Planning Board - Regular Meeting

That was quite a few years ago now.

Did you hear anything from Angus?

No, and I was just looking for my planning board calendar to see if I had notes on it about people being absent.

Well, Jarrah emailed me or texted me about an hour ago and said he probably wouldn't show up until close to 730. OK, well, we're just waiting for Angus at the moment.

Bear in mind that this first item, the hearing for 174, I'm planning to recuse myself. But we've still got four. While we're waiting for Angus, Doug, it turns out, of course, that I'm the only person really who knows anything, who knows the answers to probably some of the questions you're going to ask. It probably would be convenient for me to be invited back in as a support for Felicity. Otherwise, it's going to be reduced to me texting answers and it could be very cumbersome. Does anybody think that's problematic? I mean, we're a small town. You do often get these things in small towns where people have two hats and they get confused. But the fact is that because it's a nonprofit in town and I've offered to... do to support them. I've been doing it without an office. So it's not as though there's somebody else in my office that could come in and answer those questions. It's me or nobody.

All right. Well, we'll probably, I guess I'll try that, but I want to make sure you just answer the questions and don't go further than that.

Yes, indeed. Well, you be the judge. I will look at you for, what do you call this kind of symbols that say point of order symbol, whatever that is, you can cut me off at the top.

Okay, Angus is here. So Pam, I think we've got everybody we expect for the first hour or so.

One more point of business. I might have to leave at nine. Just, you know, Doug and Pam.

It doesn't stop until 10, Jesse. Excellent, I'm early. Gotta watch the pregame, huh? You devil.

Okay, um... Okay. Yep. Hold on. I'm switching hats here a second. Here we go. I'm going, I need just a minute.

Recording in progress.

Okay, Mr. Marshall. Let's see, you are the co-host of this meeting. You have a quorum of the board. The panelists are here. The attendees are arriving. And I do see Amherst Media is with us in the house. I think you are good to go.

All right. Thanks, Pam. Sure. You're welcome. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of July 1, 2026. My name is Doug Marshall, and as chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6.34 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. Minutes are being taken. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, extended by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, and further extended by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this Planning Board meeting will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. the zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town website's calendar listing for this meeting or go to a planning board to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda where the zoom link is listed at the top of the page no in-person attendance of the public is permitted however every effort will be made to ensure the public can access the meeting in via real in real time via technological means in the event public access is disrupted for reasons of economic hardship or despite our best efforts we will post an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town's website Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and return to mute. Bruce Colden, are you present?

I'm here.

Thank you, Bruce. Brett Hartwell.

I am here.

Jesse Major. Present. I, Doug Marshall, am present. Angus McLeod. Present. Roy Johnson.

Present.

And Jarrett Smith has informed us he will be arriving sometime around 7.30. So we have six members present. We have a quorum and we can proceed. Board members, if technical issues arise and the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment and I will call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to re-mute yourself. To the general public, the general public comment item on our agenda is reserved for public comment regarding items not appearing later on the agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the planning board chair. please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can typically express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, they may be disconnected from the meeting. Okay, time is 637 and we'll start with meeting minutes. We have the minutes from April 8th, 2026. Board members, any comments on those minutes? Anybody other than that another exemplary job from our staff putting the minutes together? Jesse.

Nope, I thought they were fine. I'll move to approve the minutes as they are.

Thank you. Does anybody want to second those? Not seeing a hand, I'll second the motion. Any further comments? Okay. We'll go ahead and have a vote on the minutes. Roy, you are welcome to vote. You are also welcome to abstain if you wish. So we'll start for the approval of the minutes with you, Bruce.

There are six here, so I'm going to abstain since I wasn't at the meeting either. That was part of my time away.

Okay. Fred?

I support the benefits as written.

OK, thank you. Angus.

Does it matter? I also wasn't there, so I was going to abstain. But are we going to be able to pass them?

I think we need a majority of the board. And since there are seven of us, we need four.

I'll vote aye.

OK, thank you, Angus. Jesse. I'm an I. Chair is not present. And Roy?

I'll abstain, seeing I wasn't there at the meeting. This is my first meeting.

All right. Thank you very much, everyone. So we have four votes in favor of approval, and that is sufficient to approve the minutes as drafted. And we'll move on. Second item on the agenda is our public comment period. So members of the public, if you want to make a comment, now is a good time to raise your hand. Before we do that, I wanted to just welcome Roy Johnson to the board. Roy is a new member for three years, recently approved by town council. So welcome Roy. And Johanna Newman has left the board just for the record. okay members of the public anyone want to make a comment and at this time i usually read the names of the public that or the public attendees that i can see uh we have five at the moment uh they are deborah gross uh felicity linda slakey maura keen and uh rob So none of them have raised their hand indicating they want to make a public comment. So I guess we will move on from that. Time is 640. Third item on the agenda is our first of our two public hearings. This is a new public hearing, advertised for 635 p.m., so we have passed that moment. This is SPR 202604. Applicant is Amherst Community Land Trust. The property is 174 Amity Street. Request site plan review approval under sections 3.3212 and 3.01 of the zoning bylaw to construct an affordable duplex complementary to a three-unit townhouse on the same lot with parking and associated site improvements. located in the RG general residence zoning district on map 14A parcel 332. Are there board members who would like to make disclosures? Bruce?

Yes, I'm recusing myself from this portion of the meeting, recusing myself from the hearing, the SPR portion. However, as I mentioned earlier, I am functioning as the architect, designer, documentarian, and so forth for this project. And I'm acting in the sole capacity, so there's nobody in my so-called office who's able to cover for me and answer questions. So the likelihood is that some of the information that you require will not be able to be answered by any of the four people, all of the four people in the Felicity's. What happened to Felicity?

Linda and Felicity should be brought over.

Yes.

And is your engineer available at all, Bruce?

Bucky Sparkle could be, but his expertise and knowledge on this project relates more to the wetlands and the concoms business and not so much to the design of the building and and so forth at the end of the property that's outside of the 100-foot buffer. So there have been questions and probably will be questions that Bucky wouldn't necessarily be able to be helpful with. So that's why I'm suggesting that I be able to do as you say, Doug, and simply provide matters of basic factual information and that alone. That's, of course, up to the board. If the board is willing to allow that, then I can stay in that capacity, not in the capacity of a member of this deliberating group.

All right. Walker?

Bruce, can you just confirm that you don't have any financial interest in the project?

I have no financial interest in the project.

OK. I think it's perfectly fine then if you answer questions.

Thanks, Walker.

All right. And I'm going to, Bruce, just to try to minimize sort of the potential for any I'm going to suggest that we direct our questions to Felicity and Linda. And if they cannot answer the question, that then we turn to you.

I entirely agree. And if you'd like, you could put me in the attendees and bring me over when and if and as such event may arise.

Well, maybe we can ask Bruce if you just, I don't know. I mean, we could ask you to turn off your camera and mute yourself and you can still hear us. And if we need to bring you in, we will. Let's try that. So welcome Felicity and Linda. I believe Felicity, you are the attorney representing the land trust and Linda, you are an official with the land trust.

That's correct.

Thank you. So welcome to our meeting. And which of you was going to be sort of introducing the topic? Or Walker, was there anything you wanted to say before we got in, had the applicant?

I don't think so, unless anybody had any questions for me about the report, the DAR, or anything that you were provided.

Well, it might be helpful. I don't know whether it's you, Walker, or someone else, Felicity or Linda, just to give a little overview of how we got to this point, because I know this project has interacted with the town in a number of ways on its way to this moment.

I think that would probably better come from Felicity, because I haven't been involved in all of the different aspects of this project.

Okay. Okay. Happy to, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, applicant, and if you want to introduce the project.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, my name is Felicity Hardy. I'm an attorney. I represent Amherst Community Land Trust, and I live at 53 Iduna Lane here in Amherst. I'm pleased to be able to present this project to the board. As the chairman has noted, it has been reviewed by a number of other boards in Amherst, and this is our final stop, so to speak, before we have all the land use permits that we need to construct this project. The project is a five-unit affordable home ownership project that consists of the existing structure on 174 Amdage with the addition of a duplex that will be constructed to the east of the existing structure. From a land use perspective, here's kind of an overview of the permissions and consents that we needed to get to this evening. We received approval by the Amherst Historical Commission regarding a partial demolition of 174 Amity. This relates to a part of the structure in the back, which is not in very good shape and we'll be reconstructing that on the same footprint with attention to maintaining the existing architecture, facades and the like. And the Amherst Historical Commission was satisfied that we could proceed. The building 174 Amity is not in and of itself an historic building, but it contributes to an historic neighborhood. So it was appropriate for the Amherst Historical Commission to take a look at that. Second was a review by the Amherst Conservation Commission with respect to a notice of intent that we filed to undertake this construction. That notice of intent was required because there is a small isolated wetland in the rear of the parcel. And that wetland was created not organically, but rather because of runoff from our abutter directly to the east. The runoff has been kind of unmanaged for a long period of time. And because of this situation, it's created a wetlands that needed to be reviewed by the Conservation Commission. The commission issued an order of conditions. We've recorded that and we have supplied what the plan that the conservation commission approved. They made some minor changes to the demarcation of the bordering vegetative wetland and so forth. That is the plan that is before you this evening. Third, we needed a special permit from the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals. The reason that was required was because we are intending to convert the existing structure, which is a single family home, to three townhouse units. The building's big enough to allow that. And we wanted to create family housing That would be owner occupied and we wanted to leverage the footprint of the existing building, to the extent that we could. And so the application for for special permit was heard by the zoning board of appeals, I think, two weeks ago. And they approved the special permit that special permit has a number of conditions, but. I will just say that the ones that may be most material to the planning board this evening is the requirement that we maintain the three units in the townhouse as affordable in perpetuity. That in fact is part of our general model. Amherst Community Land Trust has a model of obtaining parcels, identifying qualified first-time home buyers, and ground leasing the land to the homeowner, selling the structure, but retaining an interest in the land. And that's kind of the model that we're using here, although we're applying it in a kind of a multifamily situation. That leaves our application for the site plan review this evening. So one thing I forgot to mention just a moment ago is that in order to have the townhouse on both the ZBA and the planning board need to make a determination that the two uses are complementary to one another. And the ZBA has made that determination because the use of the existing structure will be residential and the duplex, of course, will be residential too. I also would just sort of point out that This kind of arrangement also exists on a property on North Prospect Street, just a couple of hundred yards away from this one. So that I think is also a kind of a model for the kind of development that we can do with affordable housing in such a prime location. So that's just sort of an overview of kind of how we got to the planning board. And I'm happy to provide some more information, answer questions, whatever the chairman, however the chairman would like to proceed.

All right. Thank you, Felicity. I think, is it correct also to say that this project came before the CPAC for funding from from the town?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, it did. Actually, we have two sources of funding for the project that are municipal in nature. We have a CPAC grant, which is applicable to the construction of the three townhouses. We also have received a grant from the Amherst Municipal affordable housing trust I always sort of fumble on the number of words in the name of that trust and we'll be using the money from the municipal trust for acquisition of the property.

All right, great. So we did have a site visit. We had a site visit last week, and Angus and I were there, along with Bruce, who was representing and Bruce and Felicity and Linda were all there for the land trust. Angus, anything you want to say, or should I give what I remember from them? So we met at the property. We saw the existing 1830s house and the sort of back house and barn on the rear of it that will be replaced. We saw stakes in the ground where the corners of the proposed new duplex would be located. We walked over to the adjacent property to the east and saw the, let's say, just the driveway that is creating the runoff that's creating the wetlands at the rear of the property. We did hear about the fact that some of the utility connections have not been completely resolved. I think it was at least the electric, if not the water line as well. Angus, anything you want to add to that?

Not really. I have a few questions. We didn't have the plans before the site visit, which was challenging. So I think I have a few questions now about that, but no, nothing to add.

All right. All right. So why don't Pam, why don't you bring up the site plan? Sure. And Felicity or Linda, would you like to walk us through kind of an overview of what we're seeing?

I'd be happy to. PB, Lupita D Montoya, Okay. Okay. PB, Lupita D Montoya, Sadler yeah if you could be scroll down because I probably will want to start on the West, which is at the bottom of the plan. Great. Thank you so much. So on the west side, you can see the existing structure and the parking spaces that we propose that will serve the existing structure. My recollection is that there are eight spaces there and two spaces next to the duplex. They won't be assigned because it may be that the residents of the duplex may need to use these parking spaces on the west side, although I kind of anticipate that most of their parking will be adjacent to the duplex. In the corner, you see a detention basin that will be constructed and has been approved by the um conservation commission and then all the way to the south um is the uh wetland area um and the south is to the right the south is to the right correct so west is at the bottom of the plan east is at the top of the plan so it's over here somewhere

All right, Felicity, should we scroll up a little bit?

Yeah, why don't we do that? So although it's not completely pertinent to what the planning board is doing, I just point out that with the redesign of the existing structure, we're going to have egress on both sides of the three townhouses. So the townhouses are two stories each. At the site visit, Mr. Marshall and Mr. McCloud, you may have noticed, you probably noticed the porches on the east side of the building, but they will also have entrances on the west side that are adjacent to the parking because we anticipate that when people come to the site, they'll park in that area and then they'll want to access their units on that side. But it's it's worth it seems to me it's worth keeping the porches on the east side because, first of all, they're already there so they've already scored a sort of established a little bit of a pedestrian flow. And we don't want to interrupt that the other advantage to having the porches on the east side is one of the central goals. of Amherst Community Land Trust is to develop community both sort of in the broader sense in Amherst, but also among the owners who are benefited by the program that we are offering. So having the porches on the east side also, it seems to me, promotes the community between the families who are living in the townhouses and the families who are going to be living in the duplex. The structures on the south side are, again, to address the runoff both from the structures and from the property next door. So the easterly abutter doesn't have to do anything. We are taking care of that through the structures that you see on this plan. Mr. Marshall mentioned this question about utilities. We discovered very recently that The electric utilities will have to come into the units underground. And because they're coming into the buildings underground, we will need to construct a transformer pad on the plan. It's not shown here because we've been scrambling for the last couple of days to figure out where the transformer pad should be. And Bruce Colden has some words about that. But my understanding, our current thinking is that it would be that the transformer pad would be to the east of one, in between the two buildings, sort of more towards the Amity Street side. So he has some ideas about where to put that pad that he can share with you a little bit later. We've just been kind of talking about it recently. Our builder, Seth Lawrence-Salvis, from Wright Buildings has been in touch with Eversource. And there's some complexity to the location of this transformer pad, including the fact that Eversource needs a lot of things before they'll approve the location of the transformer pad. And we're working very hard to get Eversource those things. So I'm just kind of putting that sort of to one side for the board's questions later on. Finally, on the east side, you see the duplex. The duplex is going to be constructed by Habitat for Humanity. It will be permanently affordable, both units. The one thing we're not quite sure about right now is how deeply affordable they will be. ACLT's units, the townhouse units, will be affordable to persons up to 80% of area median income. Habitat is trying in its financial modeling to make its duplexes affordable to persons, families with up to 60% AMI income, but we're not entirely sure of that. What we do know is that all of the units will be affordable within the meaning of the Town of Amherst zoning bylaw. The other thing I would point out on the east side of the plan is a new curb cut. We are proposing that because the duplexes will be affordable, excuse me, accessible. And so it made sense to us to propose closer access for vehicles that would be used by residents on that in the duplex. And I think that's it in terms of my overview. If you have some other questions about the plan that I can't answer, of course, Bruce is here to answer those questions. And Linda also has more, you know, may have more kind of technical information that I can share with you.

All right. Thank you, Felicity. So maybe, Pam, could you show us the renderings and the rest of the material that we were provided from the applicant? And maybe shrink it down so that we can see the whole page at a time. that's good is that the whole page okay i think so okay so this is a view from the east slightly to the from the northeast amity street is on the right i believe uh the two cars in front are in front of the new duplex that uh is the subject of our discussion tonight From the plans that were in the packet, I gathered the two-story volume in the foreground is one unit and the one-story unit or the one-story volume behind it is the accessible duplex unit. Um, maybe and then, of course, the existing building of the existing houses in the in the background on the right hand side. All right. Why don't we go to the next page unless I'll let Felicity and Linda chime in here if you want to add anything else. So we have the floor plans. I believe that if you look at the floor plan in the lower left corner, it shows the two volumes. And the yellow volume is the two-story duplex. Dave Kuntz, amity street is to the right, I believe, so that the main front facade of the building is is that the right hand side of that floor plan. Dave Kuntz, Pam if you can bring your your cursor and just put it along the front edge. Dave Kuntz, know the opposite side on the right hand side of that yeah there yeah so that's the front of the building so there's a front door along that wall and then there's a side door along the West side up at the top. Dave Kuntz, And there's looks like a storage shed kind of at the end there and then. Dave Kuntz, Moving to the right is the or i'm sorry moving to the left is the accessible unit that has an entrance along the top edge, which is the right edge. Dave Kuntz, And that's the front door with another little shed unit and that's entirely on one floor with the with the kitchen at the entry and the dining and living and then. Dave Kuntz, looks like two bedrooms. Let me know if I've said anything false, Felicity or Linda. And then the separate plan that's in the upper right is the second floor of the front two-story, three-bedroom, non-accessible unit. Yes. All right. Then why don't we go to the next page? All right, these are the elevations. So in the upper left, we have the sort of the front view as faces Amity Street with the front door of the two-story. And then to the right of that in the upper right, we have the west elevation, which is facing the existing house. below that we have the east elevation that's facing the abutter to the east and then in the lower left we have the rear elevation facing south which is where the wetlands are and that's showing a one of the doors into the accessible unit but i don't believe that's an accessible door because it doesn't have a ramp All right. Is there a third page?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Then there's the rendering or the the probably a computer model of it. This is from the south. Let's see from the from the northwest. So in this instance, Amity Street is to the left. And that's most of the elevation that faces the existing house. All right. All right. So so we are not being charged to really think about the existing house with the three the three units that have been approved by the Zoning Board of Appeals. That use has been approved and is essentially a fait accompli at this point. So we're being asked to look at the site and the impacts of the new duplex going on to this site. So, with that, I guess I will, I will open it up to questions from the board. Why don't we bring bring the site plan back up onto the screen since that's probably. Going to be the most pertinent drawing. And Pam, if you can shrink it just enough. so that we can see and scroll up a little bit so that we can see the whole site on our screen there we go that's good perfect okay all right so um just to start it off um so i'm i'm interested in trash uh i see pam if you can bring your cursor in the lower left hand part of the screen just above the colored new parking along the bottom Right there there's there's a what looks like a dumpster or a storage container or shed maybe for trashes isn't in fact is that the trash collection spot that will be. Where the dumpster or the toters will be stored before the trash collection happens.

Yes.

All right. And how do I, if I'm an accessible person, if I'm in a wheelchair or I have accessibility challenges, how do I get to that?

So it's on the same level as the entrance to that unit.

Okay.

So, you know, I mean, if the person is mobility impaired, they're obviously going to need to you know, use whatever techniques that they would use to take the trash out, but we have to have exterior storage for the trash. And it doesn't, it has no doors. It's kind of open on one side. But we think that, you know, having it on the same level should make it available to them.

Brett KenCairn, All right, is is the sort of curved walkway we're seeing that is adjacent to it what's the paving material of that.

Lisa Smith- That I don't know so i'm going to ask Bruce or Linda to respond.

Brett KenCairn, Linda you are you are muted.

I think actually I was deferring to Bruce. I think he'll be more on top of exactly what the materials are.

Okay, then Bruce, why don't you come on in and answer that question about the walkway.

I can stay that way, I think. The trash shed, as has been described, it holds four large bins, trolley bins that get wheeled out onto the street in that northwestern corner. Two of those will be trash bins, two will be recycling, the path there is intended to restore an existing pathway but it's basically stated to be a stepping stone path so it really doesn't provide what you might call an acceptable level of accessibility and neither is there a pathway across the lawn area. So that may be necessary if the person in that If we have somebody in that flat who is in wheelchair bound, number one, and number two, if they're living alone and they haven't got a partner who can handle that. So there would be a couple of conditions that would need to be addressed. come into play for us to find the need to upgrade that to make a pathway. It may be that Habitat will ask to change that. I'm not sure. This is the first time this has been raised. So I can simply say that the answer to your question is as noted on the plan there, convert existing footpaths to stepping stones path.

and it uh it says it doesn't give a width but it's not four feet okay all right so i guess i'm also you know i mean i was worried a little bit about the accessibility and how that might work um but also um just wondering is that an attractive object um you know and um Dave Kuntz, You know, are there any other places that it could go it looks like you're envisioning that there'll be one trash collection point for all five units. Dave Kuntz, And that you wouldn't be asking the trash collector to come into both driveways one for each building.

That's correct. And it's a two bedroom accessible unit so the likelihood that there would be other people that could take this task on is quite high. But the answer is that there is no accessible route. yet anyway, between the accessible unit and the trash, although it would only require widening that path because there is an existing asphalt path that kisses the new path.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you. With that, I'll turn it over to the board. Angus, you mentioned you had some questions.

Yeah, I can lead off with a few.

Sure.

The first question is about screening. Is there any kind of screening for that enclosure? And I realize this enclosure is partially connected to the other development, but since it is also connected to the one that we're in center consideration tonight, just wondering about screening there, and then also wondering about any other kind of screening apart from what's shown as the evergreen screening by the parking lot on the top left corner on our screen? Is there any additional screening around that parking lot or around any part of the property? But apart from that.

So let me start. I mean, Linda and Bruce may have more to say about that. We're showing the new screening. There's we're leaving some existing trees. So that's going to provide some screening. We haven't proposed like a hedge or anything on the east side of the duplex in part because it's fairly close to the lot line. I mean, it conforms with the dimensional requirements, but it's close. I mean, I've seen projects where either the applicant or the planning board or the developer or whoever And I wanted to put up a like a privacy fence we weren't proposing that. that's, not to say that we couldn't but that that's not really what we're thinking about. And there isn't screening around the trash and closure.

And in terms of tree plantings, are the trees shown on this diagram existing trees that are being preserved or trees that y'all are trying to plant?

They're existing trees that we're preserving. You may remember from the site visit that there are a lot of mature trees there. And we're trying to maintain some of those. Obviously, some of them have to go because the area where the duplex is going to be constructed is quite wooded. Some of the woods is not particularly nice. It's kind of weedy, but so we're trying to keep the mature trees.

I also see Bruce has got his hand up. He wants to add to that maybe.

Firstly, I think the intent is that they would be new arborvitae type low screening bushes. The existing trees wouldn't do much in the way of screening and I think they'll be gone by the time we have completed the driveway. we wouldn't be able to keep the existing trees and do that driveway. You would have to take them out in order to do that. So that note that says evergreen screen per zoning bylaw owner's preference, I think it would have to be new because just from the point of view of how construction processes proceed. And it's quite common that we see this sort of thing regularly around town. So I think it would be new screening bushes. Linda, if you have a different sense of this, but I think it's always been the intent of the design process that those would be new.

That's correct. That was my understanding.

Okay. And the trash screening is not done with vegetation. It's done with a hidden with with board. It's a it's a screened enclosure.

Then I have two other questions. One is about lighting. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. The first question is about lighting. There's a new light fixture or there's a light fixture on the proposed two-unit building at the front. So this is on the document with the pretty rendering with the yellow trees in the background.

And it's the first page, Pam.

And yeah, it's actually the third page of that document. where it says north elevation, that top left, there's a light fixture there. And I guess I'm wondering, again, thinking about conformity, I don't recall seeing a light fixture on the front of the other building. Are there plans to install more exterior lighting on the outside of that building? And can you talk a little bit about, I guess, the rationale for installing lighting there?

Shall I take this question?

Yes, please.

Angus, you're correct. The light fixture shown at the gable end of the new duplex unit is a light fixture, motion-sensitive, downcast, and so forth, which will act as illumination for the parking. the remaining exterior lighting for the duplex is under the porches so there'll be three other light fixtures that will be maybe four if you put one on the one on the back of the building but all all of the rest of them are under under the porches on the duplex so far as the townhouse is concerned there are three similar exterior wall mounted light fixtures along the west side of the townhouse each of them illuminating the uh the portion of the parking lot that is allocated to one or other of those three units and then again the uh the porches on the front side have got light fixtures outside but they're under the porch they're recessed into the porch roofs i think

So Bruce, the three on the existing building would be in the vicinity of the new entrances to the three units on that side of the building?

Correct.

So in each case, the park, the lighting is, it seems like you've, your strategy is to provide lighting where sort of to illuminate the path from parking to the entrance to a unit.

to did you say eliminate or illuminate illuminate yes yes the the the three parking space the two parking spaces that will be uh used allocated to the duplex will be the two parking spaces closest to the street where the residual lighting is uh from the street lighting and so forth is is uh considered sufficient uh and then as the you get further away down the uh the remaining six parking spaces on the west side of the townhouse will be eliminated from the buildings themselves. Is there a portion of your question that I haven't answered?

No. The other question that I had was about snow, which was mentioned in the site plan review. Where is snow meant to be stored when it's removed from the parking lots?

You put up the site plan. pam the answer is that for the western side it'll be pushed all the way down to the southern end of that uh um the southern end of the of the um area so basically toward the uh toward the detention pond and and basically in the area between the shed uh i'm answering for the townhouse because there was a general question um so there's a there's an area between the property line the shed and that detention basin which is where snow would accumulate um yes in that area well not there no at the end of the part at the end of the driveway oh yeah at the end yes so all of all of that area between the property line the shed and the detention basin there's quite a large white area there all the way up to the shed as well And then on the duplex side, it'll be pushed into the area to the, it actually won't be pushed, it'll be pulled. That's not an easy thing to do, but that's where it'll have to be put into the area. to the west of that double parking area. It depends a little bit on whether this is handled by snow, you know, hand blowers and so forth, in which case it could be blown up toward the end of the parking area. But generally speaking, the answer, I think, would be that that big open area to the west of those two parking units. No, down. No, no, head to the western end of the parking area.

This parking?

The parking area is the gray, so the western end of it.

Down at the bottom of it.

There you go.

At the bottom of it, Pam.

So that, just around there is where the snow, just immediately below your arrow, stop, don't move, keep the arrow right there. That is where the snow would go, there and to the right of that, over toward the back end, the turnaround.

Yeah. Great. Um, the only other thing I was going to point out, um, uh, when we were, when we were there at the site plan, the, um, the neighbor's driveway, um, is really encroaching on this property, um, which was mentioned by, by the applicant. And I just wanted to note that that's, um, really frustrating and it seems unacceptable to me. Um, and I think that y'all have done a really admirable job of trying to work around that, um, And the only other comment I was going to make is I was on the CPA committee that approved funding for this project. And I relayed that this was a really high priority project for the planning board when we were kind of doing our ranking, because this was a project that was going to yield immediate affordable housing units.

You mean it was a priority for CPAC?

No, it was a priority for the planning board that I relayed to CPAC. So I had asked you all, the board at that time, what was a high priority in terms of the housing related projects. And this was the highest priority of the three or four projects that were brought to the CPA. So I just wanted to remind that the planning board of that and that other members of the CPA found that perspective really helpful. It changed their voting behavior. And so this is, I just wanted to express my appreciation for the work that was done here and excitement about this project and getting to see this happen. It's great. Those are all the questions and comments I have.

All right. Thanks, Angus. I'm going to pick up on what you just said. I was also dismayed to see that the abutter's driveway was over your property line, and I was dismayed to hear that the abutter's failure to implement the stormwater management that they had been directed to do some many years ago had caused you to incur the costs for the wetlands on this plant. And so my question, I realize you guys are trying to be good neighbors and not get into litigation with the abutter. Would there be any advantage for you if this board Uh, ask that the, you know, the pavement on your property. Over the property line along the East edge be removed. Or for the fence that you've, you've probably set back from the edge of the property. To be actually put along the property line. And if we imposed that condition, would that be helpful to you in your management of your property or would that be a problem? Felicity?

Mr. Chairman, I truly appreciate the sentiment and it is frustrating. that we have these issues with the abutter to the east. I think we have a strat, I hope that we have a strategy to deal with that, but it doesn't involve conditions or requirements in the context of site plan review. We've been, We've been working extremely hard over the last six months to pull together what is a reasonably complicated project. And I will say from my own point of view, that from a legal perspective, this is a particularly complicated project. Affordable housing is always challenging to do. I love, love, love doing it. I love the clients and I love the results. But right now, our focus is on getting this done. And we have a closing coming up at the end of July. We want to focus on kind of our eyes are on the prize, which is, you know, doing this project. And there will be time later on once construction has begun to have a more full and frank discussion with the abutter about the issues that the encroachments present to our property.

All right, so I'm interpreting. Okay, go ahead, Linda.

I was just trying to add to what you shared, Felicity, that you pointed out to us that we can't leave things as undocumented as they are now. So part of our approach is that documentation of the easement that they've been allowed will be properly filed. And that will present an opportunity to reinforce what the effective boundary has to be. They've been mowing well over their property line, reasonable tidying. And so they run a big mower, so it mows a big stretch on what is actually the land associated with 174. So we are going to have to address how we're going to manage the boundary and Felicity has urged us to do that by way of documenting a specific easement that makes explicit what's allowed and what's not allowed on that line.

Dave Kuntz, All right, I guess, so i'm my takeaway is you'd rather we didn't impose a condition that caused any change to the can to the conditions of that of that. Dave Kuntz, That boundary at this point.

If I can just speak from my own experience of the shared driveway, I suspect that one reason for the creep is that a full-size modern snowplow going down that driveway probably wouldn't fit within strict and enforcement of the boundary, particularly if we put up a mechanical barrier, a big snowplow pushing a big load of snow after a heavy snowfall can probably just about make that driveway. It's not that wide. It's probably the minimum legal width when the cars

Okay. Bruce, I guess I see your hand as well.

I'm asking Felicity and Linda whether they think that a formal expression of dismay by the planning board wouldn't be potentially to our benefit. I can't see how it would be to our detriment. I'll say that and nothing else.

Linda?

That's a good point, Bruce. A statement A statement from the board of sort of their view of the matter without saying explicitly a certain condition has to be met, I think it would be useful to have the documentation record that you've taken note of the degree of encroachment and are concerned about it and how ACLT plans to maintain appropriate boundary to safeguard their houses, something like that.

Okay. So that might be something we put in our findings as opposed to in our conditions. I one thing just occurred to me and I sound just ask. Have you ever considered entering the accessible parking spaces from the butters curb cut.

Yes, we didn't consider that actually that I don't remember the technical answer to that Seth Lawrence lava discouraged and having to do with what with with the with the technical challenge that would present to actually have an ad there on entrance into the accessible lot off of his driveway. You do remember the actual conditions for thinking that wasn't a good idea, Bruce?

Yes, I do. It was not only Seth. Most especially, it was Bucky Sparkle in the civil engineering. And the principal problem is that the driveway you see there is not a two-way driveway. It's a one-way driveway because the driveway actually goes down the other side of the building as well. And it's a kind of a U-shaped driveway. And if you look at some of the site photos, you'll see that there's a directional sign applied to that driveway. So we would be trying to navigate a two-way activity at the head of a one-way driveway. And I think the realization of that pretty much sank the ship in terms of that idea. But we did think about it, and it seemed for a moment in time to be a clever idea.

Yeah, especially if they're encroaching on you, and you've got some leverage to, you know, to give you something in return. Okay. So I wanted to ask, and I guess it's probably just a point of information. So you retain the land and you sell Miller Power, you know, a leg to stand on in terms of

is by others, Fred, for example, yours, Doug. But I think the latter should say we've engaged, we've noticed that we've been able to persuade to some degree, but that doesn't represent a full reflection of the views of several members of this board. particularly from my point of view on the drinking water setbacks for private wells, particularly from solar arrays. I'm less concerned about BESH, partly because I don't know enough about it, partly because I think we all know that We know enough to know that it's a small concentrated area and not a broad distributed area as the arrays we certainly know of. So less concerned about the best, much more concerned about setbacks from arrays. So broadly speaking, I think we should be prepared to write a letter of conditional support.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Fred, any thoughts from you? And Roy, I'm going to offer you the opportunity to comment on something you haven't spent much time with. So either of you want to say anything? Fred?

Well, I would just, I am struck, Bruce's made some very, I think, interesting analysis regarding the amount of space required for the boundaries and the edges of these installations and the way that they count. And that's something I'm thinking a lot about as we go forward with this.

All right. Thanks, Fred. all right um roy i'll give you one more chance if you want to say anything you can just say you don't have anything to say are you looking for where you unmute if you are in the lower left corner lower left corner of your screen you should see a little microphone symbol That you yeah there you go you're clicking it on and off, I can see that it but right now it's off. You got it on you had it on for a moment, but now it's off so we cannot hear you. Actually, let me see if.

Can Pam unmute him or can you? Yeah, I was just looking. We heard Roy at the beginning of the meeting.

I can ask him to unmute, but I can't unmute him.

Right, there's a microphone down in the lower left-hand corner. Like an old-time microphone, it should say audio underneath it. And you click it.

You have to bring your cursor over there for it to show.

You can also just hold your spacebar down.

Oh, really? Hold the spacebar down? That'll do it?

I didn't know that. Good information.

Jesse must be a power user on Zoom. I know.

Gets the gold star today.

All right. Well, it doesn't seem to be working for Roy. So, Roy, I'm not going to hold you. There we go.

There was technical difficulty. I could not get that to switch out. I've read it over. I probably need to study it a lot more. And I'm interested in maybe if we're not going to be voting on anything to pass tonight, I'd like to talk to someone that actually installs some of these solar arrays to see what they think, too.

Dave Kuntz, yeah and that that's something or your comment, along with jesse's reminds me, you know this project this process started with a solar bylaw working group, probably four years ago. Dave Kuntz, and. Dave Kuntz, I assume that group had some contact with the solar industry but. Dave Kuntz, I don't know so.

When Jesse brought this up before, it didn't seem like there had been conversations with solar industry representatives. Because I think Jesse asked a similar question at one of our meetings.

Yeah, so we'll go with what we know and assume everything else is right because of somebody else's input. Okay, so unless, you know, well, I guess I'll ask for public comment if there's we have two members of the public remaining. Do any either of you members want to say anything at this moment? We will, we will be continuing this hearing to July 15. At 635. Okay, let's bring over Pam Rooney. Hello, Pam.

Hi, I'll speak as a CRC member in terms of input from the development side of solar bylaw. I mean, the solar construction on the working group was a member who was also on the CONCOM, who is in fact a works for solar development and she was, she was viewed as sort of the, um, subject matter expert. And so had both concom hat and solar, solar development. I, I can't speak beyond that. I just happened to know that particular fact. Um, they did an extensive review with agrivoltaics, with farming, with, um, A number of of elements, but I do not know if they actually brought in people who do the construction sorry I don't have that information.

Okay that's fine, thank you. All right, I don't see any other public comment and board members. I appreciate this conversation tonight. I think that gives us enough for Walker and me to draft some sort of recommendation letter to council, or we could get started on it. You know, we'll see where we end up on the 15th. All right. So without further ado, I guess I'll make a motion to continue this hearing to July 15th at 6.35 p.m. I have a second.

Doesn't it need to be later than that, Doug?

No, I think we kind of already agreed. Oh, right. Sorry. This one at 635. So you can show up.

Then I second.

Okay. Thank you. All right, board members, any other conversation about the clean energy bylaw? Okay. Then we will vote on that. Starting again, I'll start with you, Bruce.

Aye.

Thank you. Fred?

Aye.

Angus? Aye. Jesse? Aye. Roy?

Aye.

And I'm an aye as well. So that's six in favor, one member absent. Thank you all. All right, next item on our agenda for this evening in time is 826 is a conversation about the East Amherst local historic district proposal. Walker, you want to make an introduction here?

Well, I can, but also I got a request from the members of the Local Historic District Commission to be moved to your next meeting. Some of the members were unable to stay this late into the meeting, so they were going to request being put on the agenda earlier next time.

Well, you know, we already are going to, we're already going to have the Clean Energy Bylaw and then 174 Amity Street next time as our first two substantive topics. Yeah, I understand. Will they be able to stay late enough next time?

The lateness seems to be the problem, but I mean, I can explain to them that we are still going to have those two hearings.

I mean, we could have a conversation without them.

That is also possible. Yeah, I can present this time.

Is this time sensitive? I guess is maybe the question. Jesse, I do see your hand.

It's not particularly time sensitive. I don't think there's enough urgency that we need to talk about it tonight specifically.

Okay. All right. In that case, Jesse, what would you like to say?

Thanks. Just to add that both last meeting and then in between the meetings and then tonight, I've had some interactions with some of the historic mission members who wanted to be present also. I think the issue is not just how late it gets, but not knowing when. So I know there was a significant frustration from two weeks ago of basically wading through whatever it was, three hours and then not happening.

Yeah.

So I guess if possible, if we can make a time for them and try and be close to that, I think that would solve the issue.

So if we just said, oh, we're going to do this at our as the first substantive item in at our first meeting in August. They'd be fine with that.

I mean, I can't speak to that, but my guess would be yes.

I think that would probably be preferable. We had an arrangement where I was supposed to let them know when they were going to be on the agenda tonight so they wouldn't have to wait so long, but they still felt that it was getting too late. So I think they would rather wait till you have a meeting that maybe doesn't have as many hearings so they can be earlier.

All right. So Pam and Walker, what do we know about August? How does that look? Do we have any things on the horizon?

No, August 5th is wide open in my book.

Walker, do you? Yeah, the only thing I know of is the East Amherst zoning RFP is going to be a topic of discussion at that point, but that's not a public hearing. And we could make that the second item. We could make that the second item, yeah.

Okay. All right. Well, that's fine with me. I don't need to draw this out tonight. And if this is not a particularly time sensitive thing, then why don't we do that? OK, I will let him know. And Pam, just pencil this in for 635 on August 5th, I guess.

Yes. Yep, I made a note here. And then Walker, can you say with certainty that we're going to do the East Amherst RFP on that night too?

Well, actually, this was going to be one of my topics when we get to the staff report section. I do have kind of a timeline that we're going to be running on. Okay. All right.

Okay. Well, I mean, we could make it later. I mean, we could tell them we're not going to do it until the first one in September. I mean, but I'm not sure we need to do that yet. Yeah, I don't know. Why don't we just why don't we just plan on August 5th and as things as we get later in July, we can see whether we need to adjust. OK. All right. General housing discussion. Review potential zoning amendments that would allow housing in the professional and research park zoning district. We've had this on a couple of agendas and Angus is here. I think you're the author of this, are you not? I am. All right. I actually, I don't see that proposal in my packet that I was given as a hard copy by Pam. But is that something we're ready to actually discuss tonight? Or should we hold off?

It's in the online packet. It is? Okay.

Well, it's been in, I think it's been in previous packets as well. So it might have been you got an earlier edition.

If there was something new, Angus, even I didn't get that. So Doug, when I asked you last time if I needed to reprint it, you were like, no, no, I haven't.

I remember saying, okay, that's fine. I could have pulled it out. So I didn't. That's fine. Let's go ahead. So Angus or Pam, do you want to bring this up, bring up the document and...

Do you want to do it so you have control over it? Or would you like me?

No, you can do it. Just the memo.

Okay.

It's pretty simple.

Okay.

Okay. Can you see it?

Yeah. Yes, I do. Make it a little bit larger so we can maybe read it.

Okay. How are we doing? Great. Okay.

So I can just give a brief orientation to this. So the goal is, we've heard from different developers, we've heard also from the planning department that it could be useful to allow housing in the PRP, the Professional Research Park zone. um and uh so the uh what i then have done over the last few months is kind of met with different developers to talk with them um the housing subcommittee had a number of conversations around different strategies for um how we could allow housing in the prp there's three PRP zones in the town of Amherst. And so what you have here is kind of the attempt to create opportunities for mixed use buildings and medium density housing outside of downtown in the PRP. The PRP are these three outlying districts that have not seen the kind of development that they were designed to foster to the degree that we were hoping for when they were created in previous decades. So all of these changes are meant to be consistent with different housing priorities and the production plan, as well as the master plan. And if you scroll down to the components, there's basically three things that I'm proposing. One is rezoning a few properties that are currently In the office park designation, there is only one part of town that is zoned office park. It's where the, I think it's the Cooley Dickinson branches. And this was at instigation of the town staff, it would be rezoning those properties to limited business BL. Those also all are currently in the University Drive overlay. So, yeah. The changes that I'm suggesting here for PRP don't really apply in the same way there anyway because of the overlay. And the office park designation is doing very little for the town otherwise. So then the second proposal is to eliminate the separate office park district with those few properties having been moved to limited business. Then third is the more complicated thing, which is to change PRP to allow all office park uses. There's only a few places really where that means anything. And then to allow townhouses and apartments with no dwelling unit ceiling and mixed use developments in the professional research park district. And so everything else that follows in this memo is outlining the specific changes across the bylaws as a result of those three components. And you can find them in the other documents that were attached. It's complicated. It turns out that I was expecting that the bylaws were like one Word document. And town staff helped me understand that each article is a separate Word document. And then there's also the Excel with the use table, which is pretty complicated. So anyway, so I've tried to outline all of the changes here so you can then quickly reference where those changes are in the actual bylaw. A bunch of them are just semantic. It's deleting the Office Park verbiage across the bylaws. And then a few of them are the more substantive of allowing specific kinds of uses in the PRP changing lot coverage, maximums, and building coverage in the PRP, that kind of a thing. So happy to answer specific questions if anyone has them, but that's kind of the goal here.

Thanks, Angus. Angus, you mentioned that the apartments would have no dwelling unit limit. Why is that? I thought our apartment definition had a limit of 24 units. Is that and why would this be different?

Um, it would be a way of trying to increase the cap on apartment buildings, we have a bunch of non conforming apartments that are in excess of that cap. And so this would be trying to give the option of creating larger apartment complexes that would follow those non conforming units but be conforming.

I see. Okay.

And these are some of the few areas, there's a bunch of issues in these ERP zones with wetlands. The way I perceive it, and I haven't gone back and done the historical research to see if this was true when they were created, they seem like, to me, kind of leftover lands that the town was trying to do something with. And so they are not ideal building lands. So I don't know what could actually be built here, but they're clearly not good for subdivisions or kinds of, I think concentrated housing seems like it would be one of the only things you could fit on some of these parcels when you're dealing with the wetlands issues that they're gonna have. So they look on the map like they're, oh, it's big chunks of land. But as Nate has pointed out in our housing subcommittee meetings, a bunch of them are not developable. So I think it's trying to kind of jump over that like, you know, smaller density housing and just jump straight to medium density housing.

Okay. All right. So I assume Angus and Jesse and Bruce and maybe Fred, the members of the housing subcommittee, that you all are in support of this. Is that true?

True of me.

What's that?

I'm supportive. I congratulate Angus on a very thorough job. I don't know how he does it with all of the other things he's got in his life at the moment. And I'm pleased that we're picking up tonight because this has been something that we discussed probably in February, plus or minus, And then Angus has run with this ball. And this is what we see, this elaborate, carefully prepared document. And I'm supportive. And I guess the question would be, is this the format in which we would send this to the to the council for a referral. We expect to make all of the changes to the bylaw before we actually got the general thought that this is worth pursuing.

Yeah, well, we'll get to that. Fred, I actually Walker and then Jesse and then Fred.

I do have some thoughts and questions that we can go to me after you've heard from the other board members. I also did map them out just so we could see the wetland issues and kind of like the feasibility of some of the development on these properties. If anyone's interested in seeing the maps.

Okay, well, let's come back to that. And so Jesse and Fred, and then we'll come back to Walker's.

Thanks. Excuse me. Definitely supportive. Bruce took a lot of the words out of my mouth. I'm also very, yes, I think this is a fantastic, thorough job. We've been talking about it for a long time. Thumbs up. Curious to see how this proceeds as well.

All right. And then Fred?

Yeah, I am also fully supportive of this approach.

Okay. Thank you all. So Walker, yeah, why don't you bring up your graphics? And Pam, I guess you'll need to stop airing.

You should be able to just grab it from me, Walker, as a host. Okay, well, anyway. That's okay, though. Thanks for telling me.

So here's, I did them each in their own kind of like bubble. This one to the left of the screen is The one that's by Northampton Road in Hadley, where Greenleaves Drive Apartments is. The one area that I thought had significant potential development potential is the one that's on Greenleaves Drive. One of my questions I had is, I don't know, Angus, you said you talked to some developers. Did you reach out directly to the property owners in any of these areas? uh yes i reached out to a property owner on the prp off of um old belcher town road um but i haven't reached out to other people right i know that there have been discussions with the property owner here about rezoning this area because at the moment he really can't do anything with this empty empty spot and also this is an example of units that are currently non-conforming because they have 39 units per building instead of 24 so raising the Kate Elswit- cap on apartment buildings would make sense for this area in particular I don't i'd like to hear more about a discussion about why you're posing removing the CAP, rather than just raising it enough to make the existing buildings conforming um. but that might be a discussion for another time. And the one to the right is over by Sunderland Road. There is a pretty significant usable area here in the middle. It's supposed to tell you how many acres and it doesn't, but it's almost seven acres. I'm not sure if there's access to that spot though. And then there's the solar field down here and a small lot kind of in the middle here. Angus, did you have a comment on that one?

Yeah, well, I was just going to say, isn't the southern portion of this PRP zone also where the proposal was to build senior housing?

Possibly. I'm not super familiar with that project.

It was the proposal that a group sued over and the developer pulled out. And part of that lawsuit was saying that they were suggesting building apartments in PRP, which doesn't allow apartments.

Okay, yeah, I'd have to do more research on that. I think this southern lot also has some potential. A lot of these are currently single-family homes, I believe. And then this one is the one on Belchertown Road. It probably, I think it's the only one that actually has office buildings. like research or office style development in it. I don't know if that's as a result of the PRP or if that pre-existed it. There's some potential here as well. I believe this is another, this might be the property owner you talked to, and I believe this is another property owner who has previously discussed with the town some options for this particular piece of land. So just a caveat, this is obviously GIS information. These wetlands aren't accurate. It also includes buffer zones, which sometimes can be more developable than the actual research areas. But I did want to just give people a chance to see the districts and see where the resource areas are within here.

This is great. So if the board is generally in favor of trying to move this forward, it seems like from the conversation we had with Jeff Baggs maybe six weeks ago, That it would be kind of the next step before actually recommending it to town council. Would be to informally or, or formally, I don't know, show. Show this to CRC and see if they would be on board. Before we actually try to start a time clock with. Town council. So Walker, are you a liaison to CRC?

I am not, but I, I'm actually not sure who is, but I can, me and Jeff can discuss who would be best to bring this to them. And I'll send this to everybody. This is my list of things that I had thought of that I'm not sure since I wasn't part of the original conversation, if these were considered or not. So I'd just be interested in seeing any thoughts on this. And then we will also need to run it by Rob or should run it by Rob before.

Yeah.

You make any recommendations?

Right. OK. Bruce, I see your hand.

I think that we, in the Jeff Bagg discussion, I think Rob Morrow was also someone that we thought should prudently look at this. And just to make sure we haven't forgotten anything,

Dave Kuntz, yeah so maybe maybe Walker. Dave Kuntz, let's see you, you have this document that we're looking at which I guess has these two pages.

This is, I have one page that's a Word document with some questions and thoughts on it. And then I have a separate document that has the maps on it. I mean, I can send both of those to everybody.

Well, I mean, do you want to show us the Word document at the moment?

Is it not showing up? I thought I'd switched over to it. No, we're still seeing the plan. Okay, I might have to stop and then restart.

Okay. Great. Yes, now we see it.

So it's just a few questions. And again, these might already have been discussed. And I put number four here, but I do think that this is probably a worthwhile change. It seems like a positive change to me. So I think there's enough potential here.

All right. So I see three hands, Jesse, Bruce, and Angus popped up in that order. I'll leave it to the three of you to decide who wants to talk first.

I would defer to Angus because I'm basically interested in whether he would have time to review this list.

before his child is born.

Indeed.

Yeah, I can just say, jump in with a few thoughts. For number one, I think that's great. I think reaching out to... I'm not going to have time to reach out to more owners in the next few weeks, but I think that's useful. Although, frankly, I don't... For both one and four, I think the way that I view the proposed zoning change, and I guess this also goes to five, is that it's only opening up options. All the old options for PRP remain. So the people that I've spoken to indicate that Professional research park, office park developments are just not going to happen, and especially not in a market like Amherst. So I think it's great to allow all of those uses still, and just to create new opportunities for these lots that have largely gone undeveloped.

In terms of the density... Can I comment on that real quick? I think I agree with you. I think my thought with number one is more like, Are people interested in apartments? Are they interested in like what type of use are people really looking to develop so that we can make sure that the zoning changes are going to accommodate that most effectively and that you're not missing something that someone's going to want to do?

Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. I think also if you're if you're trying to. You know, for instance, Nate talked a lot with us about the potential for different smart overlay districts or for small house overlay districts. I think those are all great. I think those are a lot more work. And so part of what I'm also trying to keep keep in mind is number four, that this is, I think, a pretty light lift that would allow some options and push towards higher density housing that would generate a lot more units for people. But other options that might produce starter homes or that kind of a thing is going to require more work on our part. And this housing subcommittee looked into some different options around starter homes. And it was challenging for us to envision that in an a quick and orderly fashion. But I hear you, Walker, and I think you're bringing up good points. And I'll just also add, I was just going to add on the memo itself, on the final page, there is a comment that I left. around dimensional regulations, which is basically that we could also increase maximum building or lot coverage percentages. We could increase floors and building heights. So I didn't wanna do all of that because I don't know what the planning board would be comfortable with recommending and to the third point about impacts on housing densities in these areas, they're outlying. So apart from the one on Route 9, they're pretty low slung areas. And so it would be a departure. At the same time, we've departed in other areas as well, and they all have great metro connections through PPTA bus stops. So these are some of the things that I'm thinking about in response to the things here. And in terms of what's realistic on the maps that Walker showed us, because Nate showed us these maps too, that's tough, but I'd like to see what developers can come up with, is I think what my response would be. And I don't think it's our job to... you know, determine well that it was zoned PRP to promote development. And so I think our goal should be to try and promote development of other kinds of buildings, even if the office park research park isn't going to work. So those are just some initial thoughts.

Thanks.

uh walker do you want to react to that or should we go on to just to say that i think those are all also good points and i think that um we we can keep talking about it but i think we're on the right track with this so walker um

You know, given that that Angus is about to become much less available. Would is this is this is this particular proposal, something that you would be would have the time to kind of pick up and maybe try to contact a few of the owners and think about what would be reasonable dimensional reg parameters to incorporate into the proposal.

To be totally honest, I'm not probably going to have time in the next couple of weeks. I've got a bunch of grant stuff due because of the fiscal year. And also, I don't know how many of you are aware, but our other planner, Jacinta Williams, resigned. So we are down another staff member at the moment. But I would like to keep this going if anybody else was willing to try to do that, or I can come back in a couple of weeks and take another look at it.

okay so we've got that on the table and we'll see if anybody wants to pick it up all right let's go to jesse and then roy thanks um i was going to ask sort of about next steps but i'll ignore that for now because did that doug um i guess that it's a question about this and other potential things that might come up in the future on that first point we actually have risk what's the what's the town's responsibility to contact owners when something's going to change is there any actual requirement is it just courtesy that staff has always done like what is their actual requirements for these things yeah i i mean you can answer that if you know or i can answer it doug

ahead walker um i think there's two layers here one is that out of courtesy we can reach out to specifically building owners who would potentially be interested in developing or have vacant slots or lots with room to develop just to have a conversation with them to make sure that we're working with them and see what they want to do and then in order to pass the zoning we have to have a public hearing in which case we are required to send notice to everybody who lives within the impacted district. So everybody will get a public hearing notice.

All right. Thanks.

All right. Roy, you'll need to unmute.

There we go. Three points. This is on the right track, like Walker said, and thank Angus for We're putting this together. I'd be interested in contacting the owners and need a little help to get started on that. And then my third question or point is, it looked like one of the areas, I was looking real quick, looked like it's where the dog park was put. Is that true? One of those sites?

Yes. One of the lots down by Belchertown Road is the old landfill. So that's not developable.

Okay, so it was one of the sites and it looked like we could look at, but we can't develop the dog park. We just spent a lot of money on that, right?

Yeah, and we can't develop a landfill as housing.

So Roy, it's within this zone, but it's not going to be something that's actually feasible for development.

Okay, but I'd be interested in helping and maybe Walker can get me started on contacting the owners.

Yeah, we can work together on that.

That'd be great.

Thank you, Roy.

Thank you. I might have to lean on you, Angus, a little bit, so.

All right. Thank you, Roy, for volunteering there. So it sounds like we've got a little more work to do with this. Walker, I think at any point you could talk to Rob Mora or you and you could figure out how to kind of get this in front of CRC.

Okay, yeah, I'll work on the next steps.

You know, I mean, this doesn't have a particular deadline, but it is something we've spent some time on, the board supports. So I think you don't need to make it your priority in the next couple of weeks, but, you know, if you can keep it kind of in the mix of things that when you have time you can get to, that'd be great.

Okay, sounds good.

Dave Kuntz, And in the meantime, we can figure out how to get Roy going with owners and. Dave Kuntz, You know I probably have time to think about dimensional regulations, if no one else wants to jump in on that. Dave Kuntz, Roy is your hand still up because you want to say something else.

No, I didn't know I had to lower my hand.

Well, I can lower it for you, but I don't like to do that unless I'm sure you're done.

No, lower my hand.

Okay. And then you can remute yourself. So then we'll go to Bruce. And then after that, Angus.

On the subject of communicating with CRC, I kind of noticed that the chair of CRC is listening to this conversation.

That's right. I agree.

You want to talk to her?

Well, I mean, happy to have Pam raise her hand if she wants to have a conversation, but it seems like we're not quite ready. We don't really have all of our loose ends tied up. And I think Rob Mora probably would be good to talk to before we start to take time from CRC.

Yeah, I certainly agree with that. But I think we've also agreed that we don't need to or we shouldn't expect to do a definitive job before we then pass it off. I think what Angus has prepared is exactly the kind of synopsis, more than a synopsis, conceptual proposal, solid conceptual proposal for a change. And I think it's definitely ready for other entities such as the CRC and Rob Mara, but let's put it in the reverse order. to comment. So I'm not sure that what Roy's doing and so forth is something that needs to be done before we move forward with the concept to see whether the adjacent entities are interested. I think now's the time.

All right. That's a reasonable point. All right. Angus.

Yeah, I would agree. I think it'd be good to send the memo to CRC and try to see if, I know they're busy, but to try and have something about it on their agenda just so that we can get a sense of, is this something they're interested in exploring or is this something that they are completely uninterested in doing? They feel like PRP is working just fine as is because we should not spend more time on this if they are not interested. And Roy should not be spending his time. Walker should not be spending her precious time on it. um and i'll just add for for walker um i met with ron lavertier um who owns the emirates office park and um i think that um doctor's office is over on old belchertown road um so he was the property owner that i had met with okay thank you okay hey uh jesse thanks yeah just

To remind us, at least my memory of conversation with Jeff bag, where he basically told us to slow down was that we need to have things in better shape before they move forward. And this, the work Angus has done is in my view, farther along than a lot of other things in the past two years, we've tried to move along. So I don't see why we wouldn't do that for all the reasons you all just stated about not continuing effort if other parties are not interested.

Anticipated. Pam or Walker?

Not from me.

All right, none.

And then any from new- Isn't gonna be friendly enough and I think Beacon who've got opportunities all over the state probably took the temperature of the waters and decided that there would be better fish to fry in other places. That's my understanding. And it is put in a sentence that starts with crawl spaces, attics, garages, or similar spaces. And I think that's pretty close to a quote. So when you couple attics with crawl spaces and garages, I think it's pretty damn clear, even to a bloody lawyer, that it's not intended to be habitable. The question is, why are we in this situation? Why is the building commissioner belief that somehow or other an attic is in this sense of the ADD habitable? It makes no sense to me at all. It seems to me that the bylaw, the way it's written, should be clear and should be unequivocal. And why isn't it? And what do we need to do to help a clear understanding of how the English languages and sentences and so forth are put together so that we can have some consistency here? I am absolutely perplexed as to why we have a problem with this and why we are, how these have been built. Maybe this will be sorted out in the ZBA meeting. But if not, it should be sorted out pretty soon by some other means.

Request, you know, recommend another bylaw change to exclude addicts from the possible 900 square feet or whatever.

Yeah, I suppose so. We shouldn't need it. It seems to be already that way. I just don't understand how it can be deemed habitable. Attic in the sentence in the bylaw is clearly not intended to mean habitable space. I mean, how can that not be clear?

Well, I could use as an example from a recent Supreme Court decision that I could also say that what looks like a straightforward sentence doesn't seem to always get interpreted that way. But let's not go there. Bruce, I don't know what to do other than just say we need to see how that ZBA hearing goes.

Okay.

I mean, sure, I'm down short of scheduling a meeting with Rob prior to that or. You know, proposing a bylaw change. Outside of that, I don't know what else to do.

I mean, of course, the frustration here is we spent almost a year on this thing and we get blindsided by something that is completely outside of defense.

Yeah, I think it's a building code interpretation. I don't think it's a bylaw issue. All right. I'm going to assume there was no other new business that we needed to add to our agenda. Pam, any Form A and R subdivision applications? No. No, we're all caught up on those.

That is correct.

All right. We've talked about one upcoming ZBA hearing. Are there any other ZBA applications coming?

Not that I know of right now.

Okay. And it sounds like that body's agenda may be slowed by the loss of their staff support.

Is that right? Jacinta did resign, although Jeff himself has stepped in to work on CBA. We have another staff person from the town hall I think is also going to help support that. I'm helping to support it in some ways. So I honestly don't think things will get really slowed due to staffing.

Okay. Well, that's great news. I'm so glad you guys are redistributing.

We're trying.

Okay. Upcoming SPP, SPR, SUB applications, anything?

No. No.

All right. Quiet is good. Okay. Planning board committee and liaison reports. Bruce, anything from PVPC?

Did I? I think we did have a meeting and then we didn't get to it the last time. So there was a meeting. The structure of these meetings that I mentioned, possibly for Roy's benefit mostly now, is that There is a certain amount of business, but there's usually one solid presentation of interest, of general interest to the 30-odd towns. And this one had to do with the rail connections and so forth. So I don't think it has a great deal specifically to do with Amherst, but it was speaking about the prospects for the east-west rails and for the augmenting uh amtrak and various things of that sort so uh it's it's it's uh it'll be at the pp pvpc side if anyone's interested that that's what was discussed at that last meeting all right thank you angus anything for cpac we had our what i hope is final meeting of uh the last year um

and approved some additional funding for the Goodwin Memorial Church, which was kind of our last outstanding thing. They needed to kind of overhaul their proposal. But I think town council has approved the different funding that we've recommended. Nothing else. We probably at some point need to talk about who would like to serve on the CPA for the coming session. I might be able to, but if someone else wants to take it over, I wouldn't be hostile to that. I know Jero is maybe interested. I don't know.

Yeah, and we'll see what Roy's interested in doing, too. I think you shouldn't be quite as optimistic that you'll have time to do it myself.

Agreed.

We should look elsewhere first. And, uh, yeah, so, okay. So then the next item was the design review board, which I had volunteered to do, but, uh, I assume Paul Backelman is still kind of thinking about that. So, cause I haven't heard anything about that moving forward. So, um, I have nothing to say, nothing else to say. Um, so next item on the agenda was the report of state of chair. Um, the main thing I was going to say is that with this being the, the first meeting with our new, um, compliment of board members, we need to have, uh, a new election of our officers. So we will need a chair. We will need a vice chair. I think the third position is clerk. And so I don't know whether we'll have room on the next meeting agenda to include those activities. But if you are interested in having one of those positions, uh you should start thinking about that um you've uh everybody but roy has been uh you know has seen how things have worked in the last year um so Roy, for your benefit, you've seen what I've been doing tonight as the chair. The vice chair generally has no responsibility unless I don't show up. And in that case, they need to kind of step in and moderate the meeting. And then the third position, the clerk is simply the third person in line if the first two don't show up. The clerk, you know, if we didn't have our excellent staff support, the clerk might be responsible for minutes. But in the way it's been working, the clerk has not been responsible for really anything. And so it's all a pretty light lift. And I guess that's all I'll say at the moment. But I think we should try to get that into the agenda, Walker and Pam, for some time in the next few meetings. Bruce.

Well, I didn't put my hand up to campaign for continued service as clerk, although I simply wanted to ask you, are you prepared to continue as chair in your final year?

I guess I'm willing to do that. It's been several years that I've been chair, and the thrill is gone, let's say. You know, all the powers that come with being chair. I've gotten so used to that. But, you know, if that's what the board wants to do, that's fine.

I simply wanted to know.

I'm not adamantly saying I'm not going to do it anymore, although I've had, you know, moments where I've been like, you know, I don't really have to do this next year. Okay, so really, that's all I had for report of staff. Angus, go ahead.

Sorry, just one quick question. It might be worth seeing if someone, I mean, this next year is your final year on the board, Doug? It is.

I've got one more year left on my three-year term, and I'm probably not going to renew after that.

Brett KenCairn, So part of part of me wonders if it would be wise to see if someone else would be willing to step up so that you're you'd still be on the board to kind of help them through things but. Brett KenCairn, But it's not going to be me.

Brett KenCairn, Okay, well that's that's that's a good time. Brett KenCairn, All right. Brett KenCairn, Walker report of staff.

The only thing I wanted to mention was the RFP for the East Amherst zoning study. It is out. The bid opening will be on July 7th. And I'm going to try to get... the information out to the committee, the RFP review committee the following day. So we've determined four members of the review committee, myself, Jeff, Doug, and Rob are gonna be the review committee. So on the 8th, I will send out um the packet and like all the proposals we receive and a sort of a um chart checklist of the criteria and then um there will be a meeting of the committee we're thinking july 14th to review everybody's rankings and decide who to award it to and then we're hoping the award can happen within the next couple weeks so um all of that to say that i think potentially at the July 15th meeting. If there's not too much stuff, I wouldn't mind going over some of the project timeline and expectations with the planning board and how that's going to work. And then we would want to schedule a kickoff meeting with the consultant as soon as the contract was awarded. That's the one I was thinking might be August 5th. We're going to kind of have to wait and see how long the contracting process takes. But As soon as we get the contract, we want to hit the ground running because it's taken a little bit longer than we wanted just to get the RFP out and they only have till next the end of next June to get the project done.

So, Walker, you're saying the selection of the consultant is likely to be on the 14th. Is that right?

Correct.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Okay, I'll put that on my calendar.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, Yeah, and I will say when I send out the email and they felt confirm that date. PB, Lupita D Montoya, And make sure it works for everybody. Okay.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, All right, thank you. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, All right. Anything else from from staff Pam, you have anything I do not All right. Our folks, you know, is there anything we need to know about folks vacations this summer? Are there, you know, absences from meetings that you already know that you might be able to tell us about? So if it becomes clear we're not going to have a quorum, we can just not schedule anything, that kind of thing. So if you have any constraints like that, you know meetings you're not going to be at, if you could send that information to Walker and Pam and me, I guess. Angus, we know you're going to disappear. Go ahead.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it sort of depends on things. I'll try to let y'all know week of. if I can't make it, but I probably won't know until, you know, things are closer. And then it'll just depend on how my wife and I are handling things. But I hope not to miss more than a couple of meetings, but we'll just see.

All right. Well, we wish you and your family the best. All right. Time is 925. Does anyone have anything else? all right then i guess i will say that we are adjourned we'll see you all uh june 15th july july 15th thank you bye