 You're muted Lynn. You're still muted. Good late afternoon. This is the community resources committee and it's the first committee since people have been reappointed to committees. And so it's my responsibility as president to open the meeting. To make sure that people can hear and be heard. To state that we have a quorum of CRC present. And we are allowed to do this virtual meeting based on the extension of the state law, open meeting law. So with that in mind, I'm going to start by alphabetically going through and saying, can you hear me and can I hear you. Hi, everybody. I'm a pretty good friend. I'm a pretty good friend. Hi, everybody. I'm a pretty good friend. I'm a pretty good friend. I'm a pretty good friend. Thank you, shall any bum. Yes, I'm present. Mandy Joe. Hannah. Whoops. Pat DeAngelis, like messed up. Present. Pam Rauney. Jennifer top. Present. Okay. And Rob Moro. We have you with us today and we'll get to business in a moment. I just know that there are four people in the audience, and we are going to go ahead. So this is how we'll proceed. We'll take nominations for chair, and it does not require a second, and you can self-nominate. In addition to that, then we ask the people who have been nominated if they are willing to accept that nomination, and then we also ask if they would like to say anything. And then we go ahead and we finish that nomination process, and then we go on to the nomination for vice chair. So with that, the floor is open for nominations for chair of CRC. Shall any? Yes. I just want to say that the position of the chair is a really involved position and requires a lot of time and organization skills and expertise in getting us all on track, listening to everyone, and given how important this position is. And I can see that there are many candidates here who would, I mean, many people in this committee who would be able to do this job. But I just, I can say with confidence that Madi Jo has really done this job really well, and I'd like to nominate her again for this position given how complex and involved this position is. So yeah, I'd like to nominate Madi Jo. Madi Jo, do you accept that nomination? I do. Okay, Jennifer. Yes, and this is no reflection of our current chair, but I wanted to nominate our vice chair, Pam Rooney. I kind of anticipated that as vice chair for the, you know, next year when we held elections again for the committee that the vice chair would have an opportunity, you know, to be in the leadership position. And I think that, you know, we've, as it came about for the vice chair on the town council, I think that we've had this same chair of this committee for two maybe three years. And I think that Pam is eminently qualified. She's a professional planner. Pam knows the intricacies, you know, both Madi Jo and Pam equally knows the intricacies of the zoning bylaws. Pam formally chaired for a number of years the planning board in town. So she's extremely qualified and steeped in the subject matter. And I think that it's good to give, you know, allow for other members of the committee in the council to have leadership opportunities. I mean, maybe we want to in the future talk about term limits as a council. But so I would like to nominate Pam. Pam, do you accept the nomination? I do. Okay. Mandy Jo, is there anything you would like to say? Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Shalini for your kind words in nominating me. And thank you for the opportunity to have served as chair for the last year. I believe I've fairly and effectively chaired this committee. I've been able to organize it in a way that has not missed a single meeting agenda or packet deadline. I've gotten them out in a timely manner for everyone to prepare. I've made the ability to get all of the notices for the public hearings out and not missed a single one. I have been able to move in my past year's as chair items through to the process to completion. And those are complicated items. The difficult ones and the simple ones, the comprehensive housing policy from non-existent to completion and recommendation. The current work we're doing on the rental permitting and the public nuisance bylaws were almost there after nearly a year. I have taken the mentoring role as chair seriously. I originally have assigned all of the ZBA recommendation process functions to our vice chair for the last year. And I helped the vice chair understand the process was a gentle nudge to the vice chair when the steps that needed to be completed. Timing for that and reminders of when those needed done and all and was a backup if those steps weren't getting done or if there was a problem with them getting done or timing and vacation issues. In the upcoming year, if I'm elected, I realize that I am sponsoring some stuff that will be in front of the committee. I intend to have the vice chair run those hearings because of fairness and transparency. It seems only right for me not to run those hearings if I am an actual sponsor. And I have kept the vice chair in the loop about agenda settings and all. And so I believe I've shown that I can take that mentoring role seriously. I've also opened up other leadership roles to others, Shalini with the engagement and both the report and the survey development. Pam Rooney with report writing on votes that for issues that she had spearheaded. And also Pam with the collaboration on our public nuisance bylaw work and our rental registration work. So I think I've done a good job. I think I've enabled other members of this committee to take some leadership roles and I would thank you and be humbled if you trusted me to chair the committee for another year. Okay. Pam. Thank you. Mandy Joe is eminently qualified. She has in fact reached out to convey opportunities for certain things. I think she is very, very organized and therefore takes on a great deal of work herself. So she does not delegate quite as much as she possibly could to her to her credit. I appreciate Jennifer's words. Yes, I chair of the planning board. So I understand that process. And just because someone has not had the opportunity to meet the deadlines for different filings and notifications, et cetera, does not mean that one can't do that. And certainly look forward to the opportunity of, in fact, embracing those schedules and those needs and staying on top of things and looking ahead as well. So I appreciate being here. Okay. Thank you. Dominations are closed unless somebody else wants to throw their hat in the ring. And so we're going to proceed to a vote. And I'll again start alphabetically. I'll try to do it in actual alphabetical order. Shall any bomb mail? Wait, we're voting for one of the two. Is that you cast your vote for one of the two? Okay. Yeah. Mandy Joe, honey. Okay. Pat D'Angelo's you're muted Pat. This is actually a hard vote because I have a lot of respect for the work you've been doing Pam, but I do need to vote for Mandy Joe because we're in the middle of a large process. And I know how long it will take us and how intricate it will be. Mandy Joe, you need to unmute. Sorry, myself, Mandy Joe Hanneke. Okay. Pam Rooney. I vote for Pam Rooney. Okay. Jennifer Tobbe. I vote for Pam Rooney. Okay. So there's three votes for Mandy Joe Hanneke. Two votes for Pam Rooney. So Mandy Joe will continue as chair. The floor is open for nominations for vice chair. Pam? I nominate Pam Rooney. Okay. She volunteers. I love it. Are there any other people who would like to volunteer or nominate somebody for vice chair? Right. Pam, is there anything you'd like to say? No, I look forward to being a diligent sous chef. And with that, we're just going to go through and vote. So I'm going to start with Shalini. Yes, Pam. Yay. Thank you. Pat DeAngelis. Hi. Mandy Joe Hanneke. Pam, I look forward to working with you again. Pam? Pam. Jennifer Tobbe. Yes. Great. This is a terrific committee. We didn't have any changes in membership because it's a committee that's been working so hard on really tough issues. And I just want to say how much I appreciate that. It's when people take on zoning, I kind of just go and I'm very glad when somebody else does it. I also want to thank Dave Zomac and Rob Morrow for all the work they do with this committee because it's really important and they have devoted hours and hours of staff time to the work of this committee. With that, I have two other meetings to go to. And so... You don't want to stay. Well, no, I'm going to read the minutes or read the... We don't take it personally. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. Thank you, Lynn. Pat. Yeah, and I am going to have to leave the meeting. Thank you for coming, Pat. And we wish you a recovery speedy. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. I want to thank you all. We will move on to the action items. But before we do, I want to say thank you for trusting me again. And Pam, Jennifer, Shalini, and Pat, when she comes back, feel free to nudge me on the delegation. I'm trying. I've gotten better. I will endeavor to be even better. So I look forward to having a collaborative work with every committee member to not just mentor and create more leadership opportunities for all, but for us to work well together and all. And so I'm happy and look forward to finding ways to delegate more. Keep me on my toes, Pam and Jennifer and Shalini on that matter. And with that, a couple of announcements before we move on to the nuisance house bylaw, the nuisance house bylaw will be our main item of review. There will be no review and vote on the CRC report or engagement report that we've been working on. It was not... revisions were not done in time to allow a thorough review by committee members with enough time to do so. So when we get that done, it will go on an appropriate agenda at a future time. So we are removing that item, which is item 4b1 from today's agenda. If we finish the nuisance house bylaw review and there's time, we will get done in an hour with that, say, then we will move on to the rental permitting draft bylaw and regulations. If not, we will just do nuisance house today. So that is the plan for today. After we get through nuisance house, we'll take public comment even if we haven't... even before we move on to the permitting bylaw, just so we make sure we get that. And so with that, let's move on to nuisance house. Pam, you worked with me on this. Would you like to summarize what our work was and where this sort of draft came from and then talk about a little bit of the draft? Sure. The nuisance... we have a nuisance bylaw on the books. It was not terribly descriptive and there appeared to be an opportunity to clarify sort of the seriousness of violations, the accounting for multiple violations that came out of the discussion with the rental bylaw process. And so just like we took some of the details out of the rental bylaw and put them into regulations, so we took some of the ideas about point systems and the accumulation of violations and sort of revamped the nuisance bylaw itself. And I think, you know, there's still some work to be done on it, but it seems like it has a little bit more structure to it that hopefully town staff and inspection services can utilize for better monitoring and also better enforcement opportunities. Thank you. I'm going to put it up on the screen so that everyone can see what we're looking at. Bear with me as I make it readable. And so we will start with... I would say before we go through this section by section, I would like to hear people's thoughts on just the whole thing because this really is a rewrite. We're not trying to amend here or there. This would be, if it goes to council, it would be a rescind and replace, basically. The current bylaw talks about gatherings and alcohol violations only. And when we had first brought it to us, we as a committee thought that was not broad enough. So let's start with people's thoughts on the direction this bylaw is now taking before we get into the sort of details of each section. Committee members and also Rob and Dave, your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. John Thompson is not able to be here today. So we will have to wait to hear his thoughts. But one of the changes is that we've added inspectional services to the enforcing authorities that is not there right now. So that's why I'd love to hear what Rob's thoughts are on this too. So general thoughts on the new, the current draft, which is sort of the first look at a complete revision. Shalini? Yeah, I think I generally want to just get a sense of what are the intentions besides the obvious ones that we want to control, new sense. But then in my mind, it's also informing the rental registration bylaw and the sense of the inspections and the fees and fines, things like that. Is this going to, they are kind of interconnected, I imagine. But like when you were revamping it, what were your intentions for creating this nuisance? And I'm also seeing it's more comprehensive because nuisance earlier was related to public displays or noise or, you know, those kind of issues. And this seems more comprehensive as in including other zoning issues and a lot of stuff, everything under nuisance. So if you could share what is the purpose of this bylaw and that's, I guess, the first question. And then the second, I can go into more details afterwards. Let me just hear that first. Do you want to tackle that one, Pam? Go ahead, I'm just trying to pull up my document in my own computer. So I think, you know, the intention was we knew that in looking at this when the committee looked at it with just gatherings and alcohol, minor service to minors and minors drinking violations is the only things we as a committee thought this isn't really comprehensive enough, right? It's too looking at just gatherings and this and that. And so I think one of the things we talked about as we worked through this to do it was what do residents consider nuisances at properties? You'll notice we changed it from a nuisance house bylaw to a public nuisance even that title was deliberate. It's not just houses that can create nuisances. It's any property that can create nuisances, whether it be commercial or residential. And what does create a nuisance? And also one of the other things we talked about that Pam and I discussed a lot were if it's, you know, and what is a nuisance as it relates to all properties, not just rental properties. I know I kept coming back to when we talked about putting potentially zoning, not zoning, but code enforcement, you know, building code and all of that into this. Do they create public nuisances or are they more of a health and safety matter? And if they're health and safety, do they belong in this bylaw versus the rental permitting bylaw for rentals? And just if your owner occupied as a house, you're living in it yourself and you own it, right? So that was some of the stuff we really drilled down into, I would say, in terms of what do we put in here? What violations would count as a, you know, would create that public nuisance and really talking about it at that level. And then when we talked about the enforcement side, it was more of a, how can you enforce it from my point of view? Like what is doable in enforcement and what is doable without too much accounting issues that might create way more work than you get out of it type thing. Pam? Yeah, just to add to the, in our in our rental bylaw conversations, we looked at sort of a range of issues that caused discontent or disturbance of quiet enjoyment of one's property and realized that in fact, there were a number of things that were already in our bylaws. So they could be referenced pretty easily and directly, rather than having to create a lot of new stuff. But by recognizing them as a nuisance or an issue, it puts sort of a lot of elements into one document. So if the if the inspection services are going to a property, there could be a number of things that they would have some teeth in. And so if we look at, you know, regulations related to animals or false alarms or junk vehicles or unlawful noise, refuse collection and recyclables, board of health issues, snow and ice. So we've had all of these things that came up, obviously, in those surveys of concerns that were raised. This helps group them under one roof or code and for enforcement. I think that's the thing that makes me the most comfortable. It also includes disorderly conduct. It includes, you know, open drinking. It includes, you know, excess noise. So it's a nice umbrella under which a lot of issues can be tucked. Thank you. Jennifer. Yeah. So I, I liked it. I definitely like the direction it's going in. And, you know, I was reading all of them. I hope I'm not sort of conflating some of the regulations with the public nuisance, but I like that. But I would like maybe to see it be more that there's some, that there's some accountability on the part of the residents or the property owner, however, for more than one violation. Because part of when something gets to be a problem property is if it's the same, you know, most of the houses are good, you know, and then there's some houses that are repeated issues. And the way it is now you kind of start over every time you get a violation. It's not seen in the context of whether you've had violations within the last year. So I think having that is a good direction to go in. I had, I was thinking this was in the nuisance by law, I actually wrote down a section that had a question on 305M 3D. And, but I'm thinking now it's not in the nuisance, it might be in the regulations where basically is that it came under violations enforcement and penalties. So should I not mention that here? And it was basically saying that a violation if somebody owns more than one property and that there's been some, there's been not many, but there have been some owners of multiple properties and there that person's properties tend to be problem properties. And I think that if that I'm just wondering how if you have one property that's consistently a problem and another that that should be maybe attached to the owners of the property. Because maybe you don't want to grant a permit to a third property or fourth property if there's been, if that owner has had consistent nuisance calls or violations or at their other properties. So yeah, so I wanted to look at that if maybe we wanted to address that concern. So it wasn't specifically that if somebody has many accrues, many violations at different properties, when they apply for a, you know, a subsequent property, that might be a consideration. And it's that 305M 3D says that it won't be that each property is in isolation. I remember one of the clauses you're talking about, I'm not recognizing the reference you're using, but yeah, we had something somewhere and I think it's been pulled but it. No, I just said it. I think I read it yesterday, you know, I was trying to take notes. Yeah. But it might be, it might be regulations or just the regular bylaw. I'm actually trying because I probably the regular bylaw because that's the 350 number. Okay, I didn't print that out. So that yeah, okay, we can go back to that when we get to there. We'll look at it there, but but it's worth considering for nuisance house nuisance properties to or public nuisance. When you get, you know, it's sort of a similar a person in charge of multiple properties that has a nuisance. I'm thinking more of less of a noise nuisance on each property because there's different tenants there versus say a littering nuisance or, you know, the maintenance side of the nuisance side where each of the properties is not maintained when an owner gets a ticket on each of the properties and it adds up to three for the owner within a year. Maybe there's a way you can write that in to to get to that corrective action plan for all properties instead of each property having to get to right that you don't start with a clean slate every time. Yeah. At each property, right? Yeah, one of the things that we haven't talked about yet, but we'll probably get to is that in crafting this, I really do want to run this by John Thompson because I came across my note saying that he he favored being able to link points accumulation of points to essentially to penalties to keep it simple here. And this version does not does not really link points. Remember, we had kind of a table that would, you know, if it was littered, it was one point, if it was health and safety, it was two or three points, that kind of thing. And it's simpler here, but I want to run it by you all to make sure that we're that we're being clear about how points essentially how violations accrue. So I want to make sure that from John's standpoint, the enforcement and the accountability is still possible. We do have Rob here. Rob, have you had a chance to read this and do you have any thoughts on that? And we haven't actually talked about that section yet, but yeah, I do. And in fact, that was probably my only question about how to accumulate the in key, you know, track of the violations. You know, because of now what's included in the list of violations, you know, there's a likely situation that the fire department responds and finds a fire alarm by, you know, violation calls us out there, we find, you know, five or six violations that are now listed in this, this group. What does that mean? You know, is that two violations because the fire department responded and we responded the next morning is that one violation because it's one occurrence or one, you know, time being there. So yeah, I think it's just understanding that we're the point system. Not that we, I don't think we have a preference of one over the other, except the point system may be made that a little bit clearer for us on how to get to those, how to treat those situations, each of those independently. My only other thoughts on this, you know, is just I'd be interested in the police departments, you know, view of kind of combining things this way and figuring out with the chief how this actually gets implemented, who manages it, who develops corrective action plans and enforces those, especially when I would expect, you know, there might be one police violation, one health violation, one building rezoning violation, you know, who's actually going to be able to staff this and see it through. I can answer one of them, but your suggestions are great. So I envisioned in my head a violation being the writing of an actual ticket for a nuisance property bylaw violation. And so if the ticket gets written, that's ding one. And if two months later another ticket under 3.26 gets written, that's ding two. And that these here, this list of activities that could be deemed a violation are sort of what a person who's the enforcement officer, whether that be your office or the police department, and maybe we can talk about who else gets to write those non criminal tickets, they would take those into account and say, okay, hey, that false alarm by itself hasn't been a violation, but here I am. And I see the false alarm and look at all this littering and, you know, the vegetation's also there. Now I'm going to write this is a public nuisance and write that separate 3.26 violation instead of say a violation under 3.46, the false alarm, or maybe they write a violation of both. And only the 3.26 citations count towards that first, second, third ding to get to the corrective action plan. That was my thinking in my head. Pam, was that your thinking too? I was an advocate for the point system, but just because it was cleaner and it actually spelled out if you have a littering citation, that's one point, you know, that kind of thing. So I think it falls to the enforcement officers. And so I would like some feedback on that. Jennifer and then Rob if he's got feedback. Yeah, well, this is also I guess a question to Rob is it just seems like if somebody has multiple violations, actual code violations that they should accrue more points from that call than someone, you know, you go out to get a noise complaint and then they disperse the party or, you know, whatever. Well, I guess that would be different because that wouldn't be a code violation, but I do think there should be a different penalty for having multiple code violations versus one, you know, I mean, there's the most egregious, you know, we always the poster child would be 11 Allen Street. So, you know, I know that the house was then shut down and the tenants couldn't be there. So that they were certainly penalized, but that's very, and if you go and there's, you know, maybe just one smoke alarm is not properly installed. And then what did always concern me with one with 11 Allen Street is that, you know, that I mean the house had to be condemned, but then when they fixed it up, they might have actually sold it, but theoretically they would have had a clean slate in it to the old process, the way we currently have it now. When they fixed the violations and they attendance, they would have a clean slate, even though the house has been in such poor condition, it had to be the tenants couldn't continue to live there until the violations were corrected. So I guess that's kind of a question is should shouldn't someone, if there's multiple violations, have it receive a different receive more points than when you get to a house and there's one violation. So can we can we go back to Mandy's like so in the section be the public nuisance violations. You know, can can Rob staff find junk vehicles, you know, incomplete removal of snow and ice and and trash, you know, spilling out of the garage. In my mind, you know, that it seems like that could be three points. Those are three separate items under this bylaw that that could get a ticket written for. So is that how you're thinking, Mandy Jo? I guess I don't know what I'm thinking, you know, I'm trying to one of the concerns I had about the point system is it requires the court system to keep the ticket. Right, you might get the point for that noise violation. But if the court then throws that ticket out, which I've heard sometimes they do a lot of, then there's no point for that violation under a point system for say rental permitting or that I'm given the way it had been written. And I'm not sure it would pass legal muster under KP law to issue those points without actual violations to keep those points there number one. And so doing it this way just says write your ticket for nuisance property, whether or not that ticket for false alarms got written or whether or not it's been adjudicated and no matter which way it was adjudicated just just because someone came and saw that nuisance property, you got a nuisance property ticket and then you just count the number of nuisance property tickets. I think you're meaning public nuisance tickets public nuisance tickets. Yeah, sorry, the public nuisance tickets. The other question I have is one of the things, you know, Jennifer, you were talking a lot about code violations. And one of the things I've struggled with is code violations, depending on what they are, are not necessarily public nuisances are not necessarily nuisances. If you've got an electrical code violation completely interior to the house, that doesn't create a public nuisance, it creates a health hazard, it creates a building code violation. We're trying to deal with that under the rental permitting law as having to pass that inspection and for an owner occupied house. But it doesn't in my mind create a public nuisance. So I'm struggling with what is a public nuisance? What are we going to issue points for under a public nuisance that is separate from whether or not the house is rented or owned, right? Whether or not it has renters in it or not, because this bylaw applies to all properties. So that's where I struggle with a point system, I would say, is like getting five points in one day, does that create a public nuisance automatically, or is it an accumulation of points and you've just gotten warnings when you get to four and then when you get to eight, then you get your corrective action plan. We could go that route, I don't know, I'd need to hear from Robert how easy it would be to track. But this is where I struggle with what is a public nuisance and what are we trying to solve with the public nuisance bylaw versus other issues? Jennifer. Yeah, I guess you're right. So when I think of that example, 11 Allen, it started out with a nuisance complaint. Right. So that's, so I guess you're right. So for this is just nuisance. So if you have a nuisance complaint and you get there and you see there's other issues, then that that's a code violation. But you're saying, yeah, and they should have points as well, like if you accumulate. So the point system could be for nuisance. And if you, you know, specter goes out once there's a code violation, goes out the next time, because I do think often some of these are triggered by nuisance complaints. That's how they get, I mean, Rob can answer that. Is that often how you get to the house in the first place? Rob? It certainly is one way. So it's an overnight response by public safety. And then we're, you know, we're following up on what was the information that was collected during that visit. Absolutely. It's not all that's not every case, but that often happens that way. Thank you. All right. Are you done, Jennifer? Yes. Okay. Shalini? Yeah, my other question sort of related is when we're going to come down to the, to categorizing a house as a problem property, then who is accountable? Because if the noise is coming from the tenants or this garbage trash on the, in the yards and all of that's tenant related, but then are we holding the property manager or the owner accountable for tenants behaviors? Pam? If I could answer that, the way it's structured now is that a problem property, which is kind of the lower tier, is, is the responsibility of the occupants and those who caused the problems. If, if issues and violations continue, oh, and at the point when it's a problem property, the owner and manager are notified, they are not liable at that point. If, if issues continue and further violations occur, the, the owners and manager and or managers become responsible for the corrective actions and for any financial burdens that, you know, are, are levied against them. But, but the first round is the first hurdle is just the occupants and those who caused the problems. Can you just explain the nuisance property then? So if it's, if, okay, so I get that, that makes sense, that the initial violation of the, breaking any of this nuisance by law is the person who's creating the nuisance. That makes complete sense. And then, and then within a year if, how does it get converted into a nuisance property designation? Pam? I actually have some wording that I'm, that I'm thinking we might want to just clarify a little bit in section C and D. And that has exactly to do with what Shalini is asking about. Go ahead. Under C, the, we accidentally used the words interchangeably and they shouldn't be. We're talking about public nuisances as these violations, whether the cars parked or the trash flowing. So public nuisances is one thing. A, a problem property is the low tier assessment of several multiple violations. And then nuisance property is the top tier multiple additional violations. So I think we, I think some of these words in here are actually incorrect. So starting with C, the nuisance, the nuisance property designation. Number one, problem property, that's the low tier designation. Upon a third violation of the bylaw, issuing with any one year period, the property shall be deemed a problem property. I have, I have an issue with that and that is that if a student is in a house from September to May, that's, that's typically their lease period. And it feels to me that wherever we are in town, if it happens to be a rental that we're dealing with, it feels like a lease, the lease period is the terminology that we might, might want to consider rather than a one year period. Let's say they have a, they have a whale of a big party in September of their lease period. A year from then, it'll be a new batch of students in that house. So if we, if we restrict it to a lease period rather than a one year period, I'm thinking that might be more helpful. So that's, that's first thing and then. Can I just ask a question about that? Yeah. Because this applies to any house, including Pam, your house and my house. How would you, how would you include your house into that wording since you don't have a lease? So maybe we keep one year, but we add and or lease period for rental. But so for a number to see to, which is a nuisance property designation, I think I'd like to see the words upon additional violation of the bylaw within one year or the lease period, et cetera, but additional violations. It implies that you've added something to it. And so in section two with right now, it's written a violation within one year after the designation as a problem property or failing to implement the corrective action plan. And you would change that too. I thought it was actually just upon additional violations upon additional violations of this bylaw within one year. One year of what though? One year of it becoming a problem property. So you would say that yes. And again, one year slash one, one lease, lease period. So you would actually say if the third violation, say the nuisance, the problem property gets designated in, I'm just trying to understand this in March and the, the location of the problem property is a lease period that runs June to May. And the next violation happens in June after it was a problem property. You would say that restarts the clock. It's no longer a problem property. It's a, we're back to count one. Because I think that's what your change would do if I'm understanding the language, right? I'm not sure. I guess, I guess if we are trying to maintain a designation for the, the dwelling unit itself. Think about it and we'll hear from Shalini and Jennifer. Yeah. Shalini. Yeah, I think why we're running into a problem is because we're trying to do two things with two different things. Like the problem property concept in my mind came about when we were talking about rental registration. And that was when properties weren't maintaining them and not meeting the code and all of that. And they're consistently creating unsafe housing conditions. And that was a property home, a problem property that would require more inspection. There would be fines and all of those, right? And now we're talking about nuisance, which applies to everybody. And nuisance is basically that's something that's disrupting people's right to enjoy quiet and peace. And so within that issue, one is what are the things that can cause disquiet and interrupt people's quiet? That's one. And so some of these issue items in this, as we go into the details, we can look at some of them may not actually be involving directly the right to enjoy quiet. That's one thing. And second, I'm still confused about the accountability because if it's nuisance, the people who are creating the nuisance should be the ones responsible. But what I'm hearing you say is that initially that will happen. But if it's three or more, then it becomes a problem property. And then it becomes the owner or manager's responsibility, which again, I'm not sure if, you know, yeah. So I'll try to explain that one. And then we'll go to Jennifer. So I'm going to take an example of false alarms. And I'm going to use my own house as a false alarm issue. When I lived my prior rental, I was a renter. I lived in a house that the smoke alarm went off in the middle of the night, sometimes monthly, sometimes more frequently than that, 3am, 4am. Now, as adults who didn't feel like calling fire department every time we just dealt with it, we could look at the house, we could know we knew these were false alarms, we weren't calling the fire department, but say we weren't as sophisticated. And one time we actually did call the fire department because, you know, we got used to this so much, but then one time it wasn't doing it the way it normally did in going off falsely. You know, we'd call our landlord, we'd ask them to replace them all, we couldn't get these alarms, these false alarms, the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors to stop going off on these random times. And one time we did call the fire department because it was acting that alarm was going off, not in its usual false alarm manner. But say I called the fire department every time. I'm a renter, I don't have a responsibility to the smoke detectors. I get freaked out when they go out and so I call the fire department just to make sure they're there. Well, it was easily four or five within a year. And so maybe they write the tickets, but after the third or fourth of those tickets, at some point the landlord becomes responsible for fixing the actual problem. It's not me as a tenant or even if I'm the owner, if it was going on in my house right now, it's not me as the owner or the fire department's responsibility to fix the underlying problem of why that false alarm is going off. And so the tenants, if you're a rental, the tenant is not going to buy all new or do what it needs to be done to do that because it's not their property. And so that nuisance, if you were to write a nuisance ticket for that, that nuisance would eventually, would initially fall on the tenant rightly or wrongly. The tenant is the one calling in the quote, false alarms. But after a while it would start falling on the landlord, the property owner, who then might finally have an incentive to come out and fix the underlying issue because now they're the ones incurring the $300 fine. So that's just one example where it's not the landlords necessarily problem that's causing the nuisance in that the tenants are calling the fire department, but the tenants don't have a way to fix that underlying issue. And so bringing that landlord in and might force the fix. So that's a different example, but where the tenants are creating the trash or they're creating the noise or whoever it is, it doesn't even have to be tenants for that matter. But in tenants, it becomes tricky because we're saying that it's the landlord or the manager management company that should be responsible when it's the tenants who are creating the noise or the trash. So which is different from the example where the landlord is responsible for fixing the causes. So how do we separate out those? Or are we separating those out? Or are we just making the manager management team ownership responsible for those? Which I don't think is entirely, I mean, I don't know, that's a conversation I, you know, to be had. Jennifer. Okay, so some problem, problem properties where there's repeated issues. It is the land, you know, there are many landlords who are really, you know, they work with their tenants, they're in touch with their tenants, they visit the property, you know, regularly, particularly if you're local or they have a local management. And it's not to say, you know, that tenants may never have a party, but they're generally not problem properties. And with the problem properties, you tend to see, you know, the same houses, you know, again, repeatedly, that's what their problems, some of them are may have the same owner. But I would say, I guess I know in my district, beer cans and those red solo cups, I mean, trash on the lawn is a real issue. And it is the, I believe it's the property manager or the owners, however, it's the properties being managed and overseen to make sure whether they make sure their tenants do it, or they hire someone to do it themselves. But the next door neighbor should not have to live with looking out over literally a lawn that's carpeted with beer cans. So I do think that the property owner, maybe through their manager has to feel like they're responsible. And I know that there was, there's one house, which they had a huge party one weekend, and the garbage, which you could see in the backyard, all the people, it was a pile of beer cans. A week later, they were still there. And I, you know, had a meeting with the neighbor next door and the property management company and just said, you know, you're, however you work with your tenants, you're responsible for making sure that because it was definitely impeding the surrounding neighbors enjoyment of their homes. So there's got to be a way we can deal with that. Rob. I agree with Jennifer, you know, especially for the items that are going to be enforced by inspection services, we need to be able to direct those issues to the owner or their manager. When you're taking, you know, something simple like trash, it's easy to identify that the trash belongs to a particular property, but the rental permit gives us the owner and the property manager's information, not the tenants' information. So, you know, we're not going to go knock on the door and ask them for their names so we can write them a ticket. That's just not going to happen that way. So we're going to have to be able to direct the owner of the property to do something to correct that situation. So the violation would be written to the owner in that case. It's different when police respond and are dealing with an individual and getting their personal information. You know, I need a social security number to file a ticket at district court and to collect on it. There's no way our inspectors are going to collect that information out in the field or expected to even attempt to. So, you know, I think these non-police matters will be handled like they are now with the manager or owner. Can I ask a follow-up with that, Rob? Does that mean that something like this by-law, you wouldn't actually write a violation for the person who initially caused the littering, say, or the junked vehicles in the front yard, you'd write it to the person in charge owner, even though the owner has no control initially over whether that vehicle showed up in the yard? Well, so it's, I know we're trying to think of this for all situations, not just rentals, but you know, it works fine for a property that's not a rental because the junk vehicle belongs to the owner of the property. So that's a little easier to deal with. But some of these other items, I would say, no, we wouldn't be able to write the ticket to the violator. I mean, occupancy limits. So the people that are not on the lease, the people that shouldn't be living there are the ones that we're going to have to try to, we have to try to collect their personal information in order to create a violation in a ticket to them. You know, I just don't see that even being possible. You know, in most cases, we don't even know who they are. And when we do get leases, we're getting leases of the tenants that have signed the lease, not the tenants that are the problem causing the violation. So I don't even know how we get a hold of them. And the time that would be involved to try to, I think we would just give up. I think the approach has to be to the manager and find ways to effectively manage the property and ensure that these violations all continue. So in case of occupants, I can see that. But in case of like litter or canyon, I mean, it seems like you just go to the door and whoever is there, they get charged. Because I know with noise, that's what we heard is that when the tenants were charged like $350 for noise and they immediately, their behaviors changed. Because of that, it's just the fact that these laws were not enforced that people keep doing that. But when the tenants who are on a limited budget and they are given a warning and they still continue to do the trash, and then they are asked to pay a fee, then it will change their behavior. So, and it seems like, I mean, I don't see why it's hard to go and ticket them for litter for parking cars on the yard or things like that. Rob and then Jennifer. We just have to think through how that actually works with a ticket system. So, if it's a parking ticket, it starts off with a license plate number. You know, the parking attendant knows who owns that vehicle, who's responsible. If we're talking about John Thompson walking up to the door and knocking on it and trying to gather the information that's needed in order to file a ticket, we could leave a ticket. We could just hang it on the door and say, pay this to town hall. But when they don't pay it, the process falls apart. Because we have to file for collection in district court through the non-criminal disposition process. So, it just, you know, maybe if everybody just voluntarily pays their tickets, it'll work out just fine. But the ones that don't, there's no next step. Jennifer. Yeah, there's also, you know, you knock on the door, one of, you know, there's four tenants, you know, they get, I wasn't here this weekend, I didn't do it, I wasn't at the party. So, I remember in the public forum, one of the larger property management companies said they sent somebody out to their properties like Monday morning, which even if you just own one property, it is the landlord's, I believe, responsibility to, I mean, they could pass, they could have something in the lease, I believe, where they could say if there's a violation and there's a cost, that will be passed on to the tenant between the tenant and then the landlord. But I can tell you that things like litter, it just doesn't get cleaned up unless the landlord gets involved. And so, this is one example. This happened before Christmas vacation. One of my constituents called very upset because the house next door, the tenants had left for Christmas and maybe they were getting rid of a double mattress and box spring. And they actually left it off on the side of her house. So, nobody would know who it belonged to and it become, I guess, her problem. But it so happened that one of the neighbors saw this. So, she, you know, they called Rob's office and the tenants who did go and move the mattress and box spring back to in front of their house and then went home for a winter break. And it was really unsightly. So, the neighbor, you know, contacted building, the building commissioner's office and they contacted the landlord who did move, get rid of the box spring mattress. But so, should it have, it was really the tenants responsibility, should it have stayed there, would still be there now till they come back. And it really was not something that the neighbors should have to deal with. So, that's just, you know, an example where, you know, unfortunately, if you're in that kind of rental business, you're going to have to deal with these situations. Thank you. So, I guess my question is, I got really annoyed, you know, as a tenant, I would have been really annoyed if my landlord just came onto my property without even letting me know and just started moving stuff and picking stuff up. You know, tenants have property rights on the property they lease. And I just don't know, you know, talking about, talking about these issues of, well, the landlord can just go on and clean it up. I don't know whether they legally can work into a lease that they can. I don't know. It's just something percolating in my head of, can a landlord actually do that if a tenant says no, you're not allowed on my property? Like, I've rented this, I have no possession. I'm not letting you on. And then the landlord's getting all of these tickets and can't actually do anything about it. So, I don't know whether we're going to solve that problem because I don't know the answer to that. But, you know, I know I could have kept for certain things the landlord completely off of my property that I was renting because I had a lease and ability to occupy it without the landlord coming onto it. You know, I had issues where the landlord would just hand a servicer a key and they would enter the house without knocking. And I would suddenly just, I knew they were coming that day because the landlord would let me know that the oil burner servicer will visit you sometime in these three days. And I'd be upstairs and suddenly there'd be someone in my basement because they would have just come right into the basement without even knocking on the front door. And at least I could figure it out, but I was annoyed. And I yelled at my landlord, like, you tell your servicers to knock on the front door to see if anyone's actually home before they let themselves in, you know, but there's only certain things that landlords can actually go onto the property for. And so, I guess I'm struggling like Shalini is, like, who's the problem and could those fines be passed on? I'm not sure. Once you've written a ticket to a person, I don't know if landlord tenant law allows the landlord to, quote, pass it on to the tenant. So this is probably partially the struggle in the town. And I don't, anyway, Pam. Okay. So I'm thinking in Jennifer's situation that that they have a contractor for lawn mowing. And it would be similar to that. You know, the lawn, the lawn, the lawn jockey is going to be there every Monday morning to mow the lawn kind of a thing. And they could, they could certainly notify them that there will be cleanup, although they'd probably rather have the kids clean it up themselves. I was going to ask Rob on this, on this list of one through 12, which of these, which of these items are actually items that can be attributed to a tenant or the cause, the cause or source of the nuisance and which ones would his office typically go to the manager or owner for? Rob? So, yeah, going through the list. I would say anything that's not a police matter is not going to is not going to be, we're not going to be able to write the violation to the person committing the violation. So number six would be something that we would send to the owner. Number seven. And I'm talking about the ones that were responsible for inspection services responsible for enforcing. Number nine, those would be the ones that we would be responsible for. For the snow and ice removal, I guess we'd have to ask whoever, you know, whoever's responding to that if it's, you know, police or public works. It's technically police right now under the bylaw. Really? Yeah, I think public works often is responding, you know, but, you know, I understand it has to get referred to the police department for any formal violation. I don't know how often that occurs. Thanks. That's really helpful. Yeah. So, so if we were to restructure this, I think we would need to kind of differentiate between the different categories then, right? Or even just to be able to say more generally that it would be one of the, you know, the violation would be to whoever's appropriate. I'm not, I mean, I'm trying to think of a situation and there could be that we're involved in where we identify the tenant that was tampering with a smoke detector, you know, and for whatever reason we're there, we know who the individual is. Yes, we would then be able to address that to the individual. So there could be situations, although I think less likely than or less often than there would be otherwise. Thanks. Shalini? Yeah, I think the other concern, I think I'm hearing what you're saying that, okay, there's a management company that's been contracted that they are going to be responsible for cleaning all the litter and making sure that's, and that's between the tenant, let's say if you even get that they get the rights to access and all of that's part of the lease agreement. I'm only concerned then about the smaller rental owners, like if I don't have, if I'm running like I have two rentals in different parts of town and if the tenants are acting up and they are creating litter and then I go and talk to them and then they're still doing it. I mean what choice do I have as like other than not renew my lease with them maybe, but it wouldn't be fair I feel to the smaller rental owners to make them responsible for the noise by law, you know, noise blah blah blah. Thank you. Jennifer? Yeah, so two things. I feel pretty strongly about this. I mean if I went away for a year and sublet my rented my house out and the people were really causing noise and nuisance to my neighbors, I have a responsibility, I don't think I just say well you know sorry it's that's I mean I just who I rented to, it's still my property. So this issue with not being able to pick up your cans on the front lawn, I'm just saying in terms of doing this bylaw this is a major issue in neighborhoods where there are a lot of student rental houses, that's no other way to put it. There's you know litter on the lawn particularly you know after weekends and if it was a if it's a homeowner I think I'm just if it was on any of our lawns and we didn't even put it there we would clean up the beer you know you would clean up your cans that were on your front lawn. But you know I don't know if I would have done it when I was 19 so they just stay there and the property owner even if it's one you know you just own one house and you you know hopefully there that's the problem if somebody owns one house and they live way out of town and they don't have anybody looking over the property locally but if I'm renting one or two other houses in town then I do have to go there regularly and make sure I mean there is there's a rental house down the street for me that's rented to students it's a two-family house on the corner of McClellan and Page it is immaculate always and I just happened to be walking by once in the woman who owns the house she doesn't live there but she was like sweeping the porch and doing the front lawn and she actually I knew she was local because I heard her talking to one of the tenants about how her daughter is a crest officer. Anyway I was um so there meant most many landlords take really good care of their property even if they don't live there but really we have to have some way to have all landlords do that because and I can't believe that we're if you go if you own a property and you go to front lawn and you clean up the litter that you it's like removing a tenant's private property but there has to be a way to deal with it because just like parking is a major issue in neighborhoods or streets where there's a lot of group rental houses the trash on the lawn or in the backyard when you can see it from the neighbors you know can see it from their house it's a real problem and I have to think at some point it's a health and safety position to just have the trash that stays there for weeks so there has to be a way in this bylaw that we can deal with this legally. Thank you Jennifer so I'm struggling so I have a couple questions for Rob but then I go back to what this bylaw is you know we've identified a bunch of stuff here right and so for Rob my question is for those numbers six seven and nine would you ever write a public nuisance violation or would you write different violations you know like if if it was number nine would you and happened regularly say or you showed up to a house and it had refuse and you know all of the the storage issues with trash and there was you know vegetation violation say would you think about writing a violation of this bylaw a non-criminal violation of this bylaw nuisance property public nuisance bylaw at all or would you know or would you just write a violation would you just cite them under the other bylaws that are there that we've adopted or the violation of the board of health regulations or a violation of the zoning bylaw or would you do both and I think that's what I also have to ask the police like what are we what are the people we write this by who would enforce this bylaw are they going to use it because it sounds like if it's not going to be used then I go back to and I hate to say this do we even need it like what do we need it for if it's never going to be used and do we just go back to within potentially a rental registration bylaw a point system based on the actual writing of tickets for certain bylaw violations and get rid of this bylaw completely and I hesitate to say that because we like having a public nuisance bylaw there's a problem with that and I know we have some problems with public nuisance as so I'm just curious Rob what would you actually write a ticket for if you showed up and you had the authority to write something under public nuisance would you write that too or just the underlying violations so I would think all all possibilities I I would look to the public nuisance violation for for items that are not regulated by say zoning or some other law or code because I also have to write the violation under those codes or those bylaws mainly to give them the you know the right to appeal and you know properly cite and follow the enforcement procedures of those regulations now those didn't exist I'm going to use this one because there's no appeal process there's no local appeal right on the rental appeals board I don't have a zoning board of appeals I don't have a state building code appeals board I'm just going to write this this ticket find this violation and try to collect it so you know it really depends what it is but for most of our stuff there's another law and regulation you know that we would be involved in that we'd have to include in the notice of violation so in that sense this this bylaw doesn't do much except for designating the property and what that means that's that's really all this is about is getting that that designation and what comes as a result of that do you see in terms of how this is written that having that designation would help your office correct these problems or not do you find it given given this new rewrite do you think it would be helpful in correcting the issues I don't I don't think so for for our stuff but what we this would this would force a little bit more to happen that we you know we envisioned when we wrote the first regulation that we're currently using with noise and nuisance violations that when they got to a certain point the police department could recommend to us to get involved and take some action under the current bylaw this kind of prescribes that a little bit more so I do like that piece of it so it makes that connection that you know maybe maybe they're not health and safety violations that we enforced but the other violations that are occurring could impact the ability to rent the property and that's that's the the piece we don't have now or maybe just not utilizing right now as maybe intended so I I do like that being built in somewhere thank you Pam yeah just so I make sure I understood what Rob said um he can use this for anything that's not zoning or or police it sounds like is that correct is that correct I can use it in addition to so I can I would I could cite the public nuisance violation but I also have to cite the zoning bylaw and they would you know the they would have the right to appeal the zoning bylaw determination to the zoning board of appeals and that would take it why do you have to do both if you have this why do you have to do the zoning because they have a right to an appeal and there's enforcement procedures of the zoning bylaw that have to be followed so I can't just ignore that entirely and take away their right to to challenge the decision uh because this doesn't build in any any appeals process okay the the rental the rental permit bylaw has an appeal process but they but you wouldn't have any teeth until you get to the point where we're saying we really don't want you to be able to rent because you're so awful then you then you have the appeals process built into the rental bylaw right right the appeals process is just for decisions to revoke a permit yeah and and the rental appeals board isn't hearing the zoning by they're not they're not deciding on a zoning violation or code violation they're only deciding on whether or not the the permit should be suspended so this isn't all in vain no and but we never cut out we never cut out you know building code process fire code you know some things go to the state fire marshal on appeal we could never remove that and deal with it all locally so it's just working with them together and is there an advantage to getting to this designation and that's what this this bylaw will be able to do thanks ham are you good for now yep so i just i'm just thinking about that then we we need to make sure that rob and john take a look at at how the the problem property is described and then and then what triggers designation of a nuisance property and and then what might tip the scales to something that that says you really aren't qualified to rent a property i mean this there so there's sounds like there are three hurdles three little three little tears oh okay jennifer yeah i promise this my last comment on beer cans um but if i guess i'm asking rob um if you have to so if the landlord um property owner has to give notice to the tenants that somebody and maybe it's a certain number of days notice that somebody's going to be coming to fix something couldn't it i guess i'm thinking like a gardener um couldn't they just inform the tenant that they're going to be coming into the but not going into that house but going to the backyard and or on the front lawn to clear trash once a week would that be legal so i think it really depends on how the leases are are put together i think in most of our cases that we're thinking about the manager the property owner or manager is responsible for maintaining the grounds and they're not going to give notice every time they're going to come cut the lawn or whether maybe some of them pick up the trash you know for the tenants so they're not going to give notice when when they get uh alerted to a problem with the the grounds not being maintained they respond and take care of it to eliminate the problem now that's up to them if if they're throwing away something that might be of value or you know that type of issue they need to they need to work with their tenant on that when we're talking about going inside the building absolutely now you wait because i'm not talking about inside you know there's there's um there's procedures and time that has to be provided for notice depending on what the situation is i can tell you when we're talking about these things i have one case right now it's on northeast street um you know when it's a when it's a uh a professional property manager and in this case they just hand the problem off to their attorney you know they're they're actively involved be serious about the problems and writing and directing their tenants to to stop creating the violation stop putting trash out stop in this case putting uh taking down the smoke detectors you know don't let your friends stay over every single night you know and and the attorney says we're just going to send the notice to quit because they're in violation of the provisions of the lease and they're evictable offenses so that's what we need to make this work is we need people property owners and managers to be willing to do that now that's that doesn't always have to be the the you know the way it gets resolved but they have to be willing to do that and we have to be clear that it's their responsibility to take that step and and try to resolve this because i can't make that tenant put the smoke the smoke detector back on but they can yeah thank you um jennifer yeah just quickly notice i mean the whole kind of goal with you know revising and strengthening this bylaw is we are a town with a lot of students is to be able to create it so people can compatibly look together and these are the kind of issues that make it not compatible you know if if you don't have a way of you know it's it's just some of the it's almost like bread and butter issues trash on the lawn noise cars on the lawn it's those kind of things we have to find a way that we can address them effectively so that we can all live together harmoniously yeah so my next question the question i have goes to this section that i just scrolled to persons liable and this is basically a copy of what's in the current bylaw and maybe it if we expand the current bylaw like this draft does this needs to change given what rob has said um you know the current bylaw was gatherings only was basically alcohol violations so you only have the police there you were asking for ids anyway they could write a ticket to um the organizers because the organizers are on the property and the police had the ability to write the sort of to to ask for that information but what i'm hearing from rob is that for some of the stuff that he would write a ticket you know a violation a non-criminal violation under this bylaw he doesn't have the ability to figure out who the person in charge is potentially i mean maybe right like if it's the owner or if they have a rental permit in theory you can look that up on the permit because the person in charge needs to be listed but the person that who's organized it the tenor the tenant um the one engaging in activity isn't necessarily something that rob isn't someone necessarily that rob can identify and so i look at this one and i say when the violation is the first is say a littering violation that rob writes to the owner the owner might not be the person in charge and if it's the first violation under this bylaw have we written a problem in into this section d do we even need section d um or is essentially do we have to rewrite section d to include owners right um at all times is jointly and severally liable and that joint in several means in theory that if the ticket is written here um the owner could then sue the tenant for a portion of that bill that ticket it would have to be under a lawsuit i believe but they couldn't just like pass it on in final billing or something i think they'd have to actually sue for it but do we need to rewrite this section so that rob when you write that first ticket to the owner for x violation that and then you write in public nuisance one we're not faced a lawsuit of well you couldn't write that one to me because it's first rob so i don't i don't see this as a violation always equaling the ticket so you know i think what happens here is that we we might find violations that add up they could get their third violation and and they end up jumping right into a nuisance property they have to they have to be considered a nuisance property in order for us to take any action and assess any penalties now that'll be different for the police department they'll be able to um maybe ticket immediately right right from the start so the way this is written um so i guess it's whether or not that's a concern it's it's more about identifying and counting the violation not whether or not a ticket's issued ham um how do we how do we count how do we keep track of them then that x number of violations are noted um um and you and rob you just said that you know several violations might add up to a nuisance property i feel like we i feel like we have to be able if i don't i don't understand how we can do it without a ticket for each or a violation equals one point so that we understand where we are in the tally right so i mean that that's going to require some sort of management system for all these properties that's that communicates with police activity but you know we write violation notices we don't start off with a ticket when we find a violation we rewrite a violation notice and we're looking for compliance we're not looking to collect a fine so that would be that would be a violation it would be a violation found and and if we you know if we went there three times and and had that violation had violation notice is written even without tickets under some other regulation and then the police department showed up the fourth time now it's a nuisance house if that happened within the year went from a problem house to nuisance house so it's it's just the tracking of that that no matter what we use points or otherwise we have to develop that yeah internally other questions or thoughts um for now um pam yeah um sorry sorry shallonee's actually first because i never took my hand out um but i wonder if we we drag out that that point table again and and just put it out there for staff to look at so that we i'm i'm definitely having a little bit of problem understanding how we transition from you know violations to to actual linking this to rental permitting given that so i'd like to pull the i'd like to pull that out again and then get some feedback on that kind shallonee yeah i'm just looking at upton massachusetts and they have written it in a way that allows the building commissioner if there's a violation to do the necessary investigation and it leaves it open and says that um the order they'll do the right they shall be served upon all owners and occupants as can be determined after reasonable inquiry i'm deciding that is an example but i think and boston actually has point system so maybe we can get feedback from the staff you know look at this and meanwhile we can look at boston and a couple of other towns how they're writing this up to address the issues that rob just brought up that they don't have access to the tenants and how to implement it and then how do we create the point system for problem properties in a fair equitable way yeah that's all thank you shallonee um sounds like with this conversation we're making progress we're clearly not there in other words people like the the way we're going of expanding what could contribute to creating a public nuisance um and the difficulty is figuring out how to translate that into sort of enforcement mechanisms um shallonee you got one more thing to say before i wrap up yeah again this is a touchy point for everyone but um can you explain how occupancy limits in itself is creating a public nuisance i can understand that if there's a lot of cars parked if there's trash if there's noise that is definitely a nuisance but just the fact that there are five people living in a house how is that on its own a nuisance if they're all very quiet they're graduate students and yeah pam and then jennifer i'm going to respond by saying there is there is an associated um aura about each person living in the in the property and whether it's the five quiet grad students or the five um unquiet undergraduate students the additional car the additional noise the additional trash the additional traffic coming to and from the additional number of guests it is it is something that is um not in the in the usual day to day of a quiet neighborhood let's say and in so many cases the the that one additional person that's in that building is you know sometimes the reason that things start to get out of hand they are not managed well they don't have them they don't have a parking plan that goes along with the fifth vehicle and etc so um you know whether whether the five beds in that in that house are are safe for the residents is is immaterial and i and and it's it's the add-on it is the additional um byproduct of excess so can i respond to that no i think what i think what you're saying makes complete sense that when it is creating a trash when it is creating additional traffic additional density all of that is a problem but we've already highlighted each of those as a point for it under the nuisance violation we already are covering if there's trash if there's parking no we're not covering that jennifer you're saying no jennifer you're muted i mean if they have a place to park it's still just it's a lot of cars i mean finish talking then i'll respond yeah yeah no my point is that if you're already covering like if there are if there is place for parking and there parking in the right place without creating but if it is creating a traffic issues if it is creating what is creating this quiet um so if you're already accounting for all of those things then we're not counting for all of those things like what is left out what is the occupancy thing adding that's not already included in that list jennifer let ham go and then i'll go go ahead go ahead please already i i i just have to say this if you live in a neighborhood where there are a lot of these group rental houses so we're not talking about one house we're talking about let's say i have two triplexes in my neighborhood so each triplex each unit can have four students so that's 12 15 if they could each have five or they could each you know that's and the 12 is a lot it really impacts the neighborhood so you're also talking about an infrastructure the street was made there's a certain number of houses they assumed a certain number of people would live there and now you have lots of it it compounds every issue that you have it's not just one house it's all the houses that are having more residents it also makes each structure and unit that much more profitable for the owner so we're already have a situation where regular folks are getting outbid for houses and and you know there's a lot of competition for the houses there's a lot of you know a house goes up for sale and the listing agent contacts in LLC somebody they knows buying houses you know now maybe they can you know four bedrooms four thousand dollars to have six people six thousand dollars i mean it's there there is it is not if we want to have a town where we have people living here and families moving in and not just want to accommodate more beds for you mass off campus away for the property owners to generate an even greater rate on return more wear and tear on our infrastructure and on the streets and i have to tell you you know you look outside your window and if every house has five or six cars parked and their guests it's just you know that that's that affects the whole ambiance and feeling of the street it's not it is we if we want to give up our neighborhoods to the year-round people that it's just there is it exacerbates every problem that we that we have i mean so i guess we have to decide we want to serve can i respond to that yeah so so i'm agreeing with you that that's why we have listed that out if there is excess cars park when there's no space like if there's supposed to be only four people living there and if there are six cars they might be actually three people living there and there might be six cars that should be oh no it should not be wait what i haven't finished saying what shall we finish yeah i'm okay so i'm saying that we if there is a crowding of cars if there is litter on the streets or if there are these people living then they we are that's exactly why we're creating this nuisance by law is to enforce all of that right so all of that is already covered i'm still not hearing how and and all the other issues that you raise are gen real legit issues in terms of um you know property owner uh real estate agents taking an empty house directly letting investors know and not letting it reach out into the market all of these are real issues but they're not related to the nuisance by law so those are separate issues that should be dealt with in a separate conversation that we probably should have but when we're talking about the nuisance by law yes if you're saying that there is littering if there is all this crowding happening and that's exactly what we have in that list of 12 items already do we not have that like when we we have that like i'm seeing that list over here hold on we have right we have junked vehicles we have refuse we have parking somewhere where there is management yeah yeah so we already have all of those things covered i don't again you're not answering my question that what is adding the occupancy limits doing to enhance this nuisance by law because we already have all of those things that you just said when you look out of the window and there's litter or there is like all these cars parked we already have all that covered i don't understand what you mean by covered because you're still looking out if you're looking out for car it's and you don't want to have to call in you know you don't want to create a situation where you're call always having to call in you know it's in the bylaw you're violating it i mean you don't want that to be what you do every week yeah so i think if i understand shallony you're saying we have we have zoning bylaws we have a nuisance bylaw in this case we we gathered a number of of items that were that are already covered in other bylaws and i'm looking for the one to 12 yeah and we could we could say okay we don't include anything that's already covered in another bylaw no no that's not what i'm saying so let let me see if i can reword it um and then we have to move on to public comment but okay i guess you know and i think pam i asked you this some other time but what does if we're talking about a public nuisance and the creation of a public nuisance what do we think about in if we were to approach a house you know you know what when you see it what do you see when you say right that's a nuisance house right i see litter i see vegetation issues potentially the the public newt lewdness of you know if you if i was living next to it what would be a nuisance um people peeing on the lawn at all hours you know things like that and i think shalini's question is please explain how the addition of a fifth person by themselves right constitutes a public nuisance which is what adding in that occupancy of the household into this list is saying that that fifth person the presence of that fifth person contributes on itself yes yeah any other action that person might take or the household might take that simply that person on the property contributes to a public nuisance and i think shalini's question is how does the presence of a person by its themselves sitting quietly leaping in a house contribute to the public nuisance right thank you as i started to say we have we sort of lumped a number of these things into the the public nuisance grouping and i guess it i guess it the it's the fact that we've already determined that because of the because the um the excessive for the excessive influence of students in a neighborhood that that the neighborhood can only absorb a certain amount of and that is and that is where someone had the foresight to install or in that would be town meeting who instituted the four person limit we could have at the time is instituted a three person limit which is what some college towns have done who have been at this you know bylaws stuff a lot longer than we have and so so we town meeting established a four person limit that that is an attempt to minimize the nuisance of having under i'll just be really blunt undergraduate rentals within our neighborhoods so when we start ignoring the four person limit and say what does this person really do to make a difference in our lives well no no that's not it's not a difference to our lives but it's to the nuisance bylaw because what you're saying is a very legit conversation that needs to be to be had within zoning how to reinforce how to enforce that but i'm just talking with respect to nuisance bylaw we have vegetation we have parking we have outdoor lighting okay let's have eight it's uh you know no no no one minute i'm not saying because each of these each of these items is a nuisance in itself to the neighbors yeah having having they should be having the fifth person having the sixth person because you know they always invite their girlfriend and to split the cost right so having having that the additional people which is a an absolute given is the nuisance that is the nuisance itself jennifer's point about the about the economics of it makes even more sense because if we had a three person cap and a landlord could only legitimately rent to three people the values of those buildings would be much less and it would also allow the the pricing to settle at a point where maybe a working a working person could actually afford to buy the house because they were beating with three students rather than with five can i can i just say just for this because of time and all of that that everything that you're all saying is really what should be discussed but in a separate context of how do we enforce the four occupancy limit but in terms of like the nuisance bylaw like when you're saying this is causing more traffic or more but you know like unkempt houses or more noise those are all the points that we are already covered we have already covered we haven't covered that in this list do you think i'm just i'm confused as to what it has to do with if you're saying we should discuss i mean what is i guess okay what i'm it's i think manager just explained and if you still haven't understood it maybe we just need to if we were getting close to time i'd like to allow jennifer to to make a comment this is clearly conversation we have to come back to as it would relate to inclusion in the nuisance and we also public we also public raising my hand right yeah we should discuss it later we have to do public comment so i would i guess i'm just confused are you saying we should change it in the nuisance bylaw i mean the door tent is separate things so you're just asking you're just saying doesn't the nuisance bylaw cover all these and i'm saying no it doesn't and then at what point so you're gonna have five or six or no no no no i'm not i'm just saying the problems that the four person or five person or three person creates let's add those points specifically in the nuisance bylaw in terms because that's what we're trying to control is how is the behavior of people living whether they're owner or tenants how is the behavior of people disrupting the quiet peaceful life of other people and what i'm hearing is it's because there are too many cars because there's trash because they force too many in the ideal world i mean and i'm not talking about four or three or ten or six i'm not talking about that i'm just looking at just in terms of like as mandee joe said if i had to go into a neighborhood and i didn't know how many people were living in that house but looking at the house what would or if i was living right next to it without knowing how many people are living in it what would interfere with my quiet existence in that neighborhood and what would affect it is whether there's trash outside where there's too much noise coming where there's too many cars so let's make a list of all of those things that are impacting my living next to them no jennifer last comment okay i'm done another time we have to go to public comment so yeah are you sure jennifer okay so at this time we are clearly not going to get to residential rental bylaw at all today because nuisance public nuisance takes a while and it was our first discussion it was a good one i think next steps are for pam you've probably taken wonderful notes um why don't you try to take the lead on coming up with a next draft with whatever you think based on the conversation today um would move the conversation forward next time okay does that work for you excellent and i'll get you soon about when we'll next have this discussion um general public comment public comments on matters within the jurisdiction of crc at this time residents are welcome to make their public comments um please if you would like to make a comment please raise your hands and i will recognize you in turn um it will take me a little bit because i am manning the controls too um each resident will have uh up to three minutes to express their views um so at this time i'm going to call on mario de pillis um please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment hi i'm mario de pillis jr um i've been living on gaylord street since i was five years old i'm now 64 uh and i uh am in shalini's district uh shalini i'd love to take you to for a midnight stroll down south prospect uh when the parties are rolling uh that might have observed the neighborhood uh exclude young families over the last 40 50 years little by little until now it's uh jones property is almost all across all down south prospect and cayman's running it and we've been fighting that since my father established a west downtown neighborhood association a long time ago trying to trying to address the behavioral issues uh that you are trying to address here and it never worked uh we have lots of lots of experience with this nothing uh works in terms of trying to modify the behavior of the tenants you're trying to take care trying to raise uh raise their raise your expectations of them and get them to behave better and that simply doesn't work because you get a new set of tenants every year i would like to agree with rob more that you really have to go after the owners essentially they're your point of contact they're the people who have control over the tenants they're the people who can write the lease they're the people who can evict the tenants they're the people who can take action nothing else has worked for us we have seen the town downtown decay and move into a purely student neighborhood with no families and this is the issue uh it's fundamentally the issue and a lot of us are longtime residents are thinking about selling and moving out right and it's a very real decisions and i want you to understand that so i'd like you to move forward with this um i think some of them are some of the changes are more fundamental perhaps than what you're looking at but i would like to make one small comment and that is that the fines of 300 which has been long-standing is simply not enough especially for parties after 9 p.m you have written it so there's 300 for any of these violations whereas the violations that really drive out families uh and make it uh less attractive to live is are the student parties after 9 p.m and i would strongly suggest that you review that penalty structure and apply stronger penalties for different types of violations and those violations that directly impinge in a very immediate way on the on the residents should be higher penalties i would suggest fully loading the costs of the police and inspection services that have to respond and basing your fines on that so if there's a police cruiser involved what's the cost of driving a police cruiser having that police cruiser etc etc these are not low-cost violations all right so please consider addressing the penalty structure and making it more appropriate that's all i have for today i didn't have a lot of time to prepare for this i may contact you again sometime individually and thank you very much for doing the work that you're doing thank you mario for your comment um me a second um and we normally do not respond to comments but i will say just just because this this one's a basic issue which is a general bylaw that the town and acts cannot have a fine more than three hundred dollars per violation per day that is the maximum under state law the town itself is allowed to write which is why you see three hundred dollars in nearly everything because we can't go higher um state law issue there but thank you for your suggestions beyond that i'm going to go on to the next person and after public comment shalini um we will do that so the next person is um alex kent um please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment but my name is alex kent and i live at 83 north prostrate street and have lived here for the past 22 years i would agree with everything that mario de pilis just said and uh do recognize there is a limit on the fine that can be imposed um i would say that in in all this extensive discussion i did not hear enough about making in particular undergraduate student renters responsible for their behavior and that responsibility of course applies to graduate students or working people or anyone living in rental property um my proposal is this and i don't know if it can be added to the current discussion of um uh the bylaw but i would like each dwelling unit to designate a responsible person or a site manager who would be responsible for the behavior of the other residents on the property and would be held responsible for this behavior that would include uh fines in other words i think that a person should be designated in advance that person should provide their social security number in order to lessen the burden of the enforcement agency be the police or the authority in town hall to ticket the house and to make sure that the behavior is sanctioned um i want a notification to go i would like to see a notification go not only to that responsible person or site manager in the dwelling but also to the landlord and or the property manager so that they're they are aware that there is a nuisance house condition at that property and ultimately when fines are levied i i would like to see the fines go not just to the residents but also to the landlord and or property manager um i would say on a more personal note i live between two rental properties and i am surrounded by rental properties to one side to the south i have a property that has routinely flouted the four person limit or tenant limit any and uh and that the new purchaser of the property it tends to continue violating the bylaw and to have more than four people living in each dwelling six on one side and seven on the other um to the north of me is a property owned by Joel Greenbaum who is one of the better property owners in town he maintains his properties very well and i appreciate that but that property also has to my knowledge six undergraduate women living there and frequent parties that disturb our peace and right to quiet enjoyment those the town needs to enforce that bylaw the limit on foreign related persons and i would also like to see the a mechanism developed so that a single person is responsible for the behavior of the other tenants in that dwelling unit thank you very much for the work you've been doing on this bylaw and thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment on it thank you alex for making your comment dorthy pam please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment hello can you hear me now we can okay i live at 229 amity street right in the middle of a neighborhood which is in fact being deeply challenged by un poorly managed student rentals the statements of the previous two speakers were excellent and totally on target um the owner controls the type of tenants that's why the owner is the one that the town goes to it's not just that it's easier and they have the it's i live next to a student rental when i first moved here it was completely out of control it is now very quiet well behaved so the owner or the property manager decided to pay more attention to whom they rented it to and there are we have not had problems okay the main thing is we expect quiet in a residential neighborhood we need to i mean you heard 20 years of or more of losing homes for families and the number of our families is going down the number of our students in the school system is going down um we have to reduce these outside profiteers for their profit motive from coming in from outside and totally long-term managing just buying up single family homes and for prices that no family could afford one thing that hasn't been mentioned though is that this is a residential neighborhood was not set up for a big heavy dense apartment system it's sewers are old and have been for low density so the more you increase the density in one of these older residential neighborhoods the more problems you're going to have with sewers they're also the downtown of amherst benefits from the residential neighborhoods nearby the trees and the unpermeable uh grass that is on these in the residential neighborhoods helps bring the temperature down in the downtown which by nature of its businesses must have fewer trees and much more impermeable surfaces we need our trees so if you say why not just one more if they have a parking place well that means they're parking they're paving over the backyard we already have that in many places and in order to pave over the backyard you cut all the trees and then you pave over the side yard and then you increase the width of the driveway and the next thing you know you have something which has got no green in it no trees it is not residential and it is not manageable and when you talk about why not five why not six you heard from alex right now four we know that in many cases that has kind of spread to five four five or six so if you say okay let's have five or six then you're saying let's go for eight or ten so there there have to be lines drawn there has to be enforcement and I really applaud our building department for working at this and for taking it seriously because it's the future of the town that we're talking about they were talking about the year-round tax-paying base of the town wanting to have some sense of living in a town and amherst may call itself a city for one reason or another but it's a small town and we need to save it and we need to do it in a way that's fair and equitable and with a with a good bylaw and I you know I applaud this committee for tackling with this it is complex but don't keep thinking why not push it a little bit more push a little more because it's all the envelope has already been pushed thank you thank you Dorothy for your comment back to my other screens at this time there are no other hands so I am closing general public comment thank you committee for staying a little late are there any changes to the January 12th meeting minutes seeing none I'm going to make the motion to adopt the January 12th 2023 meeting minutes as presented is there a second second any conversation seeing none we'll start with Pam yes Mandy's and I Jennifer yes felony stain you abstained okay that is three to zero three in favor zero against one abstention and one absent they are approved announcements next agenda preview we are moving we were supposed to have a meeting on February 2nd there has been a invitation and event scheduled for the pretty much exact time of our February 2nd meeting at UMass that I thought people might want to obtain attend not obtain I am hoping that it is okay that we move our meeting to February 9th does anyone have a problem with February 9th over February 2nd it will then be up Jennifer yeah I may not I will try to attend I may not I know we we hate changing schedules but I I thought I understand so plan on February 9th instead of February 2nd February 13th is the public form on the rental bylaw I think I'm going to try and add the nuisance property bylaw to it even though we are just talking about it add to get some ideas so that since we're thinking about trying to integrate one into another I'm still coming up with it I'll talk to Pam and I you and I need to talk about how we can do this forum okay let's let's figure out a time to meet for that so we'll get that and then we have a February 16th meeting I am tentatively looking at the public hearing on the duplex triplex converted dwellings townhomes hearing being March 2nd it is our last meeting before the deadline of March 15th to start the hearing I am hoping somewhere in either the February 9th or February 16th meeting to do a preview of that so that we can have some discussion before the hearing I do not yet know when the planning board will open their hearing I suspect that we will open ours on March 2nd have a small conversation and then continue it to sometime in April or later depending on what the planning board is doing but we'll talk more about that later yeah so it's going to be a busy February is what I would say any requested agenda items for the future seen up Shalini just clarifying that we will have the committee the survey report in the next meeting because I will send the updated whenever you get me the updated one I will make a determination as to which meeting it goes on based on when I received the yeah fair enough but I will try to keep that as a goal and incorporate all the council comments that I've received and I just think there are a lot of valuable insights in there for the staff for residents neighbors tenants everyone landlords so I think it's worthwhile that we all get to publicly like once we've accepted it that everyone gets to see and we kind of learn from that how we all can do a better job yeah thank you any other announcements or next agenda items see none thank you all for the extra six minutes 6 36 on the journey in the meeting thank you thank you thanks Rob thanks Dave