 Okay, we're ready. The appointed hour is six o'clock having been reached. I call this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals to order. My name is Steve Judge. As ZVA chair, I want to welcome everyone to this meeting. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. Additionally, the meeting will be recorded and may be viewed on the town of Amherst's YouTube channel and ZVA webpage. In accordance with provisions of Massachusetts General Laws chapter 40A and article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw. This public meeting has been dewy advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. We will begin with a roll call of members of the ZVA. Steve Judge, I'm here. Ms. Parks. Here. Mr. Maxfield. Here. Mr. Meadows. Here. Mr. Gilder. Here. Mr. Cochran. Here. Ms. Winters. Here. Also an attendance tonight is Marine Pollock, planner with the town, Rob Mora, building commissioner, Dave Wasebeck, senior building inspector and John Thompson, senior enforcement officer. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 40A of the General Laws, the Commonwealth, for the purpose of promoting the health safety and convenience and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important elements of the Amherst Zoning By-law is section 10.38. Specific findings from this section must be made for all our decisions. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing after which the board will ask questions for clarification or for additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair if a member of the public wishes to speak. They should so indicate by using the raised hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels that there's enough information in time, they will decide on the upon the applications. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. Tonight's agenda, a public meeting. This is an administrative meeting to discuss ZBA standards, conditions for residential use permits permitted by the special permit, items raised by the ZBA members for discussion, general public comment period and other business not anticipated within 48 hours. And then, of course, the journey. So one of the things we wanted to do tonight is really pursuant to a couple of requests that we've had from members and is probably gonna be helpful, especially for our newer members, to review generally the zoning by-law and the Massachusetts statutory framework for the ZBA, its role, its authority, how its frame, it's how its discretion and the zoning by-laws are framed by both the by-law and state laws. Number one, number two, also then discuss the kind of conditions that we have put on in the past and kind of have a discussion about the conditions that are, that have been imposed on special permits. Open that up to discussion from people on the board and get the enlightenment of the staff to help us with both the history as well as implications of decisions that we would make in terms of conditions. So what I had done is ask the staff to create kind of opening introduction and sort of a primer on the ZBA. And I think Maureen has pulled that together. I think Maureen, has everybody gotten a copy of the PowerPoint or are you just gonna go through it on the meeting? I did only this afternoon, just emailed everyone the PowerPoint. So if you haven't got a chance to review it, well, we'll review it tonight. And also I did send it via email earlier today. Great. So Maureen, would you start with that? And I guess my question to you is if members have questions, do you want them to hold them till the end or should they raise their hand and ask the questions during the presentation? What's most convenient for you, which do you prefer? So I'm gonna give a little overview on a few things. And I guess when I finish my overview, if folks have questions, that would be a good time. And then John Thompson, it's gonna give an overview. And so at the end of his presentation, then that would be a good time to take questions for his questions. I think it's gonna be particularly helpful. One of the areas that I had not had as much experience in is the town's policy and authority to do inspections and examinations of residents and how that whole system works. We rely a lot upon the conditions of the special permit being followed. And we really don't, we don't have a role in enforcement, but that's done by the town. And John will talk about that in his presentation. So Maureen, get started. Okay, okay, so here is tonight's presentation outline. I'll review the special permits process and which is administered through the special permit granting authority and talk about decisions and conditions. And John Thompson will give an overview of the zoning code enforcement and we'll review typical conditions that we've used in the past when permitting residential uses. And we'll talk about, we'll open it up for discussion of what works, what doesn't work, what, you know, if anything doesn't work, you know, does anyone have suggestions? So special permits. So consistent with mass general law, chapter 40a, section nine, the Amherst zoning bylaw provides for specific types of uses, which can only be permitted in specific zoning districts upon the issuance of a special permit. Special permits may be issued only for uses or structures which are in harmony with the general purpose and intent of the zoning bylaw. The special permit requires adjudication by the board and as such may be approved with conditions or denied. So the special permit granting authority, which is in Amherst, the special grant granting authority can be, can be either the planning board or the zoning board of appeals. So again, so for you guys, you are considered a special permit granting authority. So the ZBA has the discretionary power to consider an application. And this discretion may not be unguided, meaning it can't just be something completely random. It has to be based on standards and criteria outlined in the zoning bylaw. So both you, the board and the applicant are informed of what factors and considerations will govern the application. In order to be granted a special permit, the application needs to satisfy the following. The relevant standards set forth under section 3.3, the use classifications and standards, table three, the dimensional regulations, specific findings under section 10.38 and any other applicable requirements and standards under the zoning bylaw. Examples of residential uses that are permitted by special permit and specified zoning districts include duplexes, either owner-occupied duplex or a non-owner-occupied duplex, townhouse apartments, converted dwelling, a mixed-use building, and a detached accessory dwelling unit, and if it is a certain size. And so in your leisurely time with us, you could actually, we could click on it right now. This hyperlink will bring you to the town's GIS mapping tool, if it works, I've never seen it slow down like this, but what I'm gonna say was, let's see here, this is our GIS program. And if you click here, there's different maps. You can utilize, there's an aerial map, a topography map, property map, a zoning map, and that's the one I'm clicking on. And you can zoom in and see what areas of town are in the various zoning districts. And so where you see the areas highlighted in yellow, those are the general residence districts. And- Marine, sorry to interrupt, but we can- Oh, you can't see it. Yeah, we can't see it. Thank you. Yep, it's the way I did it. Sorry, I'm glad that you said that. So the hyperlink from the slide show brought us to this GIS mapping tool, and this is provided through the town. And when you click here, you can click on different types of maps, aerial map, a topography map, and here I clicked on the zoning map. And so you can zoom in and zoom out, and here you can see where the yellow is. You can see that it says RG and that represents the general zoning, general residence zoning district. And if you click over here on the left side where it says legend, you can find and scroll down. You can find the legend that indicates the different zoning districts. So if you're sort of unclear of what RG represents, this provides you like the full name, for instance. And then you also can search for properties. So we can just type in Adam Street. And you can either, if you know the address, you could type in the exact address, or you can just press search. And then we can just, I clicked on this where it's now yellow and then show on map, and it'll zoom right to that property, which is, I guess, a property. And anyways, you can see that it's located in the R and the neighborhood residence zoning district. So I just wanted to give you a quick tutorial on that. And so now in the slide show, it has a hyperlink to that GIS mapping tool. Okay, so now I'm back on the slide show and hopefully you see that, correct? Cool, cool. Okay, so, and then the next slide shows table three, the dimensional regulations. And so we provide dimensional regulations for each zoning district. And this is included in the zoning by law and it gets into the basic minimum lot area, additional lot area per dwelling unit, basic minimum lot frontage, setbacks, front setbacks, side setback, rear setback, maximum building coverage, maximum lot coverage, maximum amount of floors allowed, and maximum heights allowed per zoning districts, okay. And so as I said before, the Amherst zoning by law designates the zoning board of appeals and the planning board as the special permit granting authority. The rules and regs, so the state statute requires that the planning board and the ZBA adopt rules and regulations governing the organization procedures in conduct of the board and governing review in action on special permits, experiences, appeals, and comprehensive permits. Tonight, we're just solely gonna really be talking about special permits, but there are other permits that the ZBA, for instance, handles, and those are variances appeals of a building commissioner decision and comprehensive permits. A copy of the rules and regs are filed with the Amherst town clerk. Marino, just to add one thing, just for the new members, the ZBA rules and regs are something that we have, that we adopt as a body. And I think we most recently updated it in 2020, about a year ago. But there are rules and there are the rules that we have adopted to govern the process of the operation of the ZBA. Yep, very good point, Steve. So the ZBA membership consists of five regular members and four associate members. All members need to be residents of Amherst and they are appointed by the town council. Regular members are expected to attend all regularly scheduled ZBA meetings, if possible. And the associate members sit on the board in case of absence inability to act or there's a parent conflict of interest on the part of any ZBA member or in the event of a vacancy of the regular membership. Application filing. So applicants are required to meet with the building commissioner or planner to complete the application for a special permit prior to filing it with the town clerk. This is an important step because it gives a chance for staff to meet with the applicant to make sure that everything they provided is complete. And so sometimes things we notice that are, oh, you forgot either a couple things or you forgot a lot of things and that are requirement of the application. And so staff will review this with the applicant and once it is deemed complete by the building commissioner, Rob will sign off on the application and then we will file it with the town clerk and that's when we then will schedule a public hearing with the board. The public hearing and decision. So the special permit granting authority, so again, that could be the ZBA or the planning board needs to hold a public hearing with notice. So provided with a legal ad going into the daily Hampshire Gazette that public legal ad needs to be advertised twice, two weeks and one week before the meeting which it spells out what the application entails and it says the date and time and the zoom link. So members of the public know about the public hearing and also a butters that have properties within 300 feet of the project site get notified by regular mail. So the public hearing needs to be held within 65 days of the filing of the application with the town clerk and ZBA needs to take action and make their decision within nine, which take final action making and filing the decision with the town clerk within 90 days of the close of the public hearing. And these timelines can be extended with written agreement between the applicant and the board. Voting requirements. So for a special permit, again, that's what we're kind of just focusing on tonight. The decision, so a special permit approval or denial. Well, I guess approval you would need at least four members, to vote in favor of a special permit for it to be approved. And for a comprehensive permit, which is something completely different, you just need three members of a five member board to vote in favor of it for to approve. So that's just a comparison, a withdrawal. So an applicant can withdraw an application and if it's, there's two sort of avenues before the legal ad is published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the applicant could say, you know what, actually, I would just like to withdraw my application. That person could just send me a formal email or a letter addressing it to the ZBA and I just need to file it with the town clerk. If it's after the legal ad is published in the paper, then the applicant needs to formally request it, request a withdrawal without prejudice to the ZBA at a meeting and the board would need to vote on that, either yes or no. And so the board would needs for decision-making, the board needs to make a detailed record of its proceedings, including the vote of each member on each application, including the failure to vote, the absence of a member in the reasons for its decisions and actions. The board needs to make findings that support the decision or actions and the findings are, you know, AKA the reasons why the board either approved or denied a permit. And those findings are based on the zoning by-law and the applicable sections in the zoning by-law and these bullets highlight, you know, those standards. So, you know, the standards under that particular use and the dimensional regulations and the specific findings under section 10.38, in any other applicable requirement or standard under the by-law. I feel like I might have said some of this before. So after the board signs the decision and it's filed with the town clerk, there is a 20 day appeal period. And so, you know, butters that have, I forget the term interest, the butters that are within 300 feet of the property could, if they had an issue with the project, they could possibly appeal it in superior court. And after that 20 day appeal period is over and there is no appeal, then that applicant is ready to move forward with their building permit or whatever else is needed. So the board is able under, you know, a mass general law to impose conditions, safeguards and limitations on time and use of any structure or use for which a special permit is sought. For example, a requirement that limits the special permit to the applicant or owner is an acceptable condition. And, you know, you guys make conditions, I think 99, if not 100% of the time when approving a special permit. In addition, what a special permit application is accompanied by plans or designs, those become conditions of the special permit and the board should so specify in its decision. It's important that the decision with conditions are clear and well written, which are based on the relevant findings made in order for it to be defensible in a potential appeal at superior court. And so they're also enforceable by the town enforcement officers such as John Thompson. And so a special permit requires the adjudication of the board, I did say this before, and as such may be approved with conditions or denied. There is no guarantee or entitlement to a special permit. The board may deny the permit based on any reasonable grounds. The planning department encourages the board to provide detailed findings for denial of a special permit. And, you know, if there is a denial, again, it really should be based on findings, relevant findings under the zoning by-law. It's not because you don't like a person or just for some sort of random reason, it really needs to point back to the findings that you made under the zoning by-law. And I already said that. And so now I'm gonna pass, before I pass the baton over to John Thompson, do you have any questions? Go ahead. I just was trying to remember the four votes for special permits. That was something that we had adopted in our rules when we voted that back in 2020, that's not something coming down from state law or town by-law, is that? That is based on mass general law. Yeah, that's under chapter 48, I think, right? Outlines it throughout the state the same, yeah, super majority requirement. Mr. Meadows? Either a simple or a difficult question. Under the guidance document, proposed activity requiring a special permit will be evaluated assuming that there are no adverse impacts. I'm not certain what the adverse impacts relates to. I mean, it could be adverse impacts to the neighbors, to the property itself. I don't know exactly where you're reading that, but that would be an example of an adverse impact if there is, for instance, some sort of development and they have parking and there is no screening provided and the applicant is just saying, you know what? I still don't, the neighbors have expressed that they want screening to block the headlights from the cars that park on this proposed development, but you know what, the hypothetical is that maybe they still don't care. They still don't want to provide fencing or evergreen trebery that could easily block that the headlights and so that could be a reasonable, that could be a finding that you as the board couldn't make under 10.38 that there would be an adverse impact to that neighbor or neighbors. And so that could be a reason to deny a permit. You would hope that the applicant would be reasonable and say, sure, I'll provide privacy fencing. That seems to make sense. And then you would be able to make that finding. So it's just a broad category. Okay. So if you look at, when you look at 10.38, a lot of those are just about the effect that the special permit will have on the neighborhood of the community or the conservation district or other things. And if we can't find that we meet the requirements, make a finding that we meet the requirements of all of 10.38, then that's grounds for denial of a special permit. Is that correct, Maureen? Yeah, yep, yep. And so- You have to make findings on all of those. Yeah, and so the way that you can make those findings is with the inclusion of conditions. So a condition to say in that hypothetical is that vegetative screening will be provided and maintained for the life of that project. So if there was a concern about adverse effect of that neighbor or neighbors, that would be a good condition to include. So you could make that. So it's similar to the article three where it says permits may be issued for only uses which are in harmony with a general purpose in harmony is a pretty broad spectrum of concepts. Okay. Ms. Parks. So I'm just wondering if there's any cost to talk to the planning board or someone in town if you just want to think about a project at your house? Is there only, does the cost only take place when you're actually doing permits? So if I'm hearing, so your question is, are there only costs associated with the application fee for the special permit? Yeah. And are there other costs? Yeah, so I mean, so yeah, there is a fee associated with the application and then there is a fee to record the permit with the registry deeds. And then if there's needed building permits and or electrical permits, stuff of that nature, there would be additional fees associated. But as far as like just talking to the town and- No, no, there is no fees. Nope. Okay. No, we generally meet with people very often to discuss their projects first before they even outlay any kind of money or application. So we just want to make sure that it's even feasible to begin with and we'll guide them down that road. That's what I was hoping. I just didn't know if there was like a consultation fee or anything like that or- Yeah, I know. Yeah, actually just the yesterday, Dave Westkevitz and I met with someone and someone had called me up and I said, they said, oh, we have these plans to do A, B and C and on our property. And I said, oh, you're gonna have to get a surveyor to survey your property. But I said, you know what? Before you go hire that surveyor, why don't you meet with Dave and I and we'll see if this isn't even feasible. So we met with them yesterday, I believe, just to kinda walk them through the process and it was very helpful for them because there was some information that they didn't realize and so that'll help them decide whether they wanna pursue it or not. So yeah, so people call us all the time and we can meet via phone, zoom and now in person. So. Yeah, there was a couple of days ago which will probably come before the board if they decide to go forward but it was two units existing or actually one or yeah, two and they were conceivably adding a third and maybe a fourth. So that would be something we would just tell them what they need to look at first to see if it's feasible, try to explain some of the costs they might run into building code wise and then decide if they wanna do two, three or four units but that's a typical day for us, among other things. I guess I'd like to distress one more time. I know you've heard me say this before but the imposition of conditions is sometimes the grease that makes the gears work for the benefit of both the applicant as well as the surrounding neighbors. We have to make a decision on 18 findings under 10.38. If they are applicable to this case we've got to make a finding in each one of those that we meet the requirements of that section of the bylaw and sometimes we can't, there are times when we can't make that finding for to use Maureen's example, we can't make the finding under one of our requirements that it will not impose a burden on the neighbor to have the light shining into their bedrooms every time the car comes in and out without having some kind of screening of vegetation. And if put by putting a condition on that application saying it can be approved if there is screening to prevent the intrusion of headlights into the neighboring houses, then we can make that finding and the application can go forward assuming that all other findings are met. But if we can't make that finding and the applicant refuses to do that then we can't make the finding that we need to make in order to approve the special permit. And that's how conditions work both to the benefit can work to the benefit of the applicant as well as can resolve concerns and problems that the neighbors or the community has about the property. And it isn't just limited to neighbors, it's also limited, it also applies to the conservation districts and other kinds of broader concerns than just the next door neighbor that we have to make findings that this development or this change of special permit will not pollute the water or pollute the light sources and other things. So, and it has to be consistent with the general town plan, the master plan. So those are, those are one of the reasons that conditions are imposed. That's how they tend to work in, I think in our experience and they have been beneficial to both applicants as well as to the town and to the residents of town. All right, Maureen, is that pretty much what you wanted to go through? Yep, so next, so I'll now pass the baton to John. So John, I can click on the slides. So... Right, stay on the first slide for a minute, Maureen. Go back one. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I'm John Thompson. I'll tell you a little bit about myself and how I got to this job. I worked in the Valley as a carpenter and a custom home builder for 38 years. During that time, I served on my local planning board for 15 years, seven as the chair, and I served for 10 years on my local ZBA. So I had an understanding of both how zoning bylaws are written and how they're enforced before I came to this job working for the town. In 2012, the town of Amherst advertised a job that hadn't existed before, which would be someone, they wanted to hire someone to be a building inspector and a health inspector who could work on health and safety issues in the rental community. And there's about 5,000 units of rental, rental units in Amherst, so it's a big job. It sounded interesting to me because it hadn't existed. And I applied and got the job, so got to help create it. Rob came on right about the same time that I started. And so we started to form the team that we have now. Go ahead, Maureen, and we'll talk about some of the most common complaints and enforcements that I deal with. Some of these are just things that I drive by. Some of them are things that neighbors complain about. Trash, you can see the problem here. There was too much trash on the site. It looks like animals got into it. It gets spread around. This is just one that I happen to drive by. Most of these, in terms of enforcement, I know who, because I've been doing this long enough, I know who owns the property. I have them in my cell, I take a photo of this, I text it to them, I say, clean it up by noon and it happens. A lot of these little complaints are handled same day. Go ahead, Maureen, and quick to the next one. Again, a trash thing. So this upsets neighbors to no end. These kids had a party and they didn't put their toys away. And on Monday morning, I hear about it. Next slide. So vehicles, people complain about parking and I see parking when I drive around. I took this photo the other day. This is a house down on McClure Street. Yeah, I walked past this house. Yeah, so there's two cars on the lawn. There's another photo that I had taken. There's two more cars on the front lawn. So we had one, two, three, four, five, six cars there. There's a zoning bylaw in Amherst that no more than four unrelated can live in a single family home. And we got six cars. I'm not sure how that's going, but after we get through the slides, I'll talk about how we deal with enforcement on something like this. Go ahead, Maureen, to the next slide. So this is two photos of an unusual property on Cosby Street, which is off of Lincoln. There's two houses on a single lot. They're both listed as four-bedroom homes. There are 11 cars parked there on this particular day and I've actually seen 12 cars there. So we got two problems. We got the parking problem and we've got an overpopulation probably happening. And Maureen pointed out to me, they actually, go back to that slide, they actually have an approved parking plan that shows 11 cars. It's a hand-drawn thing. I tried it today. I drew one on the town GIS and if you fit 11 cars in there, it's like that little parking lot game that you get on your phone, you know, where you got to figure out how to move a car so you can get the other one out. No, it's just not happening. And of course, an emergency vehicle has, if this is full of cars like this, they can't get in there. So that's a problem. Click on Maureen. This one just happened the other day. So what happens when we have an overpopulated house and they're all out on the deck at one o'clock in the morning, you know, we had a deck collapse. Nobody was injured in this one. Fortunately, but that's the second egress to the house right back there. They can't use that anymore. So now we've got another situation of, you know, how do they get out? Fortunately, the next morning they were there tearing down what was remained of the deck and they put up some temporary stairs to be able to access that door again. I think that's it. Did I set all I put in for slides? Yes. I can talk about enforcement a little bit. So complaints come in a few different ways. People can complain online. We have an electronic way to do that. And folks use that for all kinds of complaints, not just housing complaints, although it is on the rental page specifically. But a few different people see those complaints. Often noise complaints will get filed that way, you know, at one o'clock in the morning, someone goes online and files one of those. I don't see that, of course, until Monday morning, but Officer Laramie, who is the Neighborhood Liaison Officer for APD, he gets a copy of these complaints and we review them on Monday and deal with them then. People call me and leave a message. People email me directly and leave messages. So if we get a complaint, say it's a parking complaint at a property, I will go there, get a photo of the problem, I reach out to the landlord. The landlords will have any number of excuses. That's just their girlfriends, whatever. But we got to deal with the problems. Often it's pretty easy to arrive at a solution. Sometimes what I'll do if it's a problem that people have been complaining about for a while is we'll go there every morning and keep track of which cars we see. So, you know, there's 10 cars there every day, it's the same 10 cars. I'll request a copy of the lease with the names of the occupants and then a list of which cars I'm supposed to see and what their plate numbers are. And then we can go and say, okay, well, what about these other, you know, what about these cars? Cause these don't seem to belong to anybody. And if it's an overpopulation, we'll lean on the landlord to address that. There's language in the rental bylaw that, you know, we can suspend their rental permit. If need be, usually landlords are pretty compliant. That's been my experience with them. Landlords that aren't compliant we have a way to find them. We can write a non-criminal disposition ticket. That's like a parking ticket. So it's a $100 per violation. You know, if I see a house like that on McClure where there's four vehicles on the lawn, that's four violations, that's $400 a day. So for every day that I see that, they get 21 days to pay that ticket. If it doesn't get paid, we go to district court and the magistrate hears the case and, you know, we'll listen to both sides and then make a judgment. How else? But Mr. Thompson, you don't have, you need to get a complaint, you know, for overcrowding, for example. I mean, parking, you can see that, but just driving by, if you have a house that is, it only allows for four people, four unrelated individuals. There is no way for you to independently investigate whether you can go in to that house and look at it and say, I think there's six people living in this house or 10, whatever it is. You need to have a complaint in order to do that. Is that correct? Yeah, kind of mostly, yes, I would say. The bylaw, the rental bylaw allows me to request an inspection of a property. So, you know, I did one the other day, there's a house that's become a rental recently on Jeffrey Lane and the neighbors are, you know, watching it like hawks. And well, you know, there's six cars there, John, there's six cars, here's photos of the six cars. The times that I've seen, it's only been four cars, but I've had enough complaints about it that I requested an inspection. So the bylaw says within 24 hours, I can walk through the house. So I did that two days ago, we walked through the house and, you know, there's four bedrooms and there were four beds. And then we went down in the garage and behind a couple of sheets of plywood, there was another bed. Oh, that's just being stored there, you know, with the sheets on it. Sure it is. That looks like it came out of the room that has a TV in it, you know? That's bedroom number five. So yeah, that landlord's got some explaining to do. And while I'm in the house, you know, I make a short list of other violations that need to get addressed. So, you know, two of the smoke detectors don't work and one of them fell down out of the ceiling when I pressed the button like that. So she'll be given a period of time to address this. What she came away with was, wow, I got to keep a closer eye on this house because, you know, when I, she said, when I see it, it's looked fine, but I'm not really driving by it all that often. And I said, you know, the management's really got to be up to you. I can't be managing the property for you and the neighbors aren't managing it either. So she picks up her daughter at the Montessori school and Jeffrey Lane's right on her way. She can stop by there once a week and take a look at it. And so that's what we agreed will happen. John, could you talk about, you know, the importance of conditions? Boy, you know, both from my experience as a ZBA member and in the job that I'm in now, the conditions are where you have all your power. I don't remember really ever denying a special permit application when I was a ZBA member here in Schuttsbury, but boy, we did condition them. I was thinking when the question was asked earlier about, you know, adverse effects, we have Lake Viola here in town and it's popular for folks right on the front line of the lake to want to put a second story on their house. But that has, of course, an adverse effect on the house right behind it. They can't see the lake anymore. So we did use that as reason to lower the roof line. Yeah, maybe you can add something onto your house but maybe not a full second story, you know? And that actually was one of the advantages of having a builder on the ZBA was clients can't say, well, you know, it's not possible to do that. Yeah, it might be possible to do it two or three different ways. I think that both from your point of view, your power is in the conditions, but it's also, it helps us in the enforcement because, you know, we can go then back to those conditions and we have something to enforce. And so, you know, there must be residential homes out there that are, you know, either owner occupied or their rentals and they don't, and they're like maybe just preexisting, non-conforming houses that never needed a special permit and so they don't have any conditions. What do you, is it sort of difficult to enforce that, you know, if there are no conditions, if there's something, you know, something that you wish there could be a condition to address it, but there isn't, is there, I don't know, do you have any thoughts on that of how do you deal with properties that don't have conditions? You find it, you know. We still have the building code, the sanitary code and other zoning. So, you know, I have other tools available. It's just that if the conditions are written down, here's the thing, these houses, this is more and more in demand, people want to figure out how to keep their house one way or another. They want to figure out how their house can make some income for them or maybe they're buying the house and they want the income property to help pay the mortgage. I think that we're seeing more and more houses need these special permits. So the more we can control what happens to them, the easier it is on the neighbors and the town as a whole, I think. But I guess, just to clarify, if you have an existing non-conforming use someplace and it doesn't have a special permit and to use Maureen's example of light trespass onto the neighbors, there is no way for you because there's not a special permit, there is no way for the town to say, you must put up screening to prevent the lights from entering your bedroom every night. Yeah, not really. And I do get complaints about that. My neighbor put up a spotlight and it shines in my bedroom, again, make them stop. But you can't do anything about that without a special permit. That's correct. Because it isn't a health and safety violation, it isn't a building code violation. So in that case, there's nothing that can be done. But if they are requesting a special permit and in effect, they're saying, we wanna be able to do something that would otherwise not be allowed to be done, the ZBA can say that's right. We think what you wanna do is a good thing. We generally think it's a good idea, but here are the conditions that we think will make this acceptable for the neighborhood or making it acceptable for the town. And that's what the purpose of the conditions are. That's right. So, okay. Are there other questions for John? I guess the one thing I don't know very much about Mr. Thompson is the residential rental permit program and what that does, I know that has, you have to sign up for it. You have to get a permit, you have to pay a small fee to have rental property and you need to have some kind of a parking plan. But I don't know much more than that about the residential rental permit process. I'll talk about it for a minute. So one of the difficulties I encountered right away when I started doing this job was that many properties in town were not owned by people who lived in town. And often they didn't even live in Massachusetts or in the United States. They lived in Spain or in China. So if there was an issue at a house, I really had to do quite a bit of investigation to figure out how to get in touch with them. And that ate up a lot of time. We needed a database of who owned the house, how do we get in touch with you in an emergency? And so the town set up a team of both town hall staff, folks, landlords, tenants, folks from the university who hammered out this rental bylaw. And one of the requirements is that you need to apply for a permit every year. It's $100, it comes due on July 1st. And the rental permit needs to be displayed on the premises. So the tenants know how to get in touch with someone and fire when they go there in an emergency can read how to get in touch with the owner quickly. And I know how to get in touch with you when your debt collapses. So I think it's been pretty successful. The town's just rolled out some new software which is gonna make it even more successful because we're gonna know when you didn't renew your permit which was a shortcoming of the way we were doing it previously. We'll be able to capture everybody in this. But one of the requirements of that permit program is that you need to have a local agent and that's somebody who lives within 20 miles. So in an emergency, I can get somebody to come there right away. If it's two o'clock in the morning and we've got a debt collapse, I can get someone to show up there. And for the rental permit, I know that you need to have a parking plan. So you need to- How does that, if you have a special permit on that property and you're gonna have a residential rental parking plan, how do those two match? So the zoning, chapter seven of the zoning by-law talks all about parking and how big a parking space is. It's nine by 18. So and how many spaces do you need per unit that kind of language is all in there. The parking plans that they draw need to show that they can fit those cars on their property. So this is really, in terms of a lot of the rental properties in town, it's aimed at single family homes, which had typically a car or two cars. They didn't have four cars and they certainly didn't have six cars because they don't have driveways for that. So what we wanna see is, can this site accommodate this use? And that's where your conditioning will be really key here. You've got two units, you've got eight bedrooms, you're gonna have eight cars. What about a couple of guest cars? Are they gonna, how are you gonna accommodate those on the site and not pave the whole yard and have headlights in the neighbor's yard? And yeah, it's a bit of a juggle on some of these sites. I wanna make sure that anybody else who has questions, it's a chance to ask them. Ms. Winter, go ahead. I have a question for me. If a single family such as, for example, my family, if I wanted to rent out a room in my house, a room to a student, do I have to apply for one of these rental permits and pay $100 a year? That, I'm not sure that's very well known if that's the case or is that something you just do? It's actually an exemption. So anybody in town is allowed to rent three bedrooms in their home without having a rental permit. So that's, you know, somebody's using your kitchen, they're using your bathroom, and there's like a member of your family, but they're in one of your extra rooms. Because that's pretty common in town. You know, that exists all over the place. Yeah, okay. Thank you. It didn't seem fair to charge $100 for that. But you also haven't created a new dwelling unit is the point there, right? Yes. Because you were in the existing dwelling unit, the kitchen, the bathroom, everything else is being used for the three renters and as well as the owner. But if you were creating a new dwelling unit and kitchen, new bathroom to accommodate the renters, then you would need a rental permit. The vehicles might be a thing though, you know, depending on the, depending on the property. Good question. I wanted to see, does Dave or Rob have anything to add or? Yeah, the only thing I can think of is I can call a house because the yard really didn't have any room for all the cars that would be expected with the number of tenants. They had a condition that limited the cars to say two cars where they probably needed four. But that was also known to the tenants before they rented, that was part of the lease agreement that they would understand that only two would be allowed and then they would have to figure out who that would be. But, you know, that was a case where conditions can sometimes come into being and it addresses some of these problems. And that's true, certainly you're aware of it downtown. You know, folks are particularly aggravated about new buildings going up that don't provide any parking, but there's buildings all up and down Main Street and North Pleasant Street, you know, up above those businesses that have apartments in them that don't provide any parking. It's not unusual in a downtown situation not to have parking that goes with your apartment. Mr. Maxwell. My question is about mentioning making kind of a database of all the numbers and contact information for landlords and stuff like that. Do we have or is there a database of just special permits that have been issued in town or if you're looking at a property, how do you know whether or not it has a special permit attached to it? That's a great question. So the GIS tool that I showed you online, I could pull it up if that's helpful. Should I pull it up? Okay, let's just pull it up. Yeah, that'd be very helpful Maureen. It's good. It is a good question. Excellent question Dylan. Okay, so give me a second. X out of that, go like that. Okay, so let's see here. What address should I pick? 11 Phillips. Okay, so I'm gonna start over again. So this is what it looks like when you first go to the screen for the GIS. So we're gonna press go to search to the left and we're gonna go Phillips three. He said 15. 11. Oh no, 11, sorry. Okay. And so now the map highlights that property for 11 Phillips Street. And then if you go to the right side of the screen where I'm sort of clicking down, there's options. So this where it says property information, this shows like who owns it, what's zoning districts, the size of the property. And then you can click on each year's assessors property card. And there's like other information here. But for, we're going to click on this little tab here and go to permitting and complaint history. And so look at all the complaints. So you can see there's a lot of complaints. And so when I actually provide the board in my project application report, if I find that there's complaints listed and I put it in the report, this is where I get this information. And I literally just cut and paste it from here. And so you can see, yeah, there's a lot of complaints. Look at this, it just keeps going. Okay. So and so now the next, so the sequences, it goes through the complaints. And then the next section is about rental permits. And if you click here, this brings you to our new software. It's called OpenGov. And that's where you can look up what the permit history of the rental permits are for the property. The most recent permits, the older ones are right there and still in GIS. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So actually let's click on this one. Hey, Maureen, can you drop to the bottom just to see if there's any zoning permits against this property? Yeah. Go all the way down. Oh yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So let's just go to that. Okay. Yeah. So you can just see there's a rental permits per year and you can click on the permit in the parking plan for each of the years. And then, and then now this gets into, it looks like maybe like building permits and stuff. And so now we're just going to scroll. Let's just scroll all the way down. So that's where, so if you do this on your own and you're looking for ZBA permits, just go to this tab and then scroll all the way down and it goes into a chronicle order. Let's see here. So I think this might be the latest one or the last one issued in 1990. It was under review. Under review, Bernard Dorothy to modify special permit 1988-52, which would allow one transfer ownership from Bernard to somebody else. Right below it right there, that's 2005. Oh, thank you. Okay. So this is the latest one. So anyways, so this shows you the different special permits related for this property. So it looks like actually the latest special permit is from 2006. And then so you can just go through it, the special permit. So these are, you know, this is what you sign off on for special permit decisions. Got any conditions? Let's see what it's got for conditions. Very likely. I picked a hot one here. It did you though. I don't see it. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Could be. Was this a... The deny, oh, they denied the application. Yeah, that's why no conditions. Yeah, no conditions. Okay, so let's find just to give you guys a reference. Here's one from 1990. And so yeah, usually it's the first page of the special permit decision. If it's approved, we'll list the motion and the conditions. So you can see there's nine conditions related to this property. And it looks like it was a sorority. It was at one time, yes. Yeah, so yeah, so to answer your question, Dylan, that is how you can find decisions through the ZBA. Another way of finding decisions is going to the registry of deeds, the Hampshire County Registry of Deeds and looking up a property. But this is usually a faster way of going about it. And I wouldn't expect all of the special permits to be listed there because sometimes they're not and they may go back quite a ways but the registry is another way to double check to make sure you didn't miss anything. Occasionally somebody gets a special permit and they forget to register it at the registry of deeds. That's their final step. And we do find that that happens sometimes. So that would be a special permit that's really not in effect because they didn't complete the task. But that's not likely to happen during these times because we make sure that they've registered before they're getting any building permits, before they even get to occupy or whatever they're gonna be doing with the property. Yeah. So any other comments from staff about enforcement or the zoning bylaw in general before we move on to the conditions or? Ms. Parks. So do you prefer that, how do you prefer people put in a complaint? I mean, what I have done in the past is called the landlord or called, I know Eagle Crest, I don't, I guess property management. What's the best way? We can't hear you, John. You did. Sorry, I'm happy for you to do it that way. And I actually, I wish more people would get involved in that, that way. If you're having a problem with your neighbor's trash, talk to your neighbor. A lot of people would rather I be the heavy there. And I get that. I guess I don't have a preference. I mean, you can call me, you can email me or you can do it as an electronic complaint. The frustration I have with some of the electronic complaints is that the complainer would like to remain anonymous. And so when I can't do anything for you, I have no way of telling you. So I feel like then folks think, well, see that I complained and they didn't do anything. There was a reason I didn't do anything, but I can't tell you what that reason is because I don't know who you are. I just didn't know if you would want to keep a record of it. Like if I were to call Eagle Crest, do you want me to also send an email to you and say, by the way, I'm calling Eagle Crest for the third time about... Yeah, a lot of times folks will copy me on an email that they're emailing Eagle Crest. Okay. I just didn't know if you wanted to have a log of those complaints. Nothing you need more things to do, but... I have a lot of logs. I've got plenty of logs. Okay. But the question, if you're in a house and the house across the street has numerous... Too many cars that are parked in the lawn and the garbage is not getting picked up. You don't know how to contact. One, walk across the street and knock on the door. And I think a case that I can remember personally, you can walk across the street and knock on the door and you've got 15 tenants living in the building and you don't know who to talk to. But unless you have the notice from the complaint response form or someplace in town, you don't know who to call as the owner. If your first step is you wanna avoid the conflict by bringing the town into the matter, did you wanna try to handle it on your own? How do you do that? There has to be some way that the neighbors are informed or you can look it up in the town and say, I wanna call Eagle Crest because they're the management company. How does that happen? You know, the part of the point of the printed rental permit, those are available online. Anybody can look those up and that information is on them. So you've got an email contact and you've got a phone number. Okay. Yeah, it's right on the rental registration. If you go into the GIS, you can look at that information. So that big white house across the street, Tim, could be a real problem. And when I was new to town, I didn't know how to express my concern and see if it could be fixed. And now I understand that there is a way to do that. And it's all online, okay. Yeah, that was my, we're talking about the same house, but that, I went when they were working on the house, I went out and asked for contact information. But also, I mean, another issue that was there was Lincoln Avenue was people parking on Lincoln Avenue and trying to figure out whether that should be allowed, you know, parking on Lincoln Avenue on either side because occasionally people were parked on both sides of Lincoln Avenue, which then closes the street off. Yeah. Are there other? Go ahead. I was gonna weigh in about Lincoln Avenue with an anecdote. So I've been around long enough that I remember when speed of cars on Lincoln Avenue was an issue. And the neighbors wanted those cars slowed down. So they got some speed bumps and they got some parking. And it'd be hard press to speed on Lincoln Avenue anymore. You know, you have to creep down the street. Be careful what you ask for, I guess. Are there other questions? Before we go on to review some conditions, look at kind of typical conditions we've had in the past and that we typically imposed. And I just wanna make sure that everybody's familiar with these before we... But before that, this is a chance to learn more about how enforcement works, how the rental permit process works and sort of the boundaries within which the ZBA has to operate in order to make its findings in order to make a decision to grant a special permit. All right, before we go, I would just encourage everybody to read. I would encourage you to go to your zoning bylaws, the zoning bylaw and read 10.38. That kind of gives you a very good background on the kinds of basis for which we have to make our decisions and the findings we have to make. I would just encourage everybody to do that. If there's one thing you should be familiar with on the board, it's 10.38. Okay, there's no questions. Let's go on more into the next segment. Okay, sure. So before I actually go on to the conditions, I just wanted to... I don't want to forget about this. So at the end of the slideshow, I provide some resources, link resources. So at your leisure, you can refer to this. The first one is mass journal law chapter 40. I guess in section nine is, in particular, talks about the special permit granting authority and your sort of your purview. So that's something that you could review. Number two is the Amherst Zoning Bylaw. Number three is the ZBA rules and regulations. That's really helpful. I definitely recommend everyone to review that specifically and review the Zoning Bylaw as each application comes by. And so on the agenda, the application being heard will list every applicable zoning bylaw section that needs to be reviewed and specific findings need to be made. So when you are looking at the Zoning Bylaw, you could refer to the agenda or the application that will list each of those applicable sections and look at that. And so over time, you'll get more and more familiar with the bylaw. Number four is the ZBA webpage. There's tons of information on there and different links. And that's where the ZBA application is listed. And so that's a really useful document to refer to if you haven't already. Number five is the Amherst Zoning Map. And so that was the map that I was showing you earlier and has tons of great information on there. And then on the next page is what John Thompson was talking about, the residential rental property permit program with the town that's linked to that, which has lots of information regarding our rental program. And number seven, this is the complaint property complaint form. This is the form to submit a complaint about a property, including properties containing rental units. So that would be the link that you would use to make a complaint if you had one. And that would go to John. And so now let me click here. This will bring us to the conditions. Can you see this? That's better. Yeah, okay, cool. Okay, and so I broke down the conditions. So these are conditions that the board has used for dwelling units that require a special permit. I have tweaked them, the wording of some of them, and I have broken them down by three categories, general conditions for owner-occupied dwellings and non-owner-occupied dwellings. And then I created two other categories which are conditions specifically for owner-occupied dwellings and a third category, specifically for non-owner-occupied dwellings. Just so you can see the difference of these sorts of conditions. The number one. Just let me say one thing before you go. These are typical conditions. Each special permit application may have other situations that need to be that the board wishes to address on a unique condition. So the board isn't limited to these conditions. There may be other conditions that the board wishes to impose on a special permit, but these are the ones that are most typical and are used pretty frequently by the board. So I just wanna make sure people didn't know the board is not restricted to these conditions. Just one thing I also wanted to add, floor plans are very important to enforcement because there are oftentimes we go into a property or into a house and we're seeing an extra bedroom that wasn't there before or we assume wasn't there, but we can also see what the original board authorized for bedrooms and where and somebody can't now decide that they've created two more. So it is an important reference in the archives for us to be able to go back and check what was approved at the time. So number one, the first condition, the project shall be built according to the approved plans and maintained as needed. Any changes from the following approved plan shall come back before the ZBA at a public meeting to determine whether the changes are de minimis, meaning small. I don't know the official meeting, it's a lot in term. If anyone knows the official definition, you can indicate. And therefore the said changes may be reviewed and or approved at the public meeting or the changes are significant enough to require a formal modification of the permit and or condition. The approved plans include the site plan, the building plans, which the building plans include the elevation plans and the floor plans, the landscape plan and the lighting plan. And so, yeah, so this is the condition number one. It's a standard condition for all permits, really, that go through the ZBA. And so this part just to clarify, so if there was a change to the site plan, let's say, and maybe the change was to move maybe the trash can from the, you know, from the, that when it was originally approved, it was on the back corner of the house, on maybe one corner, now they want to move it to the other back corner, you know, the applicant would go to the ZBA at a public meeting, they would look at the updated site plan, they might do a site visit, they'll say, oh, you know, there won't be any adverse impacts to the neighbor, it's still being screened, it's just at the other corner of the house, you as a board could vote to make that, to determine that that's a de minimis small change and you could just review and approve it at the public meeting. Example, if the changes are significant to require a formal modification of the permit, say the site plan, the original site plan approved by the ZBA showed four parking spots on the property for, you know, that dwelling, but now they're saying, we need eight parking spaces. So, you know, they would go to the public meeting and the applicant will make their case and, you know, it would, my speculation is that the applicant would need to maybe expand the driveway, add more asphalt, maybe there needs to be a turnaround, the law coverage is gonna change, maybe the setbacks are gonna change and maybe the amount of people living in the house or dwelling is gonna change and suddenly that change seems to be significant enough to require a formal modification of that special permit. And so then that means that there would need to be a public hearing and so there would be a legal ad required and the butters would be notified. And so, and that's where the request would be reviewed and decided on by the board. So those are just two examples of that condition. And then the second condition listed here is quite the same as number one, but number one has to do with what's being built, like site plan, building plan, landscape being and lighting. This second condition has to do with how the project is being managed and then it needs to be managed per the approved plans at all times. And, or, you know, and then it goes on to say like the previous condition that, you know, if there's a demand and a mischange, they could be reviewed and approved at the public meeting or, you know, if the changes are significant enough, they would require a modification of the permit. And so these approved plans related to the management of the property include the management plan, the management plan colon additional information required for any residential rental, the standard lease, the complaint response plan and the parking management plan. And this may, I feel the board has received a parking management plan at times, but not consistently in the town staff would like to make this a consistent requirement for all permits that include parking. And so a parking management provides a narrative, a written narrative of how the parking is going to be managed on the property and how it's going to be enforced by the property owner or the property management company. And so for instance, is the applicant going to assign the parking spaces? Are there going to be parking stickers or decals is there a guest spots, guest parking, things of that nature? Are there any ADA parking spaces? Are there any loading zones for like the UPS truck? Things of that nature. So that would explain how it's going to, be managed and then there would be a parking plan that shows exactly where those parking spaces are shown. And then I guess that that would be, those would be the sort of the main elements. And we may staff may come up with like a form to indicate to applicants what the parking space is or what the parking space is. And then we have a form to indicate to applicants what this would need to include or just sort of a better description in the application. So everyone is clear of what this means. And so, and again, these, these are the sort of key elements for our inspection services to ensure these are key conditions to, to put on this permit for inspection services to enforce. These, these ones and as well as, of course, as, you know, the site plan, the building plan, the landscaping plan and the, the lighting plan. Number three, all rooms to be used as labeled on the approved floor plans. So this would just indicate the, you know, the floor plan who, who prepared it in that date. Number four is states all exterior lighting shall be designed and installed so as to be shielded or downcast and to avoid like trespass onto adjacent properties. Like being fixtures shall be selected according to the dark sky compliance recommendations of the ZBA rules and regulations. Number five, no more than four unrelated individuals shall occupy each unit, which is pursuant to the zoning bylaw. If, if a dwelling unit has a family, family members living there, then there is no limit on that as that, that would be a discriminatory matter. But, but the zoning bylaw may limit the number of unrelated individuals living in one unit. And in Amherst we limit it to four unrelated individuals. Number six, any dwelling unit on the property being rented shall be registered and permitted in accordance with the residential rental permit, permit bylaw. Seven, the street numbers for both dwellings shall be clearly marked with reflective signage and be visible from the public right away from both directions. This is really helpful for our safety personnel, whether it's in the city or in the city or in the area. We even have police and fire and, and police and EMTs to clearly see the street number for these dwellings. So having a reflective sign stating those street numbers is very key for them particularly. Number eight, parking shall occur on improved surfaces only, meaning it like asphalt or gravel, not grass. Grass is, it would not be an example of an improved surface. The parking area shall be maintained as needed. The parking and drive areas shall be constructed in accordance with the requirements of article 7.1. The property shall be free of litter and debris. So those were the general conditions for dwelling units. The following are conditions for owner occupied residential uses. Number 10, the maximum number of overnight visitors per non-owner occupied dwelling unit shall be so many people with a maximum number of so many consecutive nights. So the applicant would propose what these X's would indicate. And so in this condition would be only applicable to that non-residential dwelling unit. So where the owner lives on the property, their dwelling unit would not need to account for this. There would be no limit on overnight guests. So if grandma wants to stay for a couple months, grandma could stay in the owner's home. Number 11, the maximum number of people on the premises at any time shall be a blank number of people. So we leave it up to the applicant to propose what this number is. And then it's at the board's discretion to allow that a number, or perhaps the board will say, could you adjust that number to something that you feel that would be in more in line of keeping the neighborhood in harmony. And so that would be said for number 10 as well. If the board doesn't like the numbers being proposed for the condition number 10, the board has the discretion to ask that applicant to modify that number. As you're making those findings under 10.38, you need to have a justification of asking for different numbers. Number 12, on change of ownership of a non, sorry, on change of ownership of a owner occupied rental permit, the new property owners shall be required to return to the ZBA at a public hearing for review and approval of the following plans, the management plan, additional information required for any residential rental, the lease, the complaint response plan and the parking management plan. So this is a new language for the board to consider. So a parking public hearing would, would entail that the neighbors that are within 300 feet of the project site are notified by regular mail about the public hearing and then legal ad would be placed in the daily Hampshire because that is another way to notify the public about the public hearing standard conditions for non owner occupied residential uses. This condition is, I think the same from above, the maximum number of overnight visitors out per unit, so both of the units because it, both units would be non owner occupied shall be blank number of people with a maximum state of blank number of consecutive nights. Again, that would, that number would be determined with, you know, the applicant and the board's approval, the maximum number 14, the maximum number of people on premises at any time shall be blank number of people 15 upon upon becoming a non owner occupied rental permit or change of ownership to a non owner occupied rental permit. The following addition, following additional conditions shall apply. The new property owner applicant shall be required to return to the ZBA at a public hearing for review and approval of the following plans, the management plan, additional information required for any residential rental, the standard lease complaint response plan and the parking management plan. And and then be all grass area areas shall be regularly maintained. I believe that is that is it. So wanted to I just wanted to add that sometimes when I look back over special permits you kind of read through the meeting minutes and try to understand what the board was thinking at the time. And you'll get an issue that comes up and they go back and forth and talk about it. But what really memorializes the end result is creating a condition that reflects what the board finally decided. And that's where conditions can come become very important, especially when it addresses a neighborhood concern. Mm hmm. Yeah, and I just like to add that, you know, so I went into typing these conditions with the idea that we would have, you know, would there be possibility to sort of break down conditions for owner occupied versus non owner occupied. And they seem pretty similar. And so similar that I don't know if there needs to be two different categories. Were we thinking owner occupied would just be a public meeting initial initially just to get introduced to the new owners and management plan of that? Or are we thinking going more towards the hearing as well? I'll let Rob or John speak to that. I'm just thinking of an owner occupied duplex that would have to upon sale, go back to a meeting or a hearing to reorgan to re institute the duplex as opposed to just, you know, updating their information. We talked about it a little bit today earlier, Dave. And what we thought was it if there have been issues with the property, it gives it gives the neighbors a chance to weigh in on that. And you might you might recondition it at that time. Yeah. Yeah, I think that what it provides is especially in cases where you have a really old special permit and the things have changed the town's expectations and what people expect from rental property in town has changed or the neighborhood to change. You may want to you may want to adjust some of the conditions for that property. And you want to do that in response to a public hearing if there is some kind of neighborhood or public concern expressed that can be that's reasonable and can be managed through a condition. So I think the public hearing but I but I also I'm sensitive to the fact that I don't want to make so in the case of an owner occupied sale to some other owner, owner occupied rental property being sold to another person who's going to be an owner occupied and going to manage the property. I don't want that to be at risk. You know, I don't want the whole them to be worried that they're going to buy the property and they may not have a special permit. So one of the things that we should think about is how do we permit the new owner in the course of the transaction? We have a bonafide offer for this property. The new owner comes before the board, not return to the zoning board appeal, but the new property owner appears before the board. And he can appear before the board before the property is the transactions finalized and said, these would be the this is what I proposed with the management plan. I'm going to adopt exactly what the original person did. I want to make these following changes. Here's my lease. It's going to be different than what the lease was from somebody else. I've changed certain things in it. And here's my parking management plan. That's just how I wish to. And then the board could makes it has that public hearing the public has a chance to respond and the board has a chance to respond as well. Either approve or deny it and you haven't, you don't run the potential of delaying the transaction or having the transaction take place. And the board not approving the the management plan or the complaint response plan of the new owner subsequent to the transaction. So I think one of the things you want to do in order to not burden transactions or owners too much is to try to get this in as soon as possible. And once a bona fide transaction is bona fide offers has been made for the property. Rob or Maureen, do you know how to how we can do that with this in this condition by changing a language or is that is there time to do that so that we considering the amount of time for public hearing? Is there enough time to do that and still have the transaction take place and not make our decision after the transaction has already taken place so that the new owner has knowledge of this before it's finalized? Yeah, I think that staff needs to sort of discuss whether for particularly for owner occupied property, you know, does the pending new owner need to come before the ZBA before they purchase the home or can it be within so many, you know, within a month or two after the purchase and sale has gone through? So that's question number one. If it was before, if the potential buyer does need to come before the board before the purchase and sale is finalized, you know, part of the due diligence of the real estate agent and the lawyer that is handling that purchase and sale is doing a deed research of the property. And so they will be looking for anything related to that to that property and they would be finding any, you know, special permits, variances, anything that is permitted on that property that's been reported with the registry deeds. And so they would be looking at, you know, that decision and they would see that condition if that was included that, you know, if there was a condition that said that the new prospective buyer needs to come before the board before the purchase and sale to review the, you know, the management plan, the lease, etc., etc. You know, I feel that the lawyer would capture that and there would be a good enough time for them to handle that before the purchase and sale. Similar to how the board actually just handled, was it 19 Phillips Street? 19 Phillips Street. So that was handled before the purchase and sale was agreed upon. And so that was just factored in with their, you know, their sort of timeline for selling the property. And, you know, I think that they're going going to be able to to finalize that purchase and sale in December. So so that that was able to they were able to deal deal with this. It seemed easily. So I think that it could be handled easily for future applications. Well, I think one of the purposes of some of these conditions that we were trying to create was to not have to worry about a possibility of needing to have more conditions in the future and making it a little bit easier for the owner occupied properties or something similar to that. I realize you can't capture everything, but I think our history and experiences led to what we have today. Because if you look back at the conditions in the past, they are very limited because at the time people didn't worry about things like this, but now they do. And we've addressed it with what you've presented here. So I mean, that's something to think about as well. Miss Parks. I'm just wondering if you have some ballpark numbers for those X's or if it would be related to like the size of the property or something like that. I guess I'm just trying to think if we need to put it in perspective, what we what the town thinks is a reasonable number of people to spend the night for a reasonable number of days. I guess that would be helpful to me. I mean, I think we, you know, we can tell if it's really ridiculous, but I'm not sure if there's like a kind of a range that we would that the town's hoping for. Sure. You know, I would say with that, it can't necessarily be only one factor. It would have to be a compilation of multiple factors. So, you know, you you suggested Tammy is at the lot size. Sure, that could be one of the factors. Other factors could be, you know, is there enough parking spaces in the driveway to accommodate, you know, that guest who's staying a few nights or whatever the scenario is, or is there on street parking to accommodate that guest to have a location to park? And how many, you know, what's the size of the dwelling unit? Is it a 300 square foot dwelling unit where it probably doesn't make sense to have, you know, multiple guests stay over? Or is it, you know, a 14,000 square 1400 square foot apartment that that has maybe an extra bedroom? So I think there are multiple factors that the board should consider when an applicant is proposing a certain number about overnight guests or gatherings. Hopefully that gives you some guidance. John, do you have any questions or suggestions? Yeah, there's some mass general law about this. Guests may stay on maximum of 14 days in a six month period or seven nights consecutively on the property. Any guest residing at the property for more than 14 days in a six month period or spending more than seven nights consecutively will be considered a tenant. Yeah, I think it would be good to have that with with this, you know, with the this zoning information. I was unaware of the state law. I just googled Massachusetts Landlord Tenant Law overnight guests. And that's what came up. If something is a state law, do we need to include it as a condition or is it already a condition? Good point. You know, I think it's helpful to include it as a condition because, you know, with John bringing it up right now, that's something that he just made a lot of people aware of this law existing. And as people look back over time, same thing. If you have it in the conditions, it lives with the property. It's right there front and center, easy reference. Otherwise, somebody's going to have to do some research or have this knowledge already to look back and note and reference it. So I think it is helpful. Going to add over the board of licensing, we we typically will put in regulations, things that are already state law, stuff like we have to be 21 to drink. We'll leave that out. But things that are less obvious will usually include there for that very reason of you want to look at these laws, you don't have to then go also look up state law. It never really hurts to include something redundant like that. And you know, my only my thoughts about the gathering number is one of the things that you want to control a little bit. I don't know what the magic number is, but large gatherings that we sometimes see with rental properties, that could be 120 people for a single family. So that seems a little extreme as a rental property. I wouldn't be as concerned if it was a single family with a family living there and they're having a family gathering. But, you know, it's that kind of consideration. But also we've left it up to the landlord to decide how many people do you want on this property that you think you can manage as well? And it seems to me that for the maximum number of people at a time, it's going to depend upon the property. Not only do we take the the owners, the property owner's suggestion and we look at that and evaluate it. But you see what the property is like. If you've got a small lot in the middle of town, 120 people is too many, no matter what. But that 120 people may be able to be accommodated for a big or a large number of people may be able to be accommodated. If you have a very large lot and you're outside the downtown area and it's a graduation party for whatever it is. So I think it varies. There are some places where 20 people is an awful lot of people and other places where it wouldn't be. This actually happens. I just was at a property down on Lower Main Street where the police broke up a party and the police count was 300 people. And when we went there to talk to the tenants about it, they said, no, it's no way there was 300 people. I said, well, you know, what was your count? Not more than 150. OK, 150 people in your backyard at two o'clock in the morning. That's a problem for your neighbors. So I think, Tammy, you had a good question. I think a lot of it will depend upon where the property is. I mean, it can depend upon where the property is and can vary. But the first answer is that we we do seek the input from the owner and we begin at that with that number. And then we make an evaluation from there. But the guidance of the state law would be it's good to know. I did not I did not know that before. I don't want to dominate the conversation. So I want I have another question. But if anybody else has something, I want to make sure that they get a chance to ask their questions. Yeah, I've got a question. Just kind of. Yeah, I guess it would be. So kind of one of my concerns, one of the things I really want to know. You hear it a lot that, you know, supposedly Amherst is expensive to do business and it's expensive to deal with it, you know, perhaps more than other towns. And, you know, I don't know. People will always complain about whatever. I don't know. I don't know if we have any real there exists any data of what the cost is to get, you know, on average, what a special permit is in Amherst than it is maybe in surrounding towns. Is there some reason for that that might just make perfect sense of, oh, well, when you consider this about Amherst, of course, it's going to be much more costly to do it. But I don't know. Maybe, John, you even might have an idea. You said you were a ZBA in and shoots very. Yeah. So when I was on the ZBA and shoots very, you know, we were charging people $100 to apply for a special permit. It was at that time cost and $350 to do the legal advertising. That's the people of shoots very subsidizing your special permit. I don't they wouldn't be happy about that. You know, we raised the cost when I found that out. What's it in Amherst, Maureen? For what? For being to apply for a special permit? It varies from the intensity of the use we have for let's say for like a duplex, I think it's about two seventy five. And what's the cost to advertise that? So, OK, and so to back up. So the fee for that duplex is, I think, maybe two hundred dollars. And then the legal ad is seventy five dollars. So the grand total is two seventy five. The legal ad charged by the Gazette is roughly eight hundred dollars. That's the people of that's the that's the taxpayers of Amherst and for that. Yeah. And so I will say that. Um, communities, you know, across the Commonwealth are dealing with this and I, you know, perhaps Rob, um, you know, wants to talk about this, I guess. But like, you know, I think communities are grappling with do we charge home owners or applicants in general, you know, eight eight hundred dollars, give or take for a legal ad. And, you know, I worked in Greenfield prior to Amherst and they treat it just like Amherst, where they, in essence, subsidize the legal ad fee because they don't want to put that, you know, strain on a homeowner or applicant in general. So it's kind of a tough dilemma, I think, for communities to how to deal with that. So and I would say, besides the legal ad element, I think the fees in general are probably, you know, I haven't, I have looked at fees in communities. In the past, I haven't looked on that research in a few years, but I think it is comparable to other surrounding communities are fees. And if you compare it to Eastern Mass, you know, some of the fees you you may say in Amherst are very, you know, low. So it's it's dependent on who you're comparing, comparing the community to. Who sets the fees? Isn't don't we have a ZBA bylaws that we as the fees are established in the bylaws? I was just. Yeah, you do it. Yeah, we do it, right. The board, the board sets the fees. And does are those then approved by the town council, or do we have the authority to set the fees ourselves? I think it is outlined in the ZBA rules and regs. I can't recall at this moment. Yep, I mean, I do remember recall that they were listed there, and I didn't know if we had to get approval from the town council or whatever to adjust those fees. Yeah, I don't know the top of my head. Generally. Rob, do you have any thought on on. The. Sub on subsidization of that fee that means it means that if for a later time, we're not going to deal with this tonight, but at a later point in time, if it is something that troubles us, it means that in order for a homeowner who wants a special permit because they're needs, he has encroaches on a lot line or something else, but for a homeowner to do a $20,000 kitchen bump out that and he needs a special permit to do that, he's got to pay an effect of $1,000 just in fees and then in publication notices. I mean, that can be a significant, that can be a significant expense. But if you've got a huge development and you're talking a multi-million dollars, 800 bucks for is a cost of doing business. And it doesn't seem to me to be particularly onerous to charge for a multi-million dollar project, you know, have then paid for the newspaper advertisement. What's what is other departments do with this kind of stuff and other boards? Well, so, you know, as more important out of something that we watch and look at every year, particularly during budget time, you know, we're constantly looking at our expenses for the previous year and estimating what we're going to need for these accounts. And what I can tell you is that, you know, when it becomes a big enough concern for the conservation and development department's budget, you would hear a recommendation from staff to reconsider the fee schedule. You know, we we have the luxury of looking at our overall budget across three departments. So, you know, whether it's taking in permit, building permit fees, you know, where there might be an excess of above our expenditures for that that division, you know, might offset, you know, some of the additional costs that we're, you know, we're showing the negative for planning department advertisement costs. So, you know, we're always looking at that, you know, we don't want to, I think, you know, changing the fees, particularly now, you know, will definitely be, you know, a negative, you know, for the for the applicant, you know, in the conservation department, for example, you know, the applicant does pay the fee for the legal ad, you know, gets billed directly to them. You know, and that's pretty common in most communities to have it handled that way. So there's a lot of different ways we could we could address it. It does come down from a financial review perspective and whether or not it becomes an issue that we need to look at closer, try to make some adjustments for. But, you know, we're just starting budget season for this year. So I know the rates have gone up and we'll be looking at that again. Thank you. And if you if I'm sharing my screen properly, this is the fee schedule for ZBA applications. It's part of the ZBA, it's part of the actual ZBA application form. So you can look at it at your leisure, but it shows you the breakdown of of fees by the impact. So there's a high impact uses, moderate impact uses and low impact uses. So for applicants for owner occupied single family property, such as accessory uses or supplemental apartments, fences, signs or, you know, something minor for owner occupied property, it's it's it's just $50 plus that $75 legal ad. So I guess that's $125. And then you see it gets, you know, more expensive as the intensity of the proposed use increases. Maureen, maybe I'm confused. So we have one, we have a fee that they pay to the town. The town has a fee that they pay for the advertisement in the in the Gazette. And then there's a legal as well. Are there three different, where's the $800? So so the applicant would pay. So let's pretend that applicant is is proposing a accessory dwelling unit to their single family home. The fee for the application fee would be $50 here plus a flat fee of $75 for the legal advertisement. So that would be $125. They would write a check out to the town of Amherst. And then and then planning staff then types up the legal ad for the public hearing and and that gets. And you paid the $800. The town. Got it. Got it. Yeah. All right. And just to clarify, so there's two legal ads. The or sorry, the legal ad needs to be published twice in the in the paper. And that is a requirement under mass general law chapter 40 section, I think 11. And so that is why, you know, it's costly. So and that's on sort of the average. It could it's based on the amount of letters that are used in the legal ad. So it could be like 750 sometimes it could be it. That's just sort of the ballpark testament I'm providing. That's helpful though. Mr. Meadows, you were going to say something. Yeah, I was. So is it the ZBA that sets the the amounts that are called for? Or is it the town planning department that determines how much they're going to pay? I think it's our rules and regulations. The fees to the town are are decided by the ZBA. Could could we possibly, you know, have Is that right? Rob, am I wrong? Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think we typically bring the the fee schedules and adjustments to the boards and committees for for their approval. But, you know, the recommendation starts from staff typically, you know, which again is, you know, based on our budget situation. So, you know, we'll we take kind of prompts from the finance department on things like that as they're reviewing fees collected and expenses for the overall department each year. For example, you know, we haven't raised building permit, electoral plumbing permits fees the entire time I've been working for the town in those 10 years because we haven't had it. Could we possibly get a comparative analysis with, let's say, six or eight other towns to see what they're charging for similar fees? So, you know, I'm sure it's a good recommendation, but it'd be nice to know what others are doing. Other suggestions or other questions? Ms. Parks. I just actually have a couple of questions that might be kind of dumb, but I'm just wondering. Um, so for for a single, if I were renting out a house, if I have a 10 bedroom house, but it only has one kitchen, I can still only rent to four people, right? Is that correct? Unrelated people. Four unrelated people. Okay. So now I have a house that has four bedrooms and two people are married. There's two couples. Can someone else move in? Hello, Robin. Are they all related? They're not all related. They're only related by marriage. I just had this, you know, two, two of the kids are twins and their friends are also twins and their best friend from kindergarten. So can we have five? No. Okay. That's what I was wondering. Like is, if, if you had four bedrooms, could you have four married couples? Because they're unrelated to each other, but they're related, they're related to the person in the room, not the other people. So you can't have that, right? That's correct. You can't have that. It's four people. Unless you're blood related. Okay. And then if you have, it's a minimum of two parking spaces, but can you have 10 parking spaces? I mean, it doesn't, at that point, it doesn't matter. Well, well, Lot coverage would come in. So, you know, how much hard surface do you have on the property? I guess. Right. I guess I'm just thinking of, you know, someone has a house that has, say, five bedroom house with a lot of parking. They still can only have four unrelated people and they still only need to have two spaces. Right. It just, that's what it always goes back to. I just, you know, I wonder about these things occasionally and I just thought I'd clarify. So that's the case, right? I mean, I, if there's 10 spaces, it doesn't, it doesn't matter as long as there's enough lot coverage. As long as they, yeah, yeah. Yup. Well, at the moment, yes. So the planning department is actually proposing a parking zoning amendment to the parking section, which would require the parking ratio right now is under the zoning bylaw says there should be a minimum of two parking spaces per dwelling unit. And the proposal is indicating that the minimum and maximum should be allowed, should be two parking spaces per dwelling unit, unless the special permit, unless the board determines that, you know, a different ratio is adequate. So, you know, if an applicant wants to propose less parking than two, two parking spaces, they could request that, or if they wanted to request more than two parking spaces because they have five bedrooms for their, you know, for mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and their, you know, their, their child, for instance, you know, they could make a request to say that they need, you know, five parking spaces or whatever that ratio is. But they would need to provide evidence that, you know, that that's a reasonable request. So, you know, for instance, they would need to show that that property would have enough space for, for the parking spaces, they meet the law coverage. For instance, they meet all the setback requirements, things of that nature. So, you know, again, so that, that's, that's the, the proposed language as is. But, you know, the board has the discretion now to, you know, indicate that, you know, if there's, for instance, maybe an apartment building being proposed and there all the apartment, the apartment units have, you know, maybe three bedrooms. Each of the apartments all have three bedrooms and or more or something. The board has the discretion to say, actually, each of those apartment units need to have three parking spaces. And so the board has, again, the discretion to sort of determine what is the appropriate or the adequate amount of parking based on, you know, the intensity of the use and other factors. So the board has sort of the flex, the board has the flexibility now and with the zoning proposal to sort of determine what is the accurate and appropriate amount of parking. It just seems to my mind that if you have four bedrooms and you have four adults living there that you would have four parking spaces. And so I think it probably creates a conflict unless you're very close to the university or someone's riding a bike of who gets to park there. And so, I mean, normally wherever I've ever lived, it's, it's why it's like, you know, you have to have enough parking per bedroom or whatever. So I, it's minimal here to me. Yeah. And so the ZBA has in the past before your time, Tammy has made a condition of, you know, of a special permit for, you know, apartment building. I don't know what the use, you know, something of that nature. And they did require that, you know, there are a parking space provided per bedroom being proposed. So that four unit apartment, they required that, you know, four parking spaces are provided. So again, the board has the discretionary power to sort of determine, you know, what the park, the appropriate, appropriate amount of parking is, you know, and another factor, you know, you said like, oh, unless it's downtown, you know, yeah, you know, the applicant could say, yeah, we're on the bus route, we're in walking distance of UMass. And, you know, we don't actually want to have four parking spaces for that four unit, you know, dwelling unit, you know, that could be a reasonable, you know, request to the board. But, you know, if that four unit apartment building maybe is on South East Street, that doesn't have, is not along the bus line and is in the outskirts of town, that seems kind of questionable if they're saying, you know, they don't want to provide any parking or they want to provide less parking than what's required, you know, it'd be interesting to hear the board's sort of finding on that. And while there is a minimum amount of parking, it would be beneficial to the owners to provide enough parking for four tenants of four, one half cars and maybe an extra for a guest. But if they were to say put 10 spaces in and we regularly see 10 cars parked there every day, 30 days out of the month, now we can kind of figure there's something going on here and they're overpopulated. So, you know, you got to take each property by, you know, how it, what happens there. But yeah, I mean, it would make sense to provide a little extra if you can and lock coverage allows. Yeah. And so that would be a determination on, you know, a case by case basis of, you know, what, what makes sense, you know, is there a guest parking, for instance, how many parking spaces per bedroom? Is that something that you would want to factor in? Is it along the bus route? Is it close to downtown? Is it in the outskirts of town? What are the demographics of that apartment building? Is it for seniors or low income individuals or is, are there any other locational or economic or demographic factors that you want to account for? So it's definitely a case by case basis in determining what's the, you know, appropriate or adequate amount of parking. Yeah, if they don't provide enough parking, they end up parking all over the lawn, then they end up getting ticketed by John. So, I mean, is there, to their benefit to provide enough? I had, I had one question on conditions one and I think two, where we talk about de minimis changes. If you could bring, bring that up, Maureen. When you look at this here, what I would like to, what I would like to see is a process where truly de minimis changes to the site plan, building plans, landscape plan, lighting plan, or the management plans, truly de minimis changes can be decided by the staff, can be approved by the staff. And that's something that is more than that, has to come to us and we decide, yeah, we think this is not a big deal. We don't need a public hearing for this, or we need, or this is a big deal, we need a public hearing. Because I, I see times, I think you guys must see it too there, where you've got a floor plan and the owner of the property wants to move a wall two feet to make one bedroom bigger, one bedroom smaller, or to move the kitchen, whatever it is. But it's not, I don't know that we should be approving and we should have, be taking up our time and meetings to say that's all right. That's just, that's a de minimis change. We approve it in a public meeting. Or there's a change in the lease. And if you look in number two, we have to see the lease scroll down a little bit Maureen. Standard lease. You've got leases change, not just the rental, the amount of the rent, but other requirements, all sorts of things change. And I don't think that we should be in a position as the board of having to approve changes in leases. You know, those are, those are de minimis changes that I think staff can look at and say, you know, this is another standard lease, it's pretty much it doesn't create any problems. And they should be able to go ahead and make those changes without having to come to come to the board to make the change the owner property owner having to come to the board, and having us declare it as a small change. And I, I know that the problem with that for some people would be, well, we, you know, that is our job is to oversee, you know, making sure that this does that these the property owners and the comply with the special permit and that they actually live up and they don't change it. They tell us when they're going to make a change. But I think that if the staff would just prepare a list every every six months of de minimis changes that they have approved, share it with the chair or share it with the whole board. And we could look at it and say, yep, that seems to make a ton of sense. We could respond to changes and requests from owners and property owners more quickly. We would reduce the amount of time that we take on those kinds of things and reduce and reduce actually the burden on staff, because you don't have to set up a meeting, you don't have to do everything else in staff meeting for something that you might just be able to sign off on. And I think the problem is how do we define de minimis? How do we give the staff the comfort that when they look at something, they say, this is something the board is comfortable with us making a decision on and they have, they have tasked us to do that and not feel uncomfortable. And we have to be comfortable that they're following that judgment. I, I am pretty comfortable with that. But if we need to have some kind of oversight, we can certainly have them comply, keep a log of all the de minimis changes as approved and we can review it once a year or once every six months to see if that's, see if we still believe it is de minimis and it's being followed in the way we intend. So I'd like to figure out a way to, to phrase these two conditions so that we don't have to prove every de minimis change at a public meeting. The staff can quickly, quickly decide what it wants to do. And three property managers can get their, that approval more quickly than they otherwise would. So can we work on trying, can you work on trying to change that? Number one, the rest of the board agree with that. And number two, if they do, can we find a way to try to recast that those two conditions to accommodate that? Yeah, I very much agree with that assessment of that. I think that's a really, really good approach to that. Mr. Mora, you're the, you're going to have to figure out how to write this. Can you, is there a way to do it and how do we give you comfort to make that decision that something is de minimis? Yeah, there's absolutely a way to do it. And we'll, we'll put some language together and bring it back to you to look at. But you know, it really is what we do now though. So these conditions are what are being considered as maybe proposed list of conditions. We don't actually use this specific condition or we haven't for some time. So the language that are in the conditions today does give authority. And we often make decisions and choose whether or not something comes back to the board. And I was just looking at the way the planning board handles it. We, you know, we wrote it into the bylaw that a change to an approved, a previously approved plan shall be submitted to the building commissioner to determine if the change is significant. And the commissioner shall either approve it as a minor alteration or revise the applicant to make the submission to the planning board. So, you know, we're, we want to be, you know, as consistent as we can be if the boards are comfortable with it. So yeah, we'll absolutely propose some language to do what, what you and Dylan also supports, you know, unless there's other comments, we'll, we'll get some language back to you to see. Great. Anybody have a comment about that or feel differently? That's great. Good. I think that's a reasonable way to resolve that. And then the last thing I had is just about the word return to the, that we're talking about change of ownership. I just want to make sure that we draft that condition so that there is in anticipation before the, before the ownership actually transfers. So just, I think it ought to be revised so that number one, we can see that in once there's a bona fide offer. I don't think we want to be doing this prospectively, just, you know, it doesn't make any sense to, to, you can't get the new management plan before there's a real, it's going to be a new manager, a new owner. So, but, so that we're in the process of the, the, the transaction. And, and I think so returning to the, the board isn't the right thing. But we can, but we can some way state that the new property owner shall be or the new potential prospective owner or property owner can shall be required to appear before the zoning board of appeals at a public hearing for review. Just some to make that clear that it doesn't have to take place after the ownership has happened. Sure. Yeah, we can definitely, with that language, make that just so we have, so we have standard language that we can use in the future. We're not making up each time. Because we all have a lot of good ideas right at the moment. Sometimes they've already been thought up and people have figured it out and we could use it. It's helpful to use things that have already been figured out. Does anybody else have questions about the conditions, about anything we've talked about tonight or have something they want to discuss amongst us in this administrative meeting? I mean, So go ahead Dylan. I was just going to say, I feel like I had so much, but now we're hitting that point E30 at night. I feel like I'm starting to get a little sleepy here. Yep. Well, it is E30. If you want it, we can schedule another one if we got more Dylan. Do you think this is helpful? Yeah, I would say I think, I think we should see if we can try to do these a little bit more periodically, maybe once every three months, something like that where we know it's coming up that way. Just as we kind of work through cases, we can kind of think, do we want to sit down for even maybe an hour or so, something like that in the meeting just be like, let's talk about what we've gone over the last couple of months. I think something like that would be helpful just that we can regularly touch base like this and not try to shove stuff in right in the last bit at the end of the meetings. Sure. Maureen, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to see if folks had any thoughts about the complaint response plan. We didn't really touch upon that tonight. And that is that something, so a complaint response plan is a requirement for residential dwelling units that need DBA approval and the form is a way for, well, the applicant needs to fill it out. It's, if I think the applicant is not available to take a complaint by the tenant themselves, maybe they're out of town or whatever the situation is, it lists three other persons that the tenant or maybe the neighbors could contact if there is an issue going on on that property. And I just wanted to see if that's something that the board finds useful, does enforcement services find it useful? Is it something that the board wants to continue using for all residential uses, particularly owner-occupied properties and or non-owner-occupied properties? I didn't know if John or Rob or Dave had any general comments about that form. And so whether it's- My comments are just to let everyone know that that complaint response form was developed before we had the rental regulations, rental by-law. And it was brought by a ZBA member, a chair of the ZBA that really felt strongly about having those contacts established as part of supporting the application. So to me years later with the rental regulations and what John talked about earlier, we essentially have that. We have the emergency contact information. John, when he's looking for somebody, whether it's the owner, the owner's representative, a local agent, he's expecting to get a hold of somebody and get a response within a certain amount of time. And that's all established in the rental regulations. So the complaint response plan to me is if the board wanted to continue with it, is more about what is the plan? What is the response going to be? Who is available? Is it an agent? Is it the owner? Understanding those pieces, not so much the form with the three contacts and the days of the week checked off. I think we've passed the need for that form. But as far as a complaint response plan being part of the overall management of the property, I think that's still something important for the board to hear and be comfortable with when judging these decisions. John, feel free to add anything. Same, Rob. Yeah, most of that information we've captured somewhere else at this point, but it would be nice to hear these applicants have thought about this. There may be an emergency. What are you going to do if there is? I mean, the other option would be to require it is for the rental registration to have additional names available if needed. I mean, and then that's taken care of already if we haven't already. So if a tenant has a complaint, something's not getting fixed, they can try to reach the landlord directly and if they don't get satisfaction, they can go to the town. They call you and they have to know that somehow. You know, they're pretty savvy. Sometimes they don't want to complain because they don't, maybe they got five people living there, they don't want to rock the boat. But other times, they feel like they're paying $850 a room. The room ought to meet some sort of a minimum standard for habitation. They're pretty savvy that way. One other way I get complaints that I didn't talk about is from Student Legal Services at UMass. Sometimes the kids just go get a lawyer first. And then I have a very close working relationship with that agency at UMass. They just call me up or they tell the kids, hey, call John. Well, I think this is something we should explore. I was, this is a benefit of this meeting is learning more about the rental program, rental permit and what it allows the town to do because on surface, the complaint response form itself seemed to make sense. But if it's duplicative of other information and doesn't give us the plan, the right plan as Rob talked about, it doesn't do us any good. And it just creates more work without any benefit. So perhaps staff could work on, you know, in the coming months or, you know, how could that complaint response plan pivot to something that is more functional and useful than- And coordinates with the residential rental program. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're exactly right, Maureen. Okay. Other people agree with that? Mr. Dillon, Mr. Maxwell? Oh, I just got a follow-up question. But yeah, that does sound good. Anything else on this before we go to Mr. Maxwell's question? Okay. Mr. Maxwell. I was going to ask, is there anybody you would say in town you've dealt with John that is a, I don't know, a repeat offender that it feels like you deal with quite frequently? And of that, those people, would you say it's something where they're really dropping the ball or maybe its students are just going to you first before going to the landlord? Yeah, absolutely. Have some problem landlords, yes. And often it's what I said that the occupants are in cahoots. They'll put up with a certain amount of problem with the place because they don't want to rock the boat. Now, what happens to people who found out they're living over occupancy, five people in a three bedroom or four bedroom, you find out about it, you go in there. What happens to the people who are living there? We haven't been, we haven't made a practice of putting people out of their dwellings. We try to address it at the end of the lease term with some more vigorous management on the landlord's part. Okay. So if it ends up being that you find somebody. They're not out on the street. No. But if it's a health issue or safety issue, it can be, right? There's two different things here. So one is the almost the financial benefit to having six people in a four people room and that's, but it's not unsafe. It's just, it violates the only one. The other thing is, in particular, if you have an unsafe condition, and there are some of those that has happened where you found unsafe. Yes, we find kids living in addicts. We find them living in basements. Yeah, it looks, the financial thing works out for everybody, but it's not safe. Then you don't let it stay. You can't let them stay. No, it gets cut down. Okay. Well, I think even though it was longer than I anticipated, I think it was really, I found it helpful. I hope you did as well. I think there's a lot of good information and a lot of, a lot that we can take from this and try to kind of standardize some of our, our concerns. I think I learned a lot and I hope it was helpful for everybody else. I want to specifically thank the staff for putting it all together. Maureen, thank you so much. John, welcome for joining us. This is your first time with us. Thanks, Rob and David. Thank you as always. It's, it was really helpful. Before we leave, are there any other questions that, of anything that we, that we discussed that you want to add before we go to public comment? Great. This is the next order on the agenda is public comment. So anybody from the public can speak on anything that we did not discuss that was not the subject of the meeting tonight. And I don't think there's anybody, Maureen, is there anybody listening? It's just us, just us folks, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. The move. Sure. Is there a second? I hear a second. This is not a debatable motion. Chair votes aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxwell. Aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Gilbert. Aye. We are adjourned. Thanks again, everybody. Thanks for the image. Talk to you soon.