 So is it being broadcast now Maureen? Okay. Welcome to the meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, general laws, chapter 30A, section 18, and the governor's March 15th, 2020 order, imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This public meeting of the town of Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but the public can listen to the proceedings by clicking on the link on the town's webpage. As with any public meeting, we do have a period of public comment at the end of the meeting, and we will of course make that available as we always do for the public. And we will describe at the end of the business that we go through today, how the public can comment at that time. Tonight's, one of them, the Zoning Board is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 40A of the general laws of the Commonwealth over the purposes of promoting the health, safety, convenience and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. Tonight's agenda is a training session for our new members and that will be our sole order of business for the evening. And before we begin, I just wanna ask everybody to mute themselves until you're going to speak and then you can use your mouse to unmute yourself, speak and then please put yourself back on mute. It just makes it easier for a large number of participants and a Zoom meeting if we all are muted, if we're not intending to speak. Tonight's training session will be conducted principally by staff, but I just wanted to say a couple of things to open the meeting. And the first is thank you for attending and more importantly, thank you for agreeing to serve on the Zoning Board of Appeals. Tonight's training session, as I said, is principally going to be conducted by the staff and we are really fortunate to have the support of a dedicated and highly skilled staff at the town that really makes our job much easier. Maureen Pollock is our principal liaison, Christine Brestoff is the planning director. They both do it and Rob Mora also works with us. They do an excellent job. They make our job a lot easier and quite frankly, I don't think we could do this without their help. So most they're gonna conduct the briefing and but I just have a couple of things to say. I would just like to mention a few things at the start. The first of which is I think it's important to remember that the Zoning Board of Appeals for many town people and for many of our neighbors is the most important and most impactful interaction they're gonna have with their government. When you think about it, they're gonna deal, it deals with the value of their house, their property, the quality of life in their neighborhood. Maybe it's dealing with the value of their business or the future of their business. Whatever it is, it affects them on a day to day basis. This is really an important body, important board. And for many people, this is the one most impactful time they deal with the town government. So in that regard, I think it's really important that whenever we act, we do so in a way that creates the impression of a fair and competent town government. And I wanna make sure that each person that does business with this ZBA feels they were treated fairly and that the rules are followed and the process was fair. And I also wanna make sure that each one of you feels that you have the opportunity to contribute equally and fairly to our deliberations and that your voice will be heard. And I commit to try to do that as best I can as chair. I've enjoyed my time on the ZBA. I've learned a lot, but most importantly, I've learned that there's a lot more that I have left to learn and I rely upon the staff and all of you to help with that. But most importantly, I know that we are doing something that's really beneficial to the town and that our town and our neighbors benefit from what we're doing and that what we do is very important. So I look forward to working with you trying to keep this and trying to maintain the ZBA as an important, fair and impactful board for the community. And I look forward to working with all of you. And with that, I'd just like to turn it over to Maureen and to Chris to brief our new members. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. I wanted to welcome Dave Westgevitz, who's joining us. He's the lead building inspector. And so whenever Rob is unavailable, Dave is my go-to for building code and zoning code interpretations, as well as Chris Brestrup, the planning director. So hopefully everyone received the binder of information that I left at each new members door. As I did it, I hope that I got each person's correct address. So that will be a good binder to keep. There wasn't a, you know, it was a good amount of information to have from the get-go. And as periodically we'll have new information and you could add to that binder. So I hope that that will be a living document that you can refer to as new types of cases or building code matters come up. We can give you handouts and you can include them. So I, unless Chris has anything to mention, I was gonna start with the special permit guidance document as sort of a guiding tool for this presentation. And feel free, I would like to make this more of a conversation than giving like a lecture or instructional speech. So I don't have any introduction to make, but I would like to welcome everybody and thank Maureen for putting this together. And thanks, Steve Judge, for agreeing to be the chair of the zoning board, which is a weighty responsibility. So thank you both. Yes. Okay, so I really wanted just to go through, you know, the ZBA is a quasi-judicial body that operates under chapter 40A of the general laws of Massachusetts. You can certainly Google that chapter 40A. I debated whether to put that in your binder, but I didn't wanna overwhelm everyone with more materials. So the purpose of chapter 40A is to promote the health safety convenience and general welfare of the residents of Amherst. Section 10.38, which is in the Amherst zoning bylaw, also outlines that process and the specific findings that must be made for all ZBA special permit decisions. And so with that note, I'll just say for the majority of time, the ZBA handles special permits, which would be uses that are allowed by special permit or dimensional regulations that require a special permit. Occasionally, and when I say occasionally, maybe one to three times per year, the ZBA will handle a variance. I've been in Amherst for two years and now we're handling a, or we most likely will be handling a comprehensive permit application. That happens, who knows, one every few years or maybe even every five or 10 years, depending on the community. There's another application that the ZBA handles a time from time, maybe once or twice a year, which is a property owner is requesting a building permit from the building commissioner and the applicant doesn't get what they were hoping for. Maybe they were denied by the building commissioner. So the applicant slash property owner has the right to appeal the building commissioner's decision to the ZBA. So those are the various permits that go through the ZBA. So primarily it's special permits. And so this guy's document is specifically geared to special permits. So all meetings and public hearings of the ZBA are open to the public. Just as this meeting is open to the public, there was an agenda that was posted in the local paper. There was the agenda posted on the town website in various places. So for public hearings, so for a special permit, that requires a public hearing notification. And for that, all public hearings need to be advertised in the Daily Hampshire Gazette twice, two weeks before the hearing and one week before the hearing. And the abutters that reside 300 feet from that project site, they get notified by regular mail about the time, the date and the location of the public hearing. And then what is the specific request? What is the applicant requesting? And then the note that's in the legal ad and in the abutter notice has a sentence saying, for more information, please contact the planner and then the list is my email. And when the town hall is open and so unfortunately town hall is not open, there's usually a line that says the plans may be looked at at town hall. So for right now, people need to email me directly and then I can email them any information that they are requesting regarding an application. So a special permit is a discretionary land use approval that a landowner and or the applicant is required to obtain prior to undertaking certain activities of their home, of their property. The table of use regulations or the listed permitted uses located in the zoning bylaw indicates what activities require a special permit. So when you take a look through the zoning bylaw, the copy that I gave you, you can go to section 3.3 and that lists all the uses that are allowed by right, by special permit, by either the ZBA or the planning board allowed by site plan review by the planning board or not allowed at all. And so those would be those examples and so you can refer to that at your leisure. So as a discretionary land use approval, the request for a special permit may be denied by the ZBA for projects that the ZBA anticipates will adversely impact the community. Alternatively, the ZBA may approve a request for a special permit subject to conditions and limitations to prevent or mitigate potential adverse impacts of the proposed project. And so for the most part or for 99% of the time, whenever the board approves a special permit, they will include conditions as part of the special permit that will help mitigate any potential adverse impacts. For example, let's say there's a new house going that a property owner wants to put in a duplex and there's houses all on all sides of this property and the neighbors, while they may say, oh, I have nothing against the duplex. I have nothing against these people, we're supportive, but we don't wanna look at their house. We want to maintain our privacy. We want to have our privacy. And so during the public hearing, the board will take note of a butter's comments such as that and they will help guide, make conditions. So a typical condition by the ZBA after talking to the applicant would be, would you be renewable of putting maybe our varieties or a fence to provide to maintain a privacy between the two properties? So the conditions help mitigate any potential adverse impacts whenever possible. And that's just a very basic example of that. So the Amherst Zoning By-law includes findings found under section 10.38 of the Zoning By-law, which evaluates whether the proposed activity requires a special permit will have adverse impacts. And so 10.38 really goes through all kinds of areas of, what will do to views, what will happen to open space? Is it connected or is it connected to the town infrastructure such as water, sewer, chiming up and then there's all kinds and what's the, is there gonna be safe circulation for pedestrians and motorists? So 10.38 has all these very specific findings that the board has to go through, which they do before they close any public hearing and make their decision. And so that would be important for you guys to at your leisure go through and just read through to see the types of findings I'm talking about. So can I just jump in for a minute? Yes, please. I would say that not all the findings are applicable to every project. And sometimes you don't even need to go through the 10.38 findings if you're looking at something purely from the standpoint of being a non-conforming use or structure or whatever. And then you look to section 9.22 of the Zoning By-law to make your findings. But most of the time Maureen is right, you do have to go through all of the individual findings of section 10.38. So it's a good idea to become familiar with that. Yes, thank you. And please, Dave, Chris, whomever, if you have things to add or you have a question, please feel free to speak up. So I want this to be a conversation than me just rambling on. Maureen, this is Keith. Oh, hi, Keith. I think it might be important just to say that in the 10.38, as we go through them for each thing, there are at times sections that are not applicable. And we just say that. So that there are sometimes what we're going through is much more simple. And so there are just sections like floodplains where given a certain thing, it's just not applicable. And we just say that and move on. So I just wanted to throw that. Thank you. Yes, very good point. The content and form of an application for a special permit are dictated by the zoning bylaw and the ZBA rules and regulations. One thing I wish I included in your binder was a copy of the special permit application. I'll email that to everyone. It is on the town website on the ZBA web page. I think that will be good for you guys just to go through to really understand what is required of the applicants. So I apologize for not including that. Can I say one more thing? Yes. Which is that Maureen provides the ZBA members who are on the panel with a really thorough report. It's called the Project Application Report. And it goes through all of these things, 10.38 and whatever other sections of the bylaw are applicable. So you can if you want to, but you don't have to thumb through the zoning bylaw every time you get an application and try to figure out what is applicable and what isn't. Maureen will give you guidance on that. Yes, yes, correct. And I also will provide and I have Chris often review the Project Application Report and we'll talk about what possible conditions would make sense for that specific project. So as Chris said, I do write a report. I do give a review of how the proposed application meets or doesn't meet the sections that they are asking approval of. And I will make responses to section 10.38 findings. And then I also include suggested conditions for you to consider as you go through your deliberation. And during that deliberation, you as members will most likely create conditions of yourselves to be considered. And that would be something that you would discuss, the possible conditions that I include and discuss the ones that you suggest proposed. And then you would decide on that as you make your motion to approve or deny a project. OK. I have a question. Sure. Can I have a quick question? Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. So when you say 10.38, I was expecting 10.38 and then a bunch of stuff under 10.38. But it looks to me like it goes 10.39 and 10 point. Is that part of 10.38? Let me just pull up 10.38. Yes. It looks like it runs all the way to 10.398. Yeah. Yeah. So 10.38, it says if you go to that specific findings required, so that's a section or a subsection. And so that would be 10.3802, if you turn on the next page, to 10.398. Yeah. Yes. So it's not just one sentence. It's a whole bunch of subsections of 10.38, if that makes sense. OK. Great. Great question. You know, Marina, I would add one thing. One of the things that you provide is, and that the applicant provides, is a management plan. And are you going to talk about what's contained in a management plan on the application? Yeah. We could, if you ask me. You have to do it now. I just, you don't have to do it now. But if you are going to do it, I won't talk about it now. You know what I will do whenever it makes sense? I will share my screen and show you the special permit application. And we can just quickly go through each of the pages, which includes the management plan. Great. OK. So the special permit rules and regs are adopted or amended by a majority vote of the ZBA, which we may be doing next Thursday at that meeting. The ZBA rules and regs may include application requirements, a fee schedule, procedures for review, special permit review requirements, and various other sections. Let's see here. The ZBA is encouraged to regularly evaluate and amend their rules and regulations, so the review process happens smoothly and efficiently. So we're doing good. Next week, we're going to be reviewing it as we should. I think probably on an annual basis, it's healthy for the ZBA to review their rules and regs and see what changes, if any, are needed. OK, so submitting. So an applicant wants to submit a application to the planning department. Perhaps maybe this is a good time to show the application. So let me pull that up. Bear with me. Application, share screen. OK, can everyone see this? Yes. Sorry. OK, you did. OK. I got it. OK, share screen. OK, it's right here. Sorry. It's the ZBA application. OK, so an applicant wants to submit an application to the ZBA. This is the application itself. The first page is pretty generic. They list their name, the address, their personal information over here is the address of the project site. The applicant can actually be different than the property owner. So the property owner could be, let's say, retail is an easy one. Maybe one of the buildings downtown. So maybe it's owned by Barry Roberts, for instance. And the applicant over here is Antonio's Pizza. So that would be a good example. And then they would list if they have a designer or attorney or whoever is assisting with their project. Here, type of application, they would check off if it's a special permit, comprehensive permit, appealed from decision of the building commissioner or variance. And over here, they would list their map and parcel that's associated with the property and then the zoning district. And then here, they would type in the applicable zoning sections that they're making their request. They would sign it. And it needs to be signed by the building commissioner. And he does that once him and I have sat down, looked at it, and confirmed everything that they were supposed to submit that they actually submitted. So we need to make sure it's complete before we file it with the town clerk. And once it's filed with the town clerk, then there's a sort of clock that starts. And so the board has to open the public hearing within 65 days of that date. One thing is, before the applicant submits this form and all the backup documents, the applicant usually has a meeting with Maureen and the building commissioner and maybe other people in our office to help us to understand what it is they're trying to do and help them to understand all the different permits that they need, including what sections of the zoning bylaw might apply to their particular project. Yes, very good point. Sometimes people have a great project in mind, and then they come in and we either say, oh, well, unfortunately, that's not allowed in that zoning district. Or you need to apply for all these other permits, like there's wetlands. They would have to go through the conservation commission if they're within 100 feet of the wetland or we help guide them through their permit process. And so on the second page, this top part is called Nature Request and Brief Description of the Project. So here they would just describe what they're requesting. And with any of these fields, if they need more room, I always tell them, oh, just say see attached and they can do it in a Word document. So here it could be, let's say, it's a owner-occupied duplex. And now they actually would like to make it a non-owner-occupied duplex. So they could type that. I currently live and own at this duplex. I would actually like to move out of this duplex and now make it a non-owner-occupied duplex. So they would say that. Waivers, waivers that are requested from this special permit application. I'm going to stop there and return to that. So the following is a checklist of all this of the checklist for the ZBA application process. So of course, they have to submit an application. They have to submit a certified list of butters to the planning department. And so we create, through the assessor's office, a certified of butters that are of the properties that were within 300 feet of that project property. And so those are the individuals that get mailed a butters list by regular mail. I had mentioned this earlier. And this is the way that they are informed that there is a public hearing for a special permit or a comprehensive permit or a variance, whatever it is. And it tells them all the information about the meeting and how they can acquire more about the application. The next bullet is fees. So the fees are listed on one of the pages here and they have to include a check. We get a hard copy and a electronic copy of everything. And in this whole virtual world, the electronic copy is very, very extra important. So here are the following is supplemental materials as part of the application, which include a site plan. And these are all the things that would need to be listed or shown on the site plan. The name of the property owner or the person that created the plan, a title block, a date, and the scale of the plan. They would have to provide the lot lines if there was any easements or right of ways. The size of the property and square feet show all the setbacks, the front setback, the side setback, the rear setback. And they would refer to the bylaw to help the applicant would refer to the bylaw to figure that out. The location and use of all the existing and proposed buildings and structures, they would want to show the dimensions and heights of that. They would want to show where there are streets and curb cuts and entrances and exits and the parking areas and sidewalks and items like that. They would want to show existing and proposed contours of the property. They would want to show all the natural features, such as wetlands and trees. Sometimes projects include removal of trees. So we will often require that they show on the plan, which specific trees will be removed. And we'll ask them to call out the species of that tree and the size of that tree. Specifically because at times, sometimes we'll require that they, as a condition, replace a tree or several trees or maybe all the trees. It's part of the conversation when the public hearing is held. And then they show all sorts of things, locations of recycling and dumpsters and things like that, showing parking spaces. And then showing the calculated building and lock coverage for the property. Then building plans, they would have to show an elevation of the building, of seeing the building. And they would have to show the dimensions of that. They would have to provide floor plans. And then management plan, that's the next one. And this is what Steve had mentioned earlier. I'll just jump to that. So the management plan is listed here. And this is really to show how it's for the applicant to explain how they're going to manage the property. So they'll talk about trash. Who's picking up the trash? Is it amorous trucking? Is it being picked up once a week or every two weeks? This would just describe the parking situation, how many parking spots are there, et cetera. This will explain the types of exterior fixtures, how many, what type. Is it downcast and shielded, also known as dark sky compliant? This one would be signage. If it's retail, for example, or a restaurant, they would describe, are they having a building wall or a marquee sign? And what's the size? What's the color? What's the material? Things like that will be illuminated. So they would want to provide as much detail about that and provide a visual of what these sorts of things would look like. But they would describe them here. Landscape maintenance, who's mowing the lawn? Is it a company? How often is there a fall and spring cleanup? Who is responsible for that? And then snow removal, often applicants would list maybe the property owner shovels, or maybe they have a contractor plow after every snowstorm. And then this, this is additional information for specific project types. So we have additional information for restaurants, for required for permit renewals. If a permit expired and they have to renew it, this would become in and deploy. Additional information required for apartments. And additional information required for home occupants. So. Maureen, can I just say one thing quickly? Oh, sure, yes. One of the reasons that brought this up is that many of the things dealt with in the management plan are important for mitigating effects on the neighborhood. And it's one of the things that a public hearing people will discuss and can be addressed. They'll state a concern and can be addressed in the applicant's management plan. And it's not the only place that's done. Sometimes that's done with conditions. But one of the ways in which the management plan helps to deal with the effects on the neighborhood or the effects on the town is through this management plan. Yes, thank you so much for pointing that out. Let's see, you're starting to scroll back. OK, so we were at the management plan. Can I ask a question, Maureen? Yes, yes. Before the hearing, does the board know what kinds of problems or butters might have with the plan? Or do you find that out at the meeting? Good question, sometimes both. Or sometimes one or the other. So again, the butters are notified by regular mail. And then my email and phone number are listed. And so sometimes I will receive emails or a letter in the mail addressed to the ZBA. And it'll be a letter of support or a letter of concern or a letter completely opposing a project. And so I'll gather all those together. And I will scan them. And I will either email them to you or I'll mail them to you. So what happens? And then so that's one scenario. And then sometimes people hold off and they just plan to come to the meeting. And they rather just state their opinions at the meeting. So it's kind of up to how they feel like going about it. I just want to say one thing about that. So in this virtual world that we're currently in, we provide people with an address, what we call a Zoom address, where they can access the meeting. And at the appropriate time, if they do have comments, they can raise their hand to be recognized. And then either Steve or Maureen can recognize them and they can speak their piece even in the virtual world. We've tried really hard to make this type of meeting as close to the regular meeting as possible. And we don't want people to feel like they're excluded from the meetings. Yes, thank you for pointing that out. And so these are the materials that I receive when they submit their application to the town hall. I review it. I then actually forward all the application in the supportive materials to all town staff for their opportunity to provide comments. So such as the fire department, the police department, the building department, DPW, planning staff, the health department, and the town manager's office. It's a whole roster of people. And I will tell them in my email, please review. Here's the application. Please review and provide comments about a week before the meeting. So then I can include in my what's called the board packet for you. And so for each of these applications, I will print out everything that they submitted. I'll print out the project application report that I typed up. And I'll print out town staff comments and all comments that I've received from the public to date. And then I will either mail or hand deliver. Traditionally, I just mail these things. And then I'll mail them to you. And then I also will email you electronic copy to everything. And unfortunately, I do get things updated, things from the applicant, maybe last minute comments from different town departments because they were on vacation or something like that, or last minute public comments. I'll get those at the last minute. So sometimes I am emailing the board that day of the meeting of, oh, here's a last minute document that you need. And so when we do have meetings at Town Hall, I will print those out and leave them at your seats. In our new virtual world, I'll just have to email you those last minute things and hope that applicants and everyone is able to provide us materials about a week before the meeting. So if the board does receive something at the last minute and doesn't feel like the board members have time to review the material, you can say that to the applicant. We didn't have time to review this material, so we need to continue the public hearing to another date. So we'll hear from you tonight. But then for this particular piece of material, we need time to review it. So we're going to continue the public hearing. Yeah, that's a really good point. And actually, that is stated in the ZBA rules and regulations. So sometimes, often, it's these little things that are handed in at the last minute, which is annoying, but it's acceptable. Like, you guys can read a last minute email from a butter. But we really don't want to get substantial material at the last minute and not have enough time to review anything. So that's very good advice, Chris. That is one of my pet peeves is, as chairman, I'm going to make sure that we're not deluged with last minute information and significant substantial changes to applications. It happened a couple of times. And you get pressure on, you feel pressure. You shouldn't, but you do feel a pressure to try to go through it all and decide at that meeting on the application. But Christine is right. We can always say, we need more time to look at this. But I think an admonition to all applicants that they should have the material to us a week ahead of time so it can be distributed and we have time to look at it as important. And it's something that I really feel strongly about. And I will try to guide the board to give us all time to do that, to do the reading that we have to do to be up to date, up to speed on the application. I just want to add one thing to that, which is that staff doesn't really like to be the gatekeeper in terms of those last minute things. So we will forward anything that we get, even up to the last minute. And then it's up to the board members to determine whether they want to take it under consideration that night or not. Because we don't feel like we are in a position to withhold information from you that we have received. That's a good point. Yeah, that is a good point. That's right. Yeah. Marie? Yes. I don't know exactly what all you have yet to say. But I think it might be good for those of us who are new on the board. For Steve, if you would, to go through that opening statement and a short discussion about the process of the meeting itself. Oh, that's a good idea. Do you want me to do that, Marie? When ever you want to do that, I'll just throw it out. Let me just finish here, because I'm almost done. And so other sorts of things that applicants can submit as a landscaping plan, a lighting plan, a sign plan. And so getting back to this page up here, waivers to be requested. That's in reference to this checklist. So occasionally, let's just pretend there's a playground being proposed. I don't know if that would ever need a special permit. And they will never have, or the dog park. There's a proposed dog park in town, which didn't need a special permit. I'm just making this up. But the dog park won't be lit. It'll just be open during the day. They would request a waiver from the lighting plan, because there is no lighting being proposed. So that would be a good example of that. And then the application itself lists section 10.38. So the applicant can actually go through and provide responses to all of these. It's a friendly reminder that they need to go through those. And then this page goes through the fees, the management plan. And I think that's it. And then this is the butters list form. And that's it. So I'm going to stop share. OK, we're back. Steve, do you have the? I do. I have the whole thing. You could just do the gist. I've got the whole thing here. And the introduction for the board meetings and board hearings is a formulaic thing that makes a lot of sense to read through, because it lays out the process by which the meetings and the hearings are conducted. So if I go through this, I can sort of notate as we go along some important aspects. As Maureen said, the zoning board is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of Chapter 48 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general wealth for the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important elements of the Amherst zoning bylaws is 10.38. Specific findings from this section must be made for all of our decisions, including the finding that that section is not applicable. But we have to make that section as it defines how we may decide on a special permit or make any decision. We have to justify that by making the decisions, making the determinations required under 10.38. All hearings and meetings are open to the public, including this one. And they're recorded by town staff. And the procedure of these meetings is as follows. And it's important we have both a meeting and a hearing. Two separate gatherings of the board or convocations of the board. The petitioner presents the application to the board during a hearing, after which the board asks, so first you have the petitioner say, here's what I would like to do. At that point, the board then can ask questions. The chair will recognize each of the board members for those questions. The applicant then addresses his response, his or her response, back to the board. After the board has completed their questions, the board will seek public input. And the public speaks with the permission of the chair. And in the hearing, there's time, there's specific time for this. And now, when you are recognized, you ask them to give their name, give them their address of the board for the record, and all questions and comments have to be addressed to the board. We don't want them addressed to each other or to the audience or to other, the applicants to petitioners or butters. It's best that all of comments are addressed to the board. So the board will normally hold a public hearing where information about the project and the input from the public is gathered. And so we'll conduct that. The public will have a chance to ask their questions or make their points. We then will say to the applicant, ask them to respond to the public's points, not at each time the person speaks, but in total that they respond to the public comments. And that's another time, and then after that's done, time for us to ask some more questions that we may have considered maybe raised in our mind because of the comments from the public. So we'll have another chance to as a board to ask questions of the applicant. At that point, we're done with the public hearing portion of the meeting. We close the public hearing and we open a public meeting section. The public meeting is not normally the time when the public speaks. That's an opportunity for the board to discuss amongst ourselves with the input of the applicant should we need it for whether how we want to deal and dispose of the application before us. If the board feels it has enough time and information, it can decide upon the application that night. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and is evaluated on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. And then the opening has us delineates each of the time frames for how long we'll take to, for the special permit to be filed, how long for the data filing for it to go into effect. We don't have to go through all that stuff tonight. That's all handled by the staff very efficiently. But what's important is that we have to decide we have to have a public hearing which brings in the public's comment. And then we have a public meeting of which we decide we have a discussion and at the end of that public meeting we just take a vote as to whether, remember we go through the 10.38, we go through the various conditions that we think we may want to have. We have a discussion about those. And then we vote on whether to approve the motion, approve the application. We decide whether there's conditions we want to apply to that and we decide and we make a determination that we have gone through the 10.38 requirements. And then the vote is on the motion to approve the application or the petition. And that's then the process of filing it takes place when the staff does that. So Keith, I think that's what you wanted us to go through. Yeah, can I just add a couple of things? One, when the rules and regulations were written it was a three-member board. Now it's a five-member board. So when there are five members sitting the vote to approve has to be four at least. Four out of those five, it can be all five but it can be four out of those five. When therefore, whatever reason it happens every once in a while, if there are only four members sitting it has to be unanimous. Yes, yes. The other thing is the other idea of a public meeting is that we may approve an application but say you have to come back to us with revised plans but we don't want to hold you up by not approving this because we want to approve it but we have to have those plans. So you have to come back to a public meeting. So a couple of Thursdays later or whenever they come back with the revised plans and it's a public meeting, it's not a hearing. So there is no public input. It is purely for the board to receive the new information say, okay, yeah, this is fine. It's de minimis, it's not a big change. We don't have to go back to a public meeting, public hearing to debate this new change. And then we can say, okay, fine, and we approve it. That can happen before, that can happen on evening when we have public hearings. Normally the public meeting will take place first and then we go to the normal which is the public hearing and then within that process is a public meeting which Steve described. But I just wanted to say that that can happen in a different way also so that you're not confused by the term of public meeting. Yes, I'm trying to pull up. Can I raise the question? I just want to make sure I'm understanding this. So when you're in a public hearing, members of the board can speak, the applicant can speak and anyone who comes to the hearing can speak if recognized by the chair. When you're in a public meeting, the same people may still be in the room but only members of the board and the applicant can speak. Is that, do I have that right? Ordinarily that's right but at the discretion of the chair or the discretion of the board we can't allow some public comments at a public meeting but it's usually not the case and that's usually only during a public hearing. So it'd be the exceptional circumstance. Thank you. Can everyone see my screen? This is a, I just pulled up a random old ZBA agenda. This is from February and these here it's a public meeting so that's what Keith and Steve were referring to and so this applicant, Amherst Rental Properties LLC they had received a special permit. I believe the board approved the special permit at the meeting prior but they had to make some minor updates to their management plan, layout plan which is also known as a site plan. Their landscaping plan and lighting plan pursuant to conditions 19 and 20 of their special permit. So that was the example of those conditions 19 and 20 most stated the applicant shall return to the ZBA at a public meeting for the review and approval of an updated management plan, layout plan, landscaping plan and lighting plan. And so that's a perfect example of a public meeting. So the applicant, so another key difference between a public meeting and a public hearing is notification. So public meetings do not need to have a legal ad posted and the butters do not need to be a butters living within 300 feet of that project site do not need to be notified by a regular mail. And that's under Massachusetts general law. And then here's another example. And this, so there aren't those requirements. Now here is a public hearing. And so these go through the whole public hearing process which includes the legal ad and the Hampshire Daily Gazette and the butters are notified about those public hearings. So I'd like to say something about the public comment at the discretion of the chair. The chair can determine that if there's a big room full of people, you can say how many people would like to make comments? And if he sees 25 hands, he might say, well, why don't you choose someone who represents the group who can speak on your behalf? Or he might say each person can have two minutes to speak. So you don't want, you know, some of these meetings can really go on and on and it ends up with people repeating things that other people have said or repeating things they've said themselves. So the chair has the prerogative to determine, you know, whether something has been said before or, you know, whether you really need to hear from 50 people for three minutes. You know, you may not want to do that because that's a lot of time. And if it looks like there are a lot of people who need to say something, you can ask them to submit something in writing or you can continue the public hearing and have them come back another time. I know that the previous chair of the ZBA kind of set a rule, I don't know if it was written down anywhere, but, you know, he determined for some meetings that he wasn't gonna go past, you know, nine o'clock at night. And that's a reasonable thing to do because sometimes for big contentious projects, the meetings can go till midnight. And you really don't wanna do that because then your next day, you're not gonna feel good on your job or whatever it is you're doing. So you have the right to say, you know, no, we're gonna cut off public comment at X time and come back in two weeks and we'll hear you then. So there's a lot of discretion that the chair has to manage public comment. Good point. Yeah, that's a good point. Since I have the agenda listed up here, so now where I'm highlighting, so normally obviously we have our meetings in town hall, this information now says go to the Zoom link or you can call in to a Zoom meeting. So anyone that doesn't have a, you know, a laptop or a smartphone, they actually can just call from their landline at home and then there is a number when they call, there's a prompt and then they can type in the meeting code. So I'm glad that there's both options. And so these are the public meetings and public hearings listed for this meeting. And then here it says public comment period. And so all boards and committees in Amherst are required to have this listed on their agenda. And this is an opportunity for any member of the public to provide comment for items that do not include special permit applications that are before the ZBA. So for instance, they could not be, they couldn't be talking about this application. They couldn't, but if they had something else they wanted to bring up for the board to consider, we seldomly have received comments related to this, but we do offer that for the public. And then this item is other business not anticipated within 48 hours. We don't often have items under this, but not to say that we won't maybe, I would say that it'd be more administrative than not. Maybe we would say, oh, there's a conference being offered and here's the information that we would love for you all to attend. And that's it for the agenda. And so this agenda is posted on the ZBA webpage. And it's also listed on the town calendar on the town website and these public hearings. And it's also listed on the, we have a digital bulletin board on the computer screen located on the basement level of the town hall by the elevator. So we're not utilizing that at the moment, but we're doing the best we can to get the word out about these meetings. And also there is a feature on the town website, which let's see, can you guys see that I'm, can you see me switching the website? I'm on the town website. Yes. I'm never good at this, so bear with me. If you go to search, notify me, I just saw that. Notify me. So you'll be unfortunately getting emails from me probably more times than you want, but this is good information for residents in town that wanna keep up to date about ZBA applications. So they can be notified about specific projects and they can be notified for different boards. So whenever I update the meeting agenda on the website, they will get an email and it'll notify them that there's a new agenda up. And so that's a good way for persons to just keep track of a particular project or projects they wanna know more about and know about the meeting and time and stuff. So. Are you gonna talk about the open meeting law? Oh yeah, that's a good suggestion. But just to, I guess, continue with the special permit process. So once you guys make the decision, I type up the decision, the conditions, all that. And I then email it out to you and I ask if you have any, you know, edits to the decision, please email me directly. And which is a good, which is a good, with the expression segue to the open meeting law, but I'll get there. So, you know, some people might say, oh, you forgot that condition or you forgot to say that. And I'll say, oh, thank you. Thank you for remembering or they'll see a spelling mistake and I'll say, thank you. Thanks for pointing that out. And so we'll finalize it and then I'll send you another email saying the special permit decision or whatever decision is ready for you to sign. And normally you would come into town hall and we have a specific location for you to sign. In this virtual world, which we just did, I think yesterday I had board members meet me in the parking lot behind town hall. Everyone brought their own pen and they sign the decisions and then I file it with the town clerk. And then there's, and then the applicant has some following steps, which we don't need to get into at the moment unless you want to hear them. But so good segue to the open meeting law, I said, if you had any comments about the decision, email me directly and not include other members of the board on the email. So open meeting law, which is defined by Massachusetts state law is that your meeting, Chris, do you want to explain this? Yeah, all the meetings of boards and committees are open to the public and we want to make sure that everybody has the same information. So board and committee members are only able to discuss topics that are coming before them in an open meeting. They can't have private email exchanges. They can't have discussions with one another in between meetings, either on the street or in the form of email. So all of your deliberations and all of your comments and conversations about things that are coming before you need to happen in an open meeting. So if you have questions or comments, you can, if you have questions in particular, you can direct them to staff either to Maureen or to Rob Maura, the building commissioner or to me and we can answer your questions. And then if you have things that you want to bring up about a particular project, you have to present those comments or concerns or whatever at the open meeting. Just so that the public doesn't get cut out of the discussion. We don't want them to not know or understand what's being talked about. So a site visit is excluded or exempt from the open meeting loss. So when you go on a site visit, you are not supposed to discuss the substance of the case. You're just supposed to become aware of what the site looks like, where things are in relation to one another. You can ask questions like, oh, what is that behind the barn? Or can we walk around the parking lot and how many parking spaces are there? But you can't start to deliberate or discuss anything about the project at a site visit. And the public is excluded from a site visit and that's a specific exemption that's in state law. So any things that you find out on a site visit, you bring up at the public meeting or the public hearing. And so the public can be made aware of what your findings were at the site visit. Is there anything else to be said about that? One thing to add is that in the spirit of making sure that any deliberation that you as a board member have on a specific topic, you wanna make sure that you're not having conversations with the public about a specific application or an item before the board. So if you're at somebody's house, they come up to you and say, I'm really upset about X, Y, and Z. What are you guys doing? You have to be able to say to people, I really can't discuss that, that's something that's gonna be before the board. I think that is another aspect of this that you don't wanna be... So you can ask people, or suggest that people come to the public meeting, make their concerns or questions known. You can ask them or suggest that they submit something in writing and then everybody can see it, but you're not supposed to talk to people like if you meet them at the town transfer station or something, you're not supposed to talk to them about a case that's before the board. You can talk to them about something that's before the planning board or the conservation commission, but not something that's before the zoning board of appeals. A prior member said this in an administrative meeting once and I thought it was good advice. This member was saying occasionally, his friends will say, X, Y, and Z either against a project or X, Y, and Z for the project. And he would always say, I can't talk to you about it. I can talk to you about sports or whatever, but I can't talk to you the case. And if you do talk to me about it, then I'm gonna recuse myself from the project. And so in essence, those are your options of if you need to talk about it, then you should recuse yourself from that case because outside of the meeting, members should not be discussing any applications with other members or members of the public. I see, Joan and, go ahead, Chris. I was just gonna say you can discuss things with staff. So anytime you have a question or a concern or something, you can call the staff because we're disinterested people who are just here to provide you with information and we don't have any role in making the decision. Okay. Joan and Dylan have their hands up. Oh, sure. Go ahead, Joan. Hi, just to reiterate on recusals, we have the right to recuse ourselves and also that we are required if we are 300 feet as in a butter to recuse ourselves that happened to me this year. So I just wanna remind everybody of that fact. Yeah, that's a very good point. Let me, oh, I don't have it up. So in the handouts I gave you, one of the pages was the disclosure form for conflict of interest and I'll try to pull it up right now. And so as Joan had just said, yeah, so say if you work for the applicant, your employee of the applicant, there would be a financial conflict of interest. Say if your dad is the owner of the applicant, like there's a family member, your family member is the applicant, things of that nature. Now, whether you are within 300 feet of the project site, sometimes that's a gray area. We've been flexible with that. We've asked if sometimes members will say, oh, I feel impartial, I do live within 300 feet of that property, but I don't have any opinion. And I feel that I could make a decision and not have an impartial opinion. In that case, you would want to again, file disclosure form and announce that at the beginning of the meeting. So an example would be, yeah, so I don't need an example for that, but so you would want to fill out the disclosure form and submit that to the town clerk. Sometimes you would be a butter, maybe a direct butter, or again, just within 300 feet, but you do feel that you would have a partial bias. That would be a good move to recuse yourself. And if you're at the meeting, you would say, I recuse myself and then you would just move your seat during that public hearing. Another example. Before we go to Dylan, one of the things that you need to do is to take the conflict of interest course that the state provides. And you have to fill out that you've, that's a requirement of your service on the ZBA is to do that conflict of interest training. That goes through a lot of these issues. And I think that's a good way to learn because this conflict of interest is complicated. And there's, so first off, do that. And secondly, if you have a question, town staff can really help, but also the state has the state ethics commission as a hotline you can call and they can give you a quick answer or they can give you a written answer. And so you have three ways of trying to learn about this. One is a training, one is a town staff and one is a state. So, and I wanted to say that my advice to a butters or people within 300 feet is always to recuse yourself because if the case is appealed, that would be possible grounds for appeal. And you wanna make sure that whatever you do, you have the tightest decision, the tightest process and without error. And sometimes it happens that you have to invoke what they call the rule of necessity, which is if you can't have, if you don't have a quorum and you can't hear something and it's gonna be granted by constructive grant, then you can invoke the rule of necessity. And that has some implications and some process which I have not ever gone through. So in that case, it would be possible to sit on a case if you did have an interest in it, but in general, it's better to recuse yourself if you're in a butter or if you even think that you have reason to have a conflict. Dylan. That's a good point. You've had your hand up for quite a while there, virtually had your hand up. Yeah, I wanted to go back as a question about when we were talking about site visits and deliberations, you can't do deliberation on site visit. And maybe this would be just become clear as I serve on the ZBA, what the distinction is, could if I were at a site visit and say, we have the plan, we reviewed the plan and we're actually on site seeing something and it raised, say, a lot of questions for me that I wanted to ask there on site. What ends up being the distinction of really trying to ask questions based on the information you receive when you're actually viewing a site, kind of what counts as deliberation, which you can't do on a site visit. You might be able to divulge what your questions are, but I don't think anybody would have the ability to answer you. And then you would have to bring up all those questions in the public hearing. So it's kind of a case by case basis and it's a little bit of a gray area, but I just always advise people, you know, not to discuss the project unless they're asking something specific like how wide is the driveway or how many parking spaces do you have or, you know, something like that. How many feet is it between your driveway and the intersection? Those kinds of hard physical facts you can ask questions about, but anything having to do with uses or whether something is good or bad, you really should avoid. Yeah, and you should wait until the public hearing to ask those questions. Alternatively, or additionally, you can always feel free to email staff your questions if you feel that you would actually, you know, you think that knowing that answer before the public hearing could be very vital for the board to consider. And certainly give us a phone call or send us an email and we can help address your question. And one thing about site visits is that we always, I didn't mention this on the agenda, but one thing we do with every application is we report on our site visit. And that includes what we actually did. We observed the property, we walked the fence line, whatever it is, and we also list the questions that we asked. And so we go to a great length to make sure that there's no information provided at the site visit that's not shared with the public. Can I just say, sorry, in terms of site visit, two things. One, we're not to discuss, it is a chance for the applicant to present to us. Some minor questions can get asked and Steve will tell them and us that whatever is asked there has to be asked at the meeting, at the hearing. The other thing is Steve, again, just in terms of procedure for practicality, would you just talk about how you open the site visit and what a normal kind of consists of? Sure, but we typically do is we wait for everybody, wait for everybody that's gonna come to come. All those EVA members, the applicant and the town staff. And then when we open the site visit, we say, this is an opportunity, we introduce everybody, so this is an opportunity for you to describe the project to us. We are not, this is not an opportunity for you to sell this honor to us or to make your case. This is your opportunity to describe it. We're gonna ask limited questions. Any question that we ask or we're gonna have to repeat at the board at the hearing itself in two days. And so in that regard, we just wanna have the, just the facts man, sort of the, you're not old enough to remember this, but Joe Friday was just the facts man. And that's really kind of what we're looking at here is just give us the basic facts, we'll make the decisions later and we'll ask those questions of the applicant at the public hearing. So we go a long ways to try to, we understand that the issue that you have, Dylan, that you're raising, the question you're raising, and I think we found a way to deal with it, satisfactorily to most members. Okay, and one other thing is that before we go on a site visit, we have the plans, we have the proposal, and you have the chance to really familiarize yourself with that. So that when we go on a site visit, it's to literally physically see what you're talking about two-dimensionally on those papers. Exactly. Joan has her hand up. Just a clarification on when we do refuse ourselves if and when that occurs, we still have the right as a community person to speak at a public meeting, correct? Yes, as a public member. Correct. Yeah. And so for that, for that, and I think- We don't identify ourselves as a ZBA member at that moment. No. Well, you could say I am a ZBA member, but I'm speaking as a private citizen. Okay, thank you. And you would do that when, as Steve went through his opening statement, is that the applicant presents, the board member most likely has questions for the applicant, there's a discussion going back and forth, and then at some point, the chair will say, are there any members of the public that would like to make a comment about this application? And then that, so then you as the resident would come up to, or come up to the virtual podium and make your comment. And so you would state your name and your address, and then you'd make your comments or questions. Tammy has her hand up, I see. I was just gonna say that during the site visits, Maureen is there, and often I will quietly go aside and ask Maureen a question, because I'm a newer member as well, and so I do have a lot of questions, and occasionally I have asked at the time, Mark, is this an appropriate question for me to ask before I said anything out loud to the applicant? And then the other thing, you have a comment I wanna make, is that I often call Rob or Maureen and ask lots of detailed questions, because sometimes I don't know the parameters of what we're talking about, like whatever it is, just so I can get a general understanding of exactly what we're talking about, both of them are really helpful and always willing to talk to me, and I do have a lot of questions. And then on the disclosure front, it is a little confusing for me on the disclosure front because I know so many people in town. I worked at UMass, and my son played soccer, and I know every other person in Amherst, and so often I know the petitioners and just have to make a statement beforehand. But I have had a case where I actually had a conflict with somebody, and so then I did the written disclosure. And so I think it's important to figure out exactly where you are on those things. And again, talking to Rob and Maureen is really helpful. Yeah, that's a really good point. It is a small town. One example comes to mind that, there's only maybe one or two fitness gyms, and if the fitness gym is the applicant and there's members that are actually, there are members to that gym, they have to make that disclosure. And that's just like one example of it's a small town, people go to the movie theater, there's Amherst Cinema, people go to Antonio's, do they know the owner? It's all these potential, like you're learning this new thing, conflict of interest, is it a conflict you know a lot of people. And so Rob and Chris and myself will help guide you through making that decision, whether there is a true conflict or not. And then the safest way to determine that for yourself is to call the state and talk to them about it, and they will give you a ruling on that to help guide your decision on that. One other thing about the site visit, well two things, I try to work with everyone's schedules for that. So like Joan for instance, traditionally I think you have Tuesdays off. So I've tried to cater to Joan's schedule and with Tuesdays in general, sometimes people have told me they only can do it at lunchtime, so I'll try to cater it from 12 to one. So as I get to know all of the new members, I hope to, you know, if possible to help cater to your needs. Sometimes I can't cater to everyone's schedule, so in those scenarios, I'll have to say, well unfortunately you're gonna have to do the site visit by yourself, which means that you would have to go and just walk around the property or maybe do a drive-by if it's very obvious from the street or you could do that or I could accompany you on the site visit. Also during the site visit, I try to take photographs of the project site and sometimes that does come in handy at the meeting, just to refer back to as a refresher from the site visit. So during this COVID-19 time, we also wear masks during the site visits. So Maureen provides you with masks. I would just add. All right. I just add one thing and then I think we should probably move on from the conflict of interest. There's two really important reasons to be diligent about this conflict of interest. The first is it's just the right thing to do. It's a state law. You don't wanna have a conflict of interest. You wanna be a dispassionate, disinterested, not, dispassionate and disinterested panelist. That's true. The second reason is pragmatic. If you should have recused yourself, if there was a conflict of interest, it causes, it is grounds for appeal and it grounds for overturning the actions of the body. And so there's really two reasons there. One, it's the right thing to do. Two, it can end up avoiding all the work of the committee of the board. And so that's really important. It's also for your members, fellow members of the ZBA. You don't wanna have to go through all this work and have it appeal because there was a conflict. So I think that's the last we really need to be saying about this except staff is great, the state staff is great and take the training session. It'll kind of open your eyes as to what is a conflict and what is the state considers the conflict and what it doesn't. So I think that's probably enough on conflict of interest. Yeah, oh, wrong one. So good segue about trainings. I have to find the website. Who is it? It's planner training for Massachusetts. I forget what the acronym stands for. Citizen planner training collaborative. There you go. So they were actually supposed to provide their annual training back in March and that obviously got canceled. So they are a great use resource for planning boards, ZBAs, maybe and maybe other boards and commissions. They provide various trainings throughout the year and they have an annual conference. They are now going to the virtual world slowly. So they will be offering online training. We actually just found out the other day that they were offering a training tonight at seven but we already scheduled our one. So I'm hoping that that one will become available online at a later date. But anyways, I was gonna say is whenever a training that we feel is appropriate for ZBA members will of course forward you that information and encourage all members and specifically new members to attend either virtually or once we reach the other side of this in person and the town has enough funds to hopefully to pay for the registration fees. So the town definitely encourages ZBA members to attend. Yeah, so what else? That is the ZBA in the nutshell. The ZBA, actually Chris, could you describe what the planning board does as a contrast? Yeah, so the planning board has a little bit wider range of responsibilities. The planning board works on the master plan for the town and the last time we did a master plan was we had one adopted in 2010. So now we're working on a master plan update. The planning board also works on the zoning by-law and proposes amendments to the zoning by-law and the method for doing that is changing since we've changed our form of government to town council. So we're trying to work out exactly what the new method is but the planning board is very much involved in writing the zoning by-law. The planning board also reviews and approves subdivision applications. So if someone owns a big tract of land and they wanna subdivide it into individual lots and build roadways and put in infrastructure, the planning board would review that and the planning board has a number of permits that it also reviews. One is a site plan review, which is very similar to the special permit. It's modeled on the special permit but site plan review is considered for something that is considered to be in the right place in the zone that it's being proposed. So in the list that Maureen mentioned, the use categories, section 3.3 of the zoning by-law, we list all kinds of uses and some of them are allowed by what they say, SPR site plan review. And what that means is the use is allowed in that location but the planning board can tell the applicant how to design the site. I mean, the applicant comes with a site plan but the planning board can put conditions on it like you need more trees here or you need a fence there or you need to rearrange your parking or you need more parking or something like that but they can't say no to the use. The planning board also reviews some special permits and usually they are either dimensional special permits so that if the planning board is reviewing a site plan review application but the applicant also needs to modify his side setback requirement then the planning board could consider that special permit that's associated with the site plan review and then there are also some specific special permits which are listed as SPP in the table of use categories and those are things that are specifically allowed for the planning board to review. And then the planning board also has a couple of other things, the one that comes to mind is scenic roads reviews. So there are a number of scenic roads that were designated in Amherst back in 1974 and they were designated because they're so beautiful and typical of New England and often it's because they have wonderful trees or stone walls associated with them. So when someone wants to remove a tree or a stone wall or rearrange a stone wall on a scenic road then the applicant needs to come to the planning board for permission to do that. The planning board also reviews plans that people propose for subdividing their lots that are not part of a subdivision. So if a farmer owns a property and all of a sudden he needs some money to buy a new tractor he might decide, oh, I'm gonna carve off what we call a frontage lot which is a lot that has frontage on a road and I'm gonna sell it so someone can build a house there. So as long as the lot has the appropriate amount of frontage and lot area then the planning board endorses the plan. That's different from approving. In fact, A&R is the designated application and A&R stands for approval not required but you still have to get the planning board to endorse the plan, sign off on it that it is not part of a subdivision and that it meets the frontage and lot area requirements. And I can't, oh, I know, another thing. I'm gonna bore you all to tears but the planning board also reviews what we call chapter 61, 61A and 61B release requests. So someone who owns say a piece of land that's used for forestry or farming or recreation those have different designations under chapter 61 in the mass general law and they get certain tax benefits as a result. So if they wanna remove part of their property from that designation the town has a right of first refusal for the property. So the planning board and the conservation commission have to make a recommendation to the town council as to whether the town should acquire that property. And generally speaking, they determine that the town shouldn't acquire the property because the town would have to pay fair market value or an appraised value which often isn't worth it for the town to own some small piece of property for $100,000. But that is another thing that the planning board does. They make recommendations on whether we should exercise our right of first refusal on chapter lands, that's what they call them chapter lands. So I think that's all that the planning board does. All the applications at the ZBA review, the public hearings I give you the list of the applications and you will inform the planning board of those special permit applications and sometimes the planning board will want to actually hear from the applicant to provide recommendations to the ZBA. Yes, and they did that on the university drive south. Which went before the ZBA. So the planning board is really just reviewing the site plan or possibly reviewing the exterior of the building and then making recommendations to the ZBA about what the planning board thinks the ZBA should do but then the ZBA is perfectly within its right to either take those suggestions or not take those suggestions. It's just another set of eyes on the project. Yeah, and traditionally those are the planning board will provide recommendations for larger projects. They wouldn't necessarily do it for like a proposed duplex or something like that. But it's really up to their discretion what they would like to provide recommendations to. And so the ZBA really their roles and responsibility is to review the application before them and to see whether the sections that they are requesting for the use or dimensional requirements and then the 10.38 it is your responsibility to see whether they meet those requirements under the zoning bylaw. And so your role really isn't to say, let's just pretend there's an Italian restaurant coming in and you don't like Italian food. That's not a reason to deny an application there's too much Italian food around here or I don't like Italian food. It's really to refer to the zoning bylaw and see if that application meets the requirements under the zoning bylaw. And generally the ZBA tries to figure out a way of allowing things to happen and coming up with conditions that will mitigate some of the impacts. So their general demeanor in public hearings is to try to work with the applicant to figure out, well, how can we make this happen? But then in the end, if you feel like you absolutely can't put conditions on something that makes it acceptable, you can deny it. And you actually don't even need to state your reasons for denial. Although we recommend that you do because that'll help if it is appealed it will help during the appeal. Yeah, yeah. And just to echo what you're saying. So you would want to make conditions that would limit or prohibit any adverse impacts to the neighborhood or the scenic views or the watershed or whatever is specified in 10.38 you would refer to those findings. And so that helps protect the town, the health and safety and character of the town. One other thing I should mention is that if the case does get appealed, the town will back you. In other words, you're not out there on your own having to hire your own lawyer. We have a lawyer who's very good and he will protect all the ZBA members when there's a lawsuit that's filed. Does anyone have questions or comments? You did a really good job Maureen. Steve, Steve as well. Steve as well. Great questions from everyone. So all ZBA member, ZBA meetings are always recorded when they're physically at town hall, they're recorded with an audio recording. Here we're actually kind of lucky in my opinion because we get the recording of the audio and the video. This will be posted on YouTube by our IT probably in the next couple of days. So I can send you a link if that's helpful. And yeah, if you feel, I'm sure. So as every all existing ZBA members can attest to there is a learning curve. This will take time to absorb all this information, to feel comfortable asking questions at meetings perhaps. You'll probably have questions for staff, all perfectly acceptable, very normal. It definitely will take time to get a handle of being a board member. So, Chris, Steve and I are always there for you to answer any questions. And yeah, we're excited to have you here. And then one other final note. So the full members are always expected to come to the regularly scheduled meetings. And those are listed on that sheet. That's like a deadline sheet I provided. For the event that a board member can attend, they're on vacation, they're sick, there's a conflict of interest. That member needs to inform me about that. And so then I can then turn to one of our associates. And so then I will ask around who's available and I will get someone to panel that public hearing. You either first one specific public hearing or for the whole evening. And then I will rotate every time that happens. So the alternates shouldn't expect to attend every single meeting as a member. However, especially as you're new on the board, it'd be helpful but not required to attend as just a member of the public to listen in here about the cases and watch the process. And again, luckily with this virtual platform, you could either do it live or watch the meeting later at your leisure. So there are some options. I'd just like to reinforce what Maureen said. We're gonna try to cycle through all the associate members when there's a chance that one of the time that one of us can't make the regular members can't make the meeting or has a conflict. We wanna give everybody an opportunity to do that. But I really do wanna encourage you to go to some of these meetings, go to meetings at the beginning all the time and try to get a feel for how the meeting works and how the hearing is conducted. Now that you can do it in your pajamas, it's really a good way to do it, I think, virtually. And you can learn a lot. And it's the only way you're gonna become familiar with it because the zoning bylaws are really daunting. You wanna get familiar with it, it's gonna take some time. But the best way for me was to listen to the deliberation of the board and see the cases. And now that we can do it virtually through Zoom, it is an easy way to come up to speed on the issues that we have to deal with in the ZBA. So I'd encourage you to participate virtually in the hearings on every other Thursday night, even if you're not sitting on the panel. And does anybody have any questions? If not, I think that's great. If not, we have to end this meeting and then go to the public hearing. So I would absent any other questions. I would move to close our public meeting and we would then go to public comment. No, excuse me, we have to go to public comment. Then we have to close the meeting. So we're done with the business for the day for the ZBA. We can open it up to public comment at this point, but I don't see that there's any attendees on the list, Maureen. I don't think there's anybody, any public member to comment if there is. This would be the time to do it. But since there's not, we will entertain a motion to adjourn. I guess I will say that absent any objection, we will adjourn this meeting until the next meeting is on the 21st, is that right? Yes. Okay, until the 21st. All right, thank you all. Any objection? Thank you. Maureen. We have a motion and a second. I have a second. Oh, a second. Well, we can, all in favor, don't do it this way, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, we've done it. Thank you very much all. See you in two weeks. Good night.