Planning Board - Regular Meeting

motion going on. And there was a little cardinal in the father cardinal, like right there and these other birds carrying on around him.

All right, so we have Jarrah Jarrah's here.

Everyone.

Thank you, Jarrah.

Of course, sorry, I'm a couple minutes late.

No, that's fine. We just everybody else is going to be absent, at least for a while tonight. So okay. Dave Kuntz, Angus is a new parent. Dave Kuntz, Congrats to Angus. Dave Kuntz, And Roy is out of town and on some conflict that he had he made long ago before even joined the board and then Bruce says he won't be here till about 720 so. Dave Kuntz, Okay, we need everybody else.

Can I, I'm going to be doing bath time with my son for like 15 minutes. I can pay attention. I'll be listening. I'll participate, but I will be on my phone.

Okay. If you can just say, you know, that you're present in the intro.

Can you sing us some bath time songs?

You wouldn't want me to.

I miss those days.

Come on, man. You need a grandkid. All right. So are we ready to get going? All right. Let me get focused. Yeah.

Although it sounds like Walker, you and I need to do our reports early so that we can stall until six, six 45 when we advertised this hearing.

Sorry. Sorry about that Walker. Okay. I'm going to get us going. So I need just a few minutes. I'm out of practice.

Yep.

Let's get started.

Recording in progress.

Okay, Mr. Marshall, let's see. You are the co-host of this meeting. Amherst Media is with us. The attendees have come on into the meeting. I do believe you are good to go. Oh, we're recording too. We're good to go.

All right. Thank you, Pam.

You're welcome.

Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of July 29th, 2026. My name is Doug Marshall and as Chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6.37 PM. 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 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 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 real time via technological means. In the event public access is disrupted for reasons of economic hardships 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. Fred Hartwell.

Fred is present.

Bruce Colden has told us he will be arriving sometime around quarter after 7. Jesse Major. Present. I, Doug Marshall, am present. Angus McLeod will be absent this evening and sends his regrets. Roy Johnson is also absent. Jarrah Smith. Thank you. So we have four board members present and that will suffice to be a quorum for this meeting so we can proceed. During this meeting, 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, when solicited, please indicate you wish to make a public comment by clicking the raise hand button. 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, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. All right. So the first item on our agenda is public comment. And I will say that this agenda item is for topics that do not appear later on this evening's agenda. So if you are here, if you have a comment about the hearing for Amherst Community Land Trust, please wait that this is not the time for that comment. So if members of the public, if you would like to make a comment at this time, please raise your hand and I will call on you. I typically also read the names of the people I can see in the public who are attending. at this time while I'm waiting for them to raise their hands. So I see three hands, three people rather, Felicity Hardy, Linda Slakey, and Maura Keane. None of them have raised their hand to make a public comment at this time. I know Felicity and Linda are here for the hearing and Maura is probably here in her reporting duties. So I'm not going to wait for further, for any indication of further public comment and interest. The time is now 641. Our hearing is advertised for 645, so in the interest of making sure we don't start prematurely, I think we'll jump to two late items on the agenda, the report of the chair and the report of the staff. I will say the report of chair. I actually don't have any, any, any, anything to say for this agenda item. So I'll pass it over Walker and Pam to you guys. If you have anything to share for that agenda item.

Did I tell you last time that we'd hired Nate's replacement? That's the only news I have.

I don't think so.

She started last week, Monday. So we're glad to have someone in that spot.

So this is a assistant director?

Assistant director. Yeah. Her name is Alexis Wheeler. She's coming from being a city planner in Brooklyn, New York. And she was a director and assistant director there for quite a while. So she has a lot of good experience. And I imagine that you will be meeting her soon. I think the hope is to kind of split the staff support for the planning board. So she's helping you with more of the zoning amendment side and I'm helping with the permitting side.

Okay. And it'll probably take her a while to learn.

Yeah.

She's got to catch up on Massachusetts procedures.

Yeah. Yep.

Great. So are there any open positions left in the planning staff?

We do still have one planner position. So the same position I have, but there should be two of us. Okay. Once we get that filled, we'll be set, hopefully.

Good. Don't jinx us. I know.

Okay. All right. Well, I'm still seeing 6.43, so we have two minutes more. We could just go away for two minutes and come back if we wanted, or does anybody have anything else? Did anybody watch the ADU, the ZBA hearing last week? No. Okay. I intended to and ended up missing it.

Yeah, same. I got a report about it, but I missed it.

Right. Okay. Well, we'll have one more minute here and then I'll open the public hearing. So, Pam, you could probably just bring over Felicity and Linda. Okay. And Walker, maybe you could be ready to share your findings document so that we go through that. And you're in the driver's seat for that.

I do have it ready.

All right. I'm seeing it's now 645 on my phone, on my computer here. So welcome, Linda and Felicity. I'm going to go ahead and open the hearing and then we'll be able to get going. All right. This is a public hearing continued from July 1st and July 15th of this year for Site Plan Review 2026-04. The applicant is Amherst Community Land Trust and it concerns property at 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. It's located in the RG general residence zoning district on map 14A parcel 332. All right, so, um. Let's see last time I believe we. Had gotten through the discussion of the revisions to the site plan. And we were starting through the findings and then the conditions. And it seemed like maybe we should step back. Delayed till this meeting, uh, the final approval so that we can. go through the findings and conditions again. So Walker, why don't we bring those up? Linda and Felicity, is there anything you want to say at the outset of this conversation?

I think that's where I believe we left it, Mr. Chairman.

Okay. All right. And Linda, your hand is raised.

Yes. I just have a procedural point. I have a conflict at seven o'clock that I couldn't change. So if there I don't think there will be any questions for me. But if somebody actually has a concern that they would need my input on, it might be good to hear that. Felicity is fully aware of all of the issues, but if someone particularly wanted my comment.

All right. Well, I mean, we haven't gone through the conditions that we're going to put on the permit or, you know, on the approval. So I guess we'll just assume that you're okay with all the conditions that we end up with.

I would assume that's very likely. Just know that conversation there's been ahead of time.

Well Walker, I know, had put this this document into the materials that were posted online for this meeting. So I'm going to assume you you didn't see any conditions that you didn't like earlier today, at least.

Yes, that's correct.

Okay. All right. Great. All right. So Walker, why don't we go through just starting at the beginning.

All right. So I redid the findings just as two statements rather than going through the whole Um, each, um, individual section, the board finds that the project complies with the relevant criteria of section 11.24 of the zoning bylaw. And the board finds that the proposed second principal use of an affordable owner occupied duplex is complimentary to the principal use of a three unit townhouse as approved in special permit ZBA FY202618. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think so. Looks good.

And then for the conditions, we did go through some of these already. A lot of them are pretty general. I added the revised dates for the plans so that those were all current, the most updated plans that we have. These are, we already went through these. They're the standard ones. I don't think I made a ton of changes to the conditions, so I'm trying to remember if there are ones we'd specifically

I'm sorry, but I think I'd like to back up and just look at each one again, just to make sure. So number two is just listing the documents on which the approval is based. And then the substantial changes. Number three, that's fine. Scroll that down.

I changed this to three years after the discussion we had last time to give them more time to get the duplex project going.

Yeah. Yeah, that sounded like that. Fred, I see your hand.

Yeah. Could you go back up slightly to the project and Substantial changes to the project or changes any prior to the planning board for its review and approval. Purposes shall be approved with change. Okay, that is correct. Let me drop down one, please. OK. I don't know what I thought I saw, but I guess I didn't see it.

Walker, for number four, the first line says three years. The second line says two year.

You're right. That should probably also be three. And then I left the number five at 24 months because that's 24 months from the date of the issuance of the building permit. So I would think that the usual amount of time should be sufficient for that.

Yes, that should be good. All right.

All right. Affordable housing units. Two units. Permanently affordable.

Mm-hmm.

the same the one right yeah you're on the shi you need a modification if they don't follow the affordability requirements portable and perpetually you're going a little fast for me to be able to read through these um

What does the second sentence of number 10? It doesn't look like an actual sentence.

We could say will be. You have to apply to have. Lisa Smith- A property listed on the shi and that's something that town staff typically does so I can just say.

Dave Kuntz, It could be something like. Dave Kuntz, The shi application shall be submitted by town staff.

Lisa Smith- Oh wait that's not right.

Dave Kuntz, yeah okay that now now that. yeah. Dave Kuntz, Now we can go down. Dave Kuntz, what's the regulatory agreement who's who who who is that between felicity.

Mr. Chairman, the regulatory agreement is a document that is between and among Amherst Community Land Trust, the town, and the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. And basically what it does is it imposes the affordability restriction, it's also identified in your document here. There are various additional requirements like occupancy. There's a requirement that limits resale in some situations. So it's kind of more comprehensive than the affordability restrictions here, but it's consistent with it. It's the document that kind of governs the affordability as it pertains to EOHLC. And it's also the document that is one of the documents that allows the units to be on the subsidized housing inventory.

Okay, thank you and so that that agreement says the affordable units will be right will be affordable for 99 years.

Yes, obviously. There are some situations where the statement require as long a period of affordability as the town. But here in Amherst, the affordability period is always 99 years.

Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. That looks good. Go along.

All right.

All right. Does anybody else on the board, are there any comments? I don't see any hands. So feel free to raise your hand. I think I'm up to number 18. OK.

All right.

So Walker, is there anything special about the rest of these? Or are they all just the boilerplate we always do for construction?

Standard, standard, standard. Yeah, I think the rest of these are just boilerplate.

Yep. Okay. All right. All right. Board members, are there any comments at all on how this reads now? And Walker, I assume you'll hit save at some point just to keep the few edits we made already.

Autosaving.

Okay, great. I'm going to ask if there are any public comments on this project at all. We are down to one member of the public. I invite that person to raise their hand if they would like to make a comment.

All right.

All right. I don't see any hands from anyone, board member or the public.

And I take my share screen them.

Yeah, I think you can stop share. All right. So we're going to need we're going to need a motion. And we're going to want to accept the findings. We're going to want to accept the conditions as as edited and presented it at this moment. We're going to want to and we're going to want to close the hearing. Jesse before we but before you do that, is that everything we need Pam and Walker? Is that the three the three aspects we should be doing? And Walker, do you want us to explicitly include the complementary?

I don't think you need to. As long as you're accepting the findings, it's one of the findings.

Okay. All right. Jesse? I move we accept the findings, accept the conditions, and close the hearing. All right.

Jarrah?

I second the motion.

All right. Thank you both. All right. Last call for comments. Not seeing any. All right. So we'll go ahead and do a vote for that. Is that a vote in favor is in favor of the motion. Starting with Fred.

Fred votes aye.

Thank you, Fred. And Jesse. Aye. And Jarrah.

Aye.

And I'm and I as well. That's four in favor and three members absent. Felicity.

First of all, I wanted to thank every member of the committee for the time you've invested in this project. We really, really appreciate it. And I just have a quick question. Some of our lenders are interested in making sure that we've completed the permitting process. What would be the process for me to get a copy of the, you know, approved decision so I can give it to our lenders?

Walker or Pam?

Pam, you probably know the process better than me.

Well, what I know will happen is that the decision will be crafted, which takes a little bit of time. There's like a format that we need to follow and make sure we have all of our things in there. And as soon as that happens, then we reach out to you, Felicity, as the representative and let you know, we we provide you with an electronic copy. But then you will be able to either come and pick up the copy of the paper copy of the decision or we can pop it in the mail to you.

Electronic is fine. OK, so that I can I can show them that that. board actually voted and that we have the decision. Sure. Sure. Thank you very much. You're welcome.

All right. Well, good luck with your project and we'll wait to see, to see it realized.

Thanks again. Appreciate it.

All right.

Oh, Doug, Linda Slakey's hand is up.

Oh, I'm sorry, Linda, go ahead.

I just wanted to add my thanks. This is the last step in the permitting process. You've done it all very graciously, including meeting on the third or the fifth Wednesday of this month in order to meet our time pressure. So we are very grateful for that.

All right. Thank you. And good luck.

Thank you.

Dave Kuntz, Alright, so the time is 703 as far as I can tell, we really only have one item left on our agenda, and that was a general housing discussion. Dave Kuntz, Jesse I know as sort of chair of the housing subcommittee there were some topics that you thought, maybe we could advance if in our larger group here. if you want to go ahead and talk about that.

Sure. When I was thinking about what the conversation should be, I guess I want to back up a step. And we now have housing production plan, downtown design standards, a sort of priority list that Nate helped us put together. six months ago, eight months ago, and they're not all the same. And so, you know, the sort of three sets of marching orders in one sense, I have my own ideas. Maybe everyone else has their own ideas. And, you know, I feel like a question, a conversation about what should happen first would be useful. And I don't know, I don't even know who's the right person to lead that conversation. I don't know if it should be you, Doug, in combination with Walker, or do we want to wait for Alexis to, Alex, Alexis, sorry, what was the name?

I think it's Alexis.

Alexis. So I don't know. I'm in a bit of a loss in the moment as I started putting all these things together. I agree with the priorities that were in all these three different places. But again, they're not all the same. So where does that leave us? I'm a little bit at a loss, to be honest.

Jera?

Jesse, I totally hear you. And I've thought about this myself. I think that... Well, I should speak to, I guess, what to... what should be foundational, but the most recent thing that we adopted is the housing production plan, right? And it names the planning board, town council, the housing trust, everybody with responsibilities for implementing it. And as far as I know, there haven't been any discussions about that. So I think to the degree that it's feasible, we should have a joint session with the probably CRC, the affordable housing trust, look at the housing production plan. It does kind of give us a sense of prioritization and that there is a timeline. So we could theoretically do an audit and see like, okay, we had all these recommendations for Xero, to one what did we do if we didn't do those things we can prioritize them or if there's other things that you know since this has been adopted have risen to the top of the priority list then um i think the important thing is that we we decide who is working on what and uh i think the best way to do that is is to get everybody together find out what our priorities are what our shared interests are and then literally delegate the work So that's my two cents. We love others' thoughts.

All right. Well, I was going to also mention when Jeff Baggs came to us, he had a list of what staff was going to be working on over the next six months or something. And I know they're about to kick off the East Amherst zoning study. which may be consistent with the housing production plan. We'll see where it ends up. In addition to Nate's list, there's Jeff's list. Walker, what's your sense of particularly what you and Jeff and Pam are thinking in terms of the housing production plan and how that's going to get turned into something real.

Yeah, I think that Jeff hasn't had a ton of time to think about it because of us being so short staffed. But I know like the East Amherst study, for instance, that is A priority in the housing production plan in that exploring the possibility of a 40-hour district was one of the priorities, and that's one of the points of the East Amherst study. So it's kind of addressing that as well as probably some other priorities out of the plan. But it does, I think, Jarrah's probably right in that it would make sense to look at what the action items are that we're supposed to be taken on by the planning board short term. I don't know how realistic it would be to have joint meetings with the CRC or the Amherst Housing Authority, but I don't think it would hurt to ask. And maybe at least as Alexis gets started, we can start making sure that's kind of the start of the conversation with her is that here's the priorities we already have outlined and would like to start with. And then hopefully the downtown design standards get adopted sooner than later, and then we can probably have to have a whole conversation about how that fits in with the housing production plan. And where's their where's their overlap and where might there be conflict and how to kind of address that.

All right, Justin.

Yeah, so that's exactly one of the things that led to my confusion Walker is assuming the downtown design standards does get I don't know if it's approved or adopted whatever term is that has zones in it. Is that just a guideline? Are we actually gonna try and pursue that? And then I look at the sort of directives in the production plan that, you know, A1 is up zone residential districts townwide to enable creation of missing middle. It's more aspirational statement than any working orders.

And it could be that the downtown design standards is one approach to meet the more aspirational goals of housing production plan. I think one of the conversations that still needs to be decided on is exactly how the design standards are going to be adopted. Is it going to be a requirement? Is it going to be a guideline? Is it going to be we do it all at once? Is it going to be phase by phase? We haven't decided that yet.

And what's the timeline on that? Can you remind us just on when that's complete? And are we voting on it? What's the actual process?

I'm not 100% sure. I know that they closed the public comment period. They're going through all the feedback and comments they received. And I believe it's September that we're supposed to get the next draft from the Or no August that we're supposed to get the next draft from the consultants with all the comments. And I think that will hopefully be the final draft. And at that point, then we'll be deciding how and how to implement how to adopt who's doing what parts.

So I think the end of the year might be the end of the year was kind of what I thought. Mm hmm.

maybe Nate had outlined, but obviously... Yeah, no, I think it's going to take a little while to have those conversations and to go back and forth about it.

And so it's even unclear if it's just a guideline or adoption.

It is unfair because it's a kind of a different approach. And who decides that? I think it has to be the planning board has... opinions on what parts they would adopt or want to take on as zoning or regulatory items on your part. And then the planning department is probably going to have like staff's going to have recommendations and then the CRC and town council are going to look at it and have thoughts. I don't think there's one single decision maker on that, which is why it's going to take a little longer.

Well, Walker, would you, do you think that you and Jeff basically town staff want to take make the first suggestion about how to incorporate it? Or do you want the planning board to do that?

Well, I don't know exactly what Jeff's plan, but my thought, I think the best way to do it, in my opinion, is to come back to the planning board with the updated draft that incorporates the feedback we have and determine with you what what you think is feasible and what you want to be under your purview and then make a recommendation to town council that what we think is the best way to adopt it.

Okay. So if the draft comes back in September, would it be something we'd put on the agenda in October or would it be November or? Do you have a sense?

I think you could put it on pretty soon after it comes back. I mean, hopefully it won't be a huge lift to review it again because I don't think they're going to make, it depends on how many changes they make, but I think sooner than later so that we can have multiple meetings about it, multiple discussions if necessary. Jeff's been meeting directly with consultants, so he has a better idea of what the specific timeline is, but

Well, I mean, he's also got the Hampshire College study going on.

Yeah, he's got a lot going on. But I can ask him about this one specifically and see if he has an idea of when it will be coming back.

OK. So Jesse, that's sort of a wide-ranging conversation about your first question.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, this is just a random question. You know, Angus had done that draft zoning for the, what was it? The PRP. The PRP, yeah. Walker, I mean, we got that to the point where we were pretty much ready to recommend it. And but held off given the request from Jeff to be careful about how much stuff we threw over the transom to other people.

Yeah, so I sent it to Rob Mora because he does need to review it before it gets recommended. And then Roy has been meeting with the property owners and working on it on that side to make sure it kind of fits with what they actually want to do with their properties. And then Jeff asked if Roy could come up with the memo for it and I can help him if he needs a little more assistance on that. And then once it has the language and also the memo that goes to town council about, you know why you're suggesting this then and we've got rob approving it then then it'll actually be ready for recommendation so it's it's getting close and it's back on the agenda on uh what the 19th pam i think i think it is the 19th oh where's my clipboard i i think it's the end of august yeah i think it's the 19th not the 5th well that would be our second meeting in august so yeah yep technically the end but not really

Yeah. When you measure time by planning board meetings, that's the end.

Right. Okay.

And it is, it is on. Yeah, that's what I thought. The report from Walker and Roy.

Okay. All right. Um, Jesse, what are kind of the other, let's say, top three initiatives that the Housing Subcommittee was working on before we You shut you down.

Yeah, I'm, I need to, again, we were working on Nate's list, which I neglected to pull up just now, which I which I can. But again, I think several of those kind of got mixed into the house production plan priorities that were, you know, we, we had not really started working on much in earnest. Okay, Frank, after the North Amherst overlay kind of went nowhere.

Right.

And I think we were ready to try and work out.

It does feel like East Amherst is kind of our next area to think about, regardless of what happened in North Amherst. And I think it's kind of a fortuitous coincidence that the town got this grant to fund the consultant on that.

Not precisely a coincidence. Okay, I knew it was going to be a focus area when we applied for the grant.

But yeah, okay. Well, it's it saves us and the housing subcommittee from having to take the lead on it. And Walker, isn't it true that the work plan described for that study has that consultant coming to the planning board on a pretty regular basis?

Yes, you will be kind of taking the lead on it in that you're their primary interaction with the town. I'm like, I'm the point of contact, but the planning board is going to be their main venue for public hearings. I mean, they're going to have community meetings, but they're going to be coming to a lot of your meetings. Six, I think.

And when is that starting exactly?

That's starting in September because they want time to get together all the existing conditions and their first sort of set of meetings. um like some information to bring to you other than just here we are and here's what we're going to do so september is actually kind of around the corner already i mean maybe maybe that'll scratch the itch enough until staff are fully ready to yeah support this up yeah yeah once it's going to take a bit for alexis to get on but once she's on one of her focus areas is probably going to be that taking projects over the hump. So where they're actually going to town council rather than just getting talked about. And I think it'll be helpful to have a staff member who's more focused on that.

Sure. Okay. Well, yeah, maybe, maybe there's just enough going on that we should just be patient.

Okay, well, um, you know, we'll keep the housing discussion on the agenda is, you know, even next meeting, let's keep it on for next next meeting. Just so we can kind of keep the pressure on to make sure we're making some progress.

Sure. Are there so thinking about what what is able to make progress, backing up to the PRP piece, Walker, you feel like that's gonna move along?

I think we're pretty close on that one once we get the feedback from Rob and once we get the memo really ready to go, I think that could be ready by the end of August.

Okay.

Great. All right. Well, Jesse, unless there's anything else, I'll assume that's the housing discussion for this evening. Yeah, I think that's good. Thanks, Doug. Okay. Well, we're approaching the time that Bruce thought he might be able to join us. So I don't know whether to kill some more time or, you know, we've gotten through our agenda. The last item on our agenda is adjournment. uh we no longer have any public attendees so i don't need to ask for public comment so time is 7 19. does anybody object to us adjourning at this moment okay all right so we'll meet again next week the first meeting in august have a good week everyone