 Call the meeting of the Town Council Community Resources Committee to order at 2.05 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, 2019. The meeting is being recorded by our own staff in IT, so there is going to be a recording that's going to be available somewhere. I just warned everybody so that they know that what you say could have a life of its own. The, my role is going to be pretty limited, but I first want to thank Lynn who's here to provide any guidance that we might need from the President, and is also volunteered to take minutes of the first meeting. So we all owe her appreciation. So I am going to share the meeting only through, since I've done number one, we get to number two, and then whoever we elect is going to be it. There is a question that I wanted to ask before we start the election process, and that is, do we want to elect a chair in the Vice Chair or just a chair? And I don't know if that will affect how people proceed. Yes, okay. So what I'm going to do is call for election of the chair, and then I will turn it over to whoever is elected as chair, and they can proceed with election of Vice Chair, but I just wanted to make sure that we had an understanding that there would be two elections before we started. So I will ask for nominations. Yes. I nominate Steve Schreiber. Is there a second? Any other nominations? Very none. Is there a motion to close nominations? Is there a seconded? Yes. And all in favor of closing nominations? So it's 5-0, and therefore, we have elected Steve Schreiber. I know, exactly. It's kind of dual edged on us. We've elected Steve as chair, so you're on. Okay, so then thank you, and thank you for starting this off on the right foot. So let's take nominations for Vice Chair. So there's a nomination in second for Dorothy Pamp. Are there any other nominations? Seeing none, I call the question. All in favor, raise your hand. That passes 5-0, so thank you very much. So let's just keep moving. I think we have about an hour, so let's get, is there a regular meeting time? So this is our fourth committee. So plus some of you are on other, no, actually, we have more than that. We have five committees now. So scheduling is always hard, but is there a regular meeting time that we think we can come up with now? Yes. It's only for the month of May that we're going to do twice a week, and that's because of the 30-day window to make the recommendation after we've received the budget. All this work that you had to do that day. Yes. This time today is generally good. I have to tell you, in the month of June, just that month alone, I couldn't start a meeting till three from teaching a course. Except for May. Except for May when we have, it's reserved for finance. So we've got to do a meeting for now. Yeah. Yeah, so for me, it's crazy until May. Then I open up until September, and I'm actually not positive what my schedule is, September to December. But this time can work for me. Most Thursdays, I'm free at this time. Yeah, why don't we start? What would be fine with me? Yeah, so the GOL is a weird thing. So I teach right now, I teach Monday, Wednesday, one to four, but that's going to end relatively soon. Yeah, so I'm actually starting the 30, no, starting May 2nd. I'm free Wednesdays, so. My thought is that he's got an academic schedule. I pretty much know what I'm going to be doing in the fall. It's going to be Tuesday, Thursday, like nine, but I won't be able to get there until three. So maybe, and you don't have no idea what you're getting for the fall. Maybe we should just do plumps of time. Yeah, yeah. That are meeting for now, then we'll start again. And your days may change. So today, so starting May 1st, I'm all set Wednesdays at 2. Before that, we actually don't have that many Wednesdays before that. So the next Wednesday, so we don't need to meet next Wednesday, because we won't, I don't think we need to meet. So then just Wednesday, the 24th, we have the GOL, then I have class. Do you have no time between the GOL and this, is that no longer? GOL ends at 12.30 or 12.12, it ends at 12. I could do 12.1 on that Wednesday. 12.30, I could do 12.30 to one, or four. Does four work on that Wednesday? Just that particular Wednesday? Yeah, okay, so do you want to do the 25th? So the 24th, we'll meet at 4 p.m., okay, closing, till the last call? Well, I could say four to six. Yeah, why don't you say four, or four to six? That's tight for me, I'll meet at 5.30. Right, 5.30, can we just do a 5.30? First meeting, four to 5.30. Well, could we meet at 3.30 or 3.30? Yeah, we can do 3.30, 3.30 to 5.30. Is that work for you? Okay. 3.30 to 5.30? Yeah, on the 24th. Yeah, and then from then on, until September, let's do, do we think every other? Every other Wednesday, for them? Well, we have to get them in the different locations. That's true, we could always have it together. My feeling is that we should be meeting once a week, because there's so many questions that we have. Like, for example, Lynn suggested that we look at the committees and see which committees fall. Well, that's just doing that and talking about that. It's going to take a long time. And there's stuff that's happening that we need to be thinking about. Also, I'm not sure, and I really need clarification, what the process is. When do things come to us? And what they go, I mean, it's just so much that we don't know that it's possible, like the finance committee, we just had to jump in because we were in the middle of the budget year. Everybody's looking to us to do things. So I know one thing is that the planning board has been working on a bunch of possible zoning bylaws. There's sort of a backlog of ideas from them. And they've actually been waiting. So I think that the timetable that Lynn was proposing kind of showed a lot of land use stuff being discussed in the fall. But this would be a good time to look at it. And there's parking stuff? Yeah. We have to decide, is parking part of our project? Yeah, exactly. What's going on? So I'm just going to suggest if we can try to do it once a week. Knowing that summer's coming and some people go away. So let's do that. So let's do April 24th at 3.30 to 5.30. Then starting May 1st, we'll just put it on the schedule from 2 to 4. Or do you want to do it after? That one, if you could do that one 2.30. Once a month I have an office hour that ends at 2. OK. And it's amazing, people were coming into the end, yeah. Starting May 1st. Just on May 1st. And then after that, are we keeping that from the group? I would say that, yeah. Yeah, let's just do it. It's going to be easier for us to remember that. We'll have it on the books and cancel if needed. But I just want to say that. So we're done with item three. Yes? Let's move on. So that'll take us until through August. Then we'll revisit if necessary. Item four, consider initial goals. So this is our unstructured time to talk about our charge and what we see as the priorities or even our ways of operating based on what was approved. Conservation and development and working with a number of different departments kind of gives me the broadest perspective on a lot of things, whether it's affordable housing, whether it's open space, whether it's zoning. So my role would be to work with you, to support you, and to bring in to you those staff people who, if I don't have a particular, I am not the parking expert, but I would bring in those people to you when you were talking about parking or bring in Robin. Thank you very much. It's amazing to have someone at your level. Yeah, well, this is a very important committee. We've got a lot of work to do, and staff is very excited to work with you. So my job would be to facilitate getting the right people through you. So let me ask a question about the group, and thank you, it's really great to have you and where I'm gonna go for the next. With the Finance Committee, one of the things that we've been trying to do is just use opportunities for members of the committee members of the committee who have not previously been familiar with the financial management structure of the town to learn so that we can gain, the committee gains expertise. And with this committee, I was wondering if there are things that would be helpful to get presentations on early so that we can get some basis of knowledge. And the first one I'll ask about, obviously we have the planning expert as our chair, but the whole, Yeah, right. No, nothing we can agree with them. I think what I'm thinking about is process and law, how planning gets developed and what the legal constraints are within the planning process. Is that something we need a presentation about? So we had the, I think also zoning. Relay tie together. Yeah. And so we had the presentation by all the town departments, including, and we did have a sort of a quick overview on planning, zoning, conservation, but would it be more helpful to have more details or should we try to get right into, so there's sort of the, for the past however many years, there was sort of a national rhythm in the town as we, hear it up for two town meetings, typically two town meetings per year. So now typically we'd be in the midst of preparing for spring town meeting, which typically had a bunch of zoning articles. So one thing that I'm aware of is that our zoning is far from perfect. The zoning being probably the primary way that issues of land use are regulated. And I, but however the zoning subcommittee, which is part of the planning board has continued to work away. So we could get right into the weeds and ask for a meeting with that particular group or at least a representative from that particular group to talk about what issues, you know, that they see. And that's also would be a good time to kind of better understand, you know, the legal basis of planning. Oh, I have to use the mic. Okay. That's what I wasn't sure. No, no, no. Yeah. I want to backtrack just a little bit. Everything you said sounded great and I want to do it, but where I'm feeling more adrift is I don't know what our schedule is, what's coming our way. And that's, so because I kind of think if we have to do a lot of this then let's get education on that and then do it rather than a lot of general education and then trying to catch up with what's going on. So I'm wondering Dave, do you, can you tell us what you think are the first two or three things we're gonna have to deal with? Into some of Andy's questions about legal and the process. We could make that happen, you know, in your next couple meetings. That's fairly easy to do with Rob Morrow and Christine Bresto. And likewise, we could do a little overview of affordable housing, which is a very pressing issue in the town. And I think we didn't get a real chance to talk some of the stats on that and what some of the exciting projects are. We've indicated there's another, there's some easier things that the zoning subcommittee and staff have been working on. And then there's some larger pieces of the zoning bylaw that need work. There's also the fundamental question and I'm glad Lynn is here, but the charter called for the master plan, I may get the quote to be for the wording, was it adopt the master plan? So that is, that question is, when do you recall the master plan was completed in 2010? The planning board worked very hard on that, hundreds and hundreds of people in town worked on that. There were always questions as to what for approval, although my understanding is state law did not acquire that, but the planning board at the time did vote to adopt that master plan. But here we are in 2019, a lot has happened since 2010. So the master plan so much moves. Two of the people on the committee, Sarah and Pat, are also on the committee to prepare the draft of the town council's goals. And so, and our goal, we're meeting this tomorrow, our goal is to bring those to the town council for discussion on the 22nd of April, and hopefully then make any changes we need to and bring them back for, must be May 6th is the next meeting. And in those goals, we have a goal around master plan, we have a goal around zoning, a goal around planning, a goal around parking, a goal around transportation, and we're trying to suggest some activities under those, but I think those are, as I said, suggestions. We're also trying to suggest a timeline and also keeping in mind all of those as it relates to the charter because just going to the master plan, that's also something that's to be done with the planning board. It's very clear in the charter that the planning board is part of it, but the charter says is the council must adopt it. It does not say we have to adopt it this year. In fact, I think we would be rushing it to adopt it this year. So one of the things that I think would be useful picking up on David's offer and Andy's suggestion is to pick a couple topics and then, I mean, I'd share this whole thing with you now, but it's really still quite rough, but then on the 22nd, before your next meeting, you'll actually see this draft and then identify from there some of what you think would be best to take on based on putting, based on the time frames. Let me just give you an example. We don't expect this year that we will be able to accomplish adopting the master plan, but we do wonder if it might be appropriate to come up with a plan for how to review if we're gonna do any revisions and how to adopt and put that in a time frame. And I would see that as something that CRC would do in conjunction with the planning board and then bring it all forward to the council. So it's a big job. Because, again, and then after that, you have, even before that, you have some zoning, for example. That's pretty easy. It's pretty straightforward. We need to change names like Select Board to Cattown Council, but then you have other zoning bylaws that really the master plan should provide guidance for those and those are probably more the ones Steve's talking about that need much more great consideration and discussion. So it kinda like one follows the other. So anything you can do to start familiarizing yourself with any of those issues and start talking about and then I will send you literally in time for your next meeting what we're gonna have on our own agenda anyway, so you're all gonna see it. The other thing I just wanna mention, if you're gonna have presentations from staff or even joint meetings with committees, I would wanna make sure that the rest of the council is aware of them and to the point that we may even for some of them want to have committees of the whole like we're doing with the finance committee because there were 10 people who wanted to be on this committee and five of you are sitting here. Okay, six of us are sitting. Yeah, so one thing that I, so it's been almost 10 years since we approved the master plan and it's honestly you can read the master plan and everyone's gonna read into it, what you wanna read into it. So it means different every, there are technical terms in there that mean different things to different people but one thing I'm not sure I've ever heard is kind of a report card on like this is how we think we're doing compared to what we said we were going to do but so I would love to get your perspective or your, so rather than necessarily a presentation on each section of the master plan, just a perspective of these are the things that we think that we have accomplished in this section. These are things that we think need more work. These are things that seem obsolete now. I think a very productive exercise for us to do because we regularly back to it but to be able to report out to you and as Lynn suggested, any members of the town council who would like to be able to do a meeting on that, how are we doing relative to the master plan from 2010? What's working, what's not working as opposed to this is the master plan. You said that if anybody can go in right now this afternoon and read the master plan it doesn't take very long. It's a high level perspective on broad goals for the town and what we recognize and I think we said this when we presented to the full council I think it's best to say that the source is implementation under many of the goals of the master plan. So some of them have just happened through work of the planning board, the planning department, the conservation department, the inspection services, et cetera. So I'm doing kind of a little report card, how are we doing under one, two, three, four, five, and four goals? So I'm sitting here thinking of the thing, what did not exist nine years ago? So Uber and Lyft, Uber and Lyft didn't exist nine years ago. Airbnb didn't exist. And Airbnb didn't exist nine years ago. So these are all legal parts. Legal parts, yeah, that's right. And I want to know if it comes to this thing, I'm thinking it does. Go ahead, go ahead. That would be awesome. I think it would be an awesome agenda. I also think it would be, so in the introduction, kind of the idea of the introduction, the planning staff, so Chris and Brandon and I'm going to, you know, to talk, because each of them has a different, like one handles the historic commission and one handles sometimes the same person, but zoning board of appeals, but yeah, just so that we can put a name to the, yeah. The DRV is handled by somebody else. Yeah. Yeah, it'd be interesting too. I mean, I know it's a ton of staff time to have them. But that might be something to start doing next week. I'm sorry, the 24th? So you'd actually like, would you like the staff to come in or? I don't know. What do you guys, you'll be in Spain, right? I'll be back before our next meeting. It's been two weeks. The, one thing that I thought about, I guess I have two different directions. One is the master plan when I've read it, actually it was an excellent document and covered a lot of territory. And one example that I always come back to is we had a lot of discussion during the campaign as we were all running for this office about the importance of form-based zoning. Form-based zoning is included in the master plan. And it was one of those things that the planning board at one point attempted in a couple of neighborhoods and there was an misunderstanding about it because of the neighborhood issues overrode the form-based issue. And but it was actually, then as we came back at it through the campaign and people were saying, how can we do a better job with what the appearance of things are in parts of town, particularly town center. That's what came back. So if we go back and look at the master plan, I think we will be surprised as to how forward thinking it really was. And that may have been when form-based zoning was just starting to be, so there were two proposals, well actually there were really three proposals. So one is for the North Amherst, the Mill District, the other one was for the Atkins District, but then there was a more overarching changes to the zoning code, zoning blah blah blah, that would have enabled the other two to exist. And I'm losing, so part of it passed, the part that enabled the zoning by-law to basically accept some of the terms, I believe passed, it was just the two specific ones didn't pass. And so there never was a proposal for downtown in part because people thought downtown's easy because it's, it's harder to imagine the Mill District, which was such a clean slate and harder to imagine Atkins Center, which was also a clean slate, easier to imagine downtown, in which there already is kind of a history of buildings. So, but what seems to have most people's attention is using form-based zoning for downtown, which I think, you know, I certainly agree that this would be a right time to, yeah. Got this on? Okay, I definitely need to be some clarification on it. One description that was given to me was that the zoning should fit in with the surrounding buildings. And then when the two buildings happened, there are two big buildings downtown, then people said, oh, that means now new buildings just have to conform to them, not to what was there. And so then we get into a quandary again. So yeah, I think we need some clarification. In terms that we think should be, that we use terms in a certain way that others interpret in a different way, like infill is a favorite one. So infill means completely different things to different people. Urban means very different things to, so like architects will talk about sort of urban design, but we realize that when you use that word, people think cities and, you know, whatever garbage piled up on the side, you know, who knows what one thinks, greenways. So these are ones, like there's a whole list of things that we realize that we can use amongst ourselves, but in the public might interpret it. Yeah, yep. And it seems like, so my, my, I'm sorry. When we were doing the zero energy bylaw, one of the things that Andy was very clear that we needed to do was have a list of terms that were defined. And we all kind of said, oh, good. And it got shoved off to the very end. And we said, oh, this will be easy. There were times we spent a half an hour on one term, but that set of terminology is critically helpful and would be helpful to the rest of the council. So for this group, what it says, what it doesn't say, that's just as important, how much detail it goes into, that it is not a mandate, it is not a you must, it is a guiding document. And I think what would flow in my mind from there is meant deciding, typically there are updates to master plan overview and Q&A with you. Get Chris, Chris, and Rob more. So getting them include form-based codes, but that we not dive right into form-based codes. And I wanna make sure we have a shared understanding of what zoning can and can do. I know for Steve, it's gonna be, you know. I always learn something. Yeah. I would also love to get their, well, maybe this is diving into the weeds, because just from their perspective, one gets a sense that we've added, the zoning by-law gets added to and added to, not subtracted from very much. We don't take things out that much. We have taken, but are there parts that they think could be, I mean that would be talking openly and freely. Like, do they have experience with other, one of the purposes of form-based zoning is to make zoning simpler and to make them more so that the average human can look at it and get the idea of at least what the intent of it is. But I'd love to know their perspective on from other communities that they've worked in. The experience and communities used to be here where they did not suggest we're doing bad, and communities have done a complete rewrite of their things from the 1970s. A baseline understanding of zoning, a baseline understanding of the master plan. So there were, most of us were at the 4DR presentation, which was, you know, intersected with the town council meeting. But there was a lot of, in those power plants, there were a lot of sort of zoning tidbits that were, you know, if you're zoning junkie, you know, they were very, one of them was they had the big thing banned, B, A, N, and E, D. And the person who was presenting that said, these are what we have on our postcards. We can't build like that anymore in most of these communities. And it's, I mean, that point was sort of an excellent point, that. But, you know, something along those lines where people are willing to talk openly and freely about, you know, what they've seen. To get us started, we're not going to suggest that May 1 might be the master plan over the UN. And you're going to have other things you aren't talking about in these, so maybe that's the big agenda item on May 1. May 8 would be zoning 101. Because again, I think, I'm not going to solve it all on May 1 for the master plan. Just give you a flavor for where we've been, where we are, and Chris took a wonderful job. And then on May 8, scheduled submitting, we could bring in Rob Mora and Rob and Chris to do a zoning 101 trimmer for you. And if it says, and then this thing. OK. It's through the green light, it's on. OK, well, it was off. OK, where is the report card? Is that in those two meetings or a third meeting? That would be no doubt. May 1 is the report card, OK. So I'm going to suggest that on your meeting on April 24, that you take the goals, the draft goals, and you spend some time talking about the appropriate activities with those, and also timelines, and identify which of the goals are specifically kind of the responsibility for them starts with this committee. OK. The question was asked a little bit ago about what are the issues that are likely to come before us quickly that we need to be aware of when is parking? There's a meeting tonight, actually, on parking where Nelson Neigard is doing an initial presentation of the newest study, which I'm not going to be able to go to. And then there was another meeting that they're going to have soon to follow with some of the. But parking will come to us. And having had experience with parking, something we're going to have to work at. The other one is affordable housing. Some of the issues around affordable housing is we know that East Street is moving along quickly. We know that Valley CDC is likely to propose something for, I guess it's Northampton Road for an SRO, which is already zoning proposal from through the town meeting on that subject, but it wasn't specific to a location. Those are two things that are just happening that I think we at least need to be aware of and find if we have a role in what the role is. I think Andy's right, a really good place. It's very exciting to have two significant affordable housing projects moving forward in the council in a very good year. We've had a couple of very good years in terms of producing more affordable housing. We know the demand is that you're going to see a shape two very exciting projects, one in East Street School and one in I think what I might add. And then, I was going to say Mill Street, they support the housing there, the Mill Project. The University Drive, the Barry Roberts Project. Oh, yeah, that's right. That has eight or something, six or eight. And so if we have six or eight there, and then there'll be an affordable housing there. So we could, sometime when we look at schedule, we could even do a little quickly on the CPA, in terms of the process there, there are land use related projects on the CPA C list. And I'm not exactly sure it was all new to us, how we proceed to do this. Right now, the plan is to take, is to refer the CPA recommendations to the finance committee, but at the same time on the agenda for the 22nd of April, we're putting a thing, kind of an information, if you will, discussion piece about CPA, because the council has never discussed this. So that once the finance committee reviews this year's CPA recommendations, it then comes to the council. And at this point, not only has the council never discussed CPA money, what it can be used for, but what their role is in terms of the vote. Whether we, and that's basically probably creeping up so fast that we probably need to do that, but there may be some land use issues, as you've mentioned, and there are, that may come out of CPA as well. They're final votes tonight. And in terms of what they're recommending to us. And there may be that we delay on some of those because we would like this committee to look at it in a different kind of way. I also think the marijuana thing is gonna come up real fast. The growing facility is the hottest item right now, but we still have as many as three more awards we can make and the plan to open the first adult use commercial facility is right around the corner. So it's, and up until now the council has not had any discussion about that either. For Sarah, it's really right around the corner. It really is, yeah. What's right around the corner? For Sarah, it really is right around the corner. So we, I think we were gonna try to wrap up at three o'clock today. So I think we, this is a good start. North Common, I would add to North Common to the list of sort of, and I know that's on your list also, but, hi. So I was gonna consider moving us to public comment, if that's okay with the committee. Can you, okay, okay, I'm sorry. I was trying to play to the whole house. Yeah, Steve, can you hear me? I know, I know. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, thanks for coming and keeping us on there. Any business not anticipated 48 hours ago within the last 48 hours? I see none. Motion to adjourn. That was a little too fast. By consensus.