 We good? Yes, I wanted to be sure that I saw Amherst Media and I did, so you can go ahead, you're live. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of January 6th, 2021, based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, GL Chapter 30A, Section 20 and signed Thursday, March 12th, 2020. This planning board meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. My name is Jack Gemsick, and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6.30 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst Media Livestream. Minutes are being taken as normal. Board members, I will take a roll call when I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and then please place yourself back on mute. Maria Chow? Here. Hamlong? Here. Andrew McDougal, sorry. Here. Doug Marshall? Present. Janet McGowan? Here. Johanna Newman? Present. And myself, present. So board members, if technical difficulties arise, we may need to pause temporarily to correct the problem and then continue the meeting. If you do have technical issues, please let Pam know. Discussion may be suspended while a technical issue is addressed. In the minutes, we'll note if this occurred. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. And so, and okay, opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment item and other appropriate times during the meeting. Please be aware, the board will not respond to comments during the general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment during the public comment period, you must join the meeting via the Zoom teleconference link. This link is shown on the slide before us. And the link, it's also on the list on the meeting agenda that you can grab from the website. And please indicate, if you wish to make a comment by clicking the raised hand button when the public comment is solicited, if you have joined Zoom meeting as a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes. And at the discretion of the chair, if a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their lot of time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. So we have the agenda in front of us. And again, we have some special events today, both good and bad. So a lot's on our mind, collective mind. And it's just, I think reason, I think all of us would like to not go too long into the evening. But here, just looking at the schedule, I think Amherst Hills subdivision shouldn't take too long. The chapter 40 are in zoning priorities are probably our main focus. So maybe we can do 30 minutes each of those. And then I think then we have the zoning lighting review and then in new business, we have the comprehensive housing policy. So a lot of these items, I think we need to do additional work on, but I think, no, we definitely want to focus on the 40 are in zoning priorities. With that said, we can look to review the minutes from November 18th. And is anyone want to make a motion regarding the minutes? They moved to accept the minutes. Okay, Janet. Second. Andrew. That was Andrew second. Okay. Any discussion? I see none. Okay. Yeah, I think you did a great job, Pam. Thank you. So we'll do a roll call here. Okay. I think you did a great job, Pam. Thank you. So we'll do a roll call here. Maria. Tom. Andrew. Doug. I. Janet. Approve. Johanna. And myself approve. So seven zero. So top. Of the old business is to. Have Chris breast strip introduce us to Amherst Hills subdivision. I feel some of the members here. Probably need a little bit of background on this. And I don't think a decision is going to be made tonight on this, but. Chris, can you. Introduce this and do we have anyone in the, in the, in the audience that needs to be pulled in on this, I wonder. Yeah. Public comment. Did I skip over that? Yeah. Public comment on things that are not on the agenda. Yeah. So a Jim, Jim master Alexis has his hand up, but I know that I thought that was with the guard Amherst Hills. So. I mean, we can ask him. Okay. Looks like there's no public comment on things. That aren't not on the agenda. And Mr. Master Alexis has a comment probably on the first thing that is on the agenda. So we can bring him in. You also have Pam Rooney's hand up now. So now I'm not sure are we doing general comment or Amherst. Right. Well, let me clear with Jim. Yeah. He has been enabled to speak. Jim, can you hear us? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Mr. Chairman. I'll either speak briefly now or I don't know if you're a lot would allow me to speak after you after Ms. Brestrup talks. Well, I think you're going to speak with regard to Amherst Hills. Correct. Which is on the agenda. So we'll just, you just stay put. Okay. And let's. That's Pam. As Pam Rooney. Yes. That's fine. Thank you. Okay. I am really 42 cottage street again, just trying to figure out if we are talking public comment. It's agenda or if we should wait for item B or item C or item D to speak. It's on other items. That are not on the agenda. I'll not speak now. Thank you. Okay. We'll, we'll be soliciting comments on the individual items. Thank you. So old business, Amherst Hills, the subdivision, considering a request from the developer for release from notice by the building commissioner requesting that he refrain from issuing building permits. For certain lots. So Chris, if you want to give a little bit of a background on this for the, for the new board members. That would be great. Okay. That's good. I gave a little bit of a summary on this in September, but you may have forgotten some of those things because a lot of you were new at that time. So I just thought I'd run down. It's kind of a summary of the Amherst Hills subdivision. I'm where we are with it right now. So the subdivision has been under development since the early nineties. And it's been very slow to develop. There was an economic downturn in 2008 that lasted a number of years. So that kind of slowed it down. Another thing happened was that it's a developer, Doug Cole. Who was. One of the owners of Tafino and also coal construction passed away shortly after 2008. I think it might have been 2009 or 2010. And then, after that Doug's successors had kind of a difficult time pulling things together. So, so things had a very slow start. The roadway was begun in the early 2000s. And the roadway was constructed. In pieces. But the top coat was not installed on any of those parts. And it deteriorated over the years. The developer. Who is now. To Fino associates and has been to Fino associates. Would like the town to take the roadway and I, that means that the town would adopt the roadway as a public way. And then the town would be responsible for maintaining the roadway and plowing it and everything. And this was the intention at the time that the subdivision was permitted. I believe that the residents are very eager to have the town take the roadway as well. So over the years, the town has had a policy of recommending not installing the top coat on a road. Until most of the houses are built. And this is because the town doesn't want heavy equipment that's used to build the houses. To travel over the top course, core course of a subdivision road. And this works well for small developments that are. Fairly quickly developed such as the Vista terrace one in South Amherst that you're familiar with. Which you have had a review last spring. Of that. And then recently released. The last lot on that subdivision, but on this particular subdivision, Hammers-Tills has taken a long time to complete. And so the base of the town. The residents of Amherst Hills came to the planning board last fall, fall of 2019. And said, you know, this is really a problem. We understand from the DPW that they're reluctant to plow the road in the winter of 2019, 2020. So the planning board really. Kind of dug in. And so the planning board. And the residents of Amherst Hills came to the planning board last fall, fall of 2019. And so the city of Amherst Hills. And so they kind of dug in and, and decided to try to do something about it. And we consulted our town attorney. And at the time. All, I believe all of the lots, except those on the cul-de-sac of Lyndon Hill. Lyndon Ridge road had been released, but. At the time that the residents were asking the planning board to rescind the release of some of the lots. But with the advice of the town attorney, the city of Amherst Hills, the city of Amherst Hills was asked to evacuate the road in the winter of 2019. They were out and issued a letter to the building commissioner. Which was filed at the registry of deeds. Requesting that the building commissioner not issue building permits for certain lots that had not been built upon. Until action was taken to fix or complete the roadway. There were complications that the developer had with the conservation commission, which caused delays and other things. really privy, but those things turn out not to have too much relevance right now in what you're being asked to do. Since we've asked talk, the developer has finished the work on the roadways themselves, the pavement themselves. And they've spent spent over $400,000 on that work. I think I saw an estimate of $440,000 that they've spent. And the town engineer says that the roadways have been completed to his satisfaction. However, there's still work off the roadways. And I think a lot of it has to do with either sidewalks, or drainage that still needs to be completed. And this work is related to the subdivision road. So the town engineer has given us a list of those items, and has given us an estimate of about $230,000 to complete that work. The town has a three party agreement among the town of Amherst, Greenfield Savings Bank, and the developer to hold about $289,000 as security to guarantee that the work will be completed. So this $289,000 that Greenfield Savings Bank is is holding is more than the amount that the developer that the town says wouldn't be needed to complete the off road work that's associated with the subdivision road. So the attorney for the developer has requested that the planning board release the lots that are currently being held under this notice that was filed at the registry, allowing the developer to develop or sell those lots. We just received this request, I think it was December 23. So that was right before the holidays. So it was, even though it's been two weeks since then, it just seems like a flash in the pan. So we just received that that request. Meanwhile, the attorney for the residents, Mark Tanner, I think I forwarded his communications to you. So he's with Bacon Wilson, which is the same firm as our, our acquaintance, Tom Reedy, just to point that out to you. Anyway, he, Mr. Tanner is representing the residents and he's requested that changes be made to the three party agreement. But the residents aren't party to the three party agreement. He's just making suggestions and recommendations as to how to tighten up this agreement so that it would be or that that it would satisfy the needs of the residents. And I haven't had time to review these requested changes with our town attorney, Joel Bard from KP Law. And I haven't really had time to talk to him about the release of the lots and how that release relates to the money that's being held by Greenfield Savings Bank. So I think it appears that the planning board would be able to release the lots based on having the sum of about 289 thousand dollars in security. But I really need to talk to Joel Bard about this and figure out, are there changes that need to be made to the three party agreement? And, and how do we document this transaction? So, so I think we're moving towards releasing the lots, but we want to make sure that we do it correctly with our town attorney's advice. And so that's what I have to say for right now. And I'm going to get in touch with Joel about this in the next few days. And I hope to have a little bit better, more clear recommendation from for you by the time we meet again, which would be January 20. But at this time, I would not recommend that you release the lots that you vote to release the lots tonight. Thank you, Chris. I'd like to recognize Janet. I would agree with you, Christine, because I when I read the three party agreement, the performance agreement, I had questions about what are the obligations? Like what did it cover? And it seemed like parts of it said it was just narrowly covering the roads. And then parts of it said the obligation seemed to me broader, like, you know, part of this subdivision permit, and something called the attached schedule of values, which I didn't have. And so I feel a little nervous about relying on the performance agreement without understanding what it really covers. And the language did seem sort of loosey goosey and kind of going back and forth. So I could send my thoughts on that to you or Joel. But I did feel very nervous about just relying on that when I wasn't quite sure what the agreement was covering. And then I suggest something. How about it, Janet and I have a conversation on the telephone about this because I think, you know, there is, there are some reasonable questions about the performance agreement. We have a performance agreement in place, which you've received in your packet, but then you received another recommended changes to the performance agreement that are suggested by the residence attorney. So I'm not clear about what the role of the residence attorney is in this in this whole thing. And I don't know if Joel Bard is going to recommend that we take the residence attorney's suggestions and incorporate them into the agreement. I know that the attorney for the developer is not willing to take all of those changes. And however, he is willing to extend the date of completion. So he's told me, this is Michael Pill, who represents the developer, he's told me that he's willing to extend the date of the agreement, but he's not willing to make any of the other changes. So I think it would be worthwhile for Janet, Janet's an attorney and me to have a conversation about this. And then I'll talk to Joel, and then I can get back to the board about this whole thing. So I think that's a great idea. I have, I also have a question, because this sounds a little complicated to adjust the agreement and also we're in between bickering parties and things like that, which is never that much fun, but doable. If there's just, you know, the sidewalks and a few storm drains, and they put them in, then everything's over, right? And so is there a chance that, you know, the developer, you know, come spring is able to put those in, and then we all just kind of release everybody and say goodbye and, you know, wish everybody well. And I am quite frustrated. I think I left a message for you of like, we have actually never seen anyone from Tofino. No one's ever come talk to us or Mr. Pill has never come in. And that's a question we could just ask him right now. It's like, how close are you to getting this done? You know, you know, if you're really close and you're going to do it in April, then let's just do that and, you know, just finish the work. And, you know, it's been a strange process of never having the developer or his attorney here. And we, we know, we kind of talk about this a lot and make a little step and never really get a back and forth. So I would love to see Mr. Pill or someone from Tofino come in, but I, we could continue this kind of odd process. But if they're close to being done, and it's, you know, probably going to be less than 200,000, maybe that's the faster way for us to go than having everybody negotiate. So those are just thoughts. Oh, sorry, did you have something to add, Chris? You know, I tend to agree with Janet. I'm not sure how important it is to act quickly on this, on the part of the developer, how, how much on the brink he is of not being able to do anything if we don't release the lot. So I need to talk to him, although you probably would like to hear from him as well. So there's more information that needs to be gathered about this whole thing. And I'm uncomfortable taking the, the recommendations of the resident's attorney to change an agreement to which the residents are not a party. So I tend to think that Janet may be correct and leave the agreement the way it is and see what work can be done in the next six months. But that's not a, that's not a, a thought that's been really well thought out. So that's, that's all I have to say right now. Quick question, Chris. Did the town, does the town get compensated somehow within this, you know, when at some point with regard to the agreement and us having, you know, to have town council review it and that sort of thing? No. No. Okay. All right, Doug. Yeah, I had one, one question for Chris, which was, um, when Jason Schiele's email to you transmitting his estimate of the scope of work and the $230,000 cost, he noted that it was difficult to see exactly what needed to be done because the snow was covering the ground. I would like to basically request that you talk to him and see whether it would be worth him going back out now that the ground is pretty much clear and double checking his scope. I will do that. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks, Jack. Yeah, I was just suspecting that maybe, you know, the urgency here is just this is a great time to sell a house and a hammer. So I don't know. I mean, I agree with everything that Janet said. And hopefully at some point in the future we can get to Fino to come and make that case because this does seem a little ridiculous at this point. Chris, were you going to say something? I wanted to answer a question that Doug asked me via email and his question to me was it looks like the attorney for the residence is not suggesting that any lots be released. And I wanted to clarify that. The agreement lists certain lots on one of the beginning pages that are actually on the cul-de-sac of Wind and Ridge Road. Let me see where that is. So on page two of the agreement, about a third of the way down the page, it says covenant contract as guaranteed for observations. So those lots 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18, those are on a roadway, a piece of roadway that is not, has not been built, may never get built and therefore those would be held as part of the covenant contract. The lots that are asked that they're asking to be released are, well, I can't remember where exactly that's noted, but essentially they're asking that all the lots be released except for those lots that are held in the covenant contract under paragraph four. So that's my question. Any other comments from the board? Seen on. So again, the the project proponent doesn't have a representative here, but I believe Jim, Master Alexis can speak at this time. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for letting me speak here today and I know today is a sad and troubling day in American history and troubles of our neighborhood subdivision here, you know, pale in comparison to what's going on. So I'm going to be very brief. I promise you here. I just want to kind of hit a few points here from what I've heard tonight. The subdivision is an older subdivision I've lived here for 15 years. Okay, we moved in in 2015 and we really need and the town really needs to influence the developer to finish the work. Now, the reason why our lawyer put together that proposal is and for those of you that don't know me, I'm a lawyer. I've been a lawyer for 30 years. That doesn't mean anything here, but in reading that three-party agreement, the document that's commonly known as a three-party agreement, there's a real question and Ms. McGowan hit the nail on the head. There's a real question as to whether the three-party agreement would cover the remaining $230,000 worth of work. And by the way, just so the members of the board, just so we're clear, that $230,000 worth of work is required in the definitive plan, which was passed by a previous planning board when the subdivision was approved. So all that work that remains is our things that the developer is required to do. So the, if you have a, and I think it's necessary for anyone on the board here to talk to your town council, your town attorney, Mr. Beard, to talk about our edits on the agreement. Because what are edits on the agreement? Again, we're not party to the agreement. All our edits do is to ensure that the work is done, the $230,000 of work is done. Because it would be the only security on the project. Because to be clear, the planning board already released the lots. We came before the board and said, take back the lots, rescind that. Because the roads need to be reconstructed. And Attorney Beard, and this is a letter that was in your packet, Attorney Beard said that the planning board could in fact rescind the release of the lots. Or they had a choice, which is fine, to do what you did. Put a moratorium on building permits and sewer hookups. And that really is the only meaningful security that exists, existed. And in my view, that's why the roads were reconstructed. And that's why Tafino did the work. And by the way, thank you for making the point that we are the only people that have showed up at these meetings. We live here. This is a very important issue for us. So Tafino did the work, and the roads are fixed, and they're very well done according to the town engineer. They look great. We appreciate that. But if the moratoriums are lifted before the agreement is amended, there's a real question on whether that agreement covers the remaining work. I think it would be fine for me if you kept the moratoriums on and said to the developer, finish the work by April 1st. And I'm just picking that date out of the air. In our edits, we gave them the date of September 1st just to be reasonable. We didn't want to push and be unreasonable. But if they can do the work earlier and the moratoriums can stay on, and they can finish the work, then you can take them off. And everything will be fine. And I just want to make one more point. The residents in the neighborhood, we didn't sue anybody. They sued us because, and Christine Brestrup is correct when she says only the base layer of the road was done. They sued us saying that we had the obligation to reconstruct the road, bringing the big milling machines, which they did, go down to the earth and repave the road. That's ridiculous. We are not developers, and we in no way agreed to do that. So they're suing us. And what we want, the planning board's obligations here, with all due respect, is to ensure that the developer does the work. A number of us, a number of us have lived here 15, 14, 13 years. How long does it have to take for a subdivision to be completed or the work that's required to be completed? And I know there have been some awful things that happened, and Doug Cole was a great guy, okay? But this project has to be completed, and I would urge the planning board not to do anything that removes the security that's necessary on this project that ensures the developer do the work. And, you know, the planning board sits and represents the town, but the town is the people here, and we're the people here. And we really need you to help us, because we're not a party to the three-party agreement. And all we're looking for is adequate security, so the work is done. If the work is done quicker, that's fine. And I want to remind the member, this is the last thing I'll say. I want to remind the members of the board. I know that they did a lot of work recently, and you know, there's been some talk, although we want them to recoup their investment. There are 67 lots in this neighborhood. Tofino bought the entire 67 lots out of bankruptcy for $425,000, okay? And if you've ever been up to my neighborhood, a lot in this neighborhood goes for about $175,000 to $200,000. It's a beautiful neighborhood. They've made their money back hand over fist. It's time now to do the work. Please make sure there's adequate security on this project. And thank you very much, as you always have, for listening to me when I've come before you. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Any other comments from the public? I don't see any hands raised. Christy, do you have any final comments? Just that I'm going to hold a conversation with Janet on the phone about this, and then I'm going to call Joel Bard. And I also want to talk to the building commissioner, and so next time we meet, I'm hoping that I'll have more information or, you know, some kind of recommendation for you to move forward. But my recommendation now is not to release the lots tonight. Okay. Do we need a vote on that, or? No. Okay. No other comments by the board? Okay. So we can move on to the next item, which is the Chapter 40R. We're going to discuss our comments on the latest draft and review of the CRC comments. And, you know, your minutes. Again, I have to compliment you, Pam. They're really good and helpful on this. We did get into it, but I think some of the board members have dove in further, and we can, you know, discuss that this evening. Again, we don't want to have a long meeting this evening. So I suspect that we're going to push this, you know, to one more meeting, if not more, because it's, there's a lot of things, a lot of satellite issues kind of going around in this. But my thoughts were that we would be able to at least make a recommendation and concept about, you know, a portion of the proposal with amendments or the entirety of it, you know, would, you know, receives our approval. But I think the next item, zoning priorities, is something that we need to talk about that is more urgent, is my understanding from talking to Chris prior to this meeting. That's what that's what Town Council is looking for us for, but so we will talk about 40R. And I, I guess, again, I know some of you might have done some research. I'd love to hear, you know, additional thoughts. In my understanding as the developer is, excuse me, the consultants are waiting for our final comments before they finalize their report. Right, Chris? And do you have anything else to add, Chris? I just like to say that, yes, the consultants are willing to take final comments and then they would like to wrap this up. And I think my recommendation would be to, if you wish to, make some kind of recommendation, maybe not tonight, but maybe next time you discuss this, about whether you like the 40R concept in general. Obviously, there are changes that would need to be made to this proposal in order to bring it to Town Council, if you were to decide to do that. There's also talk about potential for doing a similar thing over in East Amherst, which, given the fact that the town is acquiring land on Belcher Town Road for affordable housing, that's going to promote more development in that area so it may make sense to not do the 40R in the downtown, but to do it in East Amherst instead. The other thing is that we have a long list of zoning amendments that the Town Council is asking the Planning Department and the Planning Board to work on and some of those are not necessarily compatible with 40R. I don't know if you want me to go into detail about that, but one of the things, well I won't go into any detail about that, but my recommendation is to wrap up this project either tonight or two weeks from now or a month from now. Give the consultants your final comments, they can package it up, give us the final product and then turn our focus to the zoning priorities that the Town Council has asked us to work on and then at some point in the future go back to 40R and say is this a good thing? Do we want to do this? Where do we want to do it? Maybe we want to do it in East Amherst, then we ask for money to maybe hire these same consultants to look at East Amherst, but I don't feel like we're ready to say wholeheartedly this is the package that we want and this is the package that we want to do in downtown Amherst. That's just my thought about the matter. Okay, let's hear from the Board, Janet. I'm not sure this is almost at a point of a point of order. I'm actually kind of confused because I thought we already got their final product and I had because they've rewritten it a few times and I thought we got that already and then it was kind of put into our hands and then I thought at the last meeting we decided that Rhea and Doug had sort of volunteered to take it and to work on it and I was sort of surprised to see then the agenda here because I thought like oh maybe Doug and Rhea making a presentation but then I thought maybe you would show it to us first. So I'm kind of lost in the process and then so I don't so that so first question wasn't that a final report already and then what was it that Doug and Rhea agreed to do and then I also think and this is hard not to go sliding into the next agenda item is that most of the 40R would probably be most active in parts of the BL which the zoning priorities you know one of the things is sort of some serious changes to the BL and also it just looks like these things don't mash and so but just number one and two would be good for me like didn't we get a final report or their final work and then what was it that Doug and Rhea agreed to do I'm kind of I just I'm a little lost. So yeah well Doug is up has his hand up so he can speak to that perhaps. Okay so I my perspective pretty closely matches Janet's at least in terms of what she said there I thought we had pretty much gotten the final product from the consultants and I and Maria had volunteered to take a close look at it and do some work on it last time so over the holiday I did take a probably a day and a half and look at the language and start start to look at the physical parameters as well as just how the how the package is formatted I've always been a little bit unhappy with the way it was written it seemed a lot looser and squishy than what I think I that a proper bylaw ought to be it ought to be pretty black and white so that if I put on my architect hat or my developer hat I don't have a lot of room to you know you know things are pretty black and white and I'm not going to be making trying to get through loopholes so I am not complete with what I was doing I you know I think I've had conversations with Maria and with Jack that I you know and even my my comments to the board I was most supportive of the provisions in the BL less supportive of the downtown area but I'm trying to just look at the whole thing and then we can either enact or recommend the whole thing or just recommend part I guess the last thing I'll say is similar to what Chris was saying the fact that these other recommended zoning changes have come to us from CRC and town council has started to feel to me like we have a lot of different balls in the air you know earlier on actually before Christmas when Maria and I started to dive in I and she were talking about trying to do some 3d modeling to show what exists now in the zoning versus what 40 are my permit and but now you know if you take a particular parcel you'd have to do what exists now what 40 are would allow and what half a dozen different zoning changes would individually do and then you know whatever combinations of those that you might imagine would end up getting approved so I welcome Chris's recommendation that we let the consultants finish up you know from my point of view Chris could just tell them thank you for the I think it was November 10th product that they gave us and you know go on to your next job so you know I think it is in our hands but you know I think that's all I'll say for right now actually I will mention that we have talked to Chris about asking the consultants for their 3d computer model that they use to generate the renderings that they did show to us they sounded like they were willing to give us to give that to us but their their cad guru was on you know on holiday or away when we were asking so they needed to get him back before they could send it to us we also had a little bit of a talk with I think it was Ben Breger in the planning department about generating a base that would include property lines and roads but also some grading it sounded like that could be a time consuming effort so we thought we'd see what the consultants sent before we asked planning staff to spend any time on it so that's that's my report I think Maria ought to give her report thank you Doug Maria yeah so I I tried to carve out some time over the holidays only managed a couple hours and what I had hoped to do is more two-dimensional study where I compared literally the November 10th proposal to existing zoning not to like all these new zoning priority options and just see where the delta was between what we can do now versus what the consultants proposed and I only got to the heights I haven't gotten to the setbacks yet the front setbacks so I thought that was worth just the study because just studying the heights has already been pretty enlightening as far as realizing how it adds and takes away I guess what I prefer is to get right into the next agenda item since that ties into this very deeply and not go too much further in the 40R because I agree with all the balls in the air does it make sense to put our energies there when you know count up when CRC has the three month priority list that a lot of these are very exciting to me so if I were to put you know whatever little time I have I think I'd rather maybe focus on things that our elected officials have you know finally given us as priorities we've been waiting for two or three years now I think so so yeah I did start to do a few studies but I think before the holidays Doug and I had really broad visions for what we could get done and then the weekend rolled around and I just sort of panicked and quickly did a diagram but yeah I'm excited about if we could get to the next agenda item that would be fantastic so it's not really much of a report other than just comment yeah I'd have to say that you know town council has has moved quickly on this and it has kind of changed the landscape for us all so I definitely agree with with everything everybody has said Janet do you have another comment this is on the idea of having the consultants do the CAD work and hopefully for free if they're if they are going to give us the the 3d modeling um I would like them I'd like to see North Pleasant Street showing five-story buildings on both sides on the the street you know they showed it on a four-lane street like if they could they showed four stories on one side and if they could show us five-story buildings on both sides of North Pleasant accurately done I think that would be really helpful to us in terms of what we're visualizing and then on Triangle Street you know four-story buildings tapering down to three across from Kendrick Place which is five stories on you know the very narrow Triangle Street so that would be a great visual to have because the pictures they were showing weren't exactly what was in their final the final draft and not you know so I thought that if they can do that visual with their CAD person and nobody else has to the other thing I want to say is I didn't really expect to see 40 hour back you know after a two-equality break so I don't I don't want anyone to feel guilty like I was expecting to see this come up later with Maria and Doug but I agree that it's it doesn't seem easy to do with the other zoning priorities so thank you Chris so I wanted to say that we weren't expecting that the consultants would do further work or that they would do any 3d modeling for us I think what Doug and Maria were looking for was just the base material from which the consultants did their work you know and then Doug and Maria would then take that and do more work with it so we're we're not expecting the consultants to do anything else except I was imagining that planning board members might come back with comments like well instead of having a you know five foot side setback against these buildings that you should have a 15 foot side setback things like that details like that but it's it appears that you know it's it's going to be a lot of work to even do those things even look at it to the point where you know on Cottage Street you would prefer to have a 15 foot setback against the residential buildings but on you know Halleck Street you would prefer not to so my feeling is unless until we're really serious about proposing this it's probably not worth it to put that level of effort into the 40R and I think we should just tell the consultants okay we're done so give us your final whatever you're going to give us and then we'll be happy with that along with giving us the things that Maria and Doug asked for so that if we want to go back to this in the future we can do that does that make sense yeah I also like Rob Crowner's suggestions with regard to you know if we're going to do an additional work just focus it on a subset which is mainly the BL between Prospect and North Pleasant just to simplify things because there's a lot of other as proposed there's a lot of issues and I'm just I think Rob's suggestions were pretty good and I guess if we're going to revisit it I would suggest we just look at a portion of the proposed 40R for downtown just my suggestion so Andrew thanks Jack I just I know you mentioned this Chris and apologies for we're not keeping track of it but I was very intrigued by the possibility of East Amherst what we're seeing though is consultants this go around just wrap up which is purely focused on downtown and then if we want to pursue East Amherst that's something that we would negotiate as a separate body of work that's right okay and do we have do we have funding to be able to do that I know that just given the fact that we've we've got the purchase and sale agreement for the property on Belchtown Road like is that something that what that could happen in calendar year or at what point might we be able to to bring on the consultant to help with that if if we decide we want to look more deeply into East Amherst may I answer that yeah but I think with Andrew being on the CPA committee it might be good for him to kind of you know what has happened in that regard what happened with this Belchtown Road proposal and what what is what is it exactly oh so yeah it was essentially it was brought to us the timing was extremely awkward and that they the we were essentially the middle of a negotiation to purchase this property on I think it's 132 Belchtown Road it's a couple of adjacent properties that could be used for adding affordable housing within the CPAC mandate and so we as a as a committee unanimously supported the prospect of moving forward with this we had allocated up to $800,000 for the purchase of that which we ended up not needing quite as much which is which is great but this is an opportunity for for us to add I want to say the numbers 40 affordable housing units is what Rob Crowner thinks that we'd be able to put on the location it is right near the east you know if folks are aware it's it's kind of across the street from Cumberland Farms on your way out to Belchtown it's walking distance to the to the traffic light there it is you know it's it's proposed and really sort of complementary to the opportunity that we have at the library there the library site as well so two potential opportunities to build residential density around a village center bringing in affordable housing as well it's really like checking all of the boxes for things that we would like to do as a town it's consistent with our master plan vision so I think something we should all be really excited about for us to have as an opportunity and if there is the ability to be able to leverage 40 are to help with the overall economics of that to help with the you know the speed of making this happen getting a developer on on board to develop the site which we don't have right now I think that's all something that we should really be seriously thinking about so my question just to Chris or Andrew is this property to be purchased by the town with the monies and then with the developer does the developer purchase the land and do the development or does Amherst retain the land and the developers like leasing it or what's the model for this type of of thing yeah actually great question Chris I'm not sure if you have an answer to that I don't think that's been worked out yet Nate Malloy is in the attendees and he may have more information about this Nate has been following this project with Dave Zomek and the building commissioner and I believe he has also been following the project through CPA and finance committee etc so he may have more information but I think that those things haven't been worked out the idea is that we the town would like to put this property and the property at the east street school they'd like to package them together in an RFP and have developers give proposals for developing affordable housing in both of those sites and I don't know if it would be completely affordable housing or if it would be partially affordable housing but both of the developments would have to be a 40B project which is different from 40R 40B is more like what we saw at 132 North Hampton road where you have to go through the zoning board of appeals and get a comprehensive permit in order to do the work and so the way the 40R would complement this whole thing is that it could potentially open up other properties or make other properties in the east Amherst village center more attractive and you know all of a sudden we'll start to get some kind of you know critical mass of things happening in east Amherst and I think that would be that would be a good thing and this is something Janet's been talking about this for a long time ever since we started talking about 40R she she was kind of pointing at east Amherst and saying I think that's where it should happen not downtown so you know it's interesting how these things come to pass but now that we've learned we've learned so much about what is 40R and how does it work and now I think you know we can pivot a little bit to say oh we think it would work better over there than where it's currently being proposed we haven't definitely made that decision but it seems like we're kind of moving in that direction so does that make sense thanks for clarifying Chris thank you Maria this was a really timely conversation because I'm a little torn about you know sort of walking away from the 40R downtown because the one thing it did do was provide affordable housing which even if we fixed VL it doesn't necessarily you know bring that element into downtown which is something I thought this 40R you know did a lot of things and one of the big things was that affordable housing component so you know the RFP is really exciting that'll take a couple of years to process to develop and then a couple years before construction so you know you're five years out again I feel like the urgency of what Mr. Hornick was bringing to us shouldn't be lost as far as you know we need more affordable housing and especially downtown so I'm a little torn about you know not having the 40R be sort of one of our priorities as a planning board but I think given all the like Doug was saying all the balls up in the air maybe it's something that we just have to keep on our back burner somehow excellent point Maria I agree I imagine there we need housing in the worst way Doug yeah I guess one comment I'd make in response to Maria's comment it was my it's I had a little bit of back and forth with Chris Brestrup about different things at one point and she was saying that if we if we did start to get housing I think Chris correct me if I'm wrong I thought if we started to get housing on the BL because we would be adding units to to property that currently doesn't have units that it could conceivably kick in the inclusionary zoning portion of our bylaw so we could end up with some affordable housing through regular as a you know regular zoning rather than 40R so we so you know we could end up with some affordable housing even without 40R I guess do you want me to answer that yeah yes please yes so it depends on what's proposed if you propose something that requires a special permit either for the use or for a dimensional modification then a certain dimensional modifications then you would be required to have affordable units just like Barry Roberts down on University Drive in that 70 University Drive he was required to have four affordable units in there because he needed a special permit for some dimensional modification so the same thing could happen in the BL district so I think that's what we were talking about so I just want to say one more thing which is something that I've just realized I think I realized it over the weekend the list of zoning amendments that the town council wants us to work on if the BL were added to footnote B which is kind of an you know esoteric thing to say because I don't know if everybody knows what I'm talking about but it would take away the requirement for lot area for dwelling units in the BL and therefore the BL would become more like the BG district in terms of how many dwelling units you can fit in a box in the BG you can build your box however big you can get it based on the dimensional requirements and however many units you can fit in that box you can go ahead and do it so if we if we connect the BL district with footnote B the same thing is going to be true in the BL which means that the the current differential that we have between how many units can you put on a property in our existing zoning and how many units can you put on it in 40R it sort of goes away to a large extent and so the the attraction of the money that the state would give us for that differential either disappears or becomes less so the so there are three aspects of 40R that are attractive one is it provides affordable housing well four maybe one is it gives you more density it provides affordable housing it's got design guidelines and i don't know what the fourth oh this the money from the state so the money from the state would kind of either go away or become much less you'd still have the other three things affordable housing design guidelines and density but i just wanted to get that out there because that is a little bit of a conflict or i don't know something that just came up reasons why 40R and the changes that we're thinking about making that are being asked by the town council may not you know fit together as well as we want them to so like my recommendation is work on the zoning priorities that the town council is asking us to do which is again something that janet brought up like why don't we fix the underlying zoning she brought this up a few weeks ago fix the underlying zoning and then maybe you don't need 40R so anyway i'm kind of going in that direction so i'm not sure what the question was that i was trying to answer but i said what i have to say whatever you said was was it was interesting uh so janet has one comment but i'm just i'm thinking from 40R from the developer's perspective the you know they're and i guess this is for inclusionary zoning developments as well but the 40R in and of itself doesn't really provide the developer much more incentive except that they get to have a larger building more efficient in terms of construction and size and that sort of thing correct okay so um janet so i i i don't want to do this now but can we do like a bl clinic at some point where we just spend i don't know like um just like a special meeting just to talk about you know what people perceive as the problems in the bl because i think there's like four options on the table for how to fix it but the bl isn't just downtown there's like a little piece on um route nine near um fort river um collision and there's another piece in university drive and i don't think there's a is there a fourth one floating around is that is that just it but i just think it's like it's a weird zoning thing there's problems with it and i can see like four options for fixing and like fixing the underlying problems you know i think we could change it to be bl which is more flexible getting rid of footnote adding bl to footnote b and then just changing the dimensions in the bl to make it sort of fit better you know and so i wonder if we could just focus on that for a couple of hours in a special meeting or you know a special meeting of the zoning subcommittee in the planning board just to like hone in on it because it's hard in this kind of meeting to really understand you got to kind of look at it and look at pictures and then your head hurts and you have to kind of talk about it a lot so that's my plea but it seems like we're kind of deferring this to the crc town anyway because they've already kind of moved ahead and i'd suggest that we just kind of wait and see you know what the directive is from the from our town government as far as what with regard to the zoning priorities and the and the suggested changes that they uh that they just recently came out with i think they've given them to us and they want us to work on them well that well that's our next topic all right so we've uh so at this point we're just going to recommend the count the consultants wrap up the report and and uh i don't i guess we're not going to you know i i think that the zoning priorities is or will be taking precedent for the immediate future and do you want to make a statement about whether you think 40R is a good thing in concept and it may be appropriate in yeah i mean just i mean going looking at our minutes from the previous meeting it seems like we're we're somewhat on board uh i don't know um i'm i'm good with it in concept i don't know how you word that um but you could say you're good with it in concept but it needs further exploration and you need to figure out exactly where it should go something like that yeah i mean i think we're supportive of of addressing the housing crisis in in town i i think every you know i thought that was a common theme um you don't have to make a statement about 40R i can just call the consultants and say we've talked about it a lot let's wrap it up and you know we'll get back to it sometime in the future i feel like we've put enough work into it there just be nice to kind of give a feedback to the CRC um with how we feel on it but i defer to the other you know members on the board on on what what we should do um Doug yeah i i i guess i'm i was i was gonna respond to something that chris said in response or uh earlier i think 40R also gives the developer a slightly more streamlined process for getting permitting so in addition to some of the other things that i think either you or uh chris were saying about the advantages i wanted to add that to the conversation okay um i guess in terms of where i stand with 40R at the moment um i think i'm i think chris is phrasing that we thought it needed more exploration seems right um you know not only for maria and me to explore kind of what we think of what the proposal was in downtown but whether you know i think the wider conversation about whether downtown is the right place to do it is a good one especially in light of the east amherst potential development opportunity um one thing that i did come across over the holidays when i was looking at it was that uh the state department of housing and community development dchd has to approve those the by-law when we initially adopted um but i realized but i believe i read that if we ever decided we wanted to abandon the by-law they would also have to approve that and i have a a strong aversion to entangling alliances that i can't extract myself from so that gave me pause uh especially downtown you know where we could be tied in perpetuity to something that may outlive its usefulness so um that's just a few thoughts but but uh you know right now i think we're better off saying you know if we have to make a statement i think something kind of that we've we're looking we've looked at it closely we think more exploration is needed but we're not rejecting it outright is probably where i would where i would end up thank you uh yohana thanks jack um so a really interesting conversation i think to some extent the interest in 40 are stemmed from uh you know just a need and a desire to advance the vision of the master plan and you know to some extent it's uh it's just a means to an end and i think a lot of us thought oh well this seems like a good mechanism to you know get affordable housing leverage state money get the density get some standards in place get the transitional zoning like there are a lot of things that are in the 40 r package that kind of make you nod and say yeah that's what our community wants but now i think with the you know um with this more comprehensive set of zoning priority that are you know we're going to have assuming it moves forward and gets adopted will affect more than just 18 acres of our town but actually i don't know a line the overall zoning bylaw for our town with the fold of the master plan it seems like that's another means to that we're working for and is potentially i know there's part of me that's like wow that's that's a much bigger thing to chew on and if like if it doesn't move forward or gets you know held up in the process then we've we've lost time um and i am aware of the time we've already lost in some ways um so i'm caught you know nervous about that delay but um but if there's momentum behind a larger zoning thing and i i also see the value of the you know the east amherst village center project and so i think i support this although i too spent several hours digging into the 40 r proposal but i'll consider that just helpful for work all right thanks may i ask uh johanna did you have comments that you wanted to send to me to send to the consultant about i sent you some i think i like that i can receive them or if they got buried in your inbox yes they may have i uh i wasn't here for part of the time between the two holidays and before the holiday so um i may have missed your comments i'll i'll resend it just to put it at the top of your inbox christin thanks hey yohanna you seem you're like cutting your audio and video seem a little uh uh oh are they dodgy body dodgy that's a good word just so you know i it for me anyway it it it cut out but okay thank you sorry you know uh tom sure i just um i just wanted to piggy back i was listening to dug in and agreeing with with pretty much everything dug was saying um as well as johanna i think you know all along i felt like no matter what we did looking at the 40 r why i encouraged us to look at it and to spend time with it is i think there's a lot of work that was put into it and a lot of research a lot of time and that there's something we can learn from it and whether we deploy 40 r as it is or that we take tactics and elements of that and deploy that through um you know our own updating of our bylaws in different ways or attacking some of these elements that um the crc has passed down to us i think it's a learning opportunity and whether we need more design guidelines or whether we need to adjust zoning and a bl in accordance with certain things in order to get you know um higher density or low income housing or whatever it is that we need i think we learned a lot we heard from the public um we aired this and we got some feedback so i think that you know the putting it out there was a really great opportunity for us to learn and so no matter what whether we apply this to another location as a group or whether we take facets of it and and try to find ways to deploy it i think it was a useful exercise i mean i learned a lot and i have some comments i'll send them over to you chris as well via email but i think it was very it was very helpful to know that this work was was tested and supported and and that we can actually learn from it so i'd like to us to keep an open mind about it as a document and maybe not the roadmap to fix all our problems but as an opportunity to at least take away something that can help us address some of the issues that we have in our own town thank you tom you actually reminded me why you know we kind of picked this up again because of those design guidelines they came up where we're we're illuminating for me and if they were illuminating for you that's that's even better being an architect but so good points andrew yes it's kind of losing my train of thought everybody i was just nodding in my head with everybody in the spirit of moving things along if yeah i i like the idea of us having a bit more of a formal declaration i think as chris origin worded it like if if you'd like a motion to do that i would be happy to do that or if we just want to move forward i'm also fine with that as well i'm good with the formal decoration if they're not we have yeah i i think it's a good idea i mean i think it's i think it's kind of an important thing for us to yes have that that clear voice so does chris want to we do you've been jotting notes or one of the board members uh want to take a crack at it i would i would nominate either chris or dug to do that since they were both very articulate in their yeah that's so i think what i said was that um you support the idea of 40 r and concept um however you realize that there are um a lot of details that would need to be worked out and that you're not sure that the downtown is the right location for 40 r that you would like to explore um another location perhaps east dammer's village and um that you that you feel it was a worthwhile um endeavor to study 40 r something like that i would i would say the entirety of downtown being appropriate okay is right i don't quite understand that jack i mean you know we're talking downtown it's just the the entire scope of it they had was might have been a little overreaching i think because you know there were areas you know pointed out by crc you know by the post office and up a triangle street that were just that probably needed more work than than other areas so that's why i just clarified that as proposed in its entirety may not be appropriate is the geographic scope of it yeah need to be refined yeah do you have maybe pam has written down what we say well i have written down that the planning boards supports the idea of chapter 40 are in concept then i missed a little something um and then i have explore another location which is possibly the east amherst um and then over here on the side i wrote the geographic scope so chris help me out here let's let's put it together well i think if we are going to consider downtown there are a lot of details that need to be worked out and geographic scope is one of them and dimensional requirements is one and refining design guidelines is one so can we lump that into some words like further exploration deeper exploration i've got all this on a recording so well i have it recorded too um but even still when i go to actually write it into the minute we're going to have all the we're going to meet we're going to meet in two weeks and we just want to make a simple proposal based on the input let's just do it then i mean it's um sure and maybe i don't know what can be done via email but we can send you comments and iron something out but sorry sorry to put you on the spot there but we do need to move on to the zoning priorities mr marshall has his hand raised yes okay and then there's someone in the audience that has their hand up too yeah i had i just wanted to remind everybody that pam rooney is one of our participants at the moment and i think she wanted to talk about 40 r before we move on to the next agenda item okay pam and then there's also janet keller i see so pam um if you have any comments you'd like to offer at this time pam rooney hi fam hi i didn't realize i was even on thank you i say and thank you doug for um recognizing me i wasn't expecting to speak on 40 r but i would i would agree that as it's currently written it's a very rough document and would need a lot of work to make it usable i think one of the things that also needs to happen is as there's any conversation about the changes or modification or reapplication in some of their part of town that there also needs to be robust public comment and input so that's that's generally you know if you were planning to go ahead with this tonight and say yes we we want to recommend to adopt it and and recommend it to the crc i would have to say gosh you know you you're sort of missing some some vital public input on this final draft so um i think your wording tonight was great let's just set it aside we know it's one tool out of many and probably the downtown is not the place for it so thank you great thank you pam uh janet oh no uh this is janet keller sorry um hi janet hi um i don't i don't know if i'm out of order here um but when you were talking about bl i just happened to have um in front of me uh chris's february 26 2016 memo um and i was intrigued by the fact that i hadn't realized he talks about the different um bl zones um so anyway it's a it's a terrific five page piece of work um and um so i just wanted to go back to janet mcgallin's suggestion of doing a uh a clinic on bl um and that you already have a very excellent um little overview of it by christine that she did um on february 26 2016 that would be extremely useful for orienting people because it can be pretty complex so that that's it thanks thank you so um so i think so the 40 r will keep it very brief we will make it a an item for the next meeting just keep it very brief just so we can make that that that recommend motion motion okay so um i think we can move on to the zoning priorities and chris would you like to introduce this yeah so um if i can find my sheet maybe pam could bring up that um motion sheet yes that the town council voted on the other night okay so the um crc has been working on um trying to figure out what what their zoning priorities are and they've um taken input from the planning board and from the planning department and from members of the town council and um they came up with a list of um items that they think are their zoning priority so they presented them to the um town council first they presented them on december 21st and they had a robust discussion about them and they presented them again uh and voting was postponed until this past monday night and on monday they again had a robust discussion about these priorities and uh i think they talked for two hours um kathy shane introduced an alternative motion which um would have uh would have what should i say um it was very thorough and very um it would have been a lot of work it required well it asked for a lot of studies of alternatives for the different things that are being proposed here um anyway uh what they finally decided on was this list that pam i think can bring up now can you bring that list up pam you've got it um can you see it i have it up i can see the link to it but i can't see the list really oh no uh well everyone received it in an email recently so you have a pdf version pam yeah and i linked to it um in my in my powerpoint so let me just why is it doing that could it nobody could see it nope we're just sharing our point not to your whole stream has his hand up does he want to ask a question can you can you see it now yes yes okay all right so they broke these things down um based on information that the planning department had given them about um how long various things would take to do and it's kind of interesting because when i was thinking about this i was thinking that how long would each individual thing take to do and they kind of grabbed on to it and said oh you said that all of these things would take three months to do so let's put them all together and see if you can do them in three months so that's that's what's going on here um the town council is going to be um interested in working on zoning in the early part of the year and then they have a kind of um well they then they have to focus on the budget so they're going to be focusing on the budget in the later part of the spring and through the early part of the summer so they wanted to get um ideas from us about zoning before march 15th so they could work on them before they have to throw their energy uh towards the budget and then realizing that people are going away over the summer they said well you can give us the second bunch of things by September 1st so that's what's going on here so they they made a motion to ask the town manager to present zoning amendments that reflect these different ideas to the town council by these two dates and so the town manager reaches down to the planning department and asks the planning department to work on these things and obviously the planning department works with the planning board so I'm bringing these things to you they will also be um discussed at the CRC and you may decide that you want to have some joint meetings with the CRC on some of these items but um I can I can go through them with you and give you a brief description of what these things are so the first thing is one of the things that we've been talking about which is this adding the BL district to footnote B so what that means is taking away the lot area requirement for a dwelling unit in the BL zoning district this is pretty complicated um it is described in that memo that um I wrote back in 2016 there are a number of issues with it that need to be resolved and one of the issues is which BL district are we talking about so back a number of years ago when Jonathan Tucker was work was here and was working on zoning amendments he came up with a zoning amendment that would just restrict this to the BL districts that are adjacent to the downtown and so that includes the BL district north of triangle street the BL district that's west of north pleasant street and the BL district that's along south prospect street so that may be what we decide to do on the other hand we may decide to include the other BL districts which include university drive and um there's one in uh by the railroad tracks along Dickinson street and I think that's it but um it may not be but anyway so it's a complicated issue but it the idea is that currently the BL district is not friendly to residential development even though it's right adjacent to um downtown and sometimes it's a buffer zone between downtown and the residential the general residents district it really is not friendly to building new housing there there's a lot of existing housing there but you couldn't really build what exists today there because the zoning wouldn't allow it so that's what's up with the BL district um footnote a uh has to do with allowing um the planning board or the zoning board of appeals to grant a special permit to modify dimensional modifications dimensional requirements excuse me so if you look at the dimensional table um I don't have the dimensional table here but if you go to section six of the zoning by law and look at the dimensional table table three which is towards the end of the zoning bylaw you'll see that a lot of things a lot of dimensional requirements in there have this little footnote a attached to them and um if you turn the page and you read about footnote a it says authorizes the uh planning um the permit granting authority or the special permit granting authority to grant a special permit to modify these dimensional requirements and in this case um we're suggesting adding maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage to those um to that footnote a the next one it's footnote b the first one is footnote b and the second bullet is footnote a okay thank you mm-hmm yeah um I got another question um so I in my packet we have the December 21st 2020 memo that is that is a report and then what's on the screen here what's on the screen this on the screen is the motion that the town council voted on and it should be pretty similar to the um December 21st memo may have moved things around a bit i'm not sure okay I did send this to you in an email but you may not have gotten it until uh I I'm behind two days on my email sorry um right but this does pretty much track that December 21 memo in the sense that the content is the same this is kind of a shorthand version of what's in that December 21 memo okay okay thanks um so the third one is uh propose a revised supplemental dwelling unit bylaw so that's what sdu stands for supplemental dwelling unit and this was proposed it was a it was um some an idea that michael burt was that came up with and we all thought it was a good idea and the planning board actually proposed it to town meeting in the spring of 2018 but that was after the vote to go to the charter form of government and town meeting was very leery about passing substantial zoning bylaws given the fact that the town council was going to come into being a few months later so that it didn't receive um two-thirds vote and some people voted against it or abstained because they thought that town council should be involved in making this decision and it shouldn't be made by town meeting but i think many people thought it was a good idea the idea was to allow supplemental dwelling units that would be larger than 800 square feet that they could go up to a thousand square feet um and that was as a result of conversations that we've had with people who are trying to build these things and they say 800 square feet is really too small if i'm going to live there with my husband um there's no room to move around we can't have a second bedroom the hallways are too narrow etc so so that's what that's about um the demolition delay bylaw is section 13 of the zoning bylaw and it has to do with um the historical commission review of historical buildings that are over 50 years old that are either fully or partially going to be demolished proposed for demolishment and um there have been a lot of questions and comments and concerns about the existing demolition delay bylaw um the one of which is is this really zoning or should this be in the general bylaw and so the current um proposal is to take it out of zoning and put it into the general bylaw and the historical commission has been working with planning department staff on um exactly how this would be worded so that that will be coming to you um and the reason that the planning board is involved is because any change to the zoning bylaw requires planning board um or planning board recommendation to town council so even though this is proposed to come out of the zoning bylaw you have to make a recommendation do you think it's a good idea for it to come out of the zoning bylaw and then town council would vote to put it into the general bylaw um the next thing right i'm sorry could i interrupt here jack do you mind no could we go back to the second change about footnote a to maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage because does that i have two questions like could you explain what that means like is there any limit to the lot coverage or the building coverage and does that apply to every zoning district we kind of like segue don't weigh from that really quickly so i was just could you run back on that the second the adding footnote a to max so footnote a is already attached to maximum building coverage in certain districts such as the general residents district the village center residents fraternity residents general business districts business village center and business neighborhood so it's already there for those districts maximum lot coverage is also allowed to be modified in the fraternity residential fraternity district the general business district and the business neighborhood district so the proposal here is to extend that allowance to other districts and maybe it would be all of them or maybe it would just be one or two more we haven't really looked at this carefully enough but there seems to be a desire in the part of some CRC members to look into this they think that it's a problem that there isn't that allowance to grant the special permit to modify the lot coverage and building coverage for other zoning district so take a look at the dimensional table table three and you'll see you know tiny little they're really superscripts they're not footnotes but superscript a attached to certain dimensions and you'll see where we already allow this and then the conversation will come up well if we already allow it in those places where should we allow it in should we allow it in more places have to talk about that because that's something that at least the CRC was interested in doing does that answer your question yeah okay okay so the next one is where could the council to begin the conversation on housing types expansion in preparation for meeting the September 1 2021 priorities below so that has to do with some of the things that we started to talk about in the zoning subcommittee like allowing duplexes in more locations and allowing triplexes in more locations and perhaps not restricting some of our residential zoning districts to single family dwellings you know to to actually allow duplexes or triplexes by right if their owner occupied so the idea here is to begin the conversation about that not wait until September 1st to begin that conversation and we've started to have that conversation in the planning board and then zoning subcommittee but we haven't really done it fully Maria had some ideas about that when we were in the zoning subcommittee she had I forget what it was called but she had this wonderful image of working from you know one type of housing to other types of housing in a kind of continuum and how you know you wouldn't want to put a 20 story apartment building next to a single family house but if you had some transition of different sizes of houses as they moved towards the larger houses maybe that would make sense so I think this is kind of an extension of that conversation the next one is apartment buildings allow them in more zoning districts by site plan review I think right now they're only allowed by site plan review in the business general zoning district so consider allowing them in other zoning districts by site plan review right now they're as I said they're allowed by special permit in other zoning districts but only in the business general district by site plan review on the next one is remove footnote M and footnote M is something that was put in place probably I'm going to guess 20 years ago or more when the Spruce Ridge townhouse development on High Street was being proposed and the neighbors were very adamantly opposed to it and they decided I'm not sure if footnote M actually ended up applying to that development or not but it was kind of an outgrowth of that development I think that people now think of Spruce Ridge as being you know okay they don't seem to be bothered by it but back then they were very concerned about it so footnote M requires that instead of having 2,500 square feet for additional dwelling units in the RG zoning district you have to have 12,000 square feet for the first for the first dwelling unit and then you have to have 20,500 square feet for this for more whatever you add to that first but if it's an apartment or a townhouse footnote M says that you have to have 4,000 square feet instead of 2,500 so the idea is to go back to the 2,500 and not require the 4,000 square feet and that seems to be something that would help to promote development in the RG zoning district the next one is revised apartments definitions so the apartments definition says that an apartment building can't contain any more than 24 units and the other thing it says is that you can't have more than 50% of the units be of any one type and what the result of that is is that people propose mixed use buildings and mixed use buildings are not defined so you could say well you should add a definition for mixed use buildings into this list and I agree with that but so people build propose mixed use buildings you can have an infinite number of dwelling units in a mixed use building as long as you have some section of it as something that's not residential and it could be pretty small we've had instances where the mixed use portion of a mixed use building ends up being something like 200 square feet so and the rest of it is dwelling units so it's sort of I don't know it bothers people that you have to kind of create a use that you didn't really want to put there in the first place in order to call your your building a mixed use building instead of just calling in an apartment building and that has to do with the limitation on how many units you can have in the building and the fact that you can only have 50 percent of them be of any one type in a mixed use building they can be they can be all one type they can be all studios they could be all four bedrooms there's no restriction on it so anyway this is looking at the apartment's definition of figuring how to how to fix it so that it works better I hardly think anybody builds apartments in more except in outlying districts I think they're building one down at either South Point or the Boulders and they recently built one in on Belcher Town Road to replace a building that got burned down do you want to move on to the September one items or have you kind of had it we can go to the September one next time uh I guess as a is is a September one included in the December 21st memo yes it might as well I'm good with it I don't know if there's any other opinions the board but all right so the dimensional regulations in the RG and RBC districts have to do with the fact that we have a lot of lots in the RG district I'm not sure I haven't really looked at RBC very carefully that in RG a lot of lots including lots of you know people who are in the town council are undersized the requirement is that you have 12,000 square feet of lot area and 100 feet of frontage in the RG zoning district I think Steve Schreiber's lot is smaller in lot area and smaller in frontage and he's recognized that fact and there are other lots in the RG district that are also non-conforming in that way there are also lots there that have like you know 190 feet of frontage but they can't be divided into two because they don't have 200 feet of frontage so the idea here is look at the dimensions that are required in the RG district and think about how they could be modified to allow more development to occur there more infill to occur and I think you know if done properly if it's got design guidelines and it's you know a decent looking building that fits in with the character of the neighborhood people might be amenable to that so that's what that's about lowering barriers to development of duplexes and triplexes that is connected with this thing that I talked about before work with the council to begin a conversation on housing types so do we want to allow duplexes and triplexes in more areas that are currently allowed we don't even have a unit or a use that is called a triplex we have single family we have duplexes and then we have apartments or townhouses apartments in townhouses can have three units but it's not specifically spelled out so the idea is maybe we would like to allow triplexes in other zoning districts like perhaps RN RN is kind of a typical single family zoning district I live in the RN district and it's almost all single family houses but should we if we need more housing should we allow duplexes and triplexes to exist in the RN and perhaps some other residential districts as well and I think the idea here is that they would be owner occupied we currently allow owner occupied duplexes in the RG zoning district with a site plan review and should we also allow that to occur in other zoning districts people would be reluctant to have these be investor houses where there's an absentee landlord for obvious reasons but if you have an owner who lives there and is you know carefully monitoring what goes on in the other units maybe it's a good idea the next one is frontage regulations for residential zones so that relates to the dimensional regulations in the RG and RBC which we've already talked about the next one is look at appropriateness of the use table for our for VC village centers and this is something that Dorothy Pam has brought up a number of times which is that well you allow you allow residences to be more densely packed in the residential village center zoning district but you don't allow any services there you allow them in the BVC the business village center but you don't allow them in RBC so should we consider allowing some small services to be located in RVC and probably we should but we haven't really looked at it very carefully the next thing is transportation issues which you know the planning board really doesn't have a lot to do with transportation you talk about it when applications come before you you talk about you know whether there's bus service or whether there's bike stands and how much parking there is and that kind of thing but it is something that the that the town council would like to look at in more depth and I'm not sure exactly how they're thinking of approaching this but they're asking for help from the planning department and the planning board for any ideas that people might have to resolve some of our transportation issues and the last thing is that we have $40,000 that was appropriated back in 2013 and the purpose of that appropriation was to work on zoning in the downtown and what we then called the gateway area and the gateway area is the area between Kendrick Park and UMass essentially it's the area along North Pleasant Street where Mercy House is and there are a number of fraternity houses there but so the money was appropriated for the zoning for that area and for downtown but we think we can use that money to work on form-based zoning related to downtown and people keep talking about form-based zoning and design guidelines so if we can use that $40,000 to get help with that issue just like North Hampton is getting help from Dodson Flinker associates on their form-based zoning for Florence you know we think that would be a good use of that money so that's my rundown on the things that we are being asked to work on well I must say Chris it your work I know Janet or excuse me Mandy the memos from Mandy and CRC but it has your your imprint all over and it's quite impressive this document so you you've been doing a lot here so well it's over the years the planning board and the planning department have been working on these things and it would be nice if some of them would come to pass yeah no and I have to personally I have not gone through it thoroughly but at this point should we have a discussion to get others I see Andrew's hands up thanks Jack this I mean this memo you understood this memo is astounding like going through this was really eye-opening and help me understand exactly what we're trying to accomplish so I I echo the kudos there I was just curious what is the what is the product for March 15th is the idea that you would have new language drafted for each of these so we'd have like formal language ready to to approve the idea is that we would present formal language and analysis and idea of impact to the town council and then they take it and they say oh yes we think these might be good ideas now here planning board go back and refine them and here CRC go back and refine them or they say go hold a public hearing we're not sure what they're going to say they want the the draft or the you know the written material and the backup and why we should do this and what the impact would be given to them by March 15th this may be more than we can manage we hope that we'll be able to manage most of it but we'll see and I think starting on January 20th is when I I hoped to begin to introduce some of these things to you okay so and that was kind of my next question that's so you will be as you are working through and making these these recommendations you're going to share them with us get feedback from us okay yep love it I mean I think these are really excellent topics to be tackling and I think really timely so sounds great thank you Andrew Janet so I that was my question I have a question similar to Andrews which is about next steps and the process and who does what and so CRC is going to do a deeper impacts analysis they have this policy called community impact review and at the CRC meeting or not the last town council meeting but the one before that many Joe Hanakie said that they didn't do that deeper analysis of like impacts on you know different parts of our community and so that was my understanding that they're going to do a deeper analysis now that they have more specific items to focus on and then at the town council there was Lynn Grismur had said there's going to be a very robust public process but there was no real specifications about it and so so and so I'm I was kind of wondering like what are the next steps and you know who does what and you know you know getting CRC's more deeper analysis were they just checking with different parts of the community and look at economic impacts or impacts on historical buildings or different neighborhoods and economic levels and things like that so I just I kind of trying to figure out what the next steps and what we do I also think it's great to look at this whole list together because you know as I kind of have pointed out is if we did a few of things on this list the BL would have a foot knight on every dimension and so then you know what does that look like and so I think that what we could bring to the or the planning department planning board is kind of like looking at how all these things work together or kind of you know work off other parts of the bylaw and to figure out like what will buildings look like in the BL you know if these changes are made or what would you know if there's no maximum lot coverage in RN like how big can the building get or how much lot coverage could there be and what does that look like on a specific lot and then what does it look like over time and so I that kind of analysis I think you know is kind of what we could bring to the table since we're more familiar with the bylaw and could do some of those CAD designs and things like that so that that was one idea but you know so these are a lot of changes and they're going to kind of work off each other but are we going to be doing that at you know every planning board meeting spending an hour to on that or are we going to add meetings because it looks like a pretty heavy lift but to do so those are all great questions and I don't think that I have answers for them tonight I have a schedule look at risk with regard to upcoming you know I mean it doesn't I haven't heard you mention too many large items coming our way in the next month or two but I am not aware of applications coming our way but I know people have been working on things out there in the hinterlands and so I expect that there will be applications especially as we start to come out of COVID and out of this winter of you know the stress so I think we're going to have to be working on these things alongside working on our normal applications and things things that come to us like Amherst Hills and you know it's going to be a lot of work I acknowledge that we've been asked to do this so you know I'm willing to jump in with both feet but there may be a limit you know and we may not be able to get all these things to Town Council by the 15th of March which is only what the month two months and one week away I think when they originally set the date of March 15th we were back in December it was December 16th or 21st and then you know it was kind of three months till March but now it's only two months and a little bit till March so it's a heavy lift and there's a lot to do and I acknowledge what Janet said about a lot of the analysis that it needs to be done whether we do all of that or whether CRC does some of that that has yet to be seen I don't think that's been completely worked out we certainly would do our normal type of analysis like we did the last time the BL district came up it did come up as a proposal before town meeting and I think it was the spring of 2016 but we hadn't had time to study it well enough so we pulled it pulled it back but we have a lot of material to describe what it's all about and some of these other things we have material as well so not all of them are starting from scratch many of them you know we do have starting documents but it is it is a lot of work to do yep can I can I also I know that I think we were talking about this last spring I can't remember but you know we have a lot of people really interested in zoning in Amherst and I think that's true everywhere you go and um so is how do we you know one role we could do is making sure the public is informed on what is being worked on and getting sort of input from them and I think Christine Gray Mullins Maria you have to actually help me because I think we were talking about this in the zoning subcommittee about putting like on the web page what we're working on is am I making this up or I can't remember Christine Gray Mullins was talking about like making our web page more interactive about what we're working on and this is a lot of stuff at once and I know we had a you know the town council got a huge amount of comments of people and so I wonder if that could happen like we could activate a web page I think you've done that for specific projects but a way that people know what the planning board is working on or the CRC is working on and they have a way to post comments or send input I mean I hate to add to the workload but I remember we were talking about this I think in zoning subcommittee maybe at the planning board I can't remember Maria do you remember this or maybe I should ask Christine Gray Mullins because she was very excited by the idea I think it's when we were talking about master plan update about a way to involve the public it was specifically about the master plan that's it okay so I wonder if we may be able to do something like that we may be able to put some kind of a comment section on our on our web page I am not that familiar with how the web page works Pam is the web guru in the planning department and also Nate and Nate is on this call I think but anyway we can talk about that and potentially come up with a way of working it out we do post our packets so people have access to what it is we're working on how to draw attention to that is another question and so we can we can talk about that planning department staff meetings we have staff meetings every Tuesday morning so that's something that we can think about and think about how we could make that work all right we got I think Doug had his hand up for a while now Doug yeah I guess I just kind of wanted to say that I viewed the vote of town council on Monday not necessarily that they were endorsing all of these items but in a more neutral sense that they were supporting planning department and CRC taking a close look at them and coming back with an analysis of what each one would would result in so that in a sense it's sort of calling the question on all these ideas that have been bouncing around for years in the planning board and some of which that are in the planning department and some of which that came out of various consultant reports and have never really kind of come to a vote so this was a way for CRC to recommend that we finally just take a good look at them bang them into shape that seems like the best shape we can make and then give them to town council to either vote up or vote down and then we can all move on having learned some of the politics about each one and where the town council stands on it so I am delighted that these are finally getting this kind of examination I hope that the analysis that Chris and Nate and the rest of the planning staff do whether it's nominally for planning board or CRC I think our planning staff is going to do most of the work I hope that there is a fair amount of graphic analysis that illustrates the implications you know, Chris the memo that you did back in 2016 which it was really it's very illuminating but you never really get a picture of you know here's the size of the building on a parcel that you end up with as opposed to the sort of dry numbers of setbacks and heights and theoretical units so I'm hoping that there is some some graphic sketches that that describe massing and that's kind of thing in relation to parcel boundaries so I'll stop there it's good we have some good people are here in the department who can do that thank you Doug Maria yeah I agree with what Doug was just saying when I you know read sort of the what is this called sample response from Lynn where this vote is literally just it's not adopting anything it's literally just for study to begin an issuing study and I have to say I think maybe only Jack you and I were around back when we still had town meeting we were writing these really things called articles planning board articles where we would have a recommendation a background and purpose the mechanics of exactly what we would change in the bylaw the benefits the risks and the process of you know how we voted as a planning board and this memo does the majority of that I think exactly what's left is the analysis and yeah if you know if CRC feels like the zoning subcommittee if we bring in more members from the planning board to dive in if we can help divvy up the sort of study and analysis of this in any way I don't know if that happens but a joint meeting or if they go ahead and take first stabs at things they're more passionate about but you know I'm literally looking at the supplemental dwelling unit article that's already written and I actually had graphics for this already prepared so there's actually a lot of work like Chris said that has already been done that we can just pull out from the past years and refine a little more to sort of I guess what we're doing instead of presenting to town meeting we're presenting to town council and then through those meetings public are able to come and attend and you know put in their two cents or even on websites I think you know a lot of people email and put comments down so there's a lot of opportunity for input and so I yeah I'd love to know how literally the next steps of you know the CRC wants to handle these first three month priority items whether it makes sense to try to reconfigure the zoning subcommittee with either new members or people who anyone who's interested in the playing board I know it's a subcommittee of the playing board so we're not supposed to bring members from the public but like Janet said there are a lot of people out there with a lot of really good historical knowledge and zoning passionate about zoning strangely so I don't know if there's a way to just pull on people as different topics come up maybe that are more they're more familiar with or they can help out with more but yeah I feel like this is exactly what I've been waiting for for three years now is you know what should we study and so I really appreciate this and I don't know if maybe at the next planning board meeting if CRC members can come and are ready to just you know literally say what next steps are which items they're going to sort of start on what you said Chris January 20th and work with the planning department on and whether zoning subcommittee or planning board can take on any of the particular items as well so Chris you have your hand up but I'm wondering you know maybe should we schedule the joint meeting with CRC or not the 20th but the meeting after as we've got a meeting with the town council on the 20th and you're gentlemen from PVPC Doug Hall yes going to come and present information about recovering the economy from the COVID-19 problem so we've got that going on on the so I think the meeting after that you know have the joint meeting with CRC is that is that too soon or February 3rd jointly yeah CRC yeah we could do that to discuss these issues that are be that are yes and we'll have time next meeting to further discuss this and then and I like if I can speak nothing recognized I like no I recognize you I like Maria's idea of bringing the zoning subcommittee back together and that ties into what Janet was saying about studying the BL district and having some understanding of what's going on with the BL district so I think this could really work well if Janet Maria were still willing to serve on the zoning subcommittee and I would be there to help them and then maybe some other planning board member might want to join you don't have to have another planning board member but you could and we would post meetings and just you know talk about these things and work on these things so those were like they were previously like on a Tuesday they had been initially they were on the same night as planning board only earlier but then that got into being like you know seven hours of meetings and that exhausting so we switched it to Tuesday and perhaps that would be a good time to do it I think that's a that's a good idea to kind of we kind of have a mission now also we I think we were posting as joint planning board zoning subcommittee meetings because sometimes there were more than three members so because I think I think we'd be great to have more people on so should I be in touch with Janet and Maria about appropriate time for these meetings and is there anybody else who might like to join us I mean I'll I'm sure you know a lot of us would like to try to be there and then is it an issue if there's a quorum Doug has his hand up yes Doug should we add Doug to the mix yeah I just raised my hand because I think I'd probably want to join that subcommittee I had a separate comment which I'll give whenever we're ready okay that sounds great Doug thank you Andrew I'd also be interested in participating in that I'll schedule our next meeting for or our first meeting for next Tuesday okay and Tom yeah I was going to say that I'm willing to participate in that and whatever capacity is needed as well so I'm happy to jump on and work through that so so what Chris what happens if you know we have a quorum at a zoning subcommittee well that's what someone was at Janet who was just saying if we post them as joint planning board and zoning subcommittee meetings then it's okay if planning board shows up okay Pam would have to help me to schedule these as zoom meetings but then she could she wouldn't necessarily have to stay through the whole thing I would probably need help in sharing screens and sharing graphics and things like that because I'm not as good at that as Pam is but other people could could help Maria is probably really good at that maybe Janet is too so anyway nice this is great Doug yeah I was just gonna say it's it's my assumption that if whatever came to council by March 15th that would anything that they endorsed that would be the beginning of entering the flowchart that was done back in the fall yeah where you know it it comes down to planning board planning board has a public hearing CRC has their public hearing maybe their joint maybe they're not but at that point at the beginning of the flowchart that's where there are several opportunities for public you know public input on the proposals that's great so I guess I'm not really clear whether between now and March 15th other than the opportunities that are in our regular planning meetings planning board meetings whether we need to be scheduling other opportunities for public input I think that's going to be a challenge especially if we're having zoning subcommittee meetings too but the public would be welcome to come to zoning subcommittee meetings as attendees and then you know whoever is the chair of that zoning subcommittee I think Maria is the chair of the zoning subcommittee then she could choose to recognize people or not depending on what we're talking about but that would be a yeah and even you know after we go through the flowchart some items could be rejected by town council based on the public input and then get resurrected and changed in some way to make them more palatable with another with another round mm-hmm yep so I yeah I guess I I'm kind of hoping I kind of hoped that was your answer so that we could work in a focused way between now and March 15th without a lot of public input not to exclude it but with the assurance that there will be a number of opportunities for public input after we've got something we endorse to recommend to council mm-hmm yeah I I agreed to I mean it's just sort of like you know it we're like in a consulting mode we got to do our work and then it it we'll be getting input I think via the the process that is in place but Janet so I think I think that the people would feel like it was kind of the answer has already been chosen and baked if we waited till later but I also think we could get around the issue if we had this website and so we could just be here are these you know the five things we're looking at or I guess there's 12 and you know we can just say you know meeting on this send your comments in you know one thing I've learned since I moved to Amherst is that there's an astonishing amount of people who are like retired planners and you know I feel like every you know so there's you know so you know and then you know to get input from people and I think it's one thing to have people to come to a meeting I don't know how we do a Zoom zoning subcommittee but I think that I wouldn't want to lose the input from the public during this next few months because you know people are going to feel like I think Christine you said yourself it's like if we get rid of single family zoning in Echo Hill Echo Hill is going to people are going to really react to that I think it'd be best to get that idea early hear people's reactions and do the fine tuning and come to the town council with a good proposal you know we don't really have single family zoning in any district if you can fit your ADU in and people don't know that so that could be you know someone saying that and maybe someone types back and said hey check out this thing because you know and I'd be happy to work on that because I just think there's a lot of good ideas and good input and we don't want to go too far with something that is going to be the buzz saw you know because that doesn't help anybody and stuff so I think if we did this sort of more interactive website where people go to and know what's going on having them look for our packet like even I have trouble finding out what's in our packet at times and stuff like that so I think that's too much and I you know we have a you know probably you know 80 people were you know wanted more time to give input and know more about these things and so let's bring them into the process as you know kind of colleagues and stuff like that you know so I would I would think the website might help that you know create a good way of interaction without taking up a huge amount of time so so Janet I just a comment about a lot of people that are planners in town I I I question that I'm not a planner but I think a lot of people become acquainted with it and and and just by learning uh no enough to be dangerous sort of thing I would say that there is an enormous amount of retired academics in town yes that is a true statement I think but I've run into so many retired planners so so people are happy to help yes so do we need a vote for the the reconstitution of the zoning subcommittee or I think that's just I think we're just waking up make it up waking up but you could take a vote to a point who Tom and Andrew and Doug to the zoning subcommittee if you wanted to that seems reasonable I mean you've got you've already got Maria and yeah I know they were voted in you know a year ago okay but you might want to take a vote to nominate Tom and Andrew and Doug to the committee a motion for that please to see Maria's hand oh yeah Tom's hand Tom I move to nominate Maria Tom along Doug Marshall and who was the third sorry Andrew Andrew McGoogle all to the zoning subcommittee any seconds I will Jack second any discussion we can do a roll call um um Tom long has his hand oh Tom sorry Tom Tom we can't hear you you're on mute thank you sorry I had a question and comment more for Maria and Janet and maybe Chris is the size of the committee an issue for you in terms of being productive what I don't want is for all of us to jump on this committee and make it harder for you to do your work I'd like for it to be something that you're able to divvy out more work and therefore spread the burden across more people but I've also been on committees where the bigger they get the harder it is to to manage and work so you two being already appointed I'd be interested in your insider feedback on how many people you think is reasonable to work with and whether it's problematic to nominate these additional people when that's all so Maria yeah so I was gonna actually comment on a previous question about how public can be involved and what we normally did for the zoning so today is we we figure out the agenda you know once we know what the priorities are that we're working on we post that and a lot of people come out of the woodwork because they see something they're passionate about like inclusionary zoning like we had 12 people in the room once and then some other mixed use building and two people who have been you know on select board in the past showed up so a lot of people will come if they see an item they are interested in on the agenda so I'm not sure we necessarily need the extra web page idea right now but we could see how that works as far as members the more the merrier it didn't feel like it was like we were just talking in circles we were literally you know we had agenda items we would say right we're studying supplemental dwelling units and we've discussed it a little bit as far as like impacts and ideas for how we can make changes and then we would just literally volunteer someone would say I'll write a report or I'll come up with some data or I'll do a little research on what an adjacent town is doing so it's great because we can divvy up you know and it's not like next meeting you have an answer we just keep you know meeting after meeting sort of turning through the research for the particular items and it really helps to have more people because it's you know more opposing there's more devils advocates kind of way so we're really testing the ideas you know in real time so it's a real working group it's not one where we're just sort of you know filling the air with more and more words we're literally we came up with quite a few reports and I have to say the previous zoning subcommittee was notorious for that they actually wrote a lot of the articles and cells and not the previous one previous to me did that not the one I was in for the last three years so we'll rely a lot on the planning staff to help us you know make it you know the clear and logical but we do rely on the members to actually do a lot of the homework and help out on research so that's not all the staff to do I hope that is true Chris that you didn't feel like you guys were doing most of the work and we just showed up well also maybe we can do is like assign people like okay you handle these two ideas and collect information and present them and people could send you and you know what I mean like we can and then you can have like your two pet zoning bylaw changes and we're you know carry them through or something right right yeah like I I carried like you had inclusionary zoning gen I had the missing middle and I think David Levenstein had mixed use building so everyone just sort of picked something that we're really interested in and just went with it and we would talk about it in detail every week or every other week so in terms of the flow it's fine you don't have to come to every meeting it's just you know everyone's working and busy so there is no like we're not holding you to you know have this done by next meeting it was really like a working group also zoom can take notes for us it can yeah it can give a transcript isn't that amazing it's a sloppy transcript happy live arts so you know so Maria do you feel like there needs to be like limits in terms of you know in terms of the you know public input there like a three-minute thing yeah yeah well as the chair I would call on people to speak so it wasn't like I mean there were times where I couldn't control it you know like Maureen Adams was there and she's very you know she's got long winded points but she made her points and so I did have to do a lot of wrangling but it's much more informal than the planning board meetings I have to say I feel like planning boards are like one at a time and always speak in in turn but Zoom it maybe we unmute the members but the attendees are muted and then I can call on them one at a time but that really we're not I'm not calling on the other members to speak we're just sort of just all talking you know okay it's a it's a funner environment I have to say I mean not that this isn't fun Doug you had your hand up you're good though or well I I was just going to say to Maria she mentioned the format of the reports that were done that listed the proposal the implications the pros the cons or whatever and I've never seen one of those so at least those of us who are interested in joining that subcommittee or I guess now that we've been officially voted onto it now those of us that are on the committee if you could just send us or maybe through Chris so we don't run a foul of open meeting law we still got to vote we still got to vote for melody well anyway if you could send us one of the a couple of those reports just to so we see kind of what the product was that sounded like an interesting and useful model for a template yep sure so I do see a hand up in the in the public there the attendees and that's what Pam Rooney up sharing hold on hi good night Pam hi Pam hi I'm very very glad to hear you all talking about the details that you're working on because finally getting into the details you began to see why there are a number of folks that were quite concerned in the community when some of these changes are discussed so I'm really delighted that you're starting to look at them holistically I'm also happy to hear that there is not an expectation that you all are going to be developing or the staff is going to be developing zoning amendments for the town council to vote on on mark around march four fifteen I'm hearing from some of you say well that's the beginning of the public process then the town council will decide if they want us to explore them further that was definitely not my understanding I I was hearing them say we really want things back on our desk for voting so I would be I would be I would appreciate some clarification of the true process and public involvement so even you know thinking about how much of the work will end up on Christine Restrux and the planning staff deaf I guess I looked to the planning board I would I would charge the planning boards to be the arbiters of zoning I feel like you will be the ones each way the priorities and the changes not just the mechanics of each thing but really how they support the master plan goals so clearly the CRC felt that the priorities that they laid out support very much housing and housing diversity goals but I want to remind us all that there are of their master plan goals that were not quoted by the CRC and those are that that we are we should create design standards that ensure new development is in accordance with existing neighborhood character and also guiding new housing growth so as to minimize impact on emmer small town character so I think that really plays to the planning board strength of able to see that big picture and again not just to look at the mechanics of each of each article I think the the other topic that came up tonight which is for you are I would say you know I would I would encourage you I've urged you to think of these things comprehensively the footnote A the footnote B in combination is a very different B than just footnote A or B so I look forward to the zoning subcommittee conversation and perhaps I can help before I can anyway thank you and I'm really glad you're delving into the details thank you I don't see any other comments from the public so let's just do this vote quickly with regard to the three new members Tom Andrew and Doug Maria Yes Tom Hi Andrew Hi Doug Janet Hi Johanna Hi and myself Hi I think we can move on Chris Yeah you concur Yep I do okay so now the next one is the zoning particular zoning bylaw there review criteria criteria and design guidelines section 11 point two four one seven regarding minimizing intrusion of lighting review and discussion and I suppose Janet you would want to you know can I'm happy to move that to a next meeting and that'd be wonderful I know I know because I'm actually kind of tired after my okay emotional trauma of this afternoon yeah I think they're taking the electoral college vote is going on right now yeah maybe I could do is write up my notes in a more comprehensive way and send it out and then we could talk about it yeah I don't have any paper on it I know there are some emails but yeah I could I can put that together and then we'll just do it like at next meeting or something so and I think a little earlier so we don't get kicked off again but I do think we have other stuff and so yeah that'd be great thank you so Chris you take note of that okay topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting for old business I have no topics nope um I I'm wondering we did bring up a few things I I hate to prolong the meeting but just hit these really quick the thing with Bruce Carson with regard to the yeah owner-occupied thing whatever happened did we resolve that or what happened there no we haven't resolved it that's another zoning amendment that you could consider working on we have we have like three tracks of zoning amendments that we're working on we have the track that is the CRC what the CRC voted on and presented to you we have the track that the building commissioner is working on which is a more comprehensive recodification and fixing of problems and then we have all of these things that the planning department knows we have to work on among which are what you just mentioned Jack but included in that is flood maps and XYZ things so three tracks what we've been focusing on tonight is the CRC track the Bruce Carson thing I would put into the planning department list of things that need to be worked on and we're probably not going to get to that soon but we will get to it eventually sounds like a nice matrix you could make up in that regard and you could put it on the website Mr. Marshall is really good at that to hire somebody to manage our website and then and I don't know if this is old business oh spring street we're just kind of I don't know if you ever talk to Rob Moore about what's going on with that development so I know here's what I know I know that Archipelago and the contractors seem to have parted ways that's one thing I've been I have I don't know if I've pulled that out of the air or what but I heard that somewhere second thing is Janice Barberette wrote a memo to the town council with regard to something that they were talking about and she mentioned that she thinks Archipelago has been bought out by a different entity which may be a large a much larger entity so I think Archipelago is in transition right now I think they're interested in doing work in Amherst but they may be part of a larger organization going forward and so I'm sure that that organization is going to help them figure out what they're going to do with spring street I don't have any inside information except those things that I just said okay speaking Archipelago that they I saw something where the sorority building next to what's the what's the development right next door yeah Olympia Olympia Place they bought the sorority building there and I think they have some idea of doing something similar to Olympia Place but I haven't seen any plans I haven't spoken with them about that I just kind of know about that by osmosis because information floats around here and I pick it up and and the other thing is just that the master plan implementation committee is just kind of we need to put that on the on hold while we do these zoning priority things I would think well master plan implementation committee has never been formed oh Doug and I worked on pulling out the master plan matrix and I still have work to do on that okay I think that Doug and I and you all decided that that was probably not a high priority at this point okay keep filling out that matrix so that could wait in fact Doug I think said maybe we report you know every few months or every six months I don't remember exactly what he said but his suggestion made sense to me that that wasn't something that we needed to spend a lot of time on now although we've done a lot of work on it I need to go back and fill in some things that I haven't filled in but the planning board probably won't revisit it for a while okay there's just you know those are just a few things that come underneath the old business category that were bouncing around in my head okay in new business we have the comprehensive housing policy that CRC provided looks like it's pretty much borrows from John Hornix earlier affordable housing document it's it's a good one it's a you know something that we have to discuss and I just don't know that we have the bandwidth right now if we have you know two months to go through these you know the zoning issues that we've discussed but we we wanted to so we're just kind of introducing it I understand Chris you take this here's what I think the the CRC is working on this and they have worked on pieces of it and I've given you their latest version which I think is dated sometime in December is that right and they're going to continue to work on it so people who are interested in this can tune into CRC meetings and I will keep asking Mandy Jo to send me their latest version but you can I don't think I sent the latest version to you until the last few days like maybe I sent it on Monday so you probably haven't had time to really read it so we can put it back on the agenda for the 20th or the 3rd of February or something like that perhaps CRC will have done more work on it by then but by then you may have time to absorb what they've done to date yeah and I think we decided we're just going to provide individual comments to CRC versus I mean we'll discuss it but we were not going to but provide a uniform planning board you know recommendation it was just going to be more efficient just for each of the planning board members to provide comments as they saw fit to provide those to CRC or to give them to me and then I will give them to you but individually not not collectively as a you know uniform recommendations sort of thing so everybody you know you're free to to look at that housing policy and and provide Chris with your comments and she will direct it to the CRC I think Janet had a comment about that oh I'm sorry Janet so the CRC wanted like the planning board's input on the policy but I was really unclear about when they wanted it from the meeting from like a few weeks ago but I do think it'd be great for people to make comments and I went and looked at the master plan section on housing and then also the housing market study which is filled with like intense data but the beginning of it is some really good summary so I could send that out to people because it really talks it talks about something I think the policy mixes which is that the university is like the driver of housing demand and that the the market study and you know it's like the housing policy doesn't talk about the demand created by university and also doesn't really talk about the impact a few things they're sort of missing that are in the master plan and and things like that so I I actually kind of could send people like these sections just to read because I think it's a good background but I think I think they were looking for comments from the planning board but I wasn't in all these different boards but I wasn't exactly sure when they wanted it yeah I'm not either I'm not either yeah so but I always better I think it's still a work in progress for them and they don't have a complete picture yet and my impression was once they have it complete then they'll ask for comments but maybe they can use comments along the way too yeah I can't remember how they came they were talking about all of that and I can't remember how it landed so yeah so I as I was part of they had the ZBA myself and the CPAC so they had representatives from the various committee's boards that might have an interest in this and they and so it's it's on our plate but Chris just let us know you know if you know of a timeline I haven't heard of a timeline okay so is there any other discussion that you think we need on this other than no just please read it and send me your comments okay so new business topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting for new business nothing I don't have any okay I would say one thing that Doug Marshall presented was looking at our zoning and looking at existing our existing development and matching where there's non-compliance with the existing zoning versus what's built in it and and he had a came across some examples well Doug once you explain it but it you know graphically really illustrates how dysfunctional our zonings you know bylaws can be with regard to what we have yeah I I I found somewhere on the web and I had found it might have been with the one of the Metropolitan Planning District websites of one of the organizations outside of Boston had done a little brochure that was entitled something like impossible neighborhoods illegal neighborhoods illegal neighborhoods so if you google illegal neighborhoods Massachusetts you may you probably can find this right away or I can send you another link to it but they did but basically they were they took a number of very desirable pleasant walkable neighborhoods that existed in towns around Boston and demonstrated that basically none of that development met the current zoning in those neighborhoods so it's kind of like people earlier mentioned Steve Shriver's house and the fact that it couldn't be built today on the lot that he has because his lot is too small and I think the lot coverage and setbacks are probably illegal too it was it was a way so I had sent that link to Chris and said you know it might be useful for somebody on the planning staff if they had nothing else to do an intern to do a similar analysis of some of our neighborhoods such as the street that that Steve Shriver lives on if you wanted to start somewhere to to sort of demonstrate that if we wanted to perpetuate that kind of street we would need to change the zoning to allow it so that's that's what that was about you know what I Doug I think I think someone this would be a great project for a UMass student as an intern with it as a GIS study because I I know you're a bit you're you're loaded Chris but let's let's let's think about that maybe we can get have an intern do it because that's what it is I mean it's a it's a just a GIS effort so it's actually something we've been thinking of doing for a long time in fact we're thinking have been thinking for years of dividing the RG district into into pieces because the RG district on Lincoln Ave is completely different from the RG district that is represented by Cosby Street and Besten Ave and it's just the RG district is kind of a crazy amalgam of giant houses on giant properties and tiny little houses on tiny lots that don't meet the zoning so sometime we should grapple with that and figure out RG1, RG2, RG3 and make sense of it all make zoning that matches what's already there so illegal neighborhoods is the topic I think I have that I can send I think I can send that to you and Jack, Mr. Lung is trying to show you something oh yes okay what is it this CRC report is a chart that describes how all of the members of the council all of their houses are too large for their lots and it talks about how the zoning does not describe the character of the neighborhood so it's essentially doing what you're talking about yeah one particular group of people it's on page 19 I got it okay that's hilarious it's interesting interesting to read and probably something that I think Doug as you're pointing out what are the characteristics of the neighborhoods we want and maybe our zoning doesn't quite reflect that I think this is one good example and there's maybe more so I think that is a really positive exercise to be explored interesting thank you so on to Miss McGowan has her hand up as well sorry Janet okay I just want to jump in and I was you know if you've ever been to Marblehead you know how unbelievably beautiful that town is and it probably would not fit its current zoning and so I think that to me speaks really strongly to the need for really strong design guidelines like I think if it's looks really attractive you know you might be less concerned about how close to something is to the street or next to the house next door or how much of the lot it takes up and things like that and so I think you know I really think that the design standards need to be really part of increasing densification because if it looks good people aren't going to be at obsessed with upset with it and also the master plan says that like 15 or 20 like strong design guidelines with increased density and I think we can get greater housing density if it looks good and then we have to contend with the issue of undergraduates in neighborhoods and kind of work on that too so I do really think that some of the most beautiful places like Beacon Hill in Boston that you just kind of weep at and you love would never get built now and you know but if you could recreate that good look like in what is it see something Florida seaside Florida you know very dense very close to the street and beautiful and people really want to live there so I think that that to me is really I mean I I would look to everybody and you know all the architects and people on the planning board to like if we make it look good and make sure it looks good people and it's not like a box somewhere I think people would be much happier about neighbors being a little houses being a little closer and cottages in the backyard and stuff like that so that's my pitch I will stop okay thank you on to the next session is subdivision applications I'm happy to report we have no and ours tonight all righty upcoming zba applications I'm happy to report there is nothing new oh and upcoming SPP SPR as to be applications so far we don't have any upcoming nope all right onto the planning board committee and liaison reports by Nirvana planning commission I have nothing on the CPA and I'm happy to report that we didn't meet and I have nothing either um very good and Doug on the ag commission only to report that I am now officially a member of the ag commission you know having done all the paperwork with town hall and you changed your background now to like a museum thing versus your ag oh well you know when when spring comes maybe I'll get back outside Jack can we go back to your pvpc report and would you like to say one or two sentences about Mr. Hall and what he's okay so yeah so the yeah the presentation that will be provided it's going to be a joint meeting with well it depends how many town counselors so they are if they have a quorum it'll be a joint meeting but they town council is invited to join us and this fellow Doug Hall who I think lives in Amherst is a real good data analysis and planner and so he did you know studies on the impact of COVID and and all the trends and you know the closure of businesses and it kind of projected what ramifications there are currently and then you know in the near future and what might be down the road and it was it was pretty it was pretty eye-opening and I just think it just gets you thinking about you know what's a downtown without you know without businesses you know that that have been shuttered because of this this the economic trauma and I just I'm just hoping that you know we we can all collectively kind of get some insight from his presentation it's solid it's it's not too long and it can promote a little discussion afterward and you know that's pretty much yet thanks and the design review board Tom no no updates this week okay and then we have zoning subcommittee which we're going to talk about uh report of the chair I don't really have anything report of staff happy new year happy new year in adjourn at 9 20 9 21 good thank you very much so we got to get back to what news has happened since 6 30 everybody have a good evening we're meeting yeah the two weeks so and you're 20 good night good night good night thank you guys stop recording