 Okay, Mr. Marshall, you are a co-host. It is 632. You have everyone who is expected to be here tonight, which as you said is a small quorum, but we're good to go. Okay. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of August 17, 2022. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board. This meeting to order at 634 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 22 of the acts of 22 2022 and extended again by the state legislature on July 16 2022. This planning board meeting, including public hearings, will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting, or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and return to mute. Bruce Coldham. I'm here. Tom Long is absent. Andrew McDougal is absent. I, Doug Marshall, am present. Janet McGowan. Here. Yohanna Newman is absent. And Karen Winter. Karen, you're muted. Here. Good. Thank you. Sorry. Board members, if technical issues arise, we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see you raised hand and call on you to speak after speaking. Remember to remute yourself. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. If you have 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 there a lot of time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. So the first item on our agenda tonight is approval of minutes and we have the August 3rd minutes, which was our last meeting. Board members, any comments on the minutes. None for me other than that I thought they were exceptionally thorough. I mean, compared to 20 years ago, rather stunning actually. Thank you, Bruce, you should know we've had a lot of conversation in the last year or two about the proper level of detail in minutes, so we are where we are and Chris and Pam are doing a great job keeping up with us. Anybody have any other comments. Okay. So that being the case. Does anybody want to move approval of the minutes as drafted. Your precise to your hand and I'll recognize you as making the motion. I will go ahead and second the motion. Any further comments from the board. All right, so we'll go through a roll call vote. Bruce, approve the minutes as presented. Thank you. We'll skip Tom and Andrew. Janet. Hi. And Karen. Hi. And I'm and I as well. Motion passes for in favor and no rejections. Okay, we'll move on to the second item, which is public comment period, the general public comment. Okay. So a moment ago, this is for topics which are not on our agenda this evening. Are there any public comments. Any members of the public who would like to make a comment. I see that we have five members of the public in the attendees area. I don't see any hands raised for those from those folks. Going once going twice going three times. All right, so the time now is 640 and we will end the public. The general public comment period. Bruce, I see your hand. The question really a protocol perhaps to you Doug or Chris. I've been a 10 D of the plan of the school committee. Meeting for the past two and a half years. And it's always frustrated me that I couldn't see who was attending. I'm wondering whether it's ever been suggested that the chair. Read the list of attendees so that people know my sense of this is that if this was a regular public meeting. And if you were to be blind and you could cast your eye around the room you'd know who was there. And I think this is a significant failing of zoom that the attendees don't know who's in the room. So I would always like for not just for this board but for any board but particularly this board because I'm now a member of it. And I think that's the policy of. Before the public comment of reading who the attendees are. And if I don't know if it's a motion it's a suggestion and it's an also a question because there may be some protocol that I would kind of imagine but maybe that would say that that was not appropriate. Okay. Thanks Bruce. I just want to comment on that. I guess I will say that sometimes the names that show up in the attendees list are not actually the person's name. It may be a spouse. Or it may be some other shortened name that doesn't really give you a full sense of who is who they are. So at least this evening it looks like we have five members who have a first name and a last name, whether that corresponds to the actual people who are watching. I don't know. Chris. I just wanted to make note of the fact that tonight we only have five attendees but sometimes we could have as many as 50. So, we might want to be judicious in when we read the names or not. But if it's not a precedent, then we may end up having to, you know, go through a list of 50 names on some nights when we have a very interesting topic. Well I have noticed that the attendees. You know it's not consistent through a meeting. Sometimes people come in late and sometimes a lot of people leave early. The time we get to the later part of our agenda it's gotten a lot smaller. Janet. I'm going to agree with Bruce's suggestion because people have commented to me and I think to the board that it's kind of alienating not to be able to see who else is there or even how many people are there. If you're a member of the public and have often asked to have those names listed. And I do think, you know, if there's 50 people in the audience, like if you're just attending a meeting. And you don't know you can see the participants but you can't see the public and there's 50 other people that would affect how I felt about the meeting in a way or like I'd like to know that. If I could go for just reading the names. I also know that I've attended like zoom meetings where I could see. I wasn't a participant on the panel but I could see the other people's names and I wonder if that capability could be, you know, we could go to that so somebody who's interested could sort of anybody in the audience can kind of go through the names and look around. Okay. So, I guess I'm wondering whether we auto delay setting that precedent until we have a larger group. What do you think Chris, or does anybody, should I just go ahead and start that. I think you could start it tonight and then say that this isn't setting a precedent and we're going to try it out. And if it becomes a problem in the future that it won't continue. Okay. All right so the members of the public that I can see in the attendees list consists of Bruce Allen, Elizabeth Veerling, Mara Keen, Pam Rooney, and Sophia Holden. All right. We can move on to the third item on the agenda. So this is planning board review and recommendations to ZBA. So this is, I believe a presentation of a project that is coming to the ZBA. And we expressed some interest in hearing about in advance of the ZBA hearing. So this is concerning ZBA FY 2023-02 with Michael and Tracy Holden request a special permit to modify the previously approved special permit ZBA FY 2007-43 to allow the construction of a one family detached dwelling as a complimentary principal use to the existing two family detached dwelling or duplex. So sections 3.01, 3.320, 3.3211, and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw located at 1147 North Pleasant Street on map 5C parcel 35, located in the village center residents or RVC zoning district, and welcome. And that's Michael that I see in the picture rather than Sophia. So welcome this evening and thank you for joining us. Thank you. And I will say it, Chris, you can do an intro in a moment, but I wanted to say at the outset I think the main reason we asked you to come was where we were interested in the purpose, the way in which you are allowed to do this. I wanted to understand the process under which you're proposing and how this, you know, and how this is allowed in the zoning bylaw. So Chris, was there anything you wanted to say before we hear from from Mike. Yes, I wanted to say that I think that the reason this is being allowed to go to the zoning board of appeals in this manner is because there's an existing special permit on this property. And the special permit is for a two family house. Normally, if you had a single family house on a property, you wouldn't be able to add another single family house because there's no mechanism to do that in the zoning bylaw. But since this already has a special permit on it, the door is kind of open to having another special permit to do something else. So there is a section of the zoning bylaw that says, and I should have read this, I should have had this ready before, but it's section 3.01, I believe. And maybe Pam can find that we can all read it together. So section 3.01 talks about, here it is. The development or operation on a single lot of more than one dwelling, or more than one of the principal uses described in section 3.3 is expressly prohibited, except where the principal uses are clearly complimentary to each other. Or otherwise provided by this bylaw. So when the zoning board reviews this case, they will need to make a finding that these two uses, the use of the two family house that already exists there, and the use of the single family house that's being added are complimentary uses. And I wanted to put that into context. And now you are being asked to make recommendations to the zoning board of appeals about this project. Thank you. All right, thank you. And Mike, if you want to tell us about your project. Sure, just quickly before Mike jumps in, I can share the screen with the ZBA application so Mike, do you want me to do that just to start sharing the screen and you can direct me where to go or. That'd be great. I don't have the ability to do it on my own. So, and that's probably not useful for people. Sorry for all the scrolling, or do you want me to start, like, I mean, basically, the project that I'm presenting to the ZBA is the idea that I purchased a property 14 years ago, about 14 years ago, and purchase it as a non owner occupied home that was being used as a variety uses prior to us purchasing it was a doc Sandra Godin's doctor's office on the first floor in the front had an apartment in the back that was occupied and a small apartment on the second floor that was occupied, not all of which wasn't technically on record with the town it was listed as a single family house but with commercial use for the doctor's office. But I don't think they had permitting let's say, or been approved to have the two apartment incident so we purchased as a single family house and I applied for the special permit to convert it to a two family dwelling, which is more or less already had been being used as, but we went through the process of converting it to a two family so we had the front approved for a four bedroom in the back approved for a two bedroom. I'm a non owner occupied for close to 14 years now. This past year, back in the fall, my family decided I've got three children ages 10 through 16, and we decided to move to Amherst. The front portion of the house was unoccupied, come the end of last summer, and we decided to move into the front house. This enrolled all three of our kids in the Amherst school system I've got my middle daughter entering freshman year high school my older daughters entering a junior year and then I've got my son entering fifth grade. We, as a family have decided we want to stay in Amherst long term. The kids are all loving the school system. The issue with it is that the front part of the house is not conducive to a family of five. Technically it's listed as a four bedroom but it's really a three bedroom with fairly large living room and dining space but it has. We knew moving into it that this was sort of a temporary situation that it wasn't conducive to our family of five so we considered various options and really decided my kids love the location of the property. We moved the house directly across the street, or just a couple miles up the road from from all three of their schools, and started inquiring about the possibility of putting a single family owner occupied dwelling unit on the property. We had gone in front of the ZBA about 13 years ago at the time we were considering trying to add additional apartment units to the property, and we did not proceed with that. We moved the house at the time. And so we just sort of left it as as it's been for the last 13 years as the just the duplex on the front portion of the property. As you can see there's a decent it's a decent sized lot for the area. It's in North Village Center residential in North Amherst. When we purchased it it was technically there's you can see a sort of remnants of dotted line where it has had been two lots. One because it wasn't a flag lot it had no frontage. When we when we made it a two family we merged two lots together. But then met all the requirements once we had it surveyed that we have enough land to meet the coverage requirements for it, and it just seemed like a perfect opportunity for us to be able to live in a location conducive to my family of five where all three kids could go to school just a couple miles up the road have the bus directly in front of our house. And after talking to the planning department. Tried to find a way that it could be approved to allow us to do so which was as a complimentary use to the front duplex. Great. And it looks like you probably did the drawings for the house yourself. I did. Looks like you have. We have a couple architects present so criticize my work too much. Some time over the past year working in Sketchup. Yeah, that looks looks good. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you members. Any, any questions or comments for. For Mr. Holden. Janet. You are muted. You don't have enough. Do you? I don't. I don't have the frontage requirement in front of me, but it sounds like you don't have enough frontage to do a flag lot. Is that correct? And that's, I think it's 100 feet, but I might be just making that up. And they are in. And so when you weren't in front of the ZBA for like more units, when you said you did not proceed, does that because you felt like you weren't going to get the permit just from the way it was going or. Yeah, we withdrew our application without prejudice at the time thinking we might go back in front of the ZBA. It had become apparent it wasn't going to get approved to add additional apartment units at the time. One of the fit that some of the feedback that we were given at the time was had it had we been applying to have it be owner occupied. That they probably would have been more open to it. This is again going back, I think almost 13 years ago before the new master plan was done for North Amherst. Another, another question I had was just, and it could be for Chris as well as you Michael is what given I don't know the given the size of your lot how many units in our end, can you get, you know, just not, you know, just if it was, you know, a converted dwelling or whatever just how many units will be the maximum units you can get for the size of your lot. I believe at the, I believe it would allow for up to five units. But this is RBC, right. Village Center residential yes. Oh, I'm sorry in RBC then we revised my question I'm sorry. So is it five units and RBC. I don't have the bylaw in front of me but I believe when we looked at it 13 years ago, we were told we the area, a lot size would allow for up to five units. Okay, thank you in some form at the time, I think we were doing it. We applied as condos, because that was the bylaw at the time that would allow us to have the units that we were looking to do in retrospect should just move forward I'm, you know, I'm glad that that did not get approved at the time because 13 years ago. You know if you'd asked me then if I'd be living in Amherst, I would have guessed no. But now that I've got kids in at school age. Amherst became much more desirable for us to move to. And, you know, my kids with the whole families loving being in Amherst and like I said we, we want to stay in Amherst long term. Well, I'm actually happy to hear that. Yeah, I have, I just wanted to note for the board what I think is true is that the ZBA can put an owner occupancy requirement, but I think that at any point. This, this could be converted to condos. And, you know, so the buildings could be sold separately and things like that I'm not sure we'd keep the owner occupancy requirement on your one thing but I know there's sort of ways to sort of move away or get more owners in which could be positive or negative. That's it for my questions right now. Alright, thanks Janet. That's all your hand. Yes. Hello Michael, I found out that I know Michael because when I checked the Michael and phone number on the application that was the one I was familiar with so I don't think disclosure is necessary but just for the information of the board. Michael has worked for years on projects for Coleman Hartman and in fact has done two house projects for me personally. So we have a business relationship. But that's as far as it goes. Mike I was really pleased to the prospect that you're moving into town as Janet I think it's nice but being in North Amherst myself and, and you're just near the farm and I'm always interested in capable people who move close to North Amherst Community Farm so you can expect to hear from me on that idea. I didn't tell you that we were neighbors now. A couple of questions the this would be a non conforming lot I would imagine having a frontage of 90 feet in a in a in a VC requiring 120. Correct. This is all of what we're talking about. And this is perhaps not a question for you as much as for Chris is all of what is being proposed affected compromised. Let's just say affected in any way by this being a non conforming lot. You are allowed to change things on a non conforming lot. And see that that's a problem it's been done many times in the past so the CDA will recognize that this is an on conforming lot when they grant their if they grant their permit. Yeah, it's allowed under section 9.22 of the zoning bylaw. The second is, I was surprised that one could keep building lots of houses on a lot that was already developed and along with other members I think the board was interested in the, the part of the bylaw that made this possible. I, I looked in the, in the application and I noted that the application doesn't cite Chris that 3.01. I think it's, it's, it's generally useful to cite the section of the bylaw that you are asking for permission under I had thought that's just a habit I got into. So I, I was complex because I didn't know what section of the bylaw was being leveraged here, you've told us that Bruce Bruce I do I do see that referenced on the application. Really. Yeah, I, I look for it and I couldn't find it I stand corrected. Thank you. I did I also in looking because it seemed that the phrase second. Second principle use, and I scanned the, the by I searched the bylaw for mentions of the words phrase second principle use and I could only find one I think so it I was confused by that as well because I couldn't see the bylaw where second principle use was referred to in relation to residential properties of this nature. Possibly I'm, I wasn't very successful at that particular search either so I was, I was, I wanted to be enlightened as to why and where as the second principle use was the trigger for, or the basis for making this arrangement acceptable. Okay, Chris, you want to comment on that. Yeah, the principle uses are the uses that are listed in section three. It's the use category table. What, what is that called. I think it's just section three. So it includes all kinds of things that includes apartments that includes townhouses that includes single family houses. It includes two family houses, it includes retail stores so all those things that are listed in section three in the category and use category table. Those are considered principle uses so a two family house, if it's owner occupied or non owner occupied would be considered one principle use single family house would be considered one principle use so in this case, Michael's going to be asking the zoning board of appeals to make a finding that these two principle uses that are proposed to be allowed on this site are complimentary to one another. And he'll have to make that argument to the zoning board but we do have another case of a single family house and I think it's on at the corner of where Halleck meets North Prospect Street. There's a property there that had a single family house, and the zoning board of appeals granted a special permit in that case to add a duplex to that property. So again, gateway to that was the fact that a special permit was required to put a duplex in. The special permit has allowed the duplex to be there so now the door is open to another special permit to allow the single family to be there, but of course these are all discretionary permits and the ZBA can grant this or not granted. That that's interesting to Karen and myself, I guess, because we didn't realize at the time, but that was the peace place duplex that came before us at the local Historic District Commission. And we were asked to make findings of a different nature, but I hadn't realized there was a parallel between this project and, and one that Karen and I at least are already quite familiar with. Final question, I think, and this has to do with something that we may. Let's see, Michael the the existing house at the front is a duplex is that correct. I think it is. And, and I know it's because you've told us that it's compliant so far as land use is concerned the zoning board has approved the, that it be a, a duplex. Do you know whether the separation walls that this is a code, this is code compliant or is it grandfathered in some way. No, when I, when we did the renovation on the house, when we purchased it to convert it through the ZBA to a two family. We were required to put a continuous firewall down the middle of it from roof deck all the way to basement slab. Okay, that's great because at the time sorry at the time so we had everything inspected through the building department to make sure that it met the requirements to have to convert it to the duplex. Okay, I was going to suggest if that wasn't the case that we might recommend to the zoning board that they make that a condition of approval but clearly unnecessary. My final comment is that I too would like to see as much as possible the, the maintenance of owner occupancy on this site that one of the buildings is owner occupied. I guess, I mean, we're quite concerned with neighborhoods and so forth, as many people are in town, becoming student occupied properties with landlords that don't care very much and allow things to go south. So clearly, and I can see by the plan that you've got that that back house is so completely designed for a family that it seems that the floor plan itself is probably driving owner occupancy for the longest time. But I think properties that get densificated in this way in the village centers and so forth that it would be very comforting to the neighborhood to know that that this expansion of accommodations on this site was tied to the perpetual owner occupancy. All right. Thank you, Bruce. And while you were saying you were familiar with Mike, I was sort of realizing that I think Mike did some work for me at one point. I did Doug. I'm not sure you had the beard at the time. I've had a beard since I got married 18 years ago. I've had a beard and I just thought about you since you finished out your work. Yeah, so welcome to town. Thank you. I think you lived north of Greenfield when we were. Yeah, we moved from Bernadsten up in the woods. All right. Let's see Janet you had your hand up for a while did we. Is that past or you are you are muted, Janet. I know I don't want I don't have a comment. Okay. All right, so the only the only comment. Actually go ahead, Chris. I just wanted to know, Janet asked a question about whether there was enough lot area. I think it was Janet. And I added up a lot area requirements and there's 15,000 for the first unit. There's 24,000 for each additional unit so the total required is 23,000 and that's reflected in this little zoning table that's on the plan here so I just verified that, and they have over 30,000 square feet on the property existing so I just thought I wanted to clarify that. Thank you. Okay. Janet. So I'm wondering, Michael, like who your tenants are in the front have they been students are they older folk. And then just if you just some if you have any observations on how many cars they have because it's kind of a an endless inquiry we have about how many cars people need do students need one car per person and things like that I just wondered what your experience has been. So, for to answer the first part of your question, primarily our tenants have been students. When we first renovated the house. I had a young woman with two children who had just, I think just finished at UMass, who lived in our back apartment for I think close to five or six years was a fantastic tenant and then she bought a house in town and currently still lives in town. The front part of our house because it was multiple bedroom for bedrooms. We've always had four students living in it. We had several years where they were grad students, and a few years where they were undergrads but I will say that we've always been very thorough with our process of selecting tenants, and have never had any problems I actually looked at town records, or looked at the complaint records and was surprised that I actually had one noise complaint several years ago that I was not made aware of. But I think in the entire time we've owned the house. That was the only complaint that was ever filed against her house and like I said, I was completely unaware of it because if I had been it would have been addressed. And I don't know if there's anything more after that but they've it's it's been primarily students but I've always made it very clear to any incoming tenants that there are still single family, not that there's single family homes behind our property. But we do have a family across the street and to the north of us. The Valerios occupied at home so I've always made it very clear to them that this was not going to be a student priority house. On that, I think we got approved for the special permit to convert it to a duplex. We were told to allow six parking places. I believe basically one per bedroom for the house, or we were allowed to provide six parking places, one per bedroom. And you can see on my map I've actually, because I don't think I've ever had six cars at the house at any given time. Currently I have two students living in actually they're both graduates now, living in the back. And there's one car there part time for them and then my family is currently living in the front house and we've got two vehicles, although my oldest daughter is getting a license so I expect that their vehicle sometimes soon. But there's, I don't think there's ever been more than four, four or five vehicles on the property at any time. Okay. Thank you. And parking's never been an issue we've always been able to contain our vehicles to our parking spots, unlike some of the nearby homes on North Pleasant Street directly to the south of us we've. I mean, the neighborhood has changed quite a bit in the past 14 years since I've owned the home. When we bought it there was an elderly couple that live directly south of us, and the two houses south of that were owner occupied. Now all three of those are currently rental units. And parking does continue to be an issue at those residences. But I will say that it's never been an issue at ours because we have adequate parking and back to the house. Okay. Okay. And Mike, I can't resist one comment I might make about the house. Yep. And that is that the way it's configured now, the front door faces the side. Yep. Of the lot. You know, it kind of looks like a house that was designed to face the street and has been turned and, you know, made to fit on the lot. But if there were any, if there were any way to have the front door sort of face the driveway, you know, that might be more appropriate for this, this situation. But, you know, that's, that's just a comment. And I'm not, you know, I'm not, I don't think it needs to be any part of any recommendation to the ZBA. I will comment that we were because it was going to be a single family owner occupied. I was, we put the garage for obvious reasons on the west side of the house, both to make ease of access to the garage. Easier and also as a slight buffer from the street to the house. And as far as the entrance to the house, I realize it's basically facing the backyard of the house south of us, which isn't necessarily ideal. There is a row of trees there and I do plan on adding more screening along that. I don't know that reconfigure it because the, the, it's a long lot and we've, I've always sort of had this idea for what the first floor configuration of my house would be. When we built, I built my house up in Bernstein, you know, 16 years ago, but I always had an idea of what that first floor layout would be. And it fits a lot size wise. Yeah, I get that it looks like it's facing the wrong direction but I think I wanted basically self the bulk of the windows on that side of the house. What would you consider the front side of the house to be self facing and I also wanted the roof to be configured for photovoltaic. It actually makes sense because it's a long, long narrow or a lot to position it that way as well. Yep. Okay. All right. I'm not seeing any more comments. Chris, see your hand. So I understand that you have the recommendation that the property remain owner occupied were there other recommendations that you had for the zoning board. I wanted to ask about the owner occupied condition. I guess Mike, does that concern you that if you went whenever this property is sold that you might have a pretty small pool of buyers who are limited to being owner occupied but have to buy a two family duplex at the same time. Obviously, any restrictions or limitations put on it are not desirable. Obviously, you know, down the road who knows what's going to happen 1520 years from now. Should we decide to sell the property. Obviously it limits the number of potential buyers for it. Is there a market for a, you know, a decent size single family dwelling unit with the benefit of the income of a duplex on the property there is but it's certainly going to limit buyers. We, I think as Bruce mentioned earlier the house was clearly designed to be a single family, probably owner occupied home. If I was looking to put an investment property that was going to be a rental on the property. I certainly wouldn't have designed the living space the way I did on the first floor. I would like to turn. I obviously would like to not have restrictions placed on it not knowing what's going to happen down the road but I certainly we have full intentions of staying in Amherst for a decent amount of you know I've got like I said I've got my sons so I've got at least eight years in the public school system in Amherst, and then I'll have three kids going through college and probably returning home so I'm looking at you know potential 12 to 15 year plan. What's going to happen 15 to 20 years from now I couldn't even begin to tell you because, like I said if you'd asked me 15 years ago if I was going to be living in Amherst I probably would have said no. But we're glad to be here so I'm okay with them with putting that restriction on it. Because it's certainly have no intention of doing otherwise right now, I would assume that at 15 years from now, we decided to downsize and possibly look to sell the property that I could come before the zoning board again, and ask that that restriction be removed. I guess that the climate of the neighborhood, as I've said it's changed dramatically in the last 15 years, I would expect that it will probably change more over the next 15 years. So I would think that I'd have the ability at least to go before the ZBA. Again, if we found the need to have that removed. Okay, great. Janet. I think it's important that the conditions stay on the house, and I don't, you know, like an owner occupied multifamily houses like the hottest thing in the Boston area, because it's a great way to get probably a bigger house and you expect you have great tax benefits, and you have income units and so it makes buying a house much more affordable. So I think that that market, like, isn't as strong here but I think in 10 or 15 years. Hopefully that will grow and that won't be seen as a bad thing but actually be seen as a positive. But you know listening to Michael talk about the neighborhood changing as I think that it's really important that we stabilize and strengthen the neighborhoods and not turn into sort of like, you know, houses with single family houses and families, we don't turn into a rental, you know, rental neighborhood for UMass students and so I think that I hope that we as a board and I personally think that we need to stabilize neighborhoods and have a mix of housing types and not have a majority of students in the neighborhood because that will turn a neighborhood and so I think I see the Holden's as doing a great thing. And, you know, strengthening this neighborhood, keeping it stable income property, their family is there and I do think I would really encourage to keep this idea and I think it will get more popular in Amherst. So I think that myself and it's a great way to finance something you can't really afford, and have your tenants basically pay for your mortgage or most of it. So, I just think this is really an important issue for Amherst. Nate. Sure, thanks. I guess the question, you know, I'm wondering is, is the occupancy permit or requirement on the single family home or just on the property so typically we would have an owner occupancy requirement on the property so right maybe the owner is in the front house right and not a front unit and not in the single family because they might want to rent that. But you know, when you said you, you know you said occupancy of the single family home, and that's what they're saying in a special permit but is the recommendation that or just that one of the units on the property be owner occupied. Actually, that's a great point I would say on the property because they may the Holden's as they get older might want to move into the smaller units, instead of having that big house I know that problem too. All right. Bruce. I agree with Janet I just, I think, for clarity that yes, the owner occupancy on the units and you know Michael's a builder. And he's got great capabilities of doing exactly what Janet suggests and I can tell you for the last seven years Michael since I've retired. I'm, I'm, I'm now doing what you've been doing on your life I've spent seven years making two houses for my kids so in your 70s you're still going to be able to do pretty much whatever you want so I can see it's very possible that you would play with that property and it could be very different and much much better because of who you are. So, I'm welcome to town. Thank you. So it sounds like we would recommend a condition of owner occupancy on the property and not directly tied to the new single family home. And I don't see any more hands. I haven't heard any other sort of conditions we might recommend. And I also don't see wanted to know if there were any members of the public that wanted to make a comment on this. I just want to remind them that this will be coming before the zoning board, and you can make comments at that time as well and those comments are likely to be more pertinent to their decisions we're just doing a recommendation. So I don't see any hands from the attendees so in that case, I think we can consider this topic closed. Chris I now see your hand. I just wanted to know if you would recommend that this application be approved, and that this condition be added. Do you want to go that far to say that you think the application should be approved. All right. So, Janet, what would you would you agree with that. Yeah, I am. I wouldn't recommend approval because I think that I leave it to the ZBA to decide about complimentary uses and then 9.22 is as you know I find it very disturbing provision and kind of unclear so I don't feel like I'm in a position to say yeah go ahead but I do think it's an attractive project it's a really beautiful building it's going to help the neighborhood and, you know, I see lots of benefits to it but I defer to the ZBA. All right, Bruce. Again, Janet says what I was thinking, I, with a small a I definitely approve of this from the point of view that I see as the purview of the planning board and so forth and I did look at the master plan so far as this was concerned and it seems to be consistent with whether by right here in section 4.8 you know the residential identification of neighborhoods and doing density densification this way. So from, from our point of view let's, if I can be so bold as to propose for the board, or the sort of things that I think the zoning board would be supporting I think this is very supportable, but, but I, I understand that the zoning board is asked to look at things slightly differently. That's why they are them and where us. So, again, I like Janet I wouldn't say recommend approval because I think that's their business but I think I would say that I would be happy for Chris to represent positive reception. from certainly from me. Okay, on this project. All right, thank you. Karen, do you want to make a comment on this. Would you in favor of recommending approval or just leaving it to the board. I agree. I think this is a positive thing happening in North Amherst, and I would not. I, Janet and Bruce said exactly what I feel. I'm for it but leave it to the zoning board. All right. And I won't object to that taking that position so I guess it's if they approve it, we recommend a owner occupancy provision on the property. Bruce is your hand a legacy hand or. Do you want to speak again. Okay. All right, so, thank you Mike. Appreciate you're coming in this was on an optional, an additional board conversation. Thank you. Thank you everybody. All right. All right so the time now is 725. And we will move on to item four, which is a site plan review. And SPR 2020 dash zero three with Jonathan Gerfine for Riverside organics at 555 Belcher town road review of certain changes to the site plan and their condition number seven of the site plan review including placement of concrete blocks in the driveway and parking lot for a marijuana product manufacturer in marijuana micro business under section 3.363.5 of the zoning bylaw map 18 D parcel to in the PRP zoning district. Chris, why don't you start us off. I noticed that Mr Gerfine isn't here tonight. I was hoping he would be I invited him to come. But in any event, the issue is that Mr Gerfine had his property approved by the planning board back a couple of years ago to house a micro business growing in marijuana and he wasn't going to do any retail sales on the property he was going to transfer the marijuana to another entity that would then sell it off site. And so he got approval for his site plan which you have received in your packet and maybe we could show that site plan. But then it turned out that he added a few things. He did talk to the planning board back in I think it was 2019. When this came before the planning board he talked to the planning board about placing concrete blocks in the driveway. He talked about placing two concrete blocks in the driveway and I think the reason for those was to keep people from being able to enter and exit the property quickly he didn't want to. He didn't want to have people be able to come in and out very quickly so he placed these two concrete blocks in the driveway. They're about 16 feet nine inches apart. They're not shown on the plan, but he did talk to the planning board about it. And it's on page one of his planning board decision. So, then a resident drove by on fall drive I think it was on on her way to the Valley Medical Center and notice the two blocks in the driveway and felt that those were potentially dangerous and suggested that we might want to require that Mr. Griffin put some kind of reflectors on the blocks to let people know that they were there to make them more obvious. And so that complaint, if you will, came into the inspection services department and so Rob Morris sent one of the inspectors out and the inspector noticed that in addition to the concrete blocks in the driveway they were also concrete blocks placed closer to the building, the new building. And six of them were placed along the driveway and two and four of them were placed close to the building. I think, Pam, do you have access to that drawing that I sent out yesterday that shows Yeah, that's it. Okay, so this shows the Porter Drive and Hall Drive is this isn't really called Porter Drive anymore it's all called Hall Drive. There's a crosswalk there so people can cross over and walk to Valley Medical from route nine, route nine is at the top of the page. A little ways in from the crosswalk are these two blocks that Mr. Griffin had talked to the planning board about. They're about two feet wide and three feet long and two feet high so they're a little bit smaller than the average Jersey barrier and they're also more compact. And this drawing also shows that there are six blocks placed along of similar size placed along the driveway that is within the fenced in area around the building. And I guess I should describe for Bruce and Karen and I think Janet was on this planning board when this was approved and maybe maybe Janet wasn't on and maybe Doug wasn't on. I remember being hearing about this property before. Okay, well. So he has, he had an existing building there that was an old radio station. And some of you who've lived in Amherst for a long time will remember that radio station so that's the building that's shown to the right. And he's refurbished that building and painted it. And then he's added a greenhouse to the left and the greenhouse is going to be in state of the art temperature controlled everything controlled about it including microbes that aren't allowed into it etc. It's taken him a long time obviously from the time he got this thing approved, which was sometime in the winter of 2020. But to now he's had difficulties with the state getting his approval. So in any event this is still under construction so he's placed these six blocks along the driveway and he's placed four blocks against the wall of the greenhouse. And what he told me was that he placed the blocks inside the fence along the driveway and next to greenhouse to protect those to protect the greenhouse he doesn't want people who come in here, namely, you know probably delivery people to bump into things. But the problem is that the four blocks along the greenhouse actually are in the place of where the dumpster should be. And he doesn't have a dumpster there yet. So, I guess, if I were to recommend something to you I would recommend that you go ahead and approve the two blocks in the driveway because he did talk to you about those, even though they weren't on the plan originally, and that you could suggest to him or require that he put some kind of reflectors on them to make them more visible to people who might come into the driveway. But once construction is finished on the building that he removed the blocks that are within the fenced area, because those are, you know, really not something that he talked to you about and they weren't something that he showed on the plan. Let's see if I have anything else to say about that. So I have been in touch with them a few times, and I offered to go out and do the measurements and make this drawing so it would make it easier for him to explain what he was doing here. Unfortunately, he didn't come tonight but the essential idea is, can you approve these two blocks as a. Well the two blocks were part of the decision they were written into the decision. Can you. So I guess the question is what do you want to do here. That's. All right, what do we want to do. Janet. So I think I'm the only person on the planning board that was here during this, as I remember like many hearings about this project and so Chris it sounds like it's not operational yet that's what you're saying. Not operational yet. And so I went out and looked at the this here and I, I'm sorry I didn't take a photograph because I thought the two blocks were at the entry fence, are there two blocks by the entry fence because that's what I see, because so. So when I, so, just, you know, full disclosure, I have several times driven down this, this Porter way. Kind of messing up going to Valley Medical. And so I don't see that as a driveway I see that as a road. And so I looked on the map and the pictures, it is a road. And so, when, so I realized when I read your report I was like oh that you know that's his driveway and then I got out there and I said this is a road this isn't his driveway and so I do find them a strange place. It seems like he's put two blocks on a road that people could easily and accidentally go towards. I'm not quite sure why they're there in a way because you know it seems to me that he could put blocks in front of the actual entry way to his thing so I thought they were strange I thought they were in the middle of a road. And it's not his driveway so that's kind of an issue to me is like is this a road or is this his driveway. The question I had was like, does the town clear that road does, you know, Porter drive and could the fire trucks, you know, if two or three fire to two or three trucks came in could they maneuver around because one of the things we learned about growing marijuana in a greenhouse is there's a lot of carbon dioxide there's a lot of energy being used. And so, you know, the idea of having a fire was one of the considerations. As is in every situation but there's a lot of electricity going into that unit or will be someday so. So my questions were basically, is that a driveway or is that a road or private road. And then, if he could just maybe if he wants to use those blocks to stop people from quickly gaining access to his property it makes sense to put it near the entry way, the entry fence, probably achieving the same thing. And then the question is, is he blocking the road for street clearing or for fire trucks or whatever so it just seemed great when I went out there and looked I wish I had taken a picture because I sort of mentally remember. I can bring up the pictures that Chris sent us to be. You're in the packet. Yeah. Yeah, or you sent them in the email yesterday. Oh, that's right there in the email that I sent yesterday yep. Should I do that. All right, so here's photo one. I don't know if you can see. Can't see it. Oh there. Yep. So that shows that that shows the blocks within the fence. Yeah, so that's photo one. And then I'll stop share. And share photo two. Here we go. Here we go. There's the box. I mean, does this pavement joint does that suggest that's the end of the public way. No public way it's Porter Drive is not a public way neither is haul drive. It may accept haul drive as a public way at some point because it leads to Valley Medical. I don't think the town has an intention of accepting Porter Drive. It's just a paper street really. Okay, so that's what this is Porter. All right so so it probably does not get plowed by the town. I don't think so. And would the fire department have any opinion about these blocks or not. They may. You know, I just want to say that the blocks are put on the property line. So, you know, essentially they're. You know, 555 old Belcher town road owns the rest of the pavement where the red car is and with everything behind these blocks and so Chris is right that it was paved originally as a turnaround to access the radio stations. And perhaps if Porter Drive was ever developed into a subdivision but that didn't happen. And so, you know, it's just a relic of, you know, when it was first developed so the blocks are on the property line, you know, marking what is Jonathan's property so, you know, they're more than wide enough for an emergency vehicle I talked to the building commissioner so okay trucks can still make it through it's really I think, you know, supposed to be a visual cue that it's not a road or something right so you know whether or not a Chris said striping or another sign or something could indicate that but I think that's the intention of it not to prevent vehicular traffic because on the site plan, where the car is there are parking spaces beyond, you know, next to the three, including that red car, two more parking spaces on the pavement so what's the remaining pavement on the site would be used for parking and there's plenty of room for vehicles to go back and forth between those blocks. Yeah, it looks like there's more than 20 feet. There's 16.16 feet nine inches between the blocks I measured. Yeah, so I think the question for the planning board is whether these changes are de minimis to the site plan, and can they be administratively approved or is it, you know, a significant enough change that the site plan needs to be amended. What should involve a public hearing. Right. Well, I mean, I guess, Karen you've got your hand up I'll let you go next. I think we drove there because this seems so strange and it was so hard to understand reading this and I was shocked at these, these dangerous looking ugly looking like East Berlin border things in the middle of the of the road and I do see the point of whoever said, they are at the moment and somebody at night could really damage their car or and and they're they're far enough apart so that they don't hinder any kind of traffic going through there. So for the public. It's just a weird thing these two ugly things dropped in front of this, this building but I wasn't part of what you approved before and, and it's interesting that his reason for that is just just somehow make it clear that this is not public and people shouldn't be racing around but you know there's there should be there's a fence around the building to protect the building it looks like it's extremely unesthetic. Yeah, that that's just my outsider opinion of this I can see the public wondering what we're approving here. Okay, Bruce. I agree with Karen, but I also recognize that the, that the decision says that he that the private road which leads to the property will be partially barricaded with cement blocks at the entrance to his property. Well, it's just not on the planet was pretty specifically stated, and therefore approved so it seems to me that this is certainly at most a diminum this change, if not simply an inconsistency in the documents because you know we deal with, for you know, specifications and drawings where something is said in one document but isn't repeated in the other, and you say well the, you know, the document that makes the case is good for all so I would say that this is clearly a change if even that. But at the same time, I think it's ugly and seemingly pointless and but am I not right that this is a this is water under a bridge. Well, I mean I guess the blocks at the entry seem like you said they were mentioned in the conversation when the applicant got his permit. I think Chris is more concerned, maybe if I can put words in your mouth. About the blocks that are inside that are in the way of the of where the dumpster was to be located which kind of begs the question of where does he plan to put it if he leaves those blocks in place. I feel like the it's de minimis or less. I for the for the blocks on the road, but I agree that the the blocks the other the other the other 10 blocks I guess this one for are not de minimis they weren't mentioned and they weren't on the plan and they're taking the place of something that should be so that seems to be clear that that would require a reconsideration. Okay, but the ones on the road I would like to imagine that even though it's that whether we can have another bite of the cherry and at least do something to make them paint them or put some markers on them or even take some of the blocks. I mean I think it would look better if he put two or three of those blocks along there. So that it didn't look like somebody just dump something there pointlessly I mean if you had three blocks instead of one either side, even and then you could put a sign on that said private property or something that would be more intelligent it would be more. I mean, it would be better. Can we make that suggestion. We can certainly suggest pretty much anything. Okay, okay. Okay, so Janet. So, um, the, I think he had like four or five hearings with Mr. Griffin that just, you know, it was kind of a. Let me say kindly an unorganized application. And it was also the first time we had seen anything like this. And so I don't really feel like the planning board. Okay, to cement blocks sitting in the middle of the road. And so it wasn't on the site plan. I don't think of this as the driveway. And so I think that, um, you know, he mentioned this in the beginning and I think I don't think we were focusing on. This is where on the private way his property begins and this is where the cement blocks are so I, you know, I don't want to go back into all those hearings but I don't, I don't, I don't think this is something that we would agree with. If we had seen it then and we don't really agree with it now and I understand Mr. Griffin is trying not to call attention to his facility. Um, and is very concerned about security and so I could see why he doesn't want a lot of people driving up, perhaps person like me thinking I'm going to Valley Medical and I'm not. So I wonder if there's a better way for him to mark this as private property. You know, and a way that's safer because to me this looks really unsafe it's just they're low they're gray at night they're not going to be very visible. You could see easily someone driving into it so I'm not sure the board said, Yeah, to cement blocks in the middle of the private way. That's where your property starts, you know, and so I think that maybe, you know, the landscape architects and architects would have picked that up. If they had seen it but I'm not crazy about. It's not just an aesthetic thing I think they're dangerous and I think they're not really achieving what he wants which is to delineate this as private property. I think they're not really invited. All right, Karen. I know he said somewhere in his application that he was going to, I think it was with the fence and the gate that he was amenable to making it as aesthetically pleasing as possible and I think also the board said that grass has to be mowed and it has to have neat appearance. I think one should just bring up the fact that this is about as ugly as it gets and is he open to, does he have any ideas. Can he put planters around them and accomplish the same thing and you know, just so we don't have this this bomb shelter effect at that part. This is my recommendation. Thank you, Karen. So Chris, it sounds like the majority of the board would like to have Mr. Whatever, whatever his girlfriend return and we don't. We make we may or may not consider the two blocks on the entry to be de minimis. But we would like to have a conversation about the blocks inside as not being de minimis. And while we're talking with him we're going to want to talk about the two blocks that are at the entry and discuss alternative ways for him to mark his boundary in a way that's more pleasing. And Nate I see your you've taken. Yeah, I just I just shared my screen is this is a 2021 aerial photograph and so you know there's a crosswalk now. And so you know here's on route nine here's hall drive and it takes, you know, almost a 90 degree turn up to the medical center and here's here's the greenhouse being built and here's, you know, the blocks are essentially right here. And so, you know, if we're talking about how to change how the road feels I mean I feel like just the nature of how it's the road itself turns it's hard to change that, you know, if this were only if this poor driver was never going to develop I don't think they would have done this type of corner here right so you're they're leading you into straight, and then you're taking such a turn and so, you know unless we're asking the applicant to change, you know cut out pavement and, you know, curbing or like you know Corinne said planters or something else, which isn't immediately at the property boundary right so there's some, some area behind the crosswalk that's still not on the property. You know, I mean I feel we I'd like to know if there's suggestions to the applicant in terms of how to do that so you know, we'd be asking them for an amended site plan, and we'd want to have as much information as possible up front so what we know what could we suggest to the applicant to do that. That's all. All right, Bruce. In response to what you said Nate recommendations. It occurs to me that he's got 10 additional blocks that he has got to do something with. And I would say that expressing the concerns that have been addressed and and and I'm particularly swayed by what Janet says because she was, she was there and I wasn't. So that. And I did a marijuana facility years ago in Connecticut and I understand how discombobulated those people are I mean it's they just hopeless. It's something like I had to deal with, I can well understand what you said, how you must have felt, Jen. But at proposed what you say Nate, I would simply say, on the basis of what we've got at the moment and since he didn't, he chose not to come. He didn't have much to work with. But what we do have is 10 additional blocks, and a problem at the entry, which is currently is inappropriately resolved with a couple of silly blocks so I would say, now you can use those other 10 blocks and some plants, perhaps or colors or signage or reflectors or, or whatever imaginative thing that can be done with those 10 plus two blocks to make to solve the problem that he has with that strange entry there. All right. Chris, I think yours was the next hand that popped up. I just wanted to say thank you to Bruce for mentioning how discombobulated some of these applicants can be. And this particular applicant is particularly discombobulated so I just wanted to say that because I will transmit the information that you have told me and suggested, I'm not entirely sure that we're going to get a satisfactory resolution. So if we don't get a satisfactory resolution I think that what's going to happen is that the inspection services department is going to require him just to remove all the blocks. Anyway, I just wanted to state that. Yep. All right. Janet. So I was going to say that I thought Mr. Griffin was, you know, very open to suggestions and flexible so I think he would probably prefer to make adjustments without the formal opening of the hearing. And that maybe you know the suggestion is to put more cement blocks there and paint them a color that would be easily seen by motorist day or night because they kind of match the street so I think you know my impression is that he was open to suggestions, because it's his first, you know facility. Okay. I will say that the blocks, at least in the photos look like they're fairly light in color. So I'm not particularly worried about them being missed at night. I do agree they're not, you know, attractive at all. The first thing that came to my mind was to that he extend his black chain link fence out from from the print from the enclosure he's got so that it can come out and come partway onto the roadway but that's darker and less visible than the blocks he's got so that's probably not safe. He also wants delivery trucks to come to the fence and be seen on a camera, and then to talk to them so he doesn't he doesn't want people coming close to the facility without being kind of vetted. Well, I mean, I think the right answer is to cut away some pavement probably put in some concrete curbing and, you know, better define that as an entrance off of a roadway, rather than a continuation of Paul Drive, which is what it looks like now. So I don't know whether that's that's probably not feasible. You know, taking additional concrete blocks and lining them up along there gets as closer to the sort of bomb shelter aesthetic that Karen mentioned in my opinion. You know, I'm not crazy about that answer but, you know, every time I go into hall drive to the doctor there. And, you know, every time I go past that it looks like it's an abandoned section of roadway that just never got built out so I agree it's an eyesore I'm surprised that the guys at Valley Medical haven't, you know, asked him to do something about it. Okay, Chris. I think whatever we ask him to do has to be really simple and straightforward and don't leave it up to him to figure it out. So, okay, have some specific things if you'd like to meet with him I can try again to get to come and meet with you. But if you have specific things that you want him to do I think that will be more easily. I guess one other thought I had was, I think a couple of Jersey barriers would feel less what strange. And they also would have fewer sharp corners that feel like that I'm going to scratch my car on them. So that if he had a couple of Jersey barriers and those replaced the blocks. Personally, I feel like that would be a less threatening configuration proves. I'll take this. I'll take issue. I'll, I'll, I'll make make an argument that those blocks could be better. It does take a little bit of imagination and Chris is kind of stuck a spanner in my spoke on that one. But let's say I'm thinking of 12 blocks. I imagine they can be stacked. So I imagine that you could do two blocks and two blocks. And then on the other side to and to and then they could, he could attach two or three pieces of wood horizontally to those that would soften the, the look considerably, particularly if the blocks were then painted out so that they were painted dark so you didn't see them and you had just had the wood and that would be pretty straightforward. And it would make a big difference and it would look better. Can you draw that. I sure can. I can show it to him and say here's what the planning board would like you to do. Well, people comfortable with what I just said and it would represent. Janet seems to think it's okay. I will, I will do that. Over break. And I will, I will send it to you in 1015 minutes. Okay. Well, if you want to send it to me. I mean, I don't know. Can one of you posted or shared the screen after break. Pam or need to do that. I'll send it to Pam I've got her email. I think I think I do. Maybe I don't. Yes, I see. I'll send it to Nate. I know I know Nate can get stuff from me. I'm not logged into my work computer. So you would have to send it to my personal. And send it to me and I could post I could share the screen again. Yeah. All right. Well, with that, maybe we want to take our break and give Bruce a chance to draw. I think we're close to the end of this topic and I think the main thing we have remaining is the design standards comments. So, why don't we do that? Well, why don't we just take a break and so the time now is 757. And given that Bruce has got some homework, let's make it a 10 minute break. And we'll come back at 807. And see if Bruce is finished sketching. All right, so turn off your phone. Mutual. Mutual microphone and we'll come back at a 10 after or seven minutes after eight. Thank you. Okay, the time is nine minutes after eight. So I'm hoping folks will reconvene. I see Bruce has already got his hand up. Maybe he's having a problem. Maybe he had his hand up when he. Shut down when you shut down so I could just. All right. He'll probably never volunteer again. The sketching on the move. Yeah. It's a good idea though. I had no idea how I would transmit what Bruce said. To this person. Mr. Fine. So, I think it was a good idea to do the sketch. I guess you can't start up again till Bruce comes back because he. He completes my quorum. Yeah, he's got his, he's got his hostage. We could talk about something. Other than planning board. Business. Nate and I could tell you that we met with the crest team today. And that was, that was great. It was really interesting. We had a two hour meeting with them. And we told them about what we do. And they told us a little bit about what they expect to be doing. And then they also asked us a lot of questions. So it was a good opportunity to meet them and to. You know, Kind of become familiar with each other and let them know how we might be able to help them and vice versa. And yeah, it was a good, good meeting. So I was glad to be a part of it. And I wanted to thank Nate for being there. Good. Looks like we got Bruce back. So Bruce. I think we need you to. I sent the drawing to both you dug into Nate. All right. Which is basically. Oh, that's beautiful. Okay. Yep. So it hasn't come through yet for me. Oh, okay. Well, I'll keep it here then. Yeah. So basically I imagined you can stack those. I didn't look closely at the photograph to verify that. But it would seem logical that one would be able to stack things like that. And there are 12 of them. So. He could. There we go. Bruce. Nate's brought it up on screen. Yeah. So I mean, you could put them closer together and have more stacks. Oops. Am I muted? No. And the 16 foot two could be preserved or it could be narrowed. I mean, there's some flexibility there, but I think that it doesn't take much imagination to figure out what you could do with that. I mean, the boards probably should be pressure treated because they're outside and they'll be screwed to blocks. So there'll be, they'll be permanently wet behind it. I mean, you could do clever things. Just use ordinary timbers and put some washes or something. So you've got spaces and they would drain out. And then you would have more flexibility in terms of being able to paint them and stain them. And you'd use different width boards. You could put a sign on it that said. You could space them differently so that you could. Four instead of three. You could space the top two closer in the bottom one further and use the top two for a sign. So there's lots of variations. But pretty basically. You could even do it Karen wants, which I would too. You could hang. Plans is from it or you could put a tub behind it. You could do all sorts of things once you've got that there. It would look better than those two blocks. Which I can see why people would, you get, we're going to get lots of complaints, even, but just questions. You know, people are going to be calling their. The DPW to find out whether that's a problem. Serious. At least this will make it look as though somebody did something intentional and people went. Call in. Reporting. A block that. Dropped off a truck or something. Great. Yeah, I think this does look much better. Janet or Karen, any objections to this? Should we. Let Chris send this off to. To the owner and have them. Say this is what we'd like them to do. Karen, I see your, your hand. Yeah. Am I, am I, can you hear me now? Yeah. Yeah. Bruce, you're wonderful. Very telling. Yeah. And on the spot. I think maybe Chris, when you talk to him. I don't know if Bruce, you're amenable to that. Have him get in touch with Bruce. And you could suggest things. I'm sure he's concerned about costs and wants to do this. As inexpensively as possible. But it's, it really is a much, much better solution. And I would also say maybe. At some point. There should be just some. Some paintings on the driveway. Just a line. You know, just like an ordinary street line, those yellow lines in the middle, showing that this, that the. That this is not the way that you go. That this is private. And that would also help. All right. Chris, I see your hand. Did you have suggestions about what to do about the blocks inside the fence? Yes. Bring them outside the fence and stack them up. Well, I think if he wants to deviate from the site plan that was approved, that has the dumpster in the area of those blocks inside the fence. And, and he wants to leave some of the blocks that he doesn't need out here. He, he should come back to us. Okay. So if he wants to leave any blocks inside the fence, he needs to come back. But if he wants to use those blocks to create this new. Barrier or delineation, then you're okay with it. You're okay with him bringing those blocks out. And then you then you want those blocks to come out from inside the fence. Yeah. Does anybody disagree with that? I think. You know, I mean, basically we don't know where the dumpster is going to go at the moment. So we'd like to find that out. Yes. It's shown on the plan. The original plan that was approved. And it's shown in the location of one of these blocks. Right. So. Okay. Thanks. I will try to get that message across. All right. Okay. Well, thank you, Bruce, for. Your quick work. All right. So the time now is eight, 18. And we'll go on to the fifth item on the agenda, which is the downtown design standards. And. I think Nate, is there anything you want to say before you hear from comments from the board? No, I mean, I can share my screen and walk through the document. You know, I'll thank everyone for the comments received. We heard, you know, we heard from the planning board and members of the public. We did speak with a new director of the EI Pamela young. And so he incorporated some of her comments. She also had suggestions for firms that could be. This could be sent to. I think Nate, is there anything you want to say before you hear from comments from the board? No, I mean, I can share my screen and walk through the document. I sent it to the procurement officer and also to other town staff and then waiting to hear comments. So. You know, I think once, you know, if the planning board has any more comments or there's public comments, we can incorporate them. You know, typically. You know, accounting and finance might look at it. The procurement. Officer might look at it. Just to make sure that the comparative review criteria are. Clear and make sense because usually you want to have a proposal that. Fits into one category and not both. Right. So if. Or if we think like the years of experience are too, too stringent. You know, those might be changed, but. You know, typically they don't, you know, if they see something that doesn't make sense in the narrative or scope of services, they might call it out as well, but. You know, I'm having them look at it for kind of general perspective. And, you know, it doesn't make sense in terms of how to select a. You know, a proposal. Okay. All right. Well, if you want, if you would like to go through it, I mean, I had several comments and I'm, and you, I can mention them when you get to those sections. Sure. I'm sharing my screen now. So I'm hoping that's visible. Yes. Yeah. So I'm hoping that's visible. I'm hoping that's visible. And then. You know, didn't change much. I will say, you know, where there's track changes is what was changed. You know, in this third paragraph here, we say the standards will be incorporated by reference and that's parenthetical. And then in the scope of services. You know, it says to. To format the standards as if it were going into a bylaw or as. You know, it's own document that is, that is referenced. And so. You know, it says reference by the bylaw. You know, the document can change without actually having to change zoning. Right. So if you periodically update the design standards or guidelines, then it's not actually changing, changing the zoning, you know, the reference is there. And so the document itself doesn't change. And so, you know, we haven't made that decision. What's the best way we're hoping that consultant has some ideas at the different communities I've looked at. I've probably looked at about two dozen communities and they do it many different ways. Some do it by reference. Some incorporate it. Some have it in their general bylaw. So, you know, I think there's probably, you know, there's probably a few ways to do that. I think that's, you know, something that, you know, is a decision making point. You know, at the end of introduction. You know, there's some, you know, some comments about, you know, the real issues that we're talking about, the actual issues that we're talking about. And we're not talking about, you know, really describing Amherst a little bit more in terms of that it is a college town that it's important. You know, we talked about that. We value sustainability and DEI. And we really want the standards to reflect that, you know, and, you know, allow new development, but be compatible with historic building. So, you know, everything that's in red. I don't know, I'm assuming it's red and blue are the new changes. So, first of all, the last line of the second paragraph, while also providing standards that respond to and reflect the historic architecture, I probably would delete and reflect and simply say that the standards should respond to the historic architecture. I mean, we're not trying to get people to rebuild in a historic style, as far as I know. And so I thought that was adequate. And then under the next paragraph, let's see. I was wondering about the first sentence about having the standards reflect community values of sustainability as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I was having trouble coming, kind of thinking of an example of how diversity, equity, and inclusion would be shown in it or included in a standard of this type, since it's fairly, most of them are fairly neutral and more about physical than sort of cultural or behavioral sorts of issues. I know we want a process that's inclusive and allows a wide variety of constituencies to participate, but I was just not sure how this, you know, how that would happen. Have you seen examples? Yeah, no, not necessarily. I think, you know, the following statement or two tries to kind of explain that a bit more, right? So sometimes it may not be the standards, you know, it's that the standards are creating spaces, right, where things can happen. So it may be that, you know, unless we're starting to talk more about public art or, right, maybe some other things that the standards themselves may not address. So, right, typically design standards, you know, may not get to that level of detail, right? I mean, that becomes really all encompassing if you're having standards that try to bring in some of that. You know, it was a, you know, I agree in the process we do mention, you know, the outreach plan and, right, we want the process to be inclusive. I think if, you know, if others have comments about that, I mean, it could be something that is hard to explain. Okay, right. Well, I mean, I, you know, you've looked at a lot more of these than I have, and I just wasn't sure how that would manifest itself in the standards. Okay, Janet. I think you could, you know, I mean, if you're using diversity, equity and inclusion as sort of like a substitute for sort of people of color, I sort of read that more broadly that we wanted our downtown to include lots of people and different residents and different economic levels, not just, you know, you know, wealthy people or all students. And so I think there's in the master plan of value that all the neighborhoods are mixed in all sorts of ways. And so I kind of read that more broadly. I think you could say community values, but that's kind of vague. So, you know, I think we want all different types of people using downtown and not just it for one group or another. That's what I saw that more broadly. Doug, can I ask you a question? So I had some comments on the first page. Should we just, do you want to go through all your things? And then we all go one. No, no, I was, I thought we were just going to go through it page by page and give our comments as we do that. I have, I had no comments on the first page. So if you did, we can go back and catch up. Okay. Okay, thank you. So I was kind of confused by the define the boundaries of town center and why we, it seemed like that showed up a couple of times in the RFP and it seemed like an odd thing to kick to the consultant to decide. And it didn't seem to me that it was that up for grabs. And I do think we have a kind of a unique town center in that there's a lot of constraints. We have like a cemetery on the part. We have Amherst College kind of hugging a lot of it. You know, there's not, it's not the only place it could really expand would be into, you know, residential neighborhoods. And so I, I kept on seeing that and I kept on running why, like, are you looking for a recommendation from the consultant to expand it? Or don't we know where the downtown is? Or so that was one thing. In the beginning, I think in the third paragraph, you talked about parking strategies, which kind of got my, you know, I was like, oh, you know, maybe they'll be looking at like design or where parking should go. And then I didn't see that carried through. So I wondered if that's what we're really asking the consultant to do is, you know, what are we really asking to do in terms of parking strategies or locations or the look of parking? So that, that thread wasn't carried through. And I know it's a huge area of concern for people. And then the other thing I thought was sort of big was that another constraint on the downtown is it's surrounded by three different historic districts and has some of the most iconic and the downtown itself has the most historic buildings in Amherst, at least the ones that are most photographed and presented by the town. And there's no protection for those buildings. And so I thought that should be mentioned early that there's the Emily Dickinson historic district. I'm going to mess up the names Lincoln Sunset one and then the other newer one. And so that just seems to be sort of something that should come out early, as well as, you know, it some of the most historic buildings in Amherst, you know, the churches and town hall are in the town center. All right. So that's three items. Nate, do you want to respond to any of those at this time? Sure. Yeah. I think, you know, we do want the consultant to develop the design, the area where the design standards would apply. So we're not asking them to define the town center, we're saying define the area of the design standards. So we're not limiting this to just the BG or BL. And so I agree that it could extend into the residential neighborhoods and it could go north up to UMass or southbound to, you know, if they think it could go to, you know, route nine. And I think the importance there is, you know, in this we're saying, you know, that there could be different, it could encompass different zoning districts and we'd expect that there'd be different standards for those different areas. And so, you know, it may not be just commercial standards that we're looking for. We would want the design standards to apply to, you know, if there's redevelopment on Halleck Street, for instance, you know, is what does that look like? Because that is adjacent to, you know, the North Pleasant Street and the commercial core. So it's really not. So, you know, that's what staff would like. We'd like the consultant to, you know, have an on the ground assessment and say, okay, really where to what, you know, what is the extent of this? Because maybe it's important to have some buffering to, you know, what is the commercial core? And so they can have standards that apply to, you know, some properties that are, you know, a transition area. That's, you know, may or may not be the same as say the BL zone. All right. That was the first question. I think there was one about parking parking. Yeah, I agree. So we say parking strategies here. I think we mentioned it one more time. And so we're not asking the consultant to come up with do a parking study, but we would like them right to address, you know, if you're, you know, if, for instance, they recommend a certain development across the frontage of a lot, you know, then where, where is the parking? Is it, you know, do you try to have access from the side? Do you minimize curb cuts? And, you know, in general, do they recommend, you know, say a ratio or, you know, what they would expect? So if they're saying you have to have so much commercial or a certain style, you know, is there parking associated with those uses and just some general, general strategy? So we're not asking them to do a deep dive into parking. You know, sure, if we had the money, we could do that. Then I think the third one was maybe to mention some of the historic districts. Yeah, yeah, you know, that could be added to the second page, the red paragraphs about Amherst. Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. We referenced the local historic district bylaw as a reference document and we would provide maps, but I think we can mention those in the narrative as well. All right. All right, Bruce, you've got some comments. A couple, Nick, could you scroll down? I want to go back to where, no, sorry, scroll up, I meant to say the, to the top. Yes. I was confused, both what Doug says and what Janet says, the comments for mine as well, but take Janet's first because it's here. It says, as part of a process to define the boundaries of the center. I mean, you said, well, they're not really defining the boundaries of the center. They're defining the limit of application of the standards. So I think that this is, I understood exactly as Janet is, I said, well, don't we know where the center of, where the boundaries of the center of town are? And you say, that's not the point. Well, I think it, this is not clear. This is communicating to me and apparently to Janet as well, that there is uncertainty as to the boundaries of the town center. And we're asking them to get involved in recommending them. So it's, it doesn't, this doesn't say what you said. I don't think. And I'll leave it at that. I mean, it's not something I want to go to the wall on. I just, I just echoing that I had the same impression that Janet did. And if you scroll down to where Doug was talking about the community values, because again, I had exactly the same, the town would also like the standards to reflect the community values of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had the same, I said, how do you do that? And, and so one possibility would be to put in front of it wherever possible, which means that it's not an obligation to that they have to do it. It's an obligation that they should do it where possible. Because this, this was a little daunting to me. I didn't know how you would do that with standards. So just a suggestion, I don't really need a field to reflect on. No, no, thanks. Yeah, I agree. I mean, we, you know, the, the CRC looked at this, I think, or there's some comments about, you know, could we have, you know, we're looking at trying to be, you know, have the net zero buildings or, you know, other things about, you know, including, you know, solar. And so, you know, a lot of the standards that I've seen, you know, they, they might address it tangentially, but not directly because right, it may not be possible to actually have this be fully incorporated. So, you know, thanks for the comments. Yeah, I understand that. Okay. Thank you. So I think I want to go back to the comment that Janet made and that Bruce reiterated about the limits of downtown. And are you suggesting that this process might recommend a new zoning that would allow downtown to expand? Yeah, so this is, you know, this is, it's a really good point. And it's kind of the crux of it all. So when, you know, some towns will have, to me, what is a clear, say, business district, and they'll say, let's apply design standards to just this area. For me, you know, and staff who talked about it, you know, if we do that, we're just saying, let's look at the BG and BL. But I think there's areas outside those zoning districts that could use design standards, because maybe perhaps we want redevelopment there, or it will happen. And so, you know, if the consultant is saying, you know, let's look across Triangle Street to what's BL, and we think it could have different massing than what the BL allows. I think that's what the consultant is going to recommend. And then it's, you know, it's the town's decision, you know, do we rezone it to allow for that, what the consultants saying the design standards have, because if we're only going to limit it to what the BL allows, there's really not a lot to do in this exercise for the consultant. So, yeah, so I'm thinking that if they say, you know, up North Pleasant Street, past Kendrick Park, where there's some vacant properties, you know, what was the gateway, and they said, well, why, you know, what if they say this could be redeveloped into three stories, and here's some standards that apply there, I think it's then our local decision to say, well, if so, how, you know, the zoning right now wouldn't allow that. You know, for instance, the, so, you know, I, is it redefining the town center, or is it really having design standards for certain areas that, you know, I'm not considering that they're design standards, we're going to call all this like a general business design standard, I think that the design standards we could have applied to sub districts, which is mentioned so that, you know, there's, they're actually coming up with, you know, maybe some overarching standards, and then they're going to tailor it to these few other, these few distinct areas so that, you know, what's allowed on parts of Triangle Street may not be the same as what's allowed on parts of North Pleasant Street. Okay. Well, I think, I mean, that sort of touches on one question that I'd had about this, this whole introduction, which, you know, which was kind of what's the attitude toward growth. And, you know, it wasn't until I got to the end of the long paragraph on the screen right now in the middle that said it is critical that the downtown design standards allow for development. You know, that was sort of the first place where you were saying, yes, we, we're not just doing design standards within the existing parameters we have right now. We are trying to envision some change. And, you know, so I thought that could be stronger, but I, I, you know, I saw it here. And so that seemed adequate. Yeah, no, no, I mean, it could be mentioned earlier that we're not limiting it to the existing zoning, right, so that it's not, we're not trying to follow the existing zoning dimensional standards or yeah, use uses. Yeah. Karen, you're muted. Yeah, we can't hear you. Sorry. Now, now we can hear you. Yeah, yeah. So how much will a study of this cost, may I asked just a ballpark? So I laugh because when this was first discussed, we said we had up to $100,000 available. And the assumption is that this would might cost more. But, you know, so it's, it's a, it is a considerable amount. Yeah, so my question is a lot of I really welcome and a holistic sort of look at the town. But a lot of the things that the consultant is doing are already kind of in the master plan, right? We want a more walkable cars out of town, if possible, you know, vibrant business community. Does it make sense to do a study like this again, to get a lot of the details that we've, that we've spent many years sort of developing in the master plan? Is it ever done? And this is probably completely naive. Is it ever done that we just call out town urban developers that have an expertise? You mentioned in references you wanted to look at Ithaca College. And so I was trying to read what what they had done. Some successful developers to just give us a plan that this is how you get a lot of bicycle pass in here. This is how you, you develop transportation from UMass, something like that. Can, did we ever consider going that route? Or is this a necessary first step, which is going to be very expensive? And they're going to take a lot of time studying the things that we have and already in all those, those different plans that we have that you listed, 13 or 14 of them, they're going to take a long time to study that and come up to speed. And yes, they're experts, but what about just calling for plans from urban developers that say, look, this is how we can really enliven your town? Is that ever been tossed around? Yeah, right. So I agree that in general principle, those are things that are agreed upon and stated. I think what isn't is the detail and the kind of the necessary framework to really make some, you know, have buildings or the built environment look like we, you know, you know, like something we want. So here's the city of college place is one that if this is visible, I share, change my sharing that, you know, what's done here is okay, you know, just some, you know, first page, but they're already indicating what they would like. And so what was nice about this standard was, you know, it's both graphic and what I like about it is for each area, they have an intent of what they're looking for. They have criteria and then they have, you know, specific to that place, you know, images. And so, you know, the master plan talks about, yes, vibrancy and walkable, but it doesn't really say, like, what does that mean? Is that an eight foot sidewalk or is that a 12 foot sidewalk? Is that a four story building or is that, you know, how much blazing on the first floor, you know, is it street trees? And so, you know, I think we, you know, I think everyone has a different opinion of what's appropriate and what that looks like. And so, and it's not really codified or, you know, in a, in a way that it can be applied consistently right now. And so that's what, you know, we're hoping with these standards. So, you know, here, you know, I, you know, for this, you know, this is, it was done for a specific place. It's actually applied at the county level. So it's, you know, this is in Washington state. So it's a county commission that does the permitting here. But I just, you know, I think these, you know, every, you know, the intent and everything's very clear. And then they use these illustrations with, you know, with annotations and some, you know, some dimensions to show what they really like. And so, you know, I would like to think that the consultant who come to Amherst, look at those plans. And we do say that the emphasis is on the design standards and not, you know, you know, an exhaustive analysis of existing conditions and documents because we do have a lot. But take what we have and say, okay, here's how we can come up with design standards that respond to what Amherst is asking and what's, what's built. And so, you know, I think, so for me, I think something like this is really informative. You know, I can jump to Ithaca, they did something similar to, you know, it's, they're much bigger. This is a college town, you know, but they had the same kind of the same kind of philosophy where they have, you know, this is their design guidelines. So they have, you know, an introduction, their guiding principles and then site design for a specific thing. So surface parking, driveway access, service areas. And, you know, right now, we don't have that kind of level of detail in the zoning byline. So I'd like to think that the design standards would have a similar format that when, you know, for instance, if there's a new project proposed, you know, where the spoke is, for instance, we would have some of this to say, here's, you know, here are the ingredients, this is what we're looking for. You know, if you'd like a four story building, here's the type of window pattern, maybe material. Here's how it relates to the curb in the street in terms of pedestrian, you know, experience, you know, if we want awnings or so. Anyways, I agree that I think there's a lot already done. It just hasn't really been me synthesized and then, you know, done to this level. And Nate, I could add on as for Karen's benefit as a member of the planning board when we approved the last archipelago building that I guess it's 11 East Pleasant that's going up now. You know, we have our zoning that gives us height and setbacks, but we don't have a lot about the articulation of the building. And I think it's my understanding that, you know, some people like the buildings that archipelago is putting up and some people don't. And there's differing opinions about the street level of those buildings and how transparent they are and whether they are in conducive to commercial occupants or tenants or not. You know, we know they've had a hard time renting all of the first floor of one East Pleasant. And I think some of us think that some of the columns that come all the way down on that building are really not encouraging commercial occupancy. So there's details like that that I think I was hoping would come out of this process. Yeah, on the other hand, what's to say we're having a competition for this part and everybody submit your plans and then we see in those five plans what seem. Well, I think the thing is to have a competition for a design for property that the town doesn't own. There's no incentive for a developer to propose something for land they don't control or that we don't control. Okay, that's the hitch. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, thank you. This is our way of suggesting to both the landowner and the developers, here's how we'd like it to go. I got it. Thank you. Yeah, and I will say that my hope is that they do look beyond just North Pleasant Street and into the adjacent properties and I'm calling them kind of sub districts of design standards. And I'd like to think that we could extrapolate that and say, okay, well, could we apply these in East Amherst or in other areas as well. And so parts of the design standards could then apply other places. And we hope that we'd have enough information that we could make that work. And so really, we're focusing on the town center for now, but I'm hoping it's done in a way that we could say, okay, can we take pieces of this and then have it apply in other areas as well? Well, mate, you could structure it as not site specific, but different types of environment. You know, like here's the most highly urban type of environment Amherst would want. And here's the second most and here's a village center. And then it's not site specific and you just apply it wherever we want to apply it. Janet? I'm actually very enthusiastic about doing a downtown design process with the community. I think it would bring people together for us to sort of say, I mean, I Doug, remember you saying this way back when you started on the board, you know, is there agreement on heights? Is there agreement on setbacks? Is there agreement on look? And I think my hope is in this process, with flexibility, we will come to an agreement and be part of a community process of putting together something. I think that the way this is worded in terms of the language that about expanding the downtown is opening up a can of worms. And so I think the goal is to build support, not dissension. And I think if people thought, oh, this is the gateway coming back or my neighborhood is now going to become part of a commercial district, people are just going to lean in and against it. And I don't think we want to do that. I think, you know, there's a lot of room to build up now in downtown. We have a lot of single story buildings. And I think the question is, is if we can put in design standards that show that the buildings, we have figured out what we want to see as a community, the buildings come in, your building support for increased density that people like. And I do think that, you know, next when we look at hopefully East Amherst Village Center, we probably don't want the same heights as downtown, but people will know what the look is. They'll feel comfortable with it maybe in 10 or 15 years. They'll want to expand the downtown. But I wouldn't put that onto the consultant because I think you're going to, they're going to run into a wall. And that's really a decision for the town council to make for us to recommend. I would just take that off the table and just focus on our downtown. I don't, you know, the BL, the BG, I don't know if we're going to go down to the Emily, you know, down to the, what is it, business neighborhood, you know, by Bruno's or not. But I just, I don't think, I think if this language persists, people are going to be very suspicious in the start. I don't think we want to create with that tone. If this process works and we have good designs, we have a stronger community and we'll be happier and we'll have development that's bigger, you know, and, you know, just helping our town in every way. I just think this language is too open to construction. And when you're talking about the gateway or going more into the neighborhoods, I think people are going to be really immediately opposed. Right. But I, yeah, I don't, but I don't see this as just a commercial downtown design standard. I think it's, you know, if the properties along Kellogg have, you know, on the north side, going back, you know, the first stretch, they could be torn down and rebuilt at some point. And so, you know, we don't have anything guiding that. And that's, you know, adjacent to the downtown, it's in a residential zone. But I think it'd be nice to have design standards applied there. And so I, to me, that's part of the town center. To me, the town center isn't, you know, just one property off of North Pleasant Street. It's a much bigger area. And so, you know, I'm, you know, Doug kind of said, in terms of, you know, there's archetypes of like where we want the design centers to apply different, you know, environments. And so I'm not envisioning this as just, you know, the main corridor, but also what's happening, you know, a few properties back, you know, what does that look like in terms of height and facing the street and design standards. So, yeah, I mean, I think that some residents may be concerned. We're not saying that we're going to be promoting, you know, commercial development in a residential neighborhood. But what I'm saying is we can have design standards if there's going to be big changes. We have some ability here to say what we want it to look like. All right. I guess if we can move on. It's 10 of nine. So let's see. You want to say anything about this third page? The scope of services, Doug? Yeah. I mean, I really didn't have any comments on this page. Did others? Janet. I'm not sure if it goes into the task one or task two, but I thought that it'd be good for the consultants to meet early on with kind of the planning board, the ZBA, the historic commission, the design review board, disability access. I just thought that that should happen earlier in the process because we're all dealing all the time with this area and get feedback from the public a lot. So I thought it'd be good to put us in earlier in the process. Okay, Janet. I actually completely agree with that. And I had that comment when I saw the presentations to those boards and committees under task four kind of what, you know, did we have any involvement earlier? And I guess the way you've structured it, our basic opportunity is to participate in the public process as private citizens. And that may be fine. But I think some of us, you know, would be happy to have more involvement as a board. Well, I think it would help the consultants to hear our experience, you know, working with this. Okay. Bruce, you are muted. My apologies. Task two, we scrolled up and down and through it. But so scroll down a little Nate, if you would stop. I noted here where it says conduct stakeholder meetings, interviews, it's focus groups that should be five to seven stakeholders. What I did was when I was looking at this, I noted that that various tasks say public forums, neighborhood workshops, at least three attend public events, at least three hold public meetings, at least three hold presentations, at least six. And I wondered why there was no at least a number of stakeholders making suggested this there, a reason why we wouldn't do what we've done for all of the other stated events like these, that you would want to put a number of stakeholders meetings. It was that just a minute or was it a minute intentional? I mean, the number of the minimum number of. Yeah, it was totally intentional. No, yeah, good point. I was thinking that it would be, you know, we list a fair number of what we'd want as stakeholders. And so, yeah, maybe it would be good. I mean, it was only intentional in the thought that it would be something we could talk about with the consultant to say, okay, let's have eight. But maybe if we think we're going to have a lot of focus groups, we should just say that so that they, you know, are understand what our expectation is. So, you know, I wasn't trying to limit the number of focus groups. I was just thinking it was something that would be, you know, discussed and negotiated, but perhaps we won't want to put, like you said, a minimum or, you know, or some some approximate number just so it's clear. It helps the scope. I mean, this is really the scope of work. And all of the other attend three public events to present information and receive comment. You've been specific. And so the consultant can add up the number of events that they either have to attend or that they have to host themselves, initiate themselves. And that will give them some idea. I just thought that probably what will happen is the consultants in making their proposal would ask, or they would state in their proposal, and maybe that's what you would want. But it just seemed it was just different in the stakeholders meetings were treated differently in the proposal. That's all. I mean, Nate, you did ask for a pretty detailed sort of schedule of work and an outline of how they would do the process. So, I mean, you could just leave it to them to propose a certain number. And then use that as part of the differentiation between teams. But I mean, Bruce is right here, you know, you have been a little bit inconsistent. Okay. Bruce, you can take your hand down and Janet, you're next. In terms of stakeholder meetings, I think 60 or 70% of our population are UMass students and I thought, obviously, it'd be hard to meet with them all, but I think I thought that they should be pulled out as a separate group because they're probably a huge user of downtown, maybe Amherst College students, but I feel like that's the majority of who lives in Amherst and they should be outreach to the campuses and things like that. I'm not sure stakeholder meetings, but I think that could be one thing. But we have a lot of students in town and we want them to come downtown in a peaceful and shopping manner. But what do they want to see downtown? Well, be careful what you ask for, Janet. They're going to want lots of housing and plenty of bars or something. Or maybe not, maybe not, but I think they should be, they already have, you know, so. Yeah, no, you're actually right. If I went cheaper housing, then, you know, $1,500 is a bit, you know. All right. Any other comments? There is a public hand, an attendee. I'm sorry. An attendee has their hand up. Oh, okay. Well, I was, I did see Dorothy's hand and I thought we would go through the board members' comments and then turn to the public. Sure. Should I keep scrolling down? Is that? Yeah, I think so. And so, yeah, just to Bruce's point and what we've said, you know, we're in the scope of services. We've added some language, sorry for the scrolling up here. You know, some of it is, we can have some contract negotiations. And so, you know, we're asking the consultant to meet this scope of work, but and explain it with, you know, their methodology and their proposal, but also perhaps, you know, depending on cost, where can the town staff help things. So, you know, Doug, you know, you said, wow, this scope could be more than what we have budgeted. And for instance, if the consultant would like to do a visual preference survey, you know, they could, you know, they could essentially maybe get the images and structure what they want to, but then staff could perhaps administer it, right? We could solicit it. We could get the comments, the feedback and then, you know, compile the data and get it to the consultant. So they're not spending their time doing that. And so, you know, I like the idea of getting boards and committees engaged earlier and maybe, you know, that becomes in task two. At the same time, I'm not sure I want the consultant to go to eight different boards and committees at the beginning. So maybe it's a consolidated thing, but, you know, I think mentioning it is important. So, you know, again, you know, maybe they have experience that they would write into their proposal about how to achieve all this, right? How they can structure their own engagement processes. And we're asking them to do that to come up with an engagement plan. So hopefully we say, we say it and then they can, you know, if they have some other ideas, they can, they can, they can present that. All right. So, task three, task four. Then here's task five. Hey, hold on, Janet. You may have already, this might be something that town is planning anyway, but I thought about, like, an interactive website where you could have examples or surveys or comments or discussion or, you know, like consolidating feedback. Like, I don't know that the consultant would administer it, but they may have experience with that kind of thing, like how to involve the public and inform the public. So I don't know where that would go, but it seemed like that would be really important, especially with the students and people who aren't able to get to meetings. Right. So we have engage Amherst and we also have, you know, the civic plus the traditional Amherst. So I think there's ways to do that. I agree. I'm hoping that as part of their proposal, you know, we're asking them to come up with a community engagement plan and a strategy. And so if they're saying, you know, there's a web presence, there can be online surveys, there can be other ways to do it. You know, we, you know, planning staff, we can meet with IT and the community outreach officers and come up with, you know, what the town can do. You know, sometimes consultants say, oh, I have a subscription to these services and I can put it on this other platform. You know, they might belong to, you know, a community forum website that they can easily adapt for the project or if not, we can do it. So yeah, I'm hoping that they, you know, that's part of the comparative right review. You know, what are they going to bring in terms of that kind of those strategies? All right. Like you scroll on down. I don't see any hands yet. When you get to section six, I had a comment. Sure. So you have a lot about the team, but you never define it. And, you know, at least my experience with offices of this sort is you have a couple of people who are highly experienced many years of in the field. And then you, as you move down the hierarchy, people are younger and less experienced. And, you know, I think, I think what it seemed to me that what you really want to know is who are the representatives of the firm that are going to be the face of this process? You know, who is it that's always going to be the moderator of the meetings? And, you know, do they come across as experienced and credible? And I think you also had something maybe in the comparative analysis about, you know, encouraging some diversity of gender and race or whatever cultural backgrounds in that. So, you know, I think as a respondent, you want to try to adjust your definition of the team to meet your requirements, right? So, you know, if I have 20 years of experience, but I'm going to have four people who are younger and are going to do my computer renderings and the grunt work and they only have five years of experience, maybe I don't meet the seven years minimum. And so, I just think you need to be, you know, you're sort of opening yourself up to people gaming the way they define the word team at the moment. And maybe that's fine, you know, but when, you know, when you look at a team, it's the people in the office, sometimes there's some consultants, and it could be a pretty big group that's actually the team. And you probably don't want all of them to show up at the evening meetings. So, you know, that that's going to affect your fee in addition. So, I think you need, I felt like you should be a little more strategic about what does team mean or maybe it's who are the representatives who are, you know, who are the face of the firm. Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. You know, there's also some comments, you know, there's been some comments made that, you know, we also don't want to discourage young and, you know, kind of maybe innovative professionals who may not have the experience. So, I think I agree that, you know, we could define team, we've had this discussion and other procurement, you know, procurements. And so, we're, you know, we're asking the consultant to provide kind of what, how they define it themselves, right. So, we're saying it could be anywhere from engineers to architects to landscape architects to, you know, you know, sustainability consultants. So, I'm not sure. Right now, I, you know, I think it's a good point. I think staff can talk about it. You know, again, I'm hoping as part of the review criteria, they're submitting, you know, and number four here, we have the project manager. So, we're hoping that they give us an outline of what the team is. Is it five members? Is it seven members? What is the experience and resume of all those members on the team? And then because it's not a, you know, this is both kind of a qualitative and kind of a quantitative review. It's not just that, oh, they have this, you know, you know, two people have 30 years experience and then they're doing all the work and then they have the, you know, one or two people that are doing this, we like to see the breadth of the entire team and how they collaborate together. So, you know, I'm hoping that that's what they, we're expecting that that's what they're going to present in their proposal, describe how the team works. Yeah. All right. So, my only other comment in this area, and it wasn't exact, I mean, it doesn't have to be addressed in this area was, you know, we now do a lot of meetings remotely over computer. And so, you know, when on item four here where you talk about public meetings and evening meetings, you know, I don't know whether you want to leave it up. I mean, there's got you'll need to have some level of conversation about how many meetings do you expect them to come here for and be in person versus doing over the zoom platform. And so, you know, whether you want to direct them at this point into in some some direction about that or just leave it to the way they how they want to respond. That is something that you haven't mentioned here, that, you know, you, you realize there will be a couple of different delivery, you know, ways of meeting. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Anything else on this page board members? All right. Moving along. Okay. So, when you got to comparative review on page nine, so you have all these criterias for comparative review, but there's never any mention of fee. And are you going to be judging these at all on the basis of fee or are you going to have them put their fee in a separate envelope and you don't open it until you've selected who you want to work with? Right. So, this is a, we don't see the fee at all. So, we don't know what any of the consultants fees are. So, your ladder comments correct. So, this is, you know, going to be a, you know, a quality based review based on their proposal and responses. And we only take, you know, we'll only see the fee of the selected proposal. So, it's not all fee based. If we're going to go that route really, we would not have comparative review and we take the lowest qualified bidder, the lowest price of the qualified bidder. So, you know, that's something we're saying we don't necessarily want because, you know, we'd like to be able to have interviews and review proposals and see, you know, what team, you know, has, you know, the best fit for Amherst and has, you know, you know, really is a comparative review amongst all proposals submitted. So, you know, it's really how, you know, what's the best proposal, you know, compared to the rest that we've received. All right. Bruce, you're muted. My spacebar depression doesn't seem to work anymore. That was usually my go-to for short mute, unmute. Simply on this page, the second line, second sentence, projects meeting the minimum requirements. Do you not mean proposals meeting the minimum requirements? Right. And then I'll have another word, but that's on page 11. I guess my only come, I had one other sort of comment on, I guess it was topic number one, the comparable projects. I guess I, it seems like the pandemic has kind of put a, was a real interruption on a lot of sort of design processes. And I guess I just wondered whether it was going to be feasible for anybody to have, you know, as many projects within the last seven years, as you were suggesting, and whether, you know, anything happened in college towns in the last three years. So you may end up with several, you know, a majority of the proposals not being most advantageous, you know, maybe only a few that are advantageous. And I just wondered whether that's going to discourage people from even proposing, you know, if they, if they say, well, you know, I'm going to, I've done projects, you know, I've done three projects in the last seven years and I'm going to be not advantageous. Why would I do this? So I was just wondering whether it would make sense to reduce your threshold at all. But yeah, I think Chris would agree that this could be reduced or changed. And so yeah, I'm not disagreeing. I, you know, you know, when we're right. So like I said, I was trying to create those three categories to have some clear distinction. And so if we want to, you know, change one, we can change, change them all perhaps. And I'm okay with that. I agree that, you know, maybe this is too, too aggressive. I mean, if we're thinking that the project we have in hand could take 18 to 24 months, and then we're asking that they've, you know, done four of these in seven years, it's an accelerated schedule than what we're even asking. So it also caused me to wonder whether your target audience is firms in Massachusetts, or are you open to having firms who are coming from a farther distance? Because obviously if you let the firms from outside of the state participate, you know, you're more likely to get people with more experience, but then you're going to be paying for travel costs. And, you know, I think within Massachusetts, I don't know how many firms could do this. That's a good point. I think, yeah, the way this will be advertised, it'll be, you know, advertised locally, but it also will be advertised, you know, at the state level. So, you know, in the central register and goes in bulletins. So I think firms regionally will see this. So, you know, anyone who subscribes, you know, any company who's looking to do public work usually subscribes to some of the services that this will be posted in. So it's not necessarily that we're targeting firms from, you know, Virginia, but it could be that they see it and maybe they often collaborate with someone out of Boston and they say, hey, let's put a proposal together. Okay. But yeah, so I, you know, I, to your point, though, I think, you know, Chris, we talk about this internally that maybe we have to change some of these, these measurements because it is, like I said, a little strict. But back to who are who, you know, who, you know, so one thing I was going to say tonight is we can reach out to certain firms and say, here's look what we're doing, but also this is going to go through a pretty public advertisement process and, you know, it'll get out there. And so I was going to say, when we did the comprehensive housing market study in the 2000s, you know, I was surprised to see we had companies, you know, we had someone from California or, you know, like places that have never been to Amherst that somehow saw our request for proposal and they were responding, you know, and so when this is advertised, that's what we will get. Okay, great. I wonder, you know, maybe to help the the two year pandemic or two and a half year thing, just make it a longer period, like nine years. Yeah. And Chris, you have your hand up. I guess I just wondered, do we have to say what the duration of time is? Can we just say three similar projects? Do we have to say within a certain period of time? Is that required, Nate? No. So, you know, I think that people would necessarily want to show, you know, their best work, which is probably their recent work if they've been building up experience. So I'm thinking that maybe we don't need to have that time period so prominent. Maybe we could stretch it out. Maybe we could say, like Janet said, nine years or 12 years or something large so that we're not constraining people, because I think a lot of these firms aren't only going to be doing urban design and urban planning, they're also going to be building buildings and they're going to be designing parks and they're going to be doing a lot of other things. So, you know, if they had three or four similar projects, it would be kind of amazing that they would have that many similar projects to this in a short amount of time. So I'm all for either elongating the time or not having it. All right. So anybody else have comments on this page? I have no more comments on the document. Bruce? Well, I've got a couple of comments. If we go down to page 11, there's a word, I guess. Where are we? I'm just going to have to swipe over to... Whoops. Sorry. Here we go. Yes. Okay. Come back. Oh, there we go. Right at the bottom there. Provide a dynamic presentation. I guess I'm just allergic to the use of the word dynamic. And I would vastly prefer if I were reading this and trying to imagine that responding it that I would be challenged to provide a cogent presentation rather than a dynamic one. And I don't know whether that's your preference as well, Nate, but dynamic just seems to be one of those words that people use when they can't think of anything else to say. I couldn't. So that's so great for the suggestion. Again, it was interesting when we asked for presentations, that means everyone who's submitting a proposal has to be given the opportunity to give a presentation. And so it's not like we can say we're going to do the first round and then the second round is going to have a presentation. That means if we get 15 proposals, all 15 proposals will include a presentation. And then the difficulty is what's the comparative review criteria? So how do we extinguish between an advantageous and a more advantageous presentation? And so if you think a dynamic presentation is really not explaining that very well, then we can change that. And so I've heard some really awful dynamic presentations that really made my skin crawl and made me want to run out to the room or get rid of them as quickly as possible and get on to the next contender. So dynamic doesn't do it for me, but togent does. But rather, it's probably other words that compelling or engaging. Engaging is good. I actually felt the same way. I just thought it seemed like I would go for a very calm, thorough, showing a mastery of the project, the process, a history of past success. I don't need to be thrilled. And I thought in a way it was like, I just thought a laid-back person or an introvert who could deliver the goods is fine with me. Right. So then, yeah. So I guess then it's agreed. So then what is the distinction between the categories then? Is it the amount of information, the mastery? So we're trying to also show, I think we could eliminate this and then have that it's really, how is the information presented? How informative is it? What kind of master do they show? And so really that's the comparative piece, not... I mean, you could just take the word out and it still reads as a sentence. Right. Yeah. An understanding of the project because that's how much time, the attention they pay to what we're asking to do is going to be really helpful to evaluate them, I think. Right. Like if they call Amherst the city all the time. But we are, Ney. One thing that the second and third indicate that there's an understanding, but the first one doesn't. So maybe you need to add that to the first one. An understanding of the project. Pretty definitely, I would say. Oh, is that missing? Okay, usually it's... All right, yeah. Maybe a deep understanding. Yeah. Or thorough. Yeah, yeah. Well, you can do that in your own time, I guess. Yeah, I'm sort of put that right here for now, but all right. Okay. And apropos of that, when I read it, it wasn't clear this whole business of interviewing and face to face. And I thought it's not clear to me that there is... And maybe this is because this is a different way of doing business than I'm used to. But I'm used to when you're receiving proposals from people, from groups, there may be many, and you shortlist a few and you interview them. And you have this face-to-face engagement, and there's not just a presentation, but there's a question and answer and so forth through a process by which you can get a feel for the chemistry, the human chemistry, of the people that you are contemplating working with for a year or two. And so, first of all, it didn't seem to... It wasn't clear that you were shortlisting, and maybe you're not. It wasn't clear that they were face-to-face, and it wasn't clear that there was a to and fro question and answer process. So yeah, we can't shortlist. So everyone has to be reviewed using the same criteria. So we can't narrow it down from seven to three and then have a different review process for those three. The review process is for everyone, and we make a decision. In the standard boilerplate, we do allow for a question and answer, but not material questions and answers. So it's really if there's something that, kind of like we did tonight, if there's a misunderstanding or we need clarification, but we wouldn't be able to ask one consultant to provide different information that we're not asking another proposal. So we have to follow this standard process. I think some of it could be in the past, regulations can be updated or reinterpreted. And so yeah, I think 15 years ago, if the town were doing this, we may have followed a different process. And but since then, we've had different guidance or things have been up. I know in 2016 and 18, the state's procurement regulations were updated. And so I think they've taken out some of that, I don't know if we can call it ambiguity, but that ability to shortlist and then have different criteria for say the three as opposed to all of that submitted proposal. So I feel like they've may have changed some of that than what was done in the past. So I guess this is just a different process. For example, with the school, the town, so this is, I guess, a submission, a statement of qualifications or something of like that. And in a form that allows you then to say, this is the set of qualifications that I prefer. And you choose those because it seems possible that if you've got a dozen or 15 respondents and you're obligated to to interview everybody, that's really onerous. So I guess you must imagine that you're not going to get just a large number of respondents here and that you're comfortable or you don't feel threatened by the workload associated with winnowing down the respondents. Yeah, I think it will actually be a task for the committee. So on that point, I'm considering like a five person review committee. The town manager has to first approve of this and say that it's necessary, which he's been briefed on it. And then the town manager appoints a review committee. The review committee would review proposals independently and then together as a group. And then also with the proposal in the presentations. And so I mean, it could be that we that we receive eight to 12 proposals and it is a time commitment. And so I guess we just have to set aside that time. Okay, so it's helpful. This is not the way, this is an unfamiliar way of doing business, but that's fine. I just need to know that in terms of what I've been reviewing here. Okay. All right. So I want to just mention it's 25 after nine. So I was hoping this wasn't going to be a really late meeting. So I think we're close to the end of the document unless board members have another more additional pressing comments, I'd like to go to the public and let the comment that the woman that's got her hand raised and has had it for quite some time make her comment. So Pam, could we bring Dorothy Pam in and let her make her comment? Okay, Nate, can you stop changing your screen? Pam, thank you for your patience. Here we go. Hello, Dorothy, if you give us a name in your address. How are you? Very well. I have a number of comments to make, but the first one that just occurred to me this last moment, there was something way back there about diversity or whatever. And I thought, okay, there was some attempt, I believe, at social justice to be as a consideration in here. I thought of certainly a way there could be some, and that could be that if they're going to be apartment buildings, that there be a larger number of affordable units that could be a variety of affordable levels, but that that if there's going to be apartment that not just be these high, very expensive student rentals. So that may have been what was behind the mind of whoever wrote that word in. So our first question is, were you planning to change the overlay downtown, overlay district downtown, which says that there's no parking because people don't need cars because we have a bus because we now know that the demand for parking is in fact there and it's not going away. Because I think that's a very important issue. And it's not mentioned or addressed except in considering parking. Secondly, I'm a little concerned you might be removing the buffer between the dense commercial district and the established residential district, which I would not like. And again, I hope that you're not going to allow high rises on both sides of Kendrick Park. I happen to be very fond of the buildings that are there or buildings of that style. But we do I do not want to see the park shaded with high rises on both sides, which was something we mentioned a while back. I think that you need to give the architectural firms some guidance on what you have in mind, because do you want them to kind of follow UMass's brutal style of architecture, or to take a look at our historic downtown in the block of North Pleasant Street, you know, New York Town Hall or some of the other historical residential areas in town. Otherwise, you could get a lot of really crazy designs that would cause a lot of people to have heart attacks. But I also am very concerned about the outreach groups which are limited to five or seven and the whole list of categories is there. And of course, that would mean that somebody from a residential neighborhood would be one of them. And would be, you know, so by deliberately limiting these groups to five to seven, that may be the consequence intended or unintended, which would discourage people from participating, as they would say, well, what's the point. So the other question, the last question is, is this money already set aside? I think I thought there was some sense that this money was actually in a pot somewhere. Because if not, given some of the harsh realities we're just discovering in terms of our capital projects, I have questions about the financing of it. So those are my comments and questions. Thank you very much for letting me offer these. Thank you. Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Dorothy. Nate, do you want to comment on any of those? I think the funding is in place. So it was a capital request or a request to the planning department the other year. So I think that's good. Yeah. And back to the focus groups, I think we would have a minimum. We're hoping that the consultant does everything from these focus groups that could be anywhere from 70 to 90 people to other outreach efforts. And so, you know, and it may be that a lot of time and money can be spent on outreach. And so, you know, if the consultant thinks there's other ways to engage the town, whether like Janice said, through its online surveys, or if they think the town could do it, staff could do it. So we're not spending consultant money on outreach. I think that can be part of the process. So we're not trying to limit who's involved. It's just, you know, that's a kind of a time-consumptive effort. And, you know, I think the consultant, you know, can do that. And I think we can try to help augment what their service is, but we'd love to have their expertise in the design piece. Yeah. And then, you know, really what's appropriate for architecture. So I think, you know, when we staff meet meets with them, and if they meet with the boards and committees earlier in the process, I think we'll hear that there's, you know, kind of different opinions on what's appropriate downtown, what's good architecture, what's bad architecture. And so, you know, I'd like to have the, you know, these experts say, what is appropriate? So is it a blending of style? Is it okay that we have modern looking buildings, but it's appropriate because the proportions, the rhythm, the patterns, the setback, the height all make sense. And so, you know, we're not, I'm not, I have my ideas and, you know, everyone has their, so I'm relying on the consultant to do that. And I do think, Janet, you said at one point, I just want to say like the height of buildings, and what are we doing here? And, you know, back to the parking district. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, right now we define height in our by-law a certain way, in that, you know, it doesn't include the parapet, it doesn't include HVAC or equipment on the roof. And I'd like the consultant to say this is what I think is appropriate because, you know, essentially people can add height to their building and massing by putting things on the roof that's not calculated into height. And so, you know, that's something I'd want the consultant to look at. In terms of the municipal parking district, yeah, we're not asking them to specifically address the district, but if they say, given the development patterns of Amherst and here's some parking strategies, and they think that parking could be provided or should be, then, you know, then it's, then it's our local decision to say, okay, maybe the municipal parking district has run its course and now it's time to change it. You know, it was, it was, you know, it was offered as a kind of an incentive to help development downtown. We have development downtown and so is it time to, you know, look at that again. And so, you know, I'm hoping the consultant touches on that a little bit. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Nate. And thank you, Dorothy. Pam Rooney has her hand up. Why don't we bring her over? You could give us your name and your address. This is the plethora of PAMs tonight. Thank you for letting me in. And I wanted to say thank you to Bruce for asking for the names to be read at the beginning of the meeting. I think that, you know, been asking for that for quite a while and that's very nice. Specific comments. A couple people have already touched on the fact that the having a meeting with the planning board ZBA, DAC, DRB earlier in the process, maybe they get treated like a stakeholder group so that they, I mean, because you are the people that are being asked to interpret today's zoning bylaws, how do these guidelines inform your process and how do they help you? And I think that would be really helpful to get that. I had the same question about why do you limit the stakeholder group size to five to seven, you know, I think for, I can't remember what the process, oh it was the 40R process where the stakeholders were all of the business or the building owners, property owners in downtown and some business owners, no neighbors. That appeared to be the stakeholder group. I think each of these categories you definitely might have more than five to seven people. I don't think that would add cost to having a stakeholder meeting by having a slightly larger group. Thinking about some of the selection characterizations like the presentation of the proposal when I look at adventages, the presentation development team provide an understanding of the project. The presentation is clear and informative and all team members participate. That's what I want to see. So that's quite advantageous to me. If you wanted to make it most advantageous, perhaps you include something about a deep understanding of the project and a well-described engagement process or something, you know, the public involvement process that appears to be reasonable and all-encompassing or something of that nature. And that's it for now, but thank you. Thank you, Pam. Yeah, thanks. Sorry, I just want to say maybe I misunderstood Dorothy's question. So yeah, I just changed that, right? I think we could have more stakeholders in each focus group. So I apologize to Dorothy if I misunderstood that. So I agree so we could have, you know, have more people in each focus group. You know, so yeah, I think we can do that. Maybe you have five to seven stakeholder meetings. Right, right, right. That's the quantity that you were looking for earlier. The last thing I wanted to say before I forget is that I am completely delighted that you are at this point where you're getting ready to do an RFP for this very, very important project. All right. Thank you, Pam. Come on in. All right. Nate, we've gotten our comments. And Chris, do you know if any of the other board members who were not present this evening have sent any in? You are muted. Muted? No, I don't believe they have. We can reach out to them again. If you don't mind doing that, just to remind them that this is their chance to weigh in. So thank you, Nate, for the presentation and all your work. All right, unless there's anything else anybody wants to say about this topic, I guess we will consider this closed for this evening. The time is 9 36. And I guess we can go on to the parts of the agenda on page two. Chris, starting with old business, anything not anticipated 48 hours in advance? No old business. All right, what about new business? No new business. All right, I think I saw in my packet some form A and R drawings. Pam, you want to bring those up? Pam's done a good job of exploring this. It's rather complicated. Do you want to talk about it, Pam? Or do you want me to talk about it? I think you should just go ahead and talk about it. But I've got lots of slides here to back you up and support you. Okay, so this property is located on Pelham Road. It's east of the Fort River, east of the bridge, and it's almost to Poets Corner. And it's one of these long narrow lots that was created a long time ago. I think the front house was built in 1900 and the back house was built in 1950. And it's owned by a group of siblings. And they would like to be able to sell the property and get some remuneration from it. And one of the siblings wants to live in the front house. So what they're proposing to do is they're proposing to connect the area shown in yellow to the blue area. So they want to make one big lot. And then they want to subdivide that lot. And Pam, if you can show us the, yeah, that's great. So the green lines are showing the property line between the yellow property on the previous drawing and the blue property. The green lines are showing that property line going away. So that little piece at the very bottom of the property is going to be added to the whole. And then the front property, the area shown in red, is going to be carved off. And that will contain the one house at 101 Pelham Road. And then the other property, including that back area, is going to contain the other house at 103 Pelham Road. And the people here have already gone to the zoning board of appeals. And they've received a variance. And they need a variance for this property because it's got a lot of anomalies. It's not a very wide property. So it's really hard to do anything here. But there are a number of setback issues that are problematic. And in addition to that, it's unusual to have two houses on one property. So they want to move them apart. They don't really have enough frontage to have a flag lot. They have 76 feet, roughly 76 feet of frontage altogether. I think this is in the RN zoning district. So they would normally be required to have 120 square feet of frontage. They would have been required to have a 120-foot building circle in the middle of this property. But they obviously can't do that because this is too thin. And there are setback issues. So they received a variance from the zoning board of appeals to accomplish what is shown on this plan. And so the next step for them is to actually take the step of dividing the property into two properties. And you can see that one property is going to have about 16 feet of frontage, which is enough to allow cars to travel back and forth. The other property will have about 60.7 feet of frontage. And both properties will have the ability to travel over this driveway, just as they've always done in the past. So I think that's all I have to say. You may have some questions. And you did receive a copy of the variance text in your in your packets. So so we don't, you know, it's already been decided that this configuration is allowable or, you know, approved it by variance. That's all you want us to do is to agree that this does not require a subdivision plan. That is correct. And then authorize the chair, Mr. Marshall, to sign the plan on behalf of the planning board. Okay. All right. So board members, any questions? Any objection to me assigning this and agreeing that it's, that this does not require subdivision approval? Uh, your silence and is deafening. So I'm going to take that as a consensus, Chris, that we are okay with this and you will tell me when I can come sign it. Thank you. And thanks to Pam for providing the good information. She asked some good questions and we had a meeting with the building commissioner. So we were all clear on what was going on here. I think this is the first variance I've ever seen issued by the CBA. Yeah. They don't issue very many. It's really unusual for them to issue a variance. Yeah. Well, it's a change to the bylaw that that you don't want to have everybody saying they can do it, right? So it's going to be really odd and special and hardship is the is the controlling, uh, requirement here is hardship and shape of the lot. Okay. But we're good. I mean, I'm good. Okay. You're great, Bruce. Okay. Um, let's see. That was item eight on our agenda. The time now is 943. Uh, Pam and Chris, any, uh, upcoming ZBA? Nothing new to report. All right. Not tonight. How about SPP, SPR and SUB applications? Yes. I think I've told you about these before, but we do have 463 West Street coming back to you because we didn't get an appropriate number of, um, planning board members to vote on the special permit for 463 West Street to extinguish previous special permits. So we have to bring that back to you. And then we have another special permit at 51 Spalding Street, which is already a two-family house and one of the units has some lodgers and they need to clarify their parking issues and also, um, clarify the fact that they have lodgers in this two-family house. So Nate is most conversant about this project. If you have questions about that, you could ask him. Otherwise, you'll be seeing this, I think on the 7th of September. I don't recall 463 West Street. Did I miss that hearing? That's the one that was already approved. It was Ron Laverdeer, the retaining wall and back of the building. Oh, okay. But there was a special permit to extinguish the two ZBA permits from the 80s and the hearing was continued and when it was continued, there was only four voting members and there needs to be five for a special permit. So okay, it has to come back. I think, okay, I must have missed that. Okay. Okay. All right, so I guess moving on, committee and liaison reports. PVPC, we don't have anyone to represent that. CPAC, Andrew is absent, design review board, Tom is absent. Janet, how about the solar bylaw working group? We had another productive meeting. Chris Brestrup gave an excellent overview of land use and mapping in Amherst, which you can't get enough of because you always look at it and try to learn new stuff. So she's kind of giving the board the literal lay of the land in Amherst. And then we had a long presentation by another member about the mass decarbonization road map and then the very, very recent plan for how to get there. And so it takes recommendations, the road map, and it puts together a plan of like what sources of renewable energy that the state will be looking at. And then also kind of a, Martha Hanner pointed out there's a new emphasis on natural lands as carbon sinks because even if we want to net zero today, we're still in trouble. And so we need to increase our capacity of the natural like farmland, forest lands and wetlands to absorb carbon dioxide. And so there's a new emphasis on that in the plan. But it was just, it was really thorough and it's actually a really excellent plan. Probably all these documents, they're like 150 pages and you know, but they really go deep and they're interesting. And so that's it. Okay. Thank you, Janet. Nate. Yeah, I just wanted to say that the CPA, you know, in Andrew's absence, the CPA committee has put its schedule on their webpage. And so proposals open September 1st and they're due by the end of September. So, you know, the next round of CPA proposals is, you know, starting soon and the committee will meet in November to start reviewing those. So, you know, just for everyone watching or who will watch that, you know, the process is starting a little earlier this year and the, you know, the window to submit is the month of September. Okay. Great. And Chris, anything you want to say about CRC? The next CRC meeting, am I muted or not? No, you're good. The next CRC meeting is on the 25th of August and they're going to be discussing rental registration and then the CRC meeting after that. And this is some good news. I should have told you this under new business. We finally received our letter of final determination from FEMA with regard to our flood maps. So CRC is holding a continued public hearing on the flood maps on September 8th. And the planning board will hold its continued public hearing on the flood maps on September 7th. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to wrap it all up on September 7th, but at least it'll be coming back to you in a real form that we can act on if we choose to. All right. And Nate, use your hand up again? No. Okay. Okay. Then we're on to the report of the chair and I have no report other than to say this may be my last meeting as chair because I think we do elections next time, right, Chris? Elections next time, that's right. That's right. So all of, you know, I guess, do we want to just have people show up at the meeting and with some, you know, if you're interested in a position or representing the board on a committee show up and, you know, be ready to say you're interested in would like to be appointed or elected to that position. I think that's a good idea. And also if you have ideas about who you want to nominate for different positions. So obviously Doug Marshall is our chair and I strongly support Doug Marshall as chair, but that is not up to me because I don't get to vote. Tom Long is our vice chair and I'm trying to think who is the clerk. Maria was the clerk. Maria was the clerk. And I don't think we have a clerk now. Right. So we need and for you new members, the clerk really doesn't take minutes or do normal clerk things because we have the expertise of Chris and Pam. And so the clerk is really, is the clerk third in line if the chair and the vice chair are both absent from a meeting? That's right. Yes. And the clerk could chair a meeting. Okay. So that's the predominant role of the clerk at this point. So I wanted to make mention of the fact that Jack Jemsik is the alternate PVPC representative and he is going to continue as the executive committee representative for the PVPC, but that leaves open the principal role of commissioner with PVPC. So people should be thinking about volunteering for that if that is of interest to them. And you had sent us an email that had some information about how often they meet and kind of what level of commitment that is. So if you want me to send that again, do that. I think that would be great if you would. Yeah. Maybe 10 days before our next meeting or I guess our next meetings. It feels like our next meeting is not just in 14 days. It's maybe three weeks from now. So maybe send it a week before the next meeting. Okay. And my vague recollection from our last meeting was that you had talked about PVPC with Bruce and he was open to doing that. Bruce is open to doing it. And I see he confirmed with his thumb. Okay. All right. So I had no report. Chris. I have no report other than to say that we are not going to have a meeting on August 31st. Okay. Have any business to go? So everybody have a good Labor Day. Thank you. Thanks. And the time is 9.51 and I think we can adjourn. Thank you all for your time and your service to the town. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.