 Don't worry. Yeah, I didn't see the time sample on that. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. I always feel like I have less hair when I look at myself in these things than I think I do. Yeah, yeah. We are far away. Yeah, I don't know. I guess there's no policy in town hall. I've been, I know, I know. Right. Yep. Yep. And I'm pretty good at microphone, so it should be up for you. Yeah. Yeah. So, but everybody's got the center position. Yeah, I remember. So thank you all for your patience. I greatly appreciate it. Duane, we have a quorum. The meeting is recording, so if you want to get started. Great. Thank you, Stephanie. Duane Bregger, hereby open the meeting of the Solar By-law Working Group for July 15, 2022. And thank you all for being here. I do want to acknowledge, again, my pleasure in being designated chair, and I'll do my best to keep us on track as we go through the year and help drive us forward. But obviously, looking for everybody to contribute to this effort, both during the working group meetings as well as in between the meetings, because we do have a lot of work to do and a lot of perspectives and expertise in the working group that we want to take advantage of and tap into. I do also want to acknowledge Martha, who has been designated vice chair, and I appreciate that and working together as we go forward. And we can work a little bit more in terms of the role that the vice chair wants to play. Let me ask Stephanie, is it appropriate just to, I think people can see us, but just to inform us as the working group, who we have remotely? We don't currently have any member remotely and they will show up when they do. Okay, like a normal Zoom, they'll show up, or if they're public then they won't show up necessarily. They should show up as a presenter, but the public does not show up. Okay, so we do have a quorum, but we don't have any other working group members remotely. So I guess the one thing I'll say is my hearing is not the greatest, so just let's try to speak up as much as possible, particularly because there's a lot of echo it seems like in this room, and use the microphones, I guess, even though we're talking basically between ourselves. One of the first order of business is to have a minute taker. Taking minutes is a really important role and obligation for the working group and for any of these committees. And so what I'd like to put forward is that we do take minutes on a rotating basis amongst the working group members, with the exception that I'd like to be exempt from that just so I can help to run the meeting without taking notes, which I wouldn't do very well. So is that sound okay to everybody? And I think it might be easiest to just go in alphabetical order and keep track of that. So if somebody's not here, they'll get caught up in the next round. And so that puts Robert, are you prepared or okay to take notes? I'm not prepared, but I'll do my best. Okay, I do know that it's great to consider it sort of a draft of the notes and then I think Stephanie also, and Chris maybe as well, but would help to put them in a final form. Is there also like a transcript that could be made of this meeting or no, like a Zoom transcript? The Zoom transcripts, we don't use them because they're terrible. They misinterpret a lot of what's said and so we haven't, it automatically shows up. There are automatically on there when you look at the Zoom meeting recording, but we don't make the transcripts official because they're not accurate. Yeah, Chris. There is a video of the meeting though and when I'm doing minutes for other groups, I find that helpful to watch the video. Okay, and sort of take them, take them, have a second, go at it. Okay, great. So Robert, thank you for doing that this time and just, I guess next up would be Dan, and we might inform him ahead of time for the next meeting. I can ask, especially right now, I don't know anybody's name, so if you could just say who you are before you start speaking. Thank you. Okay, good. Yeah. Well, why don't we take the opportunity to quickly just introduce ourselves by name and then I have a little bit of an agenda item to provide a little bit more introduction to each of us in terms of our perspectives and expertise and so forth. But for now, let's just go around and make sure everybody knows each other. So I'm Dwayne Breger. Bob Brooks. Janet McGowan. Christine Brestrup. Stephanie Chigarillo. Great. So you might just take note of who's present and who's not present. I just want to note that, Bob, you can just get a draft to me. We do have the recording and I'll fill in any blanks. So don't be too worried. It's just a draft that we need. Great. Next official, and I think everybody has the agenda or at least it was provided ahead of time. If needed and as needed, we can maybe flash on the screen, but I don't think we need that right away. But the first formal order of business is to review and vote on the minutes from the last meeting, June 22nd. I'm not sure if people have had a chance to review those and have or have any comments or suggested changes to those minutes, or if they would like to have it put up on the screen to review quickly. Had a slight change. I think something that Martha said was attributed to me about the work of the working group and I agreed with her. So that was the only change I saw. What page is that? I think it's on page two, but I don't, that's calling my memory. We were discussing what the working group is going to do. Can you pull that up, Stephanie? Maybe? Okay, thanks. So on page three, I think Martha had raised the question about the community outreach and values and then priority list. And then I had agreed with her and said it should be important to clarify who's making what decision. Okay, so are you? I guess that's an ad. A specific amendment. Where? I'm trying to. So in section six on page three, she had raised, Martha, maybe you could speak too, but you had raised the question about who is going to do the community outreach. You said you thought that our group was going to do community outreach, figure out community values and priority site selection. And then we had a discussion about that and I agreed with her and said it was important, you know, who makes the decision. So would you? I don't see worry. What line are you changing it? What are you changing it to? In the middle of six, A, it says Ms. McGowan expressed concern. Is that the item? How do you want it to read? I would say Ms. Hammer raised, said that she thought that the working group would be doing community outreach, deciding, learning the values and then priority places for solar. I agreed with that. Janet McGowan agreed with that and said that it was important that we know who decides what. That is a topic for discussion. Those were comments expressed at the beginning, but I think worthy of more discussion by the working group and in fact that's something I had in mind for a future agenda item. So we can make a note and we'll correct those in the minutes. Yeah. So remind me, Stephanie, is that amendment need a vote or we just vote? You haven't made a vote yet. So that's just an amendment. So if there are any other changes? Yeah. Okay. So are there any other desired amendments or changes to the minutes? I would just ask you right now what you wanted. I did not be able to capture what you were trying to say. Okay. Do you, maybe we should, I should send that into Stephanie. We can vote on it at the next meeting. Would that be easier? I'm fine with the concept. I just didn't get your words. I guess we would need some specific words. If you can, I mean you did say what you stated, what you wanted it to be replaced with. We are recording so I can go back to the recording and I'll just type in what you said. Yeah, that's a good idea. So you can just leave it sort of blank and refer to recording or something and then I'll get it. I'll capture it. All right. So if there's no other comments on the minutes, do I hear a motion to accept the minutes as amended? Okay. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Great. Okay. So, okay, we need a voice vote because, well, theoretically we have a remote member but McGowan? Yes. Breger? Yes. Hanna? Yes. We're voting on the minutes. I just need a yes or no vote on the minutes. Brooks? Yes. Then the minutes are approved. Yep. Great. Thank you, Stephanie. And thank you, group. The next agenda item, which we'll see where we can get to at this point is to schedule additional working group meetings with, I guess to some extent some uncertainty as to whether they will be by Zoom or in person, which makes it a little bit harder to commit to your calendar right now because at least in my case, there could be some days that I can certainly do a Zoom working group meeting but not in person. But nonetheless, my sense is that it would be good to get on the books to meeting dates that at least the four of us can agree with and hopefully the rest of the working group is okay. And I would suggest to try to meet two more times in the summer before the end of August. And then we can potentially readjust our calendar and our schedule for some recurring time once this fall hits, at least for some of us have school and get onto a school and academic calendar. Yes, Stephanie. So the next two meeting dates, if you were to meet every two weeks would be Friday, July 29th and Friday, August 12th. Yes. Yeah, those were the two suggested dates. And how does that yep. So the idea would be to continue this meeting time on Fridays, noon to two and the next every two weeks for the rest of the summer, which is basically two additional dates, July 29th and August 12th. Do people have, do people, at least in the room, feel like those meeting times? I can't do the 12th. Can't do the 12th. I remotely or we're in person. I'm not quite sure we'll be like not sure if we'll be hiking or in a hotel, but it'll be a way. Yes, okay, okay. All right, how about the July 29th? Does that work? Maybe we should just get that one on the books for now? Okay, because I know, let's get that one on the books for now. And we'll plan the schedule that and think about when we talk about the agenda for next time, think about that time. Yeah, and you may potentially have a quorum for the 12th. You might not have Janet, but you might still have a quorum. Oh, that's yeah. So if you just schedule the next meeting, if a quorum here can meet on the 29th, okay, as long as you have a quorum, we're good. And then we can go from there for the next meeting. Yeah, so let's put both of those on the books. Do know, we like today, we recognize that especially in the summer, but probably throughout the year, everybody is not going to be able to make every meeting. But we'll certainly need a quorum, and we'll try to make sure that it's conflicting with as few people as possible. Okay, so we have that taken care of. Next, I thought it would be helpful, certainly to me, and hopefully to the, others on the working group. I think, without exception, I've only met everybody here on the working group for the first time on Zoom a few weeks ago. We had some icebreaker and introductions, but that was a little bit more about fun facts about us. I think it was, as opposed to us, where we are in terms of our level of knowledge, expertise, what we bring to this working group and what skill sets we don't have coming into this working group. So I thought it would be helpful to go around, and maybe we'll ask the others to do so at the next meeting, to introduce yourself a little bit more with regard to what you view your position is on this working group in terms of, particularly for those that are representing their town committees, sort of that relationship between the committee and the working group. But then also, what are your expertise and deficiencies, if you will, in dealing with the task in front of us? So I will start, and so I'm here representing ECAC, the Energy and Climate Action Committee, and so that committee, and I will be the liaison with that committee as well. Oh, good, Dan's joining us. And I come at this working in the renewable energy field since I was out of college, which means about 40 years or so, and particularly in the areas of policy, and I would say economics. My background is some engineering and policy, but also resource economics. So what I recognize about the issues in front of us is that they're complicated. There's no black and white answers. It's really an issue of calculated analysis, using analysis, and well-informed decision making about trade-offs that are in front of us, and how do we, as a social group, the working group, as well as the broader community, understand, do enough, we bring enough analysis and information so that informed decision making and perspectives can be voiced by the community, and that policymakers and decision makers at the town level can make difficult but well-informed decisions. And so I have no issues here with regard to, well, let me say that my professional priority and focus has always been on addressing the climate emergency that we face and the role that renewable energy plays centrally to that. So my main focus is trying to solve the climate crisis and how the town can participate in that, as well as the commonwealth as a whole. And so that's sort of my focus. In terms of my deficiencies, I would say, as I mentioned before, I'm not an expert on zoning. I really appreciate looking at crisis 101 and look forward to hearing that because that was really helpful, as well as the model bylaws, but that's all kind of new to me. I will also say that I'm fairly familiar or aware of, but not knowledgeable about issues with regard to land use, conservation restrictions, and policies regarding land use, particularly with regard to forestry, farms, conservation land, and so forth. So that's a bit of a deficit on my end. Okay. Anybody want to go second? Maybe my vice chair. Okay. So I'm Martha Hanner and I'm an astronomer and planetary scientist, which means I've been very excited by the web telescope pictures this week, seeing back into the universe. But as a planetary scientist, then I've been also following the climate research and the modeling for decades now. And it's been interesting to me to see that as we started to model other planets atmospheres with very different initial conditions and so on, that helps give us confidence in the modeling for our own Earth's atmosphere. And I've watched that get more complex and so on over the years. And to me, the most sobering aspect right now is that recent climate models for Earth predict that even if we were to wave a magic wand and eliminate all fossil fuel use tomorrow, that in itself would not do the trick that we actually need to increase the amount of drawdown of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well. And if the overall goal isn't just quote renewable energy, the overall goal is to mitigate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And so we need to consider all aspects of that, although we're concentrating on solar energy, certainly in this working group, we need to do it in the overall larger context and consider also the CO2 mitigation as well. And so, I don't know that much about the town's zoning laws in the past and so on. And I'm trying to read as much as I can and we also have to read all about the latest state regulations and rebates and so on. So I'm eager to learn a lot and again help balance these various complex considerations. So, thank you. Yeah, so I'm Bob Brooks and I've been thinking about this. I grew up in the Adirondra working farm. It was a rural forestry-based region. I went to school at three degrees in forestry and wildlife. 40 years as a wildlife scientist and I worked in National Forest Service, did all my fieldwork on the farm. I'm definitely a believer in a working forest, conservation, wild use of forest. I'm not opposed to putting solar farms in forestry on forest land. I think that probably I have more concerns about agricultural land in Amherst and about the use of forest land. And I'm quite interested in this whole process. I'm a little overwhelmed, I think, but hopefully I'll be able to get back into sitting here and participating. It really helps. Thank you. Right, Janet? So, I am an attorney and a mediator. I practiced law for about 10 or more years doing most litigation. I did a stint at the Conservation Law Foundation and Cultural Survival. I'm very interested in, I love the science of the environment and I love using that and informing legal decisions. So, at Cultural Survival it really focuses on Indigenous people and making decisions about their land, which are often better, but not always, than the policy makers do or the corporations do. So that this part of the committee that is about working with our community, you know, collecting information and figuring out values is really important to me, partly because you need the support of the community in what we decide or recommend to the town council. I love research and analysis. I don't love reading line by line, but that's what I do. And then I understand the importance of a sentence and a word. And so, and I also know that we need to have a lot of people looking at those things, you know, the by-law to make sure it's good because you need a lot of heads and ideas. Alternative energy is kind of my family business. My husband's been working on hybrid electrification, municipal buses, and now electrification of commercial things. So I know, I don't know a lot about batteries, but I know that they're hard to deal with things and there's a lot of issues about that. I think my weaknesses are sort of the economics and the different, the changes in the incentives and rebates. And, you know, I'd be interested in what other communities do to create incentives that we might make as recommendations. Yeah, that's great. I'm impressed with the knowledge as well as the diversity of the knowledge, which is fantastic. I do wonder whether, Dan, if you're able to hear us and speak whether we're doing sort of a little bit broader introductions of who we are and what our strengths and weaknesses are as we approach the year in front of us. And welcome. Thank you. Yes. Sorry, I had some technical difficulties, but I'm glad I was able to make it. So I'm Daniel Corprin, go by Dan. I have 10 years of experience in environmental consulting, where I primarily investigated and remediated contaminated groundwater and surface water. I'm currently a researcher at University of Massachusetts Amherst. I am investigating the potential future impacts of lithium mining on water resources in South America. So what I can really bring to this group is an understanding of the potential impacts of drainage changes on water quality. I suppose my weaknesses would be that I have no experience of working in town government or with zoning. So that's all going to be a new experience for me. Great. Thank you, Dan. Okay. Thank you for that. That really helps me and I hope all of us to better know who we all are. Any thoughts before we proceed forward on that? Awesome. Okay, great. Staff updates. That would be you, Stephanie and Chris. Sure. I have a few quick ones just in terms of getting our website together. We do have a website for the solar bylaw working group. There is a resource folder. So any resources that are sent by any of you or members of the public, the documents go into that resources folder. So you get them in your packets, but I try to also put relevant documents in the resources folder. Not every single item or opinion or guidance will go into the resources folder. So you will get them always in your packets. So for instance, if someone sends an email about their opinion, that will go into your packet for your meeting, but it won't necessarily go into the resources folder. That is specifically for documents that are guidance documents. Great. And as far as other updates, we are moving along on the RFP for the solar assessment. So the town is working on that and our procurement person is away next week, but we are finalizing that and we'll be getting it out next week as soon as she returns. Thank you. And I have checked out the resource folder, and it's really helpful. So I appreciate that. Okay, Chris, anything on your end? You're up next for the 101. I don't have any updates. Okay, great. All right. Any questions for Stephanie or Chris in terms of staff issues? Okay. So we're here to create and recommend with help, resource helps from some consultants later on, and we'll get to that later, a solar zoning bylaw. And so I thought it'd be helpful. It sounds like others are in the same boat as I am, that while we have expertise in various areas, we don't all have expertise in the actual understanding of and process and developing by zoning, zoning bylaws particularly. So I really appreciate, Chris, your willingness to put together the zoning 101 presentation for us. I took a look, a scroll through it, and I think it has a great deal of value to this group. So appreciate you putting that together. And do you want to walk us through that? Hold on one, I'm sorry, you'll have to wait one moment because I'm having a little bit of technical difficulty. It's very confusing because my controls are actually up on the walls and not in front of me and it's got me really disoriented. So please just bear with me a moment while I try to figure this out. I have, I have called IT for help. So just bear with me one moment. I'm also going to say that I will take my mask off during the time that I'm presenting because my glasses don't work if I have my mask. Ernie, is it on Zoom we get to see more of each other to some extent than in person? Hello everyone, I'm Chris Brestrup. I'm the planning director for the Town of Amherst and I've been working with zoning, I'm going to say for decades. I don't know, maybe even 50 years, but that makes me seem really old, but I think I have been working with it that long. So zoning seems really boring, but it's really important. Excuse me and Chris, is it possible for you to talk a little louder? Sure. If I move the microphone closer, does that help? Okay. All right. So here we go. Zoning 101 as Martha introduced it last time we were here together. So can we have the next slide please? So what is zoning? Zoning is the way a community regulates its use of land and zoning regulations allow a community to control where different uses occur and under what circumstances? And I think Jen, it's going to be really helpful here too because we went through a zoning blizzard last year. I think we adopted seven zoning amendments. The planning board worked on that and it was really quite amazing. So the authority, may I have the next slide? The authority for zoning comes from Chapter 40A of the Massachusetts General Laws. And zoning is also limited by state and federal laws governing property rights. So zoning may not violate the Constitution's takings clause and that requires compensation where property is taken for public purposes. And this occurs, sometimes the town needs to take property. It needs to take property along roadways that are being widened. And sometimes regulatory mechanisms are considered to be taking. So a taking can be either a physical taking or a regulatory taking. But zoning can't take away the dollar value of a piece of land from a landowner. So every piece of land in town needs to be allowed to be used in some manner. Next slide, please. So in terms of principal uses and getting down to what we're going to be talking about, which is solar arrays, zoning must provide that at least some uses are allowed on each piece of land, which is what I just said. And zoning must include all possible uses. So if a use comes into town that we've never heard of before, the building commissioner has to look at the table of zoning bylaws and figure out where does this go. So if you look at our zoning bylaw, it's got a pretty broad range of uses, including I think even something about radio activity. But you know, I think we say no on that one all across the board. But anyway. So zoning, if a use isn't listed in the zoning chart, the building commissioner has to figure out a place to put it in. And currently, solar by solar installations are not listed in the use chart. But to date, large scale solar arrays and Amherst have been regulated under section 3.340, which is utility uses. And the subsection is 3.340.0 transformer station or other energy facility or use. And the zoning bylaw is available on the town website. There are a couple of different ways to find it. So the whole bylaw is there and you can find these sections online. So in general, solar arrays are allowed by special permit in most zoning districts. And that would be a special permit from the zoning board of appeals, or they're allowed by site plan review in the commercial and limited industry zoning districts. And just to clarify this, we're talking about large scale solar arrays. We're not talking about the kind of solar panels that people put on their homes or on buildings that those things do not have to go through the land use permitting process. May have the next slide, please. We also have in addition to principal uses, we have accessory uses. So sometimes large scale solar arrays are permitted as accessory uses. And those would be under section under article 5, which is called accessory uses of the zoning bylaw. So for instance, the large scale solar array that's down on West Palmer and Lane, it's right across from Applewood and it's part of the Hampshire College campus. That was permitted by site plan review by the planning board because it was considered to be an accessory use to the Hampshire College campus operations and it provides energy for Hampshire College and not in general for, you know, the area at large. Next slide, please. So in terms of why we need a solar bylaw, we already have a large scale solar installations that have been approved by the zoning board of appeals or the planning board. And to date, four of them have been constructed. And these are on the transfer station on route nine. I think you're most familiar with that. That was just finished and I'm not sure if it's online yet, but Stephanie would be aware of that of the status. Then we have the Hampshire College array on West Palmer and Lane. We have a private development on Pulpit Hill Road in North Amherst and another one on Montague Road. There's another installation that's been approved at the Hickory Ridge golf course, which is a piece of property in South Amherst that the town just acquired. And that has not yet been constructed, but it has been permitted by the zoning board of appeals. But even though, you know, we have these solar arrays here in town, residents of Amherst have been concerned about problems of large scale solar arrays that have been built in other towns. And some of these problems include bad problems with erosion. So they really would like us to come up with our own specific solar bylaw. They've requested that the town develop a solar bylaw to regulate large scale solar installations so that they're constructed safely and in a manner that will be environmentally sound. So that's the process that we're currently engaged in. Next slide, please. So the history of zoning in Amherst, or the history of zoning in general, is that it goes back to the late 1700s, when President George Washington issued an order that there was a certain part of Washington DC, where all construction needed to be out of brick. And my guess is that has something to do with fire that he wanted to avoid problems with fire. But I'm not sure about that. The first official comprehensive zoning ordinance in the United States was in New York City in 1916. And it was a response to overcrowding and lack of sunlight and other unhelpful conditions where you had people living right alongside industrial processes and the buildings were really close together, etc. Then in 1926, the Supreme Court looked at zoning in the case of Euclid versus Ambler Realty in Ohio. And the Supreme Court ruled that zoning did not violate the due process clause of the federal constitution. And then by 1940, zoning had become a common means of regulating land use in the US. Next slide, please. So the town of Amherst has had its own zoning by-law and zoning map since 1925. And it's been amended over the years by the town council, excuse me, by town meeting and then town council since 2018. Did I say that right? Yes, I did. The planning department has copies of zoning by-laws that date back to at least 1937. And we have some of the old maps too. But I think that the town clerk has a more complete set of zoning by-laws and their electronic copies and you can get those from the town clerk if you're interested. Next slide, please. So in general, why do we need zoning? Well, I've talked about that a little bit already, but zoning allows the town to group uses according to their compatibility so that you don't have factories next to places where people are living. Zoning also allows the town to separate uses in ways that protect the health, safety, and general well-being of the community. Zoning enables the town to separate such things as industrial uses from residential uses. I just said that. And it has to have the benefit of health, safety, and general welfare for the community. So the first paragraph of the zoning by-law states that the zoning by-law is enacted pursuant to and under the authority of Chapter 40A, the general laws as amended, for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst and to encourage the most appropriate use of land throughout Amherst. So we'll be thinking about this a lot during our process of developing a solar by-law. This zoning by-law is in accordance with the recommendations of the master plan adopted in accordance with the Amherst Home Rule Charter and is consistent with the comprehensive plan of the regional planning agency. So the next slide is who creates and amends the zoning by-law. Well, right now we have the town council that creates and amends the zoning by-law, but the planning board has a huge role in that too. The planning board and town council, usually in the form of the community resources committee, are required to hold a public hearing on proposed zoning amendments and to make a report to town council. So when we get to the point of having a solar by-law that we're comfortable with, we would send it to the town council and then they would refer it back to the planning board and the community resources committee for a public hearing. A zoning amendment requires a two-thirds vote of town council members in order to be adopted and that means nine out of 13 of the council members have to say yes to a zoning amendment for it to be adopted. And by the way, we get a review by our town, our other town council, C-O-U-N-S-E-L, our town attorney, whenever we have a zoning by-law that's being proposed, they review it and make sure that it complies with the state law as well as other town laws and make sure that it's in proper form to present to town council. So the zoning by-law actually has two components and one is the text of the zoning by-law which is available at this link here and it is, I think it's about 130 pages of text. It's kind of dense but if you read it a few times you sort of get the feeling that you understand it for the most part. I have to keep referring back to it because I can't memorize it but it's very useful document. And then the other part of the zoning by-law, next slide please, is the zoning map and I've taken a little chunk out of the zoning map. The official zoning map is the online electronic version of our zoning map and it shows all the properties in town and what zoning district they belong to and here in this image you can see the area that's outlined in the yellow line is the town hall where we currently are and it shows that the town hall is in the general business or BG zoning district and the yellow areas around that are G are general residents and there's a kind of striped area over to the left or the west and that's the limited business district. So you should take a look at the official zoning map on the town website. It's kind of revealing. Next slide please. So how does zoning work? So the zoning map divides the town into districts and assigns each district a name and I've listed a few of them here but there are many more. One of them is commercial, one of them is general business and there's another one called neighborhood residential but as I said there are many more. Every piece of land is assigned to a district and the district boundaries sometimes cut through a piece of land so you might have your frontage in one zoning district and the back part of your property in another zoning district. Next slide please. The zoning by-law includes a table of uses. I tried to capture that here but I wasn't able to and I'm sorry about that but you can go and look at the zoning by-law and see the table of uses and again it's many many different uses. I would guess to be tens of uses if not a hundred uses but anyway across the top of the chart it shows the zoning district designation and then down the left side it will show what the use is and then the boxes are filled in with how are these uses permitted and some uses are allowed by right like agriculture is allowed by right you can do farming anywhere and you don't have to get permission for that. Some uses are allowed by site plan review and that's a review that the planning board conducts and with site plan review the use is allowed but the the planning board can tell the applicant how to do the use in other words you know how far back from the road what kind of lighting what kind of landscaping etc but they can't really in general they don't deny the use because the use is considered to be allowed if the applicant gives the planning board all the information it needs and abides by the regulations. The next category is special permit and both the zoning board of appeals and the planning board grant special permits and the special permit is a discretionary permit and so the the body that is the permitting body can say no to a special permit and then the last category is N which is not permitted so if you take a look at the use table you'll see those designations. Next slide please. So the other part of how zoning works is that there are dimensional requirements and I did manage to capture that table here but all the different zoning districts have specific requirements for setbacks from roads and setbacks from side from the side and rear of the property and how much of the land can be covered with a building or with other material and in the case of a building it would be how high can it be in various zoning districts so that dimensional table gives you all of that information. Next slide please. Another thing that is contained in the zoning bylaw is overlay districts and we have overlay districts for certain uses or limitations that we want to impose on certain parts of town so for instance WP is the Watership Protection District and that is the district that is located up in North Amherst and it is adjacent to the Atkins Reservoir. Then we have the ARP or Aquifer Recharge District that is a large area that includes Lawrence Swamp in South Amherst but also large areas along Southeast Street and other parts of South Amherst. We have Farmland Conservation District which is in general covers areas that are in outlying areas and generally it's the residential low density district that has the Farmland Conservation Overlay and it tries to preserve Farmland to the best to the best it can and not to have sprawling developments there. PURD is another overlay district and that's a planned unit residential district and parts of Echo Hill are in a PURD and what it means is you can develop the land in a more dense fashion than you would normally be able to develop it. We have R&D Research and Development that's along University Drive along the west side of University Drive and certain uses and activities are allowed there that aren't allowed in other parts of town they're related to research and development of products and then we have the Municipal Parking District and that's an area in the downtown area where onside parking is not required for certain uses and that's actually a pretty controversial district. So my comment here is that one way of dealing with the information that we're going to get out of the site assessment process that we're going through is that site assessment is going to show us where appropriate places or inappropriate places would be for solar installations and we may want to create an overlay district that actually makes that part of the zoning bylaw to show where we intend to allow solar arrays and where we don't want to allow solar arrays so that's something to consider. Can I ask a question on that just because I'm trying to wrap my head around the overlay district versus the what are the other districts called more normal districts where everybody's in a district and so if I'm a property owner I always have a district associated with me but I may or may not have an or may not be in an overlay district. Great that's correct yes so an overlay district that was just established which got a lot of press was on North Prospect Street the area behind the CVS was recently designated as a parking facility overlay district to allow a potential parking garage to be built there but the underlying zoning remains general residence so it can't be used for anything else except housing I mean it could be used for anything that's allowed in RG but it could also potentially be used as a parking facility so on these overlay districts is there a similar table of like all the uses that can be used in an overlay district no no there's no table but these districts are described and I think it's in section three of the zoning bylaw or maybe it's section two it's section two that's right article two but it gives a verbal description of these and then for certain ones of them like aquifer recharge and farmland conservation there are specific things that you can and can't do there so you should take a look at that yep okay the next slide please let's see yes what does the state law say about say about solar so there are certain uses that are exempt from very strict regulations by zoning we call them exempt uses they're not completely exempt but they are uses that the state wants to promote they think these are good things and they don't want to restrict them too much so among the exempt uses are educational uses religious uses agriculture daycare public service or public utilities and solar installations so there's a section of um chapter 40a section three which states that no zone zoning ordinance or bylaw shall prohibit or unreasonably regulate the installation of solar energy systems or the building of structures that facilitate the collection of solar energy except we're necessary to protect the public health safety or welfare so that's something we should keep in the back of our minds as we're going through and creating a zoning bylaw related to solar so in general it means that the town can regulate the dimensional aspects of solar but we can't really prohibit its installation we may be able to prohibit in certain locations but i'm not there can't be a blank prohibition so the next slide please so how does the planning board or zba zoning board of appeals make decisions and the planning board or the zoning board of appeals receives an application for particular use and then the planning department staff and there are five of us on the staff and the building commissioner determine which use category the application falls within and then they determine which district zoning district the property is located in and then that helps us to figure out which permit is required and then the zoning board of appeals or the planning board holds a public hearing after notifying property owners within 300 feet and they also put a legal ad in the paper which is the daly hamster gazette telling people when and where the public hearing will be held and then people are allowed to come in and make comments and then the zoning board of appeals and the planning board receive a report from the planning department spelling out the zoning issues that need to be considered and also telling the planning board and the zoning board of appeals whether this particular proposal needed to be approved or reviewed by the conservation commission and then we would tell the planning board or zba what did the conservation commission say about such a proposal next slide please just second please can you just explain a zoning board and the planning board i mean there's two boards but they have different functions that's correct yeah the zoning board of appeals has a more narrow function there are only four or five things that they review they review special permits they review variances which are very rare they review appeals from decisions of the building commissioner so if the building commissioner grants a building permit and people object to that they can go to the zoning board of appeals to appeal his decision then the other thing is they grant these things called comprehensive permits which are a way that developers of housing particularly affordable housing can get modifications of the zoning bylaw that aren't written into the zoning bylaw so in other words they could build something taller or bigger cover more lot area if they provide a certain percentage of the dwelling units as affordable so that's a comprehensive permit so those are the four things that the zoning board of appeals does the planning board works on zoning bylaws so they're going to be involved in developing the zoning bylaw along with you they also work on the master plan which they developed with a big group of people they look at different things like we have this thing called chapter 61 which is a tax category that allows people to avoid paying high taxes if they want to use their property for farming or I don't know forestry or recreation and then the planning board has to advise advise whoever the legislative body is about whether these places should can be released from their designation as chapter 61 so and they review scenic roads if trees are going to be cut along scenic roads the planning board reviews that so there are a number of things that the planning board does that are not all related to granting permits but the planning board also grants permits and they among the permits they grant is a site plan review approval so does that help yeah I was just reading that third bullet and trying to figure out it says pv or zba and oh so in certain areas the planning board is allowed to grant site plan review approval for solar installations and if you look at the use chart you can figure that out but it's in very limited places it's commercial district and limited industrial district in every other place it's the zoning board of appeals that grants the special permit for a solar installation so it's normally going to be the zoning board of appeals who reviews solar installations but every once in a while it'll be the planning board um yes so I think yeah okay oh so the planning board at the public hearing they get this report from the planning department and they hear from the applicant they hear a presentation from the applicant and they ask the applicant questions and they make comments and then they hear from the public um and they keep doing that until they feel comfortable that they can make a decision so they don't necessarily make the decision in one night next slide please um so after hearing from the public and deliberating they may decide whether they wanted to grant the approval or not and what types of conditions would be necessary to make sure that the project can be successfully constructed and operated and you know if you're interested we have typical conditions that we've used for zoning board of appeals special permits related to solar installations um planning board and the zoning board of appeals refer to two sections of the zoning bylaw they're like checklists of things that need to be considered one of them is 10.38 section 10.38 that's the um list that's reviewed for special permits and the section 11.24 is the list that's reviewed for site plan review but they are very similar um in content really um so then this planning board of the CBA makes the decision and they almost always put conditions on their decisions so once in a while they don't but most of the time they do um and the special permit from the zoning board of appeals can be appealed and there's an appeal period that lasts 20 days um so a butters or whoever is aggrieved can appeal the decision within 20 days um the site plan review doesn't have a specific appeal period but it is possible nonetheless to appeal as a planning board site plan review approval next slide please um so you may ask well now that you know there's the decision that's been made and there are conditions that have been written and who's going to enforce it and that is inspection services and they're under the control of the building commissioner so he and his staff are responsible um to ensure compliance with the zoning bylaw and any special permit conditions and site plan review conditions and they read those before they grant a building permit for projects um so they the building commissioner issues the building permit and after something is constructed he would also issue a certificate of occupancy that's not necessarily relevant to the solar installation but it's relevant to building projects um but nonetheless he is on the site not necessarily the building commissioner but his inspectors visit the construction sites to make sure that what is being built is in accordance with approved drawings and documents and so I think that makes Amherst a little bit different from some other cities and towns we have a very robust inspections team and they are you know on the job when things are being constructed and if anything is related to wetlands we also have wetlands administrator who goes to the site to make sure that things are being built in accordance with conservation commission conditions um and then the building commissioner and his staff would also respond to complaints so if the public saw something happening during construction that they thought was a miss or if they saw a problem they could call our office and someone from our office would go out to the site and investigate and see if what is really happening is not uh correct um so that's really the end of my presentation but I'd be happy to answer any questions if anyone has any questions um you can get a copy of the zoning bylaw printed out for you by the town clerk's office and um it might be helpful like to look at the youth table and the dimensional tables I always put a little paper clip by them because they're kind of buried so um it's a long document but it's I think it's easier to have it in your hand than to look at it online and I think it would be free for you but I'm not a hundred percent sure so if you do want to copy we have copies in my office and you wouldn't have to pay for it so let us know if you want to copy okay so the your description of the quote building inspector and so on is a lot more than inspecting the construction of buildings isn't it when you say that it also involves like some of the environmental things or the drainage of a site or you know all all of that kind of thing as well is that right so the building commissioner and his staff would be involved in um electrical connections um the the structure of the solar arrays you know how they're installed whether they're being installed properly other things like the environmental issues would be most likely um in the bailiwick of the conservation department or the town engineer so the town engineer gets a copy of a stormwater management report when an application comes through and he reviews the stormwater management report and sees if it complies with state law and local law and then the building commissioners inspectors would make sure that whatever hard structures are used to create this stormwater management system is built according to the way it should be built so they have the drawings in front of them you know with the details and everything and that's what they base their review on you're not building that correctly it's not it's not the way it's shown on this plan i've done that really really helpful christian so thank you and also keep in mind that it's a document for our resources going forward because i think i'd be referring to that as we go forward um and uh and the um suggestion that you're you're going to be working with us on this solar bylaw is comforting as well so thank you for that anything else on on uh zoning 101 you learned a lot okay uh dan any um just speak up if you have any questions as well for chris thanks then for you good okay so let me um then turn to the um i think we're doing fairly well on time um to um the next agenda item which is reviewing some model bylaws i guess i was comforted uh to know though i was aware they were out there but i actually took the opportunity to look at them now uh that there are models for solar uh zoning bylaws out there uh so we're not starting from scratch there's structures out there um and um i think understanding these uh in terms of their their uh structures and what's in them is going to be really helpful to us and so we were afforded with three model bylaws uh one is from the uh pvpc the pioneer valley planning commission uh that one i think we're going to put a bit on hold to review because jack um uh was going to uh provide a presentation or review of the uh of the pvpc model bylaw i would say it's more than a model bylaw it's actually a planning toolkit that includes uh zoning zoning issues uh so i think that one's going to be very important for us i'd like jack to do that he seems to be more directly familiar with that work uh so i'm gonna ask jack if he might be able to do that for us next meeting uh but then we have uh two others um the cape cod commission uh has a model zoning bylaw as well as a mapping tool uh that i think maybe comes out of that model bylaw but i'm not sure uh and then deal we are the state uh department of energy resources also has provided a model zoning bylaw and really appreciate martha uh volunteering to uh to give us a um her thoughts and review of those two model bylaws thank you okay so as uh dwayne said at the present we have these uh three different models to give us food for thought uh basis for developing the bylaw uh starting with the doer model that was uh published in 2014 which was before much of the of the current large development of very large solar arrays uh came in in amherst and so it addresses some of the basics i would call it the basic one that the others then can can build and expand from so first of all we start with some definitions about the solar arrays and they're defined based on how what their power is uh the sort of the uh minimum nameplate uh rating capacity and that means if you have a solar array and you have the the sun fully shining on it how many kilowatts or megawatts of power does it produce and so that's used often as a basic measurement and on that basis then uh something that's rated 250 kilowatts in dc direct current would occupy about one acre and so a one megawatt array would typically be four or five acres just to give a general overall view here so uh using that then as kind of a basis then if you're going to have a bylaw you start out with the purpose which in this case would be uh to quote them to promote the creation of large ground mounted solar arrays with standards for placement design construction operation monitoring and eventual removal and so on and so then the the the bylaw that we're going to create has to then very specifically uh deal with these standards in in the details and so on and then the applicability would would be required just again a general statement similar to what you do for all the zoning laws uh and then there would be a section of definitions which would be important here again this definition of what the rated nameplate capacity is and the power and so the power is the instantaneous thing and if you want to know about the energy then you multiply by time uh to get you know the energy produced in an hour or a day or averaged over a year and so on and also then this rated capacity is in dc direct current and there has to be a conversion to the ac alternating current that's what we use when we plug in our lamps or whatever devices which then again you have to uh indicate efficiency and if you have battery storage then that's another case of efficiency but that again that's definition and uh so I won't go through all the various definitions of terms but that would be an important section of of this bylaw since a lot of it is technical that we are planning for it doesn't get to deal with when they're building a building and so then there would be a section of general requirements you know compliance with the laws and regulations and uh the permits and inspections and any fees and so on and then the most important aspect really is uh the specification the site plan review and that would be the section where you include all the details that the field are important and that would be what the planning board has to really rely on when they are reviewing uh what the uh what the gets submitted by the potential developer and so on and so this doer document uh is dealing particularly with the case of what what's uh quiz called the as of right areas that would be case areas of of town where it gets defined then that uh the large-scale arrays are permitted uh with the the the specified restrictions that we'll get to whereas then other areas of town that are zoned differently uh would require than the special permit that would I guess have to go then to the zoning board of appeals so that's the distinction there and the doer document deals mainly with requirements then for the as of right cases so um I think I won't go into anymore about the doer model because it's fairly general and then the the next two models that we have access the cape card commission model by law and then the pioneer valley planning uh commission uh deal a lot more with some of the specifics now that are coming up with these large arrays and things so uh let me just close the one file call the next one over it went to uh just take me a minute here okay so then the cape card uh document that was uh done a couple of years ago and so it's it's somewhat more modern in the sense of of you know responding to some of the experience of the larger uh solar installations that that have taken place in in in massachusetts and there have been at least one or two big ones on cape card that that then then this uh active commission has been responding to so it's uh similar to the de oer model in the sense you have to state the purpose you have to uh an applicability and then give the definitions of all the aspects that you feel are important and they have to be clearly understood in the specifications and so on and that we'll be learning about over the next year and then the cape card model um is actually extended does a more extensive discussion of the safety and environmental standards section for example it has a discussion of the land clearing and and how that is done trying to minimize uh the disturbance of the soil for instance so as much as possible you can leave the soil's ability to be permeable to let the water drain down and leave the roots and top soil and so on uh one interesting aspect was it stating in so far as possible you would use uh posts to uh anchor your solar array as opposed to just paving the whole area with asphalt or cement and so on in order to preserve the uh soil i use those just as an example of the kind of detail that that goes into that's really worth thinking when we get to the point of specifying requirements that you want to have requirements that don't prohibit the use in many cases but specify very clearly uh the details of how you protect as much as possible the drainage and so on and then they have a section on um that i thought was interesting that if it's you're starting from undisturbed land you should investigate the archaeological resources see if there's anything there uh and then uh they suggest you could require a natural resources inventory and here i'm thinking that that the state has this bio bio map that maybe is one thing we could later investigate and so on and uh then there's a section on stormwater management and a question then whether our town does have in our in our overall bylaws a section on stormwater management do we Chris yeah we do it's a general bylaw and it was just adopted i think within the last year Stephanie may know more about that because she's in the conservation department and they have been working with DPW to develop this yeah and so again that would be something we could just compare with what already exists whether there was anything else we needed uh let's see and then they suggest us having uh specifics about hazardous waste and requiring that no hazardous waste be discharged on site and then this comes into place specifically with the battery storage uh batteries uh as Daniel would be able to tell us would contain in principle some hazardous materials and there would need to be specific patients to make sure there's containment uh so that there couldn't be any leakage and so on another interesting aspect in the k-pod model uh is mitigation uh suggesting that if one was going to be uh cutting down forest for uh putting a solar array that one could require that an equal or even larger area of forest be set aside and permanently preserved uh and that again if we are talking about you know the carbon sequestration and drawdown that that could be a possibility um that and then uh that the planning board could could require and again this would be in the site plan uh could require uh very specific uh construction monitoring and and so on so that you know there was regular monitoring of of the extent to which the site was being uh you know the the actual site was being graded or different things or how much extra land was being cleared for access rows and that you could put in careful specifications as to how this is monitored uh and and and they also suggest that that once the site is up and running that you have uh requirements for an annual maintenance report and ongoing monitoring this could be particularly important with if we have you know severe uh weather or you know terrific down for us and so on and then there's a section eventually for removal that after a specified number of years when the if the site is no longer actively productive they have very specifics for the for removal and in their case they uh of the cave pod case they actually define discontinuation in this case if it's not being used to produce electricity for more than one year or if it is operating at less than 25 percent of rated capacity then they define that as being okay guys it's time for removal and so if we wanted to we could put in some specifications like that and there's requirements for the total removal for recycling for site stabilization and restoration to what it was before if it was forwarded or somehow revegetated and so on and in fact they suggest in the cave pod model specifically requiring a financial surety in advance you know concerns supposing the owner gives up and says gee this is not profitable anymore and just sort of walks away from the site uh and leaves it to the town is there some kind of financial uh surety that that the town doesn't have to spend all the taxpayers money for this reduction and they actually include things like what happens if there's a transfer of ownership and also the process for appeal if the planning board makes a decision and so on which i think is in our zoning laws and so on yeah and and so yeah so that was just the general overview actually the the third document the pioneer valley planning commission is a lot more detailed in terms of providing some background for things that we should consider or or discuss and so on so i think that that is going to be a particularly useful document not so much and literally specifying the words in you but in in in giving the background and the things to think about and so on so questions i think jane uh yes i was curious about the financial surety potential stipulation how do those usually work is this funding that's set aside prior to approving the permit it does it like that tax mean um does anybody have any understanding of how those work doing chris has her hand up yeah please yeah yeah so to date whenever we've approved an installation of a solar um array there is a bond or some kind of surety that the building commissioner figures out with the applicant and the town engineer with regard to what the lifespan of the project would be and then um it's got a what do you call it an accelerator not an accelerator that's not the right word um what's the right word appreciation yes as time goes on um you know cost of things gets higher so um that amount of money would be x amount times x amount of what it would be today so we do have those in place now and we would intend to have those in place in the future to remove the installation yes basically an escalating amount of money that would be set aside that's that's all on the backs of the of the owner um that they put do they put in that lump sum at the beginning or is that something they sort of pay in over time i would have to ask the building commissioner exactly how that works but i can get that information for you for next time details we'll get into but um so that at any point in time it seems like there's money would be money available through this mechanism if something goes right with the project or the owner and they walk away in the town slept with us and it's not operating um or the town wants to get rid of it they have the money the resources to do so you know i as i've been reading about that i keep on wondering you know when they talk about the lifetime of the array i know the panels have a lifespan but it seems to me that most people would just put fresh panels on and i wonder how do you figure out the cost of decommissioning an array like have people done that and you know and have they done it well too so it might be cheaper just to pull stuff out and put some grass down but i'm just wondering if we have some real life examples of decommissioning and costs a question for us to consider i was just going to say in terms of the contract where the we're working with a third party and i'm thinking about the solar landfill project um decommissioning is part of the power purchase agreement so the responsibility is on the owner of the array to do so and the cost of the decommissioning is on the applicant it would be different certainly if the town owns its own system then we'd have to determine that but typically it's um the decommissioning is on the owner of the array and is is there any language about the option of of re re re repowering or reinstalling uh not necessarily the language isn't specific to being to reinstalling it's typically to extend the terms of the contract okay so you know it might be a 20-year contract with another 10 years of review that's reviewed every five years so every five years there might be another option to extend and at that point after the 30 years there is a lifespan so either they you know i i don't think we've gotten there yet so yeah i couldn't speak to that and i don't think i'm not sure about the history of the world but there's not that many projects of this magnitude that have reached end of life to know the experience yet too much in terms of how that all plays out but it seems like contractually it needs to be part of this part of this bylaw yeah and i think that that is an important question because solar panels are improving in their efficiency and so on so it may be that even if the site still could produce electricity uh the the owners or managers may decide that it would be a good idea to replace the panels with with more modern ones and again i guess they would have to then submit another plan to be approved as to how they would do that yeah and the whole subject of the batteries is another whole aspect i didn't say much about it but hopefully it's some later point with our with dan maybe for health uh we we could discuss the whole subject of batteries and what kind of specifications uh to put into a bylaw about the the batteries yeah yeah yeah good point keep in mind these large installations are essentially required by the DOER to have storage connected with them and so battery and hopefully we can draw from others experience as well and some i think these newer model bylaws are are addressing battery as well but there may be less certainty in that and less knowledge because battery technology is changing all the time and safety issues and and the chemistry of them and so yeah dan dan sounds like he'd be a great resource on that all right um martha that was great by the way really uh thought that was a really good review and touched on the on the point and i guess what you know just my general thought hearing martha and and looking at these bylaws model bylaws myself as well as the pvpc one is that um there is a roadmap ahead of us we sort of know we know that we we unless we're going to go completely rogue we know the structure we know the components um and there's a structure there it's really a matter of putting on the um flavor and and preferences and and perspectives uh that are um conducive with with town needs and town town desires um and uh but but we're not we're not starting with a blank piece of paper uh and i took a lot of solace in that when i was looking at these bylaws and also that as you mentioned while DOER was older um and even the p the pvpc one and and the uh the cape god they cover similar issues um so there is a there is a you know things we can draw from that are pretty uh pretty i'm not sure quite standard or conventional but they're they're out there for us i sort of have a point or a question for chris it seems to me that we're probably going to recommend or we could recommend a bylaw with very specific standards for medium or large scale arrays that are really like you have to do this this and this and i don't how much does it matter if it's site plan review or special permit i mean i know you know one is section 10.38 and then 11 something or something or other but it just seems to me we're not going to do one huge bylaw for site plan review and a set of regulations for special permit you know so i just wondered like what your thoughts are on that are so i think um the things that martha was reading and she was saying they were particular to site plan review i think other towns use site plan review in a similar way that we use special permits so i think that our bylaw would be created to apply to both site plan review and special permits and we would just um figure out which path this installation needed to take based on the use chart you know is it in x district and therefore requires site plan review or is it in y district and therefore requires special permit so what martha was talking about was really generic to both site plan review and special permit so thank you that's a good question so when we i you know we'll probably look at the zoning bylaw so site plan review has requirements that you know for that applied to all site plan review and then special permit has more more detailed and it's discretionary so we should probably look at that separately but i think in terms of these regulations it seems we'd have to be basically saying for any large scale or medium scale these are the requirements so yeah chris thank you i just wanted to point out that we also have been looking at a lot of other cities and towns in the area well really throughout massachusetts and looking at what they are requiring and some of them are you know similar to amherst and some are not similar to amherst so in fact janet brought to us i think it was was palmer palmer palmer had a lot of trouble with too many solar arrays coming into town and they weren't being managed properly so janet did some research and talked to the planner there and you know we kind of went through that bylaw step by step and talked about it in detail at one of our planning board meetings so i guess what i'm saying is that aside from these kind of model bylaws we actually have bylaws that are in place in cities and towns that we can look at and some of them may be appropriate we can pick things out of other bylaws that may be appropriate to us all right great and we should probably maybe in the in the these are all model bylaws so they're going to be very helpful for us but also helpful could be specific town bylaws that have been either drafted or passed and those also can be helpful to us as well to sort of look at the different flavors and and priorities i guess given by different towns and so to the extent that we find those maybe they can go in the resource folder as well that we'll be able to draw from okay any final comment on that before we talk about so that the next agendas and and and so forth before we adjourn it to a clock great okay so so i really found this helpful as a as we called it a 101 exercise to bring us all up to some base level of of knowledge and information and so i thought at the last meeting we discussed are there other topics of of introductory information background information that we as a as a working group should all be familiar with and on this somewhat common playing field and knowledge base to draw from as we sort of go forward together and so i i have a couple ideas myself to suggest and these would be not necessarily just similar to what chris provide us of a of a presentation to sort of provide a base knowledge there's other things we can talk about separately which would be specific discussion points of where we want to start honing in on specific discussion but i'm thinking at this point just as more as sort of a presentation whether it's with powerpoint or just a presentation to bring us up to speed with some background information and so jeff yeah jeff yeah where what are the zoning districts but then also you know what are the the watershed protection areas you know just see them on the map compared with the zoning or the aquifer maps or the natural resource maps the conservation maps but just to get an overall picture of our whole town and what are the different zones and you know what kind of restrictions there are in a few of the zones but just it's easier to just see the whole map up on the screen and have somebody tell us about it than to try to look through for our shells yep and i would that's actually very lined with one of the topics i had had as well which was basically an overview now we we're all familiar with the town in terms of driving around but as you see martha to take sort of a bird's eye view of what what what we have here i know and maybe it gets certainly gets into what martha provided but also maybe just looking at it from the perspective of an overview of the land use currently in amherst and and also any interesting or useful to us statistics on that land use any current patterns or trends that you're seeing over the course of the last you know decade and into the into the future and yeah and and then how different pieces of land through zoning either or state regulations are subject to conservation restrictions or other rules and regulations just again at a pretty high level just to get us all grounded and more familiar with as we start thinking about these zoning regular zoning criteria we had the language to talk about that you think that either you or somebody from your staff or or maybe it's the conservation committee commission of conservation group i don't know stefanie and i can put our heads together about that yep yeah i think it might be something that maybe a few people will present maybe between chris and i we can figure that out okay that'd be excellent and you know time permitting if you had the time for the next meeting or it could go to the next one if you need more time but that'd be great for the next meeting if that works out as a word of warning the the map of the zoning districts and the overlay districts is really hard to see on a screen and so the the planning department has a big map okay um which you know goes on a a board i have a good version of this it's probably it almost as tall as me um which chris made for me i don't know if you remember but i think it's almost impossible to get the overview on a small screen so okay is that um i will share my map with people is that something you could bring in it it rolls up in a piece of paper and you could we could look at that is that that's permissible right in terms of public meetings to have something i think um we'd have to talk about that because if you gather as a body and there's more than a corner of you present we have to post the meeting so i don't know at the meeting at but but we don't know that we would be in person at the next meeting just so if you were to do this outside of a meeting i mean and then maybe you could plan on the next meeting being in person but if the governor signs the legislation then when he signs that it goes into effect right away so okay yeah so even if we are remote i think we can look at the map that jen it's talking about and zoom in on various sections of it and you get a feeling for that but i also think that it would be useful to go through the official zoning map and help people to figure out how to look at it yeah because it is a little bit daunting when you first encounter it and you don't know which thing to click on or how to move it around and you know maybe we could even give a demonstration of that yeah and that could be done on zoom right yes that could be done on zoom okay you know that that would be excellent okay one one thought i had in terms of just a 101 which i would be happy to bring forward is bringing everybody up to speed of what's going on with regard to state level um uh carbon mitigation free energy and carbon carbon mitigation um planning as well as their about a year and a half ago they published a 2050 decarbonization roadmap of how statewide the uh the different pathways towards essentially 100% renewables by 2050 with intermediate goals and sort of through that analysis which was a pretty rigorous analysis including such things as land use of what the implications of that might be with regard to at not at the local level but at a state level what the expect expectations are or potentially needs are for solar development in terms of gigawatts of capacity that would be needed to meet those meet those tar meet those commitments and and then also and and sort of connected with that sort of zooming then down on the town level being part of the ecac energy climate action committee it would be also helpful for everybody to be up to speed on what the town's greenhouse gas reduction goals are as well which ecac provided to the town recommended to the town early early in our tenure a year ago or so and has been approved and then also what's also maybe helpful that that we've looked at in at the at ecac is to the best of our ability of what is the what is the electric consumption in hammers and and what does that what does that imply in terms of energy needs and what that might how might that inform us in terms of the energy generation that we might want to provide ourselves just to scale that all a bit do you mean that the the carp plan the climate action plan for the town that that you folks did yes yeah yeah and there's some additional analysis that that i'm not sure if it's in the carp or not but uh and it dates back to the 2017 or 18 or when was the last greenhouse gas inventory in 2017 2017 greenhouse gas inventory other some data in there that we've used to better understand electricity demand in throughout the town of hammer that and the campuses and then some and some projections based on the 2050 roadmap in terms of what is our electricity consumption look like as we begin to electrify our heating sector our transportation sector in aligned with what the state projections there and then what that all implies in terms of renewable energy generation needs if we were to think about and then it's not necessarily that we have to but just to scale it what does it mean in terms of solar capacity we might need to drive our own town which is not necessarily what we want to do but it just helps to scale that so that if that sounds okay i'd be happy to make a brief presentation to get everybody up to speed in terms of the state goals and what we know about america's point in terms of the energy side um could we also add in the umass and amherst college what they're planning to do yes because they're they're sort of half of our energy use right so yeah be nice to we have that broken that could be really helpful yeah yeah absolutely and and uh and as we look at the town i think we have to sort of think um i mean the ecac is looking at is that in terms of when we talk about our greenhouse gas emission goals does that refer to just the the town outside of the campuses or does it include the campuses because each of the other campuses have their own plans going on and and um i'm not really can't speak so much for the amherst or hamster colleges but i can talk about the umass plan okay so i'd be happy to do that if that sounds useful for folks okay and then we have in addition i'd like to start thinking about some discussion agenda items for um the next meeting um in terms in terms of you know what one thing i'm sort of interested in maybe might be helpful is is uh at this early stage of the of the uh effort is it helpful might it be helpful to us to to plot out our work plan uh you know we we it sounds like we have a long time but was it may may we need to be done which which is going to come pretty soon um and uh to some extent i think it'd be helpful to uh get a bit of a roadmap together in terms of we need to cover these issues we're going to have i want to want to maybe have a discussion about the role of the consultant that the town will be hiring to support this effort uh and maybe i'm not sure if it's Stephanie or Chris could maybe help us with that in terms of just what what we should expect with regard to the expertise and the role of that consultant uh i think it's primarily to you know do the nitty gritty of drafting uh this language uh and so forth uh but i'd like to understand that and and and incorporate that into our work plan in terms of when that would make sense and what we what we uh can expect or should be able to expect from them um and um yeah um and there were there were some other documents that were sent around that might be useful to um to just have a discussion on with regard to some um legal updates and cases with regard to solar sighting which were kind of new to me but um and i blocking on who sent them around but there was this tracer lane supreme court decision it was pertinent to our discussion uh as well as some land court rulings uh who did one of you that's good who put those put those forward um i guess one of the people not here laura peggie rula sent some into she seems very on on top of those things so uh it might be helpful to ask her if you might be able to help us understand um how we should what the implications are of those um and give it give us a brief summary of those but let me ask other in terms of discussion items for next time uh yeah i would like to uh you you mentioned about the the consultants and so on uh i would like to suggest that next time we we review what is the charge to the consultants what is the the purview going to be and Stephanie said working on the rfp now so that they would see it and also there was a question that had come up last time from i guess from uh and was in the minutes about reviewing what's what's our committee's role in regard to you know prioritizing the sighting and and and and so on uh yeah i think there was a little question about that last time that came up maybe we could discuss it yeah and and i think we and maybe also just um to um particularly a little bit more clearly um the different consultants we're talking about which is that what are you going to refer to just i want a point of clarification that there are two consultants the one that i was referring to was for the solar assessment that is not the consultant that will be working directly with this committee they will report to this committee but they're not working with this committee there is a consultant that the planning department secured funding for to specifically work with development of this bylaw and chris can speak to that the way we were envisioning this consultant who's going to work with us on the bylaw is to fill in information that we don't understand or that we don't know about and i spoke with the building commissioner about this so we asked for funding to have somebody who can help us to understand what's the role of battery storage and do we need to incorporate battery storage into our zoning bylaw or in fact do we need a separate bylaw related to battery storage so there are things like that i think that the planning department staff can draft you know the basic language of the zoning bylaw but you know when we when it comes to areas that we don't have any expertise in that's what we were hoping to get help from i think if we ask a consultant to draft to write the whole thing it's going to be more expensive than the amount of money that we have available to us so i can talk a little more in depth about that yeah okay great yeah why don't we maybe talk a little bit about that next time as well because obviously i don't think we have to wear with us to write the language but to inform the language and to say okay here's where we come out with this in terms of recommendation but to you know that'd be great if staff or some combination of staff and consultants can okay but we can talk a little bit more next time then about the solar assessment which is which is going to happen much sooner that's going to happen pretty soon whereas i think what chris is talking about is sort of on standby when when it's appropriate and when we need them yeah so i would like to have us talk about our charge and at work plan like or guess maybe you know roadmap but it seems like we have you know the drafting we have a community process to work through um and then the you know at looking at the solar assessment and figuring out like priority sites or a non you know priority sites to save or to to focus on and so you know we i i thinking it through i was thinking we might want to break up into small groups subgroups to work on those issues but i think it'd be great to sit down and say what do we have to do in the next nine months you know what's the um what activities that what information we need or activities or what help do we need and then when will it be done and then knowing it will probably not work out that way but at least we have starting with a plan yeah yeah you know very good and i think you know one thing we can maybe specifically and maybe not exhaustively but but in in in some detail talk about this issue with um public engagement i think came up specifically and and certainly and to be clear on what the solar assessment um rfq is going to be doing in that regard and our role in this process as well so maybe that should be a discussion maybe a priority discussion topic next week okay uh i don't like meetings to go over time and we're a little bit there and so i think the last agenda item if if everybody's comfortable with moving on is to see if there's any public comment we are short of time so we will take public comment and appreciate public comment but try to limit the time that we we have if anyone is interested in making a public comment please electronically raise your hand and we do have one member in the audience if you'd like to speak please also michael you can unmute and you are allowed to speak hi guys i'm michael upinsky 167 shoot spray road amherst i'm a member of smart solar amherst and i'm very interested in the issues that your working group will be discussing as you craft a solar bylaw for the town of amherst i found chris's presentation in particular to be absolutely fascinating and very well done i'm a member of smart solar amherst because about a year ago my wife and i were notified that although we live in an area that's solidly zoned as outlying residential we were now facing a shocking proposal from amp energy in the coals land company this partnership wanted to construct a 45 acre industrial solar facility in our backyard and the backyards of over 20 additional homes along shinsbury road this industrial solar facility would have completely destroyed an existing mature forest ecosystem and it would have threatened the public health safety and welfare of the residents of our residential neighborhood it also had the potential to negatively impact the overall natural environment and watershed in our town of amherst well thankfully this ill conceived and poorly planted proposal was rather abruptly withdrawn by the applicants but there's no guarantee that this kind of proposal may be resubmitted i know your group has a lot on its plate but learning a little bit about this withdrawn proposal will help you understand why your job is so important i would urge you to stay focused on the job at hand which is creating a solar bylaw and to avoid going down the rabbit hole of state energy goals solar capacity how much energy the town of amherst chooses or how many solar panels the town needs these are much broader energy policy issues they are not zoning bylaw issues you have enough work to do and i really wouldn't encourage the group to stay focused on the job at hand and by the way thank you guys for doing this it's a lot of work and i hope to be attending every member every meeting i can to us assist in any way possible thank you all right thank you michael kathleen bridgewater you may unmute hello i my name is kathleen bridgewater i also live at 167 shootsbury road i didn't know my husband was going to make a comment but i would say bravo for what he said and i do want to thank everyone on this committee for volunteering i know it takes a lot of time and a lot of focus and a lot of cooperation among you the staff are are tremendous in the way they've already built up what is going to be happening in this committee thank you so much for your for your issues and thank you for seeing that there are multiple issues that funnel into the decisions that you make and the and the points that you make in such a law thank you so much bye bye thank you if anyone else would like to make a comment please electronically a real-life person yes renae i'm sorry can you please sit at the table and use the microphone because otherwise people on zoom can't hear you could you spell your last name please for the minute i live at 277 shootsbury road i don't really have much to say you know i support what mike and kathleen say and i'm very grateful for the work that you've all agreed to do to for this um as and as you were talking about looking at um bylaws from other towns i think that's extremely important and when we look at the the the land court cases we look at the supreme judicial court cases i also hope you will look at the cases right here in hampshire and franklin county that have failed miserably in williamsburg and in conway so that this committee and all of us can learn through these from this and not make these same mistakes um you know uh i i guess basically that's what i have to say and once again thank you for for your work thank you okay um last call for public comment great thank you um any last comments from the working group or otherwise i'll well i guess that we need a motion to it do we need a motion to adjourn we need a motion to adjourn anybody like to make a motion to adjourn so move let's see if i can make the motion i'll i'll second great okay um can we just go all in favor or do we need a voice vote i guess we can do a voice vote we're going yes freger yes hanner brooks yes right the meeting is adjourned all right meeting is adjourned thank you