you know don't necessarily have foreign bees like there are some houses there that aren't part of the database okay so I don't to me it seems like a waste of time to try to justify those being historical if they're not good point so um okay well maybe next time we can try to create a scope of work for a consultant mm-hmm yeah in the in the meantime I can reach out to Karen and just see what yeah what she's thinking about about this and I saw her in this morning as she was driving to the doctors yeah bad sort of had not tested positive for COVID yet but isn't that that's one of the symptoms oh man sorry but okay I hope she has everything she needs and is fine yeah but I think you should reach out to her okay all right well I'll do that and then I guess I'll keep everyone in the loop yeah and I can what I have okay good all right are there any other announcements or uh unanticipated items not for me not for me all righty cool well I guess we can adjourn then okay move to adjourn and in my world uh seconding the move includes clicking the red button so I will see you next time thank you all right take care everybody