 Okay, Mr. Marshall, it is 6 30 you are a co-host for this meeting we are recording and the attendees have come on in so whenever you're ready. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of April 6, 2022. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board I am calling this meeting to order at 6 32pm. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media. Minutes are being taken pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. This planning board meeting including public hearings will be conducted via remote means using the zoom platform. The zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting, or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. No in person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means in the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts. We will post an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Member members I will take a roll call when I call your name unmute yourself answer affirmatively and then place yourselves back on mute. Maria chow. Jack gem sec present Tom long present. We believe Andrew McDougal is going to arrive late. So I dug Marshall and present Janet McGowan here. And Johanna Newman here. Thank you. Board members if technical issues arise we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand that call on you to speak. After speaking remember to remute yourself. General public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment can also be heard at other times during the meeting when determined appropriate. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. All right, so it looks to me like we have a fairly full agenda for this evening. So we have two hearings and several other items to discuss that may take some time. So I'll hope I'll try to keep things moving along quickly and board members please try to make your comments this evening, especially succinct. You don't need to say everything, you know, in slightly different ways a couple of times. All right, so tonight we have the first item on the agenda is approval of minutes. These will be the March 16 minutes from our last meeting. And they were drafted by Chris and included in our packet. Johanna, I see your hand. I moved to approve the minutes. All right, thank you, Johanna. Does anybody want to second that. I'll second. All right, thank you, Janet. Chris, I see your hand you want to describe anything about the minutes. I just wanted to recognize Pam, because Pam was really the one who prepared the minutes, and I just edited them so thank you Pam. And thank you both. So do we have any board members who want to make comments or changes to the minutes from March 16. It just struck me still as quite long and quite detailed and a little bit he said she said so. Thank you Pam for doing it, but you know I don't think it needs to be quite so detailed. Those are my comments. All right, so you're not asking for any question for any changes on this set of minutes but suggesting future guidance. Okay. Any other comments. So, why don't we go ahead. We have a motion we have a second. No more comments. Why don't we go through a vote on approving the minutes. Maria will start with you. And Jack. Tom. Janet. And Johanna. And I'm going to approve as well. So that's six votes in favor. Andrew's absent. And we've, we don't have any other minutes as far as I know. All right, the second item on the agenda is our public comment period. As I stated at the beginning, these, this will be for public comments that concerns topics that are not on our agenda for this evening. I see eight attendees in the attendees screen. Do any of those folks want to make a public comment on something not on our agenda. All right, I'm not seeing any raised hands. So we will move on to item three on the agenda. Now is 638. And this was on the agenda as published for 635 so we're, we're not starting before it was advertised. So, this is a public hearing. And let's see in accordance with the provisions of mass general law chapter 41, section 81. This public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard. We're starting SUB 2022-07. John Roblesky concerning 446 and 462 Main Street. Request approval for a three lot definitive subdivision plan center east way under mass general law chapter 41 sections 81 L, O, R, T, you and V, including one street with a total length of 100. 100.89 feet to the center of a cul-de-sac. Map 14B parcel 66 and 68 in the BN zoning district. Do we have any board member disclosures? I don't see anything. And it looks like Tom Reedy has entered the participant panel and John Roblesky. And I also see that Nate has arrived. So, Tom and John, do you want to make your presentation? Yeah, we'd love to thank you very much, Mr. Chair, members of the board Tom Reedy attorney with Bacon Wilson here in Amherst here on behalf of center east LLC and 462 Main LLC in Mr. Roblesky and his application for a definitive subdivision plan approval for the sites that the chairman mentioned. With me this evening you all know and remember John Roblesky, ultimately site owner here, and certainly site manager so by way of a bit of background we had filed a preliminary subdivision plan which you know you probably all remember. In the presentation we had a pretty lengthy discussion about the purpose of that preliminary plan filing, frankly to freeze the zoning. It was approved, as I think you'll see in Ms. Brestrup's, I think it was in her development application report it frankly doesn't matter if it was approved or not it's really the timing of it but it was approved because John put money into getting it to a place that it could be approved. And this definitive plan was really born out of that preliminary plan. And so we've, we've as the chairman noted, proposed the three lot definitive subdivision plan with a roadway and cul-de-sac. It's essentially what you saw before. We have asked for several waivers. And I should back up and say, we don't expect approval this evening. We will be in front of the Board of Health. I think it's April 21. For hearing in front of them and I know that the board would like and I think it makes sense for us to get feedback from the Board of Health and really to explain to them, the process that we're going through and the purpose that we're doing this for. And so we don't expect an approval this evening. Hopefully we can make our presentation and talk a bit about the waivers. See if there are some that that you would grant as conditions, others that we would likely be able to comply with as they've been drafted by Ms. Brestrup. And then continue this to your next meeting in May. And then I know there's a time period for you to make, you know, take final action, make a decision. I'd say let's see how far we get tonight and come back the, you know, and I'll defer to Ms. Brestrup because she's probably going to be the one who has to write the decision and can tell me in May whether or not that's doable to get it filed in time. If it seems like it's not then, you know, I'm sure Mr. Blesky can be reasonable and we can grant an extension to get to something where we're not talking about constructive approval because that's not the purpose here so that's just a little bit of kind of overarching background the intent is still not to build this is strictly not for a zone freeze. And so our, our thought is that the, the application we submitted with the waiver requests we've submitted and the timing of those waiver requests meaning, if in fact, John wherever to construct this, those items that we had now asked for waivers from would be complied with, you know, if it was ever, if he ever sought a building permit under this definitive subdivision plan, we would expect to have to comply with those things that we asked for waivers from so just so you know we're not trying to skirt around anything. It just makes sense for Mr. Blesky I think sense for the town not to frankly waste more time than they already have with all due respect because this is this is the process that we have to go through. It's just some context and then, you know, with that if you'd like I can share my screen and walk you through the project that's going to be very similar to what you what you'd seen before. All right, thanks Tom. Jack. Yeah, I was just, why is the Board of Health involved. State law. I believe it's part of the regulations for how this process works. Yeah, and I think it's typically in the context of like, septic systems overburdening of land. But it's it's functionally required statutorily required that we have to go through the Board of Health and they have to opine. Correct. No, no, no, no, but it's part of the process that we have to go through under mass general laws. The Board of Health is a party to this. Okay, thanks. Sure. Okay, thanks. I'll I'll be relatively brief understanding that we will be back here again. And this is the same thing that you saw, you know, a few months ago so you've got, you know, cover page property owner. So everyone can prepare by the Berkshire design group and Randy eyes are over at Harold Elliott and associates had performed the survey you've got an index plan, you know, you've got a key plan showing I think everybody's familiar with the site and if any point Mr chairman maybe after a presentation you want to talk about the site visit, you know, you can certainly talk about the site visit, the index plan showing a little bit blown out where we are. This is just an existing condition survey. You've got gray street here main street here in a east to west direction, you've got the two parcels. This is that building that was approved and has been built and is fully occupied. This building was in fact removed if you've been by the site it's, it's, I don't know if it's a graveled area at this point, and you there's a little maintenance trash shed here, and then you've got the existing building at 446 main street so this is existing to the west is gray street to the south main street, and you've got the railway on the southeast and then you've got additional multifamily housing on the right, and then some private residences to the north. So just to orient to it's in the BN zoning district I think the only BN zoning district in the town. Here is the proposal so you've got one access. You've got a 77 foot wide throw opens up into a cul-de-sac full circulation around the cul-de-sac you've got a sidewalk on the westerly side of it we are proposing three lots. So we've got a 100 foot building circle showing that they could be residential and in nature. So you could fit a residential dwelling unit within the, within the building circle. And then we've got water easements called out. And then we've got grading and planting plan so here you'll see the topography 100 feet over here it slopes down to the southeast 98 97 feet and so on. You've got some street trees planted around the cul-de-sac you've got some landscaping inside the cul-de-sac. You've got three units utility plan showing the water coming in off the street with stubs, stubs and here's the water main transformer pad, water shut off you've got existing sewer manhole. You've got a sewer line that connects here on the easterly side of the property and you also have a PVC sanitary sewer which connects to Gray Street on the westerly side of the property. There's an underground detention basin. It exists at the site and ostensibly it would be used for the future development conditions. Then we've just got some specs, some bituminous concrete paving what the specs are, the walkway, the curbing, the tree planting, your catch basin, stormwater treatment, outlet control structures, sanitary manhole structures, the detention basin, what that's going to look like your subsurface infiltration system maintenance port. And then you've got your inlet and outlet details so some some details that the town engineer would likely be more interested in we haven't got any feedback from him but I think he also knows what we're looking to do here so quickly but effectively that's what we're proposing. And, you know, obviously, the town has pretty robust and usual rules and regulations relative to the subdivision of land. And so we had asked for some waivers for certain things. And I don't know if we want to talk about those at this point, or if we want to, you know, continue to, if we want to talk to about Ms. Breastrop's proposed conditions. I think if you've completed your presentation we'd like to go to the site visit report and yeah, sure. That would be the next item on our usual order of things. So, are you finished. We can always I can always answer questions and I can keep the screen up or I can stop sharing if you want to see everybody you tell me. Well, why don't you stop for a moment. Okay, easy enough. Great, thanks. So, we did have two site visits yesterday. I think Janet and I were at this property and then John Janet and Johanna and I were at the second property for our second hearing. Janet, do you want to do the site visit report. I'm sorry, I could, I could I would love you to chime in I feel like I visit this property at least four times so far so I'm not sure. Is there anything new. The only thing, the new thing I noticed was the, that there was a roadway from the one parking lot to the other. And one of the really lovely old buildings was taken down. And I mean a lot is pretty much just as described it does slope down. You know, it's, you know, there's obviously a brand new building on it with I think 24 units or more I can't remember quite. It's, I mean, do you have anything to offer it's, you know, it's next to a railway line. I can't remember if there's a sidewalk in front I was trying to remember that earlier. Is there a sidewalk on Main Street. I don't think there's a sidewalk on the Gray Street frontage. There's a sidewalk on Main Street, and there's definitely ample parking for everybody because there's now to combine parking lots, and the building that the older building that's there has several offices there and I think one person who lives there too. And so, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's a nice site, you know, the building it's an attractive building that was built the building that's there is still very attractive. I can't remember anything about locations of trees. Do you remember anything done. I didn't focus on the trees, you know that was the first time I'd been on the site since the house was demolished. And as you mentioned the connection between the two parking lots have been constructed. I've been there before I've been there several times. I think in the conversation with Mr. Robleski we discussed the fact that this is sort of a hypothetical process we're going through with the ultimate aim of freezing the zoning prior to the passage of the latest mixed use building zoning. And, but Chris pointed out that we have to take it seriously this is a, you know, sort of the price of paying the zone of freezing the zoning is to go through this process. And so, I think that that's something that I'm going to want to keep in mind as we're talking about waivers. So, anyway, I don't have anything else to say about the site visit report. And if you don't have anything else. And the next usual topic is questions from the board. I think Tom or Chris one of you it might be good to just go through each of the waivers that's being requested. So that we kind of get those fixed in our minds as we have the conversation. Tom, I'm not sure we really need the visuals for that, because it's most of your waivers are not concerning the actual design it's concerned it's concerning the process we're going through and the requirements of the process. Yeah, I mean, if Mr. Brestrup wants I can pull up, she had circulated our application and part of the application was the waiver letter. So I'm happy to bring that up if we want to go through that I think Chris might have a few extra from her development application report that she can just interject so we can, we can talk about those. Sure, why don't you bring that up. Actually before we go, go ahead and bring it up but before you do any reading from it I see two hands. Jack. I wonder if we get a rundown of the pre versus post kind of development factors here, you know, with regard to impervious cover buildings, etc. Just trying to get a handle on that. All right. That would be on. Maybe the second of your drawings, is that right. Yeah, let me. So Jack I don't know if this is what you're looking for you know underneath you could see what exists. You know the former building location the existing building it says it says to be removed but that's just assuming this plan went into exist and same thing with here so you can see what you've got. I don't think we show parking area like so we don't have like a total developable area and and what it would turn into in this plan. But you can certainly see where the building the existing building locations are in relation to the lots, but but in your in your mind it's roughly, you know, similar to the pre development in terms of coverage. Yeah, well in terms of in purple and you know pavement and building area. I mean is it. Oh yeah I mean if we. So again we're walking down a hypothetical if if we were to build this three lot subdivision. There would likely be less pavement than existing might like less coverage, I'll say then exist. My guess. Okay. All right I just trying to get a feel for that. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. Chris I'm going to call on you next. Do you want to comment on that exchange. Yes, I just wanted to note that we really don't have any plans for these three lots and that's typical of a subdivision plan the subdivision is all about the roadway and the division of the parcel into blocks. And it's not necessarily about what's going to go on each lot unless you also have a site plan review that goes along with the subdivision which would be true of a cluster subdivision, but for this type of subdivision we wouldn't necessarily know anything about what would go on and any of these lots, but each one would come before the planning board for approval, unless it were residential subdivision and if single family homes were going to be built or that wouldn't be necessary but this has been characterized as a non residential subdivision. So I would assume that buildings that would be built here would be mixed use or office or something like that rather than single family homes but anyway those things would be approved later on after the subdivision was approved. But since you touched on it. What is it in the documents we received that would make us know that this was not a residential subdivision. Where is that indicated in Mr. I think it's Mr Chamberlain's development impact report development impact statement. Is there any mention in there. Or someone somewhere in the paperwork that was submitted. There's a statement that this is a non residential subdivision. I'm not. It doesn't jump out at me right now but maybe Mr. Maybe Mr. Reedy could point us in the direction of where it says that. Tom you have any. I'm looking myself. It could be that it was in the pro. Oh here it is. Yes, page one of Mr Chamberlain Berkshire design groups. Development statement the second line down type of project non residential subdivision. And I think just to put a finer point on it for the for the sake of clarity and maybe argument. Simply because it has been designated here as a non residential subdivision. I don't think that would preclude the applicant in the future from developing it as a residential subdivision provided that they met with they met the zoning requirements in the zoning district for single family to family etc. Okay. So that distinction doesn't have any practical impact at this point. I think so far as I think in your rules and regulations there's a couple of places that that mentioned non residential and I think that's because the state law requires a preliminary plan to have been filed for non residential. Because typically with non residential they want to give the planning board an opportunity to review it versus residential where you can, there's no requirement in a residential subdivision to submit a preliminary plan. There's no definitive preliminaries, besides the purpose for we're using a for but like preliminary plans are used to give have a discussion in form set formally but informally with the planning board before the developer goes and spends real money and designing a definitive plan which is much more costly than a preliminary plan so there is a distinction in your rules and regulations as far as timing goes and in state law as far as timing goes, but there's no other import to it. Okay, thank you. Janet. I have a question about like context and process so Mr blaski is asking for waivers of requirements in our rules and regs for subdivision subdivision plants, and then, you know, and then also in Christine breast strips. In draft conditions, there's a lot of references to, you know, we'll get more information on this or get more, you know, prior to the endorsement of the definitive subdivision plan by the planning board. So, I was just kind of a little bit lost between those two things like is Mr Edie asking for an absolute waiver of you know these 20 conditions, or, and then is Ms. Edie recommending that we don't have to address them now but when it comes time for the definitive subdivision plan and we have to approve that, then we can have a we can get much more detail that we normally would get earlier. And this is this definitive subdivision plan discussion. Yeah, but the later is probably when, you know, in the event that they actually want to build this subdivision when they come for site plan review. So I think there's some time limit where we have to have an endorsement of the definitive plans I just wanted to see if Chris could give me the context of it, are we talking about waivers of conditions forever. Okay, there's still enforcement and just put us in time and space. All right, Chris. So one thing is that the planning board can wave any requirement that's in the planning board rules and regulations. The planning board can't really wave state law but your rules and regulations have a lot of specifics in them and you can wave any specifics that are in there that aren't also in the state law. So that's one thing. The planning department is looking at this now is that, you know, Mr Roblesky is asking for approval of this definitive subdivision plan. And that is something that takes effort on the part of town staff and effort on the part of the planning board. And I think we all need to take this seriously. And in my mind, and I believe in the mind of the building commissioner, you know, we, we think that most of the items that are required by our subdivision rules and regulations should be provided. And our, the conditions that we've suggested would require those conditions to be satisfied or those requirements to be satisfied, prior to the planning board actually signing a definitive subdivision plan. Whatever Mr real bless you wants to do with the plan whether he just wants to keep it on the shelf or whether he wants to record it needs to be endorsed by the planning board in order for it to have substance or wait or actually, you know, to exist. The planning board can approve it. But if the planning board doesn't then endorse it then the board then the subdivision plan doesn't really exist. The way the law is written, the planning board has 90 days from the time that something is submitted, until the planning board needs to act. So that's the period that we're in right now. But the rules are undefined with regard to how long does the planning board or the applicant have to bring back the documents for endorsement. I'm getting into the weeds a little bit, but essentially, according to our town attorney what this means is that some applicants, you know, put off bringing their plans back for endorsement for years. And then they are allowed to say that the eight years of their zoning freeze starts on the day of the endorsement so they get like, you know, a few years ahead of time before they bring the plans back for endorsement and then they get eight years beyond that for a zoning freeze So we're trying to not allow that to happen. We're trying to be, you know, pretty careful and pretty deliberate about what we're doing where we're suggesting that some of the waivers that are requested by the applicant and Mr. It doesn't make sense, but many of them we feel should be complied with and and we can talk about that when we're going through the conditions but, you know, some of the things are not very expensive things and there is a an advantage going to the applicant to freeze the for a period of eight years as a result of this process. So we think everybody needs to take this seriously and only grant waivers that are really necessary or realistic, and then everybody agrees with. So, why am I saying all of that. Janet asked the question about like what stage are we in now and what what stage are we going to be in the future, the planning board can approve the plan the definitive subdivision plan with conditions and you can talk about which ones you want to have. And then sometime in the next six months or a year, the planning board will be asked to endorse the plan which means to sign it. And then Mr. obeleski will have a real plan that he can have either keep it or recorded at the registry and that will be the implement by which his zoning gets frozen. So the stage right now is reviewing the plans deciding how to condition it. Eventually you're going to make a determination about whether you're going to approve it. And then you know we move into that second stage. Does that answer miss McGowan's question. Yes, I have a follow up question so. And this is jumping a little head in the draft conditions you suggested that we endorse within six months of our approval. So, at that time, they would come back with all this much more detail, and we'd be sort of revisiting these issues and more detail is that correct. May I answer that. Yes, that's the idea. Period could be six months or it could be 12 months. That's a time period that was suggested by Joel Bard our town attorney from KP law. Six or 12 months makes sense but you have to put a time limit on it otherwise as I said, the applicant and we know that Mr obeleski has all the best intentions and so does Mr really but it is possible that they could take years to bring back their plan for endorsement and so we want to, you know, put a time limit on so that we get this process done and move on to the next thing. Chris, can we compel them coming back with the material needed for endorsement. I know that if they want to plan that's endorsed then they need to bring back the material that you require. Otherwise they don't have to have the option to not endorse it at that point. Yes. Do we have the option to not approve this definitive subdivision plan. Do have that option. Yes. Okay. All right, Janet I hope that gets you partway to your questions. Good for now thanks. I'm just, what's the status again I might have missed you know with regard to the site does it review but I know you know both buildings will be coming down at some point but what's the existing situation there and do these buildings have any historic value and would there be any you know consideration of, you know, moving them and and reusing them, you know, but then the Amherst area. Tom. Yeah so there's that. I'm just going to brush her pet her hand up I might steal her thunder if Chris if you want to go I'm happy to relent but yeah so there's, there are two existing buildings on the site. And I want to. I'll guess I'll be clear my answer for the purpose of the sub of subdivision. I don't think any of this stuff matters for the purposes of ultimate site development will be back before you probably in the relatively near term next couple of months. There's a separate process that separate and distinct from the subdivision approval. I think for site plan approval for what Mr or bless he's looking to do on that 446 main street site. You know that he's, you'll see what the ultimate plan is. So it's and I know this is tough to wrap your head around because you know we're talking about this being a fiction which it is. And I also want to take a step back and say you know we respect the process by requesting these waivers. You know we're saying acknowledging what it is, but we also want to make sure you know we respect the board, the town the process so we don't want to try to say don't worry about this it's, it's not a real subdivision so we don't have to do any of this stuff so you know we're on board I think what we talked through the waivers and ultimately Ms breast drops proposed conditions. We're fine with all of them there's probably one that I want to talk about but otherwise, you know I don't we don't see a problem in going through that process to get you know hydro cad storm water calculations subsurface soil and like all of that stuff. We can certainly do so, you know that's that's all fine. And so I know I'm not directly answering a question jack but you'll you'll see in the coming months what's going to be proposed there I think that I think the board will be really pleased with what ultimately is going to be proposed there. So, a little bit separate and distinct right Tom thanks. I'm Jack I see your thumb so I guess you're all set Chris was there anything else you wanted to say, since you had your hand up when jack started or when Tom started responding. Tom sort of said what I would have said. All right. So why don't, why don't we go through the waivers and. Yeah. So as Miss breast strip noted. One of the things that I like about your rules and regulations as many other towns have you have the ability to wave certain strict compliance with some of those requirements so what what we've gone through here is no some filing requirements so three overlay acetates the depicting flood blown air flood prone areas aquifer recharge areas soil slopes greater than 25% and vegetation types. I know that in Ms breast strips development application report I think she was waiting for council from Jason skills on that. If we if we want to have more discussion about that, or just to put a pin in it find out what Mr skills thinks is important not important and then if he thinks it's important. You know, it'll probably be included in the next iteration. If not then, you know, hopefully the board would see their way to print a waiver. All right Tom, having kind of had you start this I've got a question for Chris. Would we be better off just going through your one of your documents, which include, you know which lists these waivers or should we be going through what Tom was showing part of the application first. It's really hard to say in fact, I think, ultimately, it would be better to bounce back and forth that that would confuse everybody so. Okay. I guess it's good to go through Tom's list and then we can go back and look at my list and see what we haven't touched yet and what I said about the three acetate overlays was that I was going to ask the town engineer whether that was still required or not. I don't know about it because people don't use acetate overlays anymore. And the other thing that I thought is that at some point, it should be shown on the plans what the soils are, and what the vegetation types are so that should be documented on the definitive subdivision plans somewhere. And right now it isn't so that was my answer to that one. So maybe we try proceeding just as we did this one. Tom, why don't you describe what you're proposing and then Chris maybe you can let us know your thoughts on it. Great. So the next one is the definitive plan contents. And so the scale that we've proposed is one inch equals 20 feet required is one inch equals 40 feet. I don't want to speak for Chris but seemed like she was fine with that. I was fine with that. Yep. Well that's a larger scale so I would think that would be a lot more detail which would be a positive change. Right. For the data mall elevations to refer to USC and GS benchmarks if within 500 feet of the subdivision. We don't tend to engineer on that to make sure that what you've shown on the plan meets that requirement. And I'm not enough school didn't survey to know that. Okay. So the next one is the seal and certificate number of the surveyor. And we can get this if it's something I don't remember what Chris had said but it's it's not a big deal I think it was just at the time of submission we had not we did not have it from Randy he obviously signed the application. So, you know he's on board and no funny business here so if that's a requirement I don't see an issue. Yeah. So let's start getting into those where knowing that this wasn't going to be built from our perspective, not going through that exercise and expense and so the first one is subsurface soil conditions on the track and test pit data. I assume this is related to the use of a septic system. A septic but for stormwater. So what you get curve numbers you do hydro cat analysis, and then you figure out what the stormwater does on site. You know and not to put the cart before the horse but this was something that I think we're fine doing John has all the test pit data. He's just going to have to have Berkshire design go through the time etc of doing a hydro cat analysis showing, you know what the impervious surface of see it center east way does. And showing how you know we've come up with a stormwater solution for it so you know again. We can we can certainly comply so I don't want to say like we're withdrawing these technically but we get the sense that if they're not going to be granted we're going to we're going to comply right Chris what was your comment on this. You just wanted Mr ready to say exactly what he said. I'm in of manholes I think same thing that's just another technical level of design showing like topographically where those manholes are going to be but if you want us to really go through and design the site then those will be certainly part of it. It seemed to me that those were done appropriately there were rims and inverts on those manholes, it couldn't be checked again but I didn't have a problem with that. Okay, I'll check. There was sewer though lot three. There was a stub shown to service lot three but there wasn't any information about that and there wasn't an invert on the stuff coming out of that manhole. Okay. And I also wondered this is a detail but it should there be a why connection for lot one. There was a connection that shows a, you know, a T connection but I didn't know if that was appropriate. So that was just something that I wanted somebody to look at. So the next one is gas utility is maybe coordinated with the gas company and street lighting. I mean, the gas utility is probably a fair waiver to request given that there's a gas moratorium. And I think street lighting what Ms. Brestrup has said is that the planning board traditionally requires that there's street light at the at the head of the way where the where the new road intersects the existing road that that would be fine as a condition. And if you spoke with the tone engineer and he gave us an email that said that's not necessary because there's an ambient light, then I think the planning board would go along with that. Drainage calculations again given the fact that you know we're not going to construct this we thought why go through the exercise of the drainage calculations but again going back to the earlier comment that you know we'll design the site as if it were to be built then we'll provide those drainage calculations and we can get those to Jason so he can look at them and confirm that you know the water runs downhill and it doesn't leave the site faster or less quality than it does pre development conditions. So that was 15. I just suggested to try to find that middle ground for some of these was no prior to actually constructing the subdivision we would provide these. I can appreciate how the board may not want those and wants to opine or approve a plan that doesn't have those to be the last ones that I have here I'm going to make that request and I'll explain why, but for these I think it makes complete sense for the board prior to approval to have that information, or between approval and endorsement which as noted endorsements really the big thing here. A survey tied to the mass quarter in its survey monumentation. This came from Berkshire I think it's something that we just asked Jason about and see if he's okay with it. I interject here if Mr reedy would contact Jason it's been difficult for us. I have to be candid about this to get comments from the town engineer. And I think the reason is that he is aware that this is not going to be built not proposed to be built and so you know he's got a lot of other things on his mind and for me to get response from him is challenging but for Mr. he's got a lot of other things on his mind and for me to get response from him and maybe less challenging. We'll, we'll certainly reach out. And Chris probably what I'll do before is make a list of those items that I need to check in with him on, and then I'll send it to you just to make sure I'm not missing something, and then I'll get in touch with him. Okay, good. Distance in nearest town county or state monument on an accepted way. Again just an additional something to talk to Jason about if it's required will provide it. So we have a lot of times I a lot of times subdivisions are done on large tracks of land where they might have 50 feet of frontage and so you know they go back into 600 acres. So we have a little something different here. So just to consider that as we're requesting these sketch plan showing potential development for any adjacent land owned by the applicant, I would suggest everything's developed around there. So this probably is a fine waiver. So we have streets and sewers again that's something we didn't provide given our position on this but it's something we can provide. Same thing with cross section for roads. So those are some those are a couple of things so those won't be waiver requests. I thought those would be pretty easy to manage. Yeah, precisely. Yes. And then maybe I'm going to skip performance guarantees and just go down because these next a few of these I'm going to just glob together and hopefully have a discussion about street lights same thing if I guess we'll check with the town engineer if he says you need one will put one if he thinks we're fine then you know we'll ask for this waiver performance guarantee is the first one I would like to talk about for a little bit and so as you know. So performance guarantee can come in many different forms surety bond covenant saying that we're not going to release any of these locks unless and until we've got the town engineer to come in and say you have constructed in accordance with the plan. And so for here because we're saying we're really not going to construct this. So the suggestion is, I would say prior to the receipt of a building permit so all the other ones as, as Miss Brestrup noted we're prior to the receipt of the endorsed plan. So you have approval, six months we have to or 12 months we have to do some work endorsement, and then probably put it on a shelf and never do anything. However, in the, in the case that john says you know what the markets changed I want to take down this build you know what let's let's build this. We would then say if we are going to build it in earnest that's when a performance guarantee should come into play, and so our request here would be. It's endorsed with a condition that prior to receipt of a building permit, we get a performance guarantee satisfactory to the town engineer and the town plant. And so at least at that point john's not putting up the commit a security or surety bond he's not putting a covenant, because I could just see as you can appreciate what happens is if you put a contract for covenant on the property you're encumbering the title to that and so then any mortgage holder is going to say well what's this about or any potential purchaser is going to say what's this about here because we're not actually building it but it would be a condition if the subdivision ever was to be built. So the town is protected. We would just look for that timing with the performance guarantee so like I said all the other ones, you know we're okay spending the money and doing this one probably feels a little bit more appropriate immediately prior to or as a requirement of receiving a building permit. So that's one that I have have a problem with because when we talked to Rob more and I talked to Joel Bart about this, and he said we really needed a performance guarantee of some sort before the planning board endorsed the plan. And I think my feeling was putting a covenant on the property for the the three lots and the roadway would be a reasonable thing to do because it wouldn't require any transfer of money any purchase of a bond or putting money aside and an escrow account or anything like that so I would like to explore the possibility of requiring the covenant. I'm going to talk to Joel. I mean I'm happy to explore it. And just in my mind, when I'm thinking, okay, john goes to refinance this property. You're going to have a title exam done there's going to be a title exam that shows there are covenants which attached to the land, and then you're talking to lenders, what it what that actually means and how it doesn't actually have any impact on this, you know, million dollar building that that john has just built, so to speak so it's, it's that so maybe Chris if we could put a pin in that. And, and, you know whether it's I trades and emails with Joel or we I go through you, however you want to do it is fine. Because if we can find some middle ground, we're happy to do it, it's just on the one hand john's either paying money to a surety company for this, or he's got an encumbrance on his title and in for something that's not going to be built so either one of them, and if Rob can hold up a building permit. Because none of that doesn't exist and it's never going to get built. So Rob wouldn't issue the building permit until sufficient performance guarantee that exists so that that's the way I was thinking about it but I'm happy to explore. Good. So anything about covenants. Is there, would it be legitimate for you to place a covenant on this for some duration and then say, you know at the conclusion of the actual development of the property. There's some mechanism to remove the covenant. That's not a bad idea. Mr Chairman and I think what I'd like to do is just think about that a little more and just the timing of that and how Mr Oblesky is going to finance this second stage of development, assuming that it works out then. I don't think we have an issue with I don't want to speak for john but I don't think you know as long as is if it works out sequentially I think that's fine so I think it's certainly worth exploring. Janet, do you want to say something. You are mute there you go. So, I think usually the performance bond is not just is to make sure that you know is to protect the public for when the developer starts but doesn't finish or digs and puts some infrastructure in but doesn't sell the lots or, you know, in a recent years, you know, doesn't do the top coat of the case we had covenants for that one I can't remember top coat of doesn't finish the project and so I would be uncomfortable tying it to the building permits because if you know, if I'm not saying Mr Oblesky but just the developer kind of goes down, you know, goes bankrupt in the middle of the project that's what the performance bond or the covenants are for is to protect the public from a half built project so I would like to see the covenants or the performance bond, you know, which also could just be five years, or you know, you buy a performance barn for five years and then it will, you know, extinguish whenever you know the thing is built. I don't want I would be very uncomfortable tying it to the building permit I think that will help give the guarantees that we are looking for normally. If I could just put a pin in that and I think we probably have a solution but what you mentioned was when somebody starts and doesn't finish. What I'm saying is, prior to that stuff like we cannot start a developer could not start unless and until they had that guarantee in place. What I'm saying is just don't make that as a requirement of endorsement. So there the sequences you know approval, six months to a year endorsement, and then some period of time if ever before construction starts construction could never start if that during that between endorsement and construct, construction start. If we didn't do what we have to do. That's just for clarity that all said, you know let us explore and see if there's a way to smooth this over so we're not going through brain damage. Right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Mr. charity money. Mr. bless me. Yeah, there you go. Yes. Yes, John. I'm sorry. I see your hand. Yes, thank you. I just want to make sure the board understands that, you know, I do want to develop these parcels and add more housing, which is going to include some affordable housing there. The six month thing came up as far as the actual endorsement. And Tom maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong but the zoning freeze doesn't take effect until it's endorsed or approved. No, you're, you're frozen, you're in this thing called the process freeze john so as long as from the time of the filing that preliminary plan as young as long as you're pursuing this, you're fine. I thought at some point somebody said I had to be recorded before that zoning freeze took effect. But it's you're in the process freeze, once we so you get eight years from the endorsement. So all of this is extra so a Chris was saying by putting a timeline on it she's saying unscrupulous developers. You get the approval, wait a couple of years then get the endorsement so from the preliminary plan when they actually get the endorsement is two years let's say, and then from the endorsement to when the zoning freeze expires is another eight. So they've gained themselves a period of 10 years, which is contrary to what the statute really is intending to do. So I just I just want to have the board and myself on the same page here that you know I do intend to file a site plan review sooner than later so I don't want that to be held up I guess my point, waiting for another six months or something like that so that's what my basic question is. So I think it's entirely. I mean if you want to come back to us two weeks after we approve this definitive subdivision plan and ask for endorsement, you know we're not going to we're not trying to delay you and saying that we're going to endorse it for six months. It's, we were discussing it more as a, an outer limit for the interim for the period between approval and endorsement so if you want to accelerate that. I don't think I don't see why we would object. I don't think there's any reason to accelerator, if I'm understanding Tom correctly that it doesn't really impact the site plan review because that's a separate process in itself. And I took and probably work together. We've already frozen the zoning so we can review a project under the old zoning anytime. I think the endorsement is the thing that starts the eight year time clock. And that's the primary implication of when we do that endorsement. Understood. Thank you. And then two more Mr chair this section here. I think it's going to have a similar outcome however we deal with the performance guarantee is going to be mimicked in this section. And then this last one is just, there was an inspection fee that gets paid to the town. I think it's almost $1,100 I may be off a little bit on my numbers there and so we this is one where we would say, prior to us actually constructing something. We will pay prior to getting the permit to construct something, but to have john put it up $1,100 when he's not going to construct something. You know, probably there could be a better way to do it so so that's our request Chris I don't know what your senses on this one. Thanks Tom Chris. That one makes sense to me. And I actually didn't even have it in my list of things that I talked about in the development application report so that would be via a waiver that we would support. Okay. So, thanks. Thanks for going through those Tom and Chris it sounds like you and Tom have some conversation with Joel Bard and Jason skills, Jason and the board of health obviously. And so, do you Chris have what you need from us this evening have you accomplished your goal of introducing this project and, you know, starting to help us understand what the issues are. Yes, I think so. Right. Board members are there questions you want to ask of Mr Roblesky's team this evening. This will certainly be coming back. Chris, I think in some of our communication earlier you'd suggested May 4, I think a month for when this could be brought back. Is that right. And then May 4, because that would be after the board of health would meet on May on April 21. Your next meeting is April 20, so I wouldn't suggest continuing to April 20. So May 4 is the correct date to continue in my mind. Okay. And Mr readie does that time. Seem adequate or not excessive. No, no, that's, I think that's fine. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I assume we need a motion to continue this hearing to May 4. Johanna. I'm happy to make that motion but are we going to have a chance to ask questions to. Oh yeah, sure, sure. Then I'll. Why don't you hold off, and we'll continue with board questions go ahead. I'm trying to remember what you said at the last meeting, and I'm sorry I know I could probably go back in the minutes but can you just. This seems like an awful lot of hassle to go through if you don't actually intend to build it so can you just talk again about why it's so important to you to freeze the zoning. Sure, so it's. I don't know the date I don't know if it was, it was January of this year, and I've forgotten but the town had passed mixed use mixed use owning bylaw that modified what was required. As far as what had to be dedicated in the floor space to commercial uses versus residential uses. That given what Mr obelisky has found given this location that would be, you know for downtown probably makes a lot of sense given the amount of walking traffic that you have there and how businesses kind of get businesses if you will. This is right on the outskirts of the downtown, if you will down the hill and so having to having to be obligated to perform with the think the 30% is would be detrimental to the project here and would probably, you know, would probably not provide additional housing or affordable housing, as Mr obelisky has said that's that's the intent as you'll see and pick a number, you know, a month or so so in order to keep the zoning as it was at the time prior to. That's why we're going through this. Thank you. On that topic. Am I correct that the filing for this subdivision plan came after the town implemented the 10% or whatever for affordable housing on all projects so that any any new housing you propose under the previous zoning would in fact include that or meet that requirement. Correct yeah we are we're subject to. Yes, that was in the zoning by law at the time we froze the zoning by right. Okay, so it's really just the mixed use change that is frozen. Correct. Okay. All right, great. Jack. Yeah, I just wanted to second Johannes motion. Oh, okay. Thank you. All right, are there any more board is there any more board discussion or questions for this evening. All right, going once. All right, so we have a motion and we have a second. Do we want to open it up to the public. Oh, thank you, Tom. All right, attendees up right we're up to 12 attendees. Anybody, any, any members of the public want to make any comments. Okay. Not seeing any. Okay, why don't we go ahead with our vote to continue this hearing to May 4. Do we need a time certain Chris. I would say 635 if, if Pam agrees with that Pam is my sanity check. My problem with that Chris is, I did not bring the board with me so I do believe to the best of my knowledge that we can do 635. I think so. So, Johanna, are you all right with amending your motion to include the time of 635 on May 4. Love that amended version. And Jack, you still second. Okay, I see a thumb so we will conclude that you second the amended motion. All right, so we'll go through a roll call. Maria. And Jack. Tom. Hey. And Janet. I, I. Thank you. And Johanna. I. And I'm an I as well. Okay, Tom and John. Thank you very much. And I guess we'll see you in a month. Great. Thanks so much. Okay, the time is 740. And we'll go on to item four in our agenda. This is a second public hearing. We are 2022 dash 12 Amherst office park LLC. 19 research drive. Request site plan review approval under section 3.358.1. Of the zoning bylaw to add an entry. Into office suite one with a covered porch. Project includes removing the existing window. In addition to that, we also have an HVAC unit. To the north and adding 68 square feet of love. A lot coverage. The applicant also requests modification of SPR. 2002 dash 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1. Amherst professional park phase two. By removing condition number six regarding visitor trips. By accepting new landscaping plan for landscaping at the entry. Concerning map 21B parcel, 82 in the PRP professional research park zoning district. Do we have any board disclosure on this this evening? Okay. So I see Mr. Lavertier has been brought in as the. Applicant. Good evening, Ron. How are we doing? Good to see you. Do you have a presentation you'd like to make? And after you, we will have the site visit report. I see Chris's hand actually. So Chris, do you want to introduce this before Ron starts? I don't want to introduce it, but I want to acknowledge the fact that Nate Malloy is here and he's been managing this project. And he may have some introduction, introductory comments that he would like to make. Thank you. Do you want to say anything? No, thanks. Well, Ron, go. I mean, it's a, not a complicated project. And I think the development application report, you know, clarified everything. So nothing at this time. Okay. Thank you. Run or you're on. Okay. It's a pretty simple project. We want to remove a window. And put a entry door into office suite one. That you have plans for. We're going to do that. Our goal here is. Heart and Patterson originally own the whole building and. Occupied probably 90% of it and rented about 10%. They're there. The model for their business has changed. You know, they do a lot more. Had they do a lot more work. To have meetings with their, with their clients. And they wanted to shrink. So. We, we struck a deal and I ended up buying the building and I'm, I'm in the process of working through. Making it into six suites. And, you know, so, so they wanted their own entrance. And I said, I would try to comply with that. And I said, you know, I'm not going to do that. We were proposing a little bit of a walkway, a covered entry area. It will all, it will be handicap accessible. And we're going to move one plant. To the North. And we're actually going to remove the air conditioning units that that's there that was originally placed there for the big servers. And that servers no longer in use and they've been removed from the building. So we don't need to actually cool that area with additional cooling. So we'll be just taking that air conditioning unit out. That's the, you know, the crux of the main, the work on the site. And I'm going to go back to condition six, which is back in. In 2002, when we were, we proposed this building. Site visits by the public were not allowed in the PRP. And, you know, there was some discussion as to whether, you know, being a fight, whether somebody's financial. Investment was actually a business to business relationship. And so the board at the time found it. Reasonable to have one visit a day. Coming into the building. So they could have onsite meetings. The world has changed dramatically since then. And the zoning has changed since then. Now. PRP has been rezoned so that you can, you can have. A reasonable number of. Of office visits by appointment. And that's, you know, all their, all their offices, it's our by appointment. And certainly anybody renting the space would fall under that category. And, you know, so that one traffic visit a day. We'd like to get removed because it doesn't fit. And so that's, you know, I would say in the, I would say late 2000s. Okay. So we had site visit for this project as well yesterday. Johanna or Janet. Do you either of you want to. Hit start us off. And I was present as well. Johanna. So we, we met at the site. We started by just looking at where the. New portico would be built. And how it intersects with the sidewalk there and the removal of an air conditioner unit. From there, we walked over to the kind of boundary of the property and. We talked about the current, I believe a hundred foot buffer that's there with the adjacent property and how we would. How there are plans in place to potentially fill some of those trees and. Reduce that to the required 50 foot buffer, I think. And. But there would be negotiations, you know, down the road with the parking area. So we had a lot of plans to explore that. And then we walked to the driveway where the. This building's park. Parking area intersects with research drive. And discussed the plans for the signage for the building. That's it. Unless anybody has anything. Thank you. Thank you, Johanna. Janet, do you want to add anything? No, I don't want to add anything. I think the research drive is a private way. And it's maintained by the building owners. And there's four. It's kind of a surprising site. I've never been to, there's like four large. Office buildings with like parking lots for each of them. And so to the buildings are owned by Mr. Verdi. And one is by Kate Atkinson. And I lost Dr. Atkinson. I forget who the other person was, but they're kind of nestled away. And so they're all in the apartment complex. And then also a residential neighborhood. A single family homes. That's actually hard to see because there's so many trees. It's easier to see the apartments next door. But, you know, all the buildings were pretty attractive and well maintained and landscaped. It was kind of private. Like I never even knew it really was all there until I showed up and stuff like that. So. Great. All right. Thank you. All right. Questions from the board. Jack. I have to say I had been a. A working. Participant on research drive for how many. Ron. Is this a board disclosure, Jack? It's a disclosure. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm familiar with it. I was on the same, but I do want to say that I. I think Ron has done a great job. In terms of, you know, providing, you know, you know, increased housing and commercial stock within the town. And, you know, he brings a lot of ingenuity into his project. So. Just wanted to say that about Ron. Okay. Thank you, Jack. There are other questions from the board. Janet. I have a question about what the current requirement in PRP or limits on visitors. Is there like a cap in the number of visitors or just that everybody has to be by appointment. I. And is there a bylaw section I can look at. You want to answer that. Sure. Yeah. So after this building was permitted. It was permitted by site plan or view of the zoning change, right? So in the development application report, it was originally, there was just one kind of office category and now there's three. So 3.358. Point one. Is, you know, technical or professional offices and some of those conditions in the use chart is. Okay. Visits by appointment. And so. It doesn't have a limit. It almost actually is. It says predominantly by appointment and it makes it seem as if the first visit can be by appointment, but then any follow-up visit can just be as necessary. So it's a flexible language. But initially, you know, every visit has to be by appointment, but it doesn't limit, you know, daily trips or. Or number of, of visits, you know, per day or, or any limitation like that. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Nate. Well, I have a couple of questions. I'm not seeing a lot of hands from the board. One question I had was about the sidewalk that the new entry to the new portico. I don't see any real detail for that. Grade change that's necessary for the sidewalk to get to the new front door and elevate. So Chris, actually, I wondered, is it typical for us to accept. You know, to, to approve projects that don't have full sort of an actual engineering design or that are stamped from an engineer or an architect. That is not typical. This is a very small project. And you could ask for information about the elevation of the floor level and the elevation of the sidewalk. If you want that information and then the slope could be calculated. So that would be. Something that wouldn't be too hard to obtain. I mean, I guess the. The site plan that. Harold Leaton proposed does hat cross hatch the area of the, of the sidewalk, but. You know, particularly on entries with ADA and the mass access board and the kind of regulations and. Specific limits on slopes. I just wondered if that was something we might want to. Push for, but Chris, if. When Ron went for his. Building permit, would that be required anyway? That will be looked at when Ron goes for his building permit. You could have a condition that says that that. Access must be handicapped accessible. Right. Well, I mean the, the. The building code. Would require it to be handicapped accessible anyway. So I don't know that we need to add that. Okay. Okay. And then the other question I had was about. There were several photos included. One was a photo of a light fixture. And. I just wondered why we had that photo. It's not, it's not obviously dark sky compliant that you're. So it's, it wasn't clearly a fixture. You were going to be proposing to use. So what, what was that for? That photo of the light fixtures. The is the light fixture that will hang in the portico. So once it's in the portico, it's, it's basically dark sky compliant. Shielded. Yeah. Yes. So that, I mean, that's, you know, and it'll be above the level to which the, the trim boards go around. So, you know, that would make. No, it's just a very nice LED fixture that I kind of like the way it looks. So. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And I assume. I assume the photo of the front door is probably the existing front door. And you're going to duplicate that. Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Tom. Before we get to Tom, Chris, do you want to comment? Yeah, I don't think it would hurt to put on a condition that says that that. Sidewalk from the sidewalk up to the door needs to be handicapped accessible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Tom. Thanks. I'm not going to argue about it. I'm not actually sure that that's the case because you can access office suite one. Through the main entry. And so I don't think it would be required that that is also a handicap accessible entrance. If you have a handy main, the main entrance is handicapped accessible. So I don't know the rules on that, but my guess is that we may not actually have to require that given that. You have that interior access from the vestibule. So I'm. To tell me, I support all these interests as being handicapped accessible, but I'm guess what I'm saying is I don't know if they can hold this account. Or we can hold them accountable. Given. Given the law. Okay. Good. Good point, Tom. Nate, do you have a comment? Oh, no, sure. Yeah. I talked to Rob more of the building commissioner. So on work performed, it has to be accessible. If the public uses it. So if the public is going to be going into that. You know, into or out of that entrance. You know, building code would require it. So. You know, even if it's a back entrance, right? If this were work performed on essentially a back door, but public would be using it would need to be fully accessible. So. You know, the only. You know, my only caveat here would be if it's steep enough, it might need railings, right? You know, I'm assuming you can map, get the slope of the, the transition up to the landing of the, of the entry. It just may be, you know, if it's. Over a certain percentage of it might need railings, but I think. I think it can be managed. Yeah. And that, that could be part of Rob's review for, for building permit. Right. I mean, it says on the plans that won't, it'll be, you know, lower than that slope. So it, you know, essentially it's a slope walkway, not a ramp. So it doesn't need railings. Right. Okay. All right. Are there other. Board questions or board discussion. All right. We'll, we'll go. Offer public comment. Members of the public attendees. All 10 of you. Would anyone like to make a comment on this, on this project? I don't see any hands. Okay. I'm sorry, Pam. One public comment. And has popped up. All right. Oh, good. Thank you. All right. Gigi Barnhill. We will move you over into the participants and you can make your comment. Give us your name and your address. Right. I'm Gigi Barnhill Georgia Barnhill and my husband. Jim Barnhill. 54 Larks per drive. We're just wondering about the tree trimming aspect of this. And. Cause we like the full buffer. Is there some reason to cut that back by half? All right. Thank you. Excuse me. I'd like to say it also would there. Would that be part of, I, I'm hoping that would not be part of the permit that he would get at this point. All right. Thank you. And I will say that I don't believe that that. Buffer and the trees on it are a part of the. The approvals or the deliberation that we're having this evening. It did come up in the site. Plan review. Or. Or the rather the site visit we made yesterday. But it was sort of, an ancillary conversation. And, and was just sort of. Ron wanted to show us that area because I think at some point in the future, he thought we might. Be asked to, to, to think about it. Ron, do you want to make any comments on that topic? Well, you know, the big worry right now is the, you know, that, that. That lot that sits between 54 Larkspur and 19 research drive. Is heavily populated with white pine. And white pine is. Is having some issues and, you know, They're. Those trees may become dangerous. To the point where they're, you know, they're capable of. Both falling on my building and 54 Larkspur drive. You know, Nate actually gave me quite a bit of information that has been done by a forestry department, I believe at UMass. And so that, that's why I, I'm, you know, I'm even thinking of removing some trees and that will be, you know, something that would be addressed. In the future, it's certainly not part of this. This process. But, you know, and, you know, the barn Hills. I think probably should get that same information. And, you know, so they can make a. A good choice as to whether, you know, if these trees start getting weaker. They certainly don't want a tree coming down on their house. And so that's, you know, but this will be a, you know, a private conversation that I'm happy to have with them. As neighbors. And, you know, and, and, and, and I want to protect my building. And I'm sure they want to protect theirs. All right. Thank you, Ron. Janet. I don't have a question, but I did remember from the site visit that Mr. Libertier said that. The new sign that he wants to install will not be lit. And then it seemed to be, there were no changes in terms of increased or decreased lighting, except for the doorway, the new doorway. I don't know if we need to mention that as a condition or, you know, since there's no additional lighting, of that sign or anything like that. I know sign rakes are very complicated and. Lighting can be testy also. So I just wanted to add that. Thank you. Chris, do you want to comment on that at all? I don't think I have any comments on that. But when we get to the end of this process here, you may want to list some conditions like you usually do. And I don't think I have any comments on that. But when we get to the end of this process here, I don't think I have any comments on that. I usually do. And I don't know if Nate. Has made a list of. Possible conditions yet. Okay. Well, we'll give him some time to scribble a few down. Jack. Yes, I was going to move to close the hearing, but again, subject to any conditions. That I'm not aware of. It seems like it's fairly. Yeah. We'll defer to Nate. With regard to. The conditions, but anyway, wanted to move that that we close the hearing. Subject to any conditions that are. You know, from late during the deliberation. Okay. Thank you for that motion. Tom. I'll second. All right. So board members, we have a motion on the floor to close the hearing. Do we want to have some discussion of. Potential conditions or any other. Topics before we have a vote to close the hearing. So thus far, the conditions that I've heard were to. Require the new. Path to the new entry to meet. Accessibility requirements. And there was some question as to whether we needed to. Note that there was no lighting on the new sign. But Chris, it didn't seem like you had any comments on that. So having a condition for something that's. Already proposed seems a little bit. Unnecessary. You could have a condition that says that the new sign will be on. The new sign. Well, are we, do we want to prohibit. Lighting. I mean, or are we simply okay with it not being lit. If you don't want to drive out there someday and find a light and not, and be surprised, you could say that the new sign will be on lit. Okay. You know, I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to get muddy the waters, but it seemed like Mr. Laverde. I didn't want to light the sign, you know, and thought that it was adequate that people's headlights could see that. I do want to know if there's like. He's asking for five different waivers. Would we be discussing that after we close the hearing and we discuss conditions. We'll discuss it now. Okay. I think we just at least go through them quickly. All right. All right. Do you want to, do you want to lead us through the. The waiver requests. Maybe you want to ask Nate to do that because. Sorry. Okay, Nate. Sure. Thanks. And I was going to comment about the sign too. I think it's fine if you say it's an unlit sign as a. Condition just to reinforce the. The point. And so, you know what the planning word is approving is actually the new survey, right? The site plan. So that shows. You know, there's like three site, three pole lights on the site. And everything that's there. So I think. You know, I think the few conditions that were discussed is. It's fine. So. I'm sorry, Nate, but the second of the waivers says the lighting plan, the existing lighting is unchanged. Right. Except for a new hanging light in the new entry, which means there's no new light at a sign. Right. Yeah. Sure. But I think, you know, like Chris was saying, you know, it could be in the future that they would want to illuminate the sign or that it, that happens. And so. I know it's not indicated at all, but sometimes that, you know, they'll have a ground mount light. You know, uplight on the sign. So. I agree. So that's the, you know, that's the second waiver request as a, you know, from a lighting plan because there's no changes other than the hanging light in the portico. Right. So, you know, there's no significant changes in terms of the landscaping. Requested a waiver from the erosion plan. I mean, there's no. No wetlands and it's a minimal, you know, there's 68 square feet of new. Of new law coverage. So it's a minimal disturbance to the ground. A waiver from us. So I'm sorry, but it took me a minute to realize. And let me tell me if I've got this right. The waiver, for instance, for your first bullet under landscape plan. The waiver is not. We want to remove one shrub. The waiver is, we don't want to submit a landscape plan. Right. So we don't want to submit a landscape plan, a lighting plan and erosion plan. A sign plan and a traffic impact statement. Those are the waivers. Right. So typically those would be, you know, those first three or four might be separate sheets, you know, developed by an architect. And then the, the traffic one would be. Either a letter or a study done by an engineer. So the waiver request is for the right. Producing those documents. Okay. All right. Thanks for that clarification. Chris, you still have your hand up. Are you. Yeah. I wanted to clarify something and that is that when Mr. Laverdeer came into us to. Propose what he has proposed. He didn't have a. Survey of the property. He had something that was a partial. Plan based on the construction drawings for the building. So. Mr. Mora, Rob Mora, the building commissioner. Recommended that we require a survey of the property. So he has gotten a survey of the property. So as part of what you're doing tonight. Is that you are. Acknowledging the receipt of this survey. And I think, you know, there's no reason to think that the survey isn't correct. So you might actually. Go as far as approving this. This site plan. The way it's shown and it's shown as. The existing conditions. And then the. The proposal to add the sidewalk. Add the walkway and move the shrub and add the sign. So you're kind of. Approving this. Plan. You know, it's not being built now. The whole thing isn't being built now. This is a survey that we are going to use going forward. So the next time Mr. Come to us and says, I want to add a couple of parking spaces over in the corner, or I want to. Add another entry to another part of the building or whatever it is. He might say that we have a starting point. And so. Acknowledging this survey and. Approving it as, you know. The survey of the property, I think would be, could be an important part of this process here. And maybe Nate wants to comment on that because he's spoken with the building commissioner more about this project than I have, but. But that may be a worthwhile step to take. Nate. No, I think Chris summarized it well. So, you know, as site plan or view, any documents associated with this become. You know, kind of. The supersede anything in the past. And so really it's this new survey. Of existing conditions becomes what. Is being approved. And so. You know, there aren't many changes from what were approved previously when it was built, except for, you know, as Chris noted, what's. What's Ron's recommending now or asking for now the sign, the walkway and. You know, the minor change to the landscaping. So this becomes the new site plan for the property. So, so this is a. So this is actually a site plan review hearing. Yes. And so in. So we're going to be accepting the site plan. And the questions regarding the waivers is whether we accept it. In the absence of the five or six documents that are typically prepared. Yes. That'd be accurate. Yes. Okay. All right. So is there more? Well. I think, do we have any more discussion of this? Are people. I mean, we can, we can go ahead and have our vote to close the hearing. And then we're going to need to have another vote. On this site plan review. Does anybody want to have any more discussion before we have those two votes? I think it's better to get all the discussion done and then. Go through both votes as part of the hearing. Okay. So not seeing any hands. And. So. All right, Jack, your, your. Motion is on the floor. And I forget who's seconded. Maybe Tom. So we'll go through and move. This is a motion to close the hearing. Maria. And proof. And Jack. And Tom. Hi. All right. And Janet. Hi. Yohana. Hi. And I'm an eye as well. All right. So the time is eight 11 and the hearing is closed. Now. I will ask if anybody wants to say anything else about this topic. Not seeing any hands. So we'll go ahead into the vote too. So. I need a motion for. Accepting the site plan. And accepting the site plan review. Without. The one, two, three, four, five documents that were. Requested as a waiver. So that would be the landscape plan, the lighting plan. Erosion plan. Saving plan. And traffic impact statement. Does anybody want to make that motion? Yohana. I move to approve the site plan. Without the. Fiveness documents. Or granting the waivers for the five documents. Okay. Thank you, Yohana and Jack. Yeah. As, as a move there by. Yohana. So you'll second that. Now, is this the final motion that you're going to make? Because you may want to include. The conditions that it satisfies the requirements of section 11. Point two for the criteria of section 11. Point two for the relevant criteria. You usually don't go through all of the criteria for a small project like this. And then establish conditions. And you may want to roll the conditions into this. Motion. Right. Okay. So. Yohana, we may need to go through this again. So. Or, or amend it that we've had two conditions we've talked about. One is that the entrance would be accessible. And the other is. That there be no illumination of the new sign. And normally you also have a condition that says that. This project will be built according to the approved plan. Right. That gives it. Okay. If I just amend my motion to include those three conditions. Yes, it's fine with me. And I'll second. Okay. Okay. So we'll go ahead and have a vote. Maria. And Jack. Approve. And Tom. Hi. And Janet. Hi. Yohana. Hi. And I'm an eye as well. All right. So the time is 11 14. We, I believe we have concluded item four on our agenda. And we'll take a five minute break. We'll come back at. 18. To continue with the next item on the agenda. Please turn off your cameras and mute your microphones. All right. Time is eight 20. And we are coming back into. Activity. It's like we've got a couple more people to arrive. Okay, Chris, we've got everybody. But Nate, do we need Nate for the Wagner. Subject. Sort of shook your head. No. I forgot I was muted. I'm back. Okay. Okay. So we don't. So you are saying we don't need to wait for Nate. No way. No. Okay. All right. So. All right. So the time is eight 21. Okay. No. Okay. All right. So. All right. So the time is eight 21. We are ending our break and we are presuming the agenda. With item five review of management plan and site plan. This is for SBR 2022. Excuse me, dash zero seven. James and Joseph Wagner. Wagner would. No. It's a. I think it's a 305 northeast street. Chris, are the Wagner's here this evening? Or are. Will we be discussing their submissions? Without them. You will be discussing the submissions without them. And I don't think Mr. Reed is here any longer either. Is he. I don't see him in the attendees. No, I don't see him either. I'm proposing to be here either. So I'll just explain that as you know, you approved the Wagner farm stand back in January, we finally got the decision written, and it was signed this week and filed with the town clerk and there were two items that were kind of coming out there and one was the revised site plan showing at least one new handicapped parking space closer to the building, and they have submitted a site plan showing that. The only thing was that they changed their management plan to allow them to be open a little bit longer I think it was from dawn until eight o'clock in the evening. So if Pam could bring up the site plan and the management plan for that project, it was part of your packet towards the very end. You could decide whether you're going to approve those two things or not. I want to confess that Tom ready submitted these things on January 20, which was the day after the public hearing and I'm just now bringing them to you so I apologize for that. And I think, yeah, I think they're a little later. This is the decision which you just signed. Yeah. And this is the management plan. So back up a bit Pam backup. Back up to the first page of that. Yes, so there it is. Lighting as shown on the elevation business hours will be from dawn until no later than 8pm, seven days a week with adequate lighting to be provided as necessary during those times. So those were the things that the board was concerned about when they reviewed this in the management plan to get clarity on what the hours of operation were and what the lighting is going to be. If we, this, this lighting would need to be dark sky compliant. No. Yes, I think that's taken care of in the in the decision decision. I hope it is taken care of in the decision. Light lighting shall be dark sky compliant and cold compliant and should not shine on to adjacent properties and she'll be adequate for the purpose of lighting the area where people are walking and driving for the safety of the pedestrians. The path from the parking areas to the main entry of the farm stand shall be adequately lit. That's condition number seven. And Janet had some questions about the adequacy of the way we represented the issue about lighting. It was during the public hearing so we went back and we listened to the, to the recording of the hearing and we made changes to the minutes of January 19 to reflect this issue of lighting and we also made those those that topic. We clarified that topic in the decision that you just signed. So there's more about lighting there. Yes, we have this statement about lighting here in the management plan now. All right, thank you. Anything on the second page that we want to talk about. I don't think so. Is there Pam, let's see. I don't think they've changed anything on the second page. No. All right. So why don't we go to the site plan. And as you can see, they have handicapped parking on the south side of the site. They have a handicapped space there with an access aisle. I think there are two handicapped spaces there actually, but then they've added one, and it's labeled a da. It's up by the entry to the building. So that was that that was also in response to a comment that Janet made about having a long way to travel from the originally proposed handicapped spaces over to the entry to the building. So this is the new. The new site plan. All right, board members. Any comments on these. Do they seem to meet the requirements or the concerns that we had when we had our hearing in your memory. Janet. I think I think they do and it's great to get this plan. And another was some concern about where the signs would be for pedestrian safety, safety because there's trucks, huge trucks going in and out. And looking at this plan, it's really clear where the signs will go. So I think this is great. Okay. Good. Thanks. Any other board members. Any comments seeing at least couple of shaking heads. Janet I'll assume that's a legacy hand and call on your honor. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate seeing this again. Thank you. I was just trying to wrap my head around the lighting because I remember there was lighting attached to the house that then shine down, but if it's, you know, eight o'clock PM is pretty dark. In winter months and so, and I'm having a hard time telling on this exactly where the lighting is going to be. Anybody. Okay. Let's go from 66% to 75. Yeah. Is that too big. No, that's fine. Why don't you pan a little to the left. There we go. Okay. So I see a, the word motion light on house. There it is. Yeah. Can I describe it? There are three, what are essentially floodlights mounted on the back of the house pointing east. And those are motion sensitive. Those can be brighter or dimmer depending on what kind of bulb you put in them. So, Mr. Reedy has said that if it proves that those aren't bright enough. Then there's another light. There's at least one other light at the entry. And it looks like from this plan that there are actually two lights at the entry. They have two little circles. And the entry is at the southwest corner of the, of the new building. Then there's another light on the back of the house. There's another light on the north side of the building at the porch. And those lights are kind of a, it's like a pie plate with a little bump on top of it. And the light hangs down. So those are dark sky compliant. In addition to that, there's a light on, on a pole that's existing. And that's down near where the north arrow is. Towards the bottom of this plan. And that is on from dusk till dawn. And maybe yes, that's exactly where it is. So there are, there's a light there on the pole. There are three lights on the new building. And three flood lights on the. House pointing east. The flood lights on the house won't bother anyone else because the. Wagner's own all the property around here. So they're not going to be spilling over into somebody's, somebody else's property. So does that. Does that satisfy. Satisfied. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Chris. Any other board. Comments. Not seeing any. Do we have any comments? On this. On this site plan or the management plan. Don't see any hands there either. Okay. Chris, we need a formal vote for these two documents. Okay. Could we have a motion to approve the site plan and the management plan? Okay. Okay. Could we have a motion to approve the site plan and the management plan as submitted by the applicant. Yeah. Jack, you were muted. So moved. Okay. Thank you. And Tom. Okay. Okay. All right. Any other. Comments before we vote. Not seeing any. Okay. I'm going to go backwards this time. Johanna. Hi. And Janet. Hi. All right. I'm an I. Tom. Hi. Jack. I'm going instead of I am going to approve. Thank you, Jack. I'm so confused. I'm so confused by that. Okay. Okay. That's you all six votes. Are in favor. Of various flavors. Okay. The time is 832 and we're finished with item five. We'll go on to item six. Proposed work in the ed zoning district. Okay. I'm going to go back to item six. We have a service building at six East drive. Pam will want to bring up the drawings for that. And Chris, do you want to introduce it? I will introduce it and also recognize the fact that. Let's see. Seth. Seth. Will should. Has joined us. I didn't realize we were going to have someone from Amherst College here. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on down, but if not, then I can explain what's going on. Okay. Seth welcome. And I presume you do want to discuss your project. I'm really just here to answer any questions that come up. I'm happy to let Chris take the lead. Unless you'd rather not. I think we should bring up the drawings and Seth, you should just. So that we've at least shown the images for the public. And you have represented Amherst College on this. This, you know, significant project. If you don't mind, may I just make a statement to set the stage. Sure. So we're not asking the planning board to approve this project because it's outside of the jurisdiction of. The planning board regarding zoning. I think that there is a requirement section, I think it's section 3.2 1 1 of the zoning bylaw that requires that. Entities that are developing things in the ed zoning district. Present plans to the planning board for its information. Prior to initiation of construction. So Amherst College is presenting these plans to you for your presentation. And you're welcome to comment, of course, but there's no approval required. Okay. Thanks for that clarification, Chris. All right. Are you going to pull them up on your, on your. I was just going to ask you that, Seth, I have them on a PDF. Do you have a clearer version than that? Is the PDF is not clear. Well, we can go ahead and take a look at it's a scam PDF. So I don't have a clear version of it. I don't have a clear version of it. Okay. Just give me one. Yeah, I do just, I just need one second. Okay. Sorry. I wasn't planning on. Being the one to. Pull them up. Give me a one. And then I have, I have permission to share my screen. Yes. Here we go. I don't actually. This may not be exactly this that you have, but this is the set I have immediately handy. So let me just. Yeah, that's, these are the images that we've seen. We've got. All right. So this is the facilities and place building on East Drive. It is the place are the Northern section of the building here. This is East Drive here. College Street is off. In this direction. The campus. The West Bay campus. The campus campus. The campus campus campus campus. The campus campus campus. Amherst college has a long plan to address accessibility. Issues on our campus. This one has been a high priority for a while. It was planned two years ago and was canceled. Or postponed, I will say, because of pandemic related. Issues. to the front door, there is a set of, currently a set of stairs inside this front door. And so effectively we are taking those stairs and we are putting them outside the front door and then also adding a ramp to get up there. We are also at the request of the Amherst College police chief adding a door operator to this door. It'll be a new door because the door is being lifted up the number of stairs that we have here. And then we are doing a limited amount of interior work around one of the restrooms as well as kind of redoing all the paving, resetting the curb, there's a bunch of ancillary work that kind of has to be done to make this kind of all function. But the primary point of the project is to provide an accessible entrance to the first floor of this building, which is our police station. And we have a need for students for various reasons who have to get to the police station and we have some students that require accessibility right now and there's just simply no way to get there. So that's what we are aiming to fix. All right, thank you. The packet had a first floor plan. Do you think you could go to that too? I can, one second. Sorry, there's a lot of drawings here. So here we are. There you go, that's it. Yeah, so this is the new stair. This is infill where the existing stair is. The ramp comes up this way, up this way, up this way. The first two legs are below the Massachusetts access board requirement for needing handrails because they're below 5%. So the first two legs don't have handrails and then this section does have a handrail. This is a new door and a door operator on that door. This is a new vestibule door just because we had to put a new door in to make it kind of all work. And then we're turning an existing three fixture men's room into a single fixture men's room and a gender inclusive room. This will be the only gender inclusive restroom in the building and it'll be on the accessible level. The police department has this space that's on the page left on the north side of the building. Will the inner door of the vestibule also have an operator? It won't, but it's on hold open. It's almost never closed. Okay. It actually has no hardware on it either. So it's just a free swinging door with no hardware. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Seth. So this is just for information for the board. Members, are there any questions or comments you wanna make about them about this project? Janet. I think this is great to make the building more accessible especially such an important one. I had two questions. One of them was the diagram I had didn't show the parking spaces around I know they're all around the building and I was wondering how close the ADA spaces were to the ramp. I can show you. This is one second. I think there's plan. So they are across the street. So this parking here is all designated police parking. So the police have a side entrance that comes in over here. So this is all police. And then this is temporary delivery parking. Staff parking back here. So the only kind of available parking is right here. So this is the ADA space right there. And so space 11 is the closest space to the ramp. Space 11, yeah. So apologies. This plan is slightly old. Space 11 doesn't actually exist anymore. There's a big tree here we're trying to take. So actually these two spaces don't exist. So we should only count one through nine. And it is the closest, but we lose two spaces by making a space there because the crosswalk is here. And the crosswalk is aligning. It's a little hard to tell because it goes off the page here. The crosswalk is aligning with the existing sidewalk. And by allowing us to use this space as the required adjacency space that no one can park in for a van accessible spot. We don't have to take up two spaces to get a space in. So this is the route. So you park here and then you have a path, right? And then you go, you obviously would go up. And if you're not parking here, if you're just coming from another place on campus, right? You'd be coming across this path too. Okay. And Seth, wouldn't it be true that at least for students, most of the people, most of the students are not parking before they come to this building. They are. No students are parking anywhere around here because there is no student parking anywhere in this vicinity. There are student parking across the railroad tracks, but there's no accessible route from those locations. So accessible, in terms of accessible parking that a student could use, they would not be coming from here unless it was a, you know, they could be parking for immediate use as they came and parked solely to come to our building. But if they were coming from somewhere else on campus, they wouldn't be parked in this vicinity. So the parking that spaces one through 11 would be visitor parking potentially? No. Oh, no. So who parks? No, we, those spaces are reserved for facility vehicles and for a couple of cases for geology vehicles. This is our primary maintenance, mechanical and plumbing shop right here. And their facility vehicles occupy the majority of these spaces and the geology, which is a building right here, gets two of them too. So visitor parking is across the parking lot. Okay, so somebody who needs an ADA spot could go into those two spots. Yes. So the other question I had was, I'm thinking about New England in ICE, particularly in our new climate and not having the handrails on the first section. Cause that was the first thing that popped out. It looks really attractive as a ramp, but I wondered if it was icy conditions and someone had mobility issues if they'd want to grab onto something, not saying anything. Yeah, so I mean, no sidewalk, right? Whatever has a handrail, right? And almost all of them are steeper all over the city than 4.8%, right? So this is, you know, it's, you know, the idea is to make it as gracious as possible and 5% is both the ADA and the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board regulation for where you need a handrail. So the idea is to really kind of try to make it less impactful on the building. This is a McKinley to White iconic building on campus, one of many we have of theirs, but one of the better ones. And so we're trying to be really respectful to the building. We do have a way to drain, that's what these little, I'll call them scuppers are here and here. There's a drain at the top. And so we're trying to funnel water off the ramp as much as possible. And then of course our groundskeepers maintain it in terms of ice removal, but yet we are not proposing to put handrails on the non-technical ramp sections. So I just, I appreciate the aesthetics of it, but having spent quite a bit of time with people with mobility issues and very slow movers, I think some kind of subtle, but attractive handrail would be really helpful to somebody who's having trouble moving. If somebody has a walker, just or a cane, I think having a handrail would, maybe you could put it on the wall so it's not as noticeable, but I think it would be really helpful to someone. And then also we have a disability committee that maybe you could check in with and get some ideas from too. So those are my comments. All right, thank you, Janet. Jack. I heard geology. I just want to say I'm all over it. I do agree with Janet's comments about accessibility. So that's all. Okay, thank you, Jack. Any other comments from the board? All right. Any comments from any of our public attendees? Mr. Marshall, just to let you know, I can't see that when Seth's screened. Okay, thanks, Pam. I can see that and I do not see any hands. Okay. Okay, all right. So thank you, Seth. Thanks for showing us what you're planning and I hope you'll take our comments into consideration as you finalize and move forward. Thank you, everyone, for your time. Good night. Night. Okay, so the time now is 846. We're up to item seven on the agenda, fees for public hearing legal ads. Chris, this is yours, I believe. You are muted. There you go. I'd like to talk to the planning board about this a little bit. So right now, when someone files an application with the planning board, site plan review, special permit, subdivision plan, there's a fee associated with that. And the fee is supposed to have some relationship to how much time it takes to review it. It doesn't really relate to it at all. It takes way more time. But anyway, that's beside the point. We also have an adjunct fee that we've been charging really for the past maybe five years or so, which is nominally for the legal ad. But the fee that we charge is only $75 for the legal ad. And it turns out that legal ads are actually much more expensive than that. And they've gotten even more expensive recently. And I think there are a few reasons why they've gotten more expensive. One is we have all this introductory language about virtual meetings and having to find links and if you wanna join by your phone and all of that. But we also have a newspaper that is struggling and the newspaper doesn't have very many commercial ads anymore. And so I think it's kind of leaning on its legal ads a little bit more than it has in the past. And some of our legal ads really cost a lot of money. They cost $600, $1,000. We have to run the legal ads two weeks in a row prior to a public hearing. It's part of the state law. There are conversations about getting away from this requirement and somehow just posting things on a website rather than having to run it in a paper. But right now the requirement is that you have to post the legal ad in a paper of general local circulation for two times in a period of two weeks. So anyway, what happens is we put money in our budget. We ask for money in our budget to pay for legal ads. And then we get this paltry $75 from the applicants and it in no way pays for the legal ads. So right now we've got my budget is way over board. And part of that is due to last year's all of the zoning amendments that we worked on because we have to publish legal ads for those too. But what I'm coming to you tonight about is specifically related to applicants. People who are trying to develop their property and need to come before the board. In the past we felt that, well, there already some of them are struggling, like particularly somebody who just wants to do something relatively small. He's not gonna spend that much money on the project. We ask him for $75 for the legal ad. But now we're thinking maybe we should get the applicants to either share more of the expense or on the alternative to actually pay for the legal ad themselves. So I'm coming to you with kind of two separate ideas and I wanted to see what you thought about them because the planning board really does need to be able to regulate fees that it charges. So one of the ideas is to up the legal ad fee from $75 to $200 across the board. So every applicant would pay $200 for legal ad. That still doesn't cover the full cost of the legal ad but at least it helps the town in paying for it. So that would be one alternative, one option. The second option would be to actually require the applicant to pay for the legal ad entirely. And this is a little more complicated. Right now we have this very easy process where either Pam or I draft a legal ad, we send it around to Rob Mora and get approval on the draft and then we send it right to the Gazette and they write back to us and say, okay, we're gonna publish your legal ad these two days and here's how much it's gonna cost. And that's fairly simple. The second option that I was gonna tell you about is that we would still send the legal ad to the Gazette but then we would ask them to bill the applicant. And if they bill, or, so this gets more complicated, they could either bill the applicant or they could bill us. And if they bill us, then we have to chase the applicant to get the money out of them. And if they bill the applicant, then the Gazette has to chase the applicant to get the money out of them. So we're wrestling with how do we cope with this conundrum? The way the Conservation Commission handles it is they submit the legal ad to the Gazette the same way that we do and then they receive a bill from the Gazette. Meanwhile, the Gazette has given them an estimate of what this legal ad is gonna cost and the Conservation Commission staff tells the applicant okay, give me a check for $586 or whatever it is. And the applicant gives the check to the staff person for the Conservation Commission and then she pays the bill when it comes in from the Gazette. So really the two options are as far as you're concerned do we raise the fee to $200 and then the town kind of bears the burden of the rest of it or do we actually try to get the applicant to pay for the actual legal ad? So I just wanted to have a discussion with you about that and then if you want to decide tonight, that's okay if you want to think about it a little bit and we can talk about it next time, that would be okay too but I wanted to just get your feelings on the matter. Tom, I see your hand. Thanks, Chris, just one comment that I see often working with nonprofits and other kind of organizations through my business is a scale, right? So what we don't wanna do is make it really hard for small businesses and startups to pay this fee but then we also might recognize that there are large organizations that could easily pay this fee. And sometimes that fee might be scaled based on the size of an organization, the income or revenue of that organization or some other really simple to quantify value. And that way your small startup with zero revenue for that year could pay a small fee and an organization that's been around for 10 years that's looking to permit and add a big chunk onto their property could easily pay $600 for an ad. So it's just something to consider and sort of evaluating the applicants up front to scale that so that there's not a back and forth chasing people for those fees but there's just, they know ahead of time it's gonna be this number, this number, this number based on how many employees or their annual revenue. So just a thought that might simplify that process and get you where you wanna be and not make it hard for small businesses. That's a good suggestion. Thanks, Tom, Maria. Thanks. How that might be hard to ask for private information like that as far as like how many employees and what's your annual profit or whatever. But I think the building isn't the building permit fee based on square footage. So if someone's doing like a mega apartment complex they can afford that additional fee versus a single family home. Isn't that by square footage, I think? And so that might be an easier way that's not like asking for a business's sort of income. So square footage is a way to also kind of get a feel for that. I mean, I know that some nonprofits do larger buildings but by the time they're doing a project that size they probably have the capital to pay for things like that. So it's just another kind of similar to what Tom was saying. Yeah, that idea came to my mind too. I think the building permit is based on the dollar value of the construction that's gonna be happening. And obviously at the beginning of a project when you're looking for permitting you don't really know exactly but you probably have some general sense of what you think you're gonna or what you have available to spend. So it could be dollar value or it could be square footage. Like the project we just saw, there's no, or if they were just building the ramp or even the project at Research Drive we saw tonight there's no interior square footage. So, is it overall square footage or whatever? So anyway, that's just some more ways to think about it. I was gonna ask, what's the average cost of one of these things? Because does $200 come close to the average or is the average actually 600? And by this increase we're doing we're only getting from covering a quarter of the value to being a third of the value or something. Yeah, I could figure that out. My guess is the average is around $400 or $500. All right, well, another thing that occurred to me was I know that Gazette is not flush with funding and you've said maybe they were leaning heavily on legal ads, I don't wanna intentionally hurt them but would we meet the letter of the law if we advertised in the Republican and maybe also posted on the town website just to make sure there was some local presence. And I don't know if the Republican meets the criteria for the state statute of where we post but they might have a more reasonable rate for legal ads. I can check that out. And I don't know if there's any other papers that might be worth considering. Janet. I was wondering what other local towns do? I don't know, it just like a few towns around us. I know this was sort of discussed on the list, the mass planners lists are about using local papers when people have declining circulations and the ads being expensive but I just wondered what is Hadley doing or Northampton or Granby or Sunderland? I can check with them. Also occurs to me, could we be a little more severe on how we edit these ads so that they're shorter? Maybe I'm thinking of the old telegram where every word counted and the only words you had were the essential parts of the message. Nate, I see your hand. Thanks, so you just made my point. I think we could try to make the legal ads more concise. I would say that probably 90% of a legal ad is formulaic. So no matter what the project is, the cost is there. So the cost of the legal ad doesn't necessarily change much by the size of the project because a description of the project and property is a small portion of a legal ad. It's the whole standard intro to the hearing. So I think a sliding scale could be difficult because really how that impacts the cost of a legal ad is small but I do think we could try to make it a little bit more concise in the language. And I agree with Janet, the mass planners listserv has been discussing this and it's interesting that some people are really advocating for getting rid of this imprint requirement. So there's some discussion about whether or not it's actually statutory. Some attorneys say yes and some seem to say no but I think after the pandemic, I think there may be some recommendations to change the statute so that it doesn't necessarily have to be imprinted in a newspaper. So there could be other ways but our understanding right now is that it has to be dug to your point. It has to be in a newspaper imprint and in general circulation. So the Republican may meet that but the Gazette is more widely distributed in Amher so if we're going by the intent of the law that's probably where it would need to be published. If changes to the open meeting law happen too in terms of remote meetings, I don't know if then public hearing notifications will come next in the next year or so but for now it's supposed to be in print. Okay, thanks, Nate. Chris, I don't know if this was helpful but you've gotten a few ideas. Yeah, I'll do some research and calling around as Janet suggested and try to get a sense of what the average legal ad is and then come back to you with that information. So thank you. And I do think if you come back with a sliding scale it ought to be the bottom end ought to be some fraction of the average and the top end ought to be some multiple of the average. We don't get a lot of $20 million projects in town so that ought to be paying a lot and 10 times the average or whatever just to make up because it's, I mean, I'm not sure that's how we want to be spending our town funding. Okay, all right, it's good. Yep. All right, so moving on, it's 902. Chris, do we have any old business, item eight? I do not have any old business. All right, the next item is new business, topics not reasonably anticipated. How about that? We do have new business. We don't necessarily have to discuss it in depth tonight. We can put it on the agenda for the next time but the town manager has reached out to us to recruit a representative of the planning board to sit on the solar bylaw working group. And it's a group of seven members. And I think the conservation commission will have a representative, ECAC. And let me see if I can remember what that stands for environmental. I can't remember energy and my brain. I believe it was energy and climate action committee. Thank you. That would have come out easier at about six o'clock this evening instead of now. So ECAC and I think that the conservation commission planning board and the watershed supply protection committee. Yeah, water supply protection committee. Yes, which I am on that. Okay. Thanks, Jack. Yeah. I wanted to just note that at nine oh two Andrew McDougall arrived and joined our meeting. Oh, am I late? Am I late or did I miss anything? Thank you, Andrew. Andrew, you need, nevermind. Okay, I'm glad you could make it. So the board is being invited to designate a representative and then that representative would be appointed by the town manager. This is a group that's appointed by the town manager and it would follow all the usual open meeting law requirements. I checked with the town manager on that today, but you may want to, I think I sent you a copy of the charge this week. Didn't I? A copy of the town managers email to us and the charge. So you may want to go home and think about it. Go home and think about that and think about whether you would like to be a member of this group. Some people may want to ask questions or make statements about whether they'd like to be a member tonight. But I would suggest that since it wasn't on the agenda that we don't talk too much about it, but I wanted to certainly introduce the topic. Okay. I did see in that email from the town manager that it was expected to have a fairly significant time commitment and that they may meet twice a month. So obviously if you're on the planning board already and you're meeting twice a month with us, it could be a doubling of your time commitment, at least for meetings and then whatever research is needed in between. Jack. Yeah. I just want to say that, I would love to be on that committee, but I do anticipate stepping down after two terms as of June. I will be on the water display protection committee and I'm on the subcommittee where we're doing a white paper with regard to impacts to water resources which has come along pretty good. But I just wanted to say that. So you and probably Maria are really not candidates for this because you're coming off the board. Correct. I mean, yes. Okay. Yeah, but I feel very passionate about this. I feel like I have a lot of knowledge too, but maybe through the water. I believe there will be a couple of that large members. Isn't that true? I think so. Okay. So Jack, if you really feel strongly, you might apply for one of the large positions. Yeah, but I know I'm already helping with regard to the water supply protection committee. We have the subcommittee that we're doing a white paper on the impact of the potential solar rays and batteries on the water resources. So I'm doing that already. And I may serve on that committee through that, but we have a couple other good people on the board. So we'll see. Good. Thank you. Yeah. Janet. I'm interested in serving on the committee. And just because the topic is interesting to me and I hope I can add some legal heft to it or kind of as they work through the values and statements about the bylaw and things like that. But I do see it could be a bear of a job in terms of the committee's work is, and there's a staff person assigned to them, right? So that will. The staff people are Stephanie Ciccarello and myself and I have recruited Nate to help me. Yeah. So we're not gonna have a very big staff and I'm sure Pam will be recruited from time to time to help us out. But yeah. But a capable staff. So capable. That's a good way to put it. All right. So we will put this on the agenda for the next meeting. Yep. And everybody, should everybody that should depot if they're interested to email you in the intro or do you wanna wait until the meeting to hear that? No, people could email me and I could make a list and that would be a good thing to know. Yep. Okay. And I wanted to say one thing that I've heard recently that the six year limit on service is kind of a more of a guideline than a strict requirement. So people who have been on boards and committees for six years, I think if there are people waiting in the wings who are well qualified, they may be given preference but if there aren't those people waiting in the wings who are qualified and the people who are in the position now wanna continue to serve, I think there's an openness to that that there hasn't been in the past. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that. Okay. All right. Any other new business not anticipated? I can't think of anything. Nope. All right. Item 10, Form A, A&R, subdivision applications. Do we have any of those coming? Pam and I are happy to report that we do not have those tonight. No. Okay. How about ZBA applications? Nothing new to report tonight. All right. How about SP, SPR and SUB? Nothing new to report. Okay. I think I've heard things already. All right. Item 13, Planning Board, Committee and Liaison Reports. We'll start with Jack, PVPC. Yeah. We had an executive committee meeting where I think we approved. It seemed like a lot of e-bike type stations throughout Western Mass that seemed and then we have a quarterly meeting next week on the 14th, Thursday. But again, I'm willing to stay on on the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission as like an alternate and I can preserve that executive committee seat for Amherst, but that's something that needs to be worked out. If I indeed step down from the Planning Board, I just wanna throw that out there. I can't really say what value I really bring to Amherst being on the executive committee, but I just, I do enjoy it. I think the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission provides an important mission to our region and I'm 100% behind what they do. So just wanna say that. So I could be an alternate if I'm not on the Planning Board, but it would have to be carried it out. Right. Chris, is there some sort of policy that one of the Board members is a delegate to the PVPC? Usually one of the Board members is a member of the PVPC, yes, and the Board as a whole designates that member. Right. I think Town Council has some thing to do with that, whether it's just approval of the designation or not, I don't really know. And then there is usually an alternative and often what has happened in the past is that a Planning Board member is the actual member of the PVPC and then a staff member is or another outside resident is the alternative. Yeah, for example, the gentleman in Belchartown, I can't think of his name, the Planning Director there in Belchartown. Doug Albertson. Yeah, so he's on the Executive Committee and obviously he's more of an alternate sort of thing, but because he's not on the Planning Board, whatever. And there's other towns, I think Springfield, one of their planning folks are representative, but they don't really have Planning Board representative. I don't understand why towns don't participate within the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission meetings. It seems like it confuses me because it's like, why wouldn't you? But there's a lot of towns that don't participate, but they pay into it. So. All right, well, it sounds like once we have our new board members, we can review what the different board liaison openings are and find out who wants to be involved with the PVPC. And I assume you can keep being involved without sort of having the Amherst hat on. Well, I mean, I would have to be, I would have to be, to keep my position, I would have to be an alternate is all versus I'm the primary now. So I think, and I think Paul Bachman or the town council would have to get involved with that. But I mean, yeah. All right. Thanks, Jeff. Andrew, CPAC. No updates. Okay. Tom, DRB. No updates this week. All right. Christine, Chris, CRC. So the last time we spoke with CRC, we talked about a couple of things. We talked about the comprehensive housing policy and the CRC had asked the planning department to look through the comprehensive housing policy and come up with some zoning amendments that might further the cause of the housing policy. So we made a presentation at the last CRC meeting. I'm trying to remember the date. I think it was March 31st. And among the things that we talked about were for the apartments category to divide the apartments category into class one and class two. And I think that people who are familiar with the past work of the zoning subcommittee will remember those discussions. And the class one might be between three and 24 units. And the class two might be 25 units up. Anyway, just to give some flexibility to the apartments category. And there would be other things as well like, and we've talked about this in the past, breaking off triplexes and quadruplexes from the apartments category and creating new categories for them so that they could be more easily infilled into neighborhoods than the apartment, which sounds very large and very fearsome. So there was that. And we talked about a number of other things. Anyway, if anybody's interested, I could send you a list of the things that I presented as possibilities. And what's happening is the CRC has this matrix and they've put into it all the zoning amendments that we worked on last year, whether they were approved or not approved and what their status was. And then things that we wanted to work on but didn't get to. And so they have this big matrix and then eventually they're going to kind of shake it up and decide, okay, what are the things that rise to the top that the CRC and the town council want to move ahead with, say starting in July? That's what they're looking ahead to. Because they recognize the fact that we're busy now with solar bylaw, flood mapping and other things. So that's what we talked about. We also talked to them about the rental registration program which several of the counselors are very interested in. They're interested in making it more strict, more robust that there might be a change in the fee to people who are renting their property and just strengthening it. So Rob Mora is working on that and we had a long conversation about that. And the other thing that the CRC wants to work on with us is bringing Article 14 into some level of permanency. So things that are currently permitted via Article 14 which you will remember was the temporary zoning during the COVID crisis, that things that don't really require a special permit, can we make them permanent? So we're talking to them about that. So those are the things that right now the CRC is focusing on. I think the rental registration project is huge and that's gonna take up a significant amount of their time going forward over the next six to 12 months, but we'll see. So. All right. Thanks, Chris. So report of the chair. I don't have any particular report. I do have a couple of one comment and one question. Chris, the question has to do with the sort of design guidelines study and the RFP that's kind of being prepared. Do you have a sort of update on where that whole process is? Yes, Nate has written an RFP for the design standards. We're calling it standards now because we wanna make it more of a requirement than a guideline. And I think if I'm not mistaken that we're planning to bring that to the planning board on the 20th of April, is that right, Nate? Nate is nodding his head. Okay. So you'll see the current draft of the RFP. So this is a project that we'll all be working on together and it's really the town manager who puts out RFPs, but I know that the planning board has been interested in what the contents of this is going to be. And so we're gonna show it to you for your comments and suggestions. Okay, thanks. All right, and then the comment I was gonna make for the board was we do have two members who have decided to leave the board this year. So we're gonna need two new members. And this is the time of year where if you know people who would be great planning board members, please talk to them and encourage them to put in an application when that opens. And I think it's actually available to submit any time. And in fact, I think it was today I received an email from Mandy Johannike from the CRC asking me to put together the comments that the chair usually gives for, you know, what we're looking for in candidates. So it seems like this year's process is starting. And so I would encourage everybody to think of all your friends and talk to the people who would be great planning board members. Marie, I see your hand. Yeah, I, in fact, preemptively asked some people and they are gonna put their third hat in the ring. And I had asked architects just because it's nice to have some, you know, people from a variety of backgrounds. But I think in particular architects, so I asked a couple of them. So one definitely is a guess. I think Mandy Johannike reached out to me as well and asked that was gonna reapply. And I said no, but that I knew someone in particular in town was going to apply. And she said, oh yeah, he already did. So hopefully, yeah, you'll have a really strong board. I mean, you already are really strong, but hopefully, yeah, I didn't wanna leave you high and dry. I had a really good person in mind. So hopefully, they'll be a contender. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Maria and Jack. Yeah, I just wanna say, I really enjoy working with everyone on the board. And it's, I think we do such good work. And, you know, the year I was chair, you know, it was a rough one, you know, lots of meetings. Maybe too many, but boy, you know, we definitely, you know, pushed the ball forward through that. And, you know, so I'm just saying that, you know, cause Chris kind of mentioned, you know, I'm at six years, but if someone doesn't rise, you know, to everybody's satisfaction, you know, I could consider, you know, doing more because of everything, but I am so thankful for Doug taking on the chair. It has made my life, you know, much more tolerable. And again, I think this board is well-composed and y'all done, you know, pretty good job. So, except Andrew, who showed up, you know, late tonight. So, but that's all right. All right. Thanks, Jack. You know, obviously we're not the ones that pick the next members. CRC will, and then I guess the council. So, Jack, if you want to keep your head in the ring, you probably need to put in an application. You're not going to win on a write-in vote. Okay, so that's really all I have to say. Yeah, I'm just having a little fun there. Sorry, but it is what it is. Thank you. Yep. All right. So that was the chair's report. And Chris, do you have a report from staff? I don't have a report tonight. No, thank you. Okay. So the time is 9.23. It's an early night for us. We powered through a bunch of things and thank you all for coming. Thank you very much. Okay, good night. And thanks for coming in to sign. We'll see y'all in two weeks. Thank you, Pam. Thank you, Chris. Welcome. Good night. Stop recording. Stop recording.