 Welcome to the April 23rd select board meeting. This meeting is called to order at 6.30. And we have had two extremely long meetings in a row, the most recent of which was a mere five days ago. I am not expecting this meeting to be like that one. So we shall see. This is our last meeting here at Town Hall until the conclusion of town meeting, whenever that might be. So when folks see us next, we will be in whatever that room is called at the middle school behind the auditorium. Our first item is public comment, but there does not appear to be anyone here for public comment. So we will get through some untimed items before we get to our 6.45 item. And we might as well start with the CHD, Proclamation of Flag Raising. This is for child abuse prevention awareness and the children's memorial flag on the town common. Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motions? Sure. OK, I move that the select board approve, well, which we'll start with the first one, I guess, the proclamation. Sure. OK. I move that the select board proclaim April 2012 as Child Abuse Prevention Month. Second. For the discussion. I'll just note that this is something that we've done annually for a very long time. And as part of this, there will be a flag raising ceremony, which we'll get to in a moment on the town common on Wednesday. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve that the children's memorial flag be raised on the town common on April 25, 2012. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Typically, when folks come in for these things, we read the proclamations. There's nobody here for this this time, but we could read the proclamation or not at the select board's preference. Would you like to read that, Ms. Stein? Sure. If I can find it, I will read it. Just give me a second here. Here we go. It's very short. So that's this. Mr. Hayden has it. Oh, yeah. Would you like to read it? Otherwise, I will. All right. Proclamation, whereas April was first declared child abuse prevention month by presidential proclamation in 1985, and whereas organizations dedicated to protecting children have used the special time of year to acknowledge the importance of families and communities working together to prevent child abuse, and whereas the month of April is devoted to celebrating all the activities to transform communities into places that care about families and children, and whereas child abuse proclamation month is about connecting all of those concepts so that solutions to child abuse may be achieved. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the select board of the town of Amherst declare April of 2012 to be child abuse prevention month in the town of Amherst and directs that the children's memorial beef flag be raised at the town common on April 25th, 2012. Thank you. So we will sign that proclamation after the meeting. OK, note the date was wrong. It was wrong? Which part? The last part that I read on April 25, 2012, it's above. Oh, it should be 2012 instead of 2011. Thank you. I always notice that as I read it. That's excellent. I appreciate that. OK, sticking with that backside of the motion, she will get through a couple of other untimed items. We have a taxi license. I move that the select board approve the application of Dwight Thomas to set for a license to drive taxi slash chauffeur on behalf of green transportation. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say, aye. Aye. That is unanimous. And special liquor license. I move that the select board approve the application for a wine and malt special license for Brenda Ryan Newton, director of catering on behalf of the University of Massachusetts for a reception to be held at Memorial Hall April 26, 2012 from 6 PM to 8 PM. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say, aye. Aye. That is unanimous. And we might as well do the committee appointments. OK. I move that the select board appoint Andrea Battle to the Housing and Sheltering Committee for a two-year term effective on April 24, 2012 through June 30, 2014. Second. For the discussion. Ms. Brewer or Ms. Stein, would you like to speak about these appointments at all? I think Ms. Brewer should. Well, actually, if we wanted to, I don't know how, if you order we want to do this then. I was just looking to double check if we've gotten the charge on the table tonight. It is in the online packet. And I did just want to mention a little bit more about the charge. But we could certainly finish reading the name since we've already started. And I will bring up the charge again. OK. So I'll just note that these are apparently staggered. Do you stagger the terms on purpose so that there's a brand new committee. We're populating it for the very first time. So in order to have appropriately rotating seats, the recommendation is to stagger them as stated. All right. For the discussion, non-miss battle. And all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Shall I continue? Sure. I move that the select board appoint Michael Giles to the Housing and Shell Drink Committee for a one-year term effective April 24, 2012 through June 30, 2013. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board appoint Nancy Gregg to the Housing and Shell Drink Committee for a one-year term effective April 24, 2012 through June 30, 2013. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board appoint John Hornick to the Housing and Shell Drink Committee for a two-year term effective April 24, 2012 through June 30, 2014. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board appoint Denise Laduke to the Housing and Shell Drink Committee for a three-year term effective April 24, 2012 through June 30, 2015. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Would you like to speak about the change now? Yes, now if I might. I know we did this in kind of a funny order. But I just want to remind people what the composition of the Housing and Shell Drink Committee was that we all decided upon last fall. And it is now up on the town website. The information on the Housing Partnership for your Housing Committee and the Committee on Homelessness is still maintained on the website. So that information is not gone. So any studies or minutes, et cetera, is all there. But the Housing and Shell Drink Committee now has its own web page. It is to consist of seven members. You'll note we appointed five this evening. Seven members representing a diversity of experience and range of professional expertise, including but not limited to housing, production, and management, familiarity with state and federal grant programs, strong record of collaborative work on behalf of the community or nonprofit organizations, social service provision, and past personal experience being homeless. In terms of the people that we have appointed so far, the two of these people, Michael Diles and Nancy Gregg, served respectively on the Committee on Homelessness and the Housing Partnership Fair Housing Committee. So we have one each from those previous committees. You will also notice those are the shortest terms, because, again, that's that change over from you all to the new. And we wanted to make it clear that it was not a reiteration of what we were doing before, but that we very much respect their work, as well as others who did apply for this committee. Others did apply that were served on both of those committees in the past. The others are all names that are fairly new to all of us, except perhaps for Denise Laduke, who is new to us for another reason, which is that she is the new director of the Amherst Housing Authority. One thing that many people have noticed over the years is that although the Amherst Housing Authority has its own elected board, there has not always been much of a connection between what the rest of the town committee structure understands of what they're doing and how the Amherst Housing Authority properties feed in with other Section 8 properties and everything else. So I thought it was very kind of Ms. Laduke to say, hey, I'm the new director, and I'll take on some more work by being on this committee. So that seems like a really great way to facilitate. The two things that we're still looking for, in particular, associated with this committee, and again, we have had other applicants, but looking at the composition, we are looking hard for a person who has formerly experienced homelessness but feels able now to commit to a series of meetings and being able to be a committee member and also someone who has more experience in the housing production area, whether it be a real estate person or a large property owner or somebody of that nature, hopefully Amherst based, to help round out the skills and experiences that are available on this committee. In terms of the committee, I'm sure that Nate Malloy will be the one who is their staff liaison, and he and I will expect he'll probably end up contacting all these individuals to see when we can have a first meeting, and I at least will plan to be present at that meeting to talk to them again about their charge and what the select board's expectations were. Thank you very much, and thanks to everyone who applied. It's wonderful to get this committee finally off the ground. It's taken us kind of a while to do this, but we have been wanting to really make sure we got a good applicant pool and be able to choose among folks. We want to make a strong start to this because this is a little bit of a different direction that we're taking this in, so that's excellent to get it started. Thank you very much. Okay, a couple more minutes. Ms. Stein. I would like to complete the committee's appointments, if I may. I move that the select board point Ryan Harb to the Agricultural Commission for a term to expire June 30th, 2015. For the discussion, I will note that Mr. Harb is the gentleman who was in charge of the Permaculture Initiative at UMass, and whose project was commended by President Obama recently in the White House Challenge, and I wonder how many other committee members we have out there who have actually received commendation from the President of the United States. And went to the White House. Absolutely, yes, I was so happy to see, and so young. I was so happy to see that application to me. It's really nice. All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay, if we've got anything else here that we can do as an untimed item, we have three minutes. Probably not. Let's see. So what we do then is we start at the end of the agenda and work backwards. I will just note one thing from the chair's report that I had emailed to the select board forwarded an email from the university that they sent out the vice chancellor for student affairs and as well as the director of Greek affairs sent out an email to all students and to all parents who they have email addresses for about expectations for the end of the semester, kind of reminding folks about safe celebrations and reminding them about the town bylaws, about the fact that the code of student conduct applies off campus and that it applies right up until graduation so even if you're a senior and you're getting out of here in a couple of weeks you really don't want to put your degree at risk by getting into any trouble now. So select board already knew that because I forwarded that to us when we received it the other day but something interesting that I learned that I wanted to let you know about also is that the new student government association president was also going to be sending out an email to all students about year end activities and I thought that that was really a great way to be kind of growing this conversation about shared expectations and mutually respecting this community so I thought that was really good news and I appreciated that and I wanted the select board in the town to know about that. The new student government association president just elected last month's name is Akshay Kapoor and I have not met with him yet. I usually meet the new SGA president either in the spring or in the early fall and I have not had a chance to contact Mr. Kapoor yet but I commend him on that initiative so I think that's great. All right it is now 644 which is as we like to say the same as 645 so we will get to our 645 item which is the safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative so speaking about end of season things. Mr. Musanti why don't you take this opportunity to introduce folks to the safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative which is something we've been talking about for a while and has sort of been taking shape and it was a good time to really bring folks up today. Sure and what I'd like to do this in two parts. First what I'd like to do is put some faces with two names who are new to town of Amherst government. Really pleased to introduce to you and the public this evening Rob Mora our new building commissioner who started with us on April 9th and has hit the ground running and John Thompson is also here newly appointed as our code enforcement officer. Very very pleased and excited about both of these gentlemen and what they bring in their experience to the work. The building commissioner, life safety, building code, zoning enforcement, Rob's experience in Weston and elsewhere we think make him well versed and well suited to the needs facing the community and our goals to be as responsive as we can be still be clear in setting out expectations, be timely and have that clarity working with property owners, business owners and those who are considering investing in the town of Amherst that they'll have good experience working with inspection services. John Thompson is also here tonight. He comes to the code enforcement position and thank you select board. Thank you Amherst town meeting for supporting the funding for the addition of that position. John has started up part time. We'll be ramping up the full time by early summer. John brings 38 years of experience in the building trades to his work and we think he'll be a very and is proving to be very practical code enforcement position for us well versed on the code issues but also the combination of that and his private sector experience puts him in a nice position in terms of problem solving with various folks that we come in contact with. So they're both here if they wanna say a few words or not. Come forward. Give the board in this setting to have a chance to see them and meet them. There was a nice reception for these folks a week or so ago but not the whole community obviously did not get to attend to that so we thought it would be a good opportunity for you folks to be able to come in and introduce yourself. So the greater general public will know who you are and who they might be dealing with so welcome. Great thank you for the introduction. I'm pleased to say that I am already getting to know staff and services work will be up for board to my role and John's role on the Amherst team. And I just remembered I forgot to tell you to turn the mic on. Oh jeez. I'm so sorry. I was like they gave me a job and I told him. Last time that that's why I don't come early. That is why I don't come early. You're free to introduce yourself again. Just in case folks didn't hear you. So you are John Thompson. You're the building commissioner. I am Rob Mora and to my right John Thompson. That's why you have to introduce yourself. We'll make you a name text. Okay go ahead Rob Mora. I'm Rob Mora to my right John Thompson. Thank you for having us here tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming in. Mr. Thompson is there anything you'd like to add I'm excited to be in the position. I've met with Lance and landlord groups already and really hit the ground running here. Terrific. Thank you. Since I totally filed this up guys. I'm so sorry. Maybe you could speak just a moment to like what how the public might expect to interact with you like what kinds of things you do versus what he does. Sure. You know I intend on being you know that point of communication to the developer the prospective project that's coming down the line. If there's any question on process and how we can help guide applicants through the permitting steps. That's where I hope to be very useful. You know John is when he comes full force and full time will be taking on the inspections and the code enforcement for our various programs through the periodic inspections, certificate inspections and what we're going to hear a little bit about tonight after this with the safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative. Thank you. Thank you very much. I apologize for confusing your names which I have done since day one. Now they're just implanted wrong in my head and it's gonna be wrong forever. I'll work on that. I'm lucky because before I had any idea who Rob Warl was, I sat next to him at Judy's. And so I have a heads up and it's probably the only time I'll ever remember anybody's name better than you. So, good to see you again. Thank you. Thank you both. All right. And the second part. And the second part I wanted to touch very briefly on our safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative. There is a handout in your packet with the blue picture on the front. That is also on the town, on the select board meeting packet webpage for tonight's meeting, April 23rd. John and Rob are part of a much larger group of Amherst staff that involves myself, Dave Zomek, planning and conservation director, Julie Fetterman, health director. We have police and fire involvement, inspection services, public works. And that's just the town staff. Then out in the community we have a growing number of landlords and property managers who we're interacting with. And also we've had tremendous collaboration that is also growing with college officials in town and in particular the University of Mass, external relations, Dean of Students, Chancellor and his top folks, UMass Police Department, that nature. This is a fancy title for something that's pretty basic. How do we strengthen the quality of life in all of our neighborhoods in town? Because while we have many wonderful neighborhoods, some of them are under some stress, quality of life issues, noise, litter, occasional problems with individual parcels, particularly some of the rental properties, but certainly not most, issues with code issues and other things. We're trying to bring together a broad base group to try to make progress in addressing these issues. And there's four main areas we're looking at, education and outreach, building what I was describing a moment ago as collaborative partnerships, enforcement and enforcement strategies are a component of this effort. And then as well as looking short-term and long-term at what the town can do to improve our infrastructure and the physical setting within some of these neighborhoods. So in education and outreach, I mentioned the collaboration with the town staff and with the university. Part of that is messaging to students and college-age residents to town regarding our both campus and community standards of conduct and helping to educate and reinforce that there are some consequences when those standards aren't lived up to or town bylaws are broken. There's also been outreach by the police, by some of our landlord and property managers to bring that message to the young people in this community. Partnerships, campus and community coalition, the UMass Dean of Students, various neighborhood groups in town, the Greek community, organizations at the university. Student government, as Ms. O'Keefe mentioned, including an outreach effort by the new student government president, she mentioned. Campus police and town police, town fire inspections. Unenforcement, we're looking at working with the Dean of Students with law enforcement on holding those few who, after being attempt to be counseled, still have problems complying with noise and nuisance house bylaws in particular or a student code of conduct issues for both on or off campus behavioral issues that there'll be some enforcement and follow-through and we're pleased with the burgeoning cooperation that's going on and particularly pleased with the more consistent and responsive effort on the part of the UMass Dean of Students. Very, very pleased with that effort. In terms of infrastructure, we're gonna continue to look for ways to improve public transportation. We'll be looking at street lighting, neighborhood beautifications, sidewalk improvements in our attempts to make the town more walkable, pedestrian friendly. Also looking to partner with student groups and others, community groups on neighborhood cleanups and those types of things. So there's a lot going on. It is broad based, it's not easy and it's a long-term effort and so our objective is to keep working at this, talk a lot about what we're trying to do, encourage people to join us. We'll be reaching out and report on our progress as we go along. Thank you. If I open it up to any questions from the select board, I just wanna know how important it is for the town to really be coordinating its efforts in this way. So these were a lot of things that were happening sort of in silos, that's always the term people use silos before, but this is really bringing that whole work team together to make sure that they're coordinating with information from public safety, public health and inspections and to jointly work together to be a resource both to the non-student community and the student community and I think it's important to note as one of the bullet points on here talks about rental units and good structural and functional repair. Just because students live in student rentals does not mean that they have to live in squalor. So it's really important to be getting the message to students that they are fully members of this community and they are entitled to exactly the same kinds of health and safety that any community members are and it's very important for them to know that the town is a resource to them also in making sure that the places that they live are safe and up to code and that they aren't being somehow ignored or overlooked by the town. So I think that that will be really important to students and to their parents and it's a great opportunity to be to really be out there for the non-student sort of regular members of our community as well as the student members. So thank you very much for putting this together and I think it's really important to give the community an overview like this so that they know this resource is available to them. Who would you say is the point person? If someone had a quality of life concern who would they call first? They can always contact me or in the town manager's office but I have Julie Fetterman, our health director who is our primary point person. Bring together all of the various town staff as well as this outreach in the landlord community. I mentioned the recent meeting that a couple of us attended on campus recently where we had all the institutional players there but we also had a number of property managers and landlords there who very much want to collaborate and be part of an ongoing dialogue to promote best practices within the landlord community and we welcome that and we don't claim to have this all figured out but it's going to take working together to do it so Julie and others are working to try to bring that about. Thank you. Questions or comments from Slackboard, Ms. Brewer? A couple of things. One is that I know UMass students sometimes feel picked on and we always talk about the fact that it's a really tiny percentage of people who are causing issues but I know that Amherst College and Hampshire College students are not without flaw in some respects, especially Amherst College as regards to EMT runs. So are we, what kind of relationship do we have with those campuses given that it's not so much a neighborhood issue with them because very few students live off campus in both those cases but just to be sort of consistent in our messaging with UMass students, Amherst College students, Hampshire College students? We have excellent communication with both Hampshire and Amherst College through the campus public safety people primarily and then other people in the administration as needed. You're right, that doesn't get a lot of attention in a town with three colleges and one of which is very large but that interaction is very important because some of those issues occur with that student population as well but I would just also underscore that the vast, vast majority of young people in this community are contributing positive members every day to the community and the focus is not, the focus is on the relative few to try to reinforce what some expectations are and that's true for the students at all three campuses. Thank you. Ms. Brewer? Associated with what some might consider the more punitive side of things but we consider the sort of last resort sort of things with sharing information between the town and the dean of students. I know that this has been a long time coming over many years in terms of discussion. I wonder if you could characterize what the current plan is associated with that or all arrests reported or citations and what's the, just so people have a sense of how that. We are having regular meetings typically on Mondays with campus public safety and dean of students representatives. There's a lot of information sharing really from the law enforcement side. The dean of students does share some information but without violating privacy rights that students have under law and she is keenly aware of those and so does not cross that line in the sharing of information. I would note also that the information doesn't just come from a public safety standpoint and in fact the dean of students office has really been emphasizing that they want to know about problems early. The dean of students office isn't in the business of suspending and expelling students. What they wanna do is provide educational opportunities to change behavior and so when off campus behavior is a problem they'll take referrals from anybody. What they can't do is take something like Huffer's Pond, whole bunch of kids, causing problems or whatever, that's too general. There's nothing for them to follow up on but if they have the name of a student and the location that constitutes an incident they will follow up on every one of those whether it comes from a member of the community whether it comes from a landlord. At the meeting that Ms. Musanti was talking about earlier with the landlords and public safety and all these folks getting together they were really emphasizing that they wanna know early especially for example from landlords. They don't wanna wait until this student is really out of control and you've been putting up with too much, too much and now it's just kind of the end of the line. They wanna know early when there could be an educational opportunity for some intervention to kind of change that behavior but they follow up on every single referral and they take the appropriate action. Lots of it is educational but it will run the gamut all the way to suspensions and expulsions. I'm really excited to hear that that's really great rather than just when it gets to a certain point a report goes and ding you're out kind of thing so that sounds great. And the other thing I wanted to just follow up on was what you mentioned earlier Ms. O'Keefe is that students are entitled to the same health and safety standards the rest of the community are. I know there's been some tension over the fact that if we do start reinforcing the four person bylaw that people who are living five or six to a house will fear that they shouldn't bring anything up for fear that they're gonna get evicted. So I guess I'm just stating that we're going to think that through as we are working on that because that was an unfortunate outcome of a situation on East Pleasant Street a couple of years ago. It was, there's no way to argue it wasn't an isolated enforcement issue. So we need to in order to avoid that sort of thing happening and for people to not feel like well I better not complain because I know there's five people living here. I'm assuming there will be some sort of discussion as to how to magically make that work for people so they can still report the bad that there might be unfortunate things in their housing situation. I think it's important that the students know the laws when they rent and so they are putting themselves at some risk at some risk if they know that they are renting beyond what the local bylaws are and at the same time it is complaint based. I mean we're not kind of going around town looking for. But no student knows that except for the fact that information's been being provided much more recently. I mean in terms of like if they go rent from a private house they don't realize that information it's certainly not in their lease so. There's all kinds of information that is going out to them and so there's an off campus student office as well as off campus housing office on campus that is trying to make that kind of information that clear for them. Like Miss Fetterman attends the off campus housing fair and stuff. There's all kinds of information that's going to the students is every bit of information reaching every student certainly not but certainly the efforts are out there to educate them. In multiple ways. Right in multiple ways. Coordinated we are with it the more sure we can be of them. That's really good to hear because I wouldn't want someone to get caught out for that particular thing when we're so good at reminding them about kegs for example. Thank you. Anything else on safe and healthy neighborhoods? Mr. Wald. The same topic as Mr. Hayden recalls in the work and the comprehensive planning committee I think it's after Ms. Brewer had left. This was a topic of conversation there too. So the code enforcer, Mr. Thompson's position in some sense grew out of that because part of the logic was what should be talked about what kind of knowledge has been talked to you on the real entertainment of the department of conferences and affordable housing and student housing. So we appreciate your comments about everyone being entitled to live in safe and healthy conditions. Thank you. And just as Ms. Brewer pointed out so well and it's in Mr. Museum earlier about the small minority of students causing the problems. It's also the small minority of landlords. We have vast amounts of rental property in town, vast amounts and most of it is extremely well managed and makes for excellent neighbors both from the ownership perspective as well as the rental perspective. But the ones that cross that line are the ones that the town needs to deal with. So we're working on it. Okay, anything else from folks? Anything, any other members of the safe and healthy neighborhoods team would like to add to this? All right, thank you all for coming in tonight. Thank you for your excellent efforts with this. And this is a really important thing for the town to be doing right now. It's very exciting that this is really taking shape and making progress. So thank you very much. All right, so next up, we're back to Warren Articles is Mr. Warren coming in tonight. We'll skip him, maybe he'll come in after. Okay, so then we'll start with article 11 which is the regional school assessment method and then the two school budgets. And we have Mr. Deatweiler and Ms. Garrick from the schools here to talk to us about this. Welcome, thank you very much for coming in. And so here we are, we're taking positions on Warren Articles again and we are just briefly explaining them where briefness is possible. And so I'll just note that article 11, the regional school district assessment method, we won't make these poor folks go through every detail of this again. We all know this, it's on the warrant every single time. This is because the towns in our region choose to do something different than the state mandated assessment method. We will go with a five year rolling average of the student populations from the towns in the region. Every town in the region needs to vote to accept this method. So it's really a technicality that every town has to do so that we don't fall back to the state's required method. Is there anything else we need to say about this? That says it all. Okay. You'll be taking this out in a second. It's an annual ritual. Right, it's an annual ritual and we're just, we gotta start putting this stuff on the consent calendar or something. Okay, Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion on article 11? Sure. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, article 11, Amherst Pellarm Regional School District assessment method. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. And Ms. Brewer typically does our school related things. Do you want to do that one? Sure. I don't think you have to explain it. She has about 15 in a row. Yeah, that's right. You don't have to do it, but. Well, I've got the rest right before it, right after it, so may as well. Okay, moving along then, the budgets, which are much more interesting than the assessment method. Yes, so ever so much. What's your pleasure? Whichever one you prefer to start with. Sure, just came up first. Okay, well, I'd like to just speak to, if I could for one minute, a little bit of both. And then Rob can share some information, which I know you all have. But I wanted to, first of all, just say that again, this year, I believe that there was a very strong collaborative approach to budgeting from all the town departments in the budget coordinating group. I think it was a highly effective meeting for us to be able to get together and really talk about our priorities. And I think everyone really worked together well to come up with responsible budgets. So I wanna thank people for the partnership again this year from the school's perspective. And again, from not only Amherst, but also from the four towns. And we had some, I think, very important four town meetings this year that we were able to kind of wade through some difficult budget situations for the different towns, which it always varies the perspective. But in terms of the schools, Amherst and the regional schools, we were able to this year really focus on our mission of our schools and to create a three to five year plan. I know many of you have heard some of these pieces before through the various venues. We really focused on going deeper with our reform efforts and not adding new things to our budget. We wanted to make sure that things were actually making a difference in our schools. Our priorities are related to aligning and strengthening our curriculum and instruction. A tiered instructional model to address the needs of students who are struggling and to maintain what we consider to be an Amherst experience. What people would like to see happen in schools of comprehensive offerings for our students and what people seem to and love to come to Amherst to have their children experience. So we worked to again realize efficiencies as always and to bring in additional revenue as many people heard the discussions around school choice for Amherst this year. And we also are looking actively at additional grant fundings, although we've had some of our funding stopped this year or at grants from federal funding. And we're also leveraging partnerships with not only the town of Amherst, but also the institutions of higher learning and the business community. And I think we've built a very fiscally responsible budget, which I think our vision was to develop budgets that would be sustainable long term. And in terms of the region where we were able to, as we discussed, reduce the assessment to the four towns based on some insurance numbers that came in to the better. And we're waiting anxiously to see what chapter 70 comes in to see if we're able to further reduce the assessments to the town. Again, that's for the region and for Amherst, we were able to reduce. We had to reduce by I think $300,000, but we did not quite close that gap, which I know all of you are aware of. So in terms of the process, we feel like it was a very, as Sandy would say, it's a no drama year. And we were strong and steady and have come through with I think a very responsible budget for Amherst and the region. And I don't know if Rob, do you wanna walk through any numbers for people? I think people have seen the numbers over the months. So if you wanna talk numbers, I'd be happy to talk numbers or just entertain any questions you may have left. Questions or comments from select board about the school budgets? Ms. Brewer. Tell us a little bit about the after school, because we've already talked about that from the standpoint of community services and leisure services. Sure. Be happy to. So about a year and a half ago, we started to look at our after school programs, which many people are aware have been either leisure services run programs or private vendors or parent collaboratives. And we had varying programs across our three elementary schools, middle school and high school. We have one program our own, but elementary, the school has not had a hand in the after school programs. And it's been very much a private venture, although the use of our facilities and clearly our children stay after and we have shared responsibility. So we decided to begin conversations about a year and a half ago with the vendors to talk about how can we equalize the experience for our children across the schools, not that it has to be cookie cutter, the same exact program, but to really provide families with access to waivers and vouchers for income eligible families, but also have a consistent rate for families in schools, I mean in the after school program, but also in also staffing and such. And to be able to expand the enriching opportunities for children in these programs. So we began speaking with Mr. Musanti as well as other members from Leisure Services, Linda Shelfant, and we moved toward having our after school programs evaluated, which we did through the Wellesley, it's a national out of school time group who came in and did a fabulous job of looking at all the programs. And we have just put forward, Mr. Musanti and I, a new model for after school programs which would be a partnership between the schools and the town, which would be a comprehensive program, I think much modeled after the after school programs in Newton and some of the programs in the eastern part of the state, which would be a more sustainable model, allow the waivers and vouchers to be shared across the elementary schools and for the school to have a much stronger hand and financially as well as day to day in terms of programming within the after school programs. So the schools provide space and some resources for transportation as well as for academic interventions for students, professional development, and then the town as would be the conduit through Leisure Services to manage the programs. So we're very excited by this new turn of events and we are going to be meeting shortly to hopefully take the next steps in terms of implementation. So we're very pleased with again leveraging partnerships to be able to bring stronger programming to our students and to the community. Thank you. You're welcome. And if either Mr. DeWiler, Mr. Musanti, would like to talk a little bit about the elementary school budget and because it feeds into our article 22 part of Free Cash, we've talked a little bit about it here before but now that we're in the formal budget approval part, the elementary school budget as you said couldn't be completely in balance within the guidelines, the finance committee guidelines that were put out based on revenue projections for next year because you have lost some stimulus money as you said, the Ed Jobs money and as you referred to the school choice money for next year which we can start doing in FY 13 but we can't then use that money until the following year. So the proposal is to use some money from Free Cash to bridge that gap and that's, how much money? About 218,000. 218,000. And 200. 200, there you go. Don't even get that, 200. I would just add and I would encourage town meeting members to read closely the finance committee report to town meeting goes into some detail explaining the rationale that the schools and the school committee have come up with that are, as you said, consistent with the town's guidelines about appropriate uses of our reserve funds of which Free Cash is won. This is a one-time use from Free Cash. It's really a bridge year to keep the elementary school budget balanced and then in subsequent years there is a new recurring source of revenue that will be in hand at the time budgets are recommended and adopted from school choice revenues. So this really gets us, gets the elementary schools where they need to be in the coming year while also adopting a best practice about how and when to allocate school choice monies. And so that was a formulation that I wholeheartedly endorsed in the finance committee I know has endorsed it for town meeting. And we've been discussing that a budget coordinating group for several months now and that was also endorsed by them. So the representatives from the school, town and library all recognizing that as a priority and being consistent with the reserve use as Mr. Musanti mentioned, Ms. Brewer and Ms. Stein. I was just going to follow up since Mr. Musanti pointed that out so thoughtfully. Article 22, it doesn't say it in there on page 55, town meeting members turn to page 10 of your finance committee report and it's a little bit above the graph on that page. So just so that they don't think, oh, I don't see it. It's because it's back here and it has that very same explanation and it's very helpful. I would just add an article 22 which is the free cash article which traditionally at town meeting follows all of the other budget articles. If the budgets that are recommended to town meeting are adopted as recommended, the FINCOM would be prepared to make a motion for $218,200 from free cash. Really it would be for the elementary school budget to support that. They typically defer their recommend, the FINCOM defers their recommendation to town meeting each year. As a just in case, in case there's any changes over the course of town meeting, but you could anticipate that motion if the budgets are voted as recommended. Thank you. Ms. Stein. I have a question, but it's about the regional budget. It would be appropriate to ask that now. We were sort of dealing with both things together. I was looking at health insurance for employees and noting that there's a 15% increase this year and I was wondering if that's because the teachers or the employees rather are on a different health plan. That seems steep to me. It's a great question. You may remember the dialogue over the last couple of years when it comes to central office staff and a central office cost being properly allocated to the through districts and so forth. And so we had to took a study last year to determine whether that was the case or not and what basis do you allocate costs on? And we fell back finally on the close to a per pupil rolling average basis, which seemed to be what was done originally. Nobody can remember how we got to the 50, 47, three. But when we did it last year in a couple different ways, it came out pretty close to being, I think 4% for Pellum, 46 for Amherst and region because up to 54, something like that. So what's happening is that there are central office costs being shifted from Amherst budget to regional budget. So as long as we were doing that, we also looked at how we allocate health insurance costs. And the way health insurance costs have been allocated historically is, whichever district you work in the most is where you got your health insurance from. And we decided, well, that's silly. We really should be allocating on whatever percentage you work in each district. It's a little more work, but it's more accurate. And so these numbers reflect those two changes in how we allocate costs. But you don't expect them to go up at that rate in the future. No, that's a one-time shift from one district to the other to reflect where people are working. It's not a change in rates. Good. Other questions or comments on the elementary or regional school budget? Ms. Brewer. I just want to thank you for making those adjustments because every time we do something like that, it's just so much easier to explain to people than to say, well, it's like this, well, but except for this little piece. So thank you. Anything else on the school budgets? I would just like to second what Ms. Garrick said earlier about how well the process worked. And I think that's true at Budget Coronation Group as well as the capital planning through JCPC. We are really so blessed to be so coordinated in this town with these different budgets. One of the things I like to do, keeps me going, is read about the dysfunctions and dramas in other towns. And honestly, in some towns, the town hall and the school department have no idea what's going on with each other. And that leads to all kinds of communication problems. It leads to all-out fights. And it leads to really some very messy, accounting issues and everything. So in Amherst, we have a long history of working really well together. And I think that every town meeting is just proof of how well our system works and really how collaborative all the different partners are in it. And it's a good process, and we should be proud of it. So thank you all for being part of it. OK, Ms. Stein was like to make the most of it, Sarah. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 12, FY13, operating budget elementary schools in the amount of $21,558,039. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say, aye. Aye. Aye. Ms. Stein-Ellis. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 12, FY13, operating budget regional school district in the amount of $28,527,558. And the appropriation of $13,796,524 for Amherst proportional share. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say, aye. Aye. That's unanimous. All right, thank you very much for coming in. We appreciate all the information, and we appreciate you being here this evening. You too, good night. Next up, we have the library budgets, and we have library director Sharon Sherry, as well as two trustees, Tampson Ealy and Chris Hoffman here to talk to us about the library budget. Welcome. Hi, everybody. Hello. Ms. Brewer is doing all of the operating budget, so. Yeah. Until she says otherwise, we're just giving them all to Ms. Brewer. Yeah, it's all good. Ms. Sherry, welcome. What should we know about the library budget? Thank you very much for having me. I wanted to say that this is a really exciting time for the Jones right now. There's a lot of great changes going on. There's a lot of energy and enthusiasm over there. It's starting with the staff, and it trickles on up to the trustees. I have just passed my six month mark, and I finally feel like I have a solid foundation under my feet. A couple of the projects that we're working on includes, we're working on some job description updates. I don't think this has happened for the library in a very long time. So once that is complete, we'll be able to hire a new head of collections. And that's not a new position that used to be the adult services position, and that position's been vacant for over a year, a year and several months now at this point. So staff are really excited about that. The other big deal is that we're working on upgrading the large meeting room, soon to be called the Woodbury room. The committee proposal will be presented to the trustees in a couple of weeks at the meeting. And if approved, construction will happen in August and September of this year. Some of our goals include expanding our funding sources. So we're always looking for more money. And the trustees have talked about possibly hiring a fundraising consultant. One of my big passions is the layout of the building. It's a really crazy building over there. And so I'm working on with staff and space planning consultants and the trustees about how we can provide a safe and friendlier and more convenient space for our patrons, staff and the collections. And at some point I would love to restore Monday morning hours as well as some, maybe some other open nighttime hours. Right now we're open Tuesday and Thursday nights. It would be great if we could be open Monday and Wednesday nights too. Someday. Going to the chart in the finance committee report on page 21, I thought I'd run through a couple of the numbers with you under, so FY13 under costs for the materials budget. We have to spend $186,000 next year on books, books, magazines, circulating materials to meet our state aid requirement under operations. That number for FY13, that's a combination of the Munson Memorial Library rental and the endowment draw for that $402,000. As far as the endowment spending rate goes for next year, the trustees, they are dedicated to reducing that spending rate. And so for this year, for FY12, the endowment draw was, the rate was 5.4% plus an additional $10,000, and for next year they decreased it to 5.4%, which doesn't seem like a big decrease, but it actually is because the endowment lost quite a bit of money. And then under sources of income, the town general fund support, we are looking for a 2.8% increase. As far as state aid, I'm expecting about $63,000 in state aid for next year. Sandy said that number, he saw updated cherry sheet number, so there may be a little bit more than that, but that's the ballpark. As far as the annual fund, we collected $38,000 from this year's annual fund, so we're lucky in that we get to spend that for next year. And then for the friends, about $15,000 from the friends, it's a guess, we're hoping. Donations everywhere have been down, so that's where that number comes from. And then the remainder of the costs will be paid for using reserves. There are no new initiatives in this budget request other than the return of the head of collections position to be full time. The previous adult services librarian was dropped down to 30 hours a week, and so I think the position is important enough to bring it back up to 37 and a half. That's really it, this is the first time, and I don't know how long that I've actually been given the possibility of an increase from a town, so I'm happy. Thank you. Thank you very much, and congratulations on your first budget. And as you noted, this is six months for you, so this is your maiden budget process with the town of Amherst, and I'm glad it could be a good one, and as I was saying with the school folks, you've really been a wonderful partner in this whole budget process, so thank you very much. Questions and comments from select board about library budget? That's easy. I just have to say that I just finished the, I found some brief thing online, the biography of Samuel Minot-Jones, so I'm just feeling really extra connected to the library right now, and I agree this is a very exciting time for the library, so it's so important to be keeping these treasures of the community really alive and vital, so thank you. If we have no questions or comments, then Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? Sure. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, article 12, FY13 operating budget library in the amount of $2,272,830 with town tax support of $1,690,789, excuse me. So I read that again. Sure. $1,690,789. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That was unanimous. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming in tonight. All right, next up we have Community Preservation Act, and we have Mr. Jessup, chair of that committee here to talk to us about this tonight. Welcome. Thank you. I'm Peter Jessup. I'm chair of the Community Preservation Act Committee, and I wanna thank Diana Stein for being our liaison. That's one of the reasons the committee is not more dysfunctional than it already is. And we appreciate her contributions. Now that you've dealt with the multi-million dollar school budget, you get to hear briefly about the $532,000 that we're gonna recommend town meeting this year. So I will be brief. I know you have a lot of things on your agenda. I won't go into the details of the act. I think everybody understands how that works. We recommend a town meeting, the expenditure of Community Preservation Act funds. Town meeting can vote them up or down. They can't add additional money. They could do less. So we got lots of interesting proposals. Some were not really ready for a review. We sent them back for more thought. And we recommended the vast majority of things that were brought to us this year. We're recommending a total of $532,834 in expenditures of CPA funds. In addition to that, there would be a warrant article somewhere that's more of a housekeeping nature that will place $200,000 in a budgeted reserve. That's a bit of a really housekeeping so that we have the possibility of recommending that money at Fall Town Meeting if we were to have a project. Our recommendations this year are relatively heavy on the housing side. We don't keep track on the committee as to percentages, but we do have more recommendations in affordable housing this year, I think than ever before. And we're a little lighter on the open space, which we have had very significant amounts expended in previous years. And the rest is historic preservation and recreation. Some of these are for debt service. There's a total of $123,834 for previous projects, the Plumbrook Recreation Area, Town Hall Masonry, Hawthorne Property, and those would be the projects that would be funded this year. The Amherst Housing Authority, we haven't yet borrowed from that so we don't need to actually authorize any expenditures in that. We trust you'll recommend those since it causes you a great deal, problem if you don't. And then for new projects, we're recommending $20,000 to Habitat Free Humanity for construction of a new house on Belcher Town Road, along Route 9 there. $250,000 towards the construction of the 42 units at Olympia Oaks that's well underway in terms of planning and approvals and we're gonna be a player in that, our total in that from CPA funds with this approval would be about 450,000 out of 10 or 11 or $12 million total development costs. So we're pleased to be a part of that project. On historic preservation, there's the West Cemetery Fencing for the Dickinson plot at $40,000, the Amherst Historical Society Roof Repair at $25,000, the Amherst Historical Society Database, Creation of Electronic Database. That was an interesting one to us. They have over 5,000 objects that have no categorization whatsoever. No one knows really what's there, where they came from, their provenance or any other much information about them. So this would be to create a searchable database for that collection. In addition to that, we're recommending $25,000 in open space and appraisals. That's a kind of a standard thing we do every year to enable Dave Zomack and his staff to move quickly on appraisals without having to come back for specific allocations for specific projects. And a $25,000 allocation for the Nickerson Farm, small parcel of land adjacent to the North Amherst Community Farm. And finally a $2,000 expenditure for administrative funds to enable us to maintain our membership in the state organization that deals with CPA across the Commonwealth, as well as we place a couple newspaper ads. So we have some small administrative funds. And that's it, I'd be happy to take questions. An excellent overview. Thank you very much. And we are fortunate to have Ms. Stein as our liaison to this committee. So she has kept us well informed. Do select board members have any questions or comments about the CPA recommendations? I'll note I've been praising process and collaboration a lot tonight. And this is another one of Amherst's great processes. I mean, this is a terrific committee, has a really good way of taking in the recommendations from the different committees who are kind of the affinity groups for each of the CPA categories, as well as entertaining proposals from folks who are outside of those committees. And the process has really worked very well for Amherst, it's been very valuable. Thank you for your service. I'm happy to help out. Ms. Brewer. I'm very sorry if I missed this part in the report, but I know that there has been general discussion around the fact that there is in theory some additional money available to the tune of $200,000 with the possibility of Falltown meeting. Looking at that, and so I just wondered if Mr. Jessup wanted to outline any process associated with that or what the CPA committee was expecting associated with that. Yeah, we can make recommendations to any town meeting as a committee. We have years ago that we were asked to try and keep all of our expenditures in the Springtown meeting so that we could mash as much as possible with JCPC. And we've respected that process to the extent that we're able. This particular year, we thought we would have some open space preservation proposals that would be ready for Springtown meeting. They are in fact not ready. That doesn't stop Mr. Zomek and his staff from working diligently towards those. If those were to become available, the real estate deals tend to be time sensitive. We would not want to ask people who to wait for Springtown meeting next year if a deal was ready this summer, if we could assure them that there might be funds available at Falltown meeting, we would want to do that. So that's really the purpose of that. And we could entertain any other proposals that might come before us in that time period. Nothing that we do is intended to disrespect the efforts of JCPC or any of that, but we do have the authority, as it were, to bring those to town meeting if we see fit. We will probably not be widely advertising, I don't think, the request for proposals for Falltown meeting, but if something came from a group that asked about it, we would certainly entertain those. Ordinarily, we send out in September requests for proposals. We take the fall and winter to analyze and vet those and then vote on them prior to town meeting and make the presentation to the various committees. That's really helpful, thank you. Exactly what I was looking for. The money's sort of spoken for, but not really. And about how the process generally works. And I do appreciate. The $200,000 in budget or reserve would be added to that pot and the total on that might be someplace between 200 and 250,000 that might be available. We don't need to spend it, it'll roll over to the spring if we don't have something to the Falltown meeting. It's not that we're thinking, wow, there's a specific project, we don't have any specific project in mind. Okay. So you don't need that money to count towards the 10% for the open space requirement? We've satisfied all of our allocations. Great, yeah. Other questions or comments? Mr. Jessup? This is mine. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 21, Community Preservation Act Part A in the amount of $384,000. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, that's unanimous. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 21, Community Preservation Act Part B in the amount of $200,000. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 21, Community Preservation Act Part C in the amount of $25,000. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you very much for coming in. We appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Stein, would you like to speak to us? Yes, I would be happy to. Good, because I'm done. I think you're done and overdone. I am so done. All right, next step. So we have free cash and stabilization, so we elected to not make Mr. Poole or come in for this as we already know what we're talking about. We spoke earlier, Mr. Musanti talked about the finance committee being ready to make a recommendation for $218,200 for the elementary school budget from free cash as we discussed earlier. I think typically what we do with this is we make a contingent motion, right? That we say that that's what we're supporting and if the situation changes, we'll try and take it up. We would try and take it up at one of our meetings before a town meeting, but otherwise we wouldn't have a position on it. But the goal here, consistent with our budget policy guidelines, is that we're essentially not supporting other money coming out of reserves. We're trying to keep the budget as recommended so it is consistent to recommend only that part. Are folks comfortable with that? Okay, Ms. Stein, would you like to make the free cash motion? I move that the slip or recommend to the April 30th, 2012, annual town meeting, article 22, free cash. Is that what you, I'm not sure how you wanna say it. I'm not sure how you wanna say it. Yeah, my recommendation would be just add to the end of that in the amount of 218,200, because that quite possibly will save you from having to meet about this prior to a town meeting session or meet it all potentially, depending on how we're doing and town meeting that evening. That's fine, add to the stabilization. It's so encouraging. It's so encouraging, nothing. So we'll get to that in a second. So. Second. It has been seconded for the discussion. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay, so stabilization, we're not looking, there will be no request to take any money out of stabilization, so that will be dismissed, is that correct? Yeah, my recommendation here would be to, have you take a vote to recommend dismissal with the same rationale as the free cash. Okay. So I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, article 23, dismissal of the stabilization fund. To recommend dismiss, yeah. Recommend dismissal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The dismissal goes in there somewhere. We know. Or maybe put it at the end. Okay, is there a second? Second. For the discussion. Aye. All in favor, say aye. I'm ready to vote. I'm ready to vote. Okay. It was tongue-twisted. unanimous. All right, articles 22 and 23, those are easy ones, anyone wanna speak to those? I'm happy to do it. All right, last time, it's yours. Okay, next up. If somebody else wants to, I mean, oh, you can have one. We have article 24, 25 and 26 are zoning articles and we have Mr. Tucker here, Mr. Weber and Mr. O'Keefe to talk to us about these. For anyone who is watching their very first select board meeting ever, I must disclose that I am married to the gentleman who is sitting at the public table right now, but this does not affect my ability to be neutral on the subject. Okay, 24 is form-based zoning in Atkins Corner. Welcome, what should we know about this? Thank you, I'm John O'Keefe, Chair of the Zoning Subcommittee of the Planning Board. And what I'd like to do is talk about both articles 24 and 25 together because they both pertain to rezoning projects that we've been working on on the planning board for more than a year now. And the most significant difference from last fall being now that they are two separate articles rather than being grouped together in one article as they were last fall. So let me start out by just speaking about the motivation behind the articles is basically the same as it was last fall. There's the prospect of significant redevelopment in the area around the old coal sawmill in North Amherst as well as the prospect of significant new development in the area around Atkins Corners in South Amherst spurred by the road construction project there. And in particular, the new peripheral ring road around Atkins Market that's already been constructed. And so faced with the likelihood of new development in South Amherst and redevelopment in North Amherst, the board has been motivated for quite a while to make sure that any such development takes place in a rational manner that's in keeping with the expressed values of the community and works the way we want it to work. We want good functional development and not haphazard sprawl. So these articles are an attempt to ensure that that takes place. So as you know, well, we had an article on the warrant last fall that achieved significant support in town meeting but failed to achieve the two thirds majority required to pass. We've been working quite diligently since then to try to make changes to that article and hopefully bring it back to town meeting in a form that will pass this spring. So we've held a large number of public meetings both as owning subcommittee and notably the planning board as well has been much more involved this cycle with the development of the two articles that we're bringing to town meeting. We've had a series of discussions at planning board meetings to get input both from the public and from members of the board and members of the board have been very active in giving us feedback and suggestions and helping us improve the articles this spring. So just quickly, I know you all have seen this before last year, so I won't go into great detail about how the zoning works. I'd like to spend most of my time talking about the changes that we were proposing relative to the article that we brought last fall. But just at a very high level, an overview of how this zoning could work. We talk about this in shorthand often as a form-based code project or form-based code proposal, but it's really more than that. It really is a village center rezoning project, two village center rezoning projects, one in North Amherst and one in South Amherst. And as part of those rezoning projects we're proposing to use form-based code for the first time in Amherst zoning by-law. But apart from form-based code, it's important to bear in mind that we are proposing traditional zoning in both of those areas. So these articles would create two new zoning districts, one in North Amherst called the North Amherst Village Center and AVC and one in South Amherst around Atkins Corners called Atkins Corners AC. And both of those would function just as traditional zoning districts do, just like all the other zoning districts in our existing zoning by-law do. They would allow or disallow a range of uses and specify the permit requirements, whether things are allowed by right through site plan review or through special permit from the ZVA. And people are used to dealing with that. There's no changes from our existing zoning by-law and how that works. There are changes from the existing zoning that's on the ground there today in terms of the mix of uses that would be allowed by these two new zoning districts. In general, they're much more tailored to an appropriate for village center areas, in particular, relative to the existing zoning that's on the ground today in North Amherst, which is largely commercial, which is really an automotive-based, sprawl-promoting type of zoning that's not appropriate for the area around a village center. So these articles would create two new zoning districts, one in North Amherst, as I said, one in South Amherst, and they would also use form-based code in those two districts, as well as selected areas immediately adjacent to them. So form-based code, as we've discussed extensively over the course of the last year or so in a series of meetings and educational sessions, is a relatively new zoning concept that's been used increasingly around the country and in the Northeast for the past 10 or 15 years to try to guide development in a way that ensures that what gets built works for a community, that it preserves the look and feel of neighborhoods, it preserves their character, it ensures that public spaces function the way that we want them to, that we get pedestrian-friendly development that's not really aimed at primarily automotive uses, which is what happens a lot of the time if you don't have control over that type of thing. So it ensures that buildings are well-connected together, that they're connected to the pedestrian, bicycle infrastructure, public transit, so on. So form-based code, we have a series of form-based design regulations that would apply in both North Amherst and in South Amherst, and there's also overlay districts where those form-based regulations would apply in small areas immediately around the village centers, but without changing the underlying zoning that's on the ground today. So that's kind of a high-level overview of how the whole thing would work. So now I'd like to focus on maybe a dozen or so areas where we've made significant changes since last fall, and I also wanna draw your attention to a document that you probably have in your packets. It's certainly part of the town meeting mailing that's entitled Articles 24 and 25 of the Village Center Resoning, What's Different Since Last Fall, which contains a much more detailed series of notes. I'm not gonna drill down into all the specific changes that we made to definitions and things like that, but that document is a great overview of all the stuff that has changed. So in terms of the most significant ones, I've already mentioned the fact that this is two articles rather than one. One of the most significant items of feedback that we got from people last time around was they wanted to have the opportunity to make an up or down vote on each of the two areas separately rather than having them be lumped together, and we heard that loud and clear, and so we've designed the whole process this time to give them that opportunity. So we have two separate articles, Article 24, which is the first one on the warrant, deals with South Amherst around Atkins Corners, Article 25, which is totally separate, deals with North Amherst. The structure of the articles is designed to, the way the language is worded in the warrant is designed to facilitate that division, and so what happens in each one of the two articles is that there's three separate sections in the warrant article language. The first of those three sections would apply or would create the bulk of the text that constitutes the form-based regulations, Article 16 in the zoning bylaw, not to be confused with the numbering of the articles on the warrant, which always gets people every time, but so that the first section would create Article 16, new section of the zoning bylaw without any of the particular aspects that apply either to North Amherst or South Amherst. The second section in each article would apply those specific locations, specific aspects for Article 24 in Atkins Corners and in Article 25 in North Amherst, and then the third section of each one would make the changes that are required in the zoning map to implement the new regulations in the zoning map. And the way that it's structured that way is so that if the first article were to pass or fail, basically the second article could function independently. What will happen if Article 24 passes is that the first section of Article 25 won't be necessary, and so we just won't move that section as part of Article 25, but it needed to be there to allow for the possibility that Article 24 might not pass, and if it does, then we would move the entirety of Article 25. So that's the structure of how that's laid out. Going back to the changes, and that's one of the changes, but one of the more significant changes since the fall has been changes in the maps of how the zoning would be applied in both North Amherst and South Amherst. Another change is that we have better maps to begin with. We've got a more logical and well-structured series of maps in both areas that shows, first of all, it shows the existing zoning on the ground. It shows really detailed changes that would take us from the existing zoning to the new zoning, and then there's a separate map that shows you just what the zoning would look like if the articles were to pass. So looking at the maps specifically, the most significant change is in both areas, but particularly in North Amherst. The scope of the new zoning district has been reduced considerably. We cut down areas of NAVC to the West that were largely undevelopable or protected lands or things that areas where the new NAVC zoning wouldn't necessarily be appropriate, and we made other changes to trim around the edges of that. We also last fall proposed a changing the zoning along Montague Road to RVC. The people along Montague Road have been telling us all along they don't want to be part of NAVC, and we've respected that. Last fall, we had proposed instead changing that zoning to RVC, which is Village Center residents, and they weren't happy with that either, and they really wanted to limit the scope of that, and so we heard those concerns, and right now what we're proposing is a small RVC section just along the southernmost portion of Montague Road that's north of the Mill River itself and south of the entrance to the Mill River recreational area. That's the area where the old mill building is. It has a history of commercial uses, and it's immediately adjacent to the central part of the Village Center, so we felt that RVC is appropriate there, but not for the areas stretching further north along Montague Road, and so those areas along Montague Road would retain their existing zoning with the exception of the parcel at 134 Montague Road, which is the Coles family homestead, which again has a long history of commercial uses associated with it. So the RVC is smaller, the NAVC, and Atkins Corner is smaller. Also, I didn't mention Atkins Corner, the Atkins Corner zoning district. We've also trimmed that one around the edges a little bit. The same kinds of concerns I expressed in the north where there were some concerns about interaction of the new zoning district with the Rod and Gun Club, that's to the south up on the hill on the notch, and also wetlands and concerns about developing there. So we've pulled the Atkins Corner zoning district back a little bit in the southeastern portion to address those concerns. The other area that we've made smaller is the overlay district that I mentioned earlier, particularly in North Amherst. We had proposed sections along Montague Road, along Pine Street, and along Meadow Street that would have this new overlay district, which would apply the form-based regulations. We've trimmed that down a lot in response to feedback that we got. And right now we're proposing to only add that overlay district in the areas that are zoned RVC immediately adjacent to the North Amherst Village Center. So again, just the ones that are closer in to the actual center or the village center. So all of those have been in response to concerns that we've heard from people wanting us to take a more measured step-by-step approach and to start small and see how it works. And so we've responded to that by making significant changes to the scope of the maps. Some of the other changes that we've made as well relative to last fall, we changed the permit requirement on townhouses from site plan review allowed by right, which was the original proposal to special permit. We actually moved that on the floor of town meeting that way last fall, although it didn't get much attention. And this is different now from what was actually proposed originally last fall. So with that change, both of the large-scale, multi-unit residential uses in the two new village centers' owning districts would require a special permit. So you wouldn't be able to build them by right. You would have to go before the ZVA and get a special permit for any large-scale, multi-unit residential construction. We also made changes, speaking of townhouses and apartments, we added some language in the terms and conditions for those uses to ensure that those uses don't dominate the areas around Sunderland Road and Coles Road, which was a concern that people brought to us as well. So there's language in there that says that multi-unit residential uses aren't allowed to dominate the streetscape along those areas. The idea being, of course, that we wanna encourage a diversity of uses and have a wide range of uses and not have it be dominated by any one use in particular and in particular residential uses. So there's language to prevent that from happening. We made changes to the building coverage and lock coverage, dimensional regulations in the two new zoning districts to bring them in line to be the same as the existing dimensional regulations in the Village Center Business District. So those are reductions as well. We made a lot of smaller changes in the language to clarify and improve some of the design regulations, in particular those having to do with public transit, street trees, handicapped accessibility, and several other areas. So there are improvements to the form-based design regulations themselves. Another change that we made that some people had questions about last fall was there's a series of descriptions of street types in the beginning of the form-based regulations, and there was some confusion about exactly how much the zoning could control what goes on in the public way. Obviously, the public way is something that this board is in charge of and not controlled through zoning, but yet the form-based regulations that we're proposing govern the way that a site interacts with the public way through its driveways, through its pedestrian access and things like that. So the street illustrations that we have do show public way and they do show the connection of sites to that public way, but they've been clarified to make clear the fact that this is not something that's directly governed by zoning and instead happens through the select board. Another change that we made is in the section 16.91, which is the alternative compliance section. There is a provision in the form-based regulation that says essentially that the permitting board has the ability, in the case where they're presented with a design that might not exactly match up with the regulations that we have put in here, we're not intending to prevent new and creative uses that people might come to us with. And so there's sort of a safety valve in there that says that if somebody wants to do something good that conforms with the spirit of the regulations and conforms to a bunch of specific findings in there, then the board is allowed to consider that. That was there last time around, but we've strengthened that language to make clear exactly what public purpose is that you have to prove that you're serving if you're seeking this alternative compliance under that section. And the final one I wanna mention is just in the series of illustrations that are illustrating the various building and site types in there. We got some feedback from people who were concerned about that not reflecting our local character enough. So we went out and got an extensive library of illustrations of things in North Amherst and South Amherst and elsewhere in town. And we used those fairly extensively in illustrating the various building and site types. We also kept some other examples in there also. It's not intended just to be a catalog of local architecture, but it's also intended to give you an idea of things that might be worthy of emulation, not just preservation. So there's a mix of both Amherst specific examples and examples drawn from elsewhere, but they're predominantly local examples. So those are the major areas I wanted to cover. Again, there's a lot more in that specific document that I referenced. And I also wanna draw people's attention to the planning board report, which is as usual detailed and thorough description of the changes that this article would make. And that has also included in the mailing that went out to town meeting members. Thank you. Thank you very much. Questions or comments? Mr. Miesanti. Yeah, I'd like to, for the benefit of the select board, restate my enthusiastic support as town manager for this proposal for village center rezoning contained in articles 24 and 25. And I encourage town meeting members to show their support for these articles at the upcoming town meeting. First and foremost, I believe the proposal, which was unanimously recommended by the planning board, promotes sustainability. So what does that mean? I think it's part of the Amherst community's effort to implement the community's master plan. Believe it increases local sustainability by reducing sprawl, locating any new development near existing transportation centers, employment centers, closer to goods and services by doing, attempting to incentivize development in the village center areas. We think that leads to decreased overall energy use. It increases the economic vitality of the town and its village centers while still providing access to active farmland and generally reducing environmental impacts. Secondly, I believe this has been a thorough process that has, is resulting in a balanced proposal while there's been very intensive tweaking and reshaping of this proposal since the November special town meeting. The active development of this proposal has been taken about a full year now with lots of opportunities for community input, input public participation. And I think the proposal that's been recommended to town meeting adequately balances all of the community's sometimes competing interests. As Mr. O'Keefe has laid out in some detail and which is contained in the support materials for these articles, the proposal that's before the annual town meeting, I agree, is very responsive to the community input that has been received and has resulted in a number of changes from last fall's original proposal which as you may remember, there was 60% of town meeting voted to support the rezoning proposals at the November town meeting which in most kind of votes is bordering on a landslide victory but in the state laws as it relates to zoning and adopting changes to zoning, a supermajority or two-thirds vote is required. So that proposal while gaining a lot of support fell just short. I think the revised proposal has taken the constructive feedback that was received at town meeting and from community members before and after and attempted to reshape it. Three main areas out of the 12 or so that Mr. O'Keefe mentioned, there's really now two articles instead of one. So, structured in a way for the Atkins Corner and North Amherst pieces of the rezoning to be voted on separately. The area impacted by the rezoning proposals in both locations has been reduced and the regulations that are recommended have been adjusted particularly as it relates to multi-unit residential unit uses the process being more stringent requiring a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals. So I think for all of those reasons, the articles 24 and 25 for Village Center rezoning are worthy of town meeting support and I hope town meeting will lack favorably on them as we come into what we hope and believe is a fledgling but beginnings of a positive economic cycle. This is an opportunity for the town of Amherst and it's elected representatives in town meeting to seize the moment and shape regulations and zoning to encourage the kind of community and village centers that we aspire to as expressed in the community's master plan. Thank you very much. Ms. Stein. I'd like to thank the Planning Board and the Zoning Subcommittee prior to the Planning Board for laying things out so clearly. I think that really makes a huge difference and I think also the fact that as Mr. Musanti said that you were so responsive to the issues that were raised and that made people unhappy will make a big difference. Thank you. Mr. Wildman. Mr. Heen. Also very grateful just personally as one lives at one end of town and works in the other of course I'm going to see this every day. So I appreciate the attempt to make those parts of town more functional and attractive. But I think also three of us on this committee as it turns out worked on the master plan and we have to have a master plan according to state law but one of the triggers really for the process finally taking off was the recognition that our phase growth bylaw was unconstitutional. At least there were precedents that suggested that and we talked about the need to replace that. As it turned out, town meeting did not decline to adopt let us say the phase, the development modification bylaw that was to replace it but one of the questions we kept hearing during the master planning process is how do you know it's not going to sit on the shelf? What's it going to do? Well here's the answer. I think right now we've got two really important pieces coming before us that represent the master plan and its principles and the localist or district is another and so I think this is what the plan is intended to do. It's focused to debate in all sorts of useful ways and we haven't always agreed on what the plan means but there's been a common standard of debate and I think whatever comes out of this is better and again I agree the process has been good. I think I was impressed with the way that the planning board and the zoning subcommittee conducted the discussions and listened to public comment. I think the compromises represented here are reasonable that is they address a lot of the resident's concerns but they retain the essence of what the plan was intended to do and I guess I would just say that I think it's important that we start putting the master plan into effect in these ways and that we realize it is a compromise and that no one is going to get everything that he or she wants. So that's, I mean that's the tough thing at some point we have to decide that we've all given a little bit and we can all take a little bit and I think this is a good example of that. Thank you very much, Mr. Hayden. All of that, it is very interesting to see how the 1500 or so unique comments that we got during the master planning process have distilled themselves first into the goals and objectives and thank you for including that in the package by the way and now into actual rezoning. I want to reemphasize or to reappreciate the work of the zoning subcommittee and the planning board with working with folks. In fact I'm kind of excited all of the work that you've been doing with the people who showed up every night, every Wednesday night for a year to take that work and bring it to the 240 some odd rest of us who are waiting with bated breath to see this. All of that though, I do have a question. I actually know the answer to this but I'm hoping that you will answer it for the folks in television land out there. In many ways, this proposal represents sort of a uniquely amorous approach to form-based code and the old use-based code. In another way, it's not that unique and I'm hoping that you'll be able to speak to other communities that have adopted regulations like this and the successes that they've had because I know there are several. Sure, well it's definitely not unique in the sense that as I mentioned at the outset there are a series of communities around the country that have implemented this type of regulations. Each community tends to do it in their own way and the challenge that people often face is that they're trying to adopt what's essentially a new style of zoning regulation without totally disrupting their existing zoning infrastructure. Some people have gone and really overhauled everything and done everything using form-based codes but that's more common to see people doing the type of thing that we're doing here which is to do it typically in a limited geographic area. And so that's what we've seen in areas like Saratoga Springs, New York which is one of the most prominent local examples of a community that's been using form-based zoning for close to 10 years now. Also in Massachusetts, the city of Lowell as part of one of their downtown redevelopment projects also implemented essentially a form-based code several years ago, again in a limited area. So there are examples out there of people doing pretty much what we tried to do. Of course their regulations don't look the same as ours but the style of trying to blend together the traditional zoning infrastructure that we all have with some of these innovative techniques is not unheard of, lots of people are doing it. And there's a lot of other examples out there around the country too. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Ms. Burr. Two things. One is, let's see, page four of the what's different has toward the bottom under use classification which for those following at home is on pages 59 and 60 of our lovely large report. There's the phrase significant continuous segments of street frontage. And then when I read the whole paragraph in this it made even more sense to me. But what's the response to someone who says, well, what's the limitations of how the people interpreting this can apply that? That's a good question. We went back and forth on that quite a bit and our original instinct was actually to have fairly detailed numerical limitations rather than the broadly worded significant continuous segments. And we eventually decided that it was a little, conditions might differ from even one part of a street to another or one street to another certainly. And obviously what's proposed for any given project, we're not looking at a project here, we're just looking at what's allowed and what's not allowed. You could have a project maybe that, you could have two different projects, one of which you might feel it was appropriate to have more coverage and one you might feel it was less appropriate depending on the details of how the project was proposed. So what we decided to do was go with the more less specific language, significant continuous segments and basically leave that up to the permitting board and there's plenty of precedent for that in both our zoning by-law today and elsewhere in the form-based regulations for the permitting board to be able to decide what constitutes significant continuous segments. So that's just another decision that they would have to make to decide when that threshold had been crossed but yet the language is there. So you'd have a hard time arguing that project that really did cover 90% of the street frontage with multi-unit buildings that would be fairly easy to shoot down at the permitting level. Mr. Tucker, I want to add to that insight as to how that came about. I think part of the answer is contained in the full language, we only excerpted the phrase here but whether you were referring to townhouses or apartments, developments proposed on Coles Road are not intended to occupy significant continuous segments of street frontage to the exclusion of other uses but instead to contribute to a village center streetscape composed of and providing a balanced mix of diverse uses. That would be a little easier to apply. Mr. Wald. On that subject, I had a similar question in part because it also keeps coming up with regard to the local historic district but I think we're often caught between these two sort of extremes. We have language that people say is vague or we try to specify everything and then we're told the regulations are too intrusive and detailed. So how does one, this is more of a philosophical question but you're a smart guy, so. How do we best reassure people that good judgments will be made? And I point out too, the select board has not acted exactly in the manner of his predecessors and I'm sure our successors will not emulate us in every regard either. So how do we best convince the public that we've achieved the right mixture of flexibility and calculability when we say it's up to the permitting body? Yeah, that's another good question and the battle between trying to be too specific and detailed and too general and vague kind of sums up all of our zoning struggles that I've been involved with over the past several years but I guess the best answer I could give to that is to look around at how things are running now. I mean, that's not a new concept that's being introduced here, that pervades our existing regulations and so every time my board, the planning board sits down and considers site plan review application and I know that every time the ZBA sits down and considers a special permit application, they have a long list of things that they have to go through. We have a long list of things that we have to go through and make specific determinations about whether or not a project is going to significantly impact its neighbors through noise, dust, vibration, all kinds of various things or whether it's gonna impact the view shed and things like that. We've been, boards in this town have been making decisions about that type of thing since our zoning has existed and generally people are comfortable with that process and presumably relatively happy with the outcomes in most cases so it's not a new concept that's being introduced. It's really quite a familiar decision-making process. Other questions or comments about articles 24 or 25? Ms. Burr. Quick question about the votes. Do you have nine members on the planning board now and you've got seven members voting? Just we're not going to hear anything suddenly new and exciting from other members. I certainly believe that that's true. The votes that we had, we had two separate public hearings because it's two separate articles and we do have nine members on the board now and one member was late that evening so he missed the first public hearing and thus we ended up with, I believe it was an eight zero vote in support with one member absent. That member came in halfway through the public hearing of the second article and desired to vote in favor of it, in favor of recommending it but was advised that due to the fact that he wasn't present for the entirety of the public hearing, that it would be wise to abstain and he did so just as a technical matter but not through any concerns about the substance, I believe. And so just to clarify, there was actually one other member absent that night, right? Because don't our vote totals eight rather than nine so somebody wasn't there at all. I'm sorry, yes. So we had one member who came in during the meeting and then there was someone who wasn't there at all. Thank you. I appreciate knowing that. Other questions or comments on 24 and 25? Anything else you'd like to add for us to know? I think that covers it. Okay. So I would just note that I really appreciate how much this has been brought to the master plan and how it's framed in the packet materials and how we've been talking about it here tonight. This is not a process that started with North Amherst Charette. This is a process that started years and years ago with the community really envisioning broadly what it was looking for. How we want to develop and grow for the future. So this is a long process with a great deal of community input. And in particular, what has happened since last fall has been an extraordinary amount of community input also. The feedback that was gained at town meeting and since town meeting was extremely valuable in shaping the proposals that are coming before us now. As folks have mentioned, it is extremely responsive to those concerns. So again, this process has played out in a very successful way. I think you can sort of sum it up by saying that it is the same proposal as was brought in the fall, except made a bit smaller and made a bit more conservative. This is less risky for the community to kind of wrap its arms around because it's covering a smaller area. And as Mr. O'Keeffe mentioned, the kind of the big fears of the townhouses and apartments, those are both by special permit. We're taking it easy with this. We're going in gradually, but helping to shape the North Amherst and Atkins Corners Village Centers that the community has identified. They want to be growing and vibrant for the future. So I think it's an excellent approach, really well conceived and I hope and believe that town meeting will be very receptive to that. So thank you very much. If there's no other comments, Ms. Stein would you like to make a motion? I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 24, form-based zoning and North Amherst rezoning. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That was unanimous, Article 25. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 25, form-based zoning and North Amherst Village Center rezoning. I think that word got left off. I wasn't listening. Oh, that's right, you know I read that in the motion sheet. The first one was supposed to say Atkins Corners for Article 24, so we'll consider that as amended, Article 24, which we just voted on. And now, Article 25 is Atkins Corners. No, it's the other way around. Okay, so it's Atkins Corners rezoning and then North Amherst Village Center rezoning. Would you like me to read them again? Sure. Why not? I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 24, form-based zoning and Atkins Corners rezoning. Second. Further discussion. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Anonymous. I move that the select board recommend to the April 30th, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 25, form-based zoning and North Amherst Village Center rezoning. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye, aye, aye. And aye. Anonymous. Thank you very much. Okay, excellent, Article 26. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Hayden. I would speak to those two. Okay, yeah, you guys might want to talk about what you say, too, because Mr. Wald spoke to them last time, so it might be valuable to- You wanna speak to them this time? I can't help it. You can speak to them. Sorry. I meant you could collaborate and I just mean to collaboration at its best. Okay, Mr. Wald is taking this. Very good. Article 26, parking. That's right, I forgot. Thank you, I very much appreciate your support on those articles. Article 26 is also quite similar to an article that you've seen before. Last spring we had an article on the town meeting warrant dealing with parking regulations. This is that was at that point and still is an attempt to address the fact that parking is one of the most frequent nuisance creating issues that we have in various aspects of life in this college community. And our existing zoning regulations do speak to parking to a fair extent, although not in the best possible way. And so we felt for a long time that they needed to be cleaned up and revised. And so the article last spring, as well as this article, is an attempt to do that. All of this needs to be considered through the lens of how zoning regulations work and the fact that existing uses are always allowed to continue. Legal conforming existing uses are always allowed to continue when the zoning has changed. And so these parking changes would mainly apply to new construction and not to existing properties, which is obviously a significant limitation but one that we have to live with in the world of zoning. As you all are aware, the town is conducting a parallel effort to make revisions to the general bylaws to introduce some of the same concepts and effort that wasn't ready in time for this spring's town meeting, but we hope that will be available in the relatively near future. But for the time being, we do have the zoning changes available to us and we felt that they were ready for this spring's town meeting. And so we'd like to see town meeting support them. So the main issue, the most significant issue that our parking regulations through zoning are impacted by or the most significant aspect of our parking regulations in the zoning is a section that says that you're only allowed to park two cars in the front setback of a property. That's really all our existing zoning regulations say about parking that only, they say about parking in terms of residential and parking as a section, so in particular. Excuse me one second, you're gonna get a battery change. Thank you very much. So one of the most significant things in this article would be to prevent that. It changes the zoning regulations to say that any parking will be on the... We're not quite ready yet. We could hear it through the speakers. Testing, are we good with this one? That sounds good. Okay. Where was I? So... So what this, the most significant aspect of this article would prevent parking on the lawn. It would require that all parking in a residential property take place on a paved and prepared parking surface. It does several other things in terms of the design regulations for parking areas in particular for larger parking areas, anything with five or more spaces. It requires that first of all, if you're building such a parking area that you tell the town about it so that the town knows that it's there and can enforce the regulations, it requires that the spaces be marked and delineated and it has requirements for lighting the parking area as well. This is all only for larger areas, again with five or more parking spaces. So that's the design related aspect of it. And it also makes some, it puts in some language about specifically what types of surfaces are appropriate and how they need to be prepared and things like that. But the most significant aspect of it is the parking on the lawn aspect that you wouldn't be able to do that anywhere on the property. Subject, again, to the caveat that I mentioned earlier that existing uses are grandfathered as with all zoning changes. Questions or comments on parking, Ms. Burr? I hesitate when people say, well, what about the house near me? But I'm kind of gonna do that anyway. So when it talks about grandfathered properties, there are fraternities in town that definitely are parking all over lawns at this point. So where are they likely to fit into this? Are they likely to, that's okay based on something they had before or? Yes, basically. So there's nothing wrong with parking on the lawn now as long as you're not having more than two cars in your front setback. So provided that they're operating legally in other aspects of their use, then they're able to continue doing that. But it's still the setbacks are still, is that limitation is still there? I mean, that exists now. As it is now, yes. You still would not be allowed to park more than two vehicles in the front setback. That's there now. And there are properties that violate that all over the place. So those are subject to enforcement today and would continue to be subject to enforcement. Because that doesn't change, all right. And now that we have an excellent new code enforcement officer, thank you all very much for that. Hopefully we'll be able to address those more proactively. Excellent, thank you. Other questions about Article 26, Mr. Hayden? Yeah, I just have changed the views that would trigger this. Renovations in the building. And also, as I was reading this again, I noticed an answer in benefit. I've been parking on the sidewalk, of course, for this erosion. I bicycle around a lot, and I see my ruts. And this prevent those as well. Just one point of clarification there. You mentioned renovation, and that's an issue that came up in our discussion about it. Just to clarify then, a general renovation to a property would not trigger the enforcement of the, it's the change of views. So in particular, a situation that we deal with a fair amount is a conversion from a single-family house to a duplex. That's a change of views, and so the new regulations would apply. But if you're putting out a new porch or a new roof or something like that, that would not trigger this. Thank you. Mr. Musanti? Yeah, I would also lend my enthusiastic support to Article 26, residential parking design regulations. And this is a small but important step forward, I think. We talk about safe and healthy neighborhood initiative, broadly defined. The cars parking all over the lawn is a visual to keep in mind about what we're trying to minimize going forward. And so even though under the zoning laws of the Commonwealth, pre-existing uses are essentially grandfathered, it still sends a very clear statement of what the town and its town meeting believe are best practices, even for a grandfathered use to help shape future positive changes in an individual property and in a neighborhood going forward. So I really hope that we can get behind this. Question, you referenced that there's consideration of a general by-law, which would take out the grandfathering issue, and that would suddenly apply to everyone. Is that something the planning board is working on, or is that something the safe and healthy neighborhoods team is working on? So why didn't that come first? So I can't speak to who specifically inside town hall is working on it. It's not being actively addressed by the planning board, but my understanding is that there is a group that has been working for some time on developing that type of regulation. OK. So that's a safe and healthy neighborhoods thing. Is there any particular reason to sequence it this way? It almost seems like it would make more sense to start with it. Well, if you have a general by-law, you don't need the other by-law. But I don't know why we wouldn't start with the general. Right. So one aspect of this is that the idea of doing it generally is not without controversy. So this is an issue that will cut both ways, and there will be people who are interested in sort of maximizing the use of their property that won't be happy about stricter enforcement of parking regulations. So there's certainly the possibility that those regulations might look different than these. They might be balancing a different set of interests in the community. So this is built on what we have in place already. We do have parking regulations in place today. We do have some design aspects of those regulations. So this builds on that. It makes it stronger. And as Mr. Misanti said, it's an incremental step, hopefully one that we can take that will have some degree of positive impact. But the larger question of the by-laws will have to, it'll need more scrutiny and more public input to make sure that it reflects the concerns of everybody involved. Thank you very much. Other questions or comments? Article 26. Ms. Stein, would you like to make a motion? I move that the select board recommend to the April 30, 2012 annual town meeting, Article 26, residential parking design. Second. Further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. Mr. Hayden, would you like that one? Sure. Great, thank you. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you for all of the good information and for really the extraordinary amount of work that the Planning, Board, and Zoning Subcommittee have put into the revisions of all of these articles. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you. OK. Yes, Ms. Gould. Yes, again, just the extensive amount of materials. I mean, on the one hand, it's overwhelming, but on the other hand, there's lots of different ways that they've addressed the issues through these different types of handouts, which I think really helps the variety of town meeting members look at their concerns. Absolutely. Thank you. So if I understand that, it's not like it's 9, 2, 8, and 12, it's more like a 7, 8, and 12. Correct. Thank you. OK, I'll note Mr. Hayden can take his microphone back, if he would like, from the public table. And we also have to go back and do the street acceptance for Sunrise Ave. I apologize. I thought Mr. Moreing was going to come in tonight, but I guess not. We have in our packets the plan for Sunrise Ave. And I know just a little bit about it because I presented it at Warrant Review. This is a very short street that is off of South Whitney Street, and it has about a half dozen properties on it, including a housing authority property. And there was an agreement with the housing authority that I believe they paid to pave it or something like that with the understanding that with the paving and whatever else needed to happen, it would then meet town standards and be petitioned for acceptance as a public way. So DPW has confirmed that it does, in fact, meet all the standards for a public way. And we have the map of it and the plan in our packet. And just a word about process, we have two motions on this. And we also have a motion that clarifies and makes more official the recommendation that we made on the alternative layout of University Drive that we considered a couple of weeks ago. And I think this is because town council is just paying more attention to us on this issue suddenly. So just to make sure that we're absolutely technically correct on how we do this, we are both accepting. We are calling for the layout. We are laying out, in fact, the plans for both of those streets. And that's a technical part of this process as far as how it advances. So we will retroactively do that with the University Drive one. And we will do that also with Sunrise. If I call it Sunset before I apologize, I keep doing that. Just like the building commissioner and the code enforcement officer, I'm going to screw these up forever. Sunrise, so we will lay those out. And upon that acceptance, we will also recommend the articles. Anything else, Ms. Mr. City? That both of these streets become action that's before you and town meeting is recommended by the appropriate staff, public works. And also, both have, at the most recent planning board meeting, attained a unanimous recommendation from the planning board to accept the streets as proposed. On the second and third motions, I'd slightly change the language if that's not going to work in any way, shape, or form. Let me know, but it really doesn't read well. In terms of the select board, I move that the select board. I mean, that's the way a typical motion is. So I have to strike out the we. Or the select board pursuant to that? I move that the select board pursuant to the authority. I think it'll fly. But if not, we can redo it. We've done that before tonight. I have one other thing before we move it. We've got a new sheet tonight on Sunrise, which I frankly didn't even know existed until this town meeting. But it's got some really cool measurements on it, but I have no idea what they really mean. So I'm assuming that's already been updated on the packet too, because it was on the back of this thing. But now it's a new one. It's got degrees put in your GPS system. So you can find Sunrise on the board. I go on that street all the time. And I said last night, I don't recall. I checked it out before the warrant review, so I would know what I was talking about. I never noticed doing that. OK. As you go down the newly repaved South Whitney. I love the street. South Whitney, I mean. In Sunrise, I couldn't find. In my head. Shall I move? Please. I move that the SLEP board recommend to the April 30, 2012 annual town meeting Article 5, Street Acceptance Sunrise Avenue. Second. For the discussion. No one favor say aye. Aye. Aye. It's unanimous. I move that the SLEP board, pursuant to the authority granted under GL Chapter 82, sections 21 to 24, hereby lay out Sunrise Avenue as a public way. Which layout is shown on a plan of land entitled Sunrise Avenue Street Acceptance, dated April 30, 2012, prepared by the Amherst Department of Public Works Engineering Department, and adopt the order of layout therefore, and further direct said order and plan be sent to the town clerk for filing. Second. That's April 23. Let's say April 23. What did I say? August? 30th, but that's OK. Oh, I'm sorry. I was looking right at 23. So how did that happen? Has that been seconded? Second. And for the discussion, all in favor say aye. Aye. Actually, I do know how it happened. My tongue has been saying April 30 for every single article. So it just wanted that configuration. All right. I move that the select board pursuant to the authority granted under General Law Chapter 82, sections 21 to 24, hereby alter the layout of University Drive as a public way, which altered layout is shown on a plan of land entitled Right of Way Property Plan University Drive Route 9 to Big Boy Amherst, Mass MA, rather, prepared by Stantec Consulting Services Incorporated North Hampton MA, and adopt the order of alteration of layout therefore, and further direct that said order and plan be sent to the town clerk for filing. Second. For the discussion, Mr. Hayden. I think I'm going to miss this one. I think I've seen a version of this article since I started with the select board four years ago. This is the last one. This is the last one, right? That's right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. OK, so Mr. Hayden, I believe you were doing University Drive. Would you like to do sunrise also? Sure. I can send you the little bit of notes that I have about that. OK, we are officially done with the warrant articles, except for Article 29, which we will hopefully complete. We'll at least take up again next Monday at the middle school. That is the Secure Communities one for which we are waiting for more information. OK, town managers report. Thank you. I'd like to briefly recap how I spent my Friday night, last Friday night. I had the pleasure of doing a ride-along with the Amherst police as a guest. Not in the back of the car. I went out with the lieutenant in charge of the late shift, Jerry Miller, last Friday night between about 10 o'clock and 1.30 in the morning. And we talked earlier tonight about Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative and the enforcement piece and the outreach to the community as part of what we think is a proactive effort to allow young people in particular to enjoy the warmer weather but do so in a responsible way that's respectful of community standards. I have to say that how impressed I was with all of the men and women in the police department in Amherst, their thoroughness, their teamwork, and the professionalism that I witnessed. Lieutenant Miller, not surprisingly to me, but I wanted to put out there on the public record. He's a class act and a real asset to the town and to the department. And he demonstrated his leadership skills to the other members in the police department, letting officers on a scene make decisions for themselves with appropriate support and guidance from him along the way. The focus of our police work, although the enforcement actions get a lot of media attention as they should, but the vast majority of police work, whether it's on a patrol on a Friday night in the spring time or other parts of the year, is really a focus on prevention and nipping potentially bad things from happening in the bud. And so Friday night that was manifested with extra patrols, there were bike patrols, there was coordination, collaboration with the UMass police, Mass State Police, property managers, including some private security details in places like Townhouse that all contributed to making it a safer environment. Outside of that, we have the ongoing work of the campus and community coalition to reduce high risk drinking, our inspection services team, landlords, et cetera. In terms of staffing levels and calls for services this past weekend, the good news is that there's no major banner headline, but that should be news of itself that it was a relatively quiet weekend, particularly for this time of year. Starting on Friday afternoon when we had a real nice day, Puffer's Pond, we had both a staff and a police presence in the afternoon, some dialogue with people coming onto the beach, reminding them very clearly about our open container bylaw, and that alcohol was strictly forbidden at Puffer's Pond, and we didn't have any problems. And that's a good thing. I also want to acknowledge that UMass police assisted us last Friday by having an officer at the Pond for part of the afternoon, and that's greatly appreciated as we try to work more closely together going forward. We had regular patrols augmented with a state alcohol enforcement grant that funded some overtime for additional police coverage. We had approximately 14 officers on duty Friday night from 7 PM to 3 AM. Saturday we had as many as 40 officers on duty in the midnight time frame, and about 30 on duty after 2 o'clock or so Saturday afternoon. Over the weekend, we had 256 calls for service, which sounds like a lot, but it's not atypical for late April weekends to be in excess of 300 calls. We had 34 arrests down substantially from some comparable numbers in previous springs. We had 26 physical custodies, mostly for alcohol and noise-related issues, only 18 noise-related calls, and that compares with twice that many on the Patriots Day weekend last week. On the Fire EMS side, we had a steady number of calls, but not a crazy number, quote-unquote, talking to Chief Nelson. We had 43 emergency runs over the weekend, 12 that are fire-related, 31 ambulance-related, and there was no need at any time over the weekend to call in any mutual aid ambulances. So over the course of Friday evening when I was out, participated in a roll call, participated in just observing responses to a handful of motor vehicle accidents, and then routine patrolling all over town, but in particular, some of the apartment complexes in North Amherst, Hobart Lane, Townhouse, Puffton, Gatehouse Road, Colonial Village, and the level of activity there was relatively quiet, no large, super-large gatherings of parties. We did have some calls for service for house parties on Main Street, Lower Main and College Street, as well as McClure Street that officers monitored and responded to, and those were brought under control with the cooperation of the tenants and guests who were attending. So I just wanted to highlight that and thank, again, all the men and women of our police, as well as our fire EMS for doing a nice work. And it's news when there's no news. And I also salute the young people for taking to heart the vast majority of them, the many messages being sent out by campus leaders, student leaders, and our law enforcement people to have fun, but be safe and be respectful to the neighborhood they live in. Thank you very much. Questions or comments from Mr. Musanti? I will note that I have a portable scanner that I got years ago when I was doing a website writing about town stuff, and so I turned it on for some interesting evenings. And of course, I had to listen when I knew that Mr. Musanti was out on patrol, to see what he was hearing, and also on Saturday to see what things were like. And I was really struck by the fact that while things were very busy, what I kept hearing was that the parties or the places that the police were responding to that the folks were cooperative. That was a recurring theme was cooperative. And I think that's terrific. That's just really kind of showing mutual respect for everybody. We've talked about it in a bunch of different ways tonight. The need to strike a balance. And we're just trying to strike a balance between quality of life for people who aren't celebrating the end of finals and the end of their school year, and those who are. And because we're all living here together and we're all appreciating this magnificent college town and we just have to make sure that we're striking the right balance of respect. So I think it's great that you did that. I also want to mention that for folks who don't know, Mr. Musanti has joined the world of Twitter and he in fact tweeted about his ride along on Saturday. And folks who are likewise in the Twitter world can follow him and interesting town news at Amherst Musanti. All right, anything else? No, I was going to mention that. Oh, I followed it. The town manager is now on Twitter. And I lived to tell about it so far. I'm happy to be doing it. It's another way to try to communicate with all of the townspeople and get feedback. So I'm looking forward to being active on that and full steam ahead. Thank you very much. You'll never mess, you'll never meet the prolific tweeting of Mr. Waldo. No, I won't. I think he must actually get paid for this because he's just unbelievable. Sort of per tweet. That's right. We're all trying to learn from Mr. Waldo. Anything else? Mr. Musanti? No, just I'm looking forward to the inauguration of the New Hampshire College president, Jonathan Lash, this coming Friday. Thank you. All right, member reports. Anybody? We just met five days ago. Yeah, we just met, but if any, what do you want? Ms. Brewer. If anybody still has time tomorrow night, 6 to 7.30 in the campus center reading room is the Hunger Banquet, UMassHungerBanquet at gmail.com. They did invite us. I'm not sure how many tickets they've sold. I'm sure they still have some available. I'm going to be speaking at 6.45 briefly and then someone who I don't think I know from the survival center is gonna be speaking as well. And it sounds like they've got the program lined up pretty tightly, which sounds fun. Great, thank you for doing that. And thank you to that group for inviting us. We were also invited to an event tonight that unfortunately we're here and we couldn't be at a really wonderful Earth Day event that Robert Kennedy Jr. was going to be speaking at and the Student Government Association and others were putting this on and we are all very sorry we couldn't attend that because I'm sure that was going to be a fantastic event but we appreciate how much different student groups have been reaching out to the select board and really trying to get the town involved with what they're doing. Okay, no other member reports at this time? All right, just I think one more thing then before we go. I just want to talk quickly about expectations for town meeting just to make sure that we're all on the same page about stuff. So typically what we do is we meet on before the Monday session of town meeting and we at that point either plan to meet or not meet on Wednesday and then confirm that kind of after the Monday night town meeting session in case anything has come up that we know that we then need to meet for that Wednesday. So are we good continuing that basically planning on the Mondays and the Wednesdays will play by year as they come up? Okay, another thing is that we have we've been doing this for several years. I can't remember if it predates the select board or not not taking public comment when we're at the middle school because we have such a short period of time to be there. So if folks do need to address something with us they should let us know when we will schedule it if it is time sensitive. Otherwise we will not be doing public comment at the middle school per usual. We will try and end our meetings by 720. We have made a real effort in the last couple of years to make sure that we're in there and ready to start town meeting on time so that God forbid they're not waiting for us. That always looks terrible. So we will try to keep doing that. I'll remind select board that when we speak to these different articles, it works very well to just say for all the reasons already stated unless we're the prime presenter of an article but we really don't need to feel like we need to reinvent the wheel or whatever. Sometimes we have new information to add but we don't need to feel pressured and I commend the select board for I think we started it a couple of years ago staying at our seat and not necessarily going up to the podium if we don't need to especially if we're just gonna say for all the reasons already stated it's little things like that that save time. Let's see, in looking at the different article assignments we should make sure that if we are not speaking to an article that we have notes on it's a recurring one or otherwise we know about it we should get those notes to the person who is speaking to it. So everyone please take a look at those things. Just a couple other scheduling things just to let you know next Monday's select board meeting will have a third quarter budget update that would have happened tonight except that it needed to be postponed because of vacations. So we will have that at the middle school next week. We will also have the Kendrick Park Farmers Market coming to us to make a little commercial for their market which starts in just a couple of weeks and they'll be asking us for parking. And then we will be talking about article 29 and trying to finish up our position on that. On the following Monday the 7th we have another liquor license hearing it is for Amherst Brewing Company this is one of those technicalities another change of stock thing but we had to schedule it so just so we know that is first thing on Monday the 7th. I believe we're also gonna have a western mass electric a poll hearing that night. We're still looking into whether this is nice and easy and can be done quickly and if so then we'll be all set for the 7th and if not then we might need to reschedule it. One thing that I need to ask you if you're willing to schedule possibly for Wednesday the 9th is we have an application in from the Hess gas station in South Amherst that needs a public hearing for fuel storage. They're increasing the amount of fuel that they want or need to be able to store on site and that actually requires a butter notification and blah, blah, blah. Ms. Brewer might have dealt with this years ago otherwise it was before her time on select board but this came before select board not at Hess but a fuel storage issue on Pine Street a number of years ago, I remember watching that but so none of us have dealt with that yet. I don't really know what to expect as far as a butter concerns or anything so I don't wanna schedule it as though it's a 10 minute thing when maybe it's a 40 minute thing so would we and it does require advance notice for the posting and a butter notification. Would we be willing to do that on Wednesday the 9th? I just think it's kind of the safest way to schedule that. Okay, thank you very much. Worst comes to worst we could postpone the rest of it, right? We could move it ahead, it's gonna be taking two hours. Correct, correct, right. We wouldn't have to give it short shrift for sure but we could continue hearing it. Continue hearing it. Ms. Brewer. I remember when we went around before we realized that the stuff at Commonwealth College at UMass actually was gonna be done at the state level and we didn't need to be worried about it. Could we see if Town Council has anything about this from their other communities? Cause yeah, it's not, and it was messy last time and it was propane for condos as opposed to a gas station being a bigger gas station so it was a lot different situation. Right, right, so it's a new learning opportunity for us and we'll try and have as much advanced information about that as we possibly can. All right, I think that is all of the things I needed to mention to you folks. Does anybody see anything that I'm missing from the motion sheet or the agenda? Let's see, anything else we need to mention then? Announcements out there. All right, then Mr. Hayden. I would notice that the adjournment is not on the agenda but I would move to adjourn. And without objection this meeting adjourns at 8.57 p.m. and we will see you all at the middle school next Monday. Thank you very much.