 here like right into Stony Brook and I go past the duck pond up there and like yes yeah so that's where that's where I'll be tomorrow morning running around the neighborhoods but my mom lives here in St. James and I come down every couple weeks to do things around here. Nice. Very nice. Okay So Jack we are live. We are recording Amherst media in the house. You are a co-host. Very good. We're good to go. All right welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of May 19th 2021 based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions that would be meeting law GL chapter 30a section 20 and signed Thursday March 12th 2020. This planning board meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. My name is Jack Jumpsack and as a chair of the plant Amherst planning board I'm calling this meeting to order at 735 say this meeting is being recorded is available. Well actually that's what I have my computer. It's seven 30s or excuse me six 36 sorry. Okay. Did I say seven? You did and so okay yeah so six oops. This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst media live stream. Minutes are being taken. Board members I will take a roll call when I call your name and meet yourself answer affirmately and then place yourselves back on mute. Rhea Chow. Here. Tom Long. Here. Andrew McDougal. Present. Doug Marshall. Present. Janet McGowan. Here. And Johanna Newman. Not on yet. Okay myself. Okay I suspect that Johanna will be on shortly. Board members if technical issues arise please let Pam know if technical difficulties occur we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. Discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed and the minutes will note if this happened. Please use a raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand and call on you to speak after speaking remember to remute yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment period and reserved for comments regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Public comment may also be heard at other appropriate times during the meeting. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment join the meeting via the Zoom teleconferencing link which is shown. And it's also available on the meeting agenda posted on the town website via the calendar listing for the meeting. You can also go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda which lists the Zoom link at the top of the page. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. When called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back in your mute when finished speaking. So residents can express their views up to three minutes and at the discretion of the planning board chair if a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their a lot of time their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. Okay with that said we can go to item one which is the minutes. We have minutes of April 21st. Correct okay. And I am looking from other board members with regard to any comment or motions on these minutes. So move. Okay so Andrew. Second. And any discussion on the minutes? I see no hands raised so I'll do roll call. Maria. Andrew. Hi. Doug. Hi. Hi. Janet. The proof. Johanna is she here yet? No okay and myself so that's a six zero. All right so and we have a public comment period and I'm looking at our attendees see if any hands are raised. I see John. Brennan Bailey you know I'm not sure how to pronounce the last name but so we have three hands raised and we can start with John. Jack may I just say were you planning to address public comments for the inclusionary zoning and the moratorium at the time that the board is talking about those things in other words are you looking for public comments that are not about things on the agenda right now? Yeah they should know that so you know we will not accept comments on the on the topics that we will be discussing tonight which are really focused on the inclusionary zoning biological 15 and the temporary moratorium building moratorium article 16 so those two things are on our agenda so folks that are you know want to you know present public comments should know that they don't want to present comment yet on that because they will have their opportunity later and those hands have gone down okay so John thank you. I have enabled you to speak did you have a comment that you wanted to make now or are you gonna wait? No I'm gonna wait okay I lowered my hand okay thank you. Thanks John um okay so we have we're meeting we're going to start the inclusionary inclusionary zoning meeting at seven with you know jointly with the CRC so we have we have about you know 15 minutes or so to go over the other items that are on our agenda and do you um Chris do you think we should just go to old business? Sure okay old business we can talk about 462 Main Street you mentioned that before the meeting began and correct um back uh I think it was last year in 2020 early 2020 um reviewed um a proposal for 462 Main Street which is John Robleski's property along the railroad tracks along Main Street and at that time um you were reviewing an amended site plan review application for um 24 apartment units and um you approved it that was amended from a previous application that was for 16 apartment units um but uh and Mr Robleski at that time was going to continue to use the house that's on that property it's a white house with red shutters it was going to continue to use that for um for office use as he'd been doing since he bought the property and the previous owner had also used that for office use in any event he is finding that um he feels that it's going to be harder to fill that building for office use the building has a number of um what should I say it has a number of quirks being an old building um it's not handicapped accessible it's a little bit um it's got some issues related to moisture and other things so anyway he is coming to the historical commission and asking for um permission to demolish that building that white building with the red shutters so I don't know when that hearing is I think it might be tonight actually um Mr Morris nodding his head so that the historical commission is meeting tonight and um and that is being considered um what he wants to do is use that space that um would be there after the building comes down to have some additional parking and I think he also wants to have a little utility building there of some sort um you know and I I think it's you know bicycles equipment and different things like that so anyway he's proposing that to the historical commission tonight and we'll see what they say about that and then um if if it transpires that he does take the building down and he wants to use that property for something else he would have to come back to the planning board and file an application for um an amended site plan review so um you know we approved a plan that had that that that building that building was involved within the plan that we approved um I think that the the trash you know or I think a bicycle shed or trash receptacle or something several things or um I mean at what point will we see that if at all Chris um perhaps you would like to consult Mr. Mora who's here he knows a little more about it than I do I'm not as much up to speed as he is yes please Rob uh hi uh yeah so you're right he he originally had in his proposal to alter you know create do an alteration to the um I think it was the north end of that building to create the trash and recycling storage and and improve that area a little bit of the the building so if he um you know receives a approval from the commission to demolish tonight and decides to move ahead with um altering the site plan with a new building or altering the parking spaces and removing that building then that would be submitted to the planning board uh I would expect soon uh because I I know just from talking with the applicant that you know I think they found that moving forward on renovating the building wasn't the best option for him at the moment and we would like to switch gears and and go this other route so I think if there wasn't a delay put on the project then uh we would pretty quickly see plans developed and submitted for uh the planning board's review all right thank you Rob um Pam I think we know that that Johanna is with us 645 ish I put 644 oh okay good good okay hi Johanna hi Johanna um other old business Chris I can't think of anything okay and any new business items we want to talk about now we got like Jack Miss McGowan raised her hand oh sorry during that conversation so I just have a question about the Victorian house because that was the primary use of the lot and I think that so how many offices were in there because I remember that he said he didn't have problems renting the offices and he'd had a good clientele and there's also parking spaces allocated to that use but do you does anyone know how many offices are there um or I could I guess you could look that up if you don't know you want me to answer that sure thank you Chris so Tom Crossman who is a property manager um had his office there and I think he still does but he's planning to move into the new building that space that's being created as part of the mixed use building is where he's going to be uh operating and I think that the other um I don't know about the other tenants of the white house but um there were probably three or four tenants of the white house but I don't know if they're still in business I think what Mr Robleski said to us was that um as a result of um COVID the COVID situation and then also as a result of the building being in poor condition and also um people just not looking for office space um that he was envisioning finding it hard to find tenants and that's why he wasn't interested in uh investing a lot to fix up the building that's my recollection of what he said thank you and I'm just looking for other hands up I don't see any so um move on the next time new business I can't think of any trying to think um new business uh nope can't think of anything okay uh form a in our subdivision applications you will be receiving a form a next time um at your June 2nd meeting it's going to be um property up along let's see I don't even know the name of the street but it's 70 blossom lane thanks Pam it was you're welcome uh it's in a it's west of southeast street and um at the very end of blossom lane and it's a rather large property and it has a fence that is actually located on its neighbors property so um in order to correct that problem the neighbor is selling a little strip of land to um this property 70 blossom lane so you're going to see that it's a very minor um change for 70 blossom lane it may actually affect the other property adjacent to it more since that property is a flag lot that property is coming to the zoning board of appeals for a renewal of its flag lot special permit uh sometime in the next few weeks so that will be one of the things that Pam would report on under zba applications so so you'll be seeing that um but you won't see it until June 2nd because we haven't heard back from the town engineer thank you uh upcoming zba applications there are some and I made a little slide so let me just share that screen with you can everybody see that mm-hmm okay so the cba is going to review three new applications at their May 27th meeting um the first one is the one Chris was just talking to which is the renewal for a special permit for a flag lot and that is property that's located off of southeast street uh another application is for property at 279 amity street um and that's a request for a special permit they um they actually are proposing to put an addition onto the house such as pre-existing non-conforming one-family detached dwelling um that they're going to add an addition to and then at 187 college street um a request has been made for a special permit for a change of use so the property there is currently um a one-family detached dwelling and they are going to they're they're proposing to change it to a non-owner occupied duplex dwelling um and they're proposing to add an addition onto it um so to make the property a duplex there would actually be two so existing there is a building that has four bedrooms in it and they are proposing to add on to that another um I guess you would call it a building that would also have four bedrooms in it um and Rob I don't know if you have more to share about any of those or not but that's what I know thank you question we usually ask the planning board is are you interested in reviewing any of these they seem to be smaller projects would that be your opinion Chris yeah so Doug I think I would want to see the one on college street since we're talking about multi-family conversions a fair amount may I ask about the scheduling um Pam when are these scheduled to go before the zba they're going in front of the zba on May 27th so that would be next Thursday so unfortunately there wouldn't be time to have a presentation to the planning board but what we could do is tell the applicant that we want to have a presentation to the planning board and then tell the zba that and then the zba could continue the public hearing on May 27th until it had heard back from the planning board is that what you would like me to do Doug is that sound good to you yeah I hate to be the only one that causes a delay about all this so it'd be helpful to know whether I'm a lone voice or whether anybody else on the planning board thinks that would be worthwhile yeah I see a bunch of hands Andrew Tom Janet uh Andrew I'm on board let's do it yeah Tom Sam and Janet um I agree because I I'm just interested in if it's going to be student housing and just thinking about strong steep street and things like that I think it'd be good to go through that yeah and I agree as well um so Chris you know loop them in to us when convenient okay thank you June 16th because the June 2nd meeting is going to be all about archipelago so we'd have to be June 16th okay that's what I'll do then thank you great all right so and is that it Pam yes okay so upcoming SPP SPR SUB applications other than archipelago and Emily Dickinson um we don't as far as I know have anything definitive at this time okay going on to the planning board committee and liaison reports um I Pioneer Valley planning commission we have a a meeting I believe you know uh is it this week or next week but um no you know uh no big news um I don't know if I'm over there but uh the CPA Andrew nothing to report okay and ad commission uh yeah two quick things we tried to have another meeting last night and again failed to have a quorum um it's a it's a commission of seven members and right now there are only four active members and we got three out of four but not enough for the for the four person quorum um and then I and then I just noticed on the agenda for this evening it says that I was nominated but have not but I'm still awaiting appointment and that's no longer the case as of I think it was January thank you so sorry yeah thanks Doug sorry about that design review board Tom uh we have not had a meeting since our last meeting so we had a meeting last Monday but then we had a subsequent meeting where I think I updated you guys uh that I think we heard from archipelago again um or for the first time as DRB and if we have time another time we can go through the comments there's there's quite a few and I think they've been written up and I can make sure you guys have access to this yeah it sounds it looks like you know we're we're approaching the seven minute or excuse me seven o'clock hearing time so yeah so if you can you know just I'll forward them on yeah yeah uh and zoning subcommittee we're kind of like well we're going to have a joint hearing tonight so but Chris do you have anything else to add that should really say uh community resources committee rather than zoning subcommittee um oh I'm sorry yes that's my fault um so we had a meeting of the CRC on May 11th and we tried to talk about a bunch of different things but I actually my mind is blanking right now on what we talked about I'm so sorry then Joe is here if you wanted to hear from her yeah we well okay yeah it's all fine we have a lot on our plate tonight um and so at this point we can invite the CRC to commence their their part of the the meeting I'd be happy to but I don't think there's a quorum yet okay I keep checking attendees to see if they signed in as attendees all right we'll just just keep us posted um at I will take the opportunity to update you on May 11th discussion we were hoping to discuss demo delay bylaw at the May 11th um CRC meeting but we did not have time for that um what we discussed in terms of zoning is the apartment definition proposal which I think is coming to you guys I'm not sure when Chris would know there's so much in my head right now I can't grab hold of that date so sorry gotta have it written down good good um um begin a report of the chair I don't really have that and report of staff and then and then we actually we can just report of staff would be that we're way too busy with it all in our heads yep great so the rest of the meeting we're going to have these two hearings and once Mandy has the CRC quorum she is going to chair that and we'll conclude both hearings we were thinking about a little bit different process for the planning board usually we will um you know hear hear the uh you know project proposal and then get public comment and and then we'll vote on it but we're not gonna vote on it until CRC uh uh we're gonna close the hearing and then deliberate after both hearings have have concluded so um just so the planning board members know that assuming it's not too late I see Dorothy Pam and the attendees could um I'm can you pull her in I can and I was wondering Mandy Joe if I should be making you a co-host as well uh if you want to you may okay um I know Nate's going to help me manage stuff so I appreciate that Nate um and I'm going to focus on writing so let's see okay so once Dorothy Dorothy is in now she should be or at least coming on over there she is there so um seeing a quorum of the community resources committee present I am going to call the special meeting of the community resources committee to order at 7 o 2 p.m. um as has already been announced through the planning board this is virtual by order of Governor Baker's March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law um so I'm going to just check to make sure everyone can be heard and can hear um for those on my committee Shalini I'm here um Dorothy here uh Steve I'm here and Evan here excellent and Mandy is here so we have all five members here as Jack already announced um I will be chairing the public hearing um and opening it and everything so um I think we are ready to start right Jack correct so at 7 o 3 p.m. in accordance with mass general law chapter 40a the Amherst planning board and the community resources committee of the town council holds this joint public hearing on Wednesday May 19th to consider the following proposed amendments to the zoning by law please note in accordance with Governor Baker's March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law this meeting will be conducted virtually and will accommodate public comment to the extent practical this hearing is on zoning by law article 15 inclusionary zoning to see if the town will vote to amend the zoning by law by amending article 15 inclusionary zoning to expand the applicability of inclusionary zoning including amending the language referring to local preference expanding the categories of residential uses to which inclusionary to which in to which the inclusionary zoning requirement applies requiring a tiered level of affordability for projects requiring six or more affordable units adopting the definition for residential development and increasing the number of affordable units required to qualify for a special permit to allow offsite provision of affordable units or to allow a payment in lieu of provision for affordable units so the hearing is open here is the plan on how the hearing will go forward we will start with I'm going to run through the process and then and then we'll actually do it and we will start with board and committee member disclosures and then we will have a presentation from the planning staff who is the sponsor I do not believe there was any site visit because this is not a site plan review or special permit hearing so it's on the list but I don't think that happened and normally doesn't and then it's going to be questions from the boards and committees from the members here then questions from the public then public speaking in favor of revision public speaking in opposition of revision the applicant's response or the sponsor's response if any and then continuing questions from the board or committee once those questions are done at the end of that we will vote to close we will take a motion and vote to close the hearing comment on the hearing other than the sponsor presentation will be limited to three minutes at a time and I will be trying to time that accurately but that is how we will do it and so at this point we will start with are there any questions from the planning board or the CRC members first of all seeing none we will start with any board and committee member disclosures are there any seeing none we will move on to the planning staff presentation I believe it's going to be chris and Nate is that right Nate will present the the item thank you Nate you're on it looks like there's a member in the audience who raised the hand I don't know if we would want to there's a question about the process or wait um so the member of the audience is Andrew Vellop please lower your hand if it is unrelated to a question about the process keep please keep it raised if it is a question about the process that we will be going through tonight okay um I will since it is still raised I will you are using an older version of zoom Andrew um so let me see if I can bring you in to ask a question about the process um you should be able to unmute yourself now Andrew yep can you hear me yes thanks so I guess I have a question about process but also content uh it was my understanding that perhaps this meeting would address a proposal for a six-month postponement of any building is this the correct meeting so that hearing is scheduled to start at 8 p.m. tonight so there are two public hearings on the schedule a 7 o'clock one on amendments to inclusionary zoning and an 8 p.m. hearing on a proposed moratorium so we will address that one starting at 8 o'clock tonight all right well I'll come back for that then thank you thank you you're welcome sure thanks so I'm going to share my screen I'm going to give a brief presentation and then also then share the bylaw you know showing the language as proposed yep is that visible to everyone yes yes you're great and uh so my name is Nate Maloy I'm a planner with the town and this is uh you know a few slides about the update to the inclusionary zoning bylaw and the um the purpose of the inclusionary zoning bylaw is to maintain and increase the supply of affordable and accessible housing in the town of Amherst you know I think accessible um is it doesn't necessarily mean ADA accessible but accessible as in there are lower barriers to access to housing the current issue being addressed by the proposed changes right now the inclusionary zoning applies to um products that produce 10 or more new dwelling units that require a special permit for the use or a special permit to modify certain dimensional standards you know building coverage lot coverage additional floors or increase in height greater than two feet so you know projects that are by site plan or view or by right uh they don't you know um they don't trigger inclusionary zoning um and so as you know the statement says mix use building in the downtown or in certain zoning districts by site plan or view doesn't provide any affordable units there are a number of strategies that were used to update the inclusionary zoning bylaw and we'll see those in the text but you know one is uh elimination of the current threshold for a special permit for use or modifying the dimensional modifications so that threshold is is changed uh clearly state the bylaw applies to most residential projects so it you know clearly states now that it applies to townhouses apartments mix use buildings that result in 10 um new dwelling units there are exceptions uh you know a comprehensive permit project a 40 b project is exempt conventional and cluster subdivision is exempt uh a subdivision is typically about the creation of a roadway and lots and not necessarily about the development of units ironically um you know because uh someone can propose a subdivision but they may not be the developer of the units uh projects in the fraternity zoning district and there's very limited uh land but and what's allowed in the fraternity zoning district uh instant institutional uses that contain residential units so um you know Amherst college uh produces you know a residence hall that is in subject to this and then public housing um we're expanding the definition of local preference uh we're as as Mandy read in the public notice we're defining what it means for new dwelling units and a new definition for residential development that term residential development has been in the bylaw but it was never defined uh require that larger rental projects provide tiered affordability so two income levels and then increase the payment in lieu of um there are there's many elements that are retained from the current bylaw so the idea that 10 or more units is the uh the threshold in terms of project size that remains the same the percentage requirements for providing affordable units remains the same so if you produce you know nine units or less uh you know this that project doesn't need to provide affordable units through inclusionary zoning a developer can always voluntarily though provide affordable units so 10 to 14 new units it's one affordable dwelling 15 to 20 new units it's two affordable dwelling units and then if it's 21 or over in terms of new units it's 12 percent of the total unit count uh and then you know it's rounded up uh if it's in between um and then there is this provision in the bylaw that was adopted uh more recently but um it's a special permit uh can be issued to modify the percentage of um offsite units and originally right now in the bylaw it's four or more affordable units we're changing that to six but the bylaw does allow for a provision of offsite units um or a payment in lua and so there's minor changes to these provisions but those um are you know currently in the bylaw and we're proposing to you know change those a bit to make it a little bit more challenging in terms of project size or payment in lua in terms of the actual language uh is is this uh visible for members the bylaw so in the intent and purpose in 15 uh point zero three uh what's shown in bold italics is is new language and what's in um read and strike through is being removed and so you know we're saying to the extent allowed by law ensuring that the permit granting authority or the special permit granting authority consider offering local preference for new affordable housing as a condition of the permit or special permit and so there's a number of categories for local preference and as you can see in red originally it was uh it said to persons who live or work in amherst but there are more categories than that for local preference so the thought is that this new language allows the permit granting authority to expand who you know who can uh who can who can be part of local preference so it's not just liver work in amherst it's also if you have school-aged children in amherst um so there's other you know and it's also regulated by the state so we can request it as a permit we can't require it we have the town then has to request it through the state um in 15.10 again um we're including this new language shall apply to residential development including but not limited to townhouses apartments mixed use building planned unit residential developments or PERDS or open space conservation developments oscd's that provide new dwelling units and then new dwelling units is a is a new um it had been in the bylaw we're redefining it uh meaning uh a combination of units that have received or will receive a certificate of occupancy in any five-year period and are located in new buildings or additions to existing buildings and any net increase in units resulting from reconstruction of existing buildings except for units resulting from and then there's a list of clear exceptions and so you know um you know staff feels that this definition um given the five-year period in this particular occupancy helps um capture projects that may be phased so you know sometimes developers may phase a project to avoid inclusionary zoning and so you know with this new definition the idea is that it's it would capture it the exceptions are what we I listed um previously um you know companies that permit a 40 b project a conventional subdivision or cluster development uses in the fraternity residents the rf district institutional uses um housing constructed by a public agency um and then replacement of units after damage by fire water natural disaster and in 15.11 the changes here is um what's taken out in red is the threshold for the special permit so now it's reading that any all residential development resulting in new units above the number already existing in the development shall provide affordable units at the following rates and so um you know instead of requiring a special permit now it's just they have to you know new to any development that has new units and the bylaw already said um in in the asterisks c sections 4.33 and 4.55 and those are cluster development and open space community development and so we just include a language as a more direct reference so in those sections there can be affordable units provided not through inclusionary zoning we've eliminated the special permit modifications for the building coverage lot coverage and height and then with the double asterisks this is the tiered affordability when six or more affordable rental units are required 20 percent of the affordable units shall be affordable to households earning 60 percent of the area meaning income or less as calculated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and so six or four six or more rental units that is a project of 46 or more units so it's a pretty sizable project that would then have to provide this tiered affordability 15.12 is a new definition for residential development that means new dwelling units on one or more adjacent properties developed at the same time or in phases you know within the you know the five years and that share aspects of the property such as but not limited to shared utilities a common driveway shared parking or the use of the combined properties for a lot or building coverage calculations and staff included this because oftentimes there are adjacent properties where someone will have maybe a common driveway and develop it at the same time and and really for the context of this bylaw this is you know one residential development and so you know we're defining it as that and then the the enumeration for the rest of you know the subsequent sections is is different that's not shown in bold but you know with the new sections the numbers change and then in 15.17 this is the provision allowing the permit granting board or special permit granting authority to grant a special permit for modifications and we're increasing it except that when it's now six affordable units are required rather than four it says a minimum of 50% of the units must be provided on site however there is a provision for offsite affordable units which isn't changing and that's only in the bg bvc so uh general business uh uh village center business their neighborhood business uh and the bl districts of budding bg so in those zoning districts um half the units could be provided offsite through a special permit or within 500 feet and there's also a payment in lieu of and uh you can't hear you you can't hear me strange because i could is anyone else having the problem crisis actually no i i couldn't hear anybody i'm sorry me it's okay okay all right um so then we have the offsite affordable units and then the payment in lieu um again that's currently in the bylaw and the recommendation is to increase the payment from three times the median income to four times the median income and the median income is about 75 000 so four times that is what we see as a relevant amount to to offset the cost of not providing a unit so that amount of funding going to the housing trust could help actually build the unit so so the recommendation is to increase increase it to four times and and those are the changes to the bylaw thank you nate chris would you like to add anything yes i wanted me to explain why we're asking to have 20 percent of the units be 20 percent of the affordable units be reserved for those making 60 percent or less of area median income it has to do with the way um affordable units are um subsidized um it has to do with section eight vouchers then he can explain that yeah sure thanks christie i guess i should say that you know in our bylaw we define affordability as 80 percent of the area median income and we're in the springfield metropolitan statistical area so the msa springfield msa so um 80 percent of the area median income is a standard definition used by the state in the town however um because amherst has such a high um demand for housing in the the rental amounts are high at 80 percent am i a voucher holder and actually you know a number of other um lower modern income tenants can't afford to live in amherst so 80 percent is actually above the rental amounts that a voucher program even allows someone to live in the unit so they're not even eligible to apply to those units if it's at 80 percent am i um it's closer to 70 percent 60 percent was used also it's the um the area median income amount often used by the low income housing tax credit and other subsidy programs so it's a it's a standard amount that's calculated it's something that amherst as a town won't be calculating on her own it's already calculated by by heart or other agencies so we're not trying to figure out what is 60 percent it's calculated on an annual basis for us and we can use that thank you um i think that concludes the sponsor presentation is that correct there as far as i know there was no site visit so we don't have to report on that um that means we're on to questions from the planning board in the community resources committee if if people have questions could raise their hands i will try to recognize them in the order that they are raised um dorothy um i'm going to do something i rarely do um i think you've done a fabulous job of putting all these details i've been to so many meetings where these items were discussed and you've really arranged them in a way that's comprehensible and clear so i just want to say thank you very much for all your great work thank you dorothy um any other questions from the boards or committees um jack i can't raise my hand thank you for that reminder jack and then andrew i was just wondering about the the the magic number of 10 and and you know where's the backup and history for you know other towns and the commonwealth or or elsewhere where 10 is the number um i don't know if you know nate you can speak to that or or chris yeah i think the um you know there's a balancing act with inclusionary zoning you know you need a strong enough housing market so that you know your requirement for affordable housing doesn't deter development or you know have the price passed on uh to market rate units and so for instance in uh communities closer to boston they start at six units um and they have and they even have a higher percentage you know say 15 percent of the units instead of graduated you know up to 12 percent so you know when we had our comprehensive housing market study the consultants thought 10 uh in 2013 and 15 thought 10 was the right number but they actually recommended a 15 percent um affordability calculation and we haven't increased that so you know they thought 10 was appropriate for you know the types of development the size and amorous and the demand for housing so you know there's a number of factors that would you know weigh on that number you know there's an economies of scale too so usually they say under a certain number it's just not economical to require affordable units um so you know we're saying 10 is the right number but um in in actuality we probably haven't seen that many proposals that are 10 most of the proposals that we've seen for for the development are or greater than 20 in the last few years anyway I think that you know in the last uh you know say 10 years there's probably been I have a I have a number of a chart but there's probably about 15 developments that you know have 10 or more units um you know it really depends on um you know we also permit a lot of single family homes you know so there's other in you know duplexes so there is a range of you know number of units permitted okay I'm just I'm just thinking of the projects we've seen in last five years and from the planning board I think all of them have been greater than say 20 units versus the 10 but just just wanted to get your input on that thank you very much Nate thank you um Andrew thank you um Nate great presentation um I Andrew we can't hear you yeah we just lost you oh um can anybody hear me now yeah okay um I will try and if not I'll come back later um so you've identified some loopholes like phase developments which is great are there any other areas that you have concerns that might present potential loopholes down the road and one that popped in my mind was just the the offsite units like one of the nice things about this this proposal is that you've got sort of the income levels living together and you know is it possible that that that offsite units could be used to essentially like I don't dump some some of these units in a different part of bg bbc you know some of those planning districts where we may be missing some of that spirit of of the the principal yeah that's a good question the housing trust really discussed this and you know they felt that because you already have to provide half the units on site that providing half offsite and with the geographic proximity so with the 500 feet or the same zoning district they felt that um you know it wasn't an issue of fair housing so um one of the housing trust members who works for mass housing said that other communities are using this provision you know it would be an issue if we didn't limit it say for instance they had a product downtown and then you could put it in you know on the border of north amherst or something but because we have a geographic kind of proximity to the project site the trust felt that that was actually okay and they actually preferred the provision of offsite units rather than the payment aloo of because they'd rather see units get built and so you know staffs talked about this and I think you know it's a special permit so it's not as if it's by right so I think the applicant would really have to prove why they would need offsite units and then you know staff would likely recommend a condition that there be um you know that the applicant show they have site control and they probably receive certificate of occupancies at the same time so that there'd be some conditions you know um having both the projects happen at the same time so you know it wouldn't be like a five-year lag before the offsite units are are occupied but you know we could have some provisions and conditions of permits that would make sure they are actually um developed and and occupiable love it thanks Nate thanks manager Andrew um Doug yeah speaking about loopholes um 15.12 um you have uh you have a pair of independent phrases linked by and don't hear him yeah he was saying um that 15.12 has independent phrases linked by and let me just share my screen again yeah yeah you say residential development means new development on one or more properties developed at the same time or in phases yep and that share aspects of the properties yep I'm wondering whether you might want to make that a but or or rather an or just because I could see somebody uh uh maybe taking a large parcel and splitting it in half and uh developing two nine-unit projects on the two parcels and and not having them share any uh you know aspects and uh you know then they've then they've then they've gotten around your requirement all right thank you um Doug Janet thank you for this presentation and for doing this work um on this um the IZ article I feel like we're sort of coming to the end of the road of a long period of trying time of getting it right although we can always make adjustments later I think it's really uniform it's very simple um it applies to everybody there's no kind of dimensional requirements that trigger so someone can go up to the inch and not over it um so I really I really appreciate this this draft or this this um proposal but I have I have a question that I think Carol Lewis from the housing trust had sent us an email asking why there was an exemption for cluster developments and so I was kind of wondering why because and then I looked the cluster developments the bylaw sections have always sort of daunted me and so I was looking at it quickly and it seems like under section 4.33 if the developer provides at least 10 percent affordable units they can get quite a huge increase in the number of building lots and so I was wondering what the rationale was there like if if somebody had a cluster development of like 25 units um you know or do I mean like how do these two play off of each other why why is cluster development not automatically required to do 10 percent and then it seems like in this case the cluster development under 4.33 would get a kind of a bonus of extra lots that nobody else is getting Chris you raised your hands do you want to answer that so um I think that um possibly in the future we might want to include standard subdivisions and cluster subdivisions in inclusionary zoning but for now I think it's too complicated um someone can come along and subdivide a piece of property and with that really means is to create a road put in infrastructure sewer water electricity whatever um and divide the property into lots and then he might just sell off the lots and there's no guarantee that the same developer is going to be developing all of the lots and it mean it seemed to me that um it really made more sense for this round of inclusionary zoning amendment to focus on developments where the whole development was being done by one developer so you could capture the 10 percent right at that time or the 12 percent or whatever percentage it is that you wouldn't have to um go on into the future and I'm going to use Amherst Hills as an example of a subdivision that's taken a very long time to develop it was originally developed by Doug Cole or originally no it actually was started I think it was started by Jeffrey Flower back in the late 80s and then Doug Cole bought it and um then he passed away and it's been being developed by Tofino Associates so it's been since you know the late 80s until now and it's still nowhere near done it's got I think 42 houses out of potential 70 in Amherst if you had to um track keep track of which lots were going to be affordable which lots weren't kind of you know require the developer to build the affordable units in um sort of um at the same time as he was developing the non-affordable or market rate units um it would just be too complicated so in my mind I felt like it was better to leave subdivisions out for now and then once we get our feet under ourselves and really understand how this inclusionary bylaw is going to operate um now that we're encompassing so many different kinds of perhaps in the future we might want to consider subdivisions but it's just too complicated for now so in terms of the cluster developments it is like that whole 4.33 do you feel like it's too complicated to deal with that right now that maybe in the future it would the 10% would apply to clusters and maybe they get their bonuses if they provide like 20% affordable or something it's I think there have been a few cluster subdivisions that have you know taken advantage of the density bonuses and provide affordable units but then it becomes something where it's worked out during the permitting the land use permitting and so you know usually then it's the applicant who's a developer who's willing to designate lots and really you know um help organize that up front as opposed to you know not you know not knowing what's happening with those with those properties so it's something that you know is then you know like I said dealt with up front because they're they're actually voluntarily doing it thank you um we're gonna move on to Shalini yes I wanted to again thank the staff for streamlining the process and removing um the I think what developers also look forward to is what's predictable and clear for them and so that's really well done I also want to highlight again the potential of increasing the rents by not offering any incentives because I'm looking at research on there's one paper for example which I had sent earlier it's in one of our CRC is the economics of inclusionary development and just having a business background my understanding is that when we are asking the developers to offer affordable housing units and they're receiving half the rent or whatever it is that means they're gonna recover the loss from the rest of the units which means the rents go up in the other units and overall does that create affordable units but does not but also increases the rents in town and the way to offset that so according to this report it says in most cases jurisdictions will need to provide development incentives to ensure the feasibility of development projects the principal incentives could be direct subsidies density bonuses tax abatements reducing parking requirements and um so that's just something either we look at what is the impact of inclusionary zoning in other towns did the effects of that on yeah we're creating affordable units but is it also increasing the the rents in town and when we say this high profits we also have to keep in mind the high rents are also because the property taxes in our town are pretty high so my other concern is that it will affect actually the smaller builders because the big units I think have enough profits perhaps I don't know but it's the smaller builders who might be more impacted by the inclusionary zoning when they're not given an incentive thank you chris so I wanted to remind everybody that we do have a tax incentive for developments that provide 10 units or more affordable housing we have a tax incentive that provides I'm not exactly sure how to say it but it provides a tax relief over a period of 10 years starting with a large tax relief in the beginning of the project and a smaller and smaller tax relief as you get towards the 10th year and so far the only developer in town has taken advantage of that has been beacon communities with the north square project but we're hoping that other developers take advantage of that tax incentive as well thank you chris uh steve and then maria hi um so actually a lot of you have covered my comments but I actually want to follow a thread that Janet McGowan had brought up um I think that laws and bylaws are fairest when there are no exemptions so I'm looking at the list of exemptions and I'm trying to weed them out so like the affordable housing exemption that doesn't seem like that should be an exemption because by definition this will meet the in other words you can't have an affordable housing requirement they're going to be meeting it because it's all affordable housing so I don't see a reason for that the conventional subdivision I'm not convinced that that's an insurmountable issue so in other there was in the case of what chris was describing the developer would be compelled to put a deed restriction on you know there's 40 parcels there'd be a deed restriction on what I can't do the math five parcels and then that bridge gets crossed when those parcels go for sale I guess and then cluster development I think there's been a good description of that then even RF I don't understand fully why that would be exempt because so RF we know that what's developed there is student housing that's where student offsite student housing is permitted but I don't understand why we'd be given an exemption for that oh well I'm going to answer my own question because I think that students don't typically qualify for affordable housing so I'm going to answer my own I just answered my own question but anyway those three the top three I would prefer to remove those from the exempt list and then we can cross the bridge how to enforce it at some other date but the last thing we want to do is to be incentivizing conventional subdivision development I mean that's the worst possible kind of exclusionary development so why don't we figure out a way to make that part of this package now thank you Steve Maria sorry you want to respond yeah I was going to say with the comprehensive permit project they may not actually meet the inclusionary zoning by a lot necessarily someone 132 Northampton Road came they actually asked for waiver from it just because sometimes the subsidizing agencies don't want to see that it's that it's subject to other local regulations and so whether or not we put it in here most often a comprehensive permit developer is going to ask to waive this anyways because they can't be subject to two local regulations and so you know we're just we're exempting it because in the last two comprehensive permits they asked for this provision be waived because they see it as as a legal problem that they'd be subject to both but I understand you I understand right like if the list of exemptions grows too long it's like well what are we capturing thank you Nate Maria thanks Nate um so I I've always had the same beef with this and I'm shouting kind of touched on it it's just um I'm interested too about the incentives and how we mediate sort of yes we want more affordable housing but how do we do it so that we're not reducing the amount of development because of this being possibly overly stringent and I've kind of come around to that with the idea that you know I really trust the planning staff and the planners and the building department staff that they have worked enough in town over the years talked with developers had a lot of anecdotal sort of examples of what was able to be built what was proposed and not able to be built to really stand behind this and that's the only reason why I'm not as apprehensive um because I you know I read all these studies about uh yeah what are the incentives are their bonuses and I don't see any and and the one that Chris you mentioned you'd have to build almost 100 units to get that right because if it's you have to build 10 affordable units that's I said it wrong I said it wrong Nate can say it correctly I think it's 10 units with some affordable units whatever the requirement is oh not 10 affordable units okay I oh okay that makes more sense um so I just I I know that a lot people said we could try it see if it works if it doesn't we'll come back to it and um I'm kind of coming around to that just because I would like to see if it works I don't know how we know that but I'm sure the planning staff will know because they'll see the projects or developers come and say you know this is unworkable or okay we'll do this but um we might ask for a little more height or something to make it work for them financially so um but I still stand behind that I I do have a worry about the lack of incentives but that I want to bring more affordable housing to I mean like a broken record I'll always sing that's that's sort of one of the biggest issues that we have we're trying to work towards so I'm coming around to like let's just try it and um and trust that the staff will really monitor it and see that we're not losing opportunities um and that um we'll come back to it if it seems like uh property owners and particularly the smaller ones are saying you know this is just too onerous or um or they're asking a lot for a lot of other waivers or bonuses because it is on so um so yeah I I um I still have that concern but I'm willing to just stand behind the staff that's worked really hard on this over the years and um see how it goes. Thank you Maria. Chris did you want to respond? I just wanted to mention one more thing I think that um when this was first put on the books in 2005 um it talked about if a project requires a special permit then um inclusionary zoning is required and at that time um there was a decision made to interpret the special permit to only be for a special permit for use but um conceivably it could have been it could have gone the other direction and um it turns out that most uh projects that come before us these days require special permits for something either a dimensional setback or um height requirements or a lot covering requirements lots of different things require special permits so um if we had been interpreting the bylaw uh to um to involve all special permits from the beginning we would have a lot more affordable units right now so I feel like we're you know it's it's going to be okay and the only um and and the other thing I wanted to say was that in the bg zoning district there's very little opportunity for making to do any incentives any dimensional incentives you can't really make the building um any taller unless you go to a sixth floor and I think that's going to be something that people aren't going to want um you can't really give a lot coverage um deviations to any extent because you're already allowed 95 lot coverage you might be able to do a little bit more with building coverage but there really isn't much of an incentive to do um to to give developers in the bg zoning district there may be some incentives in other districts but it's um the last time we brought a very complicated inclusionary zoning bylaw to town meeting it was you know rejected and we just felt it was important to make this a bylaw that could be understood by people and could be worked with and um just not to make it to um to impossibly complicated thank you chris I am noticing the time and in cognizance that I'm sure there are people in the audience that would like to ask their questions so I'm going to ask shallony and dug whether they can wait on theirs until we've recognized the public and I'm seeing yeses for that so we're going to move on to questions from the public so at this point if you are in the attendees and you have joined up and you have a question regarding the bylaw not that you want to speak in favor of it or in opposition to it but actually have a question please raise your hand using the raise hand button we are going to start with and I want to remind people that they will have up to three minutes questions in theory should take less than three minutes though um we're going to start with ted parker and you should be able to unmute yourself ted thank you uh a very simple question um the 80 percent and 50 percent numbers what do those translate into real dollar amounts what's the current uh you know in common nate do you have those numbers handy for say a four-member family yeah I um you know I don't have them right um off the bat it's so it you know the income the way the income translates into how much you know 30 percent of your income prorated every month is what the rent should be plus allowances for utilities so you know it's not you know you can make under that and then the rent is set I understand all of that part I just want to know what the real numbers are because one of the options if there's a if there's a payment in lieu you're gonna you're requiring this bylaw would require four times the eight percent of the of that income right so that's a real number so it changes because it's frequently recalculated but you have no idea what that number is now so I what I what I was going to do is look base base it on the income or the rent that can be charged at um at aspen heights not say for instance like aspen heights I'm looking at their website it's not what the income is so for instance like a one-bedroom you can charge almost $1,200 for an affordable one bedroom and it goes up from there so you know whether what you know that's at 80 percent area median income and so that's um you know that's that's the you know that's what the that's what they can charge for rent right but but you're but the bylaw says that a payment in lieu right which is which you are offering that option would be four times the the the the that the uh the reference income oh yeah so four times right so the area median income is not based on 80 or six percent the area median income for Amherst is say seventy five thousand dollars um so you're saying it's an Amherst or of the catchment area the greater springfield metropolitan catchment area I'm confused about what you're so so the income for the rental amounts is based on the area median income that springfield metropolitan statistical area but the payment in lieu of is just the median income for Amherst calculated by whom I think the bylaw said that may I answer I think yes I had an answer so 80 percent of area median income for a family of four I believe is about 68 thousand dollars so you multiply 68 thousand times x times four so the Amherst the Amherst median 80 percent of the Amherst median income is 68 thousand it's the springfield area median income and we're part of the springfield area so I think the question has been answered um and we are going to move on to the next person um so the next is Brendan Bailey for a question oh I have to sorry Brendan I forgot to allow you to talk thank you very much yeah I was trying to figure that out myself I said this is going to be tough uh but my question it's not necessarily a question specifically the comment that I have doesn't speak directly in opposition or in favor of the amendment but it's more input from my association and we've actually touched on a little bit tonight I didn't know what the appropriate time would be for me to bring that forward you you can do that now if it's not in favor or against okay super um well thank you all very much for allowing me to be here and do we need to state name and where you're from yeah sorry I forgot to say that um just just state um if you know your district what district you're from if you live in amherstown if not just identify what town you do live in and if you're representing someone identify them sure so again my name is Brendan Bailey I'm the CEO for the Realtor Association of Pioneer Valley um and I live in Long Meadow uh right next to Alex's bagels actually if you know where that is on edgwood um anyway so the comments that I want to bring forward um are really about its input not speaking for or against and um there have already been some comments directly on what I'm talking about um and that really involves the cost the current proposal does not contain uh cost offsets uh for affordable unit requirement and we really urge you guys to include an appropriate offset in any final language most common what we've seen nationally is a density bonus which again has been talked about a little bit which works to defray costs of the affordable units over a larger base when this isn't present developers may not have the ability to finance projects or pass along and they you know these costs can get passed on to the end user one thing that we really recommend if I don't believe this has been done a financial feasibility analysis can provide a basis for that appropriate offset and you know we would be happy to talk about that I'm not sure if this body is familiar with our organization um my predecessor was the gentleman by the name of Ben Scranton um he retired previously and I and I took his place now as CEO um so we're making a big effort for our association to be involved with our uh 68 municipalities because our association does represent all the realtors throughout hampton hampshire and franklin county so it's a lot of area to cover uh but a lot of good work to to do so um I just wanted to put that forward to you guys and specifically the feasibility study that is something that we can help with actually um because we are a local association but then we do have our state association and the national association as well so whenever you're going through policies such as this I know we're a little late to the game in this instance but we can perform a lot of these uh studies for you and also through grant processes that we have with our national association and things like that so we're simply here to be a resource and I appreciate the time thank you brandon um next actually are there any other questions Nina while um please unmute yourself and state where you live and then ask your question uh Nina while I live um in emerson district four and I've been aware of center east commons because it it sprouted up in in in my neighborhood very close to me and my understanding is it has no affordable units first of all is that true and second would these if they were in place when they were um applying for their permit would they have had affordable housing units so I I lost you for a second so I just want to confirm your questions the first one is whether center east amherst has any affordable units and the second is if this bylaw were in place at the time they were granted their permit would they have been required for units is that correct okay chris um it does not have any affordable units and if this bylaw were in place when it was being permitted it would have been required to have some affordable units thank you um any other questions from the public we're going to recognize mac user please state your name and where you live and then ask your question after you unmute hi this is chad uh I don't know the district but it's steven and evans district four yeah they switched districts and uh the numbers and all that I haven't kept up with it in the 20 or 30 years I've lived here um I'd say a lot of it half of it I've been following the affordable housing issue in town I remember in the old day what I call the old days we had a different figure same as the first question first citizens question about the percentages I've noticed that we've gone from 30 percent most of the language now um is in the 60 and 80 not even in 50 percent of the AMI because we have such a severe issue here with our anchor institution really creating you know in the last five ten years declining population in the by park people who work in town commuting in from chickapee and so forth we really need to since there's a radical problem we need a radical solution so I'm wondering why that 30 percent was is you don't see it anymore it's 60 and 80 thank you thank you chad um Chris did you want to answer that or Nate you know than 30 of the area median income that's the correct yeah I think that you know um typically uh to have that low of a you know to have an income um of that nature and the rent of that nature usually it's a developer who can apply for subsidies it's not typically a market rate or you know most developers aren't specialized to know how to do that there is a lot you know there it does take a lot of um you know expertise to apply for subsidies and manage that so you know so for comprehensive permits or other projects they can go to 30 percent and we're we're actually saying that the 60 and 80 are maximums so a developer if they're willing they could voluntarily have a lower AMI we're just not requiring it because it is you know it would take a lot um I think at that level whoops you cut out I think Nate just froze you cut out at the end then yeah you you cut out at around at that level oh yeah I was just saying I think at that level we need more subsidy or more offsets because it is you know there is then a greater differential between market rate and the 30 percent uh you know rental amounts at 30 percent AMI and I just think that there's not you know I think that would be a really restrictive requirement I think I said that developers can voluntarily go that low but we it's just not a requirement you know the 60 and 80 are maximums thank you Nate and thank you Chad um seeing no other questions we're going to move to public speaking in favor revision at this point if you are in favor of the revisions proposed for article 15 please and you would like to speak to them please please raise your hand um for recognition you will have up to three minutes to speak we are going to I'm going to recognize um John Hornick at this time okay I believe I'm here everyone can hear me we can okay I appreciate the opportunity to talk and I also appreciate the work that the planning department particularly Nate Malloy has done on this as other people have mentioned uh I think this is the time to do this I understand that there are costs as well as administrative requirements that developers have to pick up in order to be able to do affordable housing um I don't think that's an insurmountable barrier we already have developers who are doing this in town Nate mentioned Aspen Heights there are other developments that Barry Roberts has on University Drive that's completed another one he's now building so developers can figure a way to do this um from the little bit of experience that I've had learning about affordable development one thing that I understand is that there are always problems that come up costs that are not anticipated and developers just figure out how to how to deal with it these are not an insurmountable or they don't present insurmountable obstacles on the other hand would they prefer to have to do these things to add costs to add administrative requirements well of course they wouldn't I mean anybody else in any business wants to minimize their costs and minimize their administrative requirements and that's absolutely going to be true of any developer in Amherst or anywhere else uh one of the former members of the housing trust approached the developer in town about voluntarily adding inclusionary units or affordable units to a development that was in the planning stage and he was kind of interested and then he got back to my colleague and said well you know I've talked to my banker I talked to a realtor and I talked to somebody else and they all said you don't want to get involved in that it's extra costs and extra work so I think that people are not going to do this voluntarily because indeed it does involve extra costs and extra work but again it's not so much in the way of extra costs or extra work that it's not impossible particularly when you're renting a new one or one bedroom apartment for 1800 to $2,000 a month or a three bedroom two bedroom apartment for $3,000 a month um the rental market in Amherst is very very strong developers can't move somewhere else you can't go up those rents in Sunderland or Hadley or Northampton or Eastampton if they want to play and get involved in projects of that nature Amherst is the place that they need to be so to me this is a question of values yes on the one hand we know that it will make development a little bit more difficult for people who go into that business on the other hand we also know absolutely that if we don't see no affordable housing through any number of routes and inclusionary zoning is an important one then people who need that housing are not going to be able to get it uh you know I don't I people in this group don't attend meetings of the Pioneer Valley network to end homelessness or you may have not seen the way fine sorry wrapping up yeah okay thanks Mandy Jo there's one more sentence if you want okay there's all kinds of evidence that we have a huge need and inclusionary zoning is a way to do this we don't need more debate we don't need more study we just need to get it done thank you thank you John next up is uh Janet Keller please unmute yourself identify yourself and you can speak then hi thank you um for uh the opportunity to speak and um thanks uh to the staff for a terrific very clear and convincing presentation I'd like to add to uh John's list of groups that um of developers that did find a way to add the affordable units presidential apartments did so they added six out of 54 at um that development and I'd like to speak to the need um North Square was able to um with the comprehensive permit to offer 26 affordable units to uh households with very low income 50 percent of area median income and um out of the 130 units total and um almost immediately they told us that those 26 were snapped up um and we have some terrific new neighbors as a result um and 300 people went on their waiting list um the need is really great and um um I am so hoping that we get this this change because it's a huge need thank you thank you Janet seeing no other hands in ready to speak in favor we will be moving on to public speaking in opposition of revision um and before I recognize anyone on that if anyone raises their hand for that I just want to state for those that are joining us for the 8 p.m. hearing we are getting close to wrapping up the 7 p.m inclusionary zoning hearing so just be patient with us as we move through finishing the 7 p.m. hearing um and so we are looking for anyone to raise their hand if they're going to speak in opposition to the revision of the bylaw so at this point I'm going to recognize kitty axelson berry please unmute yourself and identify where you live and your name and you may have three minutes okay I'll try to be faster kitty axelson berry um 89 stony hill road so I just don't think it goes quite far enough I agree with andrew mcdonald when he was um giving a cautionary um statement about um well well I forget which one he was wait a minute um I think it's two pro developer in that 500 square feet is actually a football and a half football field and a half away so like this other place for you know this kind of ghetto where the affordable housing could be put is yes it's not as far as north amherst from the downtown amherst but it is a football field and a half away that's I think that's really too far and that that should be modified um I also feel that there should be 20 affordable housing not 10 and I'm and I agree with Doug Marshall that it should be or not and in terms of those two clauses of who what what what developers have to do um or how they qualified and um and I hope that these regulations would pass on from owner to owner and I don't know whether it has to say that or not but um yeah I just wanted to mention it that's all thank you very much kitty we are next going to recognize Richard Bentley you should be able to unmute yourself right now please identify yourself and where you live you have three minutes am I unmuted you are well I I'm hoping that a lot of this zoning stuff is very confusing and very difficult and there are all sorts of little squiggles and things that people can do that other people don't notice and they like it that way I'm told that the planning board is going to provide some sort of direct of kind of I don't know what it is but it's a direct way of communicating with the public so uh we can know exactly what's going on because there's so much this zoning stuff is a nightmare uh to most people and so I'd like to urge them to get busy with that I'm told that's something they're going to do I haven't been told when they're going to do it but let's get busy with that making all of this known to the public in simple easy ways thank you Richard um Chris would you like to identify the website that you have created to identify all the zoning that is being worked on thank you Mandy um yes on the planning department web page because not all of these things come from the planning board on the planning department web page is a section that has all of the zoning amendments that are currently being considered it also has all the documents that we've shared with the planning board or with um CRC documents that have been submitted from others it's got comments from everybody on it um and we could send Mr. Bentley a link to that page tomorrow thank you Chris um we are still looking for hands for people speaking in opposition to the revision Janet Keller has raised her hand again um I will allow you to talk Janet even though I'm confused you may unmute yourself um I raised my hand again because I was confused and this technically probably fits into this category but um I failed to support Steve Schreiber's suggestion that um this be amended to reduce the subdivision exceptions thank you thank you Janet um seeing no more hands seeking to speak in opposition hold on seeing no more hands seeking to speak in opposition we will move on to the planning staff do you have any final words to say yeah I think the um you know I think maybe I misunderstood Ted Parker's question and so I just um and um so I you know the uh I was gonna share my screen just to show what I pulled from HUD just to um you know if this is visible to everyone it is meeting family income for Amherst it is calculated uh based on the Springfield MSA but it's 81,700 for uh fiscal year 21 and the 80 percent income limit so for a family of four it's 67,300 and um you know and it's you know it's based on family size and the rents um you know are calculated by um you know affordable housing developer will have a marketing agent you work with the state to come up with rents and so for Aspen Heights actually which is a new you know uh the Amherst motel site you know uh the affordable bedrooms are actually more expensive than I thought so one bedroom is 1366 a month a two bedroom is 1537 and a three bedroom is 1700 a month so the you know the mercury rents at 80 80 percent AMI can still be quite high you know there's wiggle room there in terms of utilities and other things this these include utilities um so you can back out a number of utilities but I do think that um so you know the if someone were to apply we'd say this is what 80 percent is uh and then that's what the meeting family income is so we would you know we would go through a process of using a HUD data set to determine those those numbers thank you Nate um anything else from the planning staff any other questions from the planning board or the community resources committee I am seeing none um Ted I encourage you to email the CRC and the planning board and the planning staff if you have continuing questions about the numbers um within the next day or so seeing that there are no more questions from anyone um we are going to take a motion we're going to do a joint motion so that one motion gets made but all committee members of all committees vote at the same time so is there a motion to close the public hearing on article 15 inclusionary zoning Johanna so moved is there a second I second and Dorothy Pam seconds and okay and so we will take a roll call vote seeing that there's doesn't seem to be discussion on this I'm going to try and go down the list if I miss any planning board members I apologize and just speak up as I do after I finish the whole list so Jack sorry about that I was muted uh yes okay um and then Janet um yes Tom yes Andrew hi Doug hi Johanna hi Maria okay and did I get Tom yes is that the whole planning board yes okay and then my committee is Shalini yes um Mandy is a yes Dorothy yes Evan hi Steve yes that is a unanimous vote of both committees to close the hearing at 8 13 p.m um the planning board I believe Jack will try to take this up for discussion and recommendation at the conclusion of the next hearing but that will be up to Jack and you guys when we conclude that hearing the CRC is intending to discuss it and vote on a recommendation at its May 25th regular meeting and if the planning board has made its own recommendation by that time at this time we are going to move on to the next scheduled public hearing um this is the one that was scheduled for 8 p.m it is now 8 13 p.m and I am going to read the statements again and that is in accordance with MGL chapter 40a the Amherst Planning Board and the Community Resources Committee of the Town Council holds this joint public hearing on Wednesday May 19th 2021 to consider the following proposed amendments to the zoning bylaw please note in accordance with Governor Baker's March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law we are conducting this virtually and will accommodate public comment to the extent practical before I read I will read the zoning bylaw that we are here for while I'm doing that Pam can you try to bring in Kathy Shane and Darcy Dumont from the attendees list as presenters so this is a public hearing on zoning bylaw article 16 temporary moratorium for 180 days on building permits for construction of residential buildings with three or more dwelling units by voter petition article pursuant to MGL chapter 40a section 5 and it is to see if the town will vote to add article 16 temporary moratorium for 180 days on building permits for construction of residential buildings with three or more dwelling units to the zoning bylaw which would temporarily halt the issuance of building permits for the proposed construction of any residential building including three or more dwelling units in the business general BG business limited BL or general residence RG zoning districts in the town for a period of 180 days the 180 day delay will provide time for town staff and a consultant to provide outreach to residents to assist in drafting design standards and to amend the zoning requirements regarding streetscape sidewalk widths and green space for new multi-unit developments building heights and setbacks required in the zoning bylaw dimensional table inclusionary zoning requirements the definition of mixed use buildings municipal parking overlay in the BG district that allows for no parking spaces for new residential buildings and allows removal of existing parking spaces without contribution to a public parking fund yet allows tenants to secure town parking permits for town parking spaces irrespective of the number of residential units climate action resilience criteria for new construction recommended in the town climate action adaptation and resilience plan if the town is not able to implement amended zoning bylaws addressing all of these areas listed in this section before 180 days then there shall be a 90 day extension of the temporary moratorium so that is what this hearing is on i will go through the process for this hearing again because a number of people have joined us since the last one we are going to start with board and committee member disclosures and then there will be an applicant presentation the petitioner presentation and it is being done by counselors Darcy Dumont Dorothy Pam and Kathy Shane uh there there will be questions then then there will be questions from the boards and committees the planning board and the community resources committee then we will move on to questions from the public then we will move on to public speaking in favor of this revision of the zoning bylaw and we will move on to public speaking in opposition to the revision of the bylaw then we will receive any response from the petitioner sponsors and then we will conclude with additional questions from the board or committee and only after that will we take motions to close the hearing if it's appropriate at that time so are there any questions regarding the process seeing none i will hand well i will first ask for board and committee member disclosures at this time Darcy do you have a you're not on the board or committee but do you have a disclosure to make um because you raised your hand and you're muted okay i do not see any board or committee member disclosures so we will move on to the applicant presentation um i just want to confirm that we can hear counselor Shane and um Dumont so can you each just say you're present we've already done it for counselor Pam so we don't have to do that again yeah yeah okay i heard you both simultaneously um i believe counselor Shane you are starting and yes and we i think you can share your own screen i can share my own screen okay i believe so if you can't let me know okay is this showing it is now showing yes okay okay i'm gonna start out we we're a team of three counselors and just so people know the origin of this there is a provision in the mass general law that allows 10 or more residents to bring a proposed bylaw um and that triggered this hearing um and my my role and before i turn it over to Dorothy and Darcy is to say why we think they need there's an urgent need for temporary moratorium on and again if this is on as Mandy read this is on multi-unit residential projects in the downtown and adjacent areas um one thing you should all know is that when we first came up with the concept and drafted a bylaw on the word got out we were inundated with requests where people said can i drive to your house can you come to your my home so i can sign it and we had over 200 people sign and deliver a registered voter petitions that were certified to get to the council to make sure we had enough we only needed 10 but we we over exceeded because of the enthusiasm and i think that's a real reflection on what people's perception is on where we're going and the needs to take a pause a six month pause this is a temporary moratorium because we have a real opportunity in Amherst for change we're already as we just heard with the discussion of the inclusionary zoning bylaw this has triggered a new energy engagement of the planning board the planning staff has been leading extremely creatively with new ideas that are plugging the holes and gaps we have in our current bylaws and thinking about what we want in the future what designs we want what is our vision for Amherst and i think this is motivated of what why there's a sense of urgency is people's of experience of what is happening what has been happening to our downtown when people see large looming residential units downtown with shadows with lack of walkable sidewalks or any public space to greet and convene or even just sit outside the building we're seeing small businesses be displaced well known businesses and even though they're supposed to be mixed juice the there's been a lack of creativity on what is that mixed juice what's in that downstairs empty corridor often we aren't seeing businesses being drawn in subsidized or creation there's been no parking provided by the new buildings because of the zoning overlay but we're losing parking places some of the new buildings have been built where there used to be parking places so people's experience of coming downtown is they can't find a place to park and there's no provision to pay into a fund to build us a parking garage and as we already heard in the first hour the new units and there've been well over 200 and there's another 58 online to come on aren't coming with affordable units so there aren't units that people who are residents low or moderate income residents of Amherst can move into so it's a real time to rethink our current zoning provisions look at where there are gaps where there are holes we desperately need design standards the plan the our master plan itself calls for them and says we should take pause periodically to look at where we're going and do we like it and we've got an amazing planning staff that is already started working energetically on this with a proposal to hire a consultant to start working with the consultant to give us design guidelines and streetscape and I was at a meeting with Chris Brestrup when she was talking about why she felt we need a consultant to work with us and it's and and what she expressed it as a time for a public discussion to examine what we like about downtown and what steps we need to make it better and more suitable to our future need and I think that's the sentiment it's not a sentiment of stopping development but saying how we develop really matters and this is a time out of a crisis of a pandemic we have an opportunity to make a real difference and I'm going to turn to Dorothy where this is the motivation of doing it now to give us time to put these on the books so they are effective for any new building that comes in to downtown and adjacent areas so we can see something different going forward and Dorothy I'm going to turn it over to you to talk about what we can gain by this in by taking this pause by hitting the pause button thank you Kathy so what does Amherst gain with a temporary moratorium we want to create housing units homes for individuals and families diverse in age race ethnicity and income we want to require inclusionary zoning affordable housing unit in multifamily buildings the one of the things we need to do is we want to respect and build on Amherst's historical cultural artistic intellectual and educational resources because we really are and should be a year-round town we want to preserve and adapt historic and iconic buildings that help define the town that let you know you're in Amherst not in some other big place we'd give it get time to establish and enforce design standards building heights no sunless canyons the despite being told that new buildings will barely cast a shadow no pay no attention to the man behind the curtain just believe your own eyes one reason people are so excited about this is that zoning is very complicated often we don't know what the rules mean but if you go downtown you can see it we see it so everyone has an opinion everyone has a thought and they're saying wait a minute we need to pause because our town is changing in ways that we don't really like we need to have setbacks from the steep street for safe pedestrian friendly wide sidewalks so that people can meet and greet each other as you would expect to do in a small town we need the public and private green space on both sides both north and east pleasant streets the planning department has been working on this and discussing it for quite a while and I want to add that the town did not rebuild Kendrick park so that developers would not have to include outdoor social green space for its tenants the new playground equipment the informal sitting areas and the performing spaces they were made for all of us the park is there for all of us in the heart of downtown and what do we get if we do this and reassess our parking situation we would then support and stimulate retail businesses services and cultural and artistic activities that would draw residents and visitors downtown for a lively interesting amourst that one that has been and is meant to be so I totally support this moratorium so that we can get a chance to get this thing right and get the design correct and now Darcy it's your turn thank you so what would the temporary moratorium bylaw actually do uh first it would hit the park with a six-month moratorium on new permits for buildings with three or four more more units and in three three zoning districts the bg uh which is downtown the bl which is the limited business district and the arch so it would allow time to act develop and implement provisions regarding mixed use building the mixed use building definition and inclusionary zoning which we see has already both of them have already gotten a great start and a deep thanks goes out to the planning department for getting started with those um but we have so much more to do we need to the design standards for streetscapes we need to revisit the parking overlay district provisions downtown and i'm just going to take a couple minutes to talk about potential climate action criteria for new construction although the new buildings have some green features we want to make sure new construction is following the most updated recommendations for green buildings we want to prepare the town for the possibility of opting into the state zero energy stretch code that was just passed into law once it's completed town staff will be presenting a climate action adaptation and resilience plan within the next few weeks and it will include a number of recommendations regarding the building sector some of which are recommended to be implemented in the near term since we have an emissions reduction goal of 25 percent by 2025 it'll be important for the planning board and crc to take those recommendations under consideration for zoning amendments during this temporary pause also the moratorium moratorium on permits would not apply to new businesses homes due plexus or accessory dwelling units specifically and the temporary delay could be extended for 90 days one final note um since our first meeting on this matter at the town council the resident petitioners easily obtained over 880 signatures supporting a temporary moratorium from all over town and just to clarify there are two petitions in the packet today one was gathered via an online petition and one is of folks who signed a paper petition but not the online petition so the total was around 880 signatures many signers took time to voluntarily add their comments as you can see people were eager to add their voices the comments cover the full gamut of issues and are passionately felt as i've said before this is an issue that i discovered on the campaign trail and then campaigned on because it appeared to be an issue that the vast majority of my constituents supported having a downtown where residents want to spend their time so we officially urge the planning board and the CRC to affirmatively recommend the adoption of article 16 the temporary moratorium for 180 days on building permits for construction of residential buildings with three or more dwelling units that and that is the three of us mandy with in record time i think so i will stop sharing my screen thank you kathy and and thank you for making it short and sweet and i i do want to note for those watching that if people have been counting there are i believe seven counselors currently in the panelist side because we have added two presentations the CRC will not be deliberating or debating the merits of the bylaw proposal tonight that will happen at the may 25th meeting of the CRC and that is why this did not need to be noticed as a full council meeting because the deliberation won't happen there will be questions asked and answered but that is not deliberation and so i just wanted to make that clarify that for people who might be questioning or wondering so with that presentation thank you counselors we will move on to questions from the board the planning board or the CRC please raise your hand if you have a question to ask the petitioners at this time and i will recognize you as the questions come and the hands get raised we will start with andrew nice manager thanks for the presentation this is we've been getting so many emails it's been great to to actually hear to hear the story so i appreciate that i had a couple questions from seeing that there was one i think dorthy you had mentioned build on our educational resources and when i first heard that i was thinking like well wouldn't wouldn't student student housing be a way of helping to build on that i'm sure that's not what you meant so i was wondering if you might be able to clarify what what that means to you building on those educational resources well i said intellectual and educational as well as artistic and cultural i mean bookstores i mean um tea houses i'm performing spaces um we're a town of people who read think like to do things like to create things and some of that should be downtown um i mean to go downtown it shouldn't just be a place you go if you want to drink or you want a piece of pizza uh it should be a place where we can go to mix and mingle which we don't do enough i remember i remember back before covid we would have street fairs and it would be a whole different feeling it would be oh my god here's the people and i know a lot of them and we're all walking up and down and then maybe there was um the the aerial dancers or things displaying going on you realize this is an interesting town with interesting people but right now you don't really get that feeling when you go to that part of the downtown so i'm just saying let's bring back the liveliness that um is part of amherst okay i do miss those days um and then i guess one other just quick follow would be um how much how much is the archipelago new proposal driving the timing of this is this like a response to them in particular or um is this something that i guess i'm i'm just trying to understand like is this is this almost singling out that particular developer and i understand them you know the the the the concerns people have about their development but is that is that really the primary driver for this this has been on the books since we ran for office the changing of the downtown the closing of the small shops the uh one day we woke up and the gazette had a picture five identical buildings filling that whole space that hasn't happened yet so people have been coming and writing and calling and complaining about this and saying what's happening for two or three years now so it's not singling out the latest development that this is responding to very deep uh express in other words we didn't create the issue people have come to us out of their concern and upset thank you did you have anything to add to that yeah i wanted andrew clearly yet another building on the scene does make a difference but as the reason there aren't buildings in that whole corridor is some people managed to get bertuchis the old bertuchis declared historical and there was a delay because we did see a wall so i think their perception is we have a lot to lose right now we can lose where the new buildings coming in you talked about the building design you didn't talk about how many parking spaces we're going to lose that they're not public but people parked there and uh the fact that we don't i had one person say oh but they all pay into a parking fund i said oh no we sometimes have that we don't have a parking fund uh the sense that the uh sidewalk at that pinch point will never get wider unless we start talking about setbacks and put it in our code that there's a moment where you can maybe have momentum for change and if you don't act you'll lose it and we don't have a very big downtown it could all be lost pretty quickly what if we don't think of this so there is this sense of urgency um because each one that has happened makes means that's that much less we can do and i just want to say one more thing about education this notion of a year-round economy that dork if you look at the UMass schedule they're they're here about seven months a year so if you're thinking about a running a business downtown an entertainment business if we don't develop up something that visitors want to come to emmerced during those other months or we want to come it's really hard for small businesses to make it i mean what do they do the other five months so there's an interest of in the affordable units but also what brings people to downtown year-round and and so the composition of who is in that building and who would want to move into the building is also important thank you happy thank you did you have you you're done for now i i guess maybe could i could i just propose just one other final thing would be um i've i've lived in town for a long time and you know this some of these areas have been parking lots forever right like would we would we rather some of these areas continue to be parking lots for the next 30 years if we can't you know if we can't get developers to build it now i'll just respond i think it's not that as much i've seen some towns do a linkage or a linkage fee or an impact fee is saying if you're not going to provide parking then contribute toward a parking garage so we've also for 20 years been waiting for the parking garage so that notion that you build a public utility that will serve your own interest and it's a direct link to your own the benefits of people who are going to live in that building so that is the alternative we don't have to keep the parking lot i agree thank you andrew thank you kathy tom hi thank you guys for the presentation um and thank you for sharing your thoughts i think one of the big questions i have is about the correlation between a moratorium and the results that you're asking for and the end right and so if we go through a process with a consultant and they come back and say we want a hard streetscape with five-story buildings and that's the result is this project then not done because we have to go back to the table six months after six months and we have another 90 days where we try to refine that to get what certain people want or is this like what are the criteria for this being a quality productive session and i think my internet's a little bad sorry um and then the second part is sort of correlating that to your results in regard to things like businesses and bookstores like how is a moratorium going to produce a bookstore downstairs downtown and change the dynamic of that culture when the some of the developers are having a hard time finding those you know people to even occupy those spaces now so i guess i'm curious about how where these correlations come from and how this moratorium is going to produce these results that you're talking about and i and i appreciate your results like i i i agree with that many of those things should be addressed and i do think we need design guidelines and i do think we need to a more robust business downtown and i do think that we want to make a concert concerted effort for a more inclusionary experience and and and living space downtown but i i'm not quite sure that what you're proposing is going to get us there in six months and i i guess that's what i'm asking how do these correlate thank you kathy or dorothy kathy um i'll be willing to jump in you know i i think you're right tom it's ambitious so what what we're we've been observing um in a very positive way is how intensely you all have been working and the planning staff has been working the town's been talking about hiring a planning director but i think there's an opportunity to start to figure some of this out if we're not racing against time if there's a cause i heard the discussion on the amount of retail space in the new building that's being proposed um and how small it was um i'm watching other places say you could design a commercial space to have pop-up spaces and flexible use inside so it can be season multi seasonal we could get we could think of a large space if if we would say a mixed use building should really not just be an apartment building with a tiny square that we call retail so it gets out from under um so we could think of those our zoning then say that like do we have to say in our zoning that there has to be x kind of space no i guess that's the difference in like buying something versus i think the hardest thing is your question about the retail and commercial i think we could certainly get street setbacks redefined how far away from the road um what the the feeling and look at the building is uh some climate action the hardest is how do we this is what every small town is grappling with right how do we bring back downtown on and main street first we were losing it to the malls now we're using losing it to the internet so that is a challenge but i think there's some creative thought and up here um in the north square where there's really big retail space it's empty right now i think there's an opportunity for some creative thinking um to get ever smaller with no retail space in large apartment buildings we'll lose it forever we won't have it downtown thank you kathy dorthy did you have something to add well i just wanted to say that i understand those are really good questions and we can't we are not saying that we have all the answers but we do know that if we go the way we're going we'll be stuck with our downtown permanently changed these buildings will be there for a long time and you'll have a kind of a dead corridor in the center of town so in hopes that with the consultant and more work such as you have been putting in the planning department is putting in in hopes that we can come up with something better we're proposing moratorium um i mean if we talk about a mixed use building did we really think that um having parking in the side on the first floor of the building is that what we had in mind when we talked about mixed use i don't think so um so there are a lot of problems and so we're saying we don't know if we can solve all of them but we want to at least give a chance to try in a short pause this is not against building it is not against development but it's a chance to try to look at it again and perhaps with a more creativity there's some new ideas that we've heard may happen at amherst works that will be really exciting there's maybe a new energy in town for doing things differently we'd like a chance to see if we could apply that to that part of the downtown too i think the second part of my question is a little bit more logistical one which is how do we know when this is done and then how do we know when we need another three months and then after three months how do we know when we need another three months so i guess i'm curious like what who and what qualifies completion of all of these items rafi kathy dorsi either well i think that's a great question tom and clearly we we drafted a bylaw and we got it here to the public hearing so the same way um i've been watching what's been going on with inclusionary zoning it's getting refined i think those questions could be answered you could make a trigger point you could say you know what would condition taking it off they aren't answered in the current bylaw so i would think that chris might have something to offer here you're putting her on the spot but i would i would really prefer not to comment at this time thanks very much okay so we we we have a question we know that we we would be done after that is consultant has presented design guidelines and you the planning board planning department have really gone through it and decided what you think is the right way to go and then i think that we would uh you would or you know or the staff would come up with a new uh bylaw and then we would be done because but i do think that's a good question we certainly have no interest in a process that keeps continuing and continuing and hanging things up we do not want that we're talking about a pause not a series of delaying tactics because we just love the way it is downtown right now that is not the aim thank you um steve so i have a comment question then a comment so um my comment is we've actually had two de facto moratoria in building in the central business district the first one was from about 1880 to about 2010 so during that period of i can't even do the math very long period nothing substantial no substantial private buildings were built in downtown larger than three stories the tucker taff building it's the only private building that was built in downtown in that entire period between boltwood place and the probably the buildings where the 18s block is we need some reflection on why that happened during that more than a hundred year period had they was eating their lunch the you know basically the root nine was being developed while nothing was happening in an air worst so the next period 2010 till um i don't know three years ago was there were several new buildings built in downtown and so the second moratoria is the last three years so nothing has been built in downtown since um when he's pleasant so spring street has started and was stopped because of the pandemic but basically we've had three years of this council council du man i'm sorry count candidate du man brought up this idea three years ago and what's happened nothing has happened until you know there's a newspaper article about new buildings being proposed so i myself am very skeptical about you know um our ability to you know to meet these deadlines so that wasn't my question my question was how many new units have been built in the downtown area you guys have that in your your package and i cannot find it at the year darcy your dorthy do you have a quick answer to that i'm not your numbers person but i think it was like 220 230 it's it's a hundred um all of my information comes from chris's staff but it's 170 units are already up if we do um can and then the other there's another 58 coming on with spring street so let's say 200 yes let's say that 200 units have been built downtown in the last 10 years if those exact same units were built in rn as houses that would be um half acre lots so that would be 100 acres so to use somebody else's analogy earlier that would be 100 football fields so we've already learned earlier that a football field is a very long distance right five so um 500 um 100 football fields would be used for those exact units that have been built in a very compact area of downtown and i'm curious as to why there is a sense in the in your message that that is not somehow sustainable or meeting climate action goals darcy do you want to respond to that your um yeah i guess the the density argument around creating units downtown is um you know it's it's valid in particular when you have um um elements of life that people can you know if they have food and hardware and clothing and all the other things that people need you can have a dense no car walkable bikeable situation but if we're creating buildings um that are admittedly designed for students and and all those students have cars um that that isn't a climate friendly situation there are a lot of things that we can do to make it climate friendly but um density only is a thing if you have the amenities um to to accommodate people living there thank you darcy um shalini yeah i think i'm um also following up on what tom had said earlier that you know these are goals we all share the um whether it's the planning board the planning department um CRC the council and again how is what you're proposing going to lead to that uh specifically when we talk about affordable housing is one of the goals we're already working on inclusionary zoning how is pausing building building more building affordable building and so we're already doing the inclusionary zoning so let's remove that from your list perhaps and could there be other ways have you looked at other ways of increasing affordable housing like engaging the developers to use poured and other uh ways of um building small starter homes i know dorthy has mentioned that should love to see communities with uh starter homes and and that is possible as any of you spoken to any of the developers locally to consider those alternatives instead of but and i'm just asking as a question is a moratorium going to result in engaging the developers to provide these alternatives or with a dialogue with them provide us more possibilities so that's one question and then i'll have yeah um i would like to answer that very quickly we don't have inclusionary zoning yet we had a hearing today going to be discussing and voting it because we're in a moratorium now there's a chance that we will have be able to pass the inclusionary zoning bylaw before the next building is built so that in itself that in itself is worth this uh the our attempt of putting this moratorium up so that not there wouldn't be another because we've we've lost so many affordable apartments recently um when i asked one person i said i see you have two accessible apartments um why can't you have some affordable ones and he said because i'm required to have accessible apartments so i have my two but i'm not required to do the other if i'm required to do it i'll do it so one of our little aims is to get inclusionary zoning on the books before anything else is built and yes i have started discussions with some builders um there's many many more to go but yes i have definitely done that because the idea of starter homes in some way which is not land hungry as steve described you know we're not going to go there to the master plan says we're not going to do um taking up huge swaths of land uh for single family homes so i know that um so you've already answered in a way one of the questions the moratorium hopefully will allow exclusionary zoning to get on the books and to be applied for the future buildings um but i agree with you much much more needs to be done i totally agree with your show and we're already doing that though so i'm not sure i understand how the moratorium can pass the bylaw we're going to be discussing it on he doesn't apply to the building that is being under permit now it it that one whatever the permit cannot be anyways not included don't argue over each other okay anyway moving on the next question is another question and then we'll go to yohana yes okay and the other question is about again um the businesses how does improving the design guidelines and sidewalks bring in more businesses we already have blue marble lying empty we we know that it's the internet so um when i spoke with mercantile store before closing this are the only people who buy from their other umass students and they don't have enough business so it's not so how is that going to improve rather than having the bid working with them and they want to put the performance shell or do public market something like thorns market and so it rather than alienating our our developing community all through moratoriums is that more impactful in reaching the goals you've highlighted and i don't see anything that you've mentioned because i don't see how design guidelines is going to lead to more businesses when we could be engaging the building i mean the developing community in business community if anyone wants to answer that do any of the petitioners have a response i would answer it in that right now if you want to go shopping do you want to go on sidewalks that are so narrow that you feel that you're in the street um these storefronts are not inviting when you go to the top part of town across from the common we see uh big buildings we see the small shops are demarked they look smaller friendly they kind of invite you to come in and it's just a whole different feeling so architecture does influence how people feel think and interact and design guidelines help could help create that and is that the reason mercantile score store loose goose all of those i mean i just feel like we're confounding the things to create an argument for the sake of it and is that really what happened i mean of course design guidelines are important but independently to the goals that you've set out here but kathy i'll be short you know shallony you're not wrong that that that is the challenge there's nothing and just remember the motor moratoriums that's been proposed just downtown you can do starter homes all over amherst if you can find developers who want to do them um and they're great ideas and so that but if we want performance shelves we've got to have space for them so i think even the pause button i'm thinking what are some of their buildings where could it be that's important and as you start to think of who is living in the buildings if we had long-term residents the number of people who told me they were ready to move down to spring street when its original proposal was some parking and two and three bedrooms aiming at permanent residents they were ready to sell their homes move downtown until it became studios and one bedrooms and really small studios that person would be there all the time so that's the person who would be more likely to be there in august in june you know in all those months and that's the kind of thing that we have got to be have time and what dorthy just said inclusionary zoning is not on the books if it had been on the books we would have had 30 more units downtown with people living downtown year round if all the big buildings downtown had had to face that and as chris said earlier for rarid reasons they could be big buildings but not have it so that alone is a good reason to at least think a little bit and wait so so but bringing businesses back blue goose this this is the big big challenge that we all have to work on in a cooperative way i agree last last last question about parking has anyone spoken with bid because the developers are ready to build a parking garage without any taxpayers money but we are and so are they more likely to offer that once we stop them from building or would has anyone spoken to them at this point or engaged with them and what is more likely to get is a parking garage when we have going to dialogue with them or when we put moratoriums against them mandy would you like me i'll just do it we have not seen that proposal yet what i'm worried about and i'll tell you just because the one thing i heard is developers could build it and then tenants could buy long-term leases for spots in it and we wouldn't have a public parking garage we would have a garage with spaces that are already been purchased so i think we do need a public parking garage so if the terms were favorable and we could actually it would be great but i have to tell you how how many years we have been waiting for that so if there's money on the table and the parking would be caught with a meter i would love to see it because i haven't seen money on the table yet thank you we're going to move on to yohana thank you um i've been on the planning board since last summer and i see how long it takes us to deliberate about issues and do iterative processes and lots of opportunities for public comment and i'm concerned that 180 days or even 270 days isn't enough time to do all the work that you've laid out in your proposal and so i'd love to hear from you um about that timeline and potentially the planning department about that timeline and then secondarily 180 days or 270 days to have downtown especially the north end in the condition that it is right now seems like i don't know i mean it like they're condemned buildings and cracked parking lots and it's like it's an eyesore and i worry that that in and of itself is repellent rather than creating momentum so would be curious to hear reactions to that as well thank you um kathy or dorthy or darsie okay i think that we we can't take all the time okay had we but world enough in time all right we don't so we would just have to do the best we can within that time and hopefully get those design guidelines and i have talent you know watching what the planning department has put together this year it's an incredible amount of work they would bring it in and then you guys would kind of knock it down i mean i believe it can be done i agree with you um things look bad but we've just lived through a whole year with the spring street looking like a ghost ship um sometimes change is is awkward um and you know going back to the thing with the loose goose i had thought that some of those places went out of business because the people who owned the land said i'm going to be you know we're going to build on this and so people chose to leave it i don't i don't know the details on that but i do agree that we want it to look better we want it to look like amherst though we don't want to have everything that that looks like amherst to disappear and to find that we've walked into this canyon of of like dorms we don't even know who the people are um and they're all the same age we if we want diversity that means age it means families it means singles it means racial it means ethnic it means income and i think that you know we are a town that it really talks about our values a lot and so i think it would be good that we lived our values Darcy did you have something to add uh yeah i i just want to point out that um the three of us are not the only petitioners you know we're actually the petitioners because we're residents who signed the petition but we do you know i i almost feel like we should be inviting some other uh petitioners into the room so that they can also answer questions i don't know how you feel about that but um you know i i feel like we we were asked by a group of the petitioners to make a presentation today but we are not the petitioners so the petitioners are the people who signed the petition that was certified but um i'm gonna ask my question and i will say i reached out to the three councillors because i knew they were sponsors of a similar amendment and i asked them to put me in touch with who would be doing the presentation and they came back with they would be um so i'm gonna take leave to ask my question and then um i think there are no more committee or board member hands so then we're gonna move to the public after that and and my question is going to be similar to following up on the other ones i'm reading the strict language here so i guess it's two questions it says if the town is not able to implement amended zoning bylaws addressing all of the areas listed in this section before 180 days then there shall be a 90 day extension of a temporary moratorium so i have a couple of questions what happens if by some miracle because there's a lot here um the council is able to vote on six proposals to match these six bullet points but shoots one of them down so that it is not implemented does the moratorium continue on what happens if um at the end of 90 days six proposals have not made it to a vote at the council does the moratorium stop or not um what is the intention of the petitioners in that in those two cases i'm gonna i'm gonna just jump in and answer you mandate with um words i've heard you we we brought forth this concept if it can get positively move friendly amendments to fix things like this where three out of five or top priorities um but yes um i don't think in my years when i was trying to bargain uh health change in the united states i didn't start at my lowest common denominator i tried to start where i could move so yes this could be improved um so what you're asking is absolutely right you know does it have to be everything on the list or before that shell those kinds of things i think can be amended and can be fixed thank you kathy um i was just reminded that jack might have a hand up but he can actually raise his hand sorry for not seeing jack i have a small screen don't get too many people on it we'll recognize jack and then we will move on to the next part of the hearing yeah so my my understanding of of the the moratorium is that uh it's you know we're going to proceed with the development proposals that are presented to the planning board within the next you know assuming this moratorium was approved we're going to hear the proposals that are presented to us and in fact i think if your bylaws are um presented and again i i need some some feedback here from chris uh or nate but if some of the bylaws like inclusionary zoning are proposed that the developer will need to incorporate that within their design prior to you know our approval and and there's a number of you know zoning you know bylaw priorities that are that are in the mix right now that that could be come into play so and then in the end when we're talking about building permits building permits um are going to affect you know uh i guess very close to construction which would be for any of the current proposals will be next spring summer so this moratorium seems like to kind of like i'm i'm just wondering about the timing of it i mean i understand there's a lot of concern um but i'm i'm i'm trying to understand if this is really going to get the job done that kathy dorthy and and darcy have uh are proposing because it seems like you know perhaps it should be a a one-year moratorium and then that's just like a non-starter for any sort of like you know business vitality for for amherst that's just a bad look uh but in effect i i don't really think that this is going to do anything with the six-month moratorium any response from the petitioners presenters you're just saying that jack because you think it would take longer than that to get through the issues my understanding is that the the the projects that are in the in the wings are not going to get building permits until way beyond six months and so this more this proposal is i just wondering what the point is it's not stopping anything i i believe we had a discussion that um at a planning board meeting and it's actually in some of one of the i think um this right here okay um what projects would be subject to the moratorium okay and what projects would seem to me and um projects that are not subject to article 16 moratorium because current applications or applications expected soon they're not subject to it none so it sounded like everything that you were working on now would be subject to this moratorium um and the projects that are not subject are ones that are already in spring street already under construction and a number of these are half built or built um and um or northampton road which already had a comprehensive permit so are ones that already have affordable housing this is it seemed to me that it would actually have some effect on not allowing some projects to go to to completion um until we get this thing done and i agree with you we've got it's got to be it cannot be something that that just lingers on and gets expanded and extended because that would be very bad and that is not our intent so i'm going to clear up the question i know chris raised her hand but i'm going to think ask sort of what jack was trying to which is um can a project that has applied for a special permit it if this moratorium is adopted or even right now while it's in public hearing can a project that has applied for either a site plan review or special permit receive that site plan review permit or special permit from the planning board or zba right now uh chris is are you willing to answer a question like that um a project that is being reviewed by the planning board can receive a special permit or a site plan review right now um projects are more affected by zoning amendments that are in the pipeline than they are by this moratorium in my opinion thank you for that um did you have anything else you wanted to say chris because i know you raised your hand um well projects it's it's rather complicated um projects that are um that are going along and being reviewed um and and rob can help me out with this but once um a legal ad for a zoning amendment is published and the legal ad for the inclusionary zoning amendment was published now we had our public hearing tonight um that means that if that zoning amendment is adopted that zoning amendment will apply to whatever projects haven't yet received their permits so um the simplest way to look at this is this inclusionary zoning amendment would apply to the projects that are being proposed for east pleasant street on the other hand there are mechanisms that developers can use to circumvent the application of a zoning bylaw and i'm not going to go into the details about that but it's it's possible that developer will choose to take one of these routes to circumvent so it's all a very complicated kind of thing and what i think we should do is um i'm not going to comment on the moratorium but i think we should put our energy all of our energy into moving forward with the zoning amendments that we're working on and hoping to work on in the future that's what i would like to focus on thank you chris um steve last one and then we're moving to the public how long did the 40 r the very recent 40 r study take did it include a lot of the components that are actually mentioned in these bullets and didn't result in a positive town council vote chris oh um we never got to how long the study took the 40 r study took 40 r study well we started it um in 2018 and i would say we're not completely finished with it yet um so it takes a long time and um it never got as far as the town council i think sorry i was just going to jump in quickly so i think that if you could you know the same i say a 40 r takes like you know a year right if you really focus on it and you have a consultant and staff and you really put effort into it you know it's it's a months long process to have stakeholder interviews you know public forums meetings back and forth so it is a you know there is a kind of an average length of time in its many months thank you for that um at this point we are going to move on to questions from the public part of our public hearing um for anyone from the public who has questions about the proposed article 16 uh temporary moratorium please raise your hands using the raise hand button when the questions are finished we will move on to public speaking in favor of the revision and then moving on to public speaking in opposition so this time really is just for questions um we will i will first recognize when i recognize you please when you unmute state your name and what part of Amherst you live in if you know your district um i'm going to now recognize Nina while you should be able to unmute yourself Nina um yes Nina while i live on high street in Amherst and um i did prepare a um three-minute um written statement that i was going to read but listening to the discussion for the last hour i do have a question for all of you and what i'm hearing is that you feel that the moratorium is not the solution to the problem but what i'm not hearing is do you agree there is a problem that um one east pleasant street one east pleasant and kinder park are a blight on our town they don't work the only tenant in kinder place is mass mutual that's an international fortune 500 company nobody goes in and out that brings no vitality nothing to our town we have a private parking lot at east pleasant what does that do for the public of of the people in our town a private parking lot 200 a month people pay to park their car there so i what i want to hear is there's a problem what is the solution if the moratorium is not the solution what is the solution i think we have a problem thank you for that Nina um and i i will say that you can say your statement when we get to public in favor or in opposition i'm not sure which side you're on so just just when we get there feel free to raise your hand again to make that prepared statement um is there anyone who would like to attempt to answer Nina's questions chris and then steve i would just say reiterate what i said a moment ago which is that we should work on the zoning amendments that we're currently working on and we should hire our consultant and get on with our business that's what i think thank you um steve oh i will try to answer the question from my next door neighbor and fellow architect Nina but the answer is no i don't think there was a problem to the extent that you have presented it in fact i think that we've done a great job and and encouraging builders to build on what were seen to be unbuildable sites were kinder places that was an empty vacant lot with many failed proposals on it and now it's an attractive um i find very attractive home for many new residents in district four and i feel the same way about boltwood place built on the loading basically the service yard of judy's restaurant who would have thought that that could become a place for new residents of amherst the debatable one are the aesthetics of what for me are one east pleasant so i i wish that it were more different than kendrick plays i wish that the storefronts had opened so one of them restaurant opened the other one didn't i think we'd have a very different discussion if those restaurants had open i have no opinion on the what they charge for parking or you know whether or not that parking is is accessible to me because i believe in the downtown parking district which is probably one of the most sustainable overlays that we have it's basically a way of encouraging people to build on build up a core of downtown do i think we can do better absolutely so i think that we have a very strong planning board now which has a zoning bylaw that they can enforce and uh some of there there's a lot of interpretation in the zoning bylaw we have very skilled people um a wide range of opinions on the planning board i think that any new projects that come before the planning board is will i think i'm fully confident that this group can you know help um interpret the current bylaw and help us get even better buildings but no i do not feel the same way you do um nina about um monstrosity or blight or any of that i don't agree with you know any of that actually thank you steve um jack yeah i i've said this several times but the mass mutual um business just gets no respect i mean i again i have a neighbor that moved to amherst because they got employment through the mass mutual business that is in that kinderplace building period and they have a son that's going to be going to crocker farm school in a couple years i mean he's probably three years old i mean i think that's the whole point of what development is supposed to be uh in amherst is to bring people and businesses and families to amherst uh so i'm like i'm just like very confused when people um you know disrespect the businesses that are within the mixed use buildings uh in amherst thank you shalini and then johanna and then we're going to move on to the next question yeah i would answer it in a slightly different way which is that um before pandemic happened we saw a lot of concerted effort with the chambers and the bed to create more vitality and with the town also the council and the town staff working to revitalize our north and redesign our north commons with the kendrick park and there's talks about uh you know things like the block party or the performance shell the farmers market um and the bid going actively trying to create now public market spaces they're trying to be creative and and and we don't want to distract and put more obstacles rather we want to create spaces and when we really talk so i did reach out to barry roberts today and um to understand what are his plans and he talked about the designs that he created which i don't know where the building is because there's so many obstacles at this point but he hired cune riddle which is a local architect to create a design which he thinks people will really like and appreciate and appreciate his aesthetics if you look at amherst works what he's done with that taken an old building and change that or we look at amherst cinnamon his work with that or we look at what uh cindy jones has done with the beacon like she had many community engagement planning sessions to get as much feedback so it's we want to encourage these local developers so we're punishing everyone we're painting everyone with the whether we agree or not but what we're doing is we're saying we don't like those buildings whether they're good but it's a personal perspective you know nina does not like it and steve thinks it's okay so but the point is we are punishing all the other local developers who are so invested in our community and they live here they've lived here for generations and they want to do what's right but we have to create a space for them to be able to come and share i don't think any of them will talk today because there is there's no sense of invitation and cooperation and collaboration here when we talk about moratoriums so i would just answer in that way that yeah nina we are working really hard in trying to engage the different stakeholders including students i spoke to okay last thing i spoke to a student in one east building eastry building because we met on instagram and he's a graduate student he's 40 years old he loves living there and he said i'm different but there is no policing i asked him what is your experience are there more polices so we need to be speaking to people and finding out who lives there who wants to live there we keep saying we want diversity and we want families do families want to live downtown we don't know that and so we are working on a community engagement plan right now at tom and and yeah and that's all okay but yeah we're thinking about it i want to remind people to stick to the question that was asked um yohana so um really the question is do i think there's a problem and do i think the new buildings are a blight on downtown um i think five stories is a very accessible height um so from that i'm okay with the height levels i think density makes a ton of sense um those buildings are creating about a million dollars in revenue for our town that help pay for our schools and our sidewalks and our road maintenance and you know the kind of high standards for services that we want and then you know with regard to mass mutual um i only know this because my husband does data science work at umass and you know he says that in that facility mass mutual has really created a world class data science training program for young people and it's the kind of thing that he didn't really think was possible in a place like amherst like boston maybe you can have an incubator for that kind of thing but it's happening right now in amherst and it's pulling in young professionals who are really up and coming in the data science field a lot of them have connections to the university and you know there are 15 people who are employed there and doing interesting important work um and sure it's a you know it's mass mutual it's a large company but that doesn't mean that the contribution isn't important and adds to the vitality of downtown so you know do i wish that one corner was set back further from the road absolutely um you know i was just going by the over design building and looking at the overhang um that's there and imagining how 11 east pleasant might have an overhang similar to that and thinking how much more appealing i like that streetscape but you know to me really um we're moving in the right direction we're learning from our experiences and i you know i don't think it's the i don't think it's a blight by any stretch of the imagination thank you i'm going to move on to the next question ted parker please identify yourself and um state where you live and ask your question hold on you should be able to unmute now i'm ted parker and i live in district five i live in in embers woods so my question for the sponsors is uh you know i managed some commercial property in the area and finding tenants is always a challenge did you while you while you were formulating some of this i these ideas did you could did you ask the folks at archipelago about whether or not they were having success at you know getting commercial tenants to fill the spaces or why they decided to reduce the amount of space that they were going to devote to commercial or do you have any do you have any feedback from any developer about this excess in in in filling the uh commercial spaces that they include in their developments and the and the second question is did you consult like lead for neighborhoods are any like objective standard about what makes good development good infill development because lead lead for neighborhoods encourages dense building on existing infrastructure reducing parking i mean these are all like well established industry standards for responsible dense development and and this moratorium seems to fly in the face of them so i'm wondering about did you consult developers and did you consult lead for neighborhoods or anything like that do any of the petitioners have a response i can answer very briefly i certainly attended planning board meetings in which archipelago was asked about retail and he certainly mentioned this for the spokesperson mentioned um difficulty at this time but you know one of the things we're talking about is rents talking about rents for apartments who can afford them that's also rents commercial rents and if the rents are too high for the kind of places we've mentioned they're not going to go in there but also in the middle of cobit okay we're just getting out all right i went into two stores today for the first time ever so what we've had in terms of the past year in terms of commercial may not be indicative of what's coming yes we have no one we've read about what are standards we know the argument for density but one of the arguments for density assumes local neighborhood services and we don't have those we don't have a food store we don't have many things that are that are needed in a discussion with barry roberts a long time ago he mentioned somebody said we need the the shoe repair man so so glad he's still here and he said yeah i haven't raised his rent since like the 1980s in other words sometimes to have the services that people want the people who own the buildings don't charge the market rate because it's a service we needed but they don't make that much money so there's um people you know builders who have certain kind of roots in the neighborhood really are are are great and think about the needs and some of those we've you know shallony mentioned some very forward-looking developers um scinty jones barry roberts so but we're not going to talk about one group versus another we're saying some of these arguments were developed holistically and when you miss certain essential parts such as stores for needed things then the whole concept of the dense neighborhood that's walkable where people don't need cars doesn't it's it's a fallacy so that's it thank you dorthy um next question is going to be from susan um please identify yourself with your name and where you live you should be able to unmute uh my name is susan sheldon and i live um mill lane and my question is has there been any post occupancy occupancy evaluation done on any of the archipelago buildings that's it now thank you for that question um does anyone if you have an answer to that please raise your hand chris well there hasn't been any post occupancy evaluation done by the town yeah i'm just wondering why do we not require post occupancy evaluations chris correct we don't require post occupancy evaluation thank you for that um we're going to move on um at this point to the next question which is nina do you have another question nina while no i'm sorry but you know what i'd like to just say for a minute jack i'm really happy that your friends found a home at mass mutual i i don't mind mass mutual i just think it's the wrong place for it that's all i thought we were hoping for you know some smaller shops businesses interaction that's all i just want to say that thank you for that hand um at this point um we are going to we don't have any more questions so we're going to move on to public speaking in favor of the the zoning bylaw proposal revision and so please if you'd like to speak in favor of it please raise your hand and i will recognize you in turn you will have up to three minutes to speak in favor of it and i will do my best to keep time and let you know when it expires when i recognize you please state your name after after unmuting please state your name and where you live we are going to start with richard bentley first i have to unmute uh i i just often wonder whether wasn't this all discussed a long time ago and the planning department decided that there will be you know additional parking in the downtown hasn't this already been done i mean there's no parking you can't park there and so why would people go there and and if maybe they put in some parking somewhere fine but where i mean this this whole issue was solved eight to ten twenty years ago there's no parking thank you for that comment richard um we are going to recognize pam rooney now you need to unmute yourself and state your name and where you live hi thank you pam rooney 42 cottage street so i am in district four um i do support a temporary moratorium uh our our master plan acknowledges the desired increase housing density in the town centers and it's very clear about that but it also says that new infill and redevelopment of existing historic downtowns and village centers will have to abide by rigorous and sensitive design and density controls intended to preserve and enhance existing character so i want to say thank you to the counselors who sponsored this i guess i'm one of 880 people that signed the signed the petition i do support denser housing construction i uh sadly feel different than some of you because i do not like to see negative outcomes for the heart of amherst i want some design controls in place um to ensure what's built is uh has wide pedestrian family sidewalks it adequate parking for the business visitors and um also that creates affordable dwelling units as part of anything built in the town i think the moratorium gives us just sort of a time to build a measuring stick first and evaluate the many many disparate zoning elements that are that are under consideration holistically it's a huge ball of many facets many interrelated elements that are being handled you know one by one over a year ago we had the 40 our proposal showed us you know initially it showed us five-story blocks smashed up against the existing neighborhoods and lining north pleasant street um four months ago the council directed the 11 different zoning articles um to the town department the planning department and the planning board this is a lot to to think about holistically these are now unfortunately being discussed one by one yet they have significant overlap and definitely some cumulative effects we still have no guidelines by which to gauge and consider the outcomes of those zoning amendments so i would i we also unfortunately have no standards or zoning that actually supports adaptive reuse of historic structures and those are the buildings that in fact give character to a once-in-former number one college town i'd like to get to number one again um so i would say please do vote to pause the perm permating and i mean all permitting not just specifically building permits but also to include site plans special permits and let's get some design guidelines in place i think we can then we're we're we're earned to give developers a clearer direction and we're also um uh able to give them better direction on walkable and engaging sidewalks and storefronts we'll look in the field that's been mentioned before and also some adequate parking that supports the small businesses and the new residents uh and very importantly we do want the affordable units as an outcome of the densification of the town center so i hear lots of comments and questions but it just it feels like we really do need to just pause collect our eggs into the one basket and deal with them holistically appreciate it thank you thank you pam next up is sandy musprat please unmute yourself and identify your name and where you live sandy musprat on north prospect street and i greatly appreciate this motion and support it and particularly well expressed by catty i find it hard to understand the resistance to a moratorium a pause the resistance seems to fail to recognize that there is a new event in town we've actually seen buildings built under the current codes and many people at least 800 are dismayed apparently not steve schreiber who would have i would prefer to have had the hadley malls built in amherst if i understand his comment i think it is unthoroughly sensible to pause and think how we might do a bit better this is not against development it's not against diversity in all those wonderful things we wish could be reconciled it's extremely difficult to do that but we have had events which we find dismay and many people do you should pause please support motion thank you sandy next up is susan please identify yourself after unmuting and state where you live thank you susan sheldon again um i'm a landscape architect i have a masters in landscape architecture and a ba and in art history i've had my own design build business for over 20 years so i'm i'm mainly concerned with aesthetics and creating spaces that are human scale inviting i was on the kindric park committee for over two years from the community outrage getting feedback from different uh uh different parts of our community to vetting the design firms and i was very excited when a major building was going up on the north end of town uh is a gateway to uh our downtown and i was really dismayed at what was built i felt like it took didn't it missed so many design opportunities to engage with the park um and both of those buildings just present a flat face to the park one kindric park one uh east pleasant has door that has sliding doors that open with these kind of dog-like gates that are supposed to be balconies i guess um i just i i just makes me really sad of all the missed design opportunities and i went down there today and i walked around the park and i actually stopped several people and asked them what they thought of the buildings and i didn't hear anything positive it was several comments about how they were out of character with the rest of the town um they they missed the little shops that were there where so much community action took place um i i i think basically that's what i just wanted to say is i i do believe that we need a moratorium and to develop some stronger design guidelines that would ensure that future buildings um have some kind of nod to our history and the vernacular architecture in our town um yeah so i i do support a moratorium thank you thank you susan next up is fanny rothschild please unmute yourself and state your name and where you live okay um my name is fanny rothschild and i now live at 25 map politics drive district five i wholeheartedly urge you to vote for a temporary moratorium a pause take a step back to systematically study what our town needs to bring new energy to its center like others like susan have just spoke and um and the petitioners i think i know we're having a consultant but i still feel like there needs to be systematic way to reach out to our residents as to what we want to see built right now to and i i don't think that we're going to find that the answer is more student housing smack in the center it's and apartments that unapologetically are designed as student dormitories i don't feel like anybody's totally addressed that today and i'm not sure why our town planners are feeling that that's what only needs to be built that's what i feel like is is happening um i don't think that we need more students living in the center of the town you mask and handle that other areas can handle that and i don't think that more students living in town equals more business revitalization i believe it's other age groups like young working people families and retirees they'll they'll support the businesses in the bottom of these buildings and other downtown locations and in turn i think these businesses will attract the 30 000 non-student residents who live outside the center i'm talking business like retail restaurants as well as art and music venues and something like thorns marketplace which i hear is being considered which i'm thrilled to hear we need to study to identify what other types of buildings are viable besides these student buildings and then work with developers who will design for non-students this plan encourages the town to thrive all year round not only when the colleges are in session thank you thank you fanny next up is elizabeth veerling please unmute yourself thank you can you hear me yes okay yes elizabeth veerling at 36 cottage street district four um and i just wanted to say that i think that the issues that the moratorium asks for review prior to issuance of further building permits i view as the most critical issues in determining the future of amherst development for equity and inclusion and for ensuring our town is a destination for residents and visitors i think unfortunately the issues raised by the moratorium were either not on the list of council development zoning priorities or were down very low on the list of council priorities and i think this was a major factor catalyzing the initiation of this petition um happily since the moratorium was first put forward inclusionary zoning is made up to the table as was apparent tonight and mixed use building is under discussion though i think the latter is far from suitable in its current form i think the other issues of critical importance the design guidelines setbacks public space parking and further consideration of affordable housing are woefully in need of serious consideration before further development proceeds i also believe a moratorium is warranted as we consider if the town's a vision for the north end of town center is really a plan for a mini satellite umas campus of student dormitories um there have been statements made that the buildings that are built and that are planned have the possibility of taking the burden of student housing out of neighborhoods i would question the data to support this given that the students i work with on a daily basis are looking for housing well under a thousand dollars a month not starting at 1200 a bedroom and i just like to say that the idea of building this student housing um that that's going to suddenly make affordable housing pop up somewhere else um is simply the worst form of trickle down economics applied to housing uh thank you thank you elizabeth next up is ira brick please unmute yourself um and identify where you live in your name hi i'm ira brick i live at 255 strong street district four i'd sent a letter to you all with some excerpts from amherst annual report from 1986 and 88 about the two-year moratorium that happened then that pause was enacted to create the opportunity for improvement where public input and more strategic study aimed at solving problems of overdevelopment lack of affordable housing whether we could provide essential services including clean water as well as public open space to that growing population the town's annual report after the two-year moratorium was done reported on the creation of a phased growth bylaw that addressed the rate and type of growth that could happen but also attracted national attention from other towns and cities and even a feature in planning magazine briefly that bylaw rewarded or penalized proposed projects by how well it met criteria it was reported that there was an quote increased sensitivity by some developers to the protection of open space and provision of affordable housing unquote the annual report also said that amherst had quote greater control over development proposals allowed for imposition of conditions by the board to ensure the site is developed without harm to the surrounding areas unquote i want to also mention that in the 1988 report the end of the moratorium it said quote the growth of the town continue to pace and subcommittees of the planning board focused on growth management issues locations for a parking garage as well as cluster housing affordable housing incentives and research parks unquote in our town's master plan it's strongly recommended to include the public's perspective in the planning process we take great pride and amherst that learning is baked into our town's economy and culture i'd hope a moratorium a pause for thinking would be a time where we can benefit from the magic of representative government and recognizing that old adage all of us are smarter than any of us thank you thank you ira next up is meg gauge please unmute yourself identify yourself from where you live hi everyone uh thank you mandy and thank you everyone i'm meg gauge i live in district one on monagu road um it's really uh i'm going to put on my little timer so i don't go over the time um it's really tempting to try to respond to what i've heard because there's so many uh never mind i'm not going to get my time mandy you'll have to keep time so many things uh to respond to but i'm going to stick to what i had thought i would say i wanted to respond to three of congress counselors ross's points in opposition to the moratorium but particularly the first the three are the three that he raised in opposing the moratorium or the potential to jeopardize future economic investment the potential to jeopardize future state funding and the potential uh to exacerbate inequalities in our town point out these are all potentials which means they're neither true nor false or just like potentials the potential to jeopardize our future economic investment in amherst is the one that interests me the most the argument that developers will develop will abandon amherst if we pause to consider all options puts all power in the hands of developers and prioritize prioritizes what is most profitable for individuals rather than what is in the best interest in the common good of amherst amherst is a treasure and one of the very very few downtowns in westermass where there is an opportunity for development we there are many and varied economic opportunities for revitalizing our downtown as well as our village centers we have a great hand to play and we should be in charge of what happens not kowtowing to what developers say they need us to do for them to be profitable we are not supplicants we need to take charge of exploring opportunities that will enliven our downtown for example services that people can't buy online as well as more arts and cultural resources if we flutter downtown with students students i feel the opportunities for serious arts facilities for example will diminish a few words about amherst cinema that i know a fair amount about amherst cinema is not kept afloat by students amherst cinema was not created because it would be profitable it was created because amherst residents wanted an independent film house we raised 3.5 million and worked in partnership with a very creative and generous developer we created we created the vision the strategic partnership and made it happen i feel we need to pause and take time to envision how we can be in charge an exact couple of examples i mean maybe we want to create a little committee of creative people to come up with ideas for example let's learn more about the thorns market business plan it's very profitable and lots of small businesses are making let's explore how we might develop rfps to create the kind of businesses that we want let's explore creative ways of building downtown arts and cultural facilities in partnership with developers i don't know how i'm doing with my time mandy because i i didn't put on my thing but you have about 30 seconds left i'm just going to point to jeopardize the future state funding counselor ross should specify how the six months moratorium makes us ineligible for grants after that period seems like they're always state grants the really his third point potential to exacerbate inequalities in our town this is a scare tactic and an unfortunate and really sad attempt to gaslight moratorium supporters as reactionaries with implications of racism and prejudice against low-income families people supporting this moratorium are not trying to build more upper middle-class homes they're not opposed to affordable housing uh this is a really unfair and false and extremely unfortunate um line of thinking zoning regulations are for the long haul for the buildings they govern we to say that a more you know 180 days is nothing uh is 180 days is a trivial length of time compared to the long term and we need to think about the long term these buildings that we're talking about building are going to be there for decades i hope i didn't go over my time sorry thank you meg i was a whole bunch i didn't get to but i'll i'll send you a letter let's go to send both the planning board and the crc um email um or email to me and i'll make sure it can get bodies my the house i grew up in on north to 20 north pleasant street for example is a historic house and you could build a beautiful four-story building behind it and keep the front please come in i'll send you a letter thank you meg okay um i i realized as meg was talking that there are people that would probably be wondering how many attendees we have had for this and right now we're around 44 or so i think i wasn't paying attention to see how high we got but i think it was in the 44 to 50 range um for this hearing 51 thank you um and for the izi hearing it was somewhere around 30 at the high i think um before we started getting people in for the next hearing so i'm going to recognize janet keller now please unmute thank you janet keller district one pulpit hill road um i hope that you hear that 8 880 people spontaneously are asking you to consider this moratorium and that they are asking you to support them in providing and ensuring that there's room for them in a more welcoming downtown than we have now and to explore that um with uh the consultant and and to enable the consultant to do whole holistic and systematic um examination of what it is that makes 880 people really uncomfortable in the downtown um we're glad that mass mutual has done well and is training young people um in new skills and we still want buildings that make us feel welcome that have inviting exteriors with plenty of glass and doors opening on to the street and in buildings that um are set back on sidewalks that allow us enough room to walk with friends and family and and have enough room for trees and benches and tables for outdoor dining um we do want to ensure that we get the affordable units and that's one way to increase the diversity not only of of the economic uh uh uh qualities of the of the people but also by pock i've been working with um of affordable housing with amherst community land trust and we have brought several families of of of color in into our housing and and we need that if if we need the affordability if we want to get the diversity um and finally we need to protect our public parking the recent downtown buildings were built or permitted with very few i believe only 34 spaces for a total of 229 units either built or permitted um and residents of these buildings are parking in the boltwood parking garage in prey street and driving demand for another um parking garage which uh you know then would be paid for with public money that does not compute um and we also need to look at um during that period um updating the green building standards to the ones that the town is adopting um with zero energy and the uh the new stretch code so um i hope you will hear the voices that are asking you to consider their concerns um and i thank you for the opportunity to comment thank you janet next is mathew and judy please unmute and identify yourself and where you live hi uh this is mathew mattingly i'm in south amherst i'm the mathew part of mathew and judy um i would like to advocate for the moratorium very strongly and for having a concerted effort to look at our design practices and especially i would like to advocate for physical accessibility because this is something i've looked in the town um master plan and so on in the documentation i see that there is plenty of references to accessibility which i think is really important and i like that but i also know that it's possible for a building to be um you know accessible on paper and in the eyes of the law and not really be accessible it has to be accessible um when the weather is bad it has to be accessible when it's crowded there's more to it than just having the right number for parking places and so on and accessibility should really be addressed holistically that the town services the town sidewalks the parking places the cutouts all those things and the way that the buildings are designed all have to work so that somebody can get off the bus or get out of their car and get into the building um and i know that accessibility is something that's in the law and it's something that you will be looking at but i also know that historically it's easy for it to get swept under the rug or pushed aside by things that are more um more sexy at the time like you know if we want to have green buildings that's great we want to have buildings that look good that's great we want to have buildings that are appealing to many different people that's all great but those things have to be um all done in a way that's accessible and in general accessible designed if it's good accessible design is just plain good design it's beneficial to everybody that uses the buildings or the facilities so i just want to advocate for that being kind of top of mind as we deliberate about the um the design criteria for these buildings thank you thank you next up is robert greeny please unmute yourself and identify yourself and where you live hi i'm bog greeny i'm on the club street in district three and i think the points that i would want to make have all been made so i just want to speak briefly saying that um i really support the moratorium this very meeting is a good example of what the moratorium can do it can give me a greater sense of connection to what's going on i can hear people i disagree with stating their case the trend the trajectory downtown is just disliked by a lot of people that's obvious the moratorium is a way of saying we hear you we're going to listen to you we're going to make an effort to do things better we're going to make it an effort to have the bylaws the standards that we use to guide our building more reflective of all of us and not so further scenes of division we all live here we see each other we know each other we want to get along with each other we don't want to be bad about being each other we need to try harder to respect each other's position and find a compromise that works and builds greater consensus in our community i really hope i think the moratorium would be an opportunity to do that thank you thank you robert at this time we are going to move on to seeing no other hands we're going to move on to public speaking in opposition to revision again if you would like to speak in opposition please raise your hand and i will recognize everyone in turn you will have up to three minutes to speak in opposition to the revision and proposed revision and when you do get recognized please state your name and where you live before you start speaking we're going to start with sarah marshal hello everyone can you hear me yes great well like others who have spoken i care what our new apartment buildings look like but i care more about adequately funding our local schools i care how wide our sidewalks are but more about adequately funding repairs towards our existing sidewalks and roads i care about the height of new buildings but more about preserving subsidies that allow kids of financially stressed families to participate in our recreation and after school programs in some i care more about strengthening our town's finances so that we can address people's needs than i do about the aesthetics and i care most about creating an environment that welcomes and supports local businesses by welcoming people of any age who want to live in our village centers i urge you to vote against the proposed moratorium which could cost us more than we realize thank you thank you sarah brennan bailey please identify yourself um unmute identify yourself and um identify who you represent to even everyone um thank you for let me speak again again my name is brennan bailey i uh live in long meadow however i am the ceo for the realtor association of high near valley uh and our association represents the realtors in hamden hampshire and franklin county um so speaking against the moratorium it's been our experience and when i say our experience i mean with our partners at the state level the massachusetts association of realtors as well as the national association of realtors it's been our experience at housing development moratorium does not help communities meet diverse needs and they can negatively affect local economies we respectfully urge you to continue to import uh your important work without freezing the housing landscape uh the big thing that really stood up to us is that emers can already decide which proposed housing developments are good for the community without imposing the moratorium none of the housing development subject to the proposed moratorium are allowed by right the board can determine whether proposed project adds value to the community or if it should not proceed um so our objection is pretty pretty short and sweet um there is a process of site plan review and the board can ensure the development alliance with the character of the neighborhoods and the town's long range vision so there are mechanisms in place and we speak in against against the uh the moratorium and thank you again for the opportunity to speak thank you brendan ted parker thank you i'm ted parker and i live in district fives um i i have to call this effort disingenuous i i think that it is clearly an attempt to sort archipelago's development the timing of its fact that nobody at archipelago was consulted i mean i i agree with with mr bricks that you know were smarter together and i'm a little appalled that this was is being proposed without consulting the developers themselves i think it's i think it's irresponsible and i think it's it's lazy actually and and it clearly is an attempt to to um to to stop development for a while while other other strategies are developed i it you know a thousand people who don't like the way downtown is being developed no matter how loud they are are not a majority of people in town and i think there's plenty of people in town who just aren't motivated to come and argue about it who see nothing wrong with the development downtown or see not enough wrong to want to stop it cold and i i it it surprises me that this such a hastily and ill thought out proposal is actually being considered um and it just seems like the same kind of obstructionism that that doomed town meeting to be perfectly honest thank you thank you ted erica zikos hi thanks um erica zikas i'm also in district five and um i will also speak against a moratorium um i worry that any moratorium will harm our relationship with our local developers and their willingness to invest i worry that anytime um in moratorium is too long and that six to nine months is not actually long enough for the selection of a consultant a legitimate study work by our staff to propose changes public outreach and to implement change i worry that zoning here is being asked to carry the burden for decisions about the public way and decisions about the type of business tenants that a developer would choose i think that more regardless of the outcomes that there will still they'll still meet with a variety of opinions um and that we have really good changes to the zoning um code in the works already um we've had parking study that recommends a garage and have developers interested in the project uh i love some of the ideas that have been shared tonight um and share a desire for affordable housing and for the arts in our downtown and i don't see any reason why those ideas can't move ahead within the zoning um that and the amendments uh that we have and have already been proposed thank you thank you nicole usher hello can you hear me yes we can hi nicole usher district one um i encourage you not to vote for this moratorium i think it's shortsighted and regressive there's a lot of talk about working people um i have to say as a working person with a young kid um very few of us are able to attend a hearing that goes until 10 p.m uh to to say our peace um i also would be curious how many working people signed the petition for the moratorium um also hearing a lot about people of color wondering how many people of color signed that um as opposed to how many people signed um the the sort of the counter statement um i'm not an economist but i wonder how we could even be considering doing this coming out of a global pandemic um we should be so lucky if anyone wants to invest in building anything downtown right now um you know there's there's all this it's stopping and porting development with all of this talk about small businesses but no constructive information or reasoning on how this would actually result in their being an influx of shops um one of the counselors i believe counselor shane mentioned something about um now being the time or being stuck with or actually i'm sorry i think this was counselor pamm um stuck with a downtown changed for good i want downtown to change i want more things to do i want more reasons to go downtown why is change bad what are we protecting um darcy counselor jumont said density is only thing if you have amenities to support the people living there how is a moratorium going to create these amenities and what's so bad about students living downtown we don't want them in single family homes as our neighbors but we don't also but they also can't be downtown it would be comical if it wasn't so insulting and discriminatory um also if they're living downtown they're going to spend money downtown but also we don't get to socially engineer downtown um you know i think that proponents want a moratorium because they want nothing to happen um and nothing to change and we need to confront that reality because six months isn't going to make that go away thank you thank you nicole nicole um with that we are ending the public speaking portion i appreciate everyone sticking with us through 10 p.m. at night um we are now moving on to the next item which is the petitioner applicant response to counselors pamm shane or um do matt have anything they would like to respond to or say at this point um i'll i'll just well first of all i want to thank well first of all i want to thank everybody for their time um it is really late at night and i can't tell you how thrilled we were to be preceded by inclusionary zoning because i think one of the the words moratorium sped a lot of things up so it had an impact just by saying let's oh what what chris was saying what we really want are some changes in the zoning law and some positive changes so that's important but i would really encourage people to look darsie uploaded the comments we got of people who signed there are a huge number of people that are very pro development they want growth they want change so it is not a keep things the way they've always been i realize there are people who would like to keep them it is a sense of taking hold so i just leave you with that thought and whether mature moratorium is the only way to do that as opposed to a package what pamm talked about of holistic changes where we think about them all together and how they interact and that's in the planning board's hands as well as staff so i do i do think this is a moment i watched i had two main towns that i looked at sea coast one decided to take hold and the other didn't of where they wanted to go and one is prosperous and the other is not so there are moments start myths some other towns have taken hold so i think we could do this whether we can do it in six months i don't know thank you kathy um darsie or dorthy would you like to say anything at this point just a few brief things um i don't really like having a defeatist attitude that says whatever comes our way we have to take because we'll never have another chance and i don't believe any of us have ever said we're against change but we said we didn't want to have the town change so much that we didn't know that it was still amherst the thought of amherst being a special town is very strong and there's no reason that it can't continue to be so but some of the changes that have been happening are not ones that we think are going in the right direction so it's time to have a pause to time to think time to give the planning department planning board crc time to deal with we have about four or five zoning bylaws which are deeply in process to get through at least some of those can we solve all the problems no but some of the arguments against the moratorium were just reaching and creating straw men which they disposed of and i ask you to think a little bit deeper and understand that we are not saying nothing should change it's great the way it is we hate everything that's happening or we don't want a new building or we don't like students that's not what we said it's not what we said and it's not what we have been working towards which is a town which is you know i hate to quote this because but it's really you know a town where it's for everybody and a place where all of us want to be i think we're moving in a direction which is making that challenging so i'd like the rest of the town around kendrick park to be the kind of place that looks like it has a park has children has families and wants to get outside and do something artistic and creative together thank you thank you dorky dorsi do you have anything to add i'm going to assume the lack of unmuting means not at this time okay yes i i just wanted to thank everyone again for coming and i especially want to thank the planning department that has worked hard on this for a long time they they had some very good plans in the making way back in september of 2018 and i i think that i have a lot of confidence that that um we're going in the right direction and i hope that the planning board and the crc will uh really spend time looking and looking at the comments that people have made and um i guess i just really feel like um the parties are not that far apart that that that it it won't be that much of a reach to um to come to agreement and solve some of these problems um and probably sooner than what we think the time would take so anyway i want to thank you again and i hope that you will strongly consider the moratorium thank you darcy are there any further or final questions from the planning board or the crc please raise your hand if there are i'm going to try and make sure jack's on my screen so i can see him too um uh steve are we taking comments or just questions questions no comments okay i'll pass okay um christ did you have anything i um i have a question about the process afterwards so what i'm going to ask you is when you close the public hearing don't all scatter and let's talk a little about process and dates and um procedure thank you thank you for that any other further questions from the planning board or crc members seeing none um at this point i will take a motion we're going to do this motion again fully jointly um so a motion to close the public hearing on proposed zoning article 16 temporary moratorium is there a motion dug i'll move is there a second is that andrew for a second i will second okay we have a motion in a second any comments seeing none we're going to do a vote i will try to make it through the uh planning board again without missing anyone uh jack uh yes please um andrew hi tom hi uh who's next yohana hi maria yeah yes uh janet did we lose janet we lost janet at some point so janet yeah janet had told me prior to the meeting that she was not feeling her best and that she might exit so okay we lost her yep nope that's totally understandable did i get dug hi and i think that's all for the planning board um and so crc is uh mandy is an i and dorthy hi evan hi thieve hi olaney hi did i miss anyone at all okay so that is unanimous with one absent um which is janet and so the public hearing is closed at 10 17 um at this time i know it's really late um i will say that crc will discuss and vote on a recommendation on this on its may 25th regular meeting if the planning board has already voted and made its own recommendation um crc's policy is to wait until it has a recommendation from the planning board before it makes its discussion and recommendation um with that i know chris wants to talk about going forward um with timings and plans and all so before i adjourned the crc meeting um and hand this back to jack to determine whether the planning board's going to discuss anything tonight at 10 18 or not um chris did you want to mention anything about timing or anything yes um i wanted to make a recommendation to jack that we not discuss this tonight because i think it's very late and we wouldn't have a very rich discussion and um so i i hope that jack will consider that but with the idea that the crc would like to vote on um may 25th i wonder if there's flexibility there and i was going to ask mandy joe how what is our deadline do we have um i'm afraid i'm a little foggy on this is there 60 days after the public hearing closes in which the town council can um take a vote or what is what is the rule about that so the council has up to 90 days from the close of the public hearing to vote if it does not vote within 90 days of the closure of the public hearings a new public hearing needs help um so it doesn't require it's not like the bylaw fails under state law it's just it needs a new a new hearing needs scheduled and and held um so the referral to both bodies was that after the public hearing was held um we needed to get crc needs to get to the governance organization and legislation committee its vote and recommendation and language on the bylaw by 60 days within 60 days so you know our tentative plan is to discuss this for crc on may 25th but if the planning board has not had its discussion yet it will wait until whatever the first meeting after the planning board's discussion is until it does its discussion yes so i was going to make a recommendation to jack that he consider holding a planning board meeting on june 9th the planning board is already meeting on june 2nd and that whole night is going to be filled with the new building that's being proposed for downtown um and then they're meeting on the 16th which seems a little far out into the future so i wondered if the planning board could muster itself to meet on june 9th to discuss um inclusionary zoning and um the moratorium and come to a vote and then um pass that vote along to the crc and then the crc could meet um after that i know evan raised his hand but jack first and then evan me yes jack oh yeah um for whatever reason i know i'm good with you know powering through this i mean i we've heard everything and i think i think we could collect the votes on these two articles um but i will you know we'll do a straw poll uh for the planning board members and if we want to adjourn after you know the hearing joint hearing with crc uh is concluded then that's that's fine but i'm willing to throw that out there uh chris with regard to just having some discussions and then a vote on each because i did i but let's let's do a straw poll you know with the board for tonight on these on these issues so before that happens i want to recognize evan and then determine whether crc can adjourn evan uh in response to chris's suggestion and remind me if i'm getting the dates wrong mandy but i believe june 9th is when crc had scheduled interviews for planning board appointments um and there are members of the planning board currently serving for re-appointment so i'm not sure a june 9th meeting for the planning board would work thank you for that reminder evan um yes there are potentially two members of the planning board that that would need to attend those hearings the the interviews the interviews are currently scheduled for 7 p.m to start so um are there any other questions uh chris for crc before i adjourn crc i will just make the statement that crc will modify its schedule on when to discuss these recommendations based on what the planning board decides um i think you've given me good information mandy that um it's not um there's there's not a lot of urgency in the next couple of weeks to get this done but um maybe we can get it done tonight i just wanted to know what the what the deadlines were so thank you thank you for that um unless there's anything else from the crc committee um there's nothing else on crc's agenda so crc is going to be adjourned at 10 22 p.m i pass the gavel back to jack to take his straw poll and everything um i would ask pam to move um anyone i'm going to i don't think me leaving as co-host will affect the meeting but um move me as co-host and then move anyone that is not on the planning board so the seven counselors into the attendees if they have not left um is what i will ask pam and i am just going to leave and say thank you to everyone oh my kathy i love the idea that you are willing to power on jack thank you all very much all right thank you okay mandy i'm going to uh remove your co-host i don't want to hit leave until i know i'm not going to kill the meeting hi everyone the night is young by planning board standards so put me in the attendees please yes and same with me pam okay happy to so uh andrew and re you have your hands up i mean i'm thinking do you want to take a five minute break or um you can do a straw poll whether we just want to you know take this up at a later date or for whatever reason i i have some energy at this late hour so uh andrew yeah i would say we don't janet here and then also i i i don't feel as compelled to rush through this either i think that we got a lot of information tonight that i i'd like like to process so i would if it wants a straw poll i would say to not okay do this tonight and maria i'm ready to vote you're ready to vote okay uh doug i am also ready to vote but uh it does occur to me that we could have we could meet next week um you know and just postpone the crc vote by a week or two i don't know when they would meet uh as far as i know we don't have a meeting scheduled for next wednesday evening and i could make a meeting then thank you uh chris so if we were going to meet next week um we would have to have a very minimal um amount of paperwork we could post an agenda that would just include voting on these two items and um that would be it because i'm going to be out of town friday monday and tuesday and i think pam is going to be out of the office on part of friday and so there's not going to be a lot of um what should i say manpower womanpower behind putting a meeting together so if all we have to do is have an agenda post the agenda have a meeting on wednesday the 26th i think we could do that okay let's hear from uh yohana i was just going to say that i think i'm ready to vote too okay i am as well so that's four of the seven that are that are ready to vote um i i think that janet was going to provide an email or something i chris did you receive anything of that nature i don't believe i received anything from janet and i stopped looking at my email around 4 30 4 45 tonight um but janet probably wouldn't be able to vote on the moratorium because she wasn't here for the public hearing i see so she could you know i think we're looking pretty good just to to you know you know do our deliberation to have do our additional comments and and uh you know tally up our votes so um it's looking that way so um i mean i can go do i need to do a roll call for for for us continuing christy thank or just we get into it can i interrupt really quickly uh tom's missing tom long no where is he must have left he's an attendee i'm going to bring him back okay my goodness how could one of our board members i'm still here do you want to thank you i thought he was hanging around here but i must have put tom over there and not shawlyn a and what about i just i sent you an email and i was flicking my raised hand you have to know my text you have to know my goodness uh Darcy she's gonna go to attendies also isn't she um we better take take go ahead and put me in attendees yeah okay everybody's hands are down okay uh so at this point chris do you recommend that we take a vote to continue or or because it was a straw poll looks like we have the numbers to continue tonight but um you um with your on your path to voting okay i think you probably do have okay so let's let's uh discuss uh zoning bylaw again we've had the hearing the hearing is closed we're gonna deliberate and then um so this is on the zoning bylaw article 15 inclusionary zoning to see if the town will vote to amend article 15 of the zoning bylaw inclusionary zoning by expanding the scope of local preference extending the applicability to more residential developments and adding new definitions and tiered affordability so um people want to you know discuss beyond what i know we have uh thus far um so jack this is nate i think you know dog had a comment about changing the or i was going to share my screen again in 1512 so on one or more adjacent properties developed at the same time or in phases or that share aspects of the properties i feel like that was something that was brought up you know a pretty specific comment and the other one was just you know eliminating some of these exact exemptions here so i you know those are from my notes i mean there are other there are other comments but those are kind of specific to the bylaw as written and then there are a few others um but i just i just wanted to you know to me those are things that i very helpful nate thank you thank you uh because yet again we it's been an hour hour and a half since we talked about this but um good reminder so uh do you see any issue with with doug's suggestion for changing it to and or nate no i i you know um you know let me just go back to it i you know i actually think the um when he said it and then i think someone i don't know if someone else reiterated it i it does make me think that um you know that would be i think that not i don't want to say it's a loophole but i think they're you know the way that's phrased now i think you would have to have both you know both parts it would have to be true and so i'm not sure that's necessarily what what we want so um i think changing it is is for the better changing it to and or uh just saying or so or that share aspect so the properties remove and so yeah right so this would just be um oh my text okay so we have that modification to 1512 uh with regard to a you know a future motion i would i would propose and then with regard to your you know going down to the exemptions i think to me that i mean i don't know rob what if you're reading the bylaw now sorry jack i just want to and rob had his hand raised and he's okay yeah then we got we got rob and we got dug in chris okay so rob uh yeah thanks nate i just wanted to remind you that we actually had that language as uh it's being suggested now prior and our our question at the time was about um what would it mean to develop adjacent parcels and phases um and we we were really trying to capture the situation where they shared you know common entranceways utility connections uh where where a project was developed more as a larger um set of units or buildings on multiple properties and not so much you know one lot being developed and then two years later or the next year even another lot next door being developed we weren't trying to capture that at least in our discussions uh with staff so rob what would your recommendation be well i i don't i don't have a problem with doug's recommendation i just wanted to remind nate that we chose specifically not to do that uh and and uh have that be you know have that be a um less of an incentive for a developer to purchase multiple properties that are adjacent to each other uh that may in fact develop them over time one lot or uh structure or building at a time and try to close a loophole on combining properties and benefiting from sharing those common uh parts of infrastructure or uh whatever it might be for the part of the development and that's what that's what this language does is it it really goes after that that proposal to develop multiple properties together uh not individually and that was done intentionally doug yeah i i mean i i basically made that observation and i wouldn't even call it a recommendation um it was just an observation that having the and means you know both sides of that and have to be uh have to be in place in order for the the restriction to take place so i'm fine with just leaving it as and um i think you know it's my understanding that town council can adjust the language you know in a couple of weeks when they whenever they get it uh assuming we you know i mean so this isn't quite doesn't have to be perfect tonight but and and i'm not even sure that i really care one way or the other i just saw it as something that if i'm trying to wiggle my way out of this uh having that and look like it would be an opportunity that you wouldn't have if you had the or but i rob i hear what you're saying and you know you've got a little more experiences with this than i do so i'm fine with leaving it as and if i do think doug to your point though is you know so what if someone a developer is like well rather than you know yeah i would be better to have a common driveway but you know what i don't want to do inclusionary zoning so i'm just gonna have two separate driveways on adjacent properties just because it saves me from doing you know a few affordable units i mean i think that's that's the reality of having this and there that we might get some action maybe some undesired you know some some someone would find a way to not do it so so we would get less pavement as is nate i'm thinking if we say to and yeah and that share aspects i think no i think we'd get more pavement so for instance you have if you have two adjacent properties and someone's thinking oh uh you know i'm going to put i'm going to develop these both at the same time oh but wait a minute you know if you know you know i'm going to have two separate driveways so i don't trigger that and right rather than maybe i'd only have one driveway and have a better parking layout i don't want to trigger inclusionary zoning so i'm going to do two separate driveways and two separate parking lots even though a better site plan might be to have one driveway and one parking lot between the two properties i mean so as this will result in less pavement yeah i mean i just one example i don't okay yeah um christ is your hand up okay yeah my hand is up i wanted to say um that i don't think we should remove standard subdivisions and convince conventional standard subdivisions or cluster subdivisions from the list of exemptions um first of all there's not that much land left in in amherst where anybody is going to develop a subdivision a new subdivision so i don't think it's really going to be an issue and it really does complicate christ wait one minute can we scroll to that portion the list of exemptions except for units resulting from and steve schreiber um encouraged you to consider um not exempting conventional residential subdivisions or cluster developments and i think you should exempt them for now and if you decide later on that you don't want to exempt them you can always make that change and it would be fairly simple but we don't have that many opportunities for um either type of development right at this time there's not that much land left so i don't think this is going to be a big um a big source of affordable units and it really complicates things and i think it makes makes it would make it harder to administer these things for the planning department and so for right now i think to simplify things leave it in um you can decide later to uh decide differently that that would be my advice chris the rf district again i i'm forgetting all about students so what's allowed there is primarily um dormitories and buildings related to um student life and so um you're not really going to get affordable units there we had a long discussion with various attorneys at the state level when archipelago was developing the um building a drive olympia place yeah and it turned out that you know we really couldn't um require affordable well it it turned out that we decided not to require affordable units but there was a lot of argument in favor of not requiring so i get again it would just complicate things so i would leave that the way it is here leave that alone okay um rob is your hand up no okay um so any other discussion amongst the board on um uh this article as proposed okay and and we're not doing public comment because we already did had the hearing correct chris yep hearings okay so um with that i guess we could take a motion maria i have to approve the article i was written with no edit very good is there a second second all right dug uh any discussion i see none all right let's do a roll call here maria and andrew hi uh dug hi tom hi and janet is not with us uh yonah hi and myself would be an i very good okay so let's uh move to the next item that we're going to deliberate post the hearing which is the uh zoning bylaw article 16 temporary moratorium 480 days on building permits for construction of residential buildings with three or more dwelling units to see the town will vote to add article 16 temporary moratorium 400 days or uh excuse me on building permits for construction of residential buildings with three or more dwelling units to the zoning bylaw uh i'm not going to read the rest because we just uh had this presented so uh chris you have your hand i just wanted to go back and reword the motion for the previous article which really i think should have been moved to recommend to town council the town council adopt the inclusionary zoning article as written um can i change my my previous move or do i have to re-say it i move that the plan board recommends the town council to adopt more in set already i think that's what we understood okay but i think we're only recommending um and dug seconds they're re-reading yeah okay okay thanks and we're okay with not taking a vote again on that but i mean i think we understood that was here yeah everybody anybody any anyone object to that okay i see none all right so um on to article 16 uh the building moratorium um any any board members want to discuss us further uh dug i was just going to move that we hold a vote to on whether to recommend this proposal or this petition for adoption by town council uh is there a second i'm not sure i understood that motion i didn't understand the motion eek you say the motion my motion was that we uh hold a vote on whether to recommend to town council or not so the vote is i guess you could say i was calling the question without uh wording it in such a way as to indicate whether i supported or opposed the measure so then you're going to have two votes one vote to to say yes we want to vote and then the next vote to actually vote sound right okay um yohana do you want to uh we'll still have an opportunity to discuss here before we vote but yohana i was gonna second dug okay so now we can discuss um and personally i i had i had some items there that i just want to get off my my chest so to speak um personally i think the the the thing for me is is is parking and uh the moratorium you know would put you know provide maybe an opportunity for for reevaluating you know where we are with parking but i don't see it changing um you know anything else i i don't think like parking has been on our agenda much with regard to the zoning priorities and you know maybe it should be um but i mean i i'm not i'm not really moved by the the arguments of shadows and and narrow sidewalks and open space because i um again i think one east pleasant street you know needs a fixed but otherwise our sidewalks are fine uh shadows there are shadows um up on main street that nobody complains about i'm not sure why but there definitely are shadows uh from a five-story building uh in that area but nobody complains about it um and when it comes to open space in downtown i don't really i i mean i don't go downtown to get open space feeling i mean amherst has the most highest percentage of open space recreational space of any town in the pioneer valley and um i understand it has value but you know i would couch that somewhat you know given you know where the particular you know development may be and um that's i just had i i just wanted to say that from from the prior discussion so um maria oh yeah i there are a lot of subjective things said tonight you know very emotional things but the bottom line is um amherst has a very very uh comprehensive review process in place so many uh departments and eyes on each project more so than a lot of other surrounding cities and then the other sort of non-subjective aspect is that this moratorium is basically uh i think one of the people wrote the best was that it's basically a moratorium on the downtown recovery and of businesses and of people working and um it just didn't make any sense at all to me honestly i just yeah i um i'm i'm ready i mean i'd like to hear if anyone else wants to make any comments but i'm ready to make a motion to not recommend it to town council for consideration if that's the right wording but um but i also didn't want to like put the kibosh on a fitting once and the board wanted to say anything yes can i motion slow out there while while when people say things but yeah so we can wait on a second there if other folks want to um only if i said it correctly first i move to andrew's got his hand up andrew and tom andrew please yeah thanks um you know i i tend to agree maria i um and i'm i'm just like a little tired right now but the the the area that i have uh just some concern around is just you know the first half talking about the inclusionary zoning is um what other mechanisms do we have in place with the proposal in front of us for example to be able to incent to get some uh you know some some uh fair mark or low moderate income housing in place into those new developments you know i you know uh andrew i'm i'm wondering and again that didn't really get addressed does providing more housing alleviate and um encourage affordable housing by taking pressure off you know you know the the we're talking about you know downtown right now but i think that's something that hasn't been addressed uh you know adequately but uh to me my gut tells me that more housing is going to help the overall situation you know in the town of amherst uh tom sure thanks jack i mean i think you know one of my questions is pretty clear to them in terms of not seeing core correlation between the the goals of the moratorium and the deliverables that they're saying are going to come out the other end and you know so i have a problem because i i i do see ways in which we can enhance the business downtown with you know with financing and all kinds of other things but zoning's not going to do that per se and i don't think the design standards you're going to get are going to fix the problem so i mean i because i still think they're going to allow for buildings like that roughly to show up so i don't know if it's going to solve the problem i also have sometimes take issue with the idea that we live in a town with a massive industry and that industry were some factory and we were talking about housing factory workers we wouldn't be having a conversation about not wanting them to live downtown and because our industry just happens to be education we say that those people can't live downtown and that's that's where i find the problem in terms of the way we think about who's living where because it's our industry and we have to support our industry and and so you know i'm i'm not in favor of for for a few reasons but one primarily i don't think it's going to solve the problems that we want we want that they're trying to address and i think the ones that we are already trying to address and as chris said the amendments are going to get us to a place where we can address at least some of them on the short term very good thanks um yoana i grieve at the amount of time that our staff have spent working on this as opposed to advancing solutions and so um yeah that's all i have to say thank you uh dug yeah i i guess um you know i have felt like this was on the one hand it was unnecessary because if you look at the six bullets of what they want to accomplish we're well into we're well down the road of accomplishing an evaluation of four of them uh the fifth one has to do with the municipal parking overlay which feels like a conversation that is really complicated and could take years and then the last one is this climate action resilience uh plan which hasn't even been released yet um i asked town staff earlier this week to give me a copy of it and it's not available so you know who knows what that's going to have and whether anybody wants to adopt what's in that so i i feel like it's this is an unnecessary uh motion and then because of the timelines involved in some of these conversations and getting things through the process i think it's inadequate to accomplish its purpose so uh i intend to vote against it thank you thank you dug um uh yohana i'm lowering my hand it's a vestigial tail oh okay andrew i would just say um this is actually i've really enjoyed this i went into the meeting today thinking that i was going to be like a dissenting vote and hearing folks talk has actually um been very useful to me and i i appreciate hearing from everybody on this thank you um so you know in my mind i i'm wondering if we can um all right so we need to to um move to to uh vote in favor or not in favor of this now i guess um chris you gotta help me out because we kind of got down a road here that's this i think dud could move could withdraw his um motion and the person who seconded would be yohana could withdraw her second and then someone could make a motion to um vote to recommend against vote vote to recommend to town council that they not adopt article 16 on the temporary more time okay dug yeah i was gonna i was on the same wavelength i i withdraw my motion okay and yohana good so i'm i'm wondering in terms of an adder if the town can put the the the parking aspect of things because i don't see that in in the zoning you know chris let me know i mean maybe i'm missing something but i don't see the downtown parking as one of the zoning priorities and it just seems to be a huge driver and um can we recommend to the crc that that becomes one of the the main zoning priority you know efforts within the coming months i think you could do that under a separate motion and i wanted to say that natan i just had a conversation today with two members of town staff about parking and they're really involved in it and um we recognize the fact that we have to take another look at the municipal parking district that was developed in the 60s revised in the 2000s and now we've got a lot of development downtown so we really need to take another look at that so that's on our radar screen and if you wanted to make a motion to ask the crc to put it on a priority list i think that would be well received okay all right so at this point we have a motion uh with regard to um not approving the proposed zoning bala you know article 16 for the temporary moratorium 480 days on building permits for construction of residential buildings with three or more dwelling units um is there a motion maria made that motion about oh maria okay and then a second nobody seconded back under okay dug and so uh any discussion for the discussion i see none okay let's do roll call um maria and andrew sorry this is to not set subsented for correct this is to recommend the town council not adopt article 16 i dug all right um hi yohana hi and i am and i as well so that's six zero and i guess i would like uh to make a motion that there is a um a priority set for you know resolution of of downtown parking concerns within our zoning priority bylaws because to me that seems like uh a crux of you know a lot of the issues associated associated with what was behind with what was behind the the building moratorium a second dug dug second okay no i did not second okay so any any discussion on that or yes yes okay dug yeah i'd like to talk about this at our next meeting or i don't want to talk about it tonight okay so can you put this on the agenda chris next meeting the next meeting is going to be all about archipelago how about if we put it on the agenda for the 16th sounds good okay i ran out of paper in my tab here are you talking about just parking general uh a discussion of parking as a zoning priority is that i think you're talking about looking at the um municipal parking district is that correct the only only municipal parking district not about article seven or any other parking or is it just really the municipal parking district let's focus on one thing at a time municipal parking district okay and that's that's why i want to talk about this at another time yeah and chris one of the things is how the town is offering cheaper parking permits than you mass what was another thing we discussed today yeah i mean it there's a lot of stuff going on there with parking that i think would address you know a lot of the you know these these two hearings that we had today well not two but the moratorium anyway so i think we're going to have to rope nade into coming to the hearing on the 16th in the meeting on the 16th because he's our resident parking expert and is that but um yeah i do i also think that there's you know things outside of zoning and you know whether even not in the general bylaws there's other regulations that could apply to so i mean it's i think i think there's a number of factors so why don't i put on the agenda kind of a parking umbrella with um with some focus on the municipal parking district okay thank you and um okay so i think we hit all the other items and it's 11 o'clock on the dot i think we can adjourn who's hand oh andrew yeah not to kill i wanted to make sure we got all the way to 11 just so i but um no actually like a really simple new business question i forgot earlier is like are we um what's what's the town policy like on having these meetings in person with some of the latest uh news announcements is that in our foreseeable future or are we still zoomed for a long time that is unclear it's um we know that the governor is ending the state of emergency as of June 15 what we're not sure of is is he going to take away the ability for groups such as the planning boards to have meetings in a remote format and we haven't heard anything about that yet usually we get some kind of announcement from the state in a written form we get something from the town manager in a written form and then we get something from kp law and we haven't gotten anything like that and previously a couple of weeks ago the town manager has said that he thought we would be having zoom meetings through the end of the summer so it's all to be worked out okay thanks good question thanks andrew uh so at this point i think we're we're we're good correct you're gonna move to adjourn just say we're adjourned yeah we're adjourned we're adjourned thank you all that it was a long night but i think a very productive one yay thank you so much i'm just happy that we don't have a meeting on may 26th right oh i tried i know is did we do four and a half hours oh my god recording four and a half hours jack you wanted to power through