 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. So welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of October 7, 2020 based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, GL 30A section 20, and signed Thursday, March 12, 2020 that this planning board meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. My name is Jack Jumsack and I chair the planning board. I'm calling this meeting to order at 632pm. This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst Media live stream. Minutes are being taken as normal. I will now take a roll call. Board members, when you hear your name called, unmute yourself, answer firmly and please place yourselves back on mute. So Maria, Chow. Here. Tom Long. Here. Andrew McDougal. Here. Doug Marshall. Present. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Not here. I'm here. So board members, if technical difficulties arise, we may need to pause temporarily to rectify the problem and then continue the meeting. If you do have technical issues, please let Sean or Pam know. Discussion may be suspended while the technical technical issues are addressed and the minutes will note if a disconnection has occurred. Please use the raise hand function to ask or make a comment. I see you raised hand and I'll call upon you to speak after speaking. Remember to remute yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment period. And 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 during a public comment period, you must join the meeting via the zoom teleconferencing link link is shown on the slide and can be entered into a search engine by typing that link. The link is also listed on the meeting agenda, which can be found on the town website through the calendar listing. Meeting or you can go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda, which also lists the zoom link. So with regard to others going in. 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 is 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 address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. We are welcome to express their views for 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 lot of time their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. Moving on the slide will now show the meeting agenda. So we have the minutes from September 16 2020. Any board discussion on these minutes. I see none. Sorry I was looking I didn't have my button up here. The only thing I would see it. Yeah, I'm Andrew. I didn't have my raise hand handy so sorry for interrupting you. I think I was going to say just on the on the minutes was this kind of confused me during the call but when we were talking about the tent at the Jones library that we said the sides would be white and not opaque. Is that white is opaque so like I don't we just want to say the sides will be white in the minutes. It's just that I found that a confusing point in the, in the discussion so So the minute we currently opaque or white it says the 40 foot 10 sides would be white and not opaque. I would just say let's strike and not opaque just the 40 foot 10 sides would be white. Okay. Somebody must have gotten confused between opaque and transparent. Yeah, I think that's that's what he said, right. I think he did say that. Yeah, he said with the that's exactly what he said so they were captured correctly but I just Thank you. Andrew and any other comments. Janet had a comment that she sent to me via email. It had to do with what she thought was a kind of a thin rendition of the Emerson till subdivision so I mentioned that to Jack via an email and he suggested that maybe we can come up with when it was discussed in the past so Pam has kindly gone through the agendas for the planning board and has discovered that it was discussed five times. In the last year since actually October 16 of 2019 so we can list those minutes as places where people can go to get more information if they want more as a footnote. This is part of the sentence here. Okay. And maybe we can do it in brackets since it wasn't actually presented at the meeting. So we'll bracket it and say money board minutes of X dates will provide more information on this topic. Is that satisfactory. Yeah, I know some of the projects, you know they do This one we're revisiting after some time, you know, seems reasonable. Any other comments on the minutes. Any motions to approve. Sure. I'll move to approve. Okay, Doug. Thank you. Second. Second. All right, Janet. And we'll do a roll call. Approve as amended. Approve as amended. And start with Maria. Approve and nice job on the minutes. I like the new formatting. I hope it didn't take more time than usual. Thanks, Pam. Yes, thank you, Pam. Janet. Janet. Approve. I'm sorry. Thank you. Andrew. Approve. And Tom. Approve. And Doug. Approve. And I'm approving. That's six zero with Johanna. Hopefully we'll hop on here shortly. Okay, so we have, I guess we just bounce into this hearing I, I know I was communicating with, with, with Mandy about when this CRC. You know, sort of interface would take place. And I said like seven 15, whatever. So I guess we'll just jump into the Kestrel. Projected. It is a six 39 now. And Chris, you mentioned you wanted to. I wanted to say now or later. One, I could speak now. I also wanted to ask you if you wanted to. And then I'll. I am so sorry. Let's do the public comment. And so at this point. Those that are. You know, within the attendees or. Otherwise. Do we have any, any comments that you'd like to offer at this time? General comments. And I don't see any hands raised. So let's, let's move on to that hearing then. Okay. Jack, did you get your preamble? I do. I have that right in front of me. Okay. So it's 640 in accordance with the provisions of MGL, chapter 40, a, this public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested sentence. Citizens to be heard regarding SPR. This is a summary of the zoning. The zoning review. The city's industrial land trust. 37 Bay Road. Request. Site plan review approval to convert. A single family home into an office for a nonprofit institution under section 3.3, 3, 3, 0.0. Of the zoning bylaw. Including various site improvements. On the lot, which is map 25B parcel 20. R-O and R-LD zoning district as well. So are there any board member disclosures? I see none. The applicant presentation way will be provided by Tom Harmon. Yep, that's correct. How are you? Okay, hi. How you doing? Welcome. You can go. All right. So you want me to go ahead and share my screen, Pam? You can. I have some slides made too. Primarily what was available to the board in their packet and just the additional items that came today, but you can go ahead and share yours. That's fine, or I will. Okay, I got it, I think here. Can you see mine? I can see your screen. There we go. Okay, so let me move a couple of things around here. So good evening, everyone. My name is Tom Hartman. I'm principal at CNH Architects here in Amherst. We're located above Hastings, if you didn't know. And happy to represent Kestrel Land Trust here. The executive director, Kristen DeBoer, is my wife. So we need to, this needs to go well for me. Just as a disclosure. So the project is a change of use. Kestrel purchased this property a couple of years ago. It's currently a single family home. And there was a land deal done with the town so that the pond is actually now town property. And so with the change of use, obviously there's the site plan review. There's building code issues. There's conservation commission review and there's historic review as part of this process. We did have a meeting with the conservation commission on September 23rd and received a favorable decision with a couple minor conditions, such as notification of when the project starts and when the project ends and some wood chips and hay and seed on a pathway that I'm gonna show you. And we are scheduled to be with the historic commission next week for a demolition delay decision. It's not a hearing, it's whether they're gonna have a hearing. So the schedule on this project is really driven by Kestrel Trust would like to move in in January. That's the move-in period. In terms of the work I'm gonna show you, the schedule that we're working against is when the asphalt plants close, typically around Thanksgiving. So there's a little bit of asphalt to be done. The team involves Tiagno Construction, they're doing the work, MyFirm. And so let me show you basically the project. So it's 37 Bay Road. There's a long driveway up a hill to the existing house. I can show you pictures of the house if you like. This 100 foot line is the offset from the pond. There's also a 200 foot boundary from Plum Brook once it leaves the pond. And again, we had a decision with the Conservation Commission. So the scope of work includes an accessible public entrance which is required by the building code for any change of use. It also includes, and I'll go through this in some detail with you, the removal of three sheds, the removal of a set of wooden steps which are a little bit of a hazard right now, the potential removal of the garage here, which as you'll see would open up the site, that most likely will not happen within the two-year period of this permit or site plan review, but if it did, we would certainly accept a condition to come back and review it with you. Kestrel's deciding whether they wanna do that or not, but I doubt it. There's also 11 parking spaces that we're providing, including two within the garage. And then there's, in this area, there's gonna be a fire department turnaround so that the fire trucks, when they come, could back down into this area and turn around. That's right where the dam is. So the public property, the town line is right past where that turnaround is. I should say that the reason we're looking at this turnaround is Commissioner Mora and Assistant Chief Olmsted were very helpful working with me because when you do this change of use, NFPA one comes into play and that requires a 20-foot-wide driveway for driveways of this length. And it's existing 14 feet. So you can imagine the grading, the complications of actually making that 20-foot-wide would probably be over $100,000 and disruptive to say the least. So what they've done with me is to accept a compliance alternative to provide a fire alarm system which automatically notifies the fire department. So with this change of use, that's one of the requirements that comes along. This is gonna be trap rock gravel. It will be plowed. Snow will get plowed over into here and it will be kept clear. It will have signage that says fire department access, no parking. And then as we get closer up to the top, up to the house, what we're proposing to do is make an accessible walkway that's asphalt and take some of the existing goshenstone and rebuild the patio so that this becomes our accessible entrance. This is what it looks like now. So this light fixture is gonna be replaced and this door is gonna be replaced. And then that goshen patio will be brought up to the finished floor level. The new door just so you can see it is gonna look a little bit of glass there. So it's a little lighter. It's pretty dark in that hallway now. And then that light fixture right here will be replaced with something smaller, a globe. So it's under a socket. So in terms of dark sky thinking, I don't think there's a problem there at all. Just to show you the parking. So we're gonna take out about two feet of the plantings that are there. We'll put some trap rock gravel in there as a strip. We're gonna modify a wall here. We've got five parking spaces that you pull into that are 10 feet by 18 feet. Two more down here that are, I think they're nine foot by 20 feet. Two more here and then two in the garage. This here is indicating the fire department area. They gave me their specs to work with. And then this space will be signed as visitor parking. It's important to say, there's seven staff people who are here. There's board members who come, but it's an office. It's not typically open to the public. And if there were an appointment with a person with disabilities, Kestra would know and this spot would be available for them. Interestingly, an accessible parking space is not required because there's less than 15 parking spaces. We've reviewed the existing septic system and it appears to be adequate for the change of use. There is town water that comes up the driveway. And I believe there's also a supplemental weld as a pressure tank in the basement. Lighting again at this front entrance will be under the soffit. There's an existing pole light. And then there's numerous flood lights around the property. And to just to note, the office hours for Kestra are typically between eight and five o'clock, eight and six o'clock. So they're not there late into the evening. Trash and recycling will be stored inside the building and taken to the transfer station by staff. And then lastly, down at the very end of the driveway here, we're proposing to have a sign that does not exceed 12 square feet. Are there any questions? I see Andrew. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Thanks, Tom. Thanks to its presentation and good to see you again. One question I have, and I'm just trying to kind of recall what the answer would be, but could you just remind me how the automated notice to the fire department translates into not needing a 20 foot driveway? Yes. So they have the authority to accept what's called a compliance alternative. And so in this situation where number one, the occupancy is very low, the need for them to have a 20 foot driveway with such low occupancy isn't really necessary. And given the cost of doing that, putting in a fire alarm system, which is over and above what is required by the building code. So you don't need to do this for the building code, but putting that system in and as soon as a smoke detector, a CO detector would go off, they would get notified directly that that system had gone off. And in their mind, that's a good trade. And that fire alarm is about $15,000. And I would actually argue provides superior coverage than the 20 foot driveway. Is it the purpose of the 20 foot drive? I guess kind of play this out. So with that early notification, people could vacate and the fire truck doesn't need, like is 20 foot requirements of fire trucks can get around existing cars? Yeah, that's pretty much what it is. That's a rationale? Okay. Yeah, yep. Okay, that was my question. Thanks, Jack. Thank you, Andrew on Doug. Sure. Tom, is this considered a public building from mass access board point of view? It is. And the only thing that is required is the public entrance. That just doesn't matter if you spend any money or not. The assessed value of the property is about 225,000 square foot. So our 30% threshold is about $75,000. And if we cross that threshold, then an accessible toilet room would be required. But our cost of work is about $50,000, $60,000 is what we're looking at. And so I've reviewed this and this will be in my building permit application to Rob Mora. Okay. I guess it's more of a conversation with Rob, but we had a similar instance at the university and ended up having to put in a accessible restroom and an accessible path to a meeting room. And I don't see either of those indicated on your plans. It's really not relevant to the planning board, but just a heads up that at least in some situations you might have to do more work inside. Yes, and I do have an accessible route from this entrance to the meeting rooms. Okay, great. Yeah, thank you. So then it's just whether anybody needs to use the restroom while they're there. I know, and yes. And part of the motivation of getting into this building quite honestly is to take what's being paid in rent right now and to reinvest that into the building. Kestrel does have the notion of doing a fuller renovation at some time. And putting in that accessible toilet room could easily be done. There's two bathrooms back to back. It's a cost issue right now and we're right under the requirement. Okay, thank you. No further comments. Thank you, Doug. Janet. Mr. Hartman, I have a question about the accessible pathway and the two parking spaces in front of it. I'm just wondering if there are two cars parked there and say somebody pulls up in parks and has a walker or has difficulty walking if that's gonna be hard for them to get around. It seems awkward to me to have two parking spaces right in front of an accessible pathway. And that's why we're designating this one as a visitor parking space. Again, there's seven staff with 11 parking spaces including the garage. If someone was a visitor, again, Kestrel would know they're coming. And if they showed up unannounced, cars could be moved and they would be facilitated. And the other question I have is why 11 spaces? Is that part of the requirement of? No, that's the most I could get with the minimal amount of work, essentially a little bit of a backhoe and some paint. So we have to modify a stone wall here to get the turnaround in there. But I was trying to get as many as I could because there will be board members who will come up and I don't know the count, but so that's just the most I could get. The requirement, I think, let me look in the application was below that based on the square footage of the building. Chris has her hands. Can you speak to that, Chris? Yeah, I think the application says that there were 11.3 parking spaces that would be required if this building were in the downtown area and were used as an office. We really don't have specific parking requirements for an office in this RLD zoning district. So to get as close as possible, we use the downtown requirement. So 11.3 would be rounded down to 11. And it looks like they meet that requirement of 11. So. Thank you. 11 is not required, but it would be required if it was downtown. Is that right? That's correct. There's a sort of, I don't know how you would describe it, but there's like a catch-all phrase for parking requirements that are not covered specifically. And what it says is for all other permitted uses, including lots of different uses, but adequate parking spaces to accommodate under normal conditions, the cars of occupants, employees, members, customers, clients, and visitors to the premises. So that's sort of the catch-all for things that are not specifically outlined in the beginning of section seven of the zoning bylaw. But they are complying with the requirement that would be true if this office were downtown. Okay, so that's more clear. And then I wondered if Mr. Hartman could just briefly go through what the Conservation Commission is requiring him to do. Sure, and I didn't actually speak to the steps yet, so let me bring that. Okay. So there are three sheds that are being removed. Two are up here, outside the 100 foot buffer. There is a, and I'll show you photographs of this. There's a shed right here down near the pond, which is falling apart that's being removed. There's a garden fence area that's being removed and we're proposing to remove these wooden steps. So let me show you what that looks like. So down the hill, there's a little gazebo with the dock. That's the garden that's being removed. This is the shed that's being removed. It's maybe, I don't know, eight feet by 12 feet, something like that. And then there's a set of wooden steps that go from that shed, which you can see over here on the right. And it's a Y shape and they go up to the house. And they're starting to rot, they're starting to fall apart. And so my recommendation to Kestrel is to remove those or rebuild them and put handrails in. There's a jetler walk that you can take around to get to the pond via that garden anyhow. And so one of the conditions from the Conservation Commission was to notify them when the project starts and when the project ends so that they can come out. And Kestrel is having some tree work done as well. There's several dead trees that are gonna be taken down. And once those are taken, when the steps come out, we're gonna hay them and seed it. Diagno's doing that work. And then it's Woodsmiths is the contractors coming in after them and they're gonna take down these various trees and then they'll chip up those trees and spread that where the stairs were before. Okay, thank you. There might have been one other minor one, but nothing of significance. Tom? Hey, Tom, how are you? Thanks for your presentation. Sorry, I was unable to make the site visit. So I just had a couple of quick questions that I'm sure you can answer in a second. What I'm not seeing and what I probably would have seen on site is the Topo lines. So I'm not seeing any landscape here. So I'm having a hard time visualizing. I could see from your photo, there is a slope down to the water which is where my thinking was coming from. Is there any requirement for you to manage demo, construction, paving and runoff from that process to that pond? Is that something that came up with the conservation group or is that something that you'll, are you in any proximity to have runoff into the water, into the pond? So let me see if I can show you a final picture. Here, I'll give you a little tour of the sound. So I'm just gonna run you around, ready? So that's going towards the new accessible entrance. This is on the north side of the house. There's a walkway. Those are the steps. That's the front door. And then bear with me. So then we start to go around. So this is on the west side of the house. And basically there's a plateau where the septic system and everything is. And then it drops off, I would say probably 25, 30 feet. And it's all planted and wooded. And then as you come around a little bit more here, the steps that go down to the pond are right here. They go down. So it's a very narrow area. So once all those steps come out again, we'll hay it. If we're concerned that soil is gonna run down there, we'll do bales or whatever we need to do. But yeah, that's the primary level area of disruption. You can see the steps there again. But what's gonna feed that slope where we're disturbing? There's not a real catchment of water that's coming from that area. Got it. Okay, thank you. Sure. Thank you, Tom. Doug. Yeah, I had a follow-up question. I don't know if it's for Tom or for Chris. I guess this is a residential zoning area and has there been any resistance from any neighbors to the change from residential to essentially an office use in the neighborhood? May I answer that? Please. Yes, go ahead, Chris. We have not heard from any neighbors. We did send out a butters notices to everybody who owns property within 300 feet. And we haven't heard of any issues with this. The section 3.330 of the zoning bylaw is a nonprofit, what we call a nonprofit educational use. It's a 501C3 corporation that is allowed to operate pretty much anywhere in any zone with a site plan review from the planning board. So I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize to you all for not giving you a development application report. It's been a struggle to get everything done recently. We have so much work and things going on. So normally we would provide you, I'm telling this for the new people with a development application report that would outline what the section of the zoning bylaw is that this is allowed under and then would outline various dimensional requirements and parking requirements, et cetera, but we weren't able to do that. But anyway, this is a use that is allowed under that section of the bylaw nonprofit educational institution in any zoning district by site plan review. And we have not gotten any negative, well, any comments from anyone about this. So thank you, Chris. I realized I think I jumped the gun. We should have had the site visit report might be moot at this point, but who was there and who can give a report? I know I did not make it. Maria? Hi, I was there. I can give a really... Basically, I think Tom covered it all, but we did start up at the house. We stood in the parking area and saw that cutting back on the berms would help with car turnaround space, but that very minimal amount of change was happening to the paved areas. The most change was probably that walkway to the front door, which we walked. And we saw the roof overhangs were really deep. And like Tom said, the front light is changing and he pointed out he would get us cut sheets, which he has. And then he showed us the dog fence area near the front that's being removed and how these large boulders would basically flank the walkway to the front door. And then everywhere else on the site, we walked it, but there was very little change on it. If anything, it was just the sheds were being removed. And like he said, he has a very steep slope from the house down to the pond. But we walked it anyways. It was a great, beautiful morning. And yeah, so we saw the sheds were gonna be removed and the steps, the wood steps that were already rotting. Actually, a lot of the sheds were actually rotting too. And then we did walk down to the turnaround area where the fire truck would back up and leave. And again, very minimal is changing. If anything, it's just signage and some, yeah, just clearing, I think. So again, we've kind of saw the front walkway and that literally is the biggest impact to the site. And we were told that the sign would be located at the street behind the guardrail where there currently is a mailbox. We didn't walk down there, as I was driving out, I took a look at it, but didn't look like it would be blocking line of sight to traffic. We didn't see all the lights that were there, but the main one that was changing. I was told if it was already there and it wasn't compliant, we don't have purview over, but whatever they are changing, we do. And the one that he is changing is under a very deep overhang. So it would be compliant with the dark sky. So I think that's it. I think it was just me, Andrew and Johanna, who are there from the planning board. Okay. And then Chris was there, of course. I'm just checking if Johanna is here yet, but I don't see her. So Chris. So I wanted to offer some information about lot coverage and building coverage. I had asked Tom to provide this and he did provide lot coverage for the entire lot, which I think was 11%. But the way we usually calculate lot coverage and building coverage is based on the particular zone that is being looked at. And Pam has a map that shows the zoning district. So if she brings that up, that would be helpful. But I wanted to mention that this project is compliant with regard to lot coverage and building coverage in the northern part of the lot closer to Bay Road is in the RO zoning district. And you can see that in yellow here and 25% lot coverage is allowed. And the driveway encompasses about 7% lot coverage. And then in the lighter yellow area, the RLD area, there is a 9% lot coverage. And that includes the building and the driveway and parking and 15% is allowed. And as far as building coverage goes, it's estimated, I estimated that's about 4% building coverage and 10% is allowed. And none of the setback requirements are being imposed upon. So I just wanted to let you know that. And again, those are things that we would normally include in the development application report and we just didn't get a chance to do that. So thank you. Thank you. Andrew. Thanks, Jack. I was just gonna add on to what Maria said. The only other things that I could think of, we also, we did mention snow removal and Tom shared that that would be sort of pushed off the south side of the parking lot, but it's well beyond the buffer for the pond. And then we had also talked about public access to the pond. And we did mention that, I believe the town has the ability to put like a parking lot nearby that could be used for residents who are wishing to access the space. But Tom or Chris, you could probably clarify that a little bit. Yeah, I was corrected that the easement is gonna be written for maintenance on the dam. That's how the easement is gonna be written. So the easement will not probably be written for public access, although de facto it will. No one's gonna stop anyone from walking the 30 feet from the driveway to the dam. That's the intent. But Kristen made it clear to me that it's a vehicle easement for maintenance on the dam. That's what it's gonna be written as. And I think she's working with Dave Zomek on that. So I actually had a question about the pond. And where is the dam on the pond? I'm just, who owns that property that the pond is located on? And I know that there is a trail from near where the rotary is that leads to the pond. So I'm just wondering whether it's relevant to the project or not, but I was just curious. Yeah, the dam and the pond are owned by the town. And there was a conservation easement placed on the associated land that's not in the boundary of the property we just showed. This was a much larger property before. And there is a trail that connects from the rotary around past the dam and then all up through the hills and everything. So I walked it the other day with my daughter, went across the dam and then ended up going up the range. So it's very nice. Okay, thank you. And is this gonna be, you know, Kestrel has, I know, an existing office. Is this gonna be their main office or just a satellite office? No, they're moving their office. Okay. And I should point out, there is no residential component to this. It's a business use from a building code perspective. It's changing from a house to a business use. Okay. Great. Chris? I just wanted to mention that this all ties together with the property that's owned by Paul Cole, the Vista Terrace, or we know it as Applebrook subdivision, which is along West Street. So Paul Cole is going to, I believe donate, I think that's the right word, about seven acres of property in his subdivision, which connects to this trail that goes up over the mountain range. And the Epstein property also connects to that trail from the other side, from the Eastern side. So it'll all be connected eventually and it'll be a really great asset to the town to be able to use that property. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the board, Doug? Well, I didn't have a question. I was going to make a motion that we close the public hearing and our end discussion and vote on this application. I think we need public comment and then we can do that. Any other comments for the board? Okay, we'll go back to you, Doug. And is there anybody from the public that wants to speak on this issue? Do you see anything, Pam? Well, Mr. Zomek was an attendee and he had his hand raised. I have moved him over to the panelists. So I'm not sure if he wanted to make a comment or if he was letting us know that he was here for the other discussion. Can folks hear me? Yes. Yeah, no, there was a series of questions about the larger property and Tom and Chris handled them well. But yeah, if there are any other questions about the broader conservation initiative up there, I'm happy to answer those. Kristen DeBoer, the executive director of Kestrel and I have been working on this project for a number of years. This was always part of the vision to have Kestrel site their office at the house and it's exciting to see it coming to fruition. Eventually all of the trails, as was stated earlier, will be connected to Bay Road and then out to the Applebrook development as Chris stated to the West, allowing people to get up to the miles of trails on the Mount Hoyok Range. So we'll be adding kiosks and additional parking areas in the months ahead. So it's a pretty exciting initiative. So happy to take any questions, but don't wanna prolong the hearing. Thanks. I guess I was curious. Atkins has parking there. What have they weighed in at all in terms of, you know, what's the parking policy on Atkins and people borrowing their parking area for access? Well, I'm sure Chris could say more about that, but I'll just say that we are, we have planned all along to have a modest parking lot in the Applebrook development to the West and then we'll be slightly expanding the parking area on Bay Road, which is at the Sweet Alice conservation area right on the frontage of Bay Road. You know, I think Atkins has always been open to people parking at their establishment, but we certainly as the town don't wanna encourage that. There's also no crosswalks from Atkins across 116 yet, as far as I know. So perhaps that might come in the future, but we're hoping the Village Center as it develops, it'll become more of a destination for people to enjoy Atkins, take a hike on the range, go mountain biking, go for a run, go fishing, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you, Dave. And without any other public comments, I think we can go back to the Doug's motion. And I think we need a second, Andrew. I'll second. Okay. Excuse me. Yes, Chris. Would you like to find that the application meets the criteria of section 11.24? And were there any conditions that you wanted to attach to this? Mr. Marshall? Yes, I'd wanna find that the application is in accordance with section 11.24. I guess your question about conditions, do we need to add some conditions that if the use of the property gets more intense that we would want some conversation about the adequacy of the septic system? That would be fine, yep. And there was one other condition that came up and I can't find it now, let's see if I can find it. They take down the garage. Come back and review the garage, that's right. Do you want to review the garage if it is being taken down? I don't think we would need to review the garage demolition. I think if something else were added, we would wanna review that. Do you wanna grant the application approval to remove the garage or, because if they take down the garage after two years, they may need to file a new application with you, but you could approve that removal now if you were so inclined. Would that kind of demolition require any more conservation commission review since there's now more land area and less building area? I don't think so. It's beyond the hundred foot, well beyond, and relatively level area as well. Okay. You could ask them to come back to tell you what they're gonna do in the vicinity of the garage and at a public meeting if you wanted to do that. Yeah. Okay. I'm not sure I need to be the only one to respond to that. Does anybody else on the commission on the board have any thoughts about that? All right, Janet. I don't really have thoughts on the garage, but I think that, I think in the past, we've often had a motion to close the hearing, and then we had discussion and then we decided to be voted to approve the project and with conditions. And then the conditions often came out during our discussion and obviously our original questioning. So I think maybe collapsing those motions, like the motion to do too many things might be what's kind of tripping us up a little bit. So I thought we were just making a motion to close the hearing and then we were gonna have a discussion so I'm happy to add a condition that they can remove the garage without coming back to us and if they wanna build something new, they should. Do we wanna backtrack and... Yeah, I'm happy to just move that we close the hearing. Okay. So is there a second? I'll second. Okay, Janet and roll call. Janet? Yes. Andrew? Yes. And Tom? Yes. Doug? Hi. Mervia? Yes. And myself, yes. So now we can discuss the conditions here in a little bit more formal format. The consensus is that the garage wouldn't require a review unless it's replaced by another structure. That's my understanding. Andrew, you have your hand up, yep. Yeah, thanks, Jack. The only thing I was gonna say is I know that the garage had some of the floodlights on it and so I think that would be something as, if that were to come out, we wanna understand just how the lighting would be managed relative to the parking spaces but I imagine that's a pretty quick and easy answer. Okay, did you get that, Chris? Yep. Okay. So there are two parking spaces proposed for the garage and I imagine that you would want those parking spaces to remain and they would be paved somehow. Is that correct? Is that a correct assumption? Andrew? Maybe Mr. Hartman could answer that this year. Yeah, I mean, the motivation for removing the garage would be to get more parking. It may mean re-striping the whole area. I don't know what it means. I just know that it would free it up so I would think that it would have some modification of the parking layout and that's why I offered that we would come back and show you. So the question is, do you wanna come back at a public meeting or a public hearing? And that would be a question for the board. Do you want him to come back at a public hearing if he's going to be taking down the garage and redoing the parking there or is it enough to allow him to do that and then just have him come back at a public meeting to show you what he's doing? Yeah, I mean, I think impervious is impervious. I don't see why, unless that's expanding in an area, I don't know if I would wanna review it other than just seeing it, as you mentioned, but. Andrew? Oh, Andrew, you're muted. Oops, I hit the lower hand instead of unmute. The only thing I would say is that, if the garage is just replaced with natural landscaping, that's fine. I'm recalling back the parking space threshold and the ADA compliance of just, we're at 11, I think you said if we got to 15, that would trigger need for ADA space. So it might be worthwhile just to have a kind of formal acknowledgement of how many parking spaces there'll be here just to ensure that we're compliant with ADA regulations. Good point, thank you. Janet? I'd like to add a simple condition that Kestrel ensure that handicap access to the pathway isn't impeded by the parking cars near there, just kind of as an extra, keep it in mind thing. Sounds good, and Doug? I guess enough people have brought up potential issues that might arise when the garage was demolished. That I'm wondering whether we should just be mute on that subject today, and when and if the garage is demolished, we'd treat it as any other project and have it come back. At a public hearing. Yes. Okay. Chris, did you, yeah, your hand up. I do, because I was responding to Mr. McDougal. There are two parking spaces that are proposed to be in the garage now. So if the garage comes down, there will be some space there, and those two parking spaces can remain there, but they have to be somehow reconfigured. So I think I would recommend that you follow Mr. Marshall's proposal to be mute on the subject of the garage now. Does that make sense? Yes. So are there any other comments on the conditions? And I guess maybe you want to roll with what you have Chris as a summary, because we've been kind of going back and forth. We'll have to go back through. Let's see. Usually you say built according to plan and managed according to management plan. So you probably want to say that. And then a condition regarding how the lights would be dealt with, well, that has to do with the garage. So you don't need that anymore. And Janet had a condition that Kestrel make sure or ensure that handicapped access to the path is not impeded by parking, parking cars in those two spaces. So I think there would only be three conditions then. Build according to plan, manage according to plan and don't allow the cars parked in those spaces to impede handicapped accessibility to the path. Is that correct? And then if the garage would be taken down, it would be coming before us again. It would be a new public hearing. So I don't think you need to say anything about that. Good. Doug. Yeah, I guess I'd want to hear from Tom on whether he would he thinks his client would accept the condition for the accessible path or, you know, not obstructing the access to that path with the parking based on his description of the the scenarios and how they would manage that. I would think you'd want to have that condition also say when needed, since on a normal basis, the parking might obstruct the, you know, the requirements for the four foot accessible route to the parking to the sidewalk. But it sounds like through their management plan, they would make sure that that was available and by moving cars out of the way when it's needed. So I think that condition should either say when needed or we should have Tom's approval with it not being thus conditioned. I'll accept the when needed. OK. Any other comment on that? Andrew, you had to end up. I did. It was it was kind of related to what Doug was was proposing. I think Doug's solution is actually nice and clean. I just I wasn't sure how exactly that would be enforced. And I think that if we can say it's within the management plan, then that that would suffice. Thank you. OK. So Tom Hartman, do you have any other things in terms of wrapping up? I do not. Thank you very much. OK. So and any final comments from the public? And he's any. I do not. OK. Any. No. And then the applicant has spoken and the board, any other board discussion? OK. Well, we have a motion to approve with the conditions stated and Chris, help me with the language here again. We've already closed the public hearing. Close the public hearing and approve the application with the waivers and conditions as drafted. The waivers are just listed in the application. And I don't think we've gone through them, but they would be erosion control, not lighting, not signs. Landscaping because they're not providing any landscaping. And let's see, the other one, the fifth one. The traffic. Traffic impact statement, that's right. So the waivers and conditions as drafted and requested and that the application meets the relevant requirements of section 11.24 of the zoning bylaw. Thank you, Chris, do we have a motion to accept those conditions that Chris said, Maria? Don't move. All right. And we have a second. Andrew. Second. OK, we'll do any discussion. OK, we'll do a roll call. Janet. Yeah, yes. Andrew. Hi. Doug. Hi. Maria. Yes. And Tom approved and I am a yes. So that's six zero. And that closes Tom. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Have a great evening. All right, you too. Good luck. All right. So we have waiting in the wings here, Mandy, Joe Hanneke and Dave Zomac to further kind of present how the planning board may be of assistance to Town and Council and the CRC moving forward. And then I guess we have a link to the meeting that took place September 15th. That Rob Moore presented. But basically we asked Mandy and Dave to come before us just because we're we're on a new new path here of how the planning board has been to interact with the new form of town government. I thought Dave would be able to give a historic perspective on the Zoning Subcommittee. I don't know if you've been here longer than Chris Restreper. But I thought that would be good to get your perspective of what you've seen from Zoning Subcommittee and obviously over the years it just really was interfacing with the town meeting, et cetera. So if it's reconstituted right now, we have agreed that it's on kind of a hiatus stage, but if it's reconstituted, we wanna know how we would be able to assist the town in that respect. And then obviously Mandy being the chair of the CRC, we just wanna be able to, you know, ask you questions and get feedback from you on this. So Dave, would you be able to kind of give us a rundown of what, you know, your historical perspective? I hate to punt the first question, but I might punt it to Chris, because Chris, I know history, I was, you know, more gonna team up with Mandy to talk about, I think, where we're going from here, but Chris certainly could give a thumbnail sketch of where we've been through the years with the Zoning Subcommittee. Am I on spot there, Chris, or? Jack, may I speak? Chris, yes, please. So, well, the Zoning Subcommittee has been a subcommittee of the Planning Board as long as I've been here in Town Hall. I've been here for 17 years, and I think they were probably existing before then. Generally speaking, zoning amendments would come up from the Zoning Subcommittee. The Zoning Subcommittee was made up of members of the Planning Board, and it varied between three and five members. Sometimes it was as low as two members, and they would recognize things that were troublesome during Planning Board meetings and Planning Board review of projects and also see that certain things weren't working exactly right, so they would recommend zoning amendments, and they would bring those to the Planning Board at various stages, initial stages, sometimes just when they thought about, oh, we really need to address this, and there was a section on the Planning Board agenda for the Zoning Subcommittee to present ideas and also to present fully fleshed out zoning amendments. The Zoning Subcommittee was usually the group that worked on final wording of zoning amendments before they were presented to the Planning Board for public hearings, and then the Planning Board would make a recommendation to the town meeting about whether an amendment should be adopted by town meeting or not. And so the Zoning Subcommittee had been meeting regularly, and then I think it was probably in sometime in the summer of 2019, they had a brief time when they weren't meeting, and then started meeting again in September, and then of course when COVID-19 came, they were considered to be a group that didn't have quasi-judicial responsibilities, and so the town manager made a decision to have only boards and committees that had quasi-judicial responsibilities to meet at the beginning, and so the Zoning Subcommittee really hasn't met since, I think, since early March of 2020, but they were, at that time, I would say, they were working on a number of things, but it was difficult for them to figure out what the pathway would be to bring something to town council because the previous mechanism for doing that had not been, it hadn't been replaced, but it hadn't been clarified either as to what would happen going forward, and then the CRC started to express interest in working on zoning amendments, and so I think the issue became more clouded, and so that's, I think, where we are now trying to figure out where are we going forward? Is the Zoning Subcommittee still relevant? Does it still have a role? And if not, who's doing the work? And I think that's probably as best as I can describe the current situation. Thank you. Janet. So one of the confusions we had in the Zoning Subcommittee last fall was being told not to send things to the town council because the town council wasn't ready, but so I just wanted to add that, but I actually thought this was more of a meeting about how the town council, CRC, and planning board are gonna work together and work on zoning, and we know Rob Mora has already started his kind of rewrite at the CRC meeting, Ben Berger, is it his name? Gregor. Breger? Breger. Breger. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm pronouncing the name wrong. So he's already, they already have like a whole format that they're looking at to change the bylaw. And then the CRC is trying to sort of set priorities and bring them to the town council. And I'm a little confused about who needs, and so that's been kind of going on. So I thought that that's what this agenda item was more focused on. Am I missing something or? That's what it's focused on. Yeah, but I was asked to give up. Yeah, I apologize if I didn't come across. That was just kind of, Right. Because I know that we've talked about this issue at different meetings and Doug has said twice, like why don't we just have someone from the CRC, Andy Joe come in and talk to us and stuff like that about how they see all these different entities working together or what the next steps are. So. Yeah, I'm really sorry if I didn't come across in my presentation, but thank you Janet for clarifying what we want to talk about here. And so perhaps it's time for that Mandy can speak from as the CRC chair. Try and I hope I give you some information that you're actually looking for. Yeah, so, you know, for those members that are new, CRC has been working with the planning board for probably at least a year now or so on sort of how we can work together on zoning changes. And we've got a flow chart that's sort of been adopted. We're working on following and figuring out. We know it's got probably some changes that need to be made that goes through and really sets forth just the required MGL and charter hearings and all of that for when something already gets to sort of the almost finished stage. That point where in what Chris just described of the prior process in a prior government, when it hits the planning board for that hearing. So everything after in that government when zoning subcommittee was done, but now in the new government planning board, it's not the only person that the only group that has to hold a hearing, so does CRC. Actually the council has to, but the council's able to delegate it to a committee and that required hearing has been delegated to the CRC. And so we've got a general flow chart on how all of that works with all of the different guidelines, but where there's a lot of confusion and sort of just learning curve at this point, now that we've kind of got that part at least set forth in how it might work on a regular basis is what to do before it's ready for those hearings. And this gets a little more complicated because zoning by law revisions don't just have to come from the planning department or the zoning subcommittee anymore. It is highly likely that over the course of the next couple of years or regularly, depending on the counselors that are elected that counselors will propose zoning by law amendments. And so that's a, it starts a different way. And so what we've been, which is one of the things that the flow chart is meant to deal with is figuring out, no matter where it comes from, what is that legally required process? But what we're dealing with now is what happens when the planning department sees revisions that need made and wants to make those revisions, the planning board sees revisions or members of the planning board in all of your hearings encompass stuff and encounter stuff and say, hey, maybe this needs revised or members of the CRC under their charge to review and make recommendations on matters dealing with planning and zoning and say, hey, this is what we've been hearing from our constituents, what can we do? And that's where CRC and planning board for sort of a year have said, well, we've got a flow chart for the second half. Now let's figure out what to do with the first half. And one of the things that CRC has been taking into account is staff time, number one. But the other is we've got two bodies that are tasked with dealing with zoning bylaw revisions, which is the planning board and now CRC. And we really do wanna work together with that. I think it depends on the type of revision that comes who might quote, take a lead on that. What happened on September 15th at CRC really came about from the planning department saying, hey, we know the counselors have their own priorities and the council itself might have their priorities. Let's get some guidance. And so that was the start of the process. That included surveying all the counselors and we've got a huge document. I think it's about seven pages long or eight pages long that have just listings of priorities for counselors. There's 13 of us and that's a long document. I have gone and combined that into what came up the most and at the last CRC meeting, we're moving through this, we're looking at for this portion of our thing, what you guys came up with because I know you guys talked about your own priorities. So we looked at that, we looked at the planning department's priorities because they had their own and we looked at the counselor's priorities and we're still in discussions as to how to sadly, another same word, prioritize all of that. But the things that came up was talking to the planning department as to COVID and responses there and what can get done. We haven't in CRC and I don't think there's some things we would like to, I know there are CRC members that would like to get really involved in the weeds on say language, but most of our discussions have centered more around topics. And so I think that's where the collaboration between the planning board and CRC can probably best happen. Again, it's a work in progress though where the planning boards probably much better suited for specific language and CRC and the counselors are probably better suited for a little bit more of the priorities potentially. And that's not to say that the planning board can't find a priority and say, hey, we really need to fix this, but giving that guidance that the planning department wanted that's where we're focused right now. And some of that conversation is focusing around time restraints, how much time it will take to get to some of these things that have been mentioned. There was a list of, let me see, from the planning department, it was a list of about nine things. From the planning board, you guys had three very broad things and the council had 10 items. And there was not a huge amount of overlap between them. There were some. And so what the CRC is now looking at is trying to balance the time commitment between all of these. The sort of the bang for your buck. What are the most needed ones that would produce the best outcomes quickly? Man, you got a question. Sure. Because so the written sort of comments that were presented were by the non-CRC members of town council. And then I'm just wondering if there was a written CRC comments other than that that were provided during that September 15th. They were provided during that meeting. And then the document was updated for the September 29th CRC meeting, which I can send to the whole plant. Well, I can send to Chris to distribute to the planning board or you Jack to distribute to the planning board. That's where we added the CRC priorities. And then I did a summary that sort of compiled the most between the 10 counselors that have priorities on there. How many times was it mentioned for each counselor? And some were mentioned. And I had a threshold of three. If it was mentioned at least three times it ended up on this list of 10. So we're now to the stage where we want to look at time commitment cost to get stuff done. The things that the planning department mentioned were things like a sign by law that will likely need consultants versus something that maybe is a two or three line. I'm not saying anything is as easy as two or three lines but something that might just be a small section that requires a couple of different things that don't need consultants and might only take a month to prepare or is almost already prepared as some of the planning department as Chris said at some of the meetings. Balancing all of that and seeing which ones are most needed to get Amherst out of COVID and position Amherst coming out of COVID pretty well. So that's where we are at CRC. We're not talking about, there were some things that were specific but from counselor perspectives there was some specifics but most of it was like inclusionary zoning something or parking regulations something. There was a review the zoning map. There wasn't this part needs changed or this one does. It was much more from the counselors of broad based. Hey, we think there's a problem but what I see happening is if we get those priorities in some sort of order it goes to the town council but then as the planning department's working on it the CRC will get some of that update but I am hoping that the planning board gets a whole lot of input into that and is probably one of the ones that's driving a lot of that revision more than potentially the CRC because for something like zoning map you have a lot better idea than we as counselors do on the uses that are coming or might be coming or might be needed or any changes that would make more sense than we as counselors may have. So we would have some input but I think it would be mostly from that point driven in terms of specific language through the planning board. Of course, it'll be our first time going through a lot of this from this stage so it's gonna be sort of a trial and error on that I think. So your September 29th meeting is that kind of pull together this CRC topics in addition to the others. Is that in the minutes or? It's in the document from the packet. I basically updated the compiled document with the CRC items and added a summary. Chris, did we, do we have that or do you know if you sent that out? I missed it. I received a document from Mandy Jo last week or maybe it was the beginning of this week asking me to look at it and talk about how we could work on these things going forward. And I'm not sure if that's the document that Mandy Jo is referring to. I will send you the actual word document that was a lot longer. I included just the 10 items that had three or more counselors. Yeah, okay. All right, good. Great, thank you. Janet? I completely appreciate the difficulty of what you're doing and trying to sort this out between all these entities. Is there some point where you're gonna go to the public and sort of say, here's what we're working on. Here's our ideas of priorities. What do you think? Is there a public outreach point? Cause I know there's always public comment at meetings but I also know a lot of times we all operate in a little bit of obscurity. And I just wondered, is there like a time for going to the public and saying, I appreciate the idea of like, okay, we know, we hope COVID will end and that we need to be in good position to keep moving forward or to help businesses or resuscitate them as it is. But is there a time that you're gonna go to the public with this package and say, what do you think? So CRC has not discussed that part specifically. Certainly when it goes to the council that would certainly be another time for the public to be involved. We have public comment at every meeting. Right now we're still in an information gathering stage without even trying to prioritize this over that. That's the sort of document Chris was just referencing in terms of the next time we have Chris and Rob at our meeting, it will be just gathering more information. Things like how long would inclusionary zoning take? What is a timeframe on the recodification? And if you're working on recodification, where's the time, what time is available to work on other things and how long might it take? And so that's not something, that's something where we're still trying to gather information before we try and say based on all of that, where do we think we need to put the time from staff time or consultant time for the next year or three months? And I think it's at that point that CRC would likely try to get the word out a little bit better. I don't know whether we would do special meetings or anything, I can't answer that right now because that would be a CRC decision as a whole. But it could be sort of, one of the things might be just more dedicated time during a CRC meeting or changing the time of a CRC meeting because we know two to four is not always good for public participation. So we might look at a different time when we're getting to that specific type of discussion. I don't expect that to happen till probably mid to late November because we won't hear from Chris and Rob again until late October. Thank you. Tom? May I just make a note? Oh, excuse me, Tom, Chris. Excuse me, I just wanted to announce that Johanna has arrived. Oh. Hi. Johanna, you have to be back. 752. Hi, everyone. All the apologies. So Tom? Mandy, Joe and Dave, thanks for coming. I think one of the questions I was having, sort of reading through a bunch of these documents in the last few conversations, again, I'm new to the planning board and still kind of learning some of this process but I don't know the 10 items that percolated to the top of your priorities but I'm wondering how those overlay with the master plan and whether the work going forward to realize these things is a burden, whose burden that is and whether or not a master plan implementation committee is part of enacting some of these things. So I guess I'm just curious where all those principles from the master plan go in relationship to the priorities set by CRC. So we haven't set priorities yet. I don't want to get people confused on that. There is a compiled list of... I'll read briefly through them. For example, on that, when we surveyed all the counselors, seven counselors mentioned something like design guidelines or form-based code either in specific parts of town or all over town or things like that. Another seven counselors talked about expanding the types of housing permitted throughout town, whether it be ADUs or duplexes or triplexes. Four counselors talked about incorporating climate action goals into land use permitting standards and zoning and building requirements. Four counselors talked about dealing with the design review board. Interesting to note on that one, there were opposite desires on what to do with the design review board. Four counselors talked about the BL district requirements, three apartment and mixed use building regulations. Three talked about the BG district setbacks and heights. Three talked about inclusionary zoning. Three talked about parking regulations for new developments. And another three talked about reviewing the zoning map. So certainly a number of those directly relate to the master plan and its implementation. Others maybe not as much because the master plan was adopted 10 years ago and the climate action goals, for example, are a bit newer than that. So aren't necessarily fully addressed in the master plan. And so, I think that will be looked at as we look at the priorities, along with the how much time things in all will take. Yeah, I mean, you could say that in terms of the purview of the planning board, the master plan is one thing, but the zoning bylaws is an entirely different thing. And, you know, planning board really need to be, you know, more hands-on with the master plan aspect of things. And it's a good question of how that merges, you know, with the zoning bylaw, you know, changes some. I can say that the discussion at both the September 15th meeting that was attended by 10 counselors and at the September 29th meeting did mention, which, you know, did talk about the connection between the priorities and the master plan, knowing that many of these are connected directly to master plan goals and, you know, I guess policies or things, I forget the terminology, but what could be implemented to get to the goals of the master plan? Yes, and in that vein, I think we do have an item in much, yes. So in our old business D, the planning boards is going to make a general recommendation to the town council, but it's a different item there. So, Maria, please. Thank you, Menejo, for that summary. That really helps. I now understand what you're doing, so that's really helpful. Basically, you're still gathering information to figure out where the priorities are gonna be. So for now, you don't really need anything from the planning board, as far as throwing more things at you, it's more about you're just updating us on where you are and figuring out next time. I was asked to update, we are always happy. You know, we got the three items from the planning board that were very generalized. I will get the compiled document from the council to Chris for distribution. And one thing I would say as chair is if planning board wants to look at those 10 that had at least three counselors mention them and say, oh, hey, here's the like four, three, or two of these 10 that we would love to see, we would certainly take all of that into account as we're trying to gather information because it's all part of the gathering and all. So I would say if you've got time in a meeting and that's something you desire, we would definitely love to hear which of those you are. We did note in the CRC that the council's sort of ideas about what's important in zoning revisions did not overlap much with the planning department's ideas. And we recognize that's probably because of the different roles we play. And so one of the things we know we have to be careful of is not to weigh, say, they came from counselors so they're more important than what came from the planning board or vice versa. That's why we're still gathering information about timing and all of that. Yeah, I would be interested in seeing both the CRC, the big compiled town council list as well as the planning department's list. And then maybe there's a future planning board meeting where we can discuss those, however many it is and just sort of distill what we think are our sort of priorities to share because I think that part of my motivation to put the CSC on hiatus was that I was hoping the planning board members would actually give input because I think there's a lot of really good collective knowledge and backgrounds from the new members and existing members to all throw in their two cents rather than have yet another small group report to a bigger group, report to another group. So yeah, I think that I'd be a person I would take time out to look through all the various documents and thank you for coming and clearing this up for us because we were kind of in a cloud like what's going on with everybody but this has been really helpful, so thanks. Thanks Maria, Doug. Yeah, I guess I would like to know if Mandy feels like when priorities come from the CRC or town council, whether in fact, it will not only be you should work on this particular subject but an indication of which way you want us to head on that subject because the master plan has some conflicting objectives in it. Mandy mentioned that more than one town counselor when they talked about the same subject, they had different views about it and even within the planning board, there are different views about particular subjects. So I guess I'm urging Mandy to help corral the horses such that we know which way we're all going to go rather than let's just all on the planning board talk about this particular subject and depending on which way we go, it could be more or less acceptable to town council and the public. Thank you. Yeah, so I agree that, I think that will happen. We haven't necessarily, we've tried to keep it to more general for now, but we did get, when you see the document or if you've seen the previous one before CRC's priorities were in there, there was a lot of specificity and so there's a lot of information there and yeah, so something like design review board that got four or five when looking at priorities knowing that some of those completely conflicted with each other will be part of a discussion as to whether that should be a prioritized item because for anything to pass, it needs nine votes on a council and so CRC I think will be looking at is this something that even if there's conflicting views that we think between planning board's discussion and it coming to CRC and then going to a council that we can find some sort of agreement to get to nine votes to get it passed because I do believe in CRC at least, there's not a desire to send planning board CRC and planning staff working on something that there's no hope of getting to nine, that there's only five or six or seven that might support one direction and five or six or seven that would support going the other direction. So I think that those discussions will come. They will likely more come towards the latter part again in November when maybe we go out to the public too instead of when we're just trying to gather information but I do think it'll come because if we seven people mentioned design guidelines if we don't know what we want and four want a certain type and four want something else and three want something else we might not ever get to nine if it really is opposites. So we'll need discussed but we're not there yet. I'd like to hear from Dave. Thank you. Sure. I'll be very brief. I think this has been a great conversation and I think this is, you know, I hope kind of exemplifies where we want to go. I think I can't tell you how many meetings I've been at over the last couple of years regarding master plan and zoning. And you know what, what I think of working from the staff standpoint is really working with our council members, working with the committees, working with the planning board in a collaborative, cooperative way. You know, we're still, we're all still getting to know this new form of government. And I think this conversation, you know, hopefully we'll form the basis for, you know, moving forward on zoning. We know the relationship between zoning and, and master plan helping to implement those broad goals and objectives that are outlined in the master plan. You know, we've had a lot of discussions over the last couple of months, maybe, maybe a year about the master plan. And I think there's a general agreement that I hope that the master plan is in, in pretty good shape. And the hope is that we can move forward with zoning. And I guess, and zoning reform, and I guess I just wanted to kind of put a, put a, you know, a bold point on moving forward with zoning, because I think as we come out of the pandemic, we need to be ready to be responsive on, on climate, on, on working with our businesses, working with our landowners, working with on affordable housing. And right now our zoning is really, doesn't allow us to be flexible, to be responsive in a lot of different ways. So, you know, I think we all feel that urgency, but I think 2021 and beyond, you know, I meet with the bed and chamber with the town manager and others weekly and the urgency of, of being, being bold and, and articulating where we want to be as a community when we come out of this pandemic and beyond is, it's palpable on a lot of these calls. I want to put my, my, my management hat on for a minute. And I don't want to get a sidetracked on the zoning subcommittee. But I think I've been pretty clear that I, I am not supportive of, of, of having a zoning subcommittee. And it's really from a management standpoint. I know how hard Chris Brestrup works. I know how many committees and boards she supports. And she is now working obviously closely with the planning board, very closely with the, the, the CRC and a number of other committees and boards. I really would, would rather see close collaboration between you all as the planning board and the CRC than a subcommittee of you. So I'll just put that out there. I don't want to get you sidetracked. I think we ought to try this system that, that, this, this new way of, of moving forward that the CRC and you all are talking about, see how it works. We can tweak it. We can tweak it and adjust it and see how it goes. But I think we need to be bold and we need to be, feel a sense of urgency because it just, it is urgent that we move forward on, on all of these things. We've heard so much about affordable housing. The ECAC is working to articulate and has, has articulated many goals for us as a community with regard to energy and climate. And I think, you know, we need to get moving. And 2021 is a great time to do it. So I would advocate that we work together now. And if we need the zoning subcommittee, we can always resurrect it. Later. So thanks. Thanks, Dave. Yeah. I would just like that, that meeting. September 15th, what struck me was. The examples that were brought up how. You know, many of the structures would not be able to be built in kind. Whether they'd be, you know, Steve Shriver's house. Or something in the BL. And, and the rigidity of our, our zoning bylaws. When we have this housing crisis. In town, as I saw, I read. That there's a further decline in our school. You know, population, I think a 3% decrease. From this year. You know, from last. You know, maybe some of the charter schools. Or part of that, but overall, it's like a 20% decline in 10 years. Yeah. So. We have a lot of, a lot of issues, a lot of heavy lifting to the solve. And I think all of us on the planning board. Want to help. But one of the questions I have is like. In terms of the process. You take chunks, you know, you got a section that's going to be redone. And will. How is the whole change going to be implemented? Is it, is it going to be. We approve, you know, section by section, but it's only approved in name. And then the entirety of the zoning bylaws will be approved by town council. As a, as a, as an entire document. Or, you know, how does. It was that way too far down the road, Mandy. I think that might be way too far down. What I was going to say is, um, I think there's, there's a limit to the chunks. Except, you know, when, when the council. Came into. Being and the bylaw review committee reviewed both all of the general bylaws. For conformance with the new charter and the zoning bylaws. We did do a complete repeal and replace, but that was for a specific purpose. Not all of us even read all 128 pages. I will tell you that right now. Um, or however many hundreds of pages, the zoning bylaw is, um, there weren't any major substantive changes to the zoning bylaws. And so when we're talking about the recodification, if it really is just renumbering and that and some small fixes that can really be pointed out and explained, then maybe that can be the huge chunk all at once. Um, But anything else is probably in much smaller chunks. But I think that's something that the planning department will have to advise. Frankly, both you guys and us on, and you guys might have to advise us on, on what you think is, is a reasonable amount of chunk to take at a time. Um, in terms of, because, you know, all we've heard from see it from planning department is they're all in a related. So there's, there's only, you know, you can't get too small. Um, but at some point it's going to be too big. Um, And so I think that's too far down the line and it will depend on what's going on. When I know Maria probably could speak to this, but that, you know, the whole footnote. I mean, uh, it's just like, there's so many artifacts that, that, you know, that hang out there because of one change. Influences. Another one that wasn't spotted and. But anyway, Chris. Um, And then Janet after Chris. I just wanted to say, I think that we're going to be working on two tracks. And we're going to be working on the one track with the building commissioner, um, recodifying the bylaw and changing the numbering and changing. You know, the things that are really, um, that make the bylaw very difficult to work with on a day to day basis. And then we're going to be working on another track where we're looking at substantive issues. And I can think of, you know, many of them have been mentioned tonight, like. Um, signs or parking or flood maps. And I just went to a webinar today, attended a webinar about, um, how to write a zoning bylaw that relates to these new flood maps. And it was really interesting. And it's a lot less complicated and onerous than I imagined it would be. But my point about this is that that would be a chunk that we could bring to CRC and town council to say, look, here's, um, a chapter of the zoning bylaw that we think is potentially ready to go. And not the rest of the, uh, codification has to be done in order to accommodate that, that piece. So that's, um, just to say and to illustrate that we're really going to have to be working on two tracks on these, um, on these changes. Thank you. Janet. Um, I actually have two questions. Um, one of the myths about the ECAC, and I can never remember what that stands for. The energy. Energy and climate action committee. Thank you. And I know that they were sort of, um, hiring a consultant. They're doing their own process and hiring a consultant. And they were talking about getting zoning bylaw changes or recommendations to us like last May. Um, and obviously no one would hold them to it given what's happened. Um, this year. Does anyone have any questions? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But obviously no one would hold them to it given what's happened. Um, this year. Does anyone have a sense of. When they're going to come up with. Recommendations and how specific they are. That's, that's my first question. And my other one is completely unrelated. Chris, can you answer that? Um, well, Dave, maybe the best person to answer that because, um, Stephanie Chickarello works for him, but she also communicates with me. And, and you know I know. I'm a member of the BAC on this process. I believe they're planning to have something finished by the end of the year. They have a consultant that they've been working with. Making good progress. Um, whether their, um, Ideas are going to be threaded throughout the bylaw. Or whether there's going to be a section of the bylaw that deals with the things that they. know enough about their specific work, but they are continuing to work and they're making good progress and they should be done in a few months. Okay. If I could just add, you know, I think they're a few months is the climate action plan. They got the goals, they've got someone to be, and they're working on a full plan, which would be the plan to get us to meet the goals within the timeframe that the goals have been adopted for it is my understanding when I was dealing with compiling council priorities, I also spoke with the vice chair or communicated with the vice chair of the energy and climate action committee. And so it's my understanding that that committee is also talking about bylaw, you know, zoning types of changes. I don't know how specific those changes are or whether they will be things like thread, you know, building standards or adopt, I think Massachusetts has its own green energy building standards. It might be something like have the council adopt that, that might not go into a zoning bylaw. I don't know how specific they will get, but I know they've been talking about building type standards and zoning type changes that can be threaded into help meet climate action goals and the plan itself. Okay. Okay, thank you. And then my second question is it is a little bit more related is so we have the master plan and then part of the master plan is the housing production plan and then mark the housing market study. And I think the transportation plan is part of the master plan. Is that right, Chris? So I did some investigation recently and I discovered that the transportation plan was incorporated into the master plan by a vote of the planning board on a certain date and that there was a statement on that date that there was an intention to incorporate the housing production plan, the housing market study, the open space and recreation plan, the valley vision plan and maybe others. And there was an intention to do that at a future date. I haven't been able to track down that those things actually happened. So I know for a fact that the transportation plan was incorporated and I will have to do some more investigation but I'm thinking that the planning board may need to take that action in the future to incorporate those plans into the master plan. Okay, and so then my now related question is, do you think that the energy and climate action plan would also be incorporated into the master plan? I mean, depending on if we liked it and things like that, is that sort of the next step? That would be my recommendation but I'm not sure how the ECAC is gonna feel about that. Okay. Well, I'm sorry. I think Johanna had her, I lost my participant screen there but I think Johanna. First of all, all apologies for being wildly late tonight. I'm really sorry. Chris, my question, well, first of all, I appreciate Dave's comments about kind of boldness and urgency. I think there is an appetite for that. And my hope is that we know enough that we can act boldly and actually get it right. So, but Chris, I guess the question in my mind is the energy and climate action committee, it's exciting that they're on this process. It makes a ton of sense to be figuring out the plan to how to actually reach 100% renewable energy by 2040 or whatever it is that we codified. And obviously they're gonna be, community changes, not just kind of town government changes that need to happen in order to hit our climate goals. So, but I'm a little bit concerned that we have parallel processes and that they're working on their plan and are gonna make their recommendations. And you're working on the zoning by-law and they're kind of co-evolving separately and then the reintegration ends up being challenging because it's just not in the, like their recommendations aren't in a form that's useful for you as you're working on the zoning by-law. And so I guess my question is, is there, how much communication has been with ECAC about the ideal form for recommendations so that they can be most useful and integrated most effectively? Mandy? To answer that, I think Chris would be better. Okay, all right. So there hasn't been much communication about how the ECAC would be incorporated or how their action plan would be incorporated into the zoning by-law. There has been discussion about how it could have been or would have been incorporated into the master plan. And I think Janet just asked the question about incorporating it by a vote of the planning board. So there needs to be some discussion and communication between either the planning board and ECAC or me and Stephanie to figure out, you know, whether what they are doing can be incorporated into the zoning by-law. It's not completely obvious to me that it can be or should be incorporated into the zoning by-law. It may be that it's some other general by-law that is not part of the zoning just like when we decided to adopt a zero, a net zero energy for municipal buildings that is not part of the zoning by-law. So there may be things that like that that can be put into the general by-law that don't necessarily have to be part of zoning. But I'm certainly eager and willing and you know, available to talk to Stephanie and perhaps I should make an appointment to talk to her about this. But that conversation hasn't happened with regard to the zoning by-law yet. I mean, I would like to note that, you know, within our top three, given we are all energy, you know, you know, the sustainability, you know, very conscious of the predicament we're in there. It was not part of our top three and that, you know, it was more, there's other bigger fish to fry in town, but I do appreciate that I have an electric car and solar panels in my house and all that. But, you know, I feel, I just hope, I hope the, you know, the town council prioritizes things that are most urgent on a local level. Doug? Yeah, I was just looking at the town website and it doesn't look like ECAC has met since last April. Are we behind on posting the documents related to their activities or are they really, have they been dormant for the last six months? I can say they have been meeting. I know that much. So it must be a behind thing. They are a committee of the town council and they would be listed as a committee of the town council, no? They are not a town council committee. They're a committee of the town council happened to form. I'm sorry, okay. Yeah, I did find them on the website, but you know, the last agenda is from April. Very good. Any other questions for Dave or Mandy? It's 8.22, we're almost like two hours in here. That's not bad, not bad. I don't see any other hands raised. So thank you very much, Mandy and Dave for your time and all your work. Thank you. It was helpful and yeah, more to be done like Dave kind of sketched out. There's gotta put our management hand, or not us, but someone in the planning department or the CRC has to put their management hand and just see how we are going to move forward and achieve the zoning by-law changes that need to be made. Thank you for having us. And yeah, there's plenty of work to be done, but I think if we're all willing to roll up our sleeves a bit, it's nice to share the load. And Chris is amazing and Rob Mora, they're gonna make a wonderful team working with you and the CRC and I'm here to support them and you. So, and it's great working with Mandy as chair of CRC. So we look forward to many more meetings and lots of discussion of zoning. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Thank you. See ya, bye-bye. Bye. Okay, so we have a couple of master plan items. And I guess, you know, the first one is the master plan implementation committee. Talk about that. I actually have to, I guess I have that table somewhere. It wasn't in our packet, but maybe Chris, you can speak to that topic that was brought up by Mike Burtwistle as if I recall, you know, over a month ago was a good one. Chapter 10 of the master plan is all about implementation. And we have been implementing the master plan over the years, but we haven't been keeping very close track of it. We never had the master plan implementation committee actually formed. There was a kind of what should I say, an aborted effort to form it back in 2011, 2013. I think I sent you paperwork on that. There were communications between the select board and the planning board about it, but there weren't any volunteers. I think there was the way the charge of the master plan implementation committee read was that there was going to be one member from the planning board. Did I send you those documents? I think I did. I think I, yes. A letter from David Weber and a charge. And in any event, it never actually got established. And so the planning board, you know, is in charge of the master plan. The planning board could set up its own master plan implementation committee if it wanted to and start taking a close look at the implementation matrix and see which things have been accomplished and which things haven't been accomplished and then decide which things that the planning board would like to move forward with that. I would be happy to work with them, anybody who's interested in being part of that. I don't think it would be terribly difficult to try to track what's happened and what still needs to happen. It's not a committee that is tasked with making things happen. It's really a committee that's tasked with tracking and reporting on how the master plan is being implemented. So I encourage you to look at the charge and then think about whether you would like to establish a master plan implementation. And I guess it would be the subcommittee, the subcommittee of the planning board, which could meet periodically to talk about the implementation of the master plan. Is that something that interests members of the board? I think Janet was the one who really brought this up. Janet and Michael Burtwistle. Yeah, I'm just looking at the master plan. It's chapter one. I'm gonna pull it out and it's okay, I lost my participant screen here, Andrew. Thanks, Jack. I do have an interest. I am curious, so when you mentioned that it's our choice whether or not to implement it, is it really our choice? Like, is it really our choice or is it something that we're just a responsibility that we've failed to do and we really need to set this up? I think it was really a responsibility that fell through the cracks of the select board. The select board had many things on its plate and it never actually got around to establishing the master plan implementation committee as it was envisioned by the master plan document. And so I don't know if the town council would like to take this on. I have the sense that it's probably, I mean, you might have a different feeling about it but I have a sense it's probably lower down on the priority list for the town council given all the other things that they're working on. So bringing this to them may not make sense. It may make more sense for the planning board to establish its own subcommittee and start thinking about this and figuring out what's happened and what hasn't happened. So I wouldn't put it on the responsibility of the planning board that just didn't happen because it was really a select board that was supposed to appoint people. There was supposed to have been one planning board volunteer and there was no planning board volunteer. So anyway, that's kind of my point of view. Thank you. Oh, sorry, Andrew, you have more. Oh, no, I deferred it to Doug. Okay. So it seems like this committee was envisioned as tracking steps that were accomplished toward the implementation of the master plan but also doing a fair amount of public outreach and it does seem like if, you know, whether it originates with us or with CRC or town council, I think the conversation about zoning is likely to go better if there's wider public awareness of what the master plan calls for. So I think it would probably be beneficial if we somehow did enable that public outreach to happen and to raise the level of conversation about it in town. I think many people haven't read the master plan. Many people don't know what it says and think that it's the same as zoning. So it would be a good idea to have some sort of public outreach and conversation about the master plan. So if we had public outreach, would that be led by the planning board or the planning board subcommittee or would it be what level of support would the planning department be able to bring to a series of public meetings presenting what the master plan showed? I mean, are we really creating another management problem for our limited staff? But it looks like the committee has stated on page 10.4, it's not the planning board. It's a mixture of, it's under our purview, but it's just an ad hoc board created by the town manager. But what do you think? But there still needs to be some level of support in putting together presentations or somebody's got to do the work behind the scenes before the meeting. That's all I really. Right. And we know planning department is a little bit on their heels with a lot of heavy lifting COVID zoning bylaw changes and what else, but. Well, depends on how much public input we're trying to achieve. And there are probably different levels of intensity about this. But one thing is sure people don't really know which parts of the master plan have been implemented and which parts haven't been. So that seems to be a fairly straightforward thing that the planning board could do with a subcommittee that wouldn't require a lot of work. I agree that holding public forums to inform members of the public about the master plan that would be work, but that could be spread out over time. So I think what I'm thinking of is less intense than say the zoning subcommittee, which is writing zoning. It's more check box. Have we done this? Have we done this? No, we haven't done that. We better figure out how we're going to do that or just meeting with the public to talk about what's in the master plan, which I don't think is that hard because it's not creating something new. It's already there. So it seems to me that that's such a committee if it is comprised of, you know, planning board member, a town council member, members of the general public, that it could be quite useful because from my observation, the comments and criticisms of the master plan seem to be misguided by those that are coming forward. And it's almost, it could almost be like an education process just to have a committee and to understand what the master plan is and its purpose. So I'm wondering, it could be very helpful to get everybody on the same page, but it's certainly the urgency is not there, but it will never be, you know, a highest priority with everything going on right now. But Janet? So I think, so I can't remember who I was talking to, but I think it was somebody at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council or somebody or read it somewhere that if there's not an implementation committee for a master plan, the master plan will never be implemented. And you can sort of see why because it's covering so many areas and it has a big reach, but it's also when you look at the implementation strategies and the appendix, they are like really specific and there's so many, you probably could never do them all. So without an implementation committee to be working with the different boards and committees in towns like the farm committee, you know, all these different committees, like, you know, like even if it's like, hey, this is your part of the master plan, these are the strategies the community has come up with. These are things, you know, the master plan says you should be working on and how does that fit for you? And what did you do this year and how does it fit the master plan and kind of reporting? It seems like a very dynamic committee that could get all the wheels moving towards the goals of the master plan. So, I mean, I think, you know, I totally understand and completely believe in the public information piece of it and the community involvement piece because unless we set the table for changes, they're never gonna happen. If we don't involve the public and bring them on board for ideas that we think are good or zoning changes, you know, there's not, there's gonna be opposition and there should be, we should be involving our community. So I think that, you know, so my focus on, I was really shocked that this whole thing had gotten so developed into this level of detail in terms of the charge seems really well-crafted. The idea seemed really good. I always thought when I was thinking about setting up the MOPIC, I think we started talking about this, like in zoning subcommittee meetings when we were looking at the master plan, you know, seeing the need for that, I always thought, look, maybe the planning board should have like a three-person committee and, you know, get a board of advisors, like one person from the farm committee, one person from, you know, different committees in town as a board of advisors and all kind of start collaborating. But I also, I also see that this met the idea put together by the past planning board of having a broader committee in town also seems really valuable. So I'm not sure what I think we should do next, but I do think if we take the master plan seriously and all the effort, we need to implement it. And I think the MOPIC would be the way to do it. And it's not like 100% clear to me what the path would be, but we could also look to other implementing committees and other communities to see how it worked for them too. So that's a lot of comments. I'm not sure what structure or what form, but I was kind of really surprised and, you know, like pleased by seeing these pieces of paper. And it's, I'm sorry that it got lost in the process, you know, seven years ago, but I think this is maybe a moment, and it's kind of a moment of pause too, that maybe we can talk about it and try to figure out what we want to do with it. So, you know, the one thing that you didn't mention, Janet, is like the economic factor, maybe, you know, bid or, you know, chamber represented, but we have no longer an economic director anymore. And I'm not, Chris, what's going on there? Because I feel like we have a huge hole in our downtown with COVID and I'm concerned. Who is it? Jeff Kravitz. So what's happening with his, with that position? Is it going to be filled or what's going on there? The town manager is taking this opportunity to kind of reevaluate what is an economic development director and exactly what would that person be asked to do if we did hire such a person to fill Jeff Kravitz's role. The town manager is also struggling with budget issues right now because, you know, he's looking at the potential for 2022, I guess, FY22 to be, you know, more challenging than FY21 is with regard to staffing, et cetera. So, you know, his general approach in the past has been if there's an empty position, you want to save money, don't fill the empty position. So these things are going through his mind. And the other thing is, is this an appropriate time to hire an economic development director? Even if we had one, what would he do right now? He can't really go out and meet with people. He can certainly have Zoom meetings, but it's kind of an odd time when there's a need for economic development, but there's the opportunity to make it happen is very limited, I would say. So anyway, the town manager is evaluating that position and trying to figure out what do we do with it? Yeah, well, I think we are fortunate because, you know, the bid is strong and we have the chamber in town. I think they're both well staffed and hopefully we can, it seems like they would be part of this master plan implementation committee for sure. For sure. Maria. I just want to say that the 14 page implementation matrix, as Chris said, actually a lot of it has been done. It's not like because there was not committing, nothing is getting implemented. Quite a bit has actually already been accomplished. And the trick I see with creating this committee right now is it will take a lot of staff time. Not that it shouldn't happen, but that in order to go through that 14 page matrix and say what's been done, what's not been done, and if it hasn't been done, how does it get done? That is not like someone off the street or someone from one committee or someone from one board can answer. It's the planning staff. So there's a little bit of like, how do we do this right now? We need a planning department staff. We, I love the idea of bringing more general public, especially I already have some people in mind who have been in the planning board or zoning subcommittee or different parts of volunteer work where they have historical knowledge of what's been done and they have great ideas that just haven't been implemented yet or people who have been in town meetings. So there are some key people who would be great to share their ideas moving forward because we don't really, we have sort of like small committees where people can volunteer. So this would be a great one to sort of tap into our, sort of our community of knowledge and reach out to people with good backgrounds. And as well as town council, I guess it's like we're doing, we're trying to dissolve one committee and create another one. So I just, I just wanna be careful about like creating more work that may not go anywhere. I know I sound like a Debbie down, I keep saying this, but maybe if it doesn't have planning staff initially, and it is just a group that just sort of brainstorms about, okay, let's take this matrix piece by piece and think about who are the key people we could talk to. That might be a good first step. But I think to then to initially have planning staff sit down yet another meeting and talk for most of the time because they're the ones with the sort of information. I just wanna be careful about creating that committee right away when we have town council and CRC and the zoning bylaw rewrite and a few other moving parts. But maybe there's a sort of a smaller working group version that is just taking this, on their own, got the reins, just take it where it can go without too much support from planning staff. Maybe, I don't wanna speak for you Chris or Pam, but I'm just, I'm kind of confused, you know, like how we're trying to, you know, focus beneath the fires, put out the fires. And then we're talking about this master plan committee. So that's where I am right now. I just, I think it's a great idea. It's a good first step. I just wanna be careful about creating another more workload when we have a lot of things going on right now. Good point, Maria. I mean, I mean, each, you know, committee needs it, like the housing committee has John Hornick, which he drives that. And if there was a person that was available that could drive it, then that would take the pressure off of the planning department for sure or other town staff that have their hands full, but thank you. Andrew, oh, sorry. Chris has her hands up, so. Oh, I just wanted to say it could be arranged that the committee could meet on its own and take its own minutes and produce its own minutes and produce an agenda. And we could help to post the agenda and post the minutes. So we don't necessarily have to be involved. We could be a resource for information. But I agree that it's, you know, it's hard to think about adding another meeting that one of us needs to attend. But if planning board members are interested in this, maybe they would be willing to, you know, take on the responsibility for coming up with an agenda, doing minutes, and then we would help with the posting. Thank you, Andrew. You had me at, it's not gonna be very hard. And then you lost me when you said that we'd have to take minutes and do our own agenda. I think what Janet said and what Marie said, I think they summed my thoughts up perfectly. I think, you know, from Janet's perspective, like if we're not tracking this stuff, like we're just, we've opened the door to lack of accountability. I, when I look at this, I actually see, I see a really compelling opportunity as a new board member to essentially onboard, right? And like to really get very familiar with how the plan is constructed and, you know, what some of the historical priorities are and how we've chosen to tackle those, right? Like if we didn't have a plan, we had some mechanism of priority, like, and we've accomplished some of this, right? We've had some mechanism of prioritizing that, whether it was by design or not. So I think it's, I think it's kind of a fascinating opportunity again, one that I'd be interested in to be able to onboard. But then, you know, when Maria brings up the point, like, how do you have time for this? And maybe, you know, you answered that short remark. I don't know how I would even begin to be able to answer some of these questions without, you know, calling you or another staff member for every part because I haven't been here to know what that is. I will say also just, you know, personally, I, in my job, I run our program management office. And so like, I have an interest in kind of how we develop processes and manage those and report those and track those. And I, again, kind of echo what Janet was saying before, that if we're not, if we're not tracking this, it almost seems like, you know, we're negligent to, is far too strong of a word. But it seems like we're not fulfilling, the town is not fulfilling its responsibility of ensuring that we follow the plan as we put it out there. It's almost like it wasn't even worth putting it there if we're not going to bother to look whether and understand if we've, if we tracked it or not. In addition to not only did we check the box, but did it work, right? Like, so maybe we did that thing, but should we have done that thing? Is there anything we could have learned from that thing that we did? Is there anything that we want to roll into our thought process moving forward that might be applicable, not only within the master plan, but other aspects of town government. So anyway, that's kind of my thoughts. I will say again that, you know, I think that I do have some interest, but I have more than some interest, but I don't know how I'd be able to do that without a significant amount of support from staff. Thanks, Jack. Thank you, Andrew. The really tied it together there, Chris. So what about if something like this were established and it didn't meet twice a month? You know, what if it meant once a month? And again, the board, the committee took on the responsibility of creating the agenda and taking the minutes and publishing the minutes and the staff person were there to be kind of an advisor or a resource or an institutional knowledge about what has happened, what hasn't happened, what's worked and what hasn't worked. You know, possibly that could work. I mean, I can imagine instead of going to TAC meetings, I could go to MPIC meetings once a month and that might actually be more useful because I'm not sure that I'm very useful at the TAC meetings. So is there a difference like instead of calling a committee, kind of like calling it a task force or something that takes the pressure off the planning department at a different level? Whatever it is, it has to have, if it's a public body, it has to have its agenda posted and it has to have minutes taken. Other than that, you know, it's really up to the members as to what they do or don't do. But it would put more pressure on the members to do the work rather than relying on staff. If I could be available, as I said, as a resource to tell Andrew, yes, we did that back in 2015 and here's where you can go to find the information. So if it's that level of involvement of staff, I think that we could provide that. But if we have to be writing reports and memos and minutes and sort of coming up with the agenda and all of that, I think that would tax us. But just to be available as a resource, I think that's probably realistic. Okay, I see Doug and Johanna's hands up, Doug. So I have a question for Chris. Earlier this evening, I thought you said that it wouldn't be too much of a burden to go through the matrix and indicate what has been done. If that's... I can talk about it, yeah. I could talk to you about it. I could sit down and I could tell you as we went through the matrix, oh yeah, we did that, we didn't do that, we said we didn't want to do that. So that would be something that I could do, yes. So if you and I made an appointment, we could have that conversation and I could type it up and at the next meeting, we could have that as, just here's the report on what we think is done. Yeah, yes, we could do that. Okay, so as a first step without creating a new committee, I could commit to doing that with Chris over the next, say, six weeks. And then we'd have something that we could start with and decide whether we needed a committee to do additional monitoring or where to go with it. So I guess it seemed like that might be a first step so that everybody can see kind of where we stand before we figure out where to go next. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Doug. That'd be great. Johanna? The way I see it is there are kind of two products that we're talking about. One product is the formation of a committee and we think that that would have, I don't know, value because it would have broader stakeholder engagement. Those people would then be more inclined to activate their people. Maybe you get more information. But that would be one product. The second product is, yeah, just the report. So what Doug is saying, like sit down with Chris, do an interview, figure out what did we do, what haven't we done on the master plan and that's the other product. My inclination right now is to hold off on the committee product and focus on the report product but then come up with a robust marketing plan of that product so that we get the public education benefit of it and raise the awareness of the master plan and raise awareness of what Amherst has done to date and what there is left to do. So again, this is me kind of as an advocate. There might be stuff here that a town board wouldn't do but I'm thinking like we could do a report card, we could do an op-ed in the paper, we could do presentations to some of the other key committees. We could actually do a video interview and put it up on social media with Chris and you know, but there are ways that we could kind of get the word out about it that are just ample of like, yeah, it's marketing and less of substance or new product creation. Yeah, it's interesting because I know Chris, you've gone through that master plan presentation but twice a year or at least once and sometimes you just gotta take a different look at it. I mean, I'm thinking of the 40R presentation that's gonna be next week and I'm like, I'm a little bit mystified of like, oh my God, I don't know because, but changing things up like Johanna said, it's public wants to speak and they need to get involved and it's like we really should be doing things different to get people involved and get their input and because I just, very good points, very good points. Tom. Yeah, I just wanted to say like one quick perspective on this is I feel like when we look at the master plan, I think, you know, I think you guys for committing to working on this committee and even going through this checklist of what's been accomplished, but I think that happens that there's something at a macro level and something at a micro level, right? So there's a sense that there are certain philosophies that are embedded in the master plan and that those can be enacted in a broader way. There's a committee that's doing X, Y and Z or vetting X, Y and Z but then on some level we as a planning board maybe are more on the hook for saying here's a project coming to us and has the opportunity to potentially do X, Y and Z. Can we hold that project accountable to meet certain criteria from the master plan as well? So I mean, I think there's a way in which doing our research and understanding what's been done is important but I also think there's a kind of these things are happening all the time. People are making changes to their own property or things are coming through the planning board that we can once we have a better understanding hold those businesses or property owners accountable to make the changes that will affect or that will support the master plan in a much more robust way, more cohesive way that nobody, I don't, we might be the only people that are looking at those things and comparing these kinds of daily actions that need to be approved with the actual by the lines of the master plan itself. So anyway, just a thought that there's a macro level and a micro level and we probably want to be thinking about both of those. So Tom, can you kind of like, I like the terminology of the big and small that you mentioned and what's the macro versus the micro that you're... Well, you know, like there are things like we want to maintain the character of the community and there's a whole set of sub lines underneath that but what is the big macro principle and how do we hold all of these different new projects accountable for maintaining the quality of our community or a character of our community? So I think that's a macro level principle. There are micro level versions of that like does this sign adhere to X, Y and Z principle or whatnot, right? Gotcha. I think there's minutia that we tend to get bogged down in but I think there's a moment where we can stop and say, hey, does this project actually do this also, right? So not that Kestrel Trust is doing something incorrect but saying is that project, does it have an opportunity to provide something positive to the community based on these macro principles from the master plan? Can we recommend they make that change based on X, Y and Z? By definition with the master plan, really be looking at macro or excuse me, macro and the micro being more like in the zoning bylaw type in the codes and stuff like that. So separating the two and being aware of it as a part of our role on the planning board and making sure, maybe it's something again, we need to do some research and have discussions to group about how we work through that but now that we have an obligation to do it but we do have the opportunity to encourage people to address some of these issues in their individual projects. Again, I haven't seen any come across the board that are doing that but I'm guessing that they may down the pipeline. So anyway, it's a good distinction. Thank you, Chris. I wanted to say two things. One is that I think what you're talking about is really a good preparation for starting a master plan process in 2025 or whenever the town decides to start the process. It takes about five years to really do a good job on a master plan. At least that's how much it took us last time. And by looking at what we've got now and what we've done, what we've accomplished and what we haven't accomplished, I think that would sort of set the groundwork for talking about, how do we wanna approach the master plan that we need to have in place or we need to present it to town council in 2030? So that's one thing. The other thing is I think that working on the zoning bylaw, we're supposed to make a statement. In fact, when the planning staff writes the planning board's report to town council now, it used to be to town meeting, we're supposed to make a statement that what we're being proposed, what zoning bylaw change is being proposed, comports or is not out of conformance with the master plan. It's some kind of convoluted language like that, but it's essentially to say what we're proposing here is in conforming with the master plan. And that's a statement that we always have to make at the bottom of our report. So this would help us to focus on what's in the master plan when we're going through the zoning amendment changes. So those are just the two things I wanted to say. All right, we're getting on nine o'clock here, two and a half hours in. Probably should wrap this up. We do need to take a vote. Recommending the adoption of the master plan as presented for the town council, which I feel like we've already done, but. We've not done that. And I just wanted to know, Mandy Joe has asked me for, or no, Lynn has asked me for a memo from the planning board and stating what your position is on the master plan. So I gave you all an email that I had sent to Mandy Joe stating what your position was. It says, dear Mandy Joe, at the July 1st, 2020 meeting of the planning board, Christine Gray-Mullen moved that the planning board recommended town council that they consider adopting the approved master plan as is for now and focus the town's attention and resources on the zoning bylaw changes, including establishing design guidelines and revisit the issue of the master plan at a later date. David Levenstein seconded and after discussion, the vote was seven to zero and supported the motion. So I could send that to her. I've already sent it to her. Is there more that you would like to say about this to include in a memo or should I work with Jack to come up with some language? How do you want to handle this? I mean, I feel like we've, we were okay with continuance of the master plan as written knowing it needs an update. I see Janet's hand and then Doug. I have a very small thing, addition. I would just be clear about what other plans are part of the master plan. Like that's, so I think, you know, if the town council decides to adopt the master plan but doesn't know that that also includes the transportation plan and anywhere from one to three other ones, I think they, they have to know what the, what it is. And so I thought, I actually thought that the planning board had adopted the housing study and the market plan. So I was, so I'll stop saying that. I thought they had two, but I find evidence of that in the, in the agendas. So I can look again. So, or maybe talk to Rob Crown or somebody who has the memory, but I think it's important just to say what the master plan is. Cause there are like extra pieces to it. Some of them are quite lengthy, you know, but I also think the more reading and the more information is better. But I think the town councilors would like to know what that means. May I ask a question? Would you all like an opportunity to vote to incorporate these plans into the master plan? Perhaps at your next meeting, I mean, I don't know if you've had a chance to look at these or think about them. Is our next meeting prior to when town council is taking this up? Cause I thought it was coming up pretty darn quick. There's a lot to read. Yeah, there's a lot to read. So you probably don't want to do that. Yeah. I mean, I would be good with just like, you know, acknowledging all these other plans that they've written and, and, and, and they should, you know, a company consideration when the master plan is being, you know, reviewed and considered, but yeah, I think there's like a half dozen plans that, that came up. I mean, I, just from a logistical kind of standpoint, I think we should recognize those. And I'm sure the town council would want that as well. But other than that, I I'll provide you with a list and links or copies. Yeah. But in concept, if we, should we approve the master plan as is with the addendum of the additional plans that have been prepared by the town subsequent? I would not go so far as to say that you'd want the town council to adopt those plans. I think that you recognize it. We recognize their existence. Make reference to them. Yeah, make reference. So I'll add that language to this, you know, I won't add the language to the boat, but I'll say that at tonight's meeting, tonight being October 7th, that you asked to have reference made to the subsequent plans that had been written. Is that decent? Is that a good? Yes. Okay. And then I'll list them. Any exception to that? I don't know that we need to take a vote, but any hands, Doug? Yeah, I had one little wordsmith on the email language that Chris made bold. Don't we want to recommend that town council adopt the approved master plan and not that they consider adopting it? Well, this is the language that was given to me by Christine Gray-Mullen that you voted on on July 1st. So if you want to take another vote, then that would be fine and I will take down what you want to say. So she'll ask me. I don't need to trip us into a whole other, you know, parliamentary process, but it just seemed like it's a little bit less direct than we might really have intended. So if we're going to issue some additional statement, I would take out the consider part, but if we're not, then that's fine. I'll withdraw my comment. So you could take a vote on a statement that the planning board recommends to town council that they adopt the approved master plan as written. And recognize. And refer to the additional plans that are, I think the CRC has listed. So do you want to take a vote on that? And I don't have that list, but it's just, I think that's what they were looking when, when you were looking at doing the master plan update, it was to incorporate the master plan with all those new plans. And that just was more complicated than anyone realized. But do we need to save the list of those plans? Andrew? Yeah, I was going to ask I, I don't know whether I just missed something, but I'm not sure what the other plans are that we're talking about or where to find those, you know, there's, so yeah, if you're a question, Jack, I would love to have spelled out specifically. Yeah. When's your next meeting? Your next meeting is 14 days from today, which is October 21st. So you could take another vote on October 21st. You want to do that? And I can have the list of subsequent plans ready by then. I was just thinking that town council is moving before that or not. I don't have my, I don't have that with me at this very moment. Yeah, let me look at my, Jess, like I apologize if I was unprepared for this, I can certainly abstain from a vote if, if that's the move, but I wouldn't, I feel like I need to, to know more about what, what that is before I feel comfortable voting for it. Well, they're really asking for a memo. So I can write the memo, I can use the words that were in this email that I sent to Mandy Joe, and then I can report on the other plans that have been done subsequently. And I don't think the planning board needs to take a vote on that. I can just report on it. Okay. So I'm just looking at an email by Lynn and she just wanted from us a very brief report on the planning board's recommendation that to town council, pass the master plan as is and suspend updates. Please include the date of the meeting motion, the vote count and a brief summary of the discussion, including any minority viewpoints. That was Lynn's email on Monday. Well, you did take this vote on July 1st. So do you want to go with that vote or that vote and I can elaborate on it? I think that captures it. Yeah, all right. And I will just elaborate on it based on the minutes of July 1st. How's that? Okay. And I will run it by, I guess I can send it to everybody if you want me to. Okay, I'll do that. Yep. They're meeting the 19th. Okay, so. So I don't know that we have time to. We don't have time for another vote. Yeah. So I'm going to put on the vote of July 1st and flesh it out a bit more with the discussion that occurred that night. How's that? Okay. Unless the plans that have been done subsequent. I think that's gonna. That'll do it, right? Do the trick. Yes. Okay. And then, so if we can move on to Janet. Okay. So we're going to move on to discussion of minutes. I do, I like the revised version that Pam or Chris came up with. It seems, you know, more to the point. And again, it's, it's, again, we're trying to take a load off of the planning department. I think there's evidence due to the passage of time that the minutes are have been more of an effort than, than they need to be because of the, it's taking months to do that. And so that discussion I brought up the last meeting was what can we do to make the minutes, you know, back to where they're more summaries. You don't want to skip anything, but we don't want to go verbatim. There's some guidelines here and again, I do like what, what Pam did. I don't, I don't know how I would quantify it or qualify, you know, what exactly you did different, but for the September 15 minutes, but we can have a discussion amongst the board in terms of what our, you know, targets are and goals for the minutes. Or so maybe we don't need to discuss. Everybody happy? Okay. Hey. Who has your hand up? Who? Janet. Oh, Janet, sorry. So my goal is to make sure we're meeting the legal requirement. And so my goal would be, there's enough information that somebody who was not the meeting could understand the discussion. Like what people said, it doesn't have to be every single statement. And I did think these minutes were a little thin. Like you wouldn't even understand what Amherst Hill's dispute was about. And so I'd hope we'd have more flesh on the bones. I don't want to become like the minutes Nazi, you know, but I also feel like I want to make sure like pros and cons in different points of view are included. And when we were reading the CRC minutes of that, that meeting, which we just got for the other, you know, that literally was, I think almost verbatim what happened at that meeting. Cause I attended that meeting and I was like, wow, you know, like I think it's Athena really just typed out, you know, her notes and that was it. And so that is very comprehensive. That might be faster than a summary and sort of analyzing it. So I would just ask for sort of more flesh on the bones, more discussion, the back and forth, people's points of views, but it doesn't have to be a transcript. So I'm going to leave that to Chris and Pam to kind of sort it out. So. Well, the comment with the guard Amherst Hills that we didn't really go into because we had knowledge of the case and then trying to project whether someone reading the minutes needed more background. I mean, I think that's on them. And it's an example of, you know, just, you know, trying to keep things simple as all, but anyway, Pam, whatever you did, I think for the 15 notes worked and it looks like we're not really going to have much discussion on this. So that's great. And Janet, I do appreciate your attention to detail. There's, I'm just putting that out there. But Doug. Yeah, I guess, you know, when I look at the minutes from the CRC meeting and I look at the minutes that of our last meeting, I agree with Janet they're quite different. And so, you know, it sounds like Janet would prefer to have more robust minutes than was done for our last meeting. And so I think we should actually talk a little more about that and try to give some clear direction to Chris and Pam so that we don't have to keep talking about this and, you know, have, you know, addendums added and, you know, kind of an ongoing difference of opinion about how the minutes should read. You know, I'm fine with either format myself, but I think, you know, I want to be respectful of Janet's opinion and her, you know, perhaps her more attention to the description in the mass general laws than I would be. You know, my guess is that Pam and Chris just want clear direction from us on what to do. So they can do it once and we can approve it and move on. So I feel like at the moment we haven't given them clear direction. And if, you know, if Janet has a preference for more meat on the bones as she put it and nobody else has any objection, then I guess we should give that direction to Pam and Chris. Thank you. Andrew. Thanks, Jack. I feel pretty comfortable with the minutes as they're formulated for this last go round. I do, though, think, I think the way you summarized, Janet, I can't remember exactly what you used about just describing the pros and cons or just the capturing the crux of the discussion. I do think that's an important part. I think it can be done with brevity, though. And that's ultimately what we're striving for. It's just how can we get to that, those critical ideas and, you know, without the need to have a full transcript. And it does seem like it seems like I didn't have any problems with these minutes at all. But I, you know, I could see them perhaps going a little bit deeper from time to time, but it seems like for the amount of materials we covered, the decisions we had, the discussions we had, I feel like I was very happy with this format. Yeah, I mean, I did a little bit of research and that we really are, we are on our own when it comes to the structure of the minutes. And here we have the public body checklist for creating and proving minutes and then the MGL law minutes of meetings. I mean, it's there and it's like, there's not much direction other than summarizing. So I guess we just keep that in mind and I don't know that we can really sculpt, you know, the exact architecture of the minutes, but just, I just feel like the planning board is struggling with trying to get all the detail in there that they probably don't need. And again, there's a question of, well, if you just provide a transcript, maybe that's just easier. And then, but we have to read the darn thing and then it's like, watch the video. Maria. I wasn't gonna say anything because I'm so tired to have a minute, but Doug, all right, Doug, I wanna say what I wanna say because I can't just let the suggestion go. I think the minutes were fine. What I wanna avoid is having a 20 pages of minutes that show up three months later. I think it's really useful by that point. And so I hope that Pam or Chris, whoever read the minutes, it wasn't a big burden to do this other version. And if they ever came to a lawsuit, I think the video would have every single word captured. So really the minutes are for people, I guess, who wanna summary, but don't wanna watch the video. So I think at this point with all the other things going on, it's a better use of time to just do a bridge version. And maybe later, if you do feel like, okay, we gotta put more substance in the minutes when it's not such a hectic time, fine. But like many people said, there is a video to get everything in case a horrible thing, like a lawsuit or whatever to come up. But that's my two cents. I appreciate the shortened a bridge version. So for the second time, it is 9.20. I mean, we can touch upon this, you know, the next meeting and we'll be looking forward to the next version of the minutes. I'm and I are gonna walk a fine line. Right. And so topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting for old business. None. Okay. New business. We have planning board officers authorization to sign plans for subdivision control law. Chris. You want me to talk about that? Yeah. So every time the planning board votes in a new slate of officers, we need to send a document to the registry of deeds in Northampton and to the land court in Boston, indicating that the planning board as the whole has voted to authorize the officers to sign documents having to do with subdivision control. So this would be anything like an A&R plan or a definitive subdivision plan or a preliminary subdivision plan, anything having to do with subdivision control law. They have to have a document in their registry that says that the planning board has given authorization to the people who are signing. So I would ask you to vote to, I don't know if you had those letters before you, but vote to authorize Jack Jempsick, Doug Marshall and Maria Chow to sign documents that fall into that category. Any discussion? Okay. Make a motion to prove the proposal that Chris just stated. Yep, so moved, Johanna. Okay. Second, anyone? Second. Okay. Roll call or more discussion? None. Okay. Andrew. Proof. Doug. Hi. Maria. Proof. Tom. Approve. Johanna. Hi. Janet. Hi. And myself, hi. So I'm gonna need to have you some sign these. So I'll send out an email tomorrow about times when I might get together with you and I can either drive by your house which I've done in some cases that you could meet me here. Okay. So I'll try to take care of that tomorrow. But thank you for doing that vote. Andrew, you have your hand up. Yeah, just super fast. Like, do we need wet signatures for this stuff or can we use docusign? Just given where we are with them. Well, I think registry requires wet signatures. Okay. And then how about just for other like the documents we signed earlier this week is? I haven't got it. I'd like getting out of the house, but I also just seem like. So I've asked the question of the town clerk and she prefers wet signatures. And I haven't asked the question of the registry of deeds, but they're the ones who actually get the document that you signed and then they record it and give it back to the owner. So I think there's still not a full acceptance. We accept electronic signatures on building permit applications now, which we never did before, but for things that have to go to the town clerk and the registry, I'm reluctant to say that that's okay. We can't explore that as a possibility, but I just to soon drive by your house, if you know, rather than. Yeah. That makes sense. For the time being, that's what I'll do or have ask you next time you're in town, you know, stop, tell me when you're going to stop by the parking lot. I'm never not in town anymore. So. But we will explore the possibility of electronic, but I don't know how that's going to work. So under new business topics, not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting, anything else, Chris? Nope. No. No, sorry. Okay. Form A&R subdivision applications. None. Upcoming ZBA applications. Yeah. I actually reached out to the ZBA staff and they have a few things that are possibly brewing in the pot, but nothing has been formally submitted. Okay. Upcoming SPP, SPR, and sub applications. So the planning board has received an application from the Emily Dickinson Museum to do some lighting and some pathway work. And I don't know if I told you that month ago when we met. So it's really going to be lighting their facade and doing some ground lighting and also providing a pathway to connect the homestead and the evergreens and lighting along the path as well. It's going to be very, well, I shouldn't prejudice you, but pictures I've seen make it look good. Thank you. Regarding committee and liaison reports, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, we're meeting, the general commissioners are meeting tomorrow. And I have to say, Monica Moran, I don't know if anybody knows her, but she's an Amherst, South Amherst resident, but she's going to be speaking about domestic violence. She has a role, their manager of domestic violence prevention and should be interesting. I know COVID has not been easy on families. And there's some other economic impacts of COVID. We're going to talk about tomorrow on top 100 high crash intersections in the Pioneer Valley. So you all want to know where those are. There's got her driver's license, or has a permit, so please tell me. Yeah, so there's just, you know, other items too, but the Community Preservation Act Committee, I don't know what's the status of folks being not approved. Did you get your appointment letter, Andrew? I didn't, none that I have seen. I've also not seen any activity for the, actually, well Doug, you may know, but I've not seen any activity for the CPAC anyway. So I would attend the meetings if I saw them, but I don't recall seeing any on them. Right, and the ad submission. Doug, have you received any letter of appointment? No, I have not. Right. And Tom, no, okay, and then Rhea and Janet. There's only a subcommittee, which. Light lifting. What's that? A light lift right now. A light lift, okay. So report to the chair. I just want to keep Amherst Hills in our, in our focus. Winter's coming. We got, I'm glad that Janet brought that up, but gave him a heads up a month ago, but another email checking in. Yeah, I think you had something from the, from Aaron, the wetlands administrator. She was answering. Yeah. Yeah. What happened? Cause they were going to review the lot, you know, a few of the lots there that might be compromised due to. Yeah. In terms of the bill ability. She says to me that October 14th, I expect to have an update on the vernal pool peer review. So they've asked for a peer review on the issue of the vernal pool. And they've also asked for an update on, you know, how big is it there? How big is it? How many lots does it have an impact on? And so after the 14th, which is next Wednesday, we should be able to know some more about that. But as a recall, they, they weren't, the developer wasn't showing up to the conservation committee. Meetings. I think the developers showed up last time, which was on the 23rd of September. Okay. And they, so they made a little progress. That's all I have reported staff. I don't have any report, but it certainly is exciting working here. I must say. There's a lot going on. And we can adjourn. Oh, maybe I do have a report. And I'm not sure if I told you this, but the town. We planning department received. The town received. We got the money for them though. Because there was a lot of work going on in the town. But it's a lot of work, and we have a ton of work going on there. So, um, $129,000 or $130,000 for, um, doing various things in the downtown to support our local businesses and our local restaurants. And it includes heaters for outdoor dining. It includes, um, Restriping part of the roadway. It includes plantings. And it's going to be really nice. Unfortunately, dining will be a very lovely experience as a result of this and you'll probably see something in the newspaper about this in the next day or so. That's from the CARES Act? Nope, that's actually from the Mass Department of Transportation, if you can believe that. It's the smart streets and smart streets and shared streets or something. I can't remember exactly, but anyway that was something that we were very happy about and we're going to be working with the bid to make that reality. Great, well thanks everyone, good meeting, and we meet what in two weeks? Two weeks, the 21st. All right, thank you. Good, good, everyone have a good evening.