 Okay, Mr. Marshall, the attendees are coming in. You are a co-host for this meeting. We are recording by my clock. It is 633. You have a quorum of the board. Do you look good to go? Okay. Thank you, Pam. You're welcome. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of November 1st, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 633 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media. Minutes are being taken pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapter two of the acts of 2023. The planning board meeting, including public hearings will be conducted via remote means using the zoom platform. The zoom meeting link is accessible on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting, or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. In person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts. I will post an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members I will take a roll call. When I call your name unmute yourself answer affirmatively and return to mute. Bruce cold. Present. Jesse major. Present. Janet McGowan here. Car and winter. Present. Fred Hartwell. Present. I dug Marshall and present. And Johanna Newman. I'm present. Thank you all. We have a full house tonight. Board members if technical issues arise we may need to pause to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak. After speaking remember to remute yourself. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the planning board chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. All right, so time now is 637 and our first item on the agenda is our minutes. We have the minutes from September 20th available for review and approval. Do any members of the board have edits they would like to make to the minutes. I know that Janet, you had sent in some a suggested addition to the minutes. And I guess I would like you to say what you were thinking we should add. So, I was reading through the list of comments people had about during the housing meeting and I remember making a comment that I thought that we shouldn't be looking at increasing housing and students along North Pleasant Street, from like Kendrick Park to the University because I thought that was going to be sort of a political disaster and people were just adding more people to a to a neighborhood that is constantly talking about having too much housing and students in their neighborhood. So, I just kind of put in a sentence to that effect. All right. So Chris, I had asked you to whether you, you found a comment like that. And what did you find in the recording? Yeah, I did listen to the recording and I didn't hear that comment. So, I think I made maybe I made it at a different housing meeting then. Sorry to have put you through that. Okay, well, I guess then are there other comments I see a hand from Johanna. I was just going to say that I remember Janet making that comment and I was not at this meeting. And so it corroborates that maybe the statement was done in another meeting. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Are there other members who have comments on these minutes. All right, I guess everybody else thought they were just fine. Jesse, maybe you're ready to make a motion. Very minor comment. There's one place where I'm miss major instead of Mr. Major, but I really don't care. Yeah. I think it's only time my name shows up besides the attendance. I think the second page halfway down. Okay, third of the way down. And with that, I would move to approve minutes. Yes, I see it halfway down. Okay. I'm very sorry. So we have a motion to approve the minutes with one edit as described by Jesse. Anybody want to second that. Janet, I see your hand. I saw your hand before I saw it at your hottest. I get the second. You get the second tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both. All right, are there any more comments? All right, so we'll that we'll go through a roll call. We'll start with you, Bruce. I'm going to abstain. I wasn't present at the meeting. Okay. Fred. Agree. All right. Jesse. Yes, I agree to approve. All right. Janet. I. Thank you. Johanna. I. Okay. And Karen. I. All right. And I'm as, I'm as well and I, and so that's six in favor and one of extension. The minutes are approved for September 20th. All right. Thank you all. So the time now is 641. We'll go to the next item on the agenda. And that is our public comment period. I have been reading the attendees that I can see at this time before we. Call on people for public comment. So I, what I see are a. Somebody from Dodson and Flinker. Jessica Allen from Valley CDC. Josh Klein. Katie. Leah. Leah. Laura Baker. Lee Jennings. Mara keen. Miguel Gomba. Orlando roof. Timothy Hagan. And Tom Chalmers from Austin design. I know several of those are for our. One topic on our agenda later. All right. So do any of you want to make a public comment at this time? We saw one hand flash up and then it disappeared. So as a reminder, this is for comments about items not on tonight's agenda. We will take public comment later for the, the one project on the agenda. Okay. I don't see any hands being raised for public comment at this time. So we can move on. Okay. So this is a request for comprehensive permit. Under mass general law chapter 40 B. To construct 30 owner occupied affordable residential units. Located in 15 duplex structures. Parking with areas with 58 spaces. And other site improvements on a 9.047. Acre site. With requested waivers from the zoning bylaws, general bylaws, subdivision regulations. And sewer and water connection approvals. At 2040. 20 to 40 ball lane. Which is in map five, a parcel 56. So this is coming from Valley Community Development Corporation. So with that, we will welcome our presenters from the applicant. Let's see. Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, are there other people in the attendees that you would like to have come over? Yes, please. Peter Flinker and Lee Jennings and Katie can also be promoted as well. Okay. Thank you. Shall I go ahead, Mr. Chair? I'm seeing Dodson and Flinker still among the attendees. So they need to come over. They're coming. They're coming. Maybe I missed this. Was Josh Klein one of your team members? Yes, he is. So, and he's already been promoted. So. Okay. All right. So welcome all. And Jessica, why don't you go ahead? Sure. Did you want me to give an intro? I'm sorry. Yep. Yep. Chris, why don't you? Sorry about that. So this was prompted by Bruce Coldham asking a question this afternoon. What is the planning board expected to do at this presentation? And what kind of recommendations should they make? So, I'm just going to read an email that I wrote to the planning board this afternoon, explaining the planning board is being given an opportunity to comment and make recommendations to the zoning board of appeals about the proposed Valley CDC development called Amherst community homes located at the intersection of Montague Road and Pulpahill Road. I attached a sample letter to the email that I wrote to Mr. Coldham and the other planning board members, which contained a letter that the planning board had written on 132 North Hampton Road. So that was a project that Valley CDC did a couple of years ago, just to give the planning board a sample of the kinds of recommendations that they made at that time. So the ZBA will be making a decision as to whether to approve this project to approve it with conditions or deny the application for a comprehensive permit. The state funding agency will make or has made a determination as to whether to fund the project. I believe that they have made that determination and I think the project eligibility letter from the state has already been received. This project is considered to be what we call a friendly 40 B application in the sense that the town has encouraged Valley CDC to develop affordable units for home ownership as well as for rental in the town of Amherst. The town also provided $750,000 in CPA funds and $250,000 in housing trust funds to support this project. And most of the comments that we've received from the public have been in favor of this project. The planning board should listen to the presentation and ask questions like it would in a public hearing for a planning board project. And the planning board should consider whether this is a good location for the project and the planning board can comment on the layout of buildings, driveway access, parking, grading, landscaping, all of the things that go into the development of a site plan. The types of things that the planning board would normally ask about a site plan review application. I also suggested that planning board members could look at the criteria that the zoning board will be looking at when they review this project. Review criteria in section 4.5 of the zoning board rules and regulations. I sent you a link to the zoning board rules and rights. Otherwise, this is a chance to offer advice and recommendations to the zoning board of appeals just as the planning board does for special permit applications. And after the planning board has reviewed the project and made its recommendations, we'll draft a letter that we'll send to the zoning board of appeals. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Chris. Now, Jessica. So, Mr. Chairman, what's your preference in terms of our presentation? I have my presentation that each members of the design team also have information they'd like to share. So would you like us to just sort of blaze forward and give all of the information or is it your preference that we sort of stop after each presenter so that the board has an opportunity to ask some questions? Why don't we pause after each presenter? And if people have burning questions, they really want to get asked. Let's go ahead and do that. Okay. But as we move along, you know, when we're done, I expect more questions and that they will cover any of the material already presented. Okay. Sounds great. Just wanted to clarify. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and I'm going to give a presentation of the overall project, project goals, the affordability, so that the board has an understanding of Valley's purpose and mission here. And that's in this development, proposed development. Can everybody see that? Yes. Perfect. This is not going to let me go to full screen. Okay. So my name is Jessica Allen. I'm real estate project manager here at Valley CDC. What I am presenting to the board tonight is a proposed projects that we are working on in North Amherst, currently titled Amherst Community Homes and it's an affordable home ownership development. So the development team that have been promoted as panelists here, but just again to reiterate so Valley is the developer on this project. We've hired Austin design to be our architect. Site design is being in landscaping being completed by Dotson and Flinker. We have a civil engineering team, Stonefield engineering. And then we've also engaged an attorney from Dorothy Wallace Pillsbury and Murphy to assist with the condo docs and any other legal assistance we might need with this project. So just to give you kind of a background of work to date that we've done on this project so Valley was an active negotiations with the property owner starting in 2021. We acquired the site in August 2022. We did a lot of due diligence before purchasing the site doing wetlands delineations and assessments doing soils analysis environmental reports were completed phase one and phase two. We acquired the site in August and then pretty quickly, even before acquisition started to have some community engagement. So we've had multiple meetings that I'll get into a little bit later in the presentation with a butters neighbors. In the community at large, starting right at that acquisition date. Also in parallel track with the community engagement. We've been working on design development. So we have our design team. And we've been working through design. Almost the entire year of 2022 and here into 2023 so As Mr. Westrup noted, we received funding from CPA received $750,000. And then the housing trust was $375,000 that we received in August. And also in August we received a letter of interest from Commonwealth builders program that's the primary public subsidy for this project. We're going to talk a little bit about program goals. So we're talking about first time home buyers here, but other part, the other major part, or major goal that we're trying to accomplish here is to increase BIPOC home ownership, and to shrink the racial equity gap. So we're going to do some some hard data and some numbers about what we're talking about when we talk about these concepts. So the majority of Americans, most of their assets are in their house, I know that's my case, most of my wealth is in my home ownership. And that's generally the case for most Americans across the board. The household wealth gap has not significantly changed in 40 years. So it's been pretty much the same for several generations here. For every $1 and assets that a white household owns a black household assets equal one cent a Latinx household equals eight cents. And this is a direct result of the of home ownership. The gap. So just to give that perspective that you know, the gap is pretty, pretty wide, pretty large. And part of this goal is to through deed writers and through lottery preference, try to increase home ownership for BIPOC households. The main subsidy for this project is through the Commonwealth builders program. This is a program through mass housing. We're receiving a subsidy of about $250,000 per home. And as I noted earlier, we received a letter of interest from the program earlier this year. This is the only state subsidy available for a photo affordable home ownership projects. There used to be money available before the housing crash in 2008. So the, the state's focus really has been on rental providing subsidies for rental projects. And so this is a program that just came to being within the past couple years. It's very geographically based so funding is really directed to geographic locations within the state. The program has shifted and changed over the past couple years. And as of now, under the current eligibility requirements to receive this funding. They are providing funding to Boston to the 26 gateway cities. And they've also identified to disproportionately impacted communities that are in eastern Massachusetts. We just started talking to mass housing about this possible projects several years ago when we were just starting in the acquisition phase. Qualified census tracts was an eligible geographic location. So mass housing has made a commitment to us that even though QCTs are no longer an eligible geographic location, because we've been in the pipeline with them for several years. They're willing to continue their commitment to this project and it's a public subsidy. There are only two QCTs in all of Hampshire County and they're in Amherst. So on this map, you'll see that this is the location of the proposed development. And here are the boundaries of the two QCTs. So there's one here North Amherst, and there's another one here skirts around you mass and comes there. So, we're going to get into the QCTs in a minute, but I just wanted to provide that context to you that if this project was to be proposed today. It would not be eligible for this funding. So we're being allowed to continue with this project, even though the guidelines have shifted in the past couple years. The site as I noted is in North Amherst. We think it's a fantastic site for housing development. It's right on the corner of pulpit Hill Road and Montague Road. It is about a half mile from a number of parks from housing, including the mill district from services. It's about 1.5 miles from UMass campus. And it's along the PVTA route 33. So the bus already comes through here. There's an existing PDTA stop right here in the corner adjacent to the site. The site is about nine acres. It's previously developed it was used to be a trucking facility and agricultural farm produce produce facility. On the property we have an existing 812 square foot house, which is located right here. We are currently renting that home to a tenant. We have frontage on two public ways, pulpit Hill Road and Montague Road. And we also have frontage on a private way ball lane is a private way ends right here. And the site has access from two locations from an existing driveway on Montague Road. There's also access to the site from ball lane. The site has two areas with delineated wetlands. We've got wetlands right here in the front and this kind of old country ditch that over time has turned into wetlands. And then we have additional wetlands in a riparian area back here. This is an intermittent stream back here, but there's a steep slope and lovely riparian area back here. Public water is available to the site both through Montague Road and pulpit Hill Road and public sewer is available through a connection on ball lane. Here just a couple photos of the site so this photo is standing along the edge of the riparian area towards the back of the property and looking out towards the intersection here's the intersection down here Montague Road and pulpit Hill. This photo is standing at the intersection itself and looking back towards the riparian area which is back here. And then as I noted it's been previously developed so we have some concrete pads and driveways from the former commercial industrial buildings. And then here's a photo of the existing house. So as I noted earlier we've gone through a pretty robust community process through this. In May of 2022 we have had either in person or zoom meetings with neighbors in a butters that's within the 300 foot buffer zone and with a lot of the director butters we've had some one on one meetings with them. We've gone before the town's technical review board four times at various stages of the design process so we get to a point where like okay we're now going to start storm water let's check in with the town and see what their preferences are. And it's been a super helpful process to help guide this development to make sure that we're we're designing in a way that the town departments feel like makes the most sense. We've had a number of meeting with municipal committees like I noted the CPA committee and the housing trust committee. We also had meetings with counselors, town counselors came for a site visit. I've had one on one conversations with counselors. So there's been a lot of communication there. And then we've had a lot of multiple emails and phone calls from a butters, having questions wanting to check in directly, and then people who are just interested in purchasing here and are asking me once the application process starting when can I get a house here. We've had a lot of interest and we've had a lot of conversations with people and we feel like we've done a really good job communicating with neighbors and a butters about this project. So I'm just going to give you kind of a broad brush of our design concept and let the design team dive into the details. But we have 30, 30 homes. We've got a lot of structure so we've got duplexes. The duplexes are a combination of two bedroom and three bedroom homes, each of the homes has one and a half baths. Because we're going through the comprehensive permit process, all of the homes will be included on the town subsidized housing inventory. We're looking at about 10 of the homes to be available to households that are at 80% area median income or below and 20 homes to be marketed to 100% AMI or below. In terms of the site design it was really important to us to preserve the frontage and to preserve this beautiful meadow that you can see from the intersection of pulpit hill and monarchy road and to work to concentrate development in those areas that had already been previously developed by the previous owner where the concrete pads are where the driveway exists is trying to tuck the development back to keep it away from the road and preserving that front area. We were really looking at a co housing model or a pocket park design model for this project so looking at shared two shared parking lots with shared open space, and that open space being designed through the pedestrian walkways. We have you know one large open space here but we have these little pockets of open space that have been designed utilizing the pedestrian pathways. All of the homes are going to be oriented for passive solar which means we're trying to maximize solar heat gain in the winter and minimize it in the summer. This will hopefully help offset some of those heating and cooling costs for the homeowners. Each homeowner will have a limited use area which you see on the plans is these little dotted areas in here, and that gives some privacy and the homeowner the ability to sort of maintain and manage their home the way that they would like to so that's privately maintained limited use areas for each homeowner. In terms of the building design the range of the homes is from about 995 square feet to just under 1300 square feet. All of the homes have been designed to be visitable which means that anybody who has mobility impairments is able to enter the house and utilize the ground floor. Six of the homes which are single story homes will be designed to be accessible. They are designed to be passive solar which means more windows on one side and less on the other. We're looking to have a fossil free development here so all electric utilities in the homes. The homes have been designed to have both interior and exterior storage space with the idea that we didn't really want homeowners plunking sheds down willy nilly after the project's been developed so providing some exterior storage space is part of that building design. And then all we intend to have all of the buildings have their own individual PV solar units as part of as part of their home. So talking about the Commonwealth builders home buyer requirements so these are going to be requirements for any homeowner who's come who's purchasing a home here right off the bat. They need to have first time home buyers. There's, you know, some weeds in the definitions but essentially anybody who is not a home owned a home in the prior three years. They need to have assets less than $100,000 and they need to be income qualifying. So they need to be able to qualify for a fixed rate mortgage loan. They need to be able to provide a minimum of 3% down payment or be approved for a down payment assistance program similar to what the town of Amherst has under their CPA program. They must have the ability to pay all of their closing costs, and they must complete home ownership counseling by the time of purchase which is a free program that we provide here at valley. We intend to provide that that service to any of the homeowner home perspective homeowners. So just to sort of touch on the qualified census tracks here a little bit more detailed. So the home buyer preferences under the Commonwealth builder program slightly shifted in 2023. When we had the influx of ARPA money that came into this program. So, now the preferences are for households that are currently living in a qualified census track which I noted earlier, Amherst has to just to give some data about what that means for the town about 35% of the total town population, and the total land area is encompassed within these two qualified census tracks and Amherst. The preferences will also be given to households that qualify for certain federal programs this includes SNAP, free and reduced lunch, any number of federal programs that a household can qualify for. So those are the, those are the preferences for home buyer. We're looking at anticipated sale prices. So these sale prices are going to be set by mass housing and they're going to be finalized when we get to the time of marketing, which will probably be around 2025 so this is just our best assumptions at this point and these are the numbers have been provided to me by mass housing at this time. So the numbers will will be reflective when they are set of the current HUD income limits for households in the market conditions so for instance interest interest rates plays a huge part in setting these home prices so as interest rates continue to creep. The sales prices are going to shift based on that if they drop they will also shift so it's all really tied to making sure that somebody is not paying more than 30% of their gross household income on housing. So the range is around $150,000 for the smallest one story 995 square foot home at that 80% level, and then ranging all the way to 230 32,000 for the three bedroom two story home. These are still well below current market prices in Amherst. So as the numbers right now provided to me by mass housing, this equates to households need to have an income range of around 63,000 to around 92,000 in order to purchase these homes. Each of the homes will have a 30 year restriction term from initial sale. So this is one of their requirements under the Commonwealth builders program. This is one of any affordable housing home by even home buyers from way back when having a 99 in perpetuity restriction. Again, the purpose of this program is to really assist a home to increase assets, and to increase generational wealth. If you have a restriction in perpetuity, it needs to be sort of aligned with maybe the length of a mortgage to give a family the ability to sell the home at a market rate number after they've fulfilled the restriction. So under Commonwealth builders, they have kind of a two tier structure. So this is a structure they actually like for all of the units but because we're being permitted under the chapter 40 B program, the 80% AMI units are going to have a little bit of a different legal structure. So there's kind of two two term limits one is years one through 15, where there would be resale and buyer restrictions you basically have to match what the initial terms words got to be a first time home buyer. You have to meet all those asset requirements, you have to be able to be eligible for home, all that kind of stays and mass housing they have a, they have a formula on how they determine what the resale value is. So that some of that might be dependent on how much work an individual has put into the house since they've purchased it. So there's a whole formulae way that they figure out what that resale term is resale amount is for years 15 through 30. There's a restricted sales amount, and there's unrestricted in terms of the buyers it wouldn't necessarily have to be a first time home buyer, but it is subject to an equity sharing with public funders. Tano Amherst is one of the public funders putting in significant money through CPA and the housing trust. So some of that money would come back to the town, if it's an unrestricted sale. For the 1% AMI, the term is still 30 years but that the resale and the buyer restrictions would be held for that entire 30 year term. The program allows for buy right transfers to immediate family during the term again trying to, to address generational wealth and allow that to happen. If the owner occupied a family member couldn't couldn't sell it to somebody and have that person be living out of state they have to be living in the home. But there is this by ability to just have a buy right transfer to an immediate family. The term will only reset if the municipality exercises are right of first refusal and elects to do so so there is language in the deed restriction. To allow the municipality, they would, they can elect to set that term at 30 years and have it continue for another 30 years so that would be something the town would have to decide on the sale of each home. And all the resales would be completed by mass housing. As for marketing. We are required to develop an affordable fair housing marketing plan that would be reviewed and approved by mass housing. As I noted earlier, the sales prices will be set at that time of marketing by mass housing based on the income limits of that time and market conditions. We would use the same process that we would for rental properties and have a lottery process for applicants. There'd be a waitlist that's maintained by mass housing. There'd be a third party affordability modern turn modern turn agent, which would be mass housing to ensure that Valley is in compliance with the affordable fair housing marketing plan. As for the governance structure of the development so the idea is that Valley is building these we're selling these and then we're out. It is not similar to a rental project where we're going to be continue to be the owner of the project. This is a little bit different. So, under the Commonwealth Builder program required to have a condo association with professional management so we will assist the condo association in identifying that property management company. The condo association will be structured according to laws of Massachusetts that have a board of managers master deed by laws rules and regs. All of those elements are going to be discussed in pretty good detail I think at the ZBA level. As I noted earlier we've hired an attorney to assist us in drafting these legal documents. One of the project goals that we tried to hold to during the design process was to make sure that we have reasonable condo fees for these homeowners. They're going to be moderate income homeowners with probably not a lot of money in their back pocket. So we want to try to make sure that these condo fees are reasonable and not overly burdensome to make it hard for somebody to be able to purchase one of these as a really conscious design concept that we moved forward with over the past year and a half. The condo association would also govern the common areas and the maintenance of those common areas common areas being the parking areas pathways common lawns, meadow, and any common infrastructure homeowners would be responsible for the limited use areas and the home that they've purchased. So as terms of property management. Like I noted earlier having a professional management company value would assist in trying to partner with somebody. Traction recycling would be once a week and you'll see on the site plans that there's two locations that trash recycling will be housed. There's no removal and storage will be per event and again the site plans team can identify where those storage areas are located. Lighting will be by photo salad motion sensor and will be dark sky compliant all of the fixtures that we've selected our ducks dark sky compliant landscape maintenance to be mowing up the common areas and seasonal cleanup. So those will be cleaned twice a year, and then there is a mailbox shed which will not only house a mailbox, but we'll have a community bulletin board in storage for utility carts so that people will be able to carry their groceries from the shared parking area directly to their home. And just wanted to quickly note how this project meets community plans that are in place in the town of Amherst. So for your housing market city from 2015. There was a strategy to provide for small to three bedroom cottage cell units that higher density than traditional single family homes. We've met that we've met that goal in the housing production plan of 2013. There was a strategy to encourage private development of cottage or bungalow style cluster developments. We incorporate universal design and visibility standards use of sustainable development principles, high energy efficiency for reduced operating costs and communication with neighboring properties during development process. I feel like we've hit all of these goals as well in this project. This is a community's master plan from 2010 in your housing chapter there were notes of encouraging a greater mix of housing types sizes and prices, encouraging development of economically diverse neighborhoods, supporting development of affordable units with equity building provisions, develop housing in an environmentally sound manner and encouraging the visibility of units. Again I feel like this project really sort of hits on all of these community goals that were noted in your master plan. So quickly the timeline so as I noted earlier from 2022 to 23 we've really been focused in community engagement and site and building design, requesting local funding and here we are in the local permitting process. Once we get through permitting, then we'll start focusing on final construction documents, getting some real numbers from GCs on pricing and bidding, continuing to request funds from various grant sources and foundations, as well as our application with Commonwealth Builders. And then if all goes according to plan we'd be closing on our financing in 2025 and starting construction, marketing and lottery construction complete and sales to selected buyers by 2026. So we're still a few years out before our homes will actually be ready for sale. The nature of affordable housing it is not, it is not a fast process. So that is the end of my presentation. I don't know if you want me to go back to any of the slides or why don't we see if there's any questions from the board at this point. I will comment that the slides you just showed we're not in our packet. So those, this is the first time we've seen this information. Okay. I can certainly send it after the meeting so that you can have it afterwards. Okay. Yeah, maybe we could add it to the packet for this meeting this evening. Chris, your hand went up first, and then your honor. I just wonder if Jessica would spend a little time talking about Valley CDC's program to help homeowners who are first time home buyers to get themselves ready to purchase homes. I think it's a really good program and I think that people should learn about that. Sure. Yeah, we have a very robust first time home buyer program here we have Donna cabana, who has been a valley for 12 years and has been doing this work for over 20. She is a rock star in terms of helping people navigate their way through the process of buying their first home and getting themselves in a great financial position so they can buy that home. So what she and I have been kind of banging the drum a little bit about in terms of this project specifically is we want people who think that they may be interested in purchasing one of these homes to start their counseling program now. It takes a lot of time to become credit worthy. And I think it's pretty well known that households and the BIPOC households tend to have a harder time with credit for a whole nature of things it's the systems kind of built against them to some So, you know, we are encouraging people that if they are interested in this program to reach out to Donna directly. And she can get them started on what it's going to take to be a first time home buyer and start helping them get their, their credit in order and their finances in order, because that the more of cash somebody has set aside to put down for down payment. Which payment is going to be and make their lives a whole heck of a lot easier. So we really are encouraging people to reach out to Donna. So, hopefully that gives enough information. Okay, thank you. Great. Thank you, Mr Chairman, and thank you for coming on and educating us a little bit more about value CDC and this project in particular. I have a question related to your slide about the restrictions. I think the aim of those restrictions is to make sure that you get as much of kind of affordable housing generation out of this project as possible, even if there are sales with my impression and so I just want to make sure I'm understanding those restrictions. So, you can either just explain them and then I have a little bit of like a hypothetical scenario so like, if someone were to buy one of the homes and live there for five years and then need to sell for one reason or another. Am I correct in understanding that during that time period there would be restrictions on who they could sell to and if you want to explain those restrictions again. And then the other part that I was unclear on was, let's say after five years they sell and someone else moves in there. Do they then have kind of inherit the previous restrictions for 25 years, or does it trigger a new 30 year. Yep, good questions. So, if for instance in your example somebody was to sell after five years whether they're in the 80% or the 100% am I category, they would be, they would have basically the same restrictions as as they purchase so it would have to be a first time home buyer. So I would have to meet all of the same kind of first those requirements under the Commonwealth builder as the initial lottery group. The second question had to do with the term resetting. So, that is, that's going to be dependent on the town. So if the town decides that they want to set a first to write, you know, they want to enact the right of first refusal to reset that affordability term. It is like, you know, when I was reading the latest deep restrictions and I'm actually getting an updated set from mass housing and within the next couple weeks so I'm not sure if this will shift. But the process looks like like the town has to buy the house back, reset the terms and then sell it to the next person. So it's, you know, it's a little bit of a convoluted process. But the town has the ability to sort of reset it, or they can let it lie and let that person just inherit the remainder of the term. So it really is kind of in the town's hands on how that wants to happen. And, you know, in a couple of meetings, I think it's the one in December 21. I am going to have folks from the mass housing from the Commonwealth builders program participate in that public hearing. And if you want a better understanding of sort of the weeds of how that would happen I would encourage you to attend that meeting because they'll have all of the, all of the details. And that's essentially how it works. So it's kind of in the town's hands to decide whether they want to reset it, or let somebody sort of, you know, play out that that length of the term. And maybe it makes a difference to the town and whether it's five years or 10 years or 15 years or 25 years, you know, so. Okay. Paul set you, Hannah. Yep, thank you. Okay. So let me just center what entity or representative of the town makes that determination. It doesn't specifically say in the deed in the deed restrictions that I see. So it just says the town of Amherst so I think we can, you know, as the deeds get drafted as we get to the end here and construction closing. And then combining with mass housing is there often is a discussion between their attorneys and the town attorney to make sure that the language is exactly what the town is looking for. So I think that can be set further down the road before we start construction. Okay. All right, the next question is probably from Janet. This presentation, I think this is a really exciting project. And it seems like you really worked well with the community and, and the way in the setting to kind of create a really nice place. I have a few questions. I'm not sure some of them should come later. One of the questions I had was, so somebody buys this house. And then can they rent it out to somebody else if they got a job elsewhere. Yeah, so there's a no renter provision in the deed restrictions. So then, so somebody got a job elsewhere they could either transfer it to a relative or they would have to sell it. Correct. And then I had questions about like different kind of energy saving things like I wondered if you considered putting a solar canopy over the parking lots as a way. I think there's probably a lot of federal and state incentives right now for that, and possibly more coming down the pike. And then on a day like today, it seems like it'd be fantastic to have something over your car as well as if you're, you know, walking a long way to get your groceries to your house. And so I wondered if you were looking at that or a geothermal as a way of heating to in the long run really reduce energy costs for the people who live there. So we did talk to our solar consultants about canopies and basically the answer was, it would, it wouldn't work out in terms of the production of it, it couldn't produce enough to make it worthwhile. So, and the grid wasn't wouldn't allow a certain amount so there was like a kilowatt issue, basically, with the canopies and the existing system, I can go back and pull out those details again and refresh my memory of exactly what the issue was but in our conversations with the solar consultant it was, it was recommended that it really wasn't worth it at the long run in terms of how it would work. Another complexity to that too is also again trying to keep the condo fees low. We're trying to keep the common infrastructure as much as minimum as possible. And so we did discuss it and we decided not to do it. And was there any talk about charging stations for the cars, because there are charging stations on the plan and I think the site, the site team can get into that and where they're located and how many we have but we will be meeting the stretch code. Yeah, so it seems to me like I could see how you may not easily be able to connect to the grid but it just seems like if everything's all electric. I mean, I don't have a power would stay in house but you know maybe with the new federal program and the new state, you know state subsidies that that calculation will change, but I think it'd be great to you know in the long run to reduce the energy costs to the low income buyers. You know I have questions about lighting and stuff but I can do that later. I think we're going to get into that later so. Okay. During the design portion. Thank you. Thank you. Bruce. I've been living in North Amherst, I've been watching the evolution of this for quite some time now and constantly impressed with with the aspiration for this project and that's only been enhanced by your explanation so far tonight. I have to say also that I, as a, I've been active in Habitat for Humanity now for about 10 years I'm a construction superintendent for the houses that we build. And I'm so and I've always been a kind of understood that we put a deed restriction on these houses and that they remain affordable in perpetuity and my base level understanding of the world of affordable housing was that was a good idea so I was intrigued to hear the explanation you gave for sunsetting the restrictions at 30 years as it relates to wealth building. And I just wanted to say that because that was, I think the most significantly new thing I heard, not just about this project, but about the way of thinking in the world. And I just wanted to make sure everybody else, perhaps understood that because it seemed to me to be a significantly interesting strategic component of what you're trying to do. That's it for now. Thank you. Karen. Yeah, I agree with Bruce I think that's really interesting that that the homeowner can sort of appreciate the value of the home in this case, but I wanted to reiterate my strong feelings that Janet expressed. The cluster house that housing unit like this which would be perfect for communal geothermal. And our, we've had geothermal and our big house now for probably 25 years. I think that if you plan the whole thing this way there probably are so many grants that would further this kind of thing I don't think you should just consultation with the solar excerpts and then say it's not worth it I realized that you have to make this affordable and that's the prime goal. But in the climate that we're living in and the time that we're living in. I think this crisis is going to only accelerate and though there's going to be. Well energy will be more and more expensive and second of all probably they're going to be more and more rules demanding that new developments like this get together and have a kind of an aggregate energy system. So, I just think that would be really good if you revisit that particularly geothermal community based. I will add that valley is doing geothermal at another one of our projects in North Hampton, which is at the former nursing home called prospect place is the name of the project. And so, valley is looking at it it's kind of our first forray into it. It is very expensive in terms of upfront costs. And so, I think with this budget the challenge is that there's not a whole lot of sources for us to go to to finance this we have Commonwealth builders and we have local money. Other you know we don't have tax credits we don't have access to all of the soft debt that HLC offers other rental projects and so with construction pricing as high as it is. I think it would be financially infeasible to do geothermal I appreciate the comment and I agree with you wholeheartedly that we need to be looking in other ways, but in terms of the financing of this project. It's going to be tight enough as it is, because I really don't have any other places to go for money that the rental that the rental team has access to so I think they're going to be able to make it work. I know that they've worked really hard, and it's going to be a huge system and it's going to, it's going to save a lot of money in terms of operation so stay tuned for valleys project in North Hampton at prospect place and it'll be one of the first multifamily projects affordable multifamily projects to use geothermal. So, I appreciate your comments thank you. All right, thank you Karen. There are other comments Chris I saw your hand for a moment. And then it then it went away are you still interested in commenting your someone mentioned a conversation between valleys lawyer and our lawyer with regard to paperwork and I wanted to say that we are having someone from KP law Carol and Murray from KP law. Assist the zoning board of appeals she's coming to all the public hearing sessions. And she's in touch with me and with Rob Wachilla who are the staff people for the CBA on this project and helping us make sure that we do everything correctly but also will be involved in looking at the condo documents and the homeowner association documents etc. So I just wanted to reassure people about that. Okay, great. I don't see any more comments from board members. I do see one hand from Josh Klein. And so, maybe we could let him ask a question. Josh, if when we bring you over if you could give us your name and your street address and you will have up to three minutes for a comment. Hello Mr Klein. We cannot hear you. Yeah, it says you're not muted but you were not coming through. Yeah, sorry about that I just, I'm the engineer for the project I just I got bumped out of the panelists spot. Good. Well welcome back. Okay, so why don't we go on to maybe the civil engineering. Would that be the next one to do. Either set if you want to do site design and understand sort of the big picture and then I think Josh and Katie can can dive into the weeds of the storm water. They kind of work together but you know one kind of drives the other so we can do site design and then engineering following up or they can tag team together but. Okay. Good evening everyone I'm Peter Flinker. My name is Justin and Flinker and Florence. And here with Lee Jennings my colleague tonight to talk about, I'm going to start by talking about sort of the over the overall master plan quickly and sort of why it looks the way it does and then Emily is going to talk a little bit about the landscape plan. And then we'll hand it over to the civils. Talk about drainage and grading and all those good things. Can you do a full screen on this Lee. You were seeing a full screen. We're seeing windows, windows and windows at least I am. Yes. Yeah we see both the current slide and the next slide. There you go. There you go. Okay. Can you do full screen or to start slide show. There we go. So we want to start with sort of showing where the site is in relationship to the rest of North Amherst as you know it's on the corner of Montague Road and up at Hill Road. It's kind of in the center of a donut surrounded by open space to the south there's the Mill River Recreation Area, and the Mill River going up to Puffers Pond and to the north there's the Cherry Hill golf course. And so we've really been cognizant as, as Jessica said at the beginning of trying to, you know, keep these patterns alive and interfere with them as little as possible. We're trying to maintain the open space along the road and so on to go to the next slide Lee. So you already saw this slide but you can see, as Jessica said, we're really trying to keep that essential view from public Hill Road Montague Hill, Montague Road from the corner. We have to preserve the wetlands of course but we're trying to buffer those as much as possible with a wider sort of a wider than required riparian buffer. And reuse that complex of buildings which is now primarily disturbed ground and old foundations to reuse that as the core of the development site. We can go to the next slide. So this is kind of the overview. And we looked at a number of different options for how to access the site. You know, could we have a new road that connected from ball lane over to pulpit Hill Road. Could you have all the access all the ball lane all the access off of Montague Road and so on. And we pretty quickly settled on sort of trying to come in split the parking and the access from both ends of the site really have the minimal impact of cars. And of course then the cars are closer to the road but trying to screen the cars and two separate lots at each end and make the center of it entirely pedestrian. So it's basically a co housing model in terms of function, even though it's not a formal co housing project. What it allows us to do is minimize the impact of the car and pavement and maximize the use of the open space starting with preserving that meadow along the street was shown in the yellow line and really using the storm water that we have to take care of anyway, to find the size of the meadow so really making the storm water areas and extension of the meadow that be planted to the extent possible with native meadow species, and really create that buffer between Montague Road and pulpit Hill Road and the rest of the development. And that really means concentrating the development on, you know, the lower two thirds of the site to the south. The other challenge we had is because these are all oriented for maximum solar gain and their duplexes we have a very long building and 15 of these very quickly starts to look like barracks lined up across the landscape. So we tried to make it as interesting as possible to vary the views to try to move the houses around so you're not looking directly into somebody else's windows. So as you go through the solar, most of the windows are on the south side of the building so we'll hear more about that later, but then to offset the building slightly. So as you walk through the site on the central pedestrian path, you really get a series of interesting events happening. Part of that is, as you walk along you come to these shared open space areas, the sort of three or four main main areas and each of these will be maintained as sort of usable lawn space that probably be most of the mode lawn that's on the site. The rest of it other than the privately managed areas, the limited use areas will hoping that would be either in meadow plantings, some kind of a native shrub border, or will be otherwise managed to be not having to be mowed. So the parking, as I said is consolidated those two separate lots and then we have a pedestrian system that focuses on that main pedestrian path should be 12 feet wide. And then that leads to a series of smaller paths that are shown in yellow that provide access to each of the homes, and also create a sort of an attractive edge, as you can walk around at a loop to enjoy the meadow get to the community guards and some of the common spaces and connect to neighboring properties where you currently have some of those connections. And then we've been working to get a sidewalk that goes all the way out to the corner to reach the bus, the bus stop. And then the last part is really carving off these limited use areas which really function as a separate sort of property boundary around each home. And two of them are noted there so the homes are duplexes so the limited use areas comes up to the middle of the home and then curves around the back. And so we've again been placing the terraces and outdoor spaces very carefully to try to give people a sense of privacy as they come out of their home and to not be looking directly for one one home into a terrace or into another home. I'm going to take over and talk a little bit more about some of the details. Hello, everyone. So, as Peter mentioned, we have these two parking areas, and we're providing 58 spaces of parking. And it includes eight EV spots and four EV ready. And at each parking area will have a dumpster location and a mail shed for the mail and also the cart storage as Jess had mentioned. And in terms of planting, it was a priority to preserve as many existing trees on the site, especially to assist with screening. So we're able to maintain the large maple trees along Montague Road. And also, there's a large buffer of hemlock and other mixed deciduous trees along ball lane, and some nice hedges along the east side of the property that we're able to use for screening. So, because of the solar panels on the homes, we maintain smaller trees for our new trees near the homes, but are planting larger canopy trees along the parking lots and in the the Meadow edge. It was important to give screening to the butters. So the northeast corner, we are providing an eight foot stockade fence with evergreen planted buffer. And there's also six foot tall fences, separating the parking areas from the adjacent residences. We're adding pollinator planting. We're calling it the Meadow edge pollinator mix, which will be taller grasses and pollinator plants to provide screening along the parking lot edges, and that will help those to blend in to the Meadow. Looking more at one cluster of houses, we can see that each home will have their limited use area, which are the dashed lines and a front walkway to a porch, and then a shared front garden space that would be maintained by the Homeowners Association. And each unit will have a rear patio with a connection to an outdoor storage area that's attached to the building and 16 foot long fence to separate the patio areas and provide privacy at the rear unit. In terms of lighting, we have three different types of lighting on the site. So we wanted to make sure that pedestrians felt safe at the parking areas and walking to the residences but to not have the site feel like it was over lit. So we have 12 foot tall poles, which are the darker orange along the central pedestrian spine, and then 42 inch bollards at the secondary pedestrian areas. And in the parking areas, we have the same type of fixture, but on an arm mount that's 14 feet tall. All of the light fixtures are dark sky compliant and meet the Amherst standards of not having any light trespass on the adjacent properties and they are on a photo cell and will dim late in the evening and then if there's motion detected, they will brighten. And then each residence will have its own porch light and rear patio light that they control. We just have a couple of views showing how the site will look. So this is the view from Montague Road and Pulpit Hill showing that meadow and the storm water that's tucked along that edge. Looking at the central spine. It's a 12 foot wide spine, but we do have three foot wide reinforced turf shoulders on either side to comply with the fire department's requirements. This is another idea of this central spine and the parking areas at either end. And the view of looking towards the northeast. We have a view of the common lawn. So we're happy to take any questions that you may have about the landscape and site, and we have the full set of landscape drawings here if we need to reference anything. All right, thank you Lee. Janet looks like you might have some questions. Having gone trick or treating last night in Amherst Woods, which is a very dark, very dark neighborhood except for porch lights with really virtually no street lighting. And also I think maybe maybe getting some help from co-housing people. I was a little to me that the kind of street lights, the tall street lights around the parking lot and along the pedestrian walkway. My first reaction was that it felt sort of institutional or apartment complexity in a way that maybe kind of working against what you're hoping for in terms of like a small cottage community. I wondered if there is a way me if everybody has their lights on or the porch lights on or some lower lights at the parking areas. You know, I've seen parking lots that are lit by very low lights. Or along the pathways, it would just create less of an institutional look or an apartment complex kind of look at. You know, I just my first reaction to that lighting was just like it doesn't feel like Amherst. I think there's a lot of dark neighborhoods and Amherst that are, you know, expensive neighborhoods as well as co-housing. And is there a way for people to see and move around without having these tall kind of 12 foot overhead lights? Is there a way to bring it down lower? We did look at having sort of bollards throughout, but in order to get enough light to reasonably show all the paths and serve, you have to have so many of them that it was kind of cost prohibitive. I mean, literally I was walking through East Amherst, which is adjacent to Amherst Woods, and there's no lighting on the street. And I was walking down a sidewalk that I could, you know, I would have to self-light or I would get a porch light. And so I wondered, I'm not asking for dozens of bollards, but is there a way to just make it look more like other neighborhoods in Amherst that aren't all lit up? But, you know, I wonder, you know, if Bruce maybe from, he's in co-housing and there's another co-housing project up the way, they also have a kind of a complex of paths and I wonder what they do for lighting. Bruce. Even before Janet said what she said, I had the similar reaction. I thought it might be too intentionally lit. I had an interesting story experience, I should say, in Hardwick many years ago where we designed a school and we had what we thought was a reasonable amount of lighting and we took a great deal of it out because the community really felt that it was inconsistent with being in Hardwick and they used to darkness. And so I got a sensitivity for people's tolerance of dimness, let's say. And so Peter, I'm wondering whether what the design standard here is. I know, I was going to say even before Janet asked again that we have bollards in our community that are spaced about 50 feet apart and they're four feet high. Which is about, well, they're four feet too. They're the same as yours and they've got, well now there's, they've got about, I don't know, 18 watt LEDs in them. But it gives pools of light with dark spaces in between and that feels fine for us. So I'm not here to say how I think you should do it, but it feels to me that the lighting might be more intense than I would expect in a community of this sort. Just an opinion. I was also interested in, Doug, might I continue? I have a few other questions as well. Yeah. I was noting of the controls. We had the same kind of controls. 20 years ago when we started, of course, that was 20 years ago technology and so maybe things have changed but we found that the, the, the, we, an auto on with, with a photo so that turned them turn the lights off and and a few other features. After about 10 years, they, they, they became just too sophisticated that they were failing and we didn't have the resources to fix them. And we're, we're somewhat affluent, I mean, modestly affluent. So I was concerned that for a community such as this, that the, that the lighting controls. And maybe there are other things as well but might be more sophisticated than necessary and that failure would mean that they might go out altogether, as opposed to something more simple and more readily serviceable upon failure. So I guess I'm curious as to whether you have reflected on how sophisticated, what is the appropriate level of sophistication in terms of cost of maintaining and repair for some of these installations and whether that you have consciously designed with a view to staying within the capacity of an affordable community to maintain and repair the systems once they're installed. I'm not sure whether I should, I should, maybe I'll let you respond to those couple of comments. These are a really good points and I think we appreciate your, your raising them because we haven't really gotten to that level of sophistication in the analysis, perhaps. One question that lead you, I can't read the little numbers, but what are the, what's the foot candle standard that we're trying to reach with this layout. So, Amherst doesn't have foot candle requirements that we needed to comply with so we were basing it on our understanding of what's comfortable for pedestrians, which would be about half a foot candle. And then the parking areas. I mean, you always have areas that are brighter when you're right under the light, so we go from point for foot candles to think to foot candles right below the light. So it's kind of a standard for is there a basic level of light but I agree it may not be what you would want in North Amherst. Because at the same time, we, we don't know, well we know this population is going to be diverse, it's going to be kids, people coming going at all hours. So we want to make sure we have enough to make it safe. Unlike that I live in where I park right next to the house. So people, some of these folks will have to go a couple hundred feet to bring their groceries to the front door. So it may be a somewhat different situation than we as homeowners, you know, in most of Amherst experience. I wanted to call on Jessica just because you raised your hand during this conversation. I have a follow up on this. These are all really great points and I appreciate the board bringing them up. I will say that lighting was one of the things that we struggled with as a team, because you're trying to find that like sweet spot you want to be able to you don't want to But you want to make sure that people feel safe and I think that it's hard because there's not always a commonality between people and what they feel is best lit, if it's lit enough. So I think there's always a varied of opinions. I think it's important to me personally to take lighting out. If that was the desire of the town. I hesitate to put more lights in I feel like you know we this is sort of we're presenting the maximum of what we're comfortable with as a design teams and in terms of how much we would want this lit, and again thinking about the safety of people being able to get out of their cars. I've also been told that it's not great to have dark spots in between lighting fixtures because that's where people can often trip. So, you know, thinking about all of these advisories that we've been provided. There's been so many feedback from the planning board and whatever that feedback goes to the ZBA in terms to come up with a lighting system that feels right to the community, we're happy to do that. So I just wanted to put that out there that this is something that I think is a very challenging aspect of this project, given its location in North Amherst also given its location to wetlands and riparian areas we don't want to confuse bugs and insects as they're migrating so these are all things that we've thought about, and we are presenting what where we landed, but it's definitely something that we can discuss and and shift on. Okay, so, so for Chris, maybe the, you know, when we're putting together our letter for ZBA, it might simply be that certain, you know, some of the members of the planning board were questioning whether we could reduce the amount of whether the amount of life could be reduced, and maybe be more consistent with the environment of the rest of North Amherst, something like that. Okay, Bruce, why don't we come back to you. You had another question. Well, it's a continuation really. Okay. I guess I would ask Peter and Jessica and the team to whether they might, if they haven't already done so to consider walking through a particularly well, our community to some degree. But right across the road, the pulpit hill community they've got lighting and they've had like us they've had installed for many years and it's a very similar situation. You know, you're walking, we're walking, you know, 50 or 100 feet to our cars from our houses and but the other community across the road even more so so I think it's probably more relevant to to to. It's a resource and I, I do think it's, it's more lighting than necessary I won't say over lit but I think more lighting than necessary. And, and I think you, if you were to look across the road and see whether that's that level of lighting is adequate or if it isn't adequate whether it might be made adequate with a couple more lighting which would indicate perhaps that it would still be less than the intensity of ballads particularly that you've got here. So I would encourage that because I think you could save some money but I think also just. Well, mostly it's a cost saving thing here I think I just it seems to me that you could get some dollars you could spend somewhere else. I've got some other questions but I'll hold those for until later. Okay, Bruce, Janet. I was going to say exactly what Bruce said is, you know, to come visit either the co housing in some neighborhoods it's just, it's just a really dark community I mean you might go to co housing and everybody's complaining about the darkness but I think that knowing those communities I'm I would have ironed that out. I wanted to talk a little bit about the road and is this and sidewalk access or for to mill lane would this be the right moment for it. I think we could start that conversation sure. I'm concerned. I know I've been on Managu right, I have friends who live along there, and people rocket along there, and I don't recall it I see that you put a sidewalk towards a bus stop which is excellent, but I wondered about a sidewalk, going the other way to and imagine meal river I'm sorry. That would be expensive and I think it'd be a great thing for the town to put in or a joint project. And something something to slow traffic down as people are pulling out our kids are crossing the road. You know, because it's really, it's really if you know it's not. It's a it can be very busy. It can be not busy and dangerous and so I have those are my concerns. Chris. So, Montague road is actually a state road. It's a state highway so it would probably mean that we'd have to ask the state to put a sidewalk in there I know that the town has considered taking over Montague road but I don't think right at this time they're interested in taking on more road maintenance and more snow plowing so that's probably not going to happen so in any event it's a state highway so we would have to contact the state to see if we could put a sidewalk in there. Is there some other access to mill river that you might be trails that I don't see on this map. Since we're in a town that's covered with trails. I'm not aware of any is there Bruce is shaking his head yes. You could go up full potential and then down. No, no. And yes, you by going up full potential on the round the corner and down. Oh God, what's the name of that bloody road. You can get to the mill river, but that recreation layer. Okay, either preferred walking route. Okay. I had just a couple of questions. First of all, will each will each owner need to mow their, their own little area that they're responsible for. And if so if they're maintaining the yard. Where do they store their lawn mower and their garden hose and all of that stuff. So I can answer that so we're planting with no mo lawn. So that would only need to be mowed once or twice a year. You can mow it more. But that would, that would be the minimum expectation. And there are small outdoor. So I don't want to talk more about these, but there's small outdoor storage areas associated with each unit. Okay. All right. And then you had a cart storage at the parking lots is that to help you bring your groceries. That's right. So some so you take your groceries to your home and then everybody hopes you put the cart back. Right. Okay. There's a space to fit more than one cart in, in the shed. There is. Yes. Okay. And at the, at the end of the, of the driveway, when the pedestrian path starts, are there bollards to keep someone from driving through there that only the fire department can unlock or something. Right. So there's a, a mountable curb. And then there's granite bollards on either side. In conversation with the fire department, they discouraged using removable bollards. I thought that the combination of the mountable curb and there's also a signage directing people that vehicles except emergency vehicles aren't permitted would keep cars from going on this. And then if it becomes an issue, you could add, add a chain between those two bollards in the future. But there's nothing to keep me from driving up close to my house when my 89 year old mother shows up and is visiting for a few days. No, and maybe the community would find that that's okay, or when you need to move in. Okay, you can do that. And I think the details of that will be housed in the rules of regulations of the condo association. So all of those details will be provided to the owners. Okay. The real problem will be with Amazon delivery. That's our experience we haven't been able to keep them out. So you might want to consider how you want to handle that. That's a good point. There are package lockers in the, in the mail cabinets. So packages can be put there will have to be within a certain size, but what would the two entrances to the two parking lots to the two mail boxes, or mail sheds have different addresses. Like, if how will I know which one to go into to drop a package for a particular unit. So we'll need to have some conversations with the post office. In terms of the details of that, we've had conversations with the town about the address of this property because currently it's ball lane and we do not intend to send people down ball lane. The address of the property itself is going to get changed to a number on Montague road. And with unit numbers. So it's possible and I would need to talk to the town. You know, really it's going to be driven by fire department and public safety on whether there's a preference to have an address on Montague road and an address on pulpit Hill road depending on, but I don't know where you would draw that line within the area, but it's like it's getting confusing. But those are conversations we would need to have with the town, particularly with public safety. Okay. All right, well you may end up needing to consolidate the two mail. You know, if you've really got one address and that's where everybody's going to come in, maybe that's where all the mail it goes. All right, do you want to go ahead and move on to the civil engineering. Would that be next. I'm happy. I'm happy to kind of jump in. Hopefully everyone can hear me all right. We can hear. Great. Well, nice to meet meet everyone. My name is Josh Klein. I'm a partner with Stonefield engineering and design where the site symbol, as well as the traffic engineer for the project. What is really nice about going behind such a strong landscape architecture team is they really, you know, done a lot of the work for us and talked about a lot of the fun stuff. Kind of touch a little bit more on some of the technical ideas. I'm happy to go a little bit deeper. You know, into some of the technical elements, stormwater and grading, you know, just as the board sees fit. But obviously, you know, we are going to be working very closely with the conservation commission, as well as, you know, various town staff and officials to kind of ensure this. Stormwater the site civil design is done in accordance with the state and won't have any adverse adverse impact. You know, the 1st thing we kind of look at as engineers is really, you know, how can we minimize impact to the surrounding area to the existing natural features. And what we want to do is through the implementation of best management practices. Stormwater measures and design is really ensure that there's not going to be an adverse impact of the surrounding properties. So it was the public right of way and really the community as a whole. So in this case, we have a, you know, a really nice, you know, opportunity to incorporate that, you know, only about 20% of the site is developed within previous areas. We're maintaining a lot of green space, you know, we work on a lot of projects, you know, throughout the state where, you know, we are kind of forcing more impervious area or really flooding a site. We have a lot of impervious where in this, you know, type of community, our goal is to create open space create common areas create opportunities to naturally kind of bring in stormwater. So what we had to do here was kind of come in and deal with with a challenge so the site. It's created by about 20 feet along both the frontages we see great change anywhere from 12 to 15 feet depending on which roadway you will. You're on so we really have to be careful how we, you know, kind of move runoff and move water to kind of ensure we can treat it so you know the real the main stormwater features kind of shown at the front of the site it's a stormwater infiltration system. We have our meeting pre treatment through the implementation of deep hood and sumps. We also have a smaller infiltration system along the monarchy road driveway, just because again with with all that grade change it's very challenging to get water to this system over here so that's going to kind of handle this driveway. So the site is collected through an onsite conveyance system. We have a sediment for bay, and then it goes into this infiltration system, one of the really nice parts about the stormwater design kind of in working with the team is that idea of using native metal species or native metal grasses in the implementation of the infiltration basin. We're going to come up away from the public right away the site and kind of lines and so what we're able to do is kind of slope up, and then we're able to kind of come back down to create the stormwater basin, which is really nice because from the public right of way you're not looking into a hole you're not looking into a stormwater basin, and by kind of incorporating these native grasses and species it really will help the stormwater features kind of blend into the metal that's there today. We are kind of reducing stormwater towards the back of the site again there's a wetland that was kind of highlighted to the bottom of the page as well as kind of a channelized wetland to the top of the page so you know the we're kind of naturally improving runoff that's kind of today going to the bottom of the page, and then through the implementation of the infiltration basin. We're not only able to meet groundwater recharge requirements, or able to meet kind of the buzz world that we live in. As engineers we talk about water quality so we're meeting water quality through kind of pre treating and then filtering the water through the infiltration system into the water. So it, it, it ends up being, you know, kind of a really nice design. You know, these type of systems, you know, you know, we'll have to be maintained and that will be part of the condo association documents, but you know this type of of design provides you know kind of a best management practice that can be here and provide you know a great stormwater management system utilities. Again utilities are available from both frontages sewer is coming from ball lane. We kind of have created a utility corridor through this spline that goes through the site so that's where we're kind of able to kind of pull the utilities from and get happy to kind of go into that further but you know our goal here is ensuring everyone has, you know, kind of, you know, safe connections and access. Throughout, you know it was kind of vehicular movements were kind of touched on in our office did run fire trucks as well as dump as well as delivery vehicles and trash vehicles to ensure that they can safely get in and out of the site. We have also refilled an access permit with the mass DOT for the driveway along Bontogu road so we have started that process. And we're kind of excited to continue to work through them for for their approval. You know, I think it was touched on we are providing ev spaces they'll be both ev spaces as well as ev ready spaces in both parking areas that are available. And those spaces will be accessible. So again someone that is handicapped will be able to to use the, the ev space. So those are, those are really the highlights, you know, we're going, we're just starting our process with conservation commission I think in a couple weeks we have our field meeting. And then I think maybe the weaker the week after that we'll really start the kind of the hearing process so we're excited to continue to keep moving kind of happy to answer any question. Get as technical as the board would like, but it's a great project we're really happy to be part of the team. All right. Thank you, Josh, Bruce. I'm curious about the EV charging stations. I think it's a very important very good idea and it's, and we have to look at this I think on all projects but I've been thinking about this for other projects much more than this generally. I'm wondering here, which meter of these connected to how, how is that handled, because I imagine that you're not going to know which home wants to buy wants to have an electric vehicle and whether you can connect to their particular meter I imagine it's not possible so how was it handled. I know that it's probably something that's going to have to be kind of worked out through the condo association docs and valleys team but you know what we see a lot and what I imagine they'll incorporate a system like I think it's up charger you charge where it's, you know, basically, you can, you know, either going in to your account when you use the charger, or it can be kind of a password enabled EV charger where it would kind of bill it a master but I, I imagine it's going to be separately meter and individuals would have to kind of put in their information to use the charger so again it wouldn't be, you know one home is paying for all of the, the EV for someone else to use. It would kind of be set up in a way that it would be kind of shared or used by the individual. Hey Josh I see that Tom Chalmers has his hand up maybe he knows more details. Yeah hi. I'm Tom Chalmers my partner at Austin design with architects for the project. So we have a separate meter at each shed that will control the, the lighting and the EV parking. So those will be metered, you know, metered and will be however they work it out with a condo docs would be distributed equally. The EV parking can be set up either to just be free which or to have a charge system that you would set up with an account. Okay. Great. Bruce you still have your hand up are you. I do have other questions but maybe I'll let someone else go. All right. Well Janet. I don't have a question I just have a positive comment, which is I appreciate that the buffer zone around the wetlands is larger than we require, because you know buffer zones basically don't really work for wetlands that we have they need to be bigger. And I've seen projects come that actually the buffer zone has a parking on it, or it's sometimes a building and so I just appreciate the respect for the site and the design to give the wetland a chance to be wetland and the animals and plants to be there so I just applaud that then I appreciate I just want to recognize that. All right, thank you Janet. Let's see well, Bruce. Go ahead. Are they are they site questions because I'm wondering, I'm actually thinking where after eight o'clock we usually take a five minute break at this time. And so maybe we, you know what, if your questions are about the site let's go ahead and go through those. Then we'll take a five minute break and then we'll continue with the architecture. Okay, this site I'll do two of them. So just to wrap conclude on the, the concern that I expressed for that you asked first again that on the control of traffic through the pedestrian service emergency traffic lane. And I said, I think the Amazon Prime vehicles are going to be the major problem well actually the pizza delivery people and and various other, you know, food truck deliveries and so forth. The comment or suggestion or request or something would be. I think that'll be a problem. And I think the, it would appear that there would need to be some provision for these vehicles, these delivery vehicles, these small delivery vehicles that would feel that they could go up there and that they should be able to go to the other pizza after all to make some provision for them to be able to park or at the head or do some some think about how to handle that because I think it will be a problem for this community if it's not addressed. Secondly, the mailboxes a further comment more than the question that I've noticed in our community that mailboxes and we don't have a common house here so this is really where we're quite comparable community and in that regard to to the one you're proposing. The mailboxes are really a place where people can congregate and doing things to keep them there would enhance the opportunities for community. Connections and so forth and one thing that is very good near the mailboxes and you probably kind of got it is paper recycling because a lot of the paper recycling actually sadly these days comes in the mail. So giving people the chance to sort through their mail at the mailboxes. It holds them there the, the more opportunities for conversations with other people who are coming to collect their mail so think about how the, think about seriously about the mail area not just as a as a perfunctory provision for where you get your mail but there's an opportunity for community connections. It's a real opportunity and like us it might be the only opportunity that's structurally there. That's it for now I'll wait until we hear from Austin design. Okay. Any more comments at the moment we otherwise we'll take a five minute break and come back. All right, I don't see any hands up other than bruises and that'll come down eventually. My time now is 816. Please turn off your video and mute yourself and turn on your video when you come back in five minutes at about 821. Thank you. Okay, I have on my clock 822 so y'all come back now. Tom it sounds like you're on tap. You're right you're next year. Yep. Yeah, good evening. So, I'm Tom Chalmers and my partner at Austin design. And we are the architects. I'm going to ask you to just hold off a minute. Okay. The last four members of the board return. Doug, I just wondered, are you keeping a running list of recommendations for. I am not taking notes while we're talking. I'm taking notes, but I just wanted to suggest that when we finish. That we could together make a list of recommendations. Okay. Thank you. And I think the lighting and the traffic through the pedestrian zone are probably the two that are most. Conscious and for me. Okay, there we go. We've looks like we've got all the board members back. So Tom, welcome to the planning board and. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay, so I'm Tom Chalmers and awesome design for the architects project. I have a, I can share a set of drawings that were posted. Sure. Do that now. Can everyone see that? Yes. This first screen was actually not in your. Was not in your set. I thought before I get into details, the buildings, I might start and look a little bit about how we got there. So I listed a few goals. Well, the end result is we're looking at. 15 buildings, 15 duplexes. So there's 30 homes. This 12, 3 bedroom, 12, 2 bedroom and 6, 2 bedroom accessible. And we had for design goals, there were many, but I've just isolated a couple. We wanted to be able to support a variety in size 2 and 3 bedroom. And support a variety and appearance and massing through the site. We're looking to control costs as much as possible with efficient construction. And also to have low maintenance and operating costs for the homeowners. And then a very important. Goal was to was to ensure was buildings would support passive solar. And PV solar on the roof. And the passive solar. Had a big influence and how the buildings were laid out, both on the site and how they were. We're put together with their mass together. So in the, the 1st thing we started out with, we're trying to do a basic building block. That we could reuse in different ways through the site. And this was basically a 20. Foot by 30 foot rectangle of a building in combining this unit. In different ways we had, we could have it as you see vertically on the page horizontally on the page. And then we added we have a basically a kind of link area between the 2. In terms of massing at the bottom of this diagram. We have a 1.5 story. And a 2 story. The 1.5 story being the, the 2 bedroom and the 2 full stories being the 3 bedroom. And then in order to get. We start with this sort of thing. We're trying to repeat, but of course it changes almost immediately in order to get. Accessible units a 2 bedroom accessible unit. We need more space on the ground floor. And so that's what this. This upper rectangle is signifying. And these can be combined. Similarly, that's the gray outline of the, of the other rectangle on that. That would be just a single story. So, in putting all of those together, we combine them in different. Ways to get 4 building types. Which we're calling a B, C and D. And I think. The last thing here, sorry, is that. The orientation to the South. And the direction of entrance are very important in how the buildings were configured. So, in this middle 1, we have where we enter. The building from the South, meaning that would be on the North side of the street. That's 1 configuration. When we enter from the North. With the. With the rear yards, basically on the South that required a different internal configuration to make that to maximize what we could with with the solar. So the building a basically is this. Kind of this unit that had that you enter from the South and the building type B is this similar unit that you enter from the North. And the building C and D are combinations of either a 1.5 story in a 1 story or a. Full 2 story in a 1 story. So, I think what I can do is maybe just run through. I think what I'll do is maybe run through building a 1st. And then. If I run through building a and then we can. Kind of go through the other buildings as well. So, building a. Again, is a building that has 2 units. It has a. 2 story 3 bedroom. And 1 and a half story 2 bedroom. The plan that they're put together. With a sort of storage type area in between, which is trying, which in doing that, we're trying to isolate them from each other a little bit. Give some privacy at the entrance. Keep noise away from each other and also separate the outside. Patio areas so they have privacy. Basically, there's an entrance. There's a mud room. This is living room stair. Kitchen dining area and a half bath and laundry on the ground floor. Similar in this 1, except that the stairs at a different location. They each have a small storage shed on the back. Which is enclosed in the building, but has access from the outside. On the 2nd floor. Hold on 1 second. Something's happening to my program here. Okay, 2nd floor. This unit down on the left is the unit with the 2 bedrooms. It's got a central bath stairway and. You know, on the right has 3 bedrooms. The roofs are. Basically, we're trying to we're trying to get away from having too long a building. So that's the reason for turning 1 perpendicular to the other. And also we have this central area that can be lower. Then the high 2 story. 2 story 1. In the elevations, you can see here, this is on the bottom right. We're looking at the 1.5 story. Unit end of the unit. And the full 2 story face with the link in between. This gives you a pretty good idea of the. Solar orientation we have a lot of windows on the south. And on the south. We can't we made a compromise with the buildings and that rather than have them all stretch out on the south. I mean, stretch out in 1 long piece. By turning 1 and and it breaks up the monotony of the building, but it also reduces a little bit the solar gain on 1 side. So, in some cases, this 1.5 story, the unit that's perpendicular will have. Equal windows on the east or west, so not quite the same as the south, but. And then the the north. We'll have very few windows. The. Eastern West also fewer windows. Oops, sorry. These are some building sections. Let's show you. Basically, the difference in heights move fights. Between the buildings, they're going to be talked to you quickly about construction while we're here. They'll all be frost wall and slab on grade. There will be, there's no basements. The grading on the outside is done so that you can roll in with a wheelchair at the front entrance and get out the back. Other than that, it's typical wood frame construction 2 by 6 exterior walls. Tji Joyce floor Joyce and roof trusses. The. On the outside of the wall will have rigid insulation. Probably about 2 inches thick. And our 60 insulation in the, in the attic. Slabs and foundation are heavily insulated as well. And here are some exterior elevations. Front porch, all the units have a front porch. In this case, this is the south side. This is where you enter. We did a number of studies on siding. And colors and only a few of them are represented here, but the siding is going to be a. Hardy plank. A combination of clabbered and. There are other possible sightings, which is. Board party plank board and baton. There's also use hardy plank shingles. I think we're leaning towards using standard colors. Some party plan so that these buildings don't, they come prepainted. They don't need to be painted. This is a foundation plan, simple plan. So. Following up on this is building B. And here. The difference here is just that this is this building is flipped around so that. You're entering from the north. So the porches to the north this time and the windows are on the set on the. Back privacy side. There's more building B units in the on the project and there are building a. And again, it has a split between the three bedroom and the two bedroom. And these, this is the elevations. So on the, it's kind of, it's reversed of what the other one, but building a was this is. This is the north side. So there's fewer windows down here on the bottom right is the south side. East and west. And here's some more renderings. And then going to building C and D. This is where we introduce the 1 bedroom accessible unit. The difference in C and D is that on the standard side. The seas are. One and a half bedrooms. I mean, sorry, one and a half story, two bedroom. And the D's are full two story, three bedroom combined with this. So in this one, you can see that it's basically the similar rectangle. But there's been a bump out because there's additional space is required for the hallways larger bathroom. It also has a half bath downstairs. On the second floor. There's the one story roof. And then there's the two bedroom. Unit over that. And this is an elevations. And renderings. And then building D is basically the same. And then building D. And then building D. And then building D. And then building D. And then building D. And then building D. And then building D. And then building D is basically the same thing. It's exactly the same on the accessibility, accessible unit side. The difference is that. There's a three bedroom. Unit. On the. On this case on the left side. And that's the elevations for that. And the renderings. I can talk a minute about. We haven't gotten into design and mechanical systems yet, but I can talk a minute about what our thinking is. These are going to be all electric homes. We're going to be trying to get very high energy ratings from them, get some mass-save incentives, programs. So they will, we have to have, they'll have heat pump water heaters for domestic water and they will have a combination of individual mini-split and ducted mini-split systems for heat and air conditioning. Each building will have its own, each unit will have its own electrical meter and water service. So they'll be completely independent that way. They will also each have solar on the roof, which will be sized to try to balance out. So each unit has the same capacity for solar generation. As the roofs are a little different, we'll have to balance that out. On the, we will be adding, we'll be having shading on the windows on the south and on the west to reduce solar gain in the summer months and still let as much as possible get back in the building during the winter. I think that's probably it. This drawing has a little bit about the shed where the mailboxes and carts are going to be. And each one has a closet off the back that will be where the electric meter will be. And then one of them on the site, there is going to be a water hydrant on the site for potential gardening use. And that, the one that's near that, which is in the northeast parking lot, we'll have a water service coming to that as well. So I'm sure there's a lot more, but I'm willing to take questions now. All right. I'm gonna take, I don't see any hands. So I'm gonna start with just a couple of questions that your elevations brought to mind. Yeah, let me pull that back. Will the condo association be responsible for the maintenance of the exterior siding and the roofing and the heat pumps and the, maybe will the condo association receive the credits for the PV? How will all of that be divvied up between the owners and the association? Yeah, so this is all of these things there's probably still a little bit under discussion. The PV will be directly linked to the individual owner and the meter. So they will have their own electric meter and their own offsetting solar with that. Okay. I think, we've talked about both ways, but one is to make each owner responsible for their own unit. The other is to combine them. It gets a little, it gets a little tricky in this joining piece here because basically the line of ownership is down the middle. Okay. I think, I don't know if it's something that's under discussion about how those documents we've gotten up. There's pros and cons to both ways that I can see. Okay, great. Other questions, Bruce, I'm expecting some from you. Okay. I do have a few. First of all, I haven't said before but I continue to be more and more impressed by this project. It is so thoroughly deserving of community backing and it's received it through the CPA, et cetera. So I guess that's there. But digging in still further, first of all, I now saw the storage sheds for the first time. I see how they are and they are extremely small and again, relating to our experience. We ultimately built a shared storage building as a community endeavor. We have a homeowner's association as well, probably similar to what you all structure. It might be worthwhile to identify a site or a couple of sites for such a supplementary building simply to make it easier for the homeowner's association to decide otherwise it might be very difficult for a group of 30 homeowners to come upon an agreeable site. So if you were to designate that, a couple of sites for potential future common storage sheds. I think particularly, for example, if you're intending to have a garden up there, I can just see all sorts of common equipment or even private equipment and things that would not fit into those storage sheds at the rear. And what we did was to build this shed and we allocated different specific portions of it for specific homeowners in our community. I just think that that's a problem that you might be able to head off if you were to do something like that. But I would certainly suggest that you think about what to do when those storage sheds are probably deemed insufficient in some years' time. Second, just a question here. You mentioned a quite impressive array of exterior insulation, the heat pump water heaters, the SOC pumps and so forth. Are you also intending to have some kind of energy recovery or powered ventilation in this? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, I forgot that. Yep, we will definitely have, what we've done in the past is we've had a central ERV for each unit and that will exhaust from the bathroom in the kitchen. Bathrooms and kitchens will be exhaust and then the return air would be distributed to the bedrooms and common spaces. And if we end up using a ducted system for the heat and air conditioning, that ducting could be combined, otherwise it's separate. Yeah. And also a question related to the building section that you showed the details where you were. I was looking at that earlier and I couldn't figure out because it's unannotated but you've, there you go. But you mentioned, no, the other, the detail section, the wall section, that one there. So I couldn't help noticing when I was looking at the packet earlier in the week that you appear to have insulation, rigid insulation on both sides of that foundation. And is that correct or is that just a, well, we are going to be contracting with CET to do energy performance, you know, evaluation. And at the same time, look into what kinds of incentive programs we can get into for this. But in the past, yes, we have in order to get the low hers rating that we've required to get some of the massive incentives we've had to have both interior and exterior insulation on the flanks. That surprises me. We build at Habitat, almost identical houses and almost identical detailing with a singular exception is that we got insulation essentially two layers because you've got some under the floor and then down the inside of the wall there. This is not a planning board thing. It's simply my background as an architect. When I look at this, I get extremely nervous because I think I never did this because I was creating a conduit for bugs to go up the wall. Well, we have a termite shield that cuts that all off. So we do a termite shield that comes out. And so there's actually a break between the interior, the above grade and below grade insulation. Okay. If you end up ditching that, which we've been able to do quite successfully and we're at tier two or the upper tier of energy star and we've gotten a net zero herds rating on the houses we're doing in Northampton at the moment. The only difference would be that the perimeter insulation at the edge thickens. So there's two inches instead of one and it gives you a little less support for the plates but that's sufficient. Anyway, this is probably way outside the- Yeah. But I can't avoid mentioning it because it's so close to what we've been doing identically. Oh, I was just going to say that it's very interesting. We definitely want to engineer this. We don't want to over engineer it and over design it because cost is very important. So, but at this point, we have not gotten into how the actual performance will be. Yeah. Okay. I'll shut up on that. And I think I'll shut up and yes, I think that's our, yeah, I think for the moment and maybe for all that said, so it is for all, I commend you all for a very worthy project. All right, thanks, Bruce. Johanna, you are next. Thank you. And apologies, I missed this, but where in your drawings are the exterior components of the heat pumps? Yeah. Okay, I think I can. So- Got it. Okay. So there's, I've got two utilities. So this, I've got a heat pump here and I've got electric panel space here. Thank you. And right now that is schematic because I don't know exactly how that would be sized or whether we'll need to, but that's what we have. All right. Anything else, Johanna? Nope. Let's see. I don't see any other hands. Oh, Janet. I was going to agree with Bruce on this, that the sheds are too small. I don't have a garage and I know that, you know, we use it for bikes and sleds and gardening stuff. And, you know, there's no basements on these. And so people will need to store their sort of extra stuff that especially if you have kids seems to materialize almost out of thin air. And there's a low-income housing project that in East Amherst and I have a friend there and like has a tiny shed and it's just full of stuff that's always sort of tumbling out. And so I would just see if you can make those a little bigger. I know you're trying to keep costs down, but if you have no other place to store outdoor equipment or bikes or, you know, whatever, it's gonna be filled up very quickly. And then I just as a word of warning, I think we're gonna, if you have sort of outdoor heat pumps and all those compressors and they're facing a public way, the CBA or Nate Molloy will want you to screen it with shrubs or something. And so ever since that, we had a meeting about that and I just noticed everywhere in Amherst all these new things are and they'd be nice if they were screened. So they could just be shrubs. All right, thanks Janet. I will echo what others have said. This looks like a really great project. And I hope you just sail through the ZBA. Okay, let's see. We do have seven public attendees at this time. Do any of the public members wanna make a comment or ask a question? All right, yeah, there's one from Janet Keller, your hand showed and then it went away. Hello, Janet. Hi. Hi, we can hear you. Please give us, remind us of your address. Sure, 120 Pulpit Hill Road and it's diagonally across from this project. And I just want to say again that I've been impressed by all aspects of the community building, the energy saving and energy producing ability and would particularly like to thank Valley CDC for the community outreach and the interchange there of ideas. We're thrilled to have, oh and the BIPOC the affordable and moderate income for BIPOC population. We think it's great and we're very happy with it, thank you. All right, thanks, Janet. Okay, that was the only hand I say off from the public. So maybe we'll come back to the board at this point. So any other comments from the board? I have written down just a few topics that it seemed like got a fair amount of attention. One was about the lighting and whether it could be reduced. One was about the control of vehicles through the pedestrian zone. There seemed to be a recurring comments about the yard storage, the yard equipment and whether that was adequate. I think Janet was spot on in terms of wanting to screen the heat pumps. And then although Bruce is the only one that said it, I would certainly agree that identifying a location for one or more common buildings would be a good thing to do. I think it might ease the permitting in the future. If the permits that the town grants at this time include agreement that that is a reasonable place for a building in the future so that simplifies it later. Good idea. So that's what I have now written down, Chris. And if anybody else has other comments, this would be a good time to bring them up. Johanna. I don't know how actionable this is, but Bruce had brought up the idea of just thinking about the mail box area as more than just a place where people get mail. Okay, great. Bruce, your hand is back up, I think. Yes, it is. I noted a question that I'd written down from my review earlier in the week. And this is probably for you, Peter. The snow storage on the parking that comes in from Pulpett Hill is not as conveniently located as it is for the storage, snow storage from the parking adjacent to Montague Road. I see the need for that, but it would appear that in order to store the snow where you've noted that you would have to control at least during the snow event, parking or the absence of parking on five parking areas. And that intrigued me. It didn't seem to be thoroughly workable, but I know you people are very thoughtful. So I imagine you've got an answer as to why you put it there. Gosh. Perfect, yeah, I'm happy to help. The snow storage always becomes tricky when kind of designing around some different elements. So they're, I'll just sort of pull, share the site plan on my screen and just talk about the area. So I think this area here obviously is nice, having the dead end. So in this area over here, we are sensitive to the fact that there's a resident kind of to the right-hand side. So again, if not taking into account our surroundings, being able to put snow storage behind some temporary spaces is always ideal, but we've really tried working very closely on this project and kind of taking into account all of our adjacent properties. So it makes the snow storage, putting it on kind of the inside or to the left of the parking area desirable. The trash enclosure is set back. So it would allow equipment, it would allow snow to be kind of staged within this kind of large open area in front of the dumpster and it could be kind of moved and pushed back into the parking. And then again, in an event where they're able to, have one or two or a few of these parking spaces open up, it'll make it a little bit easier for the company to move around. But again, what's nice is these are temporary spaces which would give the snowplow kind of plenty of room to kind of work in. And then there's some of that temporary staging that can be used in front of the dumpster to be able to move snow behind the parking spaces. But we do wanna be careful. We're pretty sensitive to our kind of our closest neighbor, at least along Culpit Road, which is why you don't really see it along that edge of the property. Any other questions? And that sounds like it may be time to ask for last comments. All right, Chris, do you think you've got a reasonable record of the topics we've brought up? Yes, thank you. That last review was very helpful. Yep. Okay. Janet, your hand showed up and then disappeared. Are you? You know, I just wanna say how impressed I am by this project. It's really, it fits in. It's attractive. The buildings look, you know, the colors are different. The shapes are different. It just looks, it just works. It works on paper. And I think it's gonna probably be better in real life. So good job. All right. I think it's gonna be a real add to our community. Thank you. We appreciate it. We've worked really hard and I have to say having as much community input during the process has really driven a lot of our decisions. So we really appreciate all of the really thoughtful comments from this board. I've heard some stuff that we hadn't even thought of yet which is just awesome to for us to think about and consider. So I appreciate the board taking the time and making space on their agenda to provide additional feedback because it just helps to strengthen the project, the more brains that we can put into it. So. Great. I'm gonna ask one more question. Did you, did you try to fit more houses on the site? And what, why did you draw the limit there? The good question. You know, on one of the community meetings, there were a couple of individuals that were in the background going more housing, more housing. And I think this site just lends itself to this number. It's like a gut feeling, like 30 just feels like the right number. And we wanna be able to preserve as much of the site as possible in terms of its open space and what the natural conditions that are already there. It just feels like it was the right number. We did, after that community meeting, we did have like a little conversation among the team, like, should we try to push more in here? And, you know, the land sort of tells you what it wants. I mean, the groundwater is high, the stormwater has to fit in there. And so the land is telling us this is the right number and this is what makes sense. I think there's also financial sides to it too. Again, the cost of construction is so high that any additional square footage that we add to the, to the project is just gonna up the costs. And as I noted before, we don't have a lot of sources to go to for this project. We use really only one public source that we're able to tap. So in addition to local money, so it just makes the financing tricky, the more houses you put in there. But I just think that this is the right number. I don't know if the other members of the design team wanna add to that, but... Okay, doesn't sound like they do. All right, so thank you very much. And as we've talked about, I think Chris will put together a letter that records, you know, a lot of what'll show up in the minutes from this meeting in terms of the topics that were discussed and we'll send that over to the ZBA. Good luck and thank you for coming. Thank you. Have a wonderful evening, everybody. Okay, so the time now is 9.01. That was the primary topic on our agenda this evening. Maybe we can zip through the rest of this. So item number four was old business. Topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance. Pam, Chris, did we have anything? The only old business that I have is just to remind everybody that we have an extra meeting in November, November 29th. And that'll be a 6 p.m. start, right? 6 p.m. start, and it's going to focus on housing, opportunities for more housing. Okay. All right, moving on to new business. Anything unanticipated there? Yeah, I think that. Okay. Form A in our subdivision applications. Anything? Nope, nothing new. I'm just looking to Pam to make sure I didn't miss anything. No. All right, well, she's shaking her head now. Upcoming ZBA applications. We do have two of those. I have just a couple of slides. I think that these are pretty, they're going to be pretty easy cases. Come on. So the first one is this property at 320 West Street. This property has a special permit already. And there is going to just, so one of the conditions of this, the current special permit is, is that if there is a change in the property management, in which in this case, there is going to be, property manager is changing. It's a non-owner occupied property that's, that is managed by an outside entity. So that is going to change. And so they're going to incorporate a new management plan because there are conditions that does need to go in front of the ZBA. Okay. So that's number one. And then number two is this property at 318 Lincoln App, which it also, it currently has a special permit. The request from this property owner is to have a change of view. So it will go from a single family residence with an attached ADU to just a, to a converted dwelling. And so in the main house, there are four units. And in the small ADU, there is one unit. At this point, it is owner occupied. It's all family. And I'm not aware of any change in that. Okay. Okay. Okay. So the question for the board is, do either of these intrigue you enough that you want to spend time at a meeting to hear from the applicant about the request? Janet. I'm intrigued enough on the first one just to ask right now, why is there a special permit? Is this a single family home that's rented? Like why did it, why does it have a special permit? Or is it a duplex or? It is a rented unit. I believe it had non-conformities to begin with. Okay. All right. Janet, I assume you, you're not proposing that we have them come and present? No, I just, I didn't understand why just a regular home would have, you know, that was used as a rental property. We'd have a special permit. Okay. All right. Not hearing from anybody really saying they want to have these presented to us in full. Why don't we say that we don't need them? Okay. Thank you. All right. Then actually Fred. Yeah. 320 West rings a bell. Didn't we have that in front of us a couple of weeks ago? I got, or maybe a month ago. Isn't that right at the Crocker farm school driveway? It's very close to Crocker farm. Chris, you've got your hand up. Do you want to elaborate? Yeah. The zoning board of appeals reviewed 290 and 300 West street last winter. Both of those, one of them was an existing two family and the other one was going to become a two family. So that might be what Mr. Hartwell is thinking about. And those are right nearby where this house is. I think this house might be south of those two houses. That may be the, I remember one that I was questioning the accuracy of the town map because it looked like it was closer to the property line. I remember we had a little back and forth on that. I remember that conversation for sure. I don't remember which property. I think this might be the house that there was a question. I had the question about the accuracy of the town map. And yeah, I think it's the next one south of the other ones. Thank you. Okay. All right. Time is 908 upcoming SBP, SPR, SUB applications. Anything on the horizon Chris or Pam? I've told you about the Jones library that's coming before you on November 15th. And then we will also have some site plan reviews for pathways at the Hickory Ridge, formerly the golf course. Now I think we just call it Hickory Ridge conservation area. We have some grants to put in an ADA loop trail as well as a path connecting the apartment complexes with the Palmer Village intersection. So we've been working with other members of our town staff here to put together an application for that. So that would be probably coming before you in December. That's my guess. All right, great. All right, so moving on, Planning Board Committee and Liaison reports. We'll start Bruce with you for PVPC. I haven't, I've seen some minutes of meetings that may have happened by, I think something happened while I was away, if I'm not mistaken, but so I wasn't present for that. I think Jack circulated something. I'm a little out of that loop, but so nothing to report. Okay. But I do have a question at the end on a totally another matter. I don't know where to put it in. So if you could come back to me before you close the meeting. Go ahead. I, it was probably a new business, but it moves through past. I think I would like to go to this, one of the citizen planning trainings that I think is in Springfield, but we've been receiving notes from it. It's a face-to-face with other communities. As I read the program there, they have two tracks. So it would seem to be good to go with somebody. So I, and one of my interests in going is that you'll be face-to-face with other planning board members from other towns. And so I would like to go two questions. One is, I think the town has a budget to pay the registration for this. If that's true, it would be nice. Secondly, is anybody interested to accompany me to this? I already signed up, Bruce. I just registered. Oh, excellent. I figured if the town has money, they could maybe reimburse me, but otherwise I'm just gonna go. So I'd love to go with you. Chris has her hand up. She'll probably confirm that they do have a budget for that. Yes, we do have money and you can either pay for it in advance and then submit a request for reimbursement, which would require you to submit information about what form of payment you used. So you'd need to give information about your credit card to the town or your statement or whatever. For the other way you can do it is just to let me know that you have registered and then let me know that the town needs to send a check to CPTC. And we're doing that for one staff member. Okay. So Bruce, what's the date of this seminar you're talking about? Oh, I don't have it up in front of me. Yes, it's far enough a way that we can think about it, but it's coming up. And I believe it's in Greenfield as opposed to Springfield. Oh, I got my fields wrong. Fred. Yeah, I was thinking about going to that as well. And I remember reading and then I tried to pull it back and somehow I lost it. Maybe Chris can help me. A training that was focused on overlay zoning. Am I? Yep. Yeah, is that part of that one or is that a different training? I think that's different and I think that's a webinar, but I will send both of those back to everybody again. Okay, yeah, I definitely, I'm very interested in that one. Doug, if I may. Yeah. I think I looked at that too. And I think you can, they have topics or trainings with the same title at the event and also on Zoom. So whether it's the same person, exactly the same agenda, but it's certainly the same topic and you can choose apparently. But I wanna go to the in-person one. Okay. Great, I'll send them back to everybody. All right, great. All right, I guess we can move on. CPAC, that's me. The town staff has distributed the applications from different organizations for funding for this year. There are 13 applications. They are a wide variety of different objectives, I guess, several from the town in terms of maintenance and improvement of recreational. Facilities, I think there's one to study another historical district in East Amherst. There's some requests from the housing trust for some more funding. Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. So we are, I think the first meeting of the committee will be the 9th of November. So that's all I have to say about that. Karen, anything on DRB? We met on Monday and we approved signage for Gates Underground, which is coming in where Hazel's something Lagoon was. And then we had a presentation by David Somek. Again, on the Hickory Ridge, the plans for the loops, it was really interesting, but we asked them to come back because they're really at the beginning and they're not quite sure how they're going to do several things. So they're gonna come back to us, but it was really interesting and very inspiring to see all the things that are planned at Hickory Ridge. So that was it. Okay, thank you, Karen. Janet, solar bylaw. We are once again having our final meeting. So I know this is our third one, Chris. So Chris is preparing what we hope is the final draft with people have been putting comments on it. And so we're still struggling with issues about forestry and farms, which are sort of the hot button issues, which we probably should probably left too late. So we're working on those. And I know, Doug, you said you wanted to see a copy of it. And I think the transmission route, if we ever do have a voted on approved draft, is to send it to the town council, but I don't see any reason why it can't also just go to the planning board as a draft that has been submitted to the town council. I don't know, we could talk about that at the meeting, but I don't think it's gonna be a secret, a top secret thing. Chris, do you have anything to add? I think I was just suggesting that because eventually we're gonna have a public hearing on it. Yeah, and it's... And it might be nice for us to approve of it, rather than have it show up and we all hate it. It's an interesting question because we're writing this draft, this process, and then everybody gets a chance to work on it, but who owns it in a funny way? And I mean, your comments, I know were attached to a recent draft, and so we had a chance to look at those. But it's gonna go to town council, it will go to CRC, it will come back to us, and who's the person or the entity that ferries it is? I'm a little, it's murky to me. Okay, other than Chris, I don't know who I would suggest, but Chris, your hand is up, maybe you can tell us. Well, I have been pondering about exactly who it's gonna go to. I think the initial thought was that it would come out of solar bylaw working group, and then it would go to staff, namely the fire department, Stephanie Ciccarello, who's the sustainability director, the building commissioner, Nate, who's the senior planner, and they would have a chance to comment on it, and then it would go to town council. I think it's probably gonna go to town council before all those staff people have a chance to comment, and what I'm currently planning is that it'll go to town council in its kind of, I don't wanna say raw, but in a form that isn't ready to be adopted. In other words, Janet knows that we haven't yet put in like paragraph numbering or many different things that you often see in a zoning bylaw when it comes to town council to be adopted. So it's gonna come to town council in a kind of a raw state, and then it, my suggestion to them is going to be that they send it off to CRC, like has been done in the past to work on actually putting it into a form that can be then sent back to town council and go to planning board and CRC for public hearings. And somewhere along the line, we're gonna have it reviewed by those entities that I mentioned earlier. Okay. But we are zeroing in on the final draft. I've been working on it all week, and we're expecting to have a meeting about it next Thursday, the 9th. Is it next Thursday into the 9th of? Yeah. I think it is. I think it is the 9th of November. Yep. Okay. All right. Chris, anything on CRC? I don't have anything on CRC, no. All right. And then I don't really have anything about a report from chair. Are we having a meeting in two weeks? We are. We're having a meeting about the Jones Library in two weeks. Okay. So that'll be when that shows up. All right. Great. Chris, do you have any staff report? Well, I don't know if I've told you about this, but we have been looking for a housing planner, an associate planner to help Nate Malloy with all the housing issues. And so we finally found one. He hired somebody and he's gonna be starting on November 6th, which is Monday. And we're very pleased about that. And he seems to have good qualifications. And he knows a lot about affordable housing. In fact, he's on the board of the Valley CDC. So that shows you how much he knows about affordable housing. So yeah, so we're thrilled that prospect. And looking forward to working with him, he's part-time and he's funded by housing trust and CPAC, I believe. Part-time 22 hours a week for three years. Okay. Great. All right. I have 920 and unless anybody has anything else, thank you for your time tonight. See you in two weeks. Bye-bye. So good night. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Good night, Pam. Good night, Mr. Marshall. Good night, Karen. Good night. Who's the recording? Stop recording.