 Now, good to go. The chair notes the time is 6.05. I call this meeting the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals to order. My name is Steve Judge and as EVA chair, I want to welcome everyone to this meeting. We'll begin with a roll call vote of the ZVA members and panels for this hearing. Steve Judge's present. Mr. Meadows is, we'll be calling in Mr. Henry. Present. Ms. Marshall. Here. Ms. Greenbaugh. Here. Four or five members, oh, and Mr. Meadows. I can see him connecting his audio and he is there. So, and Mr. Meadows. I got to apologize. I picked up a new computer yesterday and I've been downloading apps all day long. I didn't realize I didn't have Zoom on here. So. Oh, the world's wonderful. This technology is wonderful. Oh, it's just been such a delightful experience. Well, I hope this gives you a break from downloading programs and apps. But it does, I'm looking forward to not doing it anymore for today. All right, so we have Mr. Meadows is present. The quorum is present. Also attending the public hearing tonight is Ms. Christine Brestrup, Planning Director. Mr. David Wasevitz, Lead Building Inspector and Mr. Rob Wachilla, Planner for the Town. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, extended by chapter two of the Acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted via remote meetings. Members of the public who wish to observe the meeting may do so via Zoom or by 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, access, excuse me, the proceedings in real time via technological means. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of the Chapter 48 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. In accordance with provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 48 and Article 10, Special Permit Granting Authority of the Amherst Zoning By-law, this public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted in mail to parties at interest. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff and they may be viewed via the town of Amherst's YouTube channel and ZBA webpage. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the Board during the hearing, after which the Board will ask questions for clarification or for additional information. After the Board has completed its questions, the Board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If the member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raised hand function on their screen or by pressing nine on their phone. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address to the Board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the Board. The Board will normally hold public hearings where information about a project and input from the public is gathered. That is followed by a public meeting for each. The public meeting portion is when the Board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the Board feels it has enough information and time, it will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition heard by the Board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits and the Board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for a special permit, the Board has 90 days from the close of hearings to file a decision. For a variance, the Board has 100 days from the date of filing to file its decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting Board members and is filed with the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there is a 20-day appeal period for an agreed party to contest the decision with a relevant judicial body and superior court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the Registry of Deeds to take effect. Tonight's agenda, consideration of minutes from June 22nd, 2023, public hearing on ZBA FY 2023-12, Thomas and David Casey request for a special permit under sections 3.01, 3.3211 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw to construct a non-owner occupied duplex consisting of two units with each unit containing four bedrooms, eight total, on the same parcel as an existing two-story duplex with seven bedrooms. At 798 and 800 North Pleasant Street, map 8A, parcel 66, RN, Neighborhood Residential Zoning District. ZBA FY 2023-19, Fred L. Perry, DDS, requests for a modification to an existing special permit under ZBA FY 2008-00005 under section 10.33 to remove a condition 12, which states this permit shall expire upon chains of ownership of property. At 650 Main Street, map 14B, parcel 103, RG, General Residence Zoning District. A public meeting on ZBA FY 2026, 2020-26, one university drive, discussion of condition 61, which allows for the applicant to return to the ZBA at a public meeting for review and approval of the design of a freestanding sign and a monument sign. Following those items, there's a general public comment period on any matter, not before the board tonight. Other business, not anticipated within the last 48 hours and adjourned. Tonight's agenda, first is, I'd like to see if there's any disclosures that any member of the board needs to make. Yes. Mr. Meadows, do you get your hand up first? As far as the building on Main Street, did Fred Perry owns? Yep. Fred was my dentist for some time. And prior to that, Jeff Eisman, who owned the building before them, was my dentist. And before that, my mother grew up with his mother. So there's some history there as far as the relationship is concerned. Whether that is a conflict or not, I think that's someone else's interpretation. But I think the question for you is, if you make a declaration, are you saying that you can act on this case without prejudice? I believe I can. Okay. I could recite very many of the same things that Craig just recited, except it turns out I'm in a butter, so I have to recuse myself. I didn't get on a butter's letter and it didn't go to a Hallux Street, but I figured it out. I have to recuse myself. So would you prefer I leave the room or can I stay as in a butter room? I think in that, when we deal with the dentist issue, I think you should just mute and act as part of the public if you can't be a part of it. Okay. Act as part of the public in that case. But I don't wanna go through reconnecting you on once we get the interview. I'll stay here, but I'll shut off my microphone. Great. Any other disclosures? Ms. Marshall. Yes, my family also goes to that dental practice, but I think I can act without prejudice on this matter. Great. Okay. The first order of business tonight is approval of the minutes from our June 22nd meeting. You have those, each of you have those minutes before you. I reviewed them, they looked fine to me. Is there anybody that has a change? Ms. Marshall. Just to fix the spelling of Dylan Maxfield's name on the very last page under other business. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. I figure he didn't get these and is not, can't speak for himself though. So what page is that on, Sarah? Well, the last page of the minutes for page four. Under other business, not anticipated. Just fix the spelling of his first name. You, he's spelled as in Bob Dylan, as opposed to Matt Dylan. Okay. It should be D-I-L-L-O-N. Only a couple of us would get that reference. Thank you for catching that. All right. All right. Are there any other comments, changes or suggestions on the minutes? If not, I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion on that motion? Just this is as amended, right? Yes. To approve the minutes as amended. If not, the vote occurs on the motion to approve the minutes as amended. Chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Ms. Greenbaum. I think that I should abstain because we learned here for the meeting. Were we? No, I don't think you were a part of that panel. No, I think those who weren't at that meeting should abstain. But we can't do that all the time because we would always have to have the same panel. So you can take the advice and the experience of those who were there. Most of us were there and found that these minutes accurately reflected the meeting. If you wish to. I haven't read them, so because I love them. You're abstaining on this vote. Yeah. Unless we ate at the pass? No, we don't need it to pass. Then it's better I abstain. Okay, so we've got four votes. Aye. One extension. One abstention. The motion carries. The minutes are approved. All right. The next is the public hearing. We have a request to consider the 650 Main Street request for modifications as a first item tonight because the application, the applicant's representative has another public meeting to attend this evening. Normally we work to accommodate these requests. And I make a special note of it tonight because I mentioned to the people observing our site visit at 798-800 North Pleasant that the special permit, that special permit, the special permit application dealing with the North Pleasant address would be first on the agenda. In reviewing the request for modification, it seems that the issue was really pretty clear. Mr. Reedy, who's representing the applicant has assured the staff that the presentation will be short and I see no reason why that matter cannot be decided in just a few minutes. So I'm going to take up that matter first then move on to other matters on the agenda. In addition, if we haven't completed our consideration of the North Pleasant Street application by a quarter to nine tonight, I will move to continue that matter to a date certain and conduct a public meeting on the sign for one University South. So that will be completed tonight. So we'll now open public hearing on ZBA FY 2023-19, Fred Elperry, DDS request for a modification to an existing special permit. ZBA FY 2008-005 under section 10.33 to remove condition 12, which states this permit shall aspire upon change of ownership of the property. At 650 Main Street, at 14B parcel 103 RG, general residence zoning districts. There was not a site visit. There were some submissions and I can read those from the project application report. The submissions include a cover letter dated June 22nd, a ZBA FY 23-19 application, ZBA FY 20-19 management plan, requested waiver dated June 22nd, 2023, special permit decisions from FY 2008 and 605 Main Street GIS parcel map. I think those were all the submissions, would they Rob? All right. Okay. Who's representing the client? I am Mr. Chair and give your name and address for the record. Thank you very much. Tom Reed, attorney at Bacon Wilson out of Amherst here on behalf of the applicant Fred Perry and its requests for a modification of the condition. Thank you very much to the board for moving us first. I've got a 645 public meeting in Ludlow. So I'm in the parking lot at the Ludlow Town Hall. So I will keep it brief. Yeah, I mean, this use as a dental office has been at 650 Main Street since 1981. It was allowed at that time by special permit, subsequently the zone changed. So it's a pre-existing non-conforming use. I think it's only allowed one dental suite, I think up to four dentists. The condition that we're asking to have removed is one that causes the permit to expire upon change of ownership. We would request based on the fact that it's been there since 1981, that there's an appropriate management plan in place. There are appropriate conditions in the special permit and the special permit is part of the title. So any subsequent purchaser would be aware of the existence of those conditions. That the inspection services department, if anything were to go awry, has sufficient enforcement mechanisms so that you can eliminate that expiration upon change of ownership and allow the use to continue. So that's it, I'll answer any questions that you have. So Mr. Regie, and for members of the board, especially our new members, many special permits contain that condition where it expires upon change of ownership. And there was a good reason for that at the time that is to allow board members to examine whether the existing conditions are still required after the ownership changes or if they need to be changed. But at the same time, it's a hindrance to the sale of the property. And so we have something to balance here, it seems to me. So instead of allowing this special permit to be transferred, I think the board should review the management plan and that's something that we've done for the last year or a year and a half is that for rental properties and other properties, we systematically been trying to eliminate this provision, this condition from a lot of different when it comes before us. But we always say that the owner, the owner, new owner or prospective owner should share the management plan with the board at a public meeting for the board to review that and to review it if there's have to be any change to conditions. And that's what we've done in the past. And it seems to me that that's accomplishes what you need which is certainty for your client in terms of a sale of the property can be done prospectively or within, I think it could be done within three months of sale, completion of sale. The management plan can be looked at, the town can then decide if anything has to be changed, especially if something that's gone on since 1981, there might be changes that need to be made. But it doesn't, I think, hinder the ability to sell. I think the current condition does. So I wonder if that's something you could agree with. Yeah, I guess my only comment would be in two-fold. One, if it could be done through the building commissioner as just the first round, have any potential purchaser go and meet with the building commissioner and have that initial determination made, whether or not they should then progress to the zoning board of appeals because the second point would be, I would imagine anybody who's spending real money on buying this property is probably gonna wanna know before they buy, whether or not there's going to be any changes. And so instead of, within three months of purchase, I can't imagine it would happen then. And so just, and I'm frankly thinking about a pretty immediate sale that would happen. And so even now, if this were condition were to require us to come back before the ZBA, we would have to wait until the August meeting to get back in front of you. So I wonder if the building commissioner has an opportunity. I understand that, but I would propose the prospective owner, the prospective purchaser could come before us too, right? Yes, I'm just saying that there's a live one here, right? So there's a transaction ready to happen for the sale of this property that can't go forward until this is allowed, right? That the new owner is able to get the approval for the use. And so to wait for the meeting to come before the zoning board of appeals, because you meet less frequently than the building commissioner is in the office. So it could be something where they could go to him tomorrow or Monday and get that initial read saying, we're gonna keep everything the same, get that comfort level and then transit waiting until your next meeting, which is at some point, I believe in August, end of August, I think, to have that conversation. I think we have a meeting before that, but I take your point. I wonder if other people have opinions about this. Mr. Meadows. I don't know how many other situations we have just like this, maybe a few where there are a special purpose business such as a dental office or a doctor's office that are located in the building that has these requirements. And I don't wanna set a precedent, but it does seem as though a professional office is different than when we're transitioning a multifamily building or a two-family house or something of that sort. And it is unlikely that that would change if it went before the building inspector, if the building inspector found a problem, then I think it probably should come to us, but if the building inspector felt that it was the same narrative, then it seems as though it would be reasonable, my perspective. Ms. Marshall. I wanna be sure I understand. So we're being asked to allow the permit to continue, but it would be an effect in all its details. It just would be transferred to the new owner, right? So nothing would, the new owner could not change the use, could not change the management plan. It's just somebody different on the title and paying the tax bills, yes? Correct. It could be a different kind, but it could be a different kind of business, or it could, but it, right. It could be a different business. It could change. I mean, I don't remember that. No, this use, this is the, it's a dental. Only a dental office. That's what I know of. A dental office? Yes, yes. So it would need to continue as such, so. Correct. With all the conditions that have been in post since 1981, including the management plan that was last accepted in 2008, so it's literally just changing the owner and allowing, so then future owners to go through the same process of going to the building commissioner, making sure that they're aligned. And I think if anything, it, it connects them with the town. And so the town can then say to them, you know, A, welcome to town, B, here are all the conditions. And then if there is a misstep at some point, the town bill, the inspection services department can step in and say, we have this conversation. So it kind of bridges that gap as a safeguard, but I'll defer to Mr. Roscovich. Can I ask follow-up? I'm sorry. Yep, go ahead. Would there be any, let's say that that condition is going to be rescinded. Is there any need to have the new owner say in writing, yes, I have read the special permit and I, you know, I know it's attached and I'm aware of it. Yeah, I don't see an issue. And I think, you know, our proposal is to eliminate that condition, but hearing what the chair is saying about, you know, is there, can you get the porridge to be just right, right? Is there some middle ground? And if that middle ground is going first to the inspection services department and acknowledging and writing that they've read it, I don't see an issue with that. I think that's completely reasonable. Mr. Roscovich. Yeah, I think there was some suggestion that the use doesn't change, but potentially the new owner could submit a different management plan, but that's the purpose of going to the commissioner as well, besides an introduction of the new owner is to see if there's any changes that they're asking for, because then it would get brought to the zoning board if he felt it was necessary. If nothing else changes as attorney reading is suggesting, then it allows to continue without having to go through any other process. And that could be done, in your view, that could be done before the transaction is complete, correct? It could be. If the prospective purchaser is concerned about it. Yeah, but it's primarily to introduce the new owner and to make sure everybody understands what the current conditions are. And even to know there's a transition of ownership. So I was unaware in this case, we have a restricted use just to dental office. All right, any other comments regarding this? Okay, so it seems like we have a consensus building here that we should permit this for the prospective owner or I think the owner, the new owner, and we need to have it in a certain timeframe that's completed or else it's. So I'm suggesting three months from, that this prospective owner can do it before or the new owner can do it within three months of completing the transaction. And that it goes to the building commissioner. And the building commissioner could, if he felt the need, could refer it to the zoning board of appeals. Is that what, does that seem to be the consensus of the board members? Ms. Marshall. So the prospective or new owner is going to the building commissioner to review the permit and all the conditions. Correct. So there's no chance that the person is not aware of what is required. But also if the building commissioner sees that there's been a, that there's a need for a change in the management plan or the need to change in conditions, the building commissioners in his judgment can send it to the ZVA. That's, we're substituting the building commissioners judgment for ours in that case. And that's the issue for us as a body. Okay. Seems to me that we probably have consensus on that. And Ron, are you comfortable in drafting that condition up? Do you have any questions? So Mr. Chairman, if you go to page six of the project application report for this permit, I do have two conditions that I wrote that should be included in this decision packet. And then there's also a condition that the board should discuss. So one B on that bottom portion actually spells out a condition that I'll probably put in that describes exactly what we were talking about. It has to go to the building commissioner for the review of the conditions for the special permit and to determine whether or not further review is needed with the zoning board. So I could definitely change that up to include within three months of completing transaction that the prospective owner slash new owner should go to and also review the management plan as well with the building commissioner. So if you want me to include all those factors into that condition specifically, I could definitely draft it in a way where we can fit in and it works for everybody. But we should also mention those first two conditions as well under possible conditions of approval just to ensure this continuance with FY 2008-00005 and just the general carte blanche condition we put in there as well. So it has to be maintained according to the management plan. Any changes shall warrant review by the building commissioner, et cetera. That's the boilerplate that we do with special permits as long as I've been on the board. It just wasn't done in 2008. Okay, all right. So then it seems to me that we should have a motion to approve, well, let's see if there's any discussion about that before I move to accept a motion but it seems like those two, number one and two make sense. Anybody object to that? Okay, so I guess what we should need to do, we have to see if there's any public comment on this and then move on. This is a public hearing. So let's move to public hearing in case anybody wants to speak to this issue. So I'm not seeing any hands raised in the attendees. Okay, all right. So I'm going to, without objection, I'm going to move to a public meeting while keeping the public hearing open in case we need to have additional, gather additional information or public comment. And for us, the purpose of the public meeting is where the board deliberates and it's generally not an opportunity for public comment. So it seems to me that we have consensus here around how to deal with the exploration by giving the building commissioner the opportunity to review his judgment can send, his or her judgment can send it back to us and that possible condition one and possible condition two are also a consensus opinion. So I would entertain a motion that we approve conditions, possible conditions one and two and that conditions B, I guess it is Rob as amended to include perspective and three months be approved as a package, those three conditions. Any questions? Is there, is there such a motion? So moved. Moved and that's, I'm assuming yours is a second Ms. Marshall. So we haven't moved and seconded any discussion. If not, the vote occurs on the motion to approve the conditions as stated. Chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. We have four votes. The majority vote that passes. The vote now occurs on approval of a special application special permit application. It's the number on this special permit application FY 2023-19 and any waivers requested by the applicant which include a building plan, lighting plan, sign plan, site plan, lighting plan and landscaping plan which did not need to be provided to us. In addition, we have to make our findings under 10.38. Most of them are not applicable. We can find that this proposal is suitable for the neighborhood of 10.381 and 10.30. It's been there since 1980. The proposal was not constituted a nuisance under 10.382, 383, 385, 387. There's adequate and appropriate facilities. That's 10.384 that we can find as the applicant is invited by parking sign regulations. So 10.386 I think is satisfied. We can find under 10.387 the proposal will not create any congestion to traffic. There's no change in the traffic in the parking of the traffic from this. 10.388 does not apply. 10.389 which deals with disposal of sewage, refuge or recyclables. They have a plan in place. I think we can meet that finding. 10.390 does not apply. 10.391 does not apply. 10.392 does not apply. 9.3 does not apply. 9.4 does not apply. 10.395 does not apply. 396, 397 do not apply. And lastly, 10.398 which is that this is in harmony with the person that attended the bylaw and this goals of the master plan that it does indeed harmonious with the goals of the master plan. So is there any objection to those findings? If not, let's vote on the findings and the condition and approval of the special permit application for this project. It's a roll call vote. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Four votes are required for this. Four votes are given. The motion passes. Mr. Medi, congratulations. Good luck. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. And thanks for moving me up. I appreciate it. Have a good night. Good night. Take care. Thanks. This is on is ZBA's 2023-12 Thomas and David Casey request for a special permit under section 3.01, 3.3211 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw to construct a non-owner occupied duplex consisting of two units with each unit containing four bedrooms, eight total on the same parcel as an existing two-story duplex with seven bedrooms at 798-800 North Pleasant Street, map 8A, parcel 66, parcel 866, residential neighborhood zoning district. And again, I wanna remind folks that if we haven't completed our consideration on this matter by 845, we're gonna be moving to the, we'll be moving to continue this matter to a date certain. So public hearing, there was a site review on Tuesday, January 25th. Excuse me, July 25th. It wasn't, it was warm. It wasn't cold on that day. Let me get the cereal from that. We walked the site. We met with the owners, the builders, the architects and some people that were working on the property. We also were accompanied by several members and then people in the neighborhood who observed our site visit. We walked, we walked around the property. We viewed the site lines. We looked at the, we spent a lot of time talking about the parking and observing the parking and where the new curb cut would be and where the bus stop is gonna be placed. We reviewed where the drainage ground was for the, on the property for the new house or for the both houses. But as a result of the new house, we observed the fence in the back, the recycle and trash enclosures. And we went into the, into the first unit and observed the first unit as well. There were several questions asked at that site visit. How many trees do they intend to remove where the bus stop will be located? How much of the sidewalk and linear feet will be dedicated to the bus stop? What happens to the gravel in the existing parking lot? Does the current site layout provide adequate access for the fire department? Will stormwater system be placed underground? Will it be an extension of a replacement of the current sump pump? Will the existing tent and shed at the rear of the property be removed? How many trash receptacles will the applicant be proposing? Will these receptacles be screened? Could you please elaborate on the guest policy that the lease agreement says 25 total on site but 10-inch building, which is confusing. Can you identify where grass, whether existed or adding, will be located on the site? So those were the site visits. The questions at the site visit and my representation of what we did. Does anybody want to add anything? Or Mr. Henry, from your site visit, is there anything else you wanted to add to the recitation of what we saw? No, I read the questions and I had similar questions. I think it's sufficient. And I'm sure we have enough to ask more when we hear from Mr. Casey. All right, anybody else? All right, I think that's sufficient then. Submissions, we have the following submissions. Cover letter dated December 15, ZBA application from 2023-12, 2023's management plan, traffic impact statement dated December 12, 2022, sample residential lease, memo from consultants one dated February 1st, 2023, memo from the consultant. Number two dated June 1st, 2023, police call log for 798-800 North Pleasant. Raised, there's a raised ballard light specs, a budding parcel reference retrieved from Amherst.gov, GIS Amherst.gov, including residential parcels, non-ownership occupied parcels and two family parcels within one quarter mile of the site, interior restoration and repair floor plans, prepared by Keith Geyer, Keith Geyer's custom carpet tree, sheet one and two, site plans, a cover sheet, sheets one through seven, which deal with existing conditions, demolition layout, planting, lighting, site details, and the second site detail. There's architectural renderings, floor and elevated plans, a cover sheet, sheet one, two, three, four, five and six, which are 3D views, the first floor, second floor, roof plan, building up elevation and building elevations, two of those. In addition, we have received several public comments, I think that's all the town comments and all the submissions from the applicants, correct? So there actually was one document that was submitted to after the board got its report. It was a complaint response form from the applicant that they're required to fill out initially, and that was sent and included on the online version of this packet as well. We do have that, that's correct. Thank you. In addition, we have several public comments, one from Thomas Randall, dated Thursday, July 27th. One from Ira Brick, dated Monday, July 24th. We have an email letter from Ellen Wood, dated July 27th. An email from Rebecca Curzon, dated July 27th. We have an email from Doris Heller, dated Thursday, July 27th. Now that's Doris and Addie Heller, jointly. We have one from Mr. Jim Turner, and I guess regarding his parents, and that's July 27th, date. We have one from Michelle Miller, dated July 27th. And we are, I've already stated the Heller one. So those are the public comments. I think I got them all, don't I? So there's two more. So there was a letter from the Fairview neighbors who jointly signed a letter together that was sent out to the board as well. And there was one I just received prior to this meeting from a miss, and forgive me if I mispronounced your name, Josna Reggie, and that's a letter as well. I could forward that to the rest of the board members if you want to review it. I believe several of these people are in attendance tonight. So I would assume that during the general public comment period for this hearing, they're probably gonna want to speak on behalf of their comments that they submit to the board, Mr. Chairman, so I'll know if you, if you wanted to keep that in mind as well. But that's all the comments that we have received for this project from members of the public. And Rob, would you give me a favor and send both the, I did see that, but I don't have it in my packet. I must have read it online and failed to print it. So would you send the Fairview association as well as that last letter to all of us? We have it, if we wish to print it. Yeah, I could do that as well. And the applicants should have a copy of all of that as well forward to each student. All right, great. I think that's all the material that we received on this. Who's here to represent the applicant? So we have David and Thomas Casey who are the applicants. And we also have a Mr. Jeff Squire from Berkshire Design who's their consultant. So I'm gonna promote all three of them to panelists. And if there's anybody additional that they need as well to speak on their behalf, I can promote them to panelists at their requests. So I don't see Thomas Casey, but I only see a Mr. David Casey and it seems to be it's. Charles Roberts, is he there as well? Charles Roberts, yes, yes. Do you need to promote him? Yes, he is. Alrighty. Who in real? Thanks, yeah. And Charles Roberts should also get an invitation as well. I know that several, there are a couple of three people that have their hands up. And I don't think they're Mr. Tedeschi, Joshua Regi, oh, and their hands raised. And unless you're part of the, and Kathy's shown as well, and unless you're part of the presentation, we're not taking public comment until later. So if you're part of the presentation, you can speak, but right now we're just dealing with the applicants. Okay. So gentlemen, give me your name and address to the record. Hi, David and Thomas Casey, 798-800 North Pleasant Street, Amherst. That's where you reside? No, sorry, that's the property address. No, I reside at Two Hartford Street in Medfield, Massachusetts. And I'm Thomas Casey and I reside at 74 Gates Street, South Boston, Mass. Got it. Mr. Roberts. Hi, I'm Charles Roberts with Q Middle Architects, our office is located at 28 Amity Street here in Amherst. Got it. And Mr. Squire. Jeff Squire with the Berkshire Design Group at 4 Allen Place in Northampton. All right. So this is a time for you guys to make your presentation after which the board will ask questions, you can respond to that and we'll be able to open up a public comment. You'll respond to the comments through us, not to the comments themselves, if you'll have a chance to respond. The board can ask other questions and then we'll proceed. All right. So who wants to start it off? So I'll let, I'm gonna start the majority of the conversation but I would like Tom and David to at least say a few words as the owners and applicants. Absolutely. Thank you. So I appreciate everyone giving us the opportunity tonight to present to you. Both Thomas and I went to UMass back in, he was 94, I was 94, he was 99 graduates. We've been going to Amherst ever since and we purchased this property in 2004 timeframe roughly and it was a rental property at the time we picked it up and we've done minor renovations to it over the years and then back in 2021, right after COVID we did fairly major renovation and we can get into that in more detail if there's interest but we invested a significant amount of capital into it close to $600,000, totally renovated both units. We've been in the property business, most of our lives our parents owned a real estate company growing up Casey real estate, both of our parents were involved and that's kind of where we've got our interest and we purchased this property together as our first property that we own. And since then we've been managing it with local property management in town and as I mentioned, we did the renovation and since then Keith Geyer construction has been engaged helping us manage it until we determine what's gonna happen with the additional units that we're hoping to get consideration on here this evening. So as I mentioned, there was major renovation done and I did notice some of the comments we tried to read through as many as we could before this evening's presentation. So obviously we didn't get through them all but I did see a lot of mention about the property being condemned at one point and I just wanted to clarify when that actually happened it was during COVID and I think you could probably attest that a lot of the students left Amherst our house was not unique, it was left vacant and the property manager went by at the time but the squatters had moved in and they were not visible to the outside they closed all the blinds and lived inside and left all of their mess in the house so that they wouldn't be detected and it wasn't for a couple of months when we finally got up there and went inside the house and discovered that they had been there and we basically brought the town came in we met with John Thompson and that's when the property was basically remanded to where it needed major renovation and that's we hired Keith Geyer, he came in and we determined to renovate the property so I just wanted to clarify there that it wasn't left in that state for years on end this was just during COVID and right afterwards so we'll turn it over now to Jeff and Charles but we're here obviously throughout to answer questions and explain our intent with the property. Great, thanks David. So yes, like I said, Jeff Squire, a principal and partner at the Berkshire Design Group in Northampton assisting Tom and David with this proposal. This project site is parcel ID 8A-66 it's located at the corner of North Pleasant Street which you can see sort of running through the center of the sheet and Old Town Road it's just 0.86 acre parcel that you see here highlighted it currently includes a non-owner occupied two family dwelling which is in this location there's a near driveway off of Old Town Road to a gravel parking lot and there's a wider curb cut that exists now back out onto North Pleasant Street just north of the Old Town Road intersection. The, you know, this property is located in this Fairview Street neighborhood its context is generalized by sort of a dense residential neighborhood and it literally is surrounded by the university on at least three sides. This property in particular is sort of central to the overall neighborhood but you can really see sort of the consistency and layout of the small single family homes or, you know, organized on a sort of a geometric streetscape. This project proposes the addition of a second two family dwelling in the undeveloped sort of open portion of the parcel to the north. It maintains the existing parking and entry generally in its same location. We do show improvements to help organize the parking from what it is now which is, you know, a little bit more of expansive gravel area for what's needed. So we've organized that through, you know, lawn areas and landscaping. There is a second curb opening that's proposed or exit entrance proposed onto Old Town Road as a result of a bus stop proposed by the town which I'll speak to later. But generally it's a modest two family home in the undeveloped portion of the property. Again, just to provide some context because I know that has been a topic of conversation, you know, this parcel, this property is really, you know, nestled in this denser neighborhood based on some rough calculations we're around, you know, 2.2 dwellings per acre. I think we, you know, based on our estimations there were 70, 73 or so parcels that have been developed with residential uses in this neighborhood. And you can really appreciate the context surrounded by the university and its proximity to, you know, to the school and just the other residential uses surrounding this parcel here. Again, just to provide some context again this whole entire neighborhood is entirely residential. It's roughly 72 parcels, 100% of that is residential use of those non, of those seven, roughly 40% are non owner occupied, you know, so one would assume that most of these are rentals. So 28 of the 72 parcels are rentals. And then, you know, within those there's 8% of those that are two family parcels. So those are highlighted here. There are a couple of anomalies that we've noted, you know, there's a fraternity further to the south that doesn't show up on some of these tax records and data. So there are a couple of anomalies that, but just to provide some approximation of, you know, how this project fits into the context of the larger neighborhood I thought was an important thing to highlight. Again, just looking up and down, sort of some of the adjacent lots adjacent to or approximate to the, to this site this is a little bit further south. This is actually, I think the fraternity that I was referring to previously, which is two lots south just to the north at 816 North Pleasant, another residential use. And again, you get a little bit further, you know, another residential use, but I think what this really is intended to highlight is sort of the modest residential structures that dominate that streetscape up and down North Pleasant Street. And, you know, I think it's really evident, you know, especially in this image, as you can see the sort of spacing between these homes as you leave campus on the north edge. To speak to the, there were several comments about the proposed curb exit, the proposed entrance exit onto a new one on Old Town Road. We had plans developed in November of 22, which had utilized that existing curb cut on North Pleasant Street as we were getting into discussions with the fire department and the DPW to ensure that we had adequate fire access and emergency access. It was expressed to us that there was a plan by the town to relocate the existing bus stops along North Pleasant Street to this location right in front of the property as you head south and then across the street adjacent to the larger lot, parking lot, just a little bit further off this page. North, on the North Lane leading town, this had a major impact on this site plan, on our prior site plan. And so obviously was a reason that, you know, this project has been delayed a little bit and required a little bit of redesign, but I just wanted to just reiterate that this, you know, this was, this proposal was something that was brought forward by the town, something that we needed to respond to as a design team sort of mid-stride. And so this solution that we had developed, which presents, I'll just go back to that site plan, which proposes this secondary curb cut was really driven by, you know, some of the town needs and town plans and through that process, you know, ensure that we had adequate emergency vehicle access, both for fire police and a DPW concern. So I just wanted to highlight that. Again, the site plans that were presented, basic demolition plan, there's some vegetation clearing, some tree removal shown in this portion of the site. We had surveyed, you know, any of the larger trees, indicated in the larger trees that were 10 inches above. So there's a number of those that have been shown to be removed. There is some vegetation in here that does need to be removed as a result of the new driveway. Most of this vegetation along this buffer consists of overgrown use. There's a number of invasives in there. Most of this planting has been there. Probably since it's in some exception. And so, you know, most of it is pretty overgrown. There are some apple sprouts, cherry sprouts, those types of things, but, you know, we're trying to preserve as much of the vegetated buffer you can see in the north to the west side and within, even within this area as possible, just being understanding of the sensitivity to the project. Again, maintaining that existing curb entrance off of Old Town Road with a secondary one, both are further to the east. One of the things, and I don't wanna keep going back and forth, but that was brought up at the sidewalk Tuesday was providing some additional buffer in this area here against the adjacent neighbor's fence. We are able to do that. And I'll just go back to the rendering real quick because that shows that change but you can see we were able to shift the driveway over slightly at least to accommodate a hedgerow, a four or five foot hedgerow along that western edge to provide, you know, again, a little bit more buffer, a little bit more distance to that neighbor. So, you know, we didn't have time to revise all of the site plans, but we certainly can submit, you know, those plans as necessary with those updates. The stormwater management, well, so the parking lot, this really would serve as a one-way entrance in with an exit and an entrance further to the east on this new curb entrance. You can see the bus stop that is proposed in this location. It includes a continuous sidewalk that wraps around the bus pullout and then continues to meet the existing sidewalk along North Pleasant Street. The proposed new two-family is in this portion of the lot further to the north. We are including pedestrian sidewalk and connection to the new structure. There's a subsurface. So this is a stormwater management system that would be buried below this lawn area, this open space. So it's not visible, but that deals and manages the additional impervious area from the new building. And that has been reviewed and addressed by the DPW. Dumpster enclosure with a fence enclosure is shown on the western portion of the site. We have a accessible parking space and a future EV space also shown. There's parking for 11 cars overall. This is a site that is very proximate to public transit obviously with the bus stop out in front. We are providing accommodations for bike parking with bike racks at both units. It's walkability to adjacent nearby amenities really reduce the dependence on vehicles combined with the fact that we really don't, the desire is not to encourage renters and people with the ability to access those other transit modes to bring cars and offer and have those at the site. So as a function of this site design, we're really trying to limit and restrict the amount of new vehicles and vehicle traffic. So parking a vehicle and having a vehicle on this site is gonna be a privilege and part of that lease agreement. And Tom and David can speak to that earlier, we're certainly cognizant of any increase in vehicle traffic and wanna sort of discourage that to the extent possible. And certainly don't wanna encourage people to bring more cars to the area than we need. The traffic report indicated a total of summary that we provided in the application indicated a total of 24 vehicle trips per day. This is based on ITE standards, which is a industry standard for residential uses. This equates to 12 trips per day for each structure, for each two family dwelling. The total increase would amount to two vehicle trips per peak hour, obviously in the evening and the morning hours as ITE defines it. But that, just again, to reiterate all of that is assuming that everyone has a vehicle and that all of those people have a place to park. And in this case, our proposal is to restrict and limit the amount of new vehicle trips to the site by way of limiting the number of parking spaces. So the hope is that this project doesn't increase that while there may be more residential units, there's not a large increase in the number of vehicular trips to the area. Site lighting, there is no site lights, large pole lights that exist on the property now. What exists now are at least two motion detected lights at various corners of the building for safety and pedestrian purposes, but these are motion detected lights just to the right of this entrance here and then off the corner, sort of the southeast corner of the building here. The entrance to this gable end of the building has two sort of historical wall sconces, wall-mounted sconces that flank the front entry on side lights, but that really is all that exists on the current site now. What we're proposing as part of the new project are recessed ceiling lights or entry lights at the vestibules coming into the entry points into the building, but these are again recessed LED lights that are mounted up inside the canopy. And then we've got three low level LED bollards that really are just intended to light this walkway as you leave the parking lot to the new building. These are three foot high, modestly profiled landscape bollards, downlights. You can see the structure of the fixture at the head, but these are really intended just to light the walkway for pedestrian safety. We did provide a photometric plan, although I recognize the complications of small fixtures on a larger site. So again, just to provide some sense of photometric levels, you know, one foot candle reading is pretty typical in most parking lots. I think the highest levels we see here are 2.8 or so directly below the fixture. This span is about five feet. So the light cast of that fixture is five, six feet or so as you get beyond that, we're down to 0.1 foot candles. So eight feet, easily eight feet beyond those bollards, there's very little light being cast anywhere else on this site. So in recognition of the largest site, that's a very small light introduction on this site. So we're certainly sensitive to the light pollution and we're trying to minimize that to the extent possible. And with that, I'll turn it over to Charles with Q and Rill just to go over some of the building massing and then building designs. Thanks, Jeff. You know, I'm actually going to, I think I can share my screen because I have the drawings up and that way I can sort of use my pointer, if that's okay. Yeah, so this is, hi everybody, I'm with Charles Roberts with Q and Rill Architects. Jeff did a good job of sort of describing some of the larger contextual issues with the site and some of the technical aspects around drainage and parking and lighting. What I want to try and do is provide a sense of what this building is going to look like and feel like on the site and some of the thinking behind the design decisions that we made as we were going forward with the project. This is kind of, this is the bird's eye view which we'll see in more detail in another shot looking from the southeast. This is the existing house here, kind of a green space between the proposed duplex or two family to the north and the existing house in the parking. So we'll look at some more images of this. In terms of the floor plans, this is the first floor plan. They're two similar unit layouts positioned at right angles to each other which does a nice job in terms of creating a private backyard space for these folks and then also creating a nice separation between the new house and the existing house which gives us that nice green lawn space up front. There's a shared, it's not really, but there's a structure in front that's kind of a lower porch shaped architectural element that has separate entries into each house, mud rooms for each individual unit and then open kitchen living dining area on the first floor and a bedroom and bathroom and back in each unit. On the second floor, we've got three bedrooms and laundry facilities and two more bathrooms upstairs. So plenty of bathrooms, everybody to use nice sized rooms really focusing on windows and light and air and sort of the quality of life in these units. The roof plans just showing the simple geometric shapes. These are well suited for PV, especially the south facing roof here. The west facing roof is also good for PV although there are some trees back in here but later on down the road, trees go and somebody wants to put some PV panels on this roof. It's well suited for that. These are elevations. So there's kind of two expressions we're thinking about for these buildings. There's the Greek revival farmhouse which is connected to more of a barn sort of a building here. It helps break down the massing and the character of the architecture and creates interest on the site and sort of puts these two buildings in dialogue with each other and also with the existing house. So there's a board and bat and siding, fiber cement siding on the barn building and then a fiber cement siding and composite trim on the proposed two family here which faces out to Pleasant Street. So it's picking up on some of the typical Greek revival details common throughout Amherst and also which we see on the existing house too. So definitely working to try and keep this building sort of familiar, comfortable with the neighborhood and complimentary to the architectural and historic character of the neighborhood. These are the two backyard elevations, back elevations of the building north and west which frame that backyard space to the north. This is just kind of a little more detailed view that we saw in that opening sheet. So you really get a sense of the shared common space in here, entries, back doors and front doors in each of the units and really creating a sense of space. I mean, when people have a nice space to live in and it's taken care of and it's beautiful, they take care of each other, they take care of their neighbors and they take care of the property. And so the idea of creating this sort of designs integrated with the site, the architecture, all about engendering and encouraging that sort of philosophy about life, I think. This is a, I try to give you a sense of what the views are gonna look like in the street view. These pictures were taken today, so they're pretty current. So this is the existing house, as you can see. There's, I believe this is a walnut tree here, Jeff, is that right? I believe so, yeah. There's a pretty nice big existing tree here which we'll keep. And then as you'll see the proposed new buildings kind of peeking up between the existing house and this tree line here, you can again see how the detailing of the proposed buildings is complimenting the Greek revival sort of trim and detailing of that existing house. This is a view, just sort of, it's same, same eye perspective, same viewpoint but just from more of a ground level perspective of the proposed structures and just again giving you a sense of that green space in between. This is a view from the northeast. So the existing house here is kind of obscured by trees which will, some of these trees are pretty scrubby and sort of being throttled by invasive. So these are, a lot of these trees are gonna go but that'll open up this house here to the street. And with the landscaping in here sort of softening the drop-off in gray that Jeff's proposing and the landscaping kind of wrapping around here will do a nice job of letting this building settle into the streetscape. One thing you'll notice is a little different from what I submitted in the earlier package as I turn this from a shed roof into a gable roof, I felt that it was more welcoming and inviting and appropriate for a side of the building that's actually facing the street. So that's a difference from these drawings that you're gonna see on the drawings that I submitted. I can get you a PDF of these elevations and the images to help update your files. This is a view from the rear curb cut that Jeff was mentioning. So garbage and refuse would be rocked here to the left. This is the parking kind of wrapping around the rear of the existing building and that pedestrian walk, baller lit walkway that Jeff was describing winding between the buildings. And that's just another view with that same angle and that's the backyard to the north. It's nice because configuring the buildings in this L shape does a nice job of creating discrete outdoor spaces which means that smaller scale kind of gatherings of people can happen and they're spread throughout the site rather than being concentrated in one area. I think that's what I've got. So thank you. Okay. Shall I stop sharing? Do I do that or? Yeah, and I don't have anything else to present at this point. So I'd be happy to entertain any questions that the board might have. Great. Thank you. I'll have a couple of questions. I'm sure there are people that have questions as well. Give me this. Tell me when did you purchase this property? 2004? 2004, yeah. All right. So in some of the materials that has, it was confusing, some of the materials has said that you purchased it in 2020. And I had renovated in 2020. So that's you renovated it in 2020 but you've had the property since 2004. Okay. So one of the questions I have there's a significant history of violations, both noise and nuisance violations for this property, as well as some health and safety violations on this property. And so I'd like to get you to respond to that. First is the police stopped keeping track of this stuff, the police stopped keeping track of this stuff, I think on 2022 in March or April of that year. So we don't have anything more recent. Have you had any complaints that you know of since March of 2022 in the last eight, 16, 18 months? No, since we renovated the homes and took over the management ourselves, there hasn't been any complaints. No neighbor complaints or anything like that. I don't mean the complaints about safety now but I'm talking about neighbor complaints or anything. Tim, you haven't heard from your... Nothing that's been brought to our attention and we've been out there frequently over the last few years. And we've been out there since 2004, but over the last couple of years. The natives are aware of how they took to contact you if they had a problem. Yes. Okay. And so that's the first question. So what goes, what gives with the, what it looks to me to be some pretty, you know, a lot of noise party registration problems in... A lot of it, if you look was registration, right? So they called and reported that they were going to have a gathering, a lot of the reports in there and a lot of, I mean, a lot of it was noise. We agree. And at the time we had property management. Originally we had Eagle Crest property management. And then we moved to Vertex over the years. We had Eagle Crest for the first number of years. And then I think probably in 2000, maybe 14 or so it converted to Vertex. So we've been managing ourselves since 2020 with Keith Geyer. 2020. And then you renovated from window in again, both of the time now. More or less right after. When, when you go in? More or less right after COVID, the May, you know, of the end of the school year when COVID initially hit was when we were... May of 2020. 2020, yep. That's when we were alerted of the condition. And we got in there and we had Keith Geyer maybe on here as well. Maybe we can allow them to speak, but they came in and did an assessment of the property. And we attempted to initially just repair it and restore it as is. Our intention was to keep the house and restore it, but it was quite old. I think the house was built in, the records aren't exactly accurate, but we think it was built in the early 1800s. So some of the boards and so forth were just beyond repair. So we ended up having to replace a lot of them. And we spent a significant amount of money just trying to repair and keep the existing structure, but it was beyond repair, the back unit. So we completely rebuilt that 100% new foundation, everything from the ground up. And the front unit 800 was renovated inside and out, basically down to the studs with all new systems. And so since then, it's been, I think the folks can attest that walked through it the other day, it's basically a brand new home. We kept the facade and tried to keep the fluted columns on the outside with the Greek revival design, but the rest of it is brand new. So you had squatters from when to when? We're not sure when they came in, of course, but they were discovered in March timeframe of 2020. But you would have known that your tenants had left. They had left and the property manager driven through the property and there was no sign of any forced entry or anything like that. So they had no reason to go in. And I think we can all agree it was a strange time for everyone at that point. Everyone was afraid to go near anybody. So no one went in the house. And best of our understanding, they were coming and going on a regular basis and going to the food pantry because we found tons of boxes from the Amherst food pantry all over the house. And that's what they were doing. They were effectively eating and to avoid detection, they were just throwing their food on the floor. We ended up having to pay a significant amount of money to the renters at the time because they destroyed all of the property that the students had left behind. They were sleeping in their beds, living on their furniture. And it was unfortunate, but I think there's police reports that explain all of this in much greater detail. Do we have those, Rob? No, we can get them every day, right? We could definitely get them, but the only thing I had provided was just a list of each of the calls. So if the board wants me to get those reports, I could definitely ask the police department. We'll see if there may not be necessary. Let's not see how we were alerted from the police. I think that the police brought it to our attention. Yeah, yeah, we got a phone call. Yep. The police let you know that you had squatters there, okay? Yeah. So then you renovated and you rented out, when did you start having tenants again? You demolished the back building, renovated the front building and then you started, and you had tenants again starting when this fall, but let me, last fall? Two falls ago. 2021. Yeah, we were able to renovate 800 the front unit and rent that while we were finishing construction on the back unit. So we had that. We had one group of our students for two school years and we had absolutely no problems with them. They loved it. The place was clean inside and out the whole time there. So there was absolutely no problems. And then last year we rented to a second group of students, yeah. Okay. So do you think that, I mean, I know a lot of the stuff is motor vehicle stops out on the street in front of you. A lot of the stops are not even related. No, they're not related to you. No, I agree with that. It's just the address that comes up. That's what I'm looking at. And some of the party registrations mean telling me that that's just, they registered the party with the school. But a lot of times those party registrations are accompanied by a, closely by a noise complaint within the same close period of time. And we had some, we have representations from neighbors that they've had some concerns about loud parties and noise at the site. So would you represent that that is a result of bad management? Cause you're not in, you're not there. I mean, you live in Boston or for Farther East. You have a site manager. Yes. And safe to say we've learned over the years as well. I think we're doing a much better job now. Hopefully that's evident. And with the amount of money that we've invested of our own capital, you know, we literally are into this thing for almost $700,000. And then if you think about what we paid for the home initially, you know, this isn't something we're just gonna let sit and deteriorate. So we're up there frequently. We're meeting with the tenants. And in case where we rent the students, we're meeting their parents as well. And we're getting different types of renters now that take better care of the place. In the past, I think, you know, when they rented the place, it wasn't in great shape to begin with. They kind of kept it that way. Whereas now they've been maintaining the place. And, you know, we have a pretty hefty security deposit and we've been able to return that to both sets of students. So they kept it. Can you plan to employ a new property manager? Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. During the construction here, we've been coming and working on it ourselves. But Keith Geyer has been engaged and, you know, a lot of the work they've done is still under warranty. So any of the calls have been coming and being dealt with by them. But the plan is if we were to get approval here to move forward, we would retain a property manager like Eaglecrest again to take over management of the full property in accordance with the plan, you know, that we've submitted. Yeah. You need to have a property manager or an on-site resident manager because you're here. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm not here. All right. One of the things I was, what's the plan to deal with the trash bins up against the fence on the back of the property? Right now you're gonna double the amount of trash, double the amount of trash you're gonna have. Right now I see two big dumpsters back there. They're not shielded from the street or from anybody else. Where do you intend, how do you intend to shield them? We are planning to put an enclosure and right now that is picked up once a week and one of the dumpsters is for trash and the other one is for recycling. Yep. We'll probably have to double that, but yeah, we definitely intend on enclosing it. So it's not an eyesore. But you're closing it from the back. Are you gonna have a- In the front if we can put doors in front as well so it's not visible. But that's not on the plan. So that would be something I think we would need to see is how you intend to shield the front of the dumpsters from visibility of the road. And it's being shielded from the neighbor next door and that's great. But typically those dumpsters are shielded from the street as well. I would just add that, given the location it's directly behind the existing structure. So it's really, to get a clear view of it, given the plantings that are proposed with a bus stop along the street and the vegetation here, it's highly unlikely that you're gonna be able to see this dumpster in the back of the site. But again- If you're at the bus stop, you can look down the driveway and see it. I mean, those aren't the proposed bus stop, but the plantings right opposite the proposed bus stop are shrubs. They're not mature trees. So you just look down the driveway and see it. Right? We'll take care of that. Yeah, that's fine. Yep. All right, I've got some other questions, but I don't wanna dominate. I guess just one last thing. Your application says, I think you have 38,116 square feet on the lot. Who did your, did you have that done by a surveyor, that consultation? And who was that? We did the survey. You did the survey? Yes. You came up with 116 square feet more than minimum needed. So that's, because you would need 38,000 square feet for this. And that's your, and your registered surveyor, all that kind of stuff? Yes, yes. Okay. Yeah, this was done field survey and property deed research. And yes. Go follow us. All right, thank you. All right. Mr. Rob, do you have something to add? Everyone has handed a two out of everyone to ask this question first. And I can ask mine afterwards. Let's see unless it's for clarification. Everill, Mr. Henry. Not clarification. I have questions. Yep. Do you have clarification, Rob? I was gonna ask a question pertain to lot coverage. Mr. Chairman, so I don't know if you wanted the applicant to answer that question or have Mr. Henry ask us. Okay. So we were reviewing the site plans prior to this meeting and I noticed that a lot calculations existing and proposed. So I know the building coverage changes about 5%. So I think it goes from like 5.4% to 11% or something like that. The lot coverage only goes from 27% to 29%. And that's with the addition of a new duplex building on site. So I just wanted to ask the applicant how they came to calculating those lot. So yeah, right there, the zoning table if you zoom in right there. I just want to ask the applicant how they determine those calculations if they can give some explanation or clarification on that. Yeah. I mean, I appreciate that question. And yeah, I mean, typically our process would be to consider all of the impervious surfaces, walkways, parking lot structures as part of new coverage and whatever is remaining, any of the green space whether it be landscaped areas or lawn would be the remaining open space. It's typically how we would quantify it. So yeah, I guess just based on that comment I'd have to confirm just those numbers but that's typically how we would go through that process. But if I could just follow up on that so we don't lose our train of thought. Yeah. So you're building coverage increases by almost six points six percentage points but the total out coverage only increases by two percentage points. Where are you adding back uncovered areas of the, where are you taking and opening up areas on the lot that are no longer that are not going to be covered. The parking is going to be more, there's going to be more sidewalk. So you must be, are you opening up, are you taking away some impervious material or are you limiting the structure someplace? Because it doesn't, those don't add up to be in my mind without some kind of a subtraction of existing coverage. I don't disagree. And there may be a discrepancy in those numbers that I've got to confirm. I don't disagree that, so I would have to, before I can answer that succinctly I'd need to understand at least what the, where that discrepancy lies. If I may, I don't know, Jeff if this perhaps has something to do with what the original lot coverage area ratio was versus what we covered, because we changed the structure. There was a larger barn that was attached to our old house that we did demolish that was about 20 by 10. So 200 square feet is gone, that was off the back. So there were three structures where our structure is now. So I'm not sure if that's where it comes from, but it just does a thought. Okay, well, that might explain it, but will you guys let us with that information stand up? And also just to clarify, I'll be creating a list of required updates and documents that'll be needed for the continued public hearing. If it were to be continued, and I'll be sure to email that to everyone, the applicants tomorrow, so you guys know what to bring the next meeting. And Mr. Chair, I think Dave Wiskows has hand up too. He might want to add. He might have clarification, yeah. Well, I just wanted to add, well, clarification too. I think if you look at some previous drawings of the existing conditions, there was a lot more gravel in the, towards the newer structure, and that's now being removed. That's a possibility as a reduction, but also because we're so close to the 30%, I think we should require an as-built at the end just to indicate what the coverage actually is going to be, because in the future, if they ever want to add anything to this property, we're going to need to know exactly how much land is available to cover, even if they want to extend the deck, put a patio, any of this stuff. It's going to be very helpful to our department to have that information. So one last bit for clarification. How do we make sure that the as-built number doesn't exceed the 30 or 30 some percent based on how do we make sure that the numbers that we're looking at are going to be accurate? Well, that's why we hire professionals. They are guaranteeing that what they're putting down there in the numbers is what's out there. If they find that they're running over, they're going to have to make some changes by removing some of the lot coverage, because the building coverage isn't near the maximum, but it's a lot that there is. A lot of coverage is. That's just something for everybody to be aware. All right, Ms. Marshall, unless you're following up on that point, I want to go to Mr. Henry. You are following up? Okay. I'm wondering whether what the bus stop takes out or covers with pavement. And I have a lot of questions about the bus stop, which we'll get to eventually. But if what's shown or proposed happens, does their impervious, I don't know, does that count against you or is that not even your property? So. Yeah, we certainly took that and that again, that threw a curve ball into the project at the 11th hour. But one of the things that I know, the exercises that we went through in engineering the site was taking into account that taking that effectively what happened to provide for that bus stop. So that, how that shook out in terms of lot coverage was something that we need to keep an eye on. So yes, that should have been reflected in the new calculations. And you have an clarification for that, Mr. Westgevitz. Yeah, I was just going to say the bus stop appears to be in the public right away. So it doesn't really factor into any of these calculations. It's just what's on that property. I was going to add to that as well. And the board can't really control the bus stop placement at all. Just to be clear, it's not entirely on, at least based on the latest plans that we've seen, they're not, it's not entirely on on town property or within the right away. I think if you look at the rendering there to the right, you can see where the bus is in the picture. And that's actually- This is the property line here, right? Right. So they are taking, closing the take. Sidewalk and the bus, yep, shelter. Could we please get a detailed accounting for exactly what the square footage is for everything that's on the property? Yeah, we need the whole thing. No, so this is confusing. So we need to get this clarified. Mr. Everold, you had, or Mr. Henry, you had some questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have, what was the rationale to put the second entrance slash exit onto Old Town Road versus on the opposite end by the new building on North Pleasant? I think primarily it was driven by the goal to utilize sort of the existing parking area that was there. So we didn't have to encroach on more undeveloped area than we needed to. This is certainly a lower portion of the site further to the North. So it complicates things in terms of drainage. It wouldn't necessitated a new curb cut out on North Pleasant Street. And I think as I mentioned, we were very close to submitting permit application when the town brought forward the notion of the bus stop. So that was an 11th hour change that we needed to accommodate for. And so this was the compromise that seemed acceptable to the fire department. And everybody else involved with this proposal. So it was really just a response to that. But yeah, a new curb got a new parking lot in the North portion of the site. And this from an engineering and stormwater perspective and traffic safety perspective wasn't really ideal. So understanding those logistics, the neighborhood has a very valid concern. I went to the property and the current exit to Old Town Road, it's quite frankly, has a very heavy blind spot. It's very hard to see getting onto Old Town Road. What is the plan to address that? So like I mentioned, one of the things that we have done with the recent revision and the rendering was to pull the driveway away from that fence that may be part of the reason for that blind spot. So we did pull it away a little bit. It is still a narrow one-way entrance or exit, it's gonna be a one-way circulation. So the goal is to certainly recognize the concerns with that being heavily used entrance. So we're really trying to preserve the existing character while recognizing and doing what we can to improve safety to the extent possible. If I may hear from the Casey brothers, I believe you guys said that despite only having 11 parking spaces, I believe the number of units will outweigh the number of parking spaces. And it is not uncommon for friends to share a room together to manage cost. What is the plan to make sure? And when I say make sure, I mean really manage to make sure that there are not more than a lot of cars on the site at all times. Yeah, our intention is to issue permits that will be fixed to their windows. And if the, we'll have a towing company, Amherst towing engaged. And if they will have two floating passes that are guest passes, but the intent is to not give everyone there a parking space, it's gonna be a premium and they're gonna have to pay extra for it. And I can attest, my daughter just graduated college and they all don't have parking. It's not a guarantee. It has been with this house because we had so much parking, but not all the kids have cars these days and not every resident has a car. As we mentioned with the proximity to the bus stop and so forth, we're not expecting to need as many cars. And if the intent here is to make this a legit parking area with parking spaces, it's gonna be paved with lines, with numbers. So it's gonna be very clear which unit is entitled to which parking space. And if someone's parked illegally, Amherst towing is gonna be given the right to tell them. Does the 11 parking spaces or the guest parking spots? Yes. So, and if that is the case, then there's less than 11 allotted for residents of the building. Correct. Said not everybody that, you know, it's gonna be a premium for those who wanna pay for parking. They can- Right now, for example- Sorry, nine parking spaces for 15 residents. Correct. Yes. And just a follow up to that, when you or the management company does applications, is there anything in those applications that addresses parking? So a person who's interested in no upfront that this does not come with a parking space or your parking will be restricted? Absolutely. Yeah, it'll be in the lease. And there's parking as you can even see here right across the street from us. So if students wanna purchase a pass from UMass, they can do so and park right there. Those spots are available to students. Generally, the students will just work it out. You know, a student who pays more will get the spot. The student pays less. We'll have to find a spot somewhere else. So they might not have a car, so. Mr. Henry, was your question about whether there was advanced notice before they signed the lease? So how would a student, if they're looking at that place, know that the parking is gonna be restricted? Is that what your question was? No, that wasn't my question, yes. It'll be in the lease, it'll be emphasized in the lease. But in the lease, but not in the lease. And the listings, when they first rent. I'm a real estate salesperson, it'll be in the listing. So I'm the one who's been renting it basically, but we'll just pass that on to the new property manager. So it'll be very, very clear. That on the new structure, the private backyard that you mentioned, does that back up to any residential, to any current houses? Well, you can see here, 16 through the woods there, that we're gonna keep as much vegetation as possible. And then to the, would that be to the west towards Fairview? There is a home there that's also through the woods. Pretty dense vegetation there as well, that we're gonna again, keep as much as possible. No intention to cut down any trees that we don't have to. When the police are notified of any complaints or disturbances and they respond, I believe you said you guys are notified. We are now, but we have a response plan that we put in place that will notify the local property manager as well. And then we will also be notified. But historically, you guys were notified or you? Well, historically we had, as I mentioned, you're talking years back, it was Eagle Crest and after that it was Vertex. But they were notified of these complaints? Yes. And as property owners, how did you guys address those? Well, we were notified by Eagle Crest, but they were the ones who dealt with it immediately. You know, they were the local in town property manager. Nothing ever really got that bad, to be honest. A lot of those reports were, like we said, just car stops and a lot of them were just, the kids doing the right thing and registering for parties ahead of time. So, do you have- Police wouldn't be called for a party registration. Police are a noise complaint. I mean, I'm pretty certain a lot of those, they did register with the police department. They were gonna have a gathering. A lot of those, if you look at the call log there, a lot of those were registration for the gathering. At least that's how I'm interpreting it. I may be wrong, but that's what it looks like. Do you now have documented policies or will you have documented policies as to how to respond when these things happen in the future with this new building? Absolutely. And it'll be the same for both units. I mean, the leases will be the same. I understand the lease will be the same, but do you have specific provisions in the lease that addresses neighbor's concerns, noise complaints, police responses, things like that? You're saying in the lease that we will create for this new unit, so the current leases. The new lease. Correct. Yes. There will be provisions in there to tell them exactly who to call and we're happy to share the numbers with the neighbors as well. But the protocol has been to call the local property manager first and then we get involved. I think what you're saying is there like anything in the lease regarding the tenants? Yes, we'll put in there something along the lines where they could be evicted if there was continued calls, but we really haven't had to deal with that even when the place was in much worse shape. Now that's like this, we don't envision it at all, but we'll have something in there. Yes. So then that's one of the things that we want to see is the change of the lease that elucidates the consequences for violating the lease or having police noise complaints. Mr. Watchilla, I see you've got, first of all, Mr. Henry, are you done or do you have more questions? You can go ahead. I have two more questions. So in the lease that was provided, I see that the rent is listed as $5,500. Is that the proposed rent or is that the current rent? Current and proposed, I mean, it's... Current and proposed. And that includes all utilities. I don't know if you want to get into that, but yeah. And this is for each four bedroom unit, correct? Correct, yes. Okay. And the intent here, again, with looking into neighbors' concerns about noise, I'm just a little bit concerned that with that dollar value, you're inviting multiple people to say, I cannot afford this rent. Therefore, let me pay you up with somebody. Again, it is not uncommon for college kids to be to a bedroom at a time to manage costs. So is there a concern that this dollar value is inviting more people living there, but intended? I mean, we could tell you over the last two years since we renovated, this is roughly what we've been charging and they have not doubled up. And if we did market test this with all the newer properties that are being built in town, this is what the rent is. It's consistent with other newer units in Amherst. And one other thing I did was in negotiations to rent four students recently. And the first day they tried to bring a fifth one in and I gave them their money back right away. So we're well aware of the, no more than four people per unit loss, so. And you guys will be holding firm to that? Yes. Absolutely, yeah. Like I said, we've invested a lot of our money in this and we know what excessive tenants do to the property. And the damage and a long-term wear and tear. So our goal is to keep it to one tenant per bedroom. Thank you. Those are my questions. Just to follow up on Mr. Henry's and I've got Mr. Greenbaum and Mr. Wachilla and Ms. Marshall, I think you have their hands up. Just to follow up on two quick things. Number one shrubs on the driveway closest to the North Pleasant. I was also out there today just to take another look. Not only do I agree with Mr. Henry that there's a problem with the back exit of the property, but up here the shrubbery up in the forward entrance. Yes. That blocks your view. Taking a left-hand turn is gonna be difficult. Is it difficult now? And if you have a bus there and the shrub ahead of time or ahead of you there, I think that shrubbery has to be managed in such a way that there's a clear unimpinchment vision down North Pleasant Street. So that's something I would contend we need to have as a conditioner in your landscaping plan. We have no problem with that. I mean, our intention up until now is to keep as much of a buffer as possible between the area and the neighbors on the other side of Old Town, but we have no problem. Going left off Old Town Road, we've got a problem there, I think. Makes sense. And lastly, that responsibility for checking to make sure that the rooms aren't being overly subscribed for lack of a better term, that there's not two people in a room. That's not gonna be, you're not gonna be going out there each week to check, but that's gonna be the responsibility of your, is it a delineated responsibility of your property management person? Yes, absolutely. Okay. All right, I just wanted to clarify that. Ms. Greenbaum, you had, oh, Rod, did you have a clarification or did you have another question? Otherwise, I want to go to Ms. Greenbaum. Yeah, of course. Just a clarification. So I would suggest the applicant, and I'm gonna email you this tomorrow after this meeting. The applicant update their management plan to include other factors that are needed for residential properties. And I'm about to read this list off, but I will send it again tomorrow as an email. This includes the number of units, number of bedrooms, and this is for the whole site. Including the new building and the existing building, number of proposed tenants. I kind of had to guess on that one because I wasn't listening to the documents that were sent to me, which isn't a big deal. You can always update that in the management plan. Whether or not it's owner occupied, list your on-site manager that you're gonna go with once the building's operational. A noise management plan. So I didn't really have the information presented to me initially. So I recommend the applicant's draft up or at least have their noise management policy or plan and include it in the management plan because when you do this management plan, you're gonna give it to the town and essentially we're gonna condition it in a way where you have to follow that management plan at all times. So whatever policies, whatever regulations that you instill in place for this property, you should include it in that management plan. And the last category would be parking management as well. So I know that's listed in your lease agreement, but it would be wise to include that in the management plan itself as well. So again, I will email that to the applicant. So they're aware that those changes will be needed, sorry, additions will be needed to the management plan itself. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks. Ms. Greenbaum. I have a page full of questions, but at the moment, I think I'm just gonna stick to the ones that have to do with the site plan and we'll talk about management and parking sometime down the line. I have experience in those areas and just very quickly about the lease, I think they better check with a lawyer and write a more professional lease than the one they have presented. I have a hard time reading it, knowing whether they're renting by the room, so renting to households. It doesn't say jointly and separately until the very end of the lease. So I think that lease needs a lot of editing and maybe somebody in town hall can show them some prototypes of what other people have handed in. That's just a suggestion if they would like to follow up on that. Thank you, Hilma. We appreciate that. We'll take that off. The other thing that I understand is about a lot of kids come here with cars, so they have a way to get back and forth on the weekends. That's not been my experience over the years and other people's experience. So getting back to the site plan, I wanna thank Mr. Roberts for improving on the plan that had been in the first packet because this one is a lot better. It's up to what I expect K.R.A. to design. But I do have a question about the porch that's connecting the two buildings and the porch that's over the, in quotes, barn. Can we see that again? Do you wanna see it in plan? I wanna see the photograph, the markup. Oh, the image. That was on camera. The south facade. Okay. Thank you very much for improving that plan. I couldn't believe that you really had designed a first one. You probably couldn't tell by my eyes rolling. Do you, Charles, do you wanna hear that again? Sure. Yeah, I think she's looking for the color photographs. Right, yeah. Yes, your voice was echoing in my mind today. Not the other side, the south facade. This one? The south. That sounds... Yeah, up the barn, yeah, yeah. Oh, you fixed that roof up from what was the other day. Oh, okay, wait a second. The porch, the other day, it looked like a piece of sheet. That one? That one, yeah. That one you fixed and the one on the other side, did you make that other one more robust because it looked like a piece of sheet metal? Well, no, I left that as it was because it wasn't really facing the street and it's actually very similar to the side porches on the existing house. Let me see on the other side. The one with the weather that's facing south, that one, yeah, that looks a lot better than what I had seen the other day. Yes, that's a big improvement. I liked that, okay. Thank you. Now, my other big question is, has Jason's scales approved the drainage plan or are we waiting on that? Yes, as far as I know, he's approved that. But I don't know whether Rob or anybody else can speak but we certainly had some dialogue with Jason and got to a point where, you know, he seemed satisfied with the stormwater design. Okay, now I have another one about the site plan and I already see that you have four very large propane tanks there. What will be the heating of the new building? What you talked about mechanicals at one point, maybe that was in an earlier version of the plan. So what I'm asking about is what are the mechanicals? Where will they be? Is that gonna be more propane tanks like the ones on the old building or is there gonna be heat pump or what? We noticed when we pulled the permits here that there is natural gas on the property. When we've never had natural gas, at least to our knowledge, but when we initially applied to have natural gas connected, we were told there was no new service, but it looks as though we have it, it's on the property. It's, there's a right about where my mouse is here. You can see where it digs safe. I saw the gas on what we went by, but there aren't new connections as far as everybody knows. So what are gonna be the mechanicals and what are gonna be the HVAC for the new building? Our intention, if we can use heat pumps 100%, my experience is they don't work below 30 degrees, right? So we have to use some type of fossil fuel unless we have electric all together. So... I have electric backup, I just put it in, so you don't need big things back there. But I mean, if you are gonna have one, we'd like to know how... We'd like to bury them, if that's possible, put a larger tank in and have it buried, propane tank, if there's no way to connect. We haven't gotten that far yet, but... But that would be something you'd have to put on site plans, if you're gonna, if you intend to do that, right? And then I'm gonna take a leaf out on Mr. Meadow's hat, whatever, and I'm gonna ask about, what are you gonna do about electric vehicles? Are you gonna have EV charger? We are showing up future EV space. So there is space... What about the putting in the electrical cooler? We did... Didn't we determine there was an excellent site for solar? Yes. Yeah, we've had a solar analysis done and site is... Not my question. I asked you about EV, electrical vehicles. Yeah, I thought Jeff just replied to that. I mean, I don't think there's any intention to install one now, but we'll certainly have conduit and provisions to connect in the future. Is that required under the new stretch code or not? Yeah. I think Mr. Meadow's is very familiar with this. Yes, I believe you have to... You've got 15 units, you've got to put in EV. And where are you gonna put them in and how are you gonna allocate it? Because the space has to be allocated for EV charging, exclusively. And then I have one of the... What is socket pass fault? It's simply a... Where's the socket pass fault, what? It's simply a cut of the asphalt to start, where new construction would begin and where existing roadway or asphalt would remain. Well, you saw the sidewalk in the front of the house, the socket asphalt, I read that somewhere. I had never heard of that before. It's simply a cut line where the new construction would begin and where existing infrastructure would remain. So it's a cut that would put, this new sidewalk would be new. But that's town property, that's sidewalk. What about the sidewalk to the house and the parking lot and the sidewalk between the buildings? What's that made? This... Walkway you're talking? Yeah. Yeah, this is asphalt, I believe, yeah. So I've got to set up the fine... The socket reference is simply a cut in the asphalt during construction. I'm not sure exactly where that reference is to, but it's... I read it, so I wrote it down but I didn't ever heard of it before. Yeah. And then, well, I've got a lot of management issues, but we're not there yet. We'll just talk, I think, talking about the site plan at this point. So I will save my questions and cede to the next person. Yeah, I think that we'll have more... They have to resubmit some additional information on the management plan. We probably can't really evaluate that until we get more from them at that point. So that makes good sense. And one of the things I want us to be cognizant of is I think we have a lot of people who want to comment on this and we're going to be done with this in 45 minutes. So if we have a question that you need to ask right now, I would raise your hand to ask it. I think one of the values of public comment is that it gives us as a board members the ability to understand what the concerns of the neighbors are. It also gives the applicant a chance to hear them respond initially and maybe respond in subsequent amendments to their plan. And so I think it's an important thing to do early at this stage in the process and not wait until the next meeting. So I'd like to get to that, but urgent questions from members are the priority to Mr. Meadows. I think Sarah had her hand up before. So you've got a yellow background there, Sarah. So Marshall, it's really hard to see your hand. Somebody tell me how to change the color of my hand. I'll probably try to make it blue, I'll make it blue. All right, so thank you, Mr. Chair. I have, I think just some short questions that will have short answers about the proposed duplex. And then I want to have a discussion about the bus stop and the driveways. So one of you said during the site visit, I think that it was difficult to maintain the original property because you had tendency around. Maybe I misunderstood, but I had that impression. So my question is how will you maintain these two beautiful one to be and one recently renovated buildings? How will you keep them in excellent condition? Are your leases not going to be for less than 12 months? So you have time to get in and make significant repairs or improvements. So that's one. I think what maybe we were trying to convey is that it was difficult to do any sort of major renovation because it was never vacant, but with the place fully renovated now, we're maintaining it as such. And as I mentioned, the security deposits are high enough where they're not doing any damage to inspections regularly. We just turned over both units and have new tenants in there now. And within a couple of weeks, we went through, we had a cleaner come through and turned it over and there was no more damage than what a cleaner can take care of. Right, but was the lease for less than 12 months? And so it allowed you time or the tenants just left early and you had some time to. Explaining and make quick. Within a week. I mean, they literally moved out and we went in and cleaned it and the new tenants came in. Okay. What was the term of the lease? It was 12 months. Yeah, 12 months. I think that was your question. Sorry. Yeah, okay. So hopefully they leave a little early and give you a few days. I mean, our goal is to make sure it's possible, but it doesn't always rents immediately. So that may give us like any other apartment, right? Sure, sure. All right. So you said you had a photo vote study and the South facing roof, of course of the existing gable is ideal. Are you, and maybe the barn or there may be shade on the new barn part, the duplex. Are you, do you plan to install any PV? Haven't made formal plans, but we've had the study done and we're considering it for sure. Okay. All right. So now about the bus stop, which is forcing the change to the driveway. Do you have any right, any legal basis to push back against DPW's plan? And I don't know if it's DPW or PBTA or whoever, either the right and the inclination to get them to move that north. So you don't need to make a second entrance or exit. Honestly, I think it's a neighborhood discussion perhaps that should take place. I mean, this isn't impacting us as much obviously as we don't live there. It seems like there was a lot of opposition to a bus stop based on the neighbors that walked through the property the other day. But we're not really for or against necessarily. I think if the neighbors strongly feel as though they don't want the bus stop there, then I think that should be something that's voiced to the town. I mean, it's not really our decision. The way I understood it was they have the right to do this by eminent domain. And they were kind of alerting us that this was happening. It wasn't a request. It was a bus stop here. And so that means your existing driveway onto north is going away no matter what. I mean, yeah. So the driveway changes are coming whether you approve this house or not. Yes, ma'am. Well, that wasn't really my question, but okay, so maybe so, but there is an existing bus stop. It's just further north and the town is proposing to move itself right in front of the original structure. Understanding from what we were told where it is today is dangerous because the bus cannot pull off of the road. It stops in the lane. But they're proposing to do where we are is to move the bus stop in a bit so traffic heading south can continue to pass. And as if you think it's because further north on your property, the land, the site drops away and that's why they can't make a pull out there. Is that? Well, I don't know that they considered another location on our property. And honestly, I'm speaking out of turn. Okay, okay. Yeah, I'm talking about where it is today, like where the bus stop is today further up. Oh, not in front of you. I thought it was a long year. No, it's, you can't see it on this. Oh, okay. Right. Another, it's maybe all the way to the top of this. I think it might be further than that. Okay, well then, nevermind. All right, so about the existing driveway onto which you're going plan to slightly relocate onto Old Town Road, that one. Did someone represent earlier tonight that that will be an entrance only? Because seems to me that would take care a lot of the sight line difficulties if no vehicles are gonna exit that way. Sure. Is that the case? Or you're willing to make that an entrance only? Yes, I don't see any reason not to. I think from a safety standpoint, yes. I just would like, there may be an alternative view about what's the best way to go about that. So don't commit to anything yet until we, you've kind of a discussion about that, but there's an alternative view about where you should enter and exit that. So we're open to it, I guess, is though. You have a good point, Ms. Marshall. I like that idea too. All right, well, and then maybe so, just so that that obvious is stated, I assume you are required to have two driveways. Is that the case? Either because of the fire department or the, I don't know, the, yes, you have to have two. Well, fire department primarily because we weren't looking to widen this existing driveway on Old Town. Once they get into the site, they needed an ability to turn around and the amount of pavement and asphalt needed to create a turnaround within this one way parking lot is equal to or if not more than what this proposed, and this was a much safer solution. So they don't want to back up. They don't want to back up. Except for to turn around on site, if necessary. Is your, the parking as it is today for the duplex you have today, is that fully utilized by your tenants? No, right now there's two cars, two of the tenants at 798, the back unit of cars and two in the front unit of cars. So there's plenty of space there, only four cars. All right. And do you know, and if you don't, maybe the one of the neighbors will know, is there any streetlight on Old Town Road? I believe on the corner, there's one towards North Pleasant. Yeah. Okay. Oh, one more. You mentioned that you have to have an accessible or a handicapped parking space. I see it there. Are any of the units accessible? No, I mean, not wheelchair accessible with that are at grade per se, right? So that's just a requirement. You have to put it in, but it's unlikely to be for the benefit of a tenant. And it could be for somebody with a cane or a walker. Or a visitor, maybe, or someone. Or even a tenant. I mean, there's no, it's not just wheelchair-bound accessibility impairments, it's a multitude of, you know. Right, but the expanded space is for a lift, right? So that's. Well, so it's the accessible space requirements. Yeah, it's. Right. Well, I think that's the thinking. Okay, that's enough for now. Thank you. Mr. Meadows, did you have some questions? One relatively simple one and maybe one that is not so simple. I don't see where the snow removal is going to go on this. Good question. Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, certainly space, you know, along the edge of the driveway, this island here, I imagine snow would get, you know, potentially pushed, you know, along this, this edge, or if not, you know, out in, in this corner here. That's the way it's done today. It's pushed towards the back, left and right of the dumpsters and to the, you know, basically where the handicap parking spot is shown here. That's where. Maybe you could show where the snow is going to go after you indicate where the dumpsters are going to go and how they're going to be stored and what they're going to be shrouded from, from the streets with so that we can actually see how snow could be put somewhere. I just, I don't see it right now. Okay. We will add that. Yep. I'm bringing all this down by the way. So you'll, you'll be notified of this. The other, the other thing is it has been, was brought up by a number of the butters, which is related, not just here, but in terms of 3.01, I think I hadn't thought about it before, but the special permit creep where we give a special permit and then because someone wants another special permit that is similar theoretically as a complimentary use, but we've given a special permit to give it a complimentary use. And I think that that's a larger question that needs to be dealt with by the ZBA, by maybe the planning board and needs to be a consideration as a whole. Are we special permitting ourselves into a creep situation where there's, it's just cyclical, that the definition of 3.01 is not clear. That's a helpful comment. One we can't solve tonight. No, absolutely. One thing I will say is that we strive not to make any of these decisions to set precedent, but human nature is to look at something that's been done and say, well, if they could do it, why can't I? Or they've already approved this and I understand your point. We hear that, we hear it all the time. All the time, yeah. Great. What I'd like to do is we don't have, we have about a half hour for public comment tonight before we move to the last item. And I wanna make sure we get some public comment tonight and not push it off to the next meeting. So what I'd like to do is move to that and Hilda, your hand is raised, but I think you've had a lot of change. I'll be very quick with that. I'll just say it was my impression over the years, well, may it just be on the state highway that more than one curb cut is not allowed that it's only legal to have one curb cut. That's one thing that I had heard because I happen to have two curb cuts on Montague Road and they were grandfathered in because they were in there for 300 years. And then I had, oh, I can't remember what the other question was, but I had also been trying to find case law with regard to a complimentary use and I couldn't find anything in any of the legal websites that I looked at. And so I think that maybe at this point, we might wanna ask KP Law about this particular thing. We can discuss it later, but they may wanna do something. I think it'd be a good idea to get some guidance on this from KP Law, the town council staff on what complimentary means. All the above, I think makes sense. Good. All right. I had another question I can't remember what it was, but those are the important ones. Well, we'll have some more time at the next meeting for more questions, but I wanna get to the public comment. So if members of the public wish to speak, please raise your hand, I see you've done that. When the staff will assist me in identifying and bringing you online, when they do give your name and address for the record, keep your comments to about three minutes. I'll have a timer here. Keep your comments to about three minutes. I wanna make sure that we get as many people to speak as can tonight. If what you wanna say is something that's already been said, you can say I agree with X, Y and Z or Joe. It doesn't preclude you from talking next time at the next meeting if there's a second hearing. So, but it does give, by doing that, you give your neighbors a chance to perhaps say something unique that hasn't already been said. So we value all your comments. If you can keep them to short, sweet and not repetitive, I think we allow more people to speak. So I, like first one is, oh, if you're on the phone and you wanna call in, you press number nine, and that allows you to signal to us that you wanna speak. So the first person up I see is Becky Miller. Yep, I'll do that right now. There we go, and they should be able to meet themselves. There you go. Hi, this is actually Tom Randall. I'm Becky Miller's husband, and she's asked me to speak at least first. I'm gonna keep my comments brief and mostly focus on the driveway and intersection issues at Old Town Road and North Pleasant Street. Old Town Road is barely wide enough for two lanes of traffic. It is common to come around the corner onto Old Town Road and be immediately facing pedestrians in the middle of the road because there are no sidewalks. They're trying to get to the pedestrian sidewalks on North Pleasant Street by walking down the middle of Old Town Road. We have elderly, we have families with young children. That intersection is a low spot that gets completely ice covered in the winter and cars slide through it all the time. The sight lines are terrible. Adding a major driveway within a few feet of that intersection on the Old Town Road side is just gonna be a public safety nightmare. It's already a very dangerous intersection. I'm sure others in the neighborhood can vouch for everything I just said. It's also barely wide enough for two-way traffic. So if someone is trying to leave the neighborhood and they're not all the way against the curb, it's impossible to enter the neighborhood. One car will block that whole intersection. It happens all the time. Again, adding a major conduit right close to that intersection is just not a good idea. And despite the assurances we've heard, we are more than doubling the occupancy of that property and there will be increased traffic flow despite the limited parking. They will have visitors. We have seen parties of over 200 people on the existing property. We have seen cars parked willy-nilly on the sidewalks, on the yards, wherever because they will be more than twice as many people there. They will have friends. They will have visitors. It is not manageable in the way that has been described tonight. I turn it over to Becky Miller. Thank you very much for your time. Okay, thank you. I just want to piggyback a bit. Just give us your address, Ms. Miller. Becky Miller, 18 Old Town Road. So I concur with everything that Tom just said. I also want to point out two things I'd like to speak to. I understand that it's the town that we need to speak to to reconsider relocating the bus stop. But we're not sure why the bus stop determines why a new driveway needs to be built. And what we're asking for is we understand that the town is in conversation with the Casey brothers for concessions in return for allowing a bus stop in front of their property. The neighborhood members request similar concessions primarily in the form of choosing not to construct that second driveway onto Old Town Road, removing the existing one and working closely with not only the owners but also the neighborhood that we live here, the members of the neighborhood need to have a voice in this decision to better relocate that bus stop. I fully understand that that's probably discussion with DPW, but it needs to be articulated here because their decision is driving this driveway decision. So that's one thing. Second thing, we have major concerns about the maintenance and property safety of the existing building as well as the potential new ones. And we are not confident that there will be appropriate maintenance of the second duplex on the same lot. The track record of the current non-resident owners has been abysmal. I don't know any other way of saying it. So that building has been dogged by health and safety code violations, vermin infestation. We talked to the exterminator who was sent a couple of years ago and he told us of rat infestation and cockroaches, right? This is if the manager, if the property manager was really doing his or her job that those issues would not have transpired nor would have squatters landed there. If there'd been a walkthrough every week like a property manager should be doing those issues would not come to the fore. So there are many complaints about noise and trash in general neglect. And I also must say that I have called Amherst Public Safety in the last three months. And I'm kind of surprised that the record doesn't show any complaints past March of 2022. So we need to get the evidence from Amherst Public Safety because they must be keeping a police log of noise complaints, okay? And it's not just me. Other neighbors have also responded to me or not to me, but said that they have called the police about noise complaints from the building. So there's some evidence, some data that seems to be missing. I also, I'm almost done. This history, by the way, goes back to 2004 and it's been exacerbated by the failure of the town to enforce many of these violations. So, I mean, there's plenty more I could say. I also want to point out- You know, Ms. Miller, can you wrap it up? You're a little over your time. You're over your three minutes. Okay, sure. I think it's disingenuous to say that the management of the property will improve because it was flipped over to Vertex. In fact, Vertex and Eagle Crest are both owned by somebody by the name of Cherimati. Cherimati. So it's essentially two different names under the same ownership. So I don't think- No, we, we, this was in the past. All right, Mr. Casey, Mr. Casey, this is not a time for back and forth. This is a time for our, I know. All right. I'll conclude by saying, I think it's disingenuous to think that maybe the management and the trash issues and everything I just talked about are just simply going to go away because of a management company. Thank you, Ms. Miller. Thank you. Thank you. And just for clarification, Mr. Casey, you'll have the opportunity to respond either tonight or the next meeting to each of these, but right now it's not a back and forth. Okay. Next is Christine Gray-Mullen. Can you introduce yourself and say where you're located, where you live? Yes, Christine Gray-Mullen. It's 37 Bar View. I noticed on some of the documents it says Fair View, but it's actually Bar View. And I'm also here with my husband, Peter Gray-Mullen. So just a couple of quick things. So pedestrians, I see the one walk that it's kind of hard to do this while looking at the picture, but the walk goes to the parking lot, which of course needs to be there, but with multi modes of transportation in the bus stop or whatever, we want kids to not be funneled into the neighborhood necessarily. And I am unsure why there wouldn't be a sidewalk from the front of the new building to the North Pleasant sidewalk. And if you didn't put sidewalks there, the kids are gonna walk that way anyways, and then you end up with a go path. So just a thought, I don't know why there's no walkway there. So yeah, this whole town land, your land, looking at the south end of the bus stop, that verge, that corner really does grow up. And the town comes like once a year and just butchers it, which is fine, they come and cut it, but most of the year it just grows wild, there's poison ivy. So looking at it, when you're giving in your landscape plan, you're not gonna landscape town land or the town verge on old town roads. So that's something that needs to be worked out between the town and you all, maybe it does get fixed in and your management plan will maintain that tight hold of old town and North Pleasant. So that's a concern. The other thing is my husband and I were not like, that first Eastern inlet or outlet of the new driveway is really problematic. It's very close to the intersection and again, sidelines are poor, but I know it keeps coming back again to sort of a town issue with the fire fighters. I can't believe if one of those buildings was on fire, they wouldn't just pull up on North Pleasant and fight the fire. And nowhere on the site when I think doesn't mention where the closest fire hydrants are, which would be part of that plan, I would think. I can't believe that they would try to get down old town, which again, I have to reaffirm whatever it wants. It's a really small road. It's really tiny to a fire truck couldn't even pass by the car. So if it went, could it possibly the existing driveway be expanded from like 12 to 18? So it's a two way and the cars would just come in and out on that existing and it becomes like a dead end parking lot. Just a thought, it's only 10 or 11 cars. And just on that note, that is nice I think because over the years, almost 20 years, we've been here, there's almost always at least 15 cars on that parking lot. So the last thing I just wanna say is when you're doing that parking lot, it would be great if you could put some curbs, even if they're asphalt, inexpensive and some boulders. You can work with boulders. Just, I think that would reassure people that on the party times, you don't end up with, working cars. Thank you. Thank you. The next person who has a hand up is Joe Zanaregui. I'm sorry if I've butchered your name. So please give me the correct pronunciation of your name and your address. Sorry, I wrote the wrong person, it's my bad. Okay, there we go. Hello, can you hear me now? I'm Joe Zanaregui, 96 Farview Way. My husband Andrew Melnichuk is also here. We have lived and worked and owned a home in Amherst for 33 years, lived in this neighborhood for five years. And we moved to this community because it was quiet, because it was friendly, because after having lived for almost three decades on a very busy street in Amherst where there were few pedestrians and it was unsafe for our young son to cross the street alone, here there are no sidewalks, but the narrow streets are dead end streets and there's very little traffic, allowing children and seniors alike to walk safely on the street. The special permit request, as you know, asks for this construction of a second non-owner occupied duplex on one site in this residential area under the provision of complimentary use that's been mentioned today already. We feel strongly that this project as currently proposed should not constitute complimentary use in a neighborhood such as ours and could in fact present a serious danger, not only to the wellbeing of the neighborhood, but to life and limb as people have been talking about with the traffic on Old Town. Being so close to UMass campus, this RN neighborhood has a delightfully diverse mix of faculty, staff and students, as well as long-time local residents and recent transplants to the area. We have retirees, mid-career families, multi-generational households, young families with small children, grad students and some undergraduates, most of whom maintain friendly respectful relations with the neighbors. The vast majority of the houses in the neighborhood are single family homes and most of them are owner occupied. By the way, the statistics and map on the application of non-owner occupied houses is inaccurate. It needs to be updated. Even at a first glance, I could see that three owner occupied houses that were listed as non-owner occupied. So it's not 40% of the houses in the neighborhood that are non-owner occupied. To date, our neighborhood has maintained a delicate balance among the mixed uses of its houses. However, we're concerned that the special permit request before you today threatens to set a dangerous precedent by clearing the way for more and more non-owner occupied student rental units, which given our proximity to UMass could destroy that balance we've maintained. We purchased our home with the goal of aging in place here, but the changes set in motion by projects like this could drive us out of the neighborhood altogether. Two more things I want to say quickly. My husband and I signed the letter signed by 26 neighbors that were sent to the board today, voicing various concerns of the neighborhood as a whole. Stuff to do with complimentary use and about the proposed driveway, excess lights bill over parking into the neighborhood, need for fencing, owner's responsiveness to noise complaints and health and safety. I hope that you'll read the group letter carefully and take its good faith concerns and request seriously. My last thing I just want to say is to underscore the concern about the dangers of Old Town Road. Again, a lot of people use that. It's one of only three dead-end streets in and out of our neighborhood. And as the one closest to UMass, it's the one most often used to walk, bike ride and drive to the campus and beyond. So doubling the occupancy by building this second duplex would greatly increase the number of residents, their visitors, delivery and emergency vehicles on a short block with no sidewalks and a neighborhood that has no sidewalks. It's just absolutely- Time to wrap it up. Right, last thing, we joined with the neighborhood as a whole to ask that these plans be revised as we've discussed in our general letter and we asked the neighborhood and finally we just want to ask the board, my husband and I to please, please use the zoning bylaw to protect the health of our neighborhoods like our own. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Verdi. Rob, you're muted. We have one, I see one more person. I just want to make a quick statement to the public if that's okay, Mr. Chairman, about some main documents to the board for review prior to our meeting. So all the documents that we got were from earlier today until about two, three hours before this meeting took place and just a general announcement for the public. If you want the board members to have adequate time to read these documents, I would suggest sending out maybe more in advance. So you'll know the date, the continued hearing tonight at this hearing, but if you want to send out like a week or a couple of days beforehand, that'd probably more suggested. So board members have the time to receive those comments and that they can look through them when they have the time to do so. This board's volunteer, everybody here, most of them have jobs, full-time jobs as well so they need to find the time to read these documents. I just want to make that clarifying statement for the public record. Thank you. I noticed that Kathy Schoen has her hand raised. Ms. Schoen, can you come on, give us your name and your address, please? Yes, my name is Kathy Shane and there's no way in the world you would guess that correctly. Only that I've heard it. I've been corrected before by other people. I should have known that. That's okay. I live at 519 Montague Road, which is just north of this neighborhood. I am the counselor or one of the counselors for the district. So I know the residents, but I'm speaking as a resident, not as a counselor and you shouldn't take my comments as coming from the counselor. I had to miss part of it because I had a conflicting meeting when this went longer than I thought. So I just want to ask one question that builds on some pieces. I just heard, it's a question about the definition of complimentary in the RN zoning district. When I looked at the zoning book and this is important, not just for this project, but for probably any other development in this particular district, it clearly allows for non-owner occupied duplexes or owner occupied at duplexes, meaning two units. It does not allow for townhouses or apartments or defined as three or more units. So I don't completely understand what the meaning of complimentary is. And my question then is applied in this situation, as far as I see it, you're going from two units to four and it's in either two buildings to three, depending on how you look at the new duplex, which is connected only by a porch where the porch enters to one of them. And so it's a question because it has implications I think for the whole RN district. So that could you, for example, build three units, build four units on other properties where you first come in with two and do another. So that's my main question. I think you've otherwise heard lots of concerns. The one I would add about parking and it's because I heard in another hearing, it's been asserted that the parking will be kept under control. So unless you have a decal for a parking space, you won't be parking there. Well, does that mean they'll park on the street overnight? Will they end up parking in the church parking lot? Will the management company make it part of the lease? I mean, I know Amherst College at one point asked that of a large multi-unit development near them that they not have any cars parked in the Amherst College lot. There's a church. And I looked at the two UMass parking lots. By the way, you can check, but last I knew you can't get a permit for any parking lot because there's a huge waiting list. UMass, the demand has far exceeded but only one of them is for undergraduates. Lot 27, the green one, you could buy a permit for about $400 but the other one is not available. So I think you can't just assume that if they don't buy a decal for this one they would for another. So it's to worry about the cars on the street or cars spilling over that is not just the management worrying about their own property, but the town property. Thank you. I'll end my comments there. Thank you, Councillor Shane. Anybody else that wishes to comment? Any other members of the public who wish to speak? This is an opportunity that looks like, I mean, Joe's in a reggae. Yeah, your hand is up, but I think you've spoken already. All right, we'll move to back to the meeting with the opportunity for the applicant to respond to that, to the public comments. Now, in fairness to you, Mr. Casey, you don't have a lot of time to do that. So you can give us the highlights and you can respond at their next meeting if you'd like, or you can do your best to try to respond now, but we'll give you a chance now and we'll give you a chance at our next meeting to respond to those comments from the public. I'd say, you know, in general, we hear you loud and clear. And, you know, we're gonna read through the documents. I tried as Rob mentioned, like the zoning board just received a lot of these documents today as well. I tried to read as many as I could before this meeting. So I appreciate everyone's concern as does my brother. We're doing our best to put together a management plan here that will satisfy the boards and the town requirements. So if there's one out there that is exemplary of something that you'd like to see, we'd be happy to look at that and try to replicate it. It's a bit of a moving target because it's kind of, if we get this approved, it's different than if we just have the two units here. So we're trying to get a sense of, you know, what changes we'd make to it with the assumption we get approval. So we're happy to revise the plans and resubmit them as far as the management plan goes. With regards to, you know, the entrance and egress of the property. I mean, we are not wedded to this particular design. It really has to do with, I think like Hilda said, getting another curb cut on North Pleasant Street is probably not something the state's gonna allow or that the town would want. We have the entrance already there and we would honestly prefer to keep that rather than entering or creating a new entrance on Old Town Road. So, I mean, that is our preference. I mean, what has come to us was last minute, as Jeff said, and it was something that we had to react to and, you know, we're not certain. I don't know if there are any updates from the town or where we can, perhaps we can invite somebody at the next meeting from the town that can represent their interest in putting the bus stop there. Cause I think a lot of these concerns are coming from the implications of the bus stop and then how our plans address that. But I just wanted to be clear. This is not our desire. I mean, we're trying to react to the town's need for a new location for the bus stop and they approached us. So, you know, we're with you on that. If we can keep it the way it is, we'd be happy to do so and continue to, you know, perhaps use the Old Town Road. I like that idea from Sarah to make that only an entrance and then leave the existing exit back out onto North Pleasant Street. And so that becomes one way only and that way you don't have cars coming out onto Old Town. So we're totally open to that if that's an option. With regards to, you know, I understand there'll be more students or potential residents living there, but we do intend to control the parking. We understand it hasn't been controlled in the past. We know cars have parked up on the grass and so forth. That's not something we're gonna allow in the future and we are planning to put curbs throughout to prevent parking. They would have to drive up over a curb to park there. And I like the idea of putting large boulders, you know, preventing it as well. Aesthetically, of course, but we could do that on both the North Pleasant side as well as the backend where the dumpsters would be. So all the other recommendations around, you know around the dumpsters themselves and covering them, you know, we're completely amenable to that. As I mentioned to a few of the residents that I met with the other day out there, you know, honestly, we love trees. If I could show you my house where I live here, I'm in a forest. I'm not gonna cut down a single tree that we don't have to and we'll plant as many more there as possible. So it eventually creates a year-round barrier. We were talking to our neighbors immediately behind us the other day. They were the last ones to stick around and they asked if we could put a taller fence in the back. We'd be open to that as well. I don't know if it's permitted to have the fences taller than six feet, but we can plant some evergreens there that will eventually grow taller. So as far as lights go, I saw another comment about lights shining in people's bedrooms and so forth. I mean, we're not planning to put any right lights out back. I think you saw in the plan that Jeff presented the intent is to just have lights around the walkway to get to and from the units. So appreciate everyone's comments. We'll definitely take them into consideration in our revisions here, but... May I ask a quick follow-up question to Mr. Casey? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's fine. So one of the public comments was maintaining the single entrance on North Pleasant just widen the space that way there's no impact to Old Town. Would you consider that? You mean if the bus stop were denied and we kept both entrances, remove all entrants and egress from Old Town, you're saying, and have everything in and out of North Pleasant? Yes. I think that was one of the public comments. Again, I'm not opposed to that. I don't know that, honestly, we're gonna retain a lawyer here as well to help us with this request because my understanding is this is eminent domain and we don't have much say in whether they take this spot. But we will figure that out. And one of the comments from one of the neighbors was that we're getting some type of potential compensation for them taking this land. I mean, I don't know if that's the case. We're nowhere near that far. And all we've suggested was if they were planning to do that, they do have to make some modifications. They're gonna have to create the driveway that would be on them to do that, the new curb cut going from Old Town into our driveway. The town would be responsible for building that if they were to eliminate our other driveway, our current driveway. And that was the compensation, so to speak, if anything, it was just to create the new driveway. But as far as being open to that, again, we would be, I don't know if that would work from a fire engine ability to turn around standpoint. If we don't- Yeah, we'd really have to vet that with them, but I mean, it's certainly discussion we can have, yeah. What I think you need to do with this is you need to incorporate, you need to talk to town people on this. And I think it's Jason Skeels, exactly what you talked to about this, Chris. Yeah, I think it's Jason Skeels. I think you need to, you've got Berkshire Design Group, you should task them to try to figure out a better traffic flow with this, with, in case you do have to deal with a bus stop that you can't change. And then you may wanna talk to somebody if you wanna get outside help from some kind of a traffic engineer that can give a better, they'll go out and look at the site specifically and respond to some of the concerns that the exit or entrance closest to North Pleasant is really gonna be a dangerous place for people to exit out of because you got it to make a left hand turn, you gotta practically do a UE there. And it's a narrow little street and I think you have a real challenge before you're designing something that's gonna work. And so I would encourage you to use a bunch of resources. You have some great ones on tap and I would encourage you to look around and you'll deal with the town, try to see how you can do a better job of providing access to your parking areas and yet safe transit for the residents that are there. That's a little narrow street with people that are walking on it. So that's something you really have to take care of. Oh, all right, well done. Yep. And one last thing. Oh, and when you come back the landscaping plan that kind of shows which trees you're taking down is normally what we see. We see a landscaping plan that says these trees are coming down, these trees are staying, this is what's gonna be planted. That would be helpful to have. So those are the only ones you're taking down is just three. Well, there's three large trees here but most of this is open, yeah. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Mr. Chair, we also asked them beforehand to modify their plans to include that. And that's what these plans show. So these plans do show where the trees are being taken down. It's hard to see, but you can see the circle in there. Yeah. I'm sorry, I didn't realize that was in our package. No, no, it's okay. I mean, that was something that was discussed before the application was submitted. So that was something we vetted during that process. All right. Never mind. All right. And then Ms. Marshall, and then we're gonna wrap it up so we can get to the last item on the agenda and try to be done by night. Marshall. All right. So two comments. One is I think it's very important to find out, or I would want to know if the town insists on creating this new bus stop, will you be required to put in a second driveway on Old Town, even if you don't build a new two-family dwelling? All right. That's one question. And the other is just an idea. I don't know who would pursue it. Maybe residents have thought about this, but I wonder if because of the deficiencies of Old Town Road, the town might consider making that first block one way west. Yeah. Good idea. And I think I saw on one of the comments, I don't know, Chair Mayer, I'd love to respond to a comment. Yeah, to one of the residents comments that they would like to see a sidewalk perhaps. Again, something we would not be opposed to. So along the North side of Old Town Road, be happy to put a sidewalk there if that would help. And as far as the vegetation goes on the top, where Old Town Road hits North Pleasant, where I've heard a lot of people, I mean, I'm happy to clear cut that entire thing down to the ground and put grass there. I mean, we're intentionally leaving it again to have a buffer, but I agree it's unsightly, it's mostly covered in poison ivy, and I'd be happy to get rid of it entirely. So if that's of interest, we would do that. Great. All right. Well, I think that to conclude our work on this application tonight, I would like to move this to a date certain. And Rob, what do we have available on the calendar for when this can be continued? To when can this be continued? So anytime in September. So we have September 14th as the first meeting and the second meeting of September is September 28th. So unless one of those two days conflicts with this current panel schedule, I would say you could do it as soon as September 14th. Or the 14th to the 28th. All right, so that's in six weeks, practically, right? It's about six weeks. That should give you guys enough time to tell me if there's enough time to do the kinds of things we're asking you to do to respond to us? Or do you need more time? Do you need two months? If we could maybe just work with Jeff and Charles here and then I'd also like to speak to Jason in the town to see if they can part, because I think there's some questions we need to get answered from the town that are critical as far as the drive works. So if we could get back to you by next week. The problem, Mr. Casey is I'd like to do that, but I got to move to a date certain. Now we could, you know, that's just technical. Let's pick the 28th then to give us. Great, let's do that. I'll give you more time. All right. So it'll be Thursday, September 20th at 6pm, just for members of the public and everybody here for your information. Put that down your calendars so you know when to attend next time. Thank you. And I'm going to ask you if that's a Jewish holiday. I don't see any Jewish holidays listed for that on my calendar. I don't know when your own Kippur is, but it's one of those. I think Rosh Hashanah's either September or. On a Saturday and this is nine days after the month. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't see any holidays for 28th Hilda. So we should be good. That's okay. Okay. Thank you. Yom Kippur starts at 24th. 24th. And when does it end? That's a one day. Okay. So 25th this one. Okay. All right. It's 20th. It should work. Rosh Hashanah begins on the 15th. Yep. Okay. So I think we've come to a consensus here. I would entertain a motion that we continue this public hearing and public meeting on ZBA FY2023-12 798 800 North Pleasant Street until September 28th at 6pm. Is there such a motion? So moved. And is there a second? So then. Is there any further discussion on that motion? If not, the vote occurs on that motion. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Ms. Greenbaugh. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. We'll see you guys all in the end of September. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate it. Take care. All right. Next order of business is a public meeting on ZBA FY2026- excuse me, 2020-26. One University Drive South discussion of condition 61, which allows for the applicant to return to the ZBA or public meeting for review and approval of the design of a freestanding sign and monument sign. I understand this brushbook you've got. You're going to present on this. Is that right? That's correct. Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry for the delay in not being able to take you earlier, but we need you here anyway. So thank you for taking it anyway. Yeah. My name is Christine Brestrup. I'm the planning director for the town of Amherst and I'm here to talk to you about a wayfinding sign. The town has been working on the wayfinding sign project since about 2013. It seems like everything takes us 10 years to get done. But in any event, in 2018, town meeting appropriated funds to create a wayfinding sign system for the town. And the town hired a designer and the signs were designed. And then last year at the request of the town manager, the town hired a second sign designer to review the locations and also to review the sign designs. The sign designs and locations have been reviewed by the second designer and have been presented to the design review board and the town council. And now we have a sign fabricator whom we've hired and who has manufactured the signs and is ready to install them. Some of the post directional signs and parking signs have already been installed. You may have seen them. There are a couple of post directional signs around the downtown and there's a nice parking sign pointing to the parking lot behind town hall. The sign that we're bringing to you tonight is one of three wayfinding signs. The other, it's a welcome sign, one of three welcome signs. The other welcome signs are going to be installed at the intersection of Triangle Street and Main Street. And that's one that the ZBA already approved and at the intersection of Amity Street and University Drive, which is in the town right of way and doesn't need ZBA approval. So the welcome sign that you're reviewing tonight, if Rob would bring up a picture of that, that would be helpful. So you could see the nice design. The one that you're reviewing tonight was initially going to be installed in the state right of way to the east of the intersection of University Drive and Route 9. But because of the construction along Route 9, we reconsidered that location. So there's the sign. Can you move it over a little bit, Rob, so everybody can see the whole? Yeah. There it is. Yeah, that's better. Okay, thank you very much. That's good. So these are the welcome signs that have been designed. I think we're still, I don't know, I'm having trouble seeing that when I have people in the way. Maybe I need to not have the people there. There we go. All right. So anyway, because of the construction, we decided to move it away from the far side of that intersection. And in the end, it was decided that installing the sign before the cars get to the intersection would be better than installing it after the intersection. So Rob, again, I'm not seeing the full sign. I don't know if other people are. Maybe I'm having a strange view of things that other people can tell you if they can't see the full sign. Barry Roberts, the owner of One University Drive South has agreed to have the town install this welcome sign on his property. And Rob Wachilla has a copy of Mr. Robert's email that we recently received agreeing to having the sign being located on his property. He had already agreed, both in email and verbally to do this months ago. So Barry Roberts had a site plan approved for One University Drive South under a special permit application. And that included one freestanding sign. Rob, can you bring up the image of the site plan that Barry Roberts had approved? Yeah, just give me one second to pull that up. Proof set plan. I believe it was just the one page. So I'm going to quickly bring that up real quick. And just let me know if folks can see this. And we can't see the full image if you could, I guess, make it smaller. We can see the full sheet. Are you all can see it? Okay, that's good. All right, so. But it's in everybody's packet. It's in the packet. I'm looking at my heart copy. It's in the packet, that's right. So the sign location for the freestanding sign that Barry Roberts had approved was at the northeast corner of the building. And maybe Rob can use his cursor to show where that is. That's the southeast corner. The northeast corner is down towards the bottom of the page. And you can see there's a little sign. It says proposed 31 by 61 inch sign. And it's a little line that goes kind of up and down. It's to the left there. I can see his. There it is. Yep, that's it. That's it, okay. So anyway, that was the sign that Mr. Roberts had approved. The condition 61 of the special permit for this project states that the applicant shall return to the ZBA for review and approval of a freestanding sign and a monument sign. But Mr. Roberts has installed signs on the building and has decided that he doesn't need either a freestanding sign or a monument sign. The signs on the building are allowed to be up to 10% of the building wall. And the signs are less than 10% of the building wall and are already in place. Maybe Rob can bring up in one of the renderings that shows the image of where the signs are located on the building. Don't have those plans handy, but I might have to do some digging around for that if you want me to. It was in the packet. I looked at it today. Just review from West. Oh, okay. Let me choose. Figure two and figure one. Oh, I see it now. Yeah, that's my bad. Let me screen show that again. I know board members can see it, but I'll do this anyways. All right, there is a rendering. It looks like you have the signage right there. It's being blocked by the tree. Yeah, so the signage is on that north wall. So he's already got his signage in place. And in this image, you can also see where he initially had this freestanding sign over on the left there. Yep. And that's where the proposed wayfinding signage would go. Correct? No, the proposed wayfinding sign is going to go in between those two big trees right there. Right here. Oh, to the right of that. Where the, to the left of that. Right between the trees. Yes, exactly. In the shade. There you go. The town, yeah. So the town is now, I am representing the town, coming to you under condition 61 of the special permit to ask that the CBA approve the welcome sign proposed to be placed on the property in place of Mr. Roberts freestanding sign. The wayfinding sign does comply with the setback and size regulations for signs in the PRP zoning district. The properties in the PRP zoning district and the location of the sign will be at least 10 and it may be as much as 15 feet back from the property line on the route nine side of the property at the northwest corner of the building. For signs in the PRP zoning district, the property owner is allowed a freestanding sign that is up to 30 square feet and that is 10 feet high if the sign is located half the setback distance for a building. Well, the setback distance for a building in PRP is 20 feet and this sign is proposed to be installed at least 10 and maybe 15 feet from the property line. So it will be at least, at least half the distance from the property line of the setback. So therefore the sign, a sign of 30 square feet and 10 feet high would be allowed in this zoning district but this sign is only proposed to be five feet, three inches high, which is less than 10 feet and it's about 15.5 square feet in area which is less than 30 square feet. So in conclusion, we're asking that the ZBA approve the design and location of the freestanding sign that is a town welcome sign as part of the town's wayfinding sign system in place of the freestanding sign that Mr. Roberts was originally proposing under condition 61 of the special permit decision and that you approve the location at the northwest corner of the building rather than the northeast corner of the building as originally proposed. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Director Pressfoot. Are there comments, Ms. Greenbelt? Yeah, so I'm gonna turn to the Cinderella and I've been at my batteries getting very well. I have a funny feeling that looking at the picture, the sign may be so far south from the road that people's eyes may be distracted and I wonder if there's some way that we can bring it closer to where the drivers of the cars may be able to see it without averting their gaze too far. I don't know how to say that, but can we move it nearer to the streets or it won't be causing accidents for people trying to see it? I think it couldn't be closer than 10 feet from the property line. So we could make sure that it's no more than 10 feet from the property line. Well, can we give a waiver of that if it's a safety issue? Yes, this is a directional sign. It's a directional sign to some people downtown rather than an advertising sign. If it's less than half the distance of the setback, then it has to be a monument sign. It can't be a freestanding sign and we don't have a design for a monument sign. I'm worried that people's eyes are gonna be diverted from the intersection where people may be crossing the street, et cetera. But I'm just one place. Huh? I've just said, oh, thank you for your comment. But I don't, you know, I think it's, they've looked at the, I think she's putting, Christine is offering to put it as close as the rules allow and they haven't asked for a waiver of those rules yet or asked for an exception to the rules. Is anybody else worried about that safety issue? Maybe I'm just gonna ask for it. I'm not, I'm not worried about that one. Hello? Ms. Marshall. I may, I changed the color of my hand, but I'm not sure it helped. It's still really hard to see. All right. In a way, this is a side comment, but I was completely baffled by these papers because there was no explanation of what was going on. I mean, this has nothing to do with, do you drive South permit? I didn't know why that was here or why it was labeled North University in Northampton. I mean, I just, it would have been helpful to have a memo from the department and maybe also from Mr. Roberts or a better explanation of what this public meeting is about. I apologize for not including a memo. My apologies. Okay. Cause I thought it was like wrong and didn't accord at all with the plan that we were being shown. And I like these signs. I think it's great. I wonder though, if somebody could just show maybe an answer to or partial in relation to Ms. Greenbound's comment, where is the property line on this, on this site plan? Is it the kind of dashed on long and short dashes? So right along the sidewalk is the property line. I believe it's along the sidewalk. If Rob can bring up the site plan, I think you can see it. Can you, I can't see. There we go. Can you scroll down? Yes, South. See the property line? It is along the back of the sidewalk. And the original sign was supposed to be 10 feet from the property line. And so we're saying this sign. Right. And so where you're proposing to put the directional sign farther to the right from the intersection. So, so again, to Ms. Greenbound's comment, people won't be approaching the stoplight or the crosswalk when they're, you know, right next to the sign. So would your suggestion be to move it closer to the intersection? I'm just, in case it hadn't been clear, the sign is not going to be located where we're looking at it right now. That's correct. Yep. Yeah. So the sign would be, if you're looking at this site plan, the sign would be at the, about where the word building canopy is, but closer to the lot line. Is that about right? It's actually go farther to the right, Rob, if you can. Right about there. No? Yes, right about there. So it's just like where 52, 50.2 is roughly in there. Okay. Got it. All right. Any other comments? Oh, Mr. Henry. In the actual rendering with pictures, there are trees. Is there any concern? Do they have to cut any trees for the sign to be visible? No. I don't think those trees are there actually. Okay. I think that's a plan from when they first proposed it. It's not an actual picture of the place today. I think it was a rendering when they first proposed the building. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Roshevitz. Yeah. Just a question and a comment. I was wondering if the location of the sign was moved as a recommendation from somebody or if it was found to be a better location? And then the comment would be as if we are moving the sign, then just make sure, and this is more for Rob, just document tonight's meeting indicating that it did move from the original approval so that when we look at it in the future, we'll know that this was why it moved and where it went and without having to do a whole new site plan, but at least some indication that this was discussion. So Dave, to solve that issue, I'll take the site plan that I showed you and I'm gonna put my own little markings on it. So that would be good enough for you. Okay. Yeah, exactly. But just for the future, when it goes to somebody's desk, they're gonna say, well, that's not what was approved and then we need some record of it. So that often gets lost if you need it. And to respond to Ms. Marshall, I think we could put together a memo that basically talks about what I talked about tonight and that was missing from the packet and I apologize for that. And I would thank you, that'll be good to have. I wonder if it is also advisable for Mr. Roberts to say, or maybe this would be in the memo that he's giving up any claim or right to have a sign. This is instead of. So. Well, I think. You can't have another one without amending the site plan, right? In fact, he's giving it up. Right. So basically it's being documented from this public meeting that he is indeed giving it up and he also gave us his verbal and written approval to do so. So basically this isn't any different from say, the applicant coming back to discuss like a amended site plan or management plan or something like that. And usually the way we do it then is just kind of the same way document it from the verbal discussion in the minutes and just go from there. But I agree with Mr. Westgevitz of having like an updated site plan that shows where the location of the sign would go as well as this memo. So we can at least have some documentation that those changes were made and that's what's going to stand. Okay. This is the black sharpie technique. I was thinking red, but you know, black's also a good color. I don't know. Whatever works. Yeah, I don't know. A very quick question, last comment. Yes, Mr. Does this person reserve the right later on if he gets negative feedback about the sign being on his property and he doesn't like it or his customers doesn't like it? Does he reserve the right to come back and see you guys have to move it? Well, he technically could come back and discuss the condition again, but it'd have to be in a similar format. So he would have to come back to discuss was it condition 61 Chris or 51 or something like that? Do you, Mr. Henry, do you mean if he decided not to have the sign on his property and to have it moved somewhere else? Yes. I think someone would come and tell the ZBA that the sign was no longer going to be on this property. And then the town would have to figure out another location for the sign. And that may or may not involve going back to the ZBA. If we went back to the original location, which is in the state right of way, we probably wouldn't come back to the ZBA to show the new location, but we would maybe come back to tell you that it wasn't going to be in the location that I proposed this evening. So I don't mean now. I'm saying if we approve it and it is placed on the property two or three years later, can he come back and say, you guys need to remove the sign. I don't want to go on to my property. I think he could say that. He would have to come back before the board in a public meeting and request it. He couldn't do it. I don't think he could do it on his own. No, he can't. He has to come back before the board because of the condition and have the board re-approve a new location or to remove the sign per the condition. Yep. I think that's right. Yeah, I don't think he can just do it on his own. Ms. Marshall. I assume the town will be responsible for maintaining the sign or replacing it if a vehicle takes it out. Yes. Okay. All right. Any other comments, questions, concerns? I think we just have to approve this modification. There's no findings that have to be made or anything else, right? It's just a simple. That's great. A simple majority, I believe is what you need. Public meeting, that's right. So if there's no further discussion, I would entertain a motion to approve the request to approve the design of a freestanding and monument sign and the placement as identified in the documents that Ms. Brestrick gave us. All right. In second, I've heard two motions. So I heard at the first and the second. Any further discussion? If not, this requires three votes, a straight majority. Chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Ms. Greenbaugh. Aye. Motion carries five or nothing. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next order of business is general public comment period on any matters not before the board tonight. Everybody's gone home and gone to bed. There's no intention of anybody but us. So I think that's not, we're gonna just go past that. Other business not anticipated within 48 hours. What we need to do is just talk about what we have coming up, Rob. Can you talk about the scheduled hearings for the rest of the summer and the first part of the fall? Well, as I mentioned, we have only stuff scheduled until September. So September 14th, nothing, 28th. We have this continued public hearing for North Pleasant Street. August 10th, I didn't mean to go out of order with the dates, by the way. So August 10th, our next meeting, we do have a 40B training with KP law. So that's gonna be at 7 p.m. All members are encouraged to attend. So you can learn about the 40B process for somebody who's very knowledgeable about that. And that will start at 7 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. on that day. And if somebody is unable to make it, we obviously can make a recording available to you. So that'll still be recorded. And then any presentation slides will be sent to you as well. And then, sorry, my dog is whining in the background. He has to go outside too. And then August 28th is the first date of our Shootsbury Road solar public hearing. It is a 45 acre site. I believe they're generating it around, I think it's like nine megawatts. So it's a pretty large site. And that hearing date is scheduled for August 28th. It's August 24th, excuse me. Sorry, August 24th at 6 p.m. And that's the only hearing we have scheduled for that date so far. Otherwise, Mr. Chair, we don't have anything else scheduled besides those three meeting dates. So. And Rob, when do we think that the 40B application will be before us? So I heard rumors. That's over November. I heard rumors that they're trying to submit maybe mid-August. So that means we might have to hold a public hearing in September if they decide to submit. It's still kind of up in the air because they have to do a few changes to their plans. Like they have to, supposedly they have a high water table on site, high groundwater table, so they might have to put in more cut and fill. So that might take some time in terms of re-engineering their plans. But otherwise, that's all we've heard so far. It's still up in the air, but yeah. The key thing here is for members to know is that once they file their package, it's the clock starts ticking. And we can both agree to delay a hearing beyond the timeframe, but the law says that we have to start hearing it within I think within 60 days. So we can come to an agreement on a different time, but. Yeah. But they can also agree to an extension, Steve. And the Valley CDC has been very good about working with Amherst in the past and 40B. So I'm sure if we approach them reasonably, they'd be willing to work around the deadlines with us. All this goes to say, if you're gonna be here, go to the 40B hearing because 40B training because it's a different process than we have ever been through. But then you guys have been through it. I don't think anybody except me has been through a 40B. Were you on that grade? A lot of us. Oh, you, Hilly, I bet in the past you were, sure. Okay. I'm well, I've been there, I've done that. Yeah. I agree with you on that. And I was wondering how many of us, other than the two of us, I'm not certain if Sarah was on that solar training that we had. And if there's a way to repeat that before we have the solar come up. I'm trying to train you by Jonathan Murray about a solar bylaw, like. Yeah. No, no, no, not about the solar bylaw. They're Massachusetts laws that govern our approach to solar. Is there a video? Do you have a video of that meeting? Yeah, it should be, you know, it'd be good as Rob, you could send out the date of that. That was a ZBA meeting. Public meeting, if I remember correctly, it should be on the webpage. I'll have to look into that and see what date that meeting was and see if I could find the video. I know the YouTube videos go back as far as 2020. So it should be on YouTube. We can easily find it and download it. It was going the year ago, so if I went to it. Yeah, so we should have it then. I can circulate that date and video link to everybody so they have it. That'd be good. All right. But there's a lot of, I don't know how far along the working group is with the solar working group. Christine, do you know? Well, ideally they would like to submit something to the town manager by September 1st, but I'm not sure that that's actually going to happen. But if you're really interested in seeing where they are with it, there's going to be a presentation of the solar by-law at next Wednesday's planning board meeting, kind of just to introduce the planning board to the idea of the solar by-law. It's still in a draft form though. All right. So not exactly a public hearing. If we want to go to that meeting and hear it, do we have to post it for our board with more than three of us go? I think that would be a good idea for the three of you go. What's that? What was your question, Christine? We need to post it if we want to go to the planning board meeting and there are more than three of us. Well, they're virtual and we'd go as attendees. As long as you don't say anything, you can go. But if you start talking and talking among yourselves about what is being said, then it would be considered a meeting. Question of deliberation, right? Yeah. But we could ask questions if we have questions without violating open meeting. It might be a good idea if you told Rob Wachilla that you were planning to come and then if he finds that more than three of you are going to be there, then he would post the meeting 48 hours in advance. Yep. That's if there's only three or more people going. Because that's when it is constituted as having a quorum. All right. Okay. All right. Any other questions? Any other new business? If not, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Don't vote. Don't vote. Don't vote. Don't vote. Don't vote. Don't vote. Don't vote. Don't vote. Don't vote. Am I taking away his job? No, no, no. We'll flip a coin each time, Hilda. Huh? We'll flip a coin each time. Okay, I'm down to 1%. That's why I don't know. Well, you get the whole next meeting. I forgot to put a cable with all the stuff I just said. Motion to adjourn has been made and seconded. This is not a debatable motion. The roll call vote is required. I just got to be held up. What? Start with Hilda. Oh yeah. All right, Hilda. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. All right, we are adjourned. Thank you guys. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Good night. Bye.