 Seeing a presence of a quorum, I am calling this August 11th, 2022 meeting of the regular meeting of the Community Resources Committee to order at 4.31pm pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the Acts of 2022 and chapter 107 of the Acts of 2022. This meeting is being conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by technological means. At this time, I am going to take roll so that we can confirm that members can hear each other. Shalini is not here right now. She may or may not be here depending on an internet connection. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the chat. Present. Mandy is present. Pam. And Jennifer will be joining us in about 15 minutes or so, I believe. Please someone keep track so that if I don't see it, we can note the time. Yep. Yep. Thank you, Pam. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't know, or maybe Jennifer, because we have to check if she can hear us too when that arrives. Because we're still missing a couple of people that may or may not show up. We're going to take this agenda out of order. We're going to do the minutes first. This is also in an effort to make sure that Jennifer can join as much of the meeting as possible. And so we have two sets of minutes to adopt. The July 25th, 2022 special meeting minutes by the community forum and the July 28th, 2022 meeting minutes, regular meeting minutes. Are there any changes to either of those? I personally don't have any changes. And seeing no changes. I'm going to take the motion. Which is I'm going to move to adopt the July 25th, 2022 special meeting minutes. And the July 28th, 2022 regular meeting minutes. As presented, is there a second. Go ahead, Pam. Really. Thanks. The two of us. My turn will be next. Okay. So that was, that was Pam. Yep. Okay. Any discussion. Seeing none. We're going to vote. Pat. Hi. Mandy is an eye. Pam. I. Let me just highlight that. So those are adopted unanimously with two absent. Moving on. Let's see. We are going to next go to, let me see the attendees. Okay. We're going to next go to, we've gotten chief Nelson here too now. So welcome chief, welcome Rob and assistant chief Olmsted. And so we're going to move on to the residential rental bylaw. Now it's going to take a little bit of discussion, a little bit of preview. We're hoping to spend about 45 minutes on this item. So I'm going to try to, I'll go through what I hope to do with it. As we go through, I'm going to try and guide our conversation because we have very limited amounts of time to get at this point. Enough information to draft some language. This is not the only discussion we're going to be having of these very important sections of the bylaw. But it's the start of one. I suspect we will be discussing language at least two times and concepts, at least two more times regarding these sections. We're going to be focusing on violations, penalties, enforcement and incentives today. I have invited, as you can see the fire chief to, and he has also invited the assistant chief Olmsted here. I have invited, I had emailed also our crest director Earl Miller and our police chief. And I have also called the fire chief. They were also invited to the building stone to see if they, so they were also all invited. I do not know whether they will show, which is why I keep checking the attendees just in case, but they also had links. So we'll see if they come to talk about violations, penalties, incentives, because each of these departments, including Rob's department building inspector. So we're going to start first with the violations and then we will move into penalties and enforcements and then we will move into incentives. And I'd like to have about 15 minutes on each of those sections. We might be able to go a little longer on some of them to talk about what we believe should be violations in the permitting bylaw. And then when we move into penalties and enforcement, what the penalties should be and who should be enforcing these. So that's, that's more of where I believe chief Nelson and assistant chief Olmsted can weigh in on some of the things, but they can also weigh in on violations in terms of should we have fire departments and crests and all of this be part of the enforcement, especially on the civil side or other side. And then we'll move into incentives. No, I just wanted to say, I can watch the participants, the attendees. So you don't have to do that. I'll just let you know if any of them come in. Thank you. I appreciate that. Because I can then, if we need to move people in. Pam and I can do that as necessary. Okay. So first, we're going to start with violations. And I just want to say I can watch the participants, the attendees, so you don't have to do that. I'll just let you know if any of them come in. So I'm going to go through the slide. So we're going to start with the violations and the discussion of violations, the draft bylaws, the ones that the original sponsors had presented to the council has a whole raft of violations. And those fall into things like failing to get a permit or renew a permit. Falsifying information on the various applications. There might be some posting notice violations, retaliation, coercive conduct. And then there's the legal and legal limits, zoning violations, all of that. We're all in that initial working. The presented draft, the current draft has a little bit less of that. And so I want to just give us a chance to talk about what we believe should be violations of a permitting bylaw. Which will give us an idea of also what can be enforced through the non permitting bylaws too, you know, what can be enforced through the non permitting bylaw. So I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but I know we normally start with Rob's department as to what he believes is it should be noted as, as important in this particular section. And so, you know, if Rob would be willing to start with things he thinks would be wise to have as well. Or even unwise to have what, what do you think we need to have in this bylaw and call out specifically as violations and what not on the permitting side. Sure. I might start with what our current bylaw does and how that is been useful for us. The current bylaw. Simply states that any provision of the bylaw, the current bylaw, simply states that any provision of the bylaw could be deemed a violation. And, you know, then, then we will often make connections to the other sections of the bylaw that require say compliance with our state laws and regulations. So I think my, my short answer, simple answer to it is everything. So, you know, anything that any responding inspector, officer, program administrator in a situation that finds a violation of some regularly regulation or code that they're responsible for. Could be deemed a violation of the bylaw if presented to in our case. Now it's the principal code official, whoever the administrator of the program is would then be able to take action on the rental permit itself. And I think that works really well. We're used to it. So I wouldn't want to lose that. And I don't think we necessarily need to list off certain items, unless we, which, you know, the draft kind of gets into higher level violations, life safety violations. So unless we get into different levels of violations, I think a simple definition of violation to be just about that would be really useful. Thank you, Rob. Thoughts from anyone else. Chief Nelson or assistant chief Olmsted in terms of violations of rental permitting. Is there anything in particular your department would that would be helpful if we declared, or could find a way to include this as a violation of the permitting structure. So I'll start and I'll defer to assistant chief Olmsted for the needy gritty piece. I mean, I would echo what Rob just said. We have a whole list of lists of things that we can use that should be included and we all were already used. But as I said, I'll let Jeff get to the specifics. Assistant chief. Sure. So if we were going to look at, you know, trying to isolate a particular type and I do agree with Rob's assertion that basically having everything on the table that is available to us through state local codes, bylaws and fractions gives us a lot of flexibility. And we do a lot of back and forth between the fire department and inspection services. We look at these houses, but for us cover detectors, missing detectors, elements of the fire protection system that have been tampered with are important items. And if there is a mechanism to go through state, state code to address both civilly and criminally for in some cases. If you were looking to do something in the bylaw, you might try to do something where you identify specific parts and then to address them with a fine. And that fine potentially could be something that could be issued through our existing system like we use with open burning. And so if there's an open burning penalty, there's a $300 bylaw fine that goes with that. And that can be written by a police officer or the fire department, fire prevention personnel and that kind of thing might be something that you might look at. Thank you for that. So the fire department. I think this moves on to sort of, it's hard to do enforcement and violation separately, but the fire department would be willing on, would like to be a civil enforcer and that non-criminal disposition to be able to write those non-criminal disposition tickets under this bylaw for those types of violations. Correct. Sure. Now, Rob, I don't know what, you know, your thoughts are on that part of it, but we've discussed it a little bit in the past. Yeah, no, I'm not opposed to it at all. You know, I think we all have our, our codes and violations that we're charged to enforce under whatever level of certification we have. And, you know, I can't write a violation for, you know, something that Jeff can and vice versa. So I think we just, you know, what's worked okay up to this point is having kind of a central location to funnel the problems to, as the administrator of the program, but I've definitely opened to, you know, other ways of running, running the rental program in general. I mean, as a, I think we work really well with, with fire, but, you know, in a different situation, I'd say that we are not in as much communication with police as we are with fire. So we're not connected to the, the nuisance violations and responses that occur for noise and after hours. So I think there's some work to be done there. Not sure exactly how we do that. So I think we keep that conversation open. Can I just, can I follow up? Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to ask if anyone else has thoughts including committee members. Well, I was going to just follow up. You just talked about a central location for any of these. So we would be wrapping this bylaw with essentially what you said in your department for most enforcement. Right. Yeah, I would think so. I mean, we have, you know, we have licensing, a license and coordinator. We have administrative staff to help with the, the permit processing piece of it. And of course, you know, the bulk of the inspectors. So I think, yeah, I think that probably makes sense to, to remain, remain a major function of the department. And I also think that if there's an appeals process built in, it would likely be going to the board of license commissioners and we're the supporting staff for, for that community as well. Okay. Can I just do this? At this point, yes. Or if no one's talking, you can just start talking. It looks like it looks like a couple of people in the audience might actually have some questions. I was going to say just in general, I would, I would want to include as violations, sort of the bulk of health and safety. Trash over occupancy and failure to address issues in a timely manner. So we know that we know that some issues occur. They are reprimanded or whatever, but if, but there's also a violation of not doing what they're supposed to, that should be added to the list. It feels like. You said health and safety trash failure to address these shoes. I think there was another one in there. Over occupancy. Pearl land has a, her hand up. I don't know if you want to take questions or not. So I think what we're going to do is get through. Each of these conversations with us. This is one where we can take some public comment and I might do it. I think we're going to go into, maybe the details of the conversation, between violations, penalties and incentives before we between moving between each, I think, but let us have our own conversation. First. Assistant chief on step. So if I was going to add, if you were looking for places, you know, for the violations and miss Rooney kind of brought up one of them that is difficult for us to. Take care of is an overcrowding problem. Hopefully there's some incentives that could be mixed into this, but I think there is a potential, you know, usefulness of enforcement to try to get property management to make sure that they have maintained the proper number of people in those residences. And when they don't, it's, there's not always a lot of them saying you need to rectify this. And quite honestly, you know, it's a little bit like whack-a-mole where you get somebody out of one place, and then they need a place to go mid-semester when things aren't so easy to find, and they're just overcrowding somewhere else. So it is in fact not an easy question to remedy just by moving somebody, you know, in October because they're likely just to go find someplace else to live that's overcrowding in a week later and stay with another friend, trying to make sure that we have that set up well on the beginning of the leases and with the land of property management and the occupants, I think, is important, especially if they think there is some potential for a monetarian violation or fine later. Could I ask a question, because overoccupancy can mean a couple of different things, especially with our bylaw that says no more than four unrelated individuals in a house with say five bedrooms, overcrowding and overoccupancy might be two different things. And so would a permitting bylaw that distinguishes between those two items, I don't know whether we could, but if there is a possibility of distinguishing between, you know, Rob, we talked about this I think the last meeting where overcrowding is different necessarily than that violation of that bylaw. Some people believe, you know, not everyone as we know, but is there a way that maybe a distinguishing between those two would be helpful? Yeah, perhaps I think, you know, I think because there's confusion over the two different terms, you know, defining them might be helpful. So I'm not sure what we talked about last time I don't remember, but the, you know, the overcrowding is addressed in, you know, multiple other codes and regulations. So the bylaw doesn't need to regulate that, but it could recognize it as, you know, another kind of failure of compliance with a section of the code. For example, the health laws will tell us that there's so many square feet per individual in a room that's needed, you know, before we get into overcrowding. But then there's other situations that might be, you know, large gatherings, not necessarily of the occupants of the home, but large gatherings that create an overcrowding situation. So I think, I think overcrowding and overoccupancy, yeah, are two different things that probably could be, could be identified would be helpful for those using, you know, reading the bylaw using it or responding to it. Can I say something? Sure. Pat, and then Pam, and then I'd like to. Well, last time, Rob, we, we got information about six bedroom house that six bedroom house why can't that hold six people a four bedroom holding four people. And that was gotten distorted since the last meeting by some people, but isn't that doesn't that make some basic sense if a house passes inspection on every level, and it has four bedrooms that it'd be able to have four occupants if it if it has five bedrooms and it passes an inspection shouldn't be able to have five, you know, five or six people if it has the number of same number of bedrooms. There also was a sense of downplaying which I thought was reasonable. The difference between three and four people when people went in into inspect, Rob. Like, yeah, look, I'm going to try to kind of clarify a little bit of the background to that those comments that were made last meeting, especially because Jeff and I were the ones that have been having this conversation over the years mostly, and, and trying to gain support from others to, to consider some changes. So it's not exactly how you just framed it. So what we had been talking about is, how do we deal with group living, you know, and we were talking about it in the sense of possibly another zoning classification, because we deal with that quite a bit, you know, there's 252600 students enrolled in Greek life, we have houses that can accommodate 350 of those, those individuals we have sports teams, we have other organized groups that, that just like to live together in groups larger than four. So, you know, Jeff and I started the conversation years ago about how do we solve this problem. The first thing we need to do is create an opportunity for the appropriate type of housing in the appropriate building. And that's where we started this conversation about possibly six students living together in a house that's larger with more bedrooms than four or three, more than three bedrooms, and we would look at those buildings, you know, under code compliance would get into things like sprinklers and fire alarms and, and good means of egress that we don't have a better lighting, monitored systems that we don't have in most of the units today. We weren't talking about matching up number of bedrooms with number of students necessarily. I haven't made that suggestion. You know, the square footage requirements per occupant are really small. So a four bedroom 1200 square foot house can comfortably accommodate, you know, six people by the coast. And that's not what, you know, so we're not really suggesting that if two bedrooms were added in the basement as an example, we're not really suggesting that that be how that provision be used. It's really those large buildings above grade that we could see potential for the owners to invest, make significant investments into the property, make them safe, make them have better conditions if there were gatherings, large gatherings from time to time and just kind of better that situation. So that was really, that was really the conversation that I think it's turned into a lot of other things, at least as far as I know it, and Jeff, you know, feel free to correct or add on anything. But that's what I was, I guess, trying to move forward in the discussion. Thank you very much for that clarification, Jeff. Yeah, sort of add to Rob, you know, that's that's the kind of thing we were looking at. How do we find places, ways to make our community safer? We know we have a large need for people to that want to live in town. They show us this, you know, on a yearly basis, there's a large number of people who want to live in Amherst, a lot of them are going to school, they're temporary. At times we struggle to make sure that we have a safe environment for them because of how they're living. We try to find those places and kind of control and regulate how many people live there. But ultimately, it's a it's a really big task. And it's more than, you know, we can handle within our formats between building and fire to try to chase them all down. And they're highly motivated to want to live together, monetarily, socially. There's lots of reasons why they do this. And we're looking for ways to maybe make their places safer. So the things that Rob brought up, residential sprinkler systems, fire alarms that are monitored by a monitoring company. If you think about the difference of a battery operated smoke detector in a house, because it can be there from before 1975, a house built before 1975 simply has a battery operated smoke detector requirement that doesn't tell anybody anything other than if you hear that individual detector. What we're talking about is having an alarm system that would tell a central station and call 911, call our dispatch almost immediately if detection went off or water flow came from, say, a sprinkler. And that speeds up our time to, you know, put out the fire, save people, make sure they're safe. It's a huge difference. It can be 10, 15 minutes worth of difference in time between somebody paying attention to a battery operated detector because there's a fire and making sure people get out and then somebody calling 911 and then having us go. So these are the kind of conversations that we've had to try to figure out how we make these circumstances better. We can't make them all perfect. We see some limitations with different parts of this. But that really the crux to this was how do we make our community safer overall and in specific places? Thank you, Assistant Chief. Pam, I see that Jennifer has arrived. So Jennifer, can you just state that you can hear us and we can hear you? I can hear. I'm sorry for being late. Excellent, we've confirmed that. So Rob, and then Pam. Thanks. I just wanted to add just in case there's some reaction to those comments and the discussion that we've had is that that idea would be under a special permit as well. And I know I've mentioned this before and I'll try to continue to mention it when I can is that houses that are buildings that have special permits and the series of conditions that go along with it perform so much better than the ones that don't. And to the point where I would recommend to an investor to add a unit increase the the the expand the use of a nonconforming property just so we can get the special permit and the conditions that go along with it and the improvements and and that's happened in some cases and some you know some developers aren't interested in it. But I think there's a big value to that. So I just didn't want that to not be part of the thought that, you know, there's all these building code life safety fire regulations that get applied in those situations. But we also want the use conditions regulated by a special permit in those those types of properties. Thank you, Rob, Pam. But I want to remind us we're going to try and not stray too far onto that. This meeting is going to be straight a lot. I don't want to get in the lead. So I not for not on that issue because that that sort of goes beyond violations, penalties and where where we're trying to discuss today. But but Pam and then Jennifer just, you know, I'll recognize you. We're talking about violations. We're going to move on to penalties and enforcement soon. OK, right. So my comment on on that is I'm I'm actually very discouraged hearing from both Rob and and Jeff that, in fact, it's difficult to maintain the cap of occupants that really bothers me. What what seems confusing to me, though, is that. Whether you have a special permit or you just have a house full of of a couple extra people, we've been told that nobody really, really follows up on complaints that there really isn't the enforcement that we need, whether it's a special permit or not a special permit. I really confuse how the special permit helps because it's they all seem to be treated relatively equally. I mean, I don't think anybody opens up the the the lease conditions when you go to a special permit property to double check that, you know, here are the conditions that they said they would agree to. I'm looking at Rob, Rob. So you'll be surprised to know that they actually do. So all of those documents are linked on the inspector's iPad when they enter a property. If they're responding to a complaint about gatherings, they're looking at a lease to see that the special permit limited the number of occupants to 10. So now we turn to that developer that has something to lose. They have a special permit. Then they don't have the protection of a preexisting non-conforming use that has no conditions connected to it like this. And we'll tell them, you know, you need to do something. You need to you need to show us how you're going to better manage your property to ensure that the gatherings don't get any larger than what the zoning board of appeals allows. And these sometimes they come to us from overnight and weekend inspections that Jeff and his crew finds. Police might report them to us or might just be a complaint from the neighborhood. Every complaint is followed up. You know, I would say we don't get as many complaints as we should. But every complaint gets a response. A situation like that that has a path to get better compliance. We work with the landlord or property manager to make sure that that happens. So we feel those special permit conditions are really valuable. The properties, when they're when they're looked at by the zoning board of appeals are really, you know, critically picked apart to understand how the use will will happen on that property to the point where they've had walls moved, you know, doorways opened up to make sure a living room is actually a living room and not just a bedroom. So all these things that we don't have on those properties you know, a preexisting, non-conforming two family can have eight rooms in each unit. And, you know, what was once a formal dining room and a formal living room and an open family room is no longer that way. And we just don't have that opportunity to deal with that unless we are fortunate enough to get in under an inspection or request from a tenant to be able to see those conditions. And now to go back to inspection requirements, why I think it's so important that we conduct that first initial inspection or a property because we don't know what the situation. We don't know what the condition is. Thank you, Rob. Jennifer. Thank you. So I came in late, as you were, and I was actually wondering if I had a constituent this week, right, and asked if we were if the town requires embedded smoke alarms, smoke detectors. I don't know if that's relevant to what it sounded like. It might be if it's just a smoke alarm, I guess you can get anywhere. So I don't want to digress, but it sounded like you might be on that topic. Jeff, well, we are a little bit, but might be good for you and I to talk offline and I can try to give you more details because you probably have a little bit. There's a lot of nuance of code based on age and time, and I might be able to give you a better answer for them. Right. Thank you. I want to make one comment and then we're going to move on to penalties enforcement. And then we will go to public comment before we talk about incentives. I just want to say one of the things that we haven't mentioned that I would like to see as a violation, which might need to be separately indicated, is, you know, no retaliation against people for making complaints. That might already be a state law, right? But I want to make sure that, you know, we specifically say that there isn't that landlords cannot retaliate against their tenants for, you know, calling in a concern about the safety of the building and all. And then also coercive conduct. We have heard anecdotally that sometimes landlords try to tell tenants that they should not let inspectors in that sort of coercive conduct of don't let them in, all of that. I'd like to see us somehow figure out a way to address that too within the permitting bylaw. With that, let's talk about penalties for all these violations. It sounds like everyone wants as many violations as possible to give us the most ability and most flexibility. So penalties, there's a bunch of different options. We're going to start with what I think should be the quickest conversation and then move into the more specific things, monetary penalties. Would it be helpful to be able to have criminal penalties for violation of this bylaw number one and then for civil penalties? Who should be the enforcers? Who should be able to write those tickets? I think we've already talked about the fire department and the building inspectors, but also should we add anyone else? And then are there only certain panel sort of certain violations that should face criminal or civil monetary fines? What are people's thoughts on the money side of penalties? Can we say this a different way? I don't know how to respond to that question. So you you just talked about two categories. One is civil penalties for, I'm going to say, health and safety concerns, etc., the list that we just talked about. And then and then criminal. Doesn't the state already have criminal violations or penalties, criminal offenses? I know some of the college towns have, I don't know if they're criminal or penalty, but it's, you know, lewdness or excessive. You know, there's rape, there's there's, you know, disorderly conduct, etc., etc. I don't know if those are considered criminal offenses. Well, they would likely not be violations of this bylaw. So what I'm saying is if so, so what we have to determine is. For violating the permitting bylaw, whether that be a violation that inspectional services can write for a zoning violation or a health and safety violation at the state level or for just failing to obtain a permit under the bylaw. Should there be a criminal penalty for that violation or not? And if so, which violations of the bylaw do we want to be criminalized versus just a civil penalty? Like, should so, for example, should the police be able to write a criminal ticket that makes someone show up at district court for not obtaining a permit, a rental permit and renting a place without a rental permit? Things like that, should they have to show up and end up with something on their record? Or do we want it all civil? Jennifer. OK, so I would think for failure to get a permit. Yeah, well, again, criminal seems maybe extreme, but I guess it would depend if it's a repeat defender. So I do think there are cases where people don't actually, landlords realize they need to get a permit. So I wouldn't want to see someone have to go to criminal court for that. So I guess it and in terms of safety violations, I mean, it seems if you don't have the proper smoke alarms, I mean, there are some violations that are so egregious, we might want to think about them being criminal, you know, where you're really where you're being neglectful to the point, you know, that it's criminal negligence, maybe. I mean, I'm not so that that's what I'm we think most of the time we wouldn't. But I think that if it's a if it's a monetary penalty, it has to be at a civil monetary penalty. It has to be enough that it's a real disincentive. I know there was a while that you just got $100, you know, for if you had it was overcrowded for almost any the most you could get was $100. And I think a lot of landlords, you know, toss that up to kind of the cost of doing business. But I think certainly if it's if you're if it's negligent where you are putting your tenants, you know, in danger, when I think of like fire safety, you know, that my who might want to consider, you know, criminal penalty for something like that. I would need. You know, and you're going to need to be careful, careful about that on the fire, fireside, side, side of house, because we're guided by by state from fire, fire code and that message general law in terms of whether or whether a violation of a fire, fire code is is either or or or stats, stats statute is criminal or says civil. That's that's where we get get our guide, guide. So does that mean Chief Nelson that maybe you wouldn't want any specific fire violations to be included in criminal violations of this bylaw because you want the state, you just want to be able to follow the state rules? Yeah, I think, you know, I think, and Jeff weigh in, I think as I said, we that that that that that's that's where we we receive our our our guide, guide, guide, guide and our authority. OK, to to to address, address, dress, dress those items. There may there may be some some some items where we should add add add to the bylaw, we just have to have to get get get get into deeper to figure out what those are. Jeff. Jeff. So Mass General Law 148 27 alpha provides our guidance for safe tampering and doing something, anything to a fire protection system, essentially, that would prohibit it from being used. So if you shut off your sprinkler just because you decided you want to take care of it because it was cold, you shut down your fire alarm system in a place that was required to have the fire alarm system in it. You started to just tear it down because you're doing construction and you didn't want to get a permit for it, shut down permit. There's a variety of different ways at that level. And we've used that tool in very infrequently and in this since the last time I think I used it where it went to criminal citations were essentially a two family, every detector in the house had been except for one had been covered and essentially limited that from being used. And that was a very successful format for for using that 148 27 alpha. I think, as a chief said, we probably don't need to incorporate the fire protection ones in the criminal side of your violations. I think there's some definitely civil and lower level ones that I would encourage looking at cover detectors, things like that, that are very practical and constant in sort of our environment within the rental rental properties. Thank you. Sounds like Rob. Just so you know how we've approached this up to this point, you know, with the bylaw identifying basically anything as a potential violation of the bylaw, we connect that smoke detector, the broken stairway, whatever it might be to the non criminal disposition process. So that that's been our most useful tool for kind of low first level enforcement. If something is in such a bad condition, we might do that. But we'll also take the steps that are committed in our other codes that could be criminal matters. And we have that we have the opportunity to do that. It just changes the court that we file in. But I think that we're also in the same place with with health and and building codes that we don't see the need to have the bylaw address those specifically as criminal violations, but using a non criminal tool to get a the attention of the landlord has been useful. And we have, you know, been able to gain some support for that in district court. Just, you know, the hundred dollar fine that was mentioned earlier, that's per violation per day. You know, I had one accumulate the twenty six thousand dollars. So it really depends on how we want to assess that and apply that. I've had a couple in the three or four thousand dollar range. And again, it's it's, you know, it's our our tool to get some attention. And what we're really looking for is compliance and change, not really collecting the fees. So you'll notice that we don't bring in a lot of fees of fines every year, but that's just the way we decide to run around the office. And our approach to gaining compliance, but that even the hundred dollar fine can add up if it if it needed to. And the most we can do for civil non criminal disposition is three hundred dollars per violation per day under state law. So you cannot go above that. Jennifer. So is there this is was also a constituent suggestion or request. Is there a way to tie violations at different properties that are owned by the same, you know, owner? So maybe this is getting more into a point system, but that if if you're applying for a new permit at a property, but you have violations at another property that might be another conversation. But I did want to have that at some point. You know, that that directly goes to enforcement and penalties of things other than civil, right? That's the non monetary side of enforcement and penalties. Rob, do you even care to answer? I'm not sure if it's an answer, but it's come up a lot over the years. Oftentimes in the special permit process in front of the CDA, we'll give the zoning board the history of not only the property, other properties that are managed by the you know, the property management firm. Sometimes it's to show support that a professionally managed property is is beneficial. I think it's really an interesting idea. I just wonder, you know, as I thought about it over the years, how to make a system like that work? Because, you know, there are with everything, you know, it's the specific situation, it's the location, it's, you know, a particular tenant behavior versus a landlord, you know, not doing their job and trying to to separate through that and property owners that have, you know, properties, you know, all over the place or in very different locations. So I think it's a really interesting idea, but I haven't had any. I haven't come up with a good way of trying to apply something like that when I've tried to respond to the question for the zoning board of appeals. So I think that would just require others to come up with some some ideas on how that could work. Thank you. Let's talk about suspensions, revocations, non renewals, potential, these are all sorts of other potential ways to enforce violations or put penalties out there, additional inspections, a problem property designations, the point system that Jennifer just mentioned that might lead to differing penalties and one other one that was in one of the drafts was appointing requiring the appointment of a person in charge and sort of extra management and stuff. Thoughts on those options, others that haven't been mentioned, what might be worth including and I know you probably have some thoughts specifically on suspension and revocation versus non-renewal and stuff like that, because you've been dealing with it. But. Yeah, so as you know, we've never suspended or revoked a permit because the way the bylaw was written, it doesn't really serve as a good tool. You know, it's something I think over time you threaten it a couple of times. And I think people realize it's not really going to mean a whole lot because the suspension doesn't occur until the end of the least term. You know, and it's only for 90 days. So we've you know, we've stuck with non-criminal disposition and you know, if we if we felt like we weren't getting compliance, which I'm not sure we have one that I know of that we haven't been satisfied with the result. You know, we would we go to court and look for you know, stronger support for change to happen at that site. Pam, I again clarify, Rob, you've got all this so so carefully tucked in your head. You know, you know the ins and outs. So just so I understand we aren't able or have not used the the threat of revoking a license because the current bylaw really doesn't give you the teeth that you need to do so. It doesn't give you enough. It doesn't give you enough teeth to do to do what you need to do. And and because the suspension tends to happen at the end of a lease period, it means if something happens midterm, even if you wanted to revoke that license, probably unless it was a complete violation of health and safety, you really you really couldn't even stop the use of that building until that lease period ended. Is that right? Did I understand that right? Yeah, yeah, I think you have that right. So I mean the the the only situation that that's not the case is if we condemn a building and if we condemn a building, we don't even bother using the rental bylaw, we use the state laws to deal with that. And that has happened a few times over the years. But yeah, otherwise, I think that's true. I never, you know, the the idea that, you know, June 30th or July 1st, the the suspension starts for 90 days. You know, other than writing it into an enforcement letter as a you know, for the for the recipient to understand that that's a higher level enforcement, but I think if they really understood it, it wouldn't really be all that concerning to them and I never felt we need to we gained anything by suspending a permit for the summer for the summer months. So, you know, we go at it other ways and and have assessed the fines and gain compliance and other with other enforcement tools. Thank you, Jennifer. Oh, thank you. So the 90 day, is that a state law or is that just what we the Amherst? That's that's written into our current rental bylaw regulation. We could change that. I mean, but what I understand and I say we want to go this way, but in state college, they you can have a permit suspended for six months. I think I think a two years. And then I mean, I think they even go up to five years. I'm not saying we want to do that, but they have. You know, there's there's different suspension periods, but I was just wondering like nothing keeps us from if it was longer than 90 days for really a grievous violator, repeat, offender, whatever, might that be a deterrent? Like if you couldn't. So yeah, so we have 90 days as with 90 days is the first offense. And then we have 180 days as a second offense and it can go up to three years in our bylaw if the offenses occur in a 12 month period. You know, question comes up is what if the 10 the tenants change during that that period, what does that mean? So I think, yes, we can change the language and make it more meaningful of a penalty. Absolutely. And what would you think? I mean, do you think that would be useful to be helpful? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's complicated because we have to do something with the tenants of the property and if we're in if we're taking that action on, you know, parking and trash violations that are repeat issues, that's different. You know, that's going to be harder for us to to deal with because really what I mean, when it comes down to it, if they just say, no, you know, they don't leave, we have to go to court to what if you waited till the end of the lease to make it effective? I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. So at the end of the lease, you know, you get a one year suspension. You know, you don't you don't get next year's rental market. You know, that's got to be the that's got to be something something to lose. That's meaningful. And I'm not saying we we would maybe we wouldn't use that. I don't know how often that would come up. I don't I wouldn't want to be careless with that. But I think that's something that would be a useful tool. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Assistant Chief Olmstead. This question is really for Rob, just real quick. Under the rental registration, John can request entry into one of the rental properties at once a year, you know, not necessarily if there's a complaint, but if he was going to engage a particular house, is it once a year under that provision? So we don't have an inspection requirement. So it really has to be in response to something that we become aware of or suspect. And it doesn't matter how that information comes to us. But if we don't have that, the bylaw says that the owner can self-certified to the condition of the property. And if we don't have any reason to think otherwise, we wouldn't ask for that inspection. Once we have knowledge of something or suspect something, then the bylaw does give us the ability to require entry. And they they have a period of time to to do that. Otherwise, we would go get, you know, court support for that. Is having any kind of notation or inclusion in this bylaw for access worthwhile? Or do you think the way it works now is sufficient? No, I think it should be in there. I mean, it's just thinking about the property owners, the landlords, tenants that that could read this document. I think it's good for that kind of information to be there. That that would be useful for them to know, as well as understanding what we have the right to do or likelihood to do under our procedures. Pam, I think maybe we should explain that one of the one of the key elements of this is that we would, in fact, establish a true inspection cycle. And there may be different tiers based on the number of violations. So we need to be able to to link violations to a property so that we can not as not as being punitive, but that we have the opportunity written into bylaw that, in fact, we can inspect annually if if it's if it's a well managed property. Maybe it's up to five years. So we're looking at a range of inspection cycle based on based on good condition, if you will. If that if that answers your question a little bit, it does, I guess my question from a in the weed standpoint is, given the quantity of rentals you have, how do you start your list figuring out who's sort of on the good list and who's on the not so good list? And that's one of the challenges we have is the quantity of properties that we deal with. And so I think maybe having an annual opportunity to visit might be a suggestion or now. See what was good. Pam, this is this is sort of a tangent, but but it's a really timely question. Can we actually get from Rob or the for the town? I think we're talking about all these rules and regulations, but I but I feel like we are missing some baseline information. Can we kindly get the number of total dwelling units in town, including those that are permitted for this 2020 or fiscal year 23, I guess? And then if if we have the ability, can we sort by non owner occupancy? Because I know we had the conversation that we can't really say it's rented because they're we only know it's rented when they submit a permit. But but non owner occupancies, I would love to get at least that parameter of how many units we're actually talking about. We're really helpful. Rental units, rental units, non owner occupied dwelling units, which implies that they're probably rented. Rob, you, Pam, you're you're requesting not just those that have obtained permits, but right. Non owner occupied dwelling units overall, whether they have a permit or not. Correct. Is that possible, Rob? I know if you if they've got a permit, it's really easy to pull that information because you've done it very quickly before. But if they don't have a permit, is it possible to get that information? The. Non owner, non owner occupied properties would only be. Let's see, would only be accurate if the assessors have done a recent evaluation or update, because that's where that information would come from. So that pulling that data, I mean, we can we can look at it and see how it comes out. But that might not be all that useful for telling because it might not be accurate. When we started the program, that's exactly how we we kicked it off. We looked at every assessor's record and anything that looked like it might have been not on our occupied, we sent them a notice. And I think it was fifteen or sixteen hundred properties at the time. And by the time we were done working through all that, there were twelve hundred permitted properties. So, you know, that that can't be reliable. But certainly within the twelve hundred permits that we issue, those numbers can be easily sorted that way. Thank you. I think I think we really need to have a better handle on the numbers. They understand the ramifications of the workload that we're trying to create here. Jennifer, and then we probably do need to move on to the rest of our agenda. OK, so the way you determine if it's rented without a permit is the assessor is like looking at where the property owner lives, they live out of state. I mean, is that the information the assessor provides that would give a clue if. Yeah, that's that's really unless there's something else that we would be involved in in our department, that's the only clue is where where is the tax bill sent? Yeah, you know, is the property in an LLC. So every every every month I get a report from the assessor's office on the transfers that are recorded through registry deeds. If we see something going to an LLC, we reach out to that that owner and just ask him if they're renting the property because sometimes we get them, sometimes we there are some explanation for it, and it's not a rental property. So, you know, that's that's our only way to really kind of go at it ourselves trying to proactively capture some here and there. It's it's something we do in free time, but that's a monthly habit that we've gotten into and the assessors provide us the report. That's good. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Based on my agenda, we do have to move on. We did not get to incentive systems potentially or who might enforce in terms of appeals. The Board of License Commissioners did have a discussion last week on whether they would want that appellate jurisdiction or not. And so when we get to that, I will provide that information here. I may draft something based on their thoughts to provide some language for next discussion. As we get to this, this will be on next time's agenda, too, along with the language from inspections and other requirements to obtain a license. I know that item is on our agenda today. It was on our agenda in case anyone wanted to provide additional language for consideration. I did not receive anything for putting in the packet. I know Pam was thinking about doing something. I don't know whether she still has stuff to put on. So we're not going to deal with that item today. A2, but Pam. I was going to say, since we have one attendee in the audience, it would be really appropriate to probably let Renata Shepherd in right now. Yeah, I was going to after I summarized that move to general public comment. I know that that's that's one of the reasons I'm moving on. We're not doing that one. That's why we were allowed to go about an hour on this to stay on our agenda. We'll have it both of those items on the agenda next week for most mostly the whole meeting, I believe, but we're going to move to general public comment right now. Public comments on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC are going to be accepted right now. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. And CRC will not engage in dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment. And then, yeah, so if you would like to make a public comment at this time, please raise your hand. Renata Shepherd, please unmute yourself, state your name and where you live and make your comment. Hi, I'm Renata Shepherd. I live at Justice Drive in Amherst and I was just writing an email for my comment, but I can read it regarding violations. Who gets fined if a tenant disables like the smoke detector has a rowdy party, has a bonfire? Basically, anything a landlord will not know unless there's a report. And I hope you're not proposing landlords are fined. But tenants are not. I happily support the wrong door getting a fine, be it the landlord or the tenant, and that please assign blame where it is due. And just like a traffic violation, the driver gets the ticket, not the owner of the car. Definitely a citation put prompt a warning from the landlord to the tenant. And then, you know, process of eviction, if it's a repeat occurrence. And if the lease is well written for that, because everything has to be on the lease and if you want to recover fines from tenants, if you don't write it down, it won't work. And even so, the state has say in terms of what's on the lease. So basically, I just would like to, you know, guarantee that whoever is doing it wrong gets fined. Thank you. Thank you, Renata, for your comment. Seeing no other hands raised, I will reach out to Perlan. She may have had to leave before we got to this, which is unfortunate. But I will reach out to Perlan, Margie, and see what she had wanted to say. With that, we're going to thank, looking at the agenda, I want to thank Chief Nelson, Assistant Chief Olmsted and Rob for attending today and taking the time out to attend. We will be after we do some ZBA stuff and appointment stuff coming back to Residential Rental Bylaw Outreach. I don't know, Rob, if you want to stay, one of the things we're going to be talking about are the summary of the comments we've received or our thoughts on the comments we've received through the Engage Amherst Survey. If you want to stay just to listen to that, although it's in the packet so you can read them all if you'd prefer that way instead of staying. But I thought I just mentioned that. Otherwise, I believe all of the rest of our agenda is basically not necessary for either of the three of you to stay for. So I want to thank Chief Nelson and Assistant Chief Olmsted for coming to this meeting to hear. I will keep you guys updated on what we're doing and all as to this to make sure that we've received your input on that to to make sure it works for your departments too. So thank you. We're going to move on to ZBA Associate Member Vacancies. I see that Dave has has joined us in the attendees, I believe. So I'm going to think that, hold on, I don't know who I just potentially promoted. Let's try this. I think I'm going to try. I'm trying to promote Dave to panelist. I think you did it this time. I wasn't sure who I did last time. So we have a couple of things to address with ZBA stuff. On our agenda, there is policy waiver requests. I put the policy into the packet. I'm hoping that this is a very quick discussion where we just make a couple of motions and and move on with sections. So last week, we moved to recommend the council waive section two of the council policy on making appointments to most recommendations to that policy name really needs shortened to allow individuals who submitted a CAF after May 1 to be considered applicants without having to submit a new CAF. I asked you all to come into this meeting today with ideas of which other sections you would like to ask the council to waive with respect to the upcoming the now noticed ZBA Associate Member Vacancies. And so if we could just and will the motion will be the same. I've got the language once we know which sections we are seeking waivers of. I will provide the language for that. And so if people could indicate which sections they might want to ask for waivers for, that would be helpful beyond section two. I will be honest and say I actually didn't read through it and and do that thinking. And so if you if you don't know the section number, you could talk about potentially what you didn't like the hamstringing for this last time and what would be helpful to get done more, you know, get over that. Pat. Thank you. I think the biggest concern I have has to do with interviews and the fact that I like that they're all happening at the same time. I like that the questions are known, but I feel like the lack of ability to ask follow up questions is really limiting what we can do. It's very possible that we would that there are misunderstandings and that a person being interviewed could clarify them very easily. Or the additional information could make us realize this is a person that we don't want. It could go either way. But the lack of follow up questions, individual follow up questions is a real it really hamstrings us. So that would be I'm getting broad because I want to be broad. That would be sections eight and nine of the policy in order to be able to consider asking follow up individual follow up questions. Any other portions of this process that people felt were overly constrained that they might want more options with Jennifer. So I saw in one it said the skills and characteristics of an applicant. I don't know what that the characteristics. I don't know what that really means. I thought I read that and I was also that was first thing. And it said that we should know the history of the four. I mean, we should. So it definitely requires more homework, which is fine on. Like, you know, I guess the CRC's part here. It says I thought it was under five. Was it five or I saw I should have written it down. Five is reappointments. No, maybe no, I'm sorry. It was selection guidance section four. And there's a criteria that talks about. Yeah, the recommended committee may create. Oh, this is for I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this is for like the chair of the committee. It's not what we're looking for. Yeah, so the selection guidance needs the time and the committee is allowed to say this is just our standard selection guidance, we're not every time and that would have the skills in all. Or we can create it new every time. I was going to say, I totally agree with that. I think it's very awkward not to be able to ask follow up questions. It just seems like a normal conversation and interview. And then I know that we have to have you're interviewing multiple people and we can't do it at everybody's personal convenience schedule. But and I'm what I really don't have the CRC in mind for this. But just if we can and I'm sure we do try as much as possible to give enough lead time. So, you know, again, I know somebody who recently was not a counsel appointed committee, but was given two days. Can you come to an interview at this time in two days? And when he couldn't, he was told he was, you know, he couldn't be considered. So I just wouldn't want to put any applicants in that position. Yeah, no, I must say I do my best to give as much time and actually what what you didn't see last time. Although I did send a pull out to the committee, too. I did all the known applicants from all of the committee members with dates and picked the one that, right, all of the applicants could attend, even if not all the committee members could actually the problem is we then got applicants afterwards that couldn't attend that one. And that's always the tricky matter, but I do do my best. Yeah, I was just going to say you actively apologize for that in the council meeting that it had that it had that was something that you would do differently. I think there needs to be one interview date. But again, because I don't want to attend four or five interviews for this issue. But I think that it it did refer to this committee, Jennifer. And you're very nice. I just kind of know I wasn't thinking of this committee, but it did happen here. And it happened in a way that really cost a lot of damage. And I think that and I think Mandy Joe has gotten it that she can she'll figure it out from here. And so right now we're seeking a waiver of sections eight and nine. I'm not hearing any other waiver requests per se. But what I am hearing is if it becomes a problem on interviews that we've said an interview date and we receive an applicant that may not be able to meet that interview date that maybe instead of going forward with that interview or attempting to accommodate through potential future waivers that may or may not happen, the best idea is to reschedule the interviews. We were running out of time to get them done in time, which was one of my concerns because of that this in this scenario, that's not as much of a concern. But I will certainly take all of that in as we move forward with this particular one. And so the motion is and and I'll assume Pat is making this motion. OK, because she's the one that requested it just so. And the motion is to recommend the council, the town council waive sections eight and nine of the town council policy on making recommendations for town council appointments to multiple member bodies to be in order to be able to ask individual follow up questions of applicants during the interviews. Aren't we amending the policy, not getting rid of the policy? We are starting with asking the council to waive the policy for this upcoming set of interviews. We're going to have motions next regarding referrals to Geo for amending. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we're going to vote. Mandy is an I of Pam. I Jennifer. I Pat. I that is unanimous with one absent. This will actually believe it or not. I believe go on this Monday's council agenda. I will get the motion to Athena and Lynn tonight. She had already Lynn had already asked me if we expected other motions so that she could at least prep the agenda ahead of time so that we could maybe do them all at once. So that will go on Monday's agenda from what I know. The next item of business. That's the yes, Pam. Because there was a CRC report for waiver for item number two. Do you need a CRC report to explain why eight, nine are also required? And I'm not necessarily volunteering. I'm just asking. It would probably be really helpful since this is intended to be on consent. Would you be willing to draft something really quickly or Pat, would you be willing to take Pam's report that's in the council packet for the first waiver request and just summarize the second one with the unanimous vote? I think that was a sure, but I didn't hear it. You're you're muted, Pat, that's why. Actually, if Pam would do it, I would love it. I'm a procrastinator. I can do it if I have to, but I have a week coming up. So I don't want to I don't want to f up. It can be really short and just like three sentences. Pat, if you feel me, your three sentences on why you want that waived, then I will incorporate it into the into that text. OK. I'll cut and paste. Send me yours and I'll cut and paste and then. OK, OK, who? OK, so the next item on our agenda, which is where Pat was asking for again, is the actual policy. For making recommendations that the town council adopted and asking the town council to refer to GOL, certain portions to review. So this is we don't GOL is the one that deals with drafting changes to policies. So what we can do is ask the council to refer the policy back to GOL for review and recommendation on certain sections. I recommend certain sections, not the whole thing. Pat, I don't think I have very fond memories of trying to create the whole thing. And if it really is only certain sections, we might as well just say, here's the sections we want reconsidered and discussed again and potentially even for the reasons we want them. The sections we've asked to be waived are sections two, eight and nine. If people want those reviewed, they can be reviewed. Section two again is when caps are considered filed for application purposes, eight and nine are interview questions and interviews themselves and so any thoughts on seeking referrals or asking the council to refer certain sections to GOL and I move we refer our recommendation to at least study and review sections two, eight and nine. The reasons stated in the CRC reports to town council. Second. All right. So so that's to recommend the town council refer sections two, eight and nine of the policy. I'm not going to state the whole thing. Yep. For review, GOL, for review and recommendation based for for reasons stated in the waiver in in CRC's waiver requests. Sure. Right. Yeah. Is that good enough? Yeah. OK. Any discussion on that? So we don't really know how we how would it end up? We're just saying it feels a little stiff. We want some discussion about it. I totally agree with that. Yeah, that's basically what we're saying. We're saying we see problems in this. Have a discussion and come back with what you think might work. Which might be no changes or some changes. Right. OK, we're going to vote. We're down to Pam. I. Jennifer. I. Up hat. I. And Mandy is an I. So that is unanimous with one absent. I am actually going to make a second motion. And this is this is part of Shalini could not be here today, but she did email me with some concerns about some things. But it's also something I talked about and something GOL's been mentioned in GOL before, which is figuring out how to have a criteria to rank candidates or rate candidates after the interviews, after their SOIs and all, you know, some sort of I don't know what HR people call these interview things, but like matrices of qualifications versus, you know, with rankings or ratings or something like they don't even have to be rankings, but then you add up the numbers and then you get sort of a ranking of X, Y, Z. So, you know, Shalini talked about that might be very helpful. We've heard about it in terms of, I think, social justice in GOL before and not necessary in terms of review of bylaws and other things, but also in terms of interviews and recommendations of things. So I would like to make a motion to recommend that the council refer consideration and potential recommendation of a scoring matrix to be added into the town council policy on making recommendations for town council appointments to GOL. Is there a second on that motion? I'll second it. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'm either discussion is good. I can try to explain it more if people would like more explanation. I don't think I need more explanation. I think I need to process it a little bit. And again, we're asking GOL to consider it, not to write right. Consider it the way I even worded it was refer for consideration and potential recommendation of one, you know, they may say, uh-uh, right? But if they do say, hey, that's a good idea, I'd want them to come in with what it looks like to, you know, we might as a committee have to add in what the criteria are, but but I would want some sort of ideas to what that looks like. Is it a rating system? Is it ranking system? Or is it just, you know, well qualified and gets five points, not qualified or not meeting this criteria, get zero points, you know, and then you add it all up. Like that, I don't know whether it's wise or not, but it might take some frustration out of, you know, some issues we've had. I don't know. It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting because I'm trying to, as I'm sitting here trying to figure out and I was thinking, oh, I could talk to Pamela. But a lot of the ways we react to people have nothing to do with their qualifications. And how do we, how do we how do we consider that or how do we have a real equity lens? And what is and and not just about the phony category of race, but what are the other issues that we're looking at? What and I say phony issues of race, because there is no such thing as race, that's something white people made up to. So I'm I feel like our prejudices a lot of often are unconscious. And so how do we how do we deal with that? Thanks, Pam. I just it just flashed me that you said it. So and again, this is not very well articulated because I really want time to think about this. We have kind of a general criteria, you know, see a balance of seasoned members and everything. What are the places where our unconscious prejudices leak in and where and how can we? Be more specific. I can't even find exactly the right words, but I'm a little uncomfortable with right this second with the idea of rankings. Well, maybe you have to be part of what we're asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on, Jen. Yeah. Thank you. Maybe we all have we all have biases about a person's, you know, we know them well. We don't know them, you know, all those bias. Yeah, but they they determine a lot of our. Our preferences and our votes, yeah. And so the motion is a scoring matrix that doesn't necessarily say whether it would be ranking or just qualification based in terms of ranking of five, four, three, two, one, this person's better than this person or just everyone gets a five because they meet X requirement of our criteria. I mean, in the best possible world, that would help to keep it more objective and less maybe a bias. Maybe that's why I think that we're trying things. You know, we we've been in many different situations in the last four years that I've sat on this. Many different counselors have. Then the public has indicated there's been many different biases regarding these recommendations on many different sides to a whole number of counselors. This was one thing I thought of. And Shalini also mentioned that maybe might take some of that perceived bias or any, you know, any of that out. Nothing will help that. Well, it's not perceived, but there are people to look at potentially instead of just our statements, right? Which might help for people to understand why one candidate was picked over another. Pam. So it's timely here to just talk about cast. I would like very much and I've heard now from a number of people, maybe in reaction to the conversations that we've had over the last couple of weeks about appointments, but I would like to somehow address the the concern that lots of people have that we or, you know, we don't know the public doesn't know who's actually put their name forward or for a position for consideration. And and I I actually got a call from somebody today saying, you know, when the town manager appoints committees, we don't know who applied, we don't know anyone, anyone's qualifications. And there's only one person being the town manager himself who is, you know, great, upfront, honest, et cetera. But it's only one person actually deciding who to even interview. So I would like some way, just like we see all the caps, I guess, that come in, I would like to be able to extract that into at least a listing of people who have expressed interest in the following committees, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, expressed in interest in zoning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So so everybody out there at least knows who's put their their hand in the air. And I and I don't think it's a violation of privacy or anything that, you know, it it shouldn't be that way. So I'd like to have a tool to do that. That may be another motion, but Jennifer. Yeah, yeah, I was just going to say I'm sure it's public information as soon as, you know, it's it should. I mean, it should be. I mean, it should be. We've been fighting the council fought with this issue because they're what they're saying is I'm sorry, Jen, I'm interrupting. I don't know. I agree with you. I just want to ask a question. If you write to the town manager, just write an email. That's public information, right? So so the reason the caps are not made public is because they're determined to be employee documents, right? And employee documents are not public. What I'm I'm don't don't don't jump at me. Right. It's not it's a law documents that are not just not discloseable or not disseminable under public records law. Various members of the council have challenged that designation. Other members have not. It's actually a quite complicated issue in terms of someone submits a CAF. How long are they an applicant? Right. You know, we could go into this a lot, but that's why I say I think it's a motion to go to GOL. I do have a question. You submit a CAF to a council committee. That's public information. Just not if you submit it to the town manager. None of them. None of them. The CAFs are not public documents, which is why every time we do interviews, they are they are titled not public records because they are under the current rulings of our town attorney, they are not public records under the public record law, and even though they're public records in other communities like North Hampton, et cetera, they're public records. Others are not. It's it's various history of discussions. Pam. So how do we address that? Do we ask Dave Zomek to go back to the town manager or the or or KP law and say, we really want a reading on this that allows us to at least list the people who have put their hand in the air for town committees. So so I think that's a request to refer to GOL, a discussion on the public record status of CAFs submitted to the town council. So let's deal with this motion. And then I'll draft that motion for Pat and Pam or Pat and Jennifer, someone to make second at all. So the motion on the table right now is to recommend the council refer consideration and potential recommendation of a scoring matrix to be added into the council policy to GOL. So we're going to vote on that right now. I think we're starting with Jennifer. Yes. And Pat. Aye. Mandy's an aye. Pam. Aye. So that is unanimous with one absent. And then the next motion. Give me a second. I think it's going to owe me. This is is to recommend the town council refer to GOL for review and recommendation, the matter of CAF public record status. Is there something else that needs to be said in that? So it's a little status of the of the the matter of the public record status of CAFs. Who would like to make that motion? I do. So moved. Pam Rooney. Is there a second second? So the motion is to recommend the town council refer to GOL for review and recommendation, the matter of the public record status of CAFs. Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we've made it around the corner. Pat. Aye. Mandy's an aye. Pam. Aye. Jennifer. Aye. OK. I believe unless anyone else has any other emotions that we've made it through town council policy on making recommendations to appointments of multiple member bodies. So I'm going to ask the same question. I am now happy to do a do a summary of all three or all three motions or are they going to be addressed separately in the consensus? The consent record? So they can all be in the same document. If you would like, I think there are four total motions today that need to be in reports. There's the waiver request. That can be a separate report if you'd like, or they can just be in the same document. Already done. Yeah. And then the three motions regarding review of the council policy on making recommendations. So the non waiver motions, there were three of them. I can say I will CC you on my draft minutes that have those motions in them tonight so that you have the language and all. And there's a little obviously summary of the discussions for the ones we had discussions on. Yeah. And I took some notes too. OK, so those need to get them tonight and off to Athena. She know the packet from Monday. Yes. OK. OK. So now we're moving on to discussion items. Outreach, residential rental bylaw. The first thing on this discussion item. Is comments received through outreach. And I figured this discussion item, we should have a brief summer summary of our thoughts on what those comments were and then what we should do with them and who should be doing that if there is something to do with them beyond what has already been done. So we'll spend about 10 minutes or so. Briefly, each committee member can take two or three minutes if they want to summarize what their thoughts of those comments were. And then we'll move on to for another 10 minutes or so. What we think we should do with them. And then after that, if we have time and people are willing and continuation of outreach, talking about what we should be doing next for outreach, if anything. OK. So that's where we are. Would anyone like to start with their brief summary of thoughts on the comments we've received through our outreach efforts, which were so far have been any emails to the council, but the Engage Amherst survey that has over 200 responses. We have received a few more since those summaries I pulled. And then the community click comments and responses. And we are still working on. I know our UMass partners are working on attaching the video and the transcript to when those comments and clicks and degrees and disagrees happened when I get that summary and that analysis. I will certainly publish it into a packet, but I do not have it yet. So that's why we just have the raw data. I will start if not. Pam, you've got your hand up. You can start. No, go right ahead, Pam. Um, this is a really, a really rough summary, because it's not really a summary of everything that was said, obviously. Those who those who were renters, I was taken aback. You know, the number wasn't that many, but those that spoke. Really had heartfelt concerns about the quality of some of the living units, the dwelling units in town, because there's such a demand for housing, it's almost impossible to not be able to rent a really crummy facility and that people are are really squeezed into having to take really bad quality living conditions in order to have a place to live. So that was and I don't think that was across the board in the renters that spoke, but it it was pretty clear to me that it was a major concern and that retaliation was was, you know, a concern as well. We had what I would expect to hear from folks who live in neighborhoods with lots of rental units. Some didn't have huge concerns, but it kind of varied depending on the number of units in the in the in the neighborhood, that there were obviously a lot of people who have major concerns about the conversion of housing into student rentals so that the peaceful enjoyment of their own properties is being diminished. And I think that that message came out. The folks that spoke up as property owners and managers was very helpful. I think it makes it clear to me that we. I want to offer as many incentives as I can to have wholesome, healthy and well managed places for people to live that aren't, you know, don't cost an arm and a leg that I want to help incentivize owner occupancy and and owner adjacent properties that that really support maintaining a connection to the community so that it's not just it's not just the money making and it was it was it was stated very clearly, though, that renting housing is a business and a business is a business. It needs to follow the rules. But anyway, I'll stop with that one. And then obviously the last one is that somebody that that lives in a neighborhood but also has a unit themselves. You know, it's also fairly prevalent in Amherst. And I think, again, we want to encourage those folks who are doing a good job, who really care about the town and their community. And we are I think someone mentioned we're we really want to pull the scoff laws into shape and and and maintain the quality of housing in Amherst so that it's healthy and safe. That's kind of a long summary. But thank you, Pam. Other thoughts on what we've been reading and hearing from those who have commented to us, Jennifer. Well, I didn't agree with what Pam said, the last part that I heard. And it's and what I really agree with is, yeah, as much as we can incentivize and encourage and not be seen as penalizing owner occupancy and then also to look at, you know, if owner occupancy might also include if you own, you know, units right on either side of where you're principal, that if there's a way to kind of see owner occupancy, if somebody owns their house in the one, let's say, next door or two next door, if that can be seen as an owner occupied unit, even if it's more than one unit. And this is probably for another discussion, but it was with there has been so many comments about the fee for obtaining a permit. So that is going to be a whole kind of kind of worm, so to speak, for us to address. And also if there was a way that the permitting could also incentivize and not feel like it's penalizing owner occupants because, you know, to some extent, owner occupants are some own more than one property, but often it's that they own one and often and they in terms of noise and nuisance complaints, there's almost none to owner occupied dwellings and people may often it may be older people that are having tenants live there to help defray the cost and so anything we can do to not be add to their burden, I'd like to discuss. Thank you. Other thoughts on the comments? Yeah, I think both Pam and Jennifer brought up things that I noticed, but I also know it's the cost of rental. And it really, I don't know how to address that because we're limited by state law. And, you know, so for all the things that we can look at incentivizing this and and things like that, we can't change the one thing that causes the biggest part of the problem. If rents weren't as high as they are, then people wouldn't be living in four or five people might not be living in a three bedroom apartment. So I think we're trapped in many ways. And I only bring that up because I think that they've you've already reflected on things that bother me. I don't have a problem with the permit fee increases. I think they're important whether you rent one unit or or your own house. And you're renting it next door to you or whatever you are, as has been said, it is a business. Businesses have costs. And so I think that I don't have a problem with the fee increases, but that's separate. That's not a summary of the article of what we read. We looked at. So I'm going to make my comments and then I'll go to Jennifer. Like everyone else, I agree with much of what was said. You know, it struck me that I was one thing I would say is I was really happy to see we had a good mix of those who rent those who own property and rent that property out. So, you know, landlords, tenants and residents answering these questions. Because I think this is some of the first time we've really been able to hear from all three constituencies. And I thought that was what I found interesting is some of the dichotomy between what the renters were saying and what the landlords were saying. Sometimes I felt there was a very big dichotomy between the renters saying that the upkeep is not very good. We've got a lot of maintenance problems and health problems and health concerns and, you know, habitability concerns and landlords saying we take care of our properties, we don't need this system. Now, they may actually be different individuals. And so they both may be actually accurate. I'm not going to say that they're, you know, but that dichotomy I thought was really important to hear because a lot of times we don't hear from the renters themselves. And so all we hear is we don't need this system. The properties are taken care of. And now we've actually heard and said, no, we do need the system. And and that really reinforced for me the importance that Rob has been saying for so long of we need to get our own inspectors into these units. And the importance of that, which then goes directly to the fee issue of we have to find a way to pay to get inspectors into the units. Yet every time you increase a fee, we know it directly goes into the cost of housing, which the renters near universally said is too high, yet it might have to go higher in order for us to guarantee better housing for us to be able to get in and inspect them. And so it's really a it's a tough issue, but I was I was happy to see so many responses to. But I think Pam did a fairly good job summarizing a lot of the different concerns. I'm sitting here wondering for the first time, whether or not we could get if we could have certain things that were not placed on the tenant, the cost of a rental permit. Why should that increase a tenant's rent? Is there a way to establish what a tenant is actually charged for? And that sort of rent control, which is I know, but I'm trying to find a back door, honey. Capitalism sucks. That's the truth. Jennifer. Yeah, I was also really struck by how many. Renters talked about mold and rodents. Utilities like stoves not working. I mean, windows that are drafty. I mean, really, yeah, very. I mean, that is kind of well, it's not shocking. I mean, we know it, but just that should not that should not be going on. And but I was concerned. So I know we need to get we definitely, definitely need to have more regular inspections, but. You know, initially I thought, OK, well, when we increase the permit fee, that will directly go to fund additional inspectors. That was very naive, because that's not really the way it works. Is there any way? So what if we increase the fee and we strengthen the bylaw, but we don't have any more people power to do the inspections? I mean, how, you know, and we're in a budget crisis. I mean, how do we I don't know if it's maybe beyond this committee, but how do we kind of ensure that there's some relationship between the increase in the permit fee, strengthening the bylaw and that the inspections actually we see results on the ground that that's what we would need to be discussing with the manager when when we get closer to potential fee structures and and and with Rob, frankly, and and all about how many inspectors would be needed to go through with this bylaw as we get to language. So I'm sure we'll be discussing that this fall. Pam, and then we're going to move on to what we should do with these comments and all I think, you know, this just really quick for Rob. If we could give us a baseline, how many staff are in the department now? And, you know, and and. Maybe maybe it's not appropriate to talk about today. I was just trying to get a sense so I could start thinking about it. You know, Rob, are you there? Yeah. Yeah, so we have we have one code enforcement officer who's dedicated to the complaint response on this program. You know, before that was all created, the department had two other building inspectors and two health inspectors. And we all work together now. So as you know, the health department inspectors move over into inspection services. So, you know, there's a lot of collaboration and, you know, filling in here and there and supporting. So it's, you know, it's from time to time we'd see a health inspector go do something that John would normally be dealing with as code enforcement officer because they're in the area or there's just a high demand. But the program has truly has one one inspector. And so that same person also enters any kind of information about the complaints. I mean, that that or or it handles the permits, I think, as well. So we have we have a licensing coordinator, Stephen McCarthy, who supports all the licensing that happens for the health department, the rental program, the Board of License Commissioners with alcohol licenses and everything that they do. And and I think this would have been a bigger discussion three or four years ago for me, but now it isn't because we have this new permitting program that is outstanding and has made this such a easier process than it used to be. So that's not a I guess it's not a very significant task when we look at just the rental program along with all the five thousand plus licenses and permits to be issued annually. As a whole, we've got this one individual that's the point person for that. And then we have administrative staff in the office that helps along with that as well. But where we need the help is with the obviously with inspections and the out in the field work, not the administrative work in the office. Thank you, Rob. So that survey is still open, but but beyond before we get to that, how would we like to summarize or do we want to summarize things further with actual documents or are people OK with sort of the reports that can be pulled directly from Engage Amherst? And, you know, I pulled them sort of four different ways. I pulled a full report and then I split it out by each of the answers to the first question so that you could see only the rent, the answers from those who rented and only those that are just the landlord, only those that just own property in a neighborhood and then those that are landlord and own property. Would we want a different type of summary or, you know? Well, and what about the and then with the people who live in the neighborhood, not renters? Yeah, just just those that aren't renters or landlords, those that are landlords, those that are both landlords and non renters. And then, yeah, there were four ways to answer that first question. And I pulled a report for each of those answers non combined. I could pull a report that combines some of those together into one report or not. You know, there were some other ways of doing it. I found them separate, really helpful. That's why I did it. I thought it would be. But but do we want separate documents or do we just want to go with that that's what we're doing, how we're reporting out is those? I also did a screenshot of a way to do sort of a textual analysis. Any further textual analysis besides that that analysis that that screenshot can produce for each of the text answers. I only did it for one because I wasn't sure whether it was helpful or not. And I did it for the first question that popped up on how you could do it, which was that sort of like sort of a temperature feeling of were things positive or negative in this text, right, for each of these answers that can be done for every text only answer. Do people think that's helpful or not? The only way to get a further textual analysis is to actually go through and tag the answers manually, which I did not do, but could be done. It looked like it had to be done manually if you were going to do it. So would people want to see that sort of positive negative textual analysis that's done automatically through AI for each of the textual answers or not? Did they think it was helpful? Do we want to try and do something else or not? I like I'd like to look at how that came out a little bit, a little bit more when I started to go through survey by survey, just looking for sort of key recommendations that people were making or suggestions. I found that pretty helpful, but that's tedious because it's literally, you know, page by page. So I don't want to give you an answer now. I want to take another look at it. But I but I really like the fact that you and thank you for splitting it out into the four categories, Jennifer. Yeah, we could probably do this just looking at the renter ourselves. But I've always been curious if there's a different experience for the. I'll say the student renters because they change every year versus. A longer term renter, I guess. To put it the lack of being able to put it a better way are are some landlords kind of taking advantage of the students because I think they're younger, may feel less empowered and they are not long term that the units are not as you know, that there are more issues than for someone who may be living long term in a rental unit. Well, right, I guess that's what I mean. I hope people long term. The students shouldn't have to nobody's have to live with mold, but I'm just I would certain and I'm concerned. Anyway, that's just my what I'm curious about. Is there is somewhat different level of maintenance for longer term residents than students, there shouldn't be. But there were so many some what this I was noticing the ages of the student renters were talking about really very disturbing conditions that if they're the fact that they move every 12 months and they may not ask, they may not feel empowered and because they think while moving in a few months, they don't ask that maintenance be at a certain level. But we could probably determine that from you having pulled out the renters. Yeah, my only, you know, that's a good idea at the same time. You know, given the demand in this market, even a long term renter may not have the. Oh, I know, I know the sort of clout to be able to enforce maintenance badly, because if that renter moves because of that, you know, frustration with lack of maintenance, say the landlords know they can rent it in that condition someone else number one or the tenant may not be able to move because of cost, right? Like this one may be because they've been there long term, sort of artificially low, potentially that there's just no ability. You know, like I think it all feeds into each other. So while it's a good thing to think of because we don't want it, I'm not sure we'll see any. Yeah, we might not. I guess because I'm just sometimes struck when I walk by is I'd not been able to go inside, but you see some properties on the outside that just look so terrible. You shudder to think that somebody's living inside. Any other thoughts on. Further analysis at this time. So the second part of continue outreach is continuation of outreach. I know we're almost out of time in this meeting. I would like to talk a little bit about this first, which is the first one. I definitely want to deal with this. Should we be continuing to leave the survey open? And if so, for how long or should we sort of there's an ability to turn off the survey and then we'd be able to get sort of final reports if we wanted to do that? Or we can leave it open at least months longer, right? But but I thought we should talk about at least should we be thinking about closing it out now or should we be waiting much longer and then potentially doing another push for answering of the survey? Jennifer, our response is still coming in. Yes, you should be getting those emails. I think they're trickling in now because we haven't sent, you know, they there was a rush when we sent out the first round of outreach, right? To and that outreach to landlords in our property. It went from the town to everyone who has a property rental permit. We were able to get UMass to send it to their through their off campus housing office to those that they know are off campus, housed off campus. So we were able and then obviously you saw that deluge when those things went out. We haven't yet done a second push. Does it cost anything to keep it open? No. Why not? And then would we want to do a second push closer to when school starts? Pat and then Pam. Yeah, I was wondering. You know, we did get a great deal of student responses because you could find out about it even if you were out of town, but I wonder if there wouldn't be value about holding it open into September, October to make sure we have as many student responses as we can. And then there was something else. Oh, but I really but I'm a Pisces. So I go like this, different directions simultaneously. There's reason to close it in terms of we can get some final reports. We have such a range of information and that feels really valuable to me. Pam. My thinking and I appreciate, you know, wanting to try to get a broader spectrum. I think if I'm not mistaken, we have another forum scheduled. My my gut feeling is that is that maybe we it's been open for maybe three weeks. It was no, it was before the 25th, which was our our forum. So I feel like maybe we close it after these four or five weeks and just say, OK, that was that was great. It was really helpful. But we're going to and then but we have to somehow advertise the fact that we have closed it and then initiate a second one when we're closer to the second forum. My my only concern, I think, is that I'm not sure what I think it's like, I don't know, people are people going to go back in and just keep adding new comments as new survey takers or something like that. I almost would like to wrap up what we've heard to date. And we've given them weeks to do so and then do a new push, a new survey so we can actually separate the data, I think separating the data is the reason that I was thinking. We would have to think about what a new survey should ask, but that's definitely there and there's a plan to do a next forum. We have not set a date, so that is also something we have to decide. I can bring to the next meeting dates, if people would like potential dates. And we have got September, September is fast approaching enough. So we might look better into October or late September or early October. We're having October would be there as his students. Yeah, they will have settled in and don't we have a public forum coming up on my god, the maps. The flood map, our flood map continued hearing is on September 8th during our regular committee meeting. I think I would go with trying to set a forum for a Monday night again on a non council meeting, but I haven't looked at the schedule to see who member in October have a lot of holidays, so I don't know whether there are Mondays available that are not holidays. That would be the 26th because we we look like we have a council on the 12th council on the 19th and the next and then we would have the third and the 17th. So then October 24th would be the next one. So September 26th or October 24th. OK, I like October 24th. If we do late October, we could actually start asking survey questions about specific language in a draft policy in a draft bylaw. That would be great. Better settled on bylaw language, which might be and then the forum could be more about the actual bylaw language. Jennifer. No, I was just saying I have to kind of had a hard stop at 6 30, even though I was late, I'm sorry. So we will continue that discussion next time, but but I'll think about those two dates and then what what the forum would be about with that. Let me make sure. I think we're done our agenda. I don't really have any announcements next agenda September 8th is the flood map hearing, but that's not our next meeting. Our next meeting is September 20th, not September August 25th, August 25th. It will be at this point solely focused on on bylaw language related and continued discussion on the violation sections and on the requirements to obtain a permit, all of that issuance of permits. I will work. I will work on drafting some language for these next sections. Obviously, the first set was drafted and PAM expect an email from me regarding that, OK, but we'll try and get I'll try and get some language out well in advance of the 25th meeting, probably by the 18th, yeah, I would. I would love to talk a little bit about how to how to get stuff into this document because I think you've been saving a copy off to the side and working on it. I've been saving a copy off to the side and working on it. And I panic today because I thought, oh, my gosh, we're going to work. I'm working on an old, old version of something that maybe Joe has probably already changed a hundred times. So can we can we reinstate the the Google Docs access so that our you know, sort of ongoing text and comments can be can be seen? And we just all five of us have had access to that folder because we're not really sharing. We're not. I mean, it's already a public process. It's public commentary. What we're trying to do is load stuff into this document that can then get discussed in public so it's not like it's not like we're trying to work behind the scenes and it would be so much more effective for each of us to be doing a document living rather than I don't disagree. It would be more efficient, PAM. I don't disagree. It would be a lot easier, but the state attorney general and open meeting law say we cannot work on a document and make comments to a document outside of a public meeting unless the public is simultaneously involved. The document I have is, you know, I put it in the packet every week. The most recent one that I've been work that the one that is in today's packet is as recent as it might have an old date on it. But there are no changes to it. I put the most recent one on it. It is why I had the language thing on as last week you would ask for something similar and I said, if you send stuff, we can post your comments to the public before the rest of the committee sees it. And it is in theory, not a violation of open meeting law. But because any of our comments are de facto deliberation, because they are our thoughts on a document, it revealing them to a quorum of a committee outside of an open meeting is a violation of open meeting law. We went through this a lot on the Charter Commission. I have a lot of experience with this. The Charter Commission literally need every commissioner had to bring to their meetings their comments on the document. And we went through line by line, who has comments on what? And then we discussed it and made changes. We could not send them ahead of time to anyone. So I really just like having to react to something that I see for the first time, you know, in in the public meeting because that's what the law requires, though, sadly, well, Jennifer, right on. Pam, I'm sorry, I just have to sign off. Is there anything else just approving minutes? We already did the minutes. So we are on the next agenda preview and then we're done. No, Jennifer. OK, thank you. I'm sorry. Thanks. No problem. Bye. Yeah. So so, Pam, that is why I said last week. If I get a document out and you want to comment on it, I can put it in the packet and as and my belief is, as long as it is in the packet before it is distributed in SharePoint to the rest of the committee members, it would not technically be a violation of open meeting law because because the public will have seen it at the same time as a quorum of committee members has seen it, but you can't go back and forth in a document. And everyone be adding comments to that document as one document because those are not published simultaneously with the public. I got it. I got it. That's why I'm going to try and get the draft out as soon as I can, because then you can take it. And if you send it to me ahead of time or Athena, it can be posted. It can't go to the whole committee before it is posted on the website. Yeah, it cannot go to the whole committee before it is posted. So we swear that we will that we will put the correct like the version and the date on each of these things so we know that we're dealing with the most recent. So I the title of every document always has a version number and a date on it. Right. I don't know whether the footer does, but the title does. I will see if I can add it to the footer. I sometimes forget to change footers, but I never forget to change the title of the document. That's the concern. But I will try and get that document drafted, the document to review for the 25th drafted as soon as I can. Probably I can't get it done before the 16th or 17th. I'll just say that right now, given our council meeting on the 15th and my schedule for the weekend, but I will try to get something. Even if I'm not happy with it, I'll try to get something out. Right. Even if I don't think it's quite complete. And then people can look at it and if they have if they have wording changes, what I will do is I will ask you to send that document to Athena. I will email Athena and say if you receive after the packet is posted, if you receive a document from a committee member that is comments on that document, post it to the packet and then let me know and put it in SharePoint or I will put it in SharePoint. But let me know once it's posted online because it has to be online and available to the public. Yeah, I got it. I got it. So I will try to do that. Any other questions about the next agendas? Seeing none. Thank you all for your willingness to stay a little late. I don't have anything unanticipated. So with that, I am adjourning the meeting at six forty two p.m. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Dave, for being with us. Yeah, even for the end, I will. I did ask Rob during the meeting if you would give me kind of a briefing on what I missed, so he'll do that tomorrow. We have some other things to talk about, so I appreciate that. Yeah, Dave, just just here where one of the things that came up was looking actually for some information, some data from the town that is tracked and that is the total number of dwelling units in town. And then if there's any way we can extract how many units are non-owner occupied as a way to just give us that. Are you talking about dwelling all dwelling units or rental? No, all dwelling is talking about all dwelling units during the meeting. OK, yeah, yeah. And Rob, Rob heard that request as well. Yes, he did. George Ryan has been trying to get stuff like that for a couple of years. OK, we're going to stop the meeting and I'm going to end it. Bye. Officially adjourned.