Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Bruce. Good to see you.

Hi, Bruce.

Walker. Thanks, Don. I wanted to ask him about we both sat in on the town council on Monday night. Oh, Doug, I was going to ask you while we're waiting for... Lynn Greissmer made a comment after some extraordinary... thing that happened somewhere else in the country about how PV systems contaminated private water supplies and basically reduced the houses to value.

I did a Google search of that municipality. I forget if it's

Hailstorm damaged some panels.

But how irrational? I mean, some of those two of those councillors who voted for the motion were people I regard highly as being irrational people. And how you could conclude that a PV panel was not only more dangerous than a septic system, a septic field, but twice as dangerous.

so i i thought this might come up during our meeting and so you know we can leave it for now we probably ought to leave it for now um jesse told me jesse has to leave at eight um jera told me he um won't be really sure he won't he's not really sure he'll be here before about quarter of seven But as soon as we have a quorum, I thought I'd get going just to see if I could get as much of the meeting conducted while Jesse's part of it.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, if we don't have quorum, I could listen in on the phone. Okay.

Well, right now we don't have quorum. So, Bruce, just one more thing I did find out on that topic. This morning I emailed the Board of Health in Amherst and asked how many private wells there are. And I got a spreadsheet back that has 154 lines of wells. So I assume it's 154 wells, which is certainly a lot more than Kathy Shane was

reporting, speculating on, I guess, would be more accurate. Yeah. I mean, she confessed as much. But astonishing. I mean, the only people in the room who really had to spend any time understanding this problem were all the people who voted appropriately. The others who Basically, apparently, I would uncharitably suggest we're not well-informed and certainly weren't prepared to take the advice of those that were.

I don't think it was something that, I mean, obviously, it wasn't able to be persuaded by facts.

No, very obviously not. Experiences and facts were...

We're not relevant.

Not relevant.

All right, so we have a quorum. Angus, I'm so glad you keep showing up with your newborn.

I'm more than glad and also impressed.

Yeah.

I hope your family is as well.

Yeah, don't talk to my wife about it.

Okay. So, Pam, let's get this on the road.

Okay.

Get Angus back to his wife as soon as possible.

Hang on, Angus.

Well, I met your wife and she's a nice person, so tell her that I think she's even nicer than I did when I first met her.

Oh, and we've been recording in progress. Excellent. And we haven't heard anything from Fred, so I don't know, I expect him to drop in sometime soon.

Well, OK, Mr. Marshall, let's see. The meeting is live. It's recording. You have a quorum of the board. The attendees have arrived. I think we're good to go.

All right. Thank you, Pam.

You're welcome.

Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of September 16, 2026. My name is Doug Marshall and as chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 636 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 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. 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 disruptive for any reason, 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.

I am here.

I don't see Fred Hartwell yet. Jesse Major.

Present.

Doug Marshall, I'm present. Angus McLeod. Present. Roy Johnson.

Present.

And Jarrah Smith.

Present.

Thank you all. During the 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 remute yourself. To the general public. The public comment item on tonight's agenda is for comments on topics not appearing later on the agenda. Please hold comments on those later topics until we get to those topics. When public comment is solicited, please indicate you wish to make a public comment by clicking on the raise hand button. If you've 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. All right. Time now is 6.39, and our first item is review and approval of minutes. We have the June 3rd minutes in draft form from our hardworking staff. Did anybody have any comments on these minutes other than that they are the usual excellent summary that we expect? Jesse?

No comment. I thought they were great, so I moved to Approve minutes.

Okay. Thank you. Second. Thank you, Angus, for your second. All right. We have a motion on the floor. Does anybody want to make any other comments about these minutes? All right. I don't see any. We'll go right into our vote. Starting with you, Bruce.

Aye. Yes, aye.

Roy? Aye. Roy Johnson.

I don't think I attended this meeting, so my event, I can't vote.

You can abstain if you'd like. Abstain, yeah. Sure. All right. Jesse. Aye. Angus. Aye. And Jarrah. Aye. And I'm an aye as well. Five in favor, one abstention, and one member not present. All right, thank you all. Time is now 640. And so members of the public, this is now the time for general public comments about topics that don't appear later on this agenda. So if you have want to make a public comment at this time, please raise your hand. I see that we have three members of the public in attendance. I usually read the names so they all know who is present. They are Jake Thiel, Maura Keane, and Melanie St. John. And I still do not see any hands raised or anybody wanting to make a comment. Give you another few seconds, and then we'll move on. Okay, uh, it doesn't appear that we won't have any public comment. This evening time is 641. All right. So the third item on our agenda is the general housing discussion. I have two topics on the agenda for that. First is the just a check in on the work for the rezoning of the PRP district to allow housing. Brett KenCairn, Roy, I think you missed the last meeting we talked about what you might be doing, and you might do. Brett KenCairn, Do you want to just give everybody an update on what you have done, and we can discuss where to go from there.

Thank you. So out of the six different parcels in the PRP, I contacted four different owners. There's one owner that owns two of the parcels, and all of them were receptive to doing mixed use 55 and over and changing, letting us work with them to change the zoning so they could put residential of some kind in there. They are very flexible.

All right. Brett KenCairn, And I think we had and suggested that you could draft a memo to counsel. Brett KenCairn, Essentially, a cover letter for the zoning bylaw changes that that Angus had drafted. Brett KenCairn, um. I saw you had emailed a first pass at that. And there were some questions you had because you haven't been part of the process. Correct. Are you ready for somebody else to pick that up and finish it off?

That would be helpful.

Okay. All right. Well, I'm willing to do that, actually. So I think, why don't I just plan to do that? Roy, when you and I talked, there was one sort of question in parentheses on the draft from Angus that I wanted to see if we needed to talk about. Do you remember what that was?

Not offhand.

Okay.

Was it?

Let me see. Well, if you don't, that's fine. What we'll do is I'll try to be better prepared for the meeting, for the next meeting when we can talk about the draft and try to talk about that last question. Does that sound fine?

Sounds good.

Okay, good.

Well, Doug, there was one other thing I was just going to note. So I had sent Roy a version of rewriting the bylaw that would be a PRP overlay that Nate had proposed. But we're going in a different direction. So I know Roy had... highlighted some things from that overlay, but I don't think they're applicable now. So I don't think you need to worry about, as you're writing things for the town council to consider, I don't think you need to even share the overlay idea with them since we're not going in that direction.

Okay. Angus, I hesitate to ask this, but since there's been a couple of versions of types of things floating around, would you mind sending me your last...

set of files yeah i can i mean i i think you can also all right they are in the packet yeah it's the set of files that's been in the packet for the last like five or so meetings um just the prp section i think i mean pam you can correct me if i'm wrong it's the same stuff that i sent in a while back yes it is okay i think the only other thing that might be missing is my memo So I'll send you what I've got, Doug, but it's essentially the same stuff that's been in the packets.

Okay. Sorry to ask you to send it again, Angus.

It's okay. I'm going to do it right now.

Okay. Yeah, you can do it while we're talking. Bruce.

the packet that had all of those pieces of the bylaw, but except for one where the PRP was it, or the OP column of this table was highlighted in orange or red. None of the other files had anything. They were basically just extracts from the zoning bylaw as far as I could see. And if that's the case, I was wondering why they were in the packet. because it occurred to me that I was missing something. There was something I didn't understand about what I was looking at. So my question is, was there in the packet, in those half dozen extracts from the bylaw, were they anything more than extracts from the way the bylaw currently reads?

I thought there were edits to half a dozen different parts of the bylaw because Angus followed the trail all over.

They were, every one of them that I opened, with the single exception that I mentioned earlier, were cleaned and unblemished.

Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah, it actually looks like they're PDFs. So what I sent in were Microsoft Word documents with track changes with all of the edits. So I can send that back in to Pam and Walker to send out to everyone again. I think at some point maybe someone converted them into PDFs and then you lose the track changes unless you save the PDF in a certain way.

That would have been me. That would have been me a long time ago, Angus. I am so sorry. I didn't realize that happened like that.

Can I just CC everyone on this email to Doug with the stuff? Is that okay? Just don't reply all.

Just don't reply all.

Thanks for bringing that up, Bruce. Dave Kuntz, Okay, so we continue to make progress on that on that topic, I know that you know the planning department and town council are probably not eager for us to finish this and get them a new bylaw change to consider so. Dave Kuntz, nobody's pushing us to do this, but I think it's good for us to get it finished.

Can I just say one other thing, Doug? Sorry. When you get the documents, you may have to turn on track changes to see the visible edits. So if you need help with that, just shoot me an email or Google.

Turn on track changes.

I'm just saying for everyone, Doug, not for you specifically. But I do track changes with my students and I have to tell them how to do it, how to turn on track changes now because none of them have really done it.

I know how to do it in the 20-year-old version, but it changed a few years ago, and it's now more difficult to get rid of them or to, anyway, blah, blah. I might facilitate, I might, yeah, I'll look up, but it's not as easy.

all right uh and then the second item was the what's called here the campus adjacent zone um i did uh get started on uh drafting an overlay for that um and then i got sidetracked on another topic that uh ended up before town council the the uh Brett KenCairn, The adjustment to the clean energy bylaw setback distance for well, so I didn't get as far as I wanted to, and I don't have anything to show you tonight. Brett KenCairn, So that's that's an update I did get started I basically I took the university drive overlay text and use that as my template. Dave Kuntz, And then edited from there, so. Dave Kuntz, I definitely am consider i'm taking the overlay approach, rather than. Dave Kuntz, You know, creating a new new zone that has all kinds of options for residential. Dave Kuntz, All right. Gosh, we're going way too fast tonight. Anybody else want to talk about anything else on general housing at the moment? Okay.

Sorry, Doug. Did we want to talk about Jesse's ADU thing from last time now that Jarrah's here and Roy? I know we're missing Fred, but

Yeah. Well, let's see. Since Jesse was named, Bruce, I'm going to let Jesse start.

Thanks. Thanks, Angus. I had emailed Doug saying I didn't think we needed to. My sense from last time was there wouldn't be enough support from the planning board to move in that direction. And that might be better to pursue other options down that line. I'm happy to talk about it, but I wasn't convinced it was good use of our collective time as a planning board.

And I actually ran into Jeff Baggs this morning. He said that he and the department are working on some bylaw revisions to address the definition of an attic. and how that interacts with the ADUs. So he told me that that would probably be going to council for referral to this board and CRC for adoption. Not any particular timeline, but it sounded like something he had pretty close to the front of his agenda. Jesse.

Two questions about that. Maybe you don't know. One question for you, Doug. One question for Walker, I think. Do you know if they're also adding more language just about livable space, habitable space, defining that?

I don't know.

We'll wait to see. In the meantime, my other concern is about ongoing applications, or not even applications, ongoing submissions for new ADUs. Since we're in this moment, Does that change people's abilities to say building an ADU with two bedrooms in the attic? Walker, do you know, are there a steady stream of applications coming now that are actually more than 900 square feet? Or are we doing anything to prevent that? What's happening there?

I don't see the applications when they come in, so I'm not sure if there's been any more. The day the zoning bylaw was amendment is filed with town council is the day that the zoning will freeze and that people will no longer be able to put in applications under the current zoning. So people could be still putting applications in and then what happens to those applications will be determined by the results of the appeal. It's ongoing. So it's not yet clear what's going to happen with the ADUs that are being built or being applied for at the moment. Okay.

Thanks, Walker. Is it probably true that the building commissioner is holding on on approving building permits, and that's such a that's you know those kinds of things until the appeal and legal process is laid out.

I am not sure. I only know that they had a meeting with the lawyers about it on Monday, but I wasn't part of the meeting. So I'm not sure what the latest is on that. But it is something that's they're trying to move that along as quickly as possible, too.

Okay. Sorry, I have one more follow up question. If we wanted to know what that status is, who can tell a concerned citizen? Meaning, are there current applications being approved?

I would ask the building department, you could put in a public records request. We've had a few public records requests about the ADUs from various people. So it's something that, you know, you're not the only one who's wondering. Sure. Okay. Thanks.

All right. Anything else? Brett KenCairn, And I will ask the public anybody anything any does anybody want to make a comment about. Brett KenCairn, Housing as a general topic. Brett KenCairn, Before we move on. All right. Don't see any hands raised there. So we'll move on. Time is 655. We're up to item four in our agenda old business. Topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance. Anybody have any anything that we should revisit? Angus?

I just wanted to ask that did the town council have a vote on Monday about the clean energy bylaw?

Yes, they approved the amendment that. The two amendments that were moved and then they did approve the bylaw. And I think I forget Walker, but it sounded. You know, right, I think they said it might take effect in a week or something, but it's imminent.

I'm not I'm not sure the timeline, I didn't watch the meeting.

Dave Kuntz, But so so. Dave Kuntz, Pam and Walker will probably need to be giving us new zoning bylaw hard copies sometime soon. Dave Kuntz, With the additional 20 pages or whatever we ended up with from that one section. Dave Kuntz, Anything else Walker.

I was just going to bring up that I talked to Innes, the consultant that we're working on the East Amherst study with today. We're planning some public outreach and just a question for any of you, if any of you can think of a convenient place for a community outreach event somewhere in that area or some suggestions people I might reach out to that might be helpful. And they will be coming on the 30th with some updates, a timeline, and some questions about the focus area. And they want to hear from everybody on the board about what your priorities are for the area and what sort of zoning changes you might be considering. And they're going to have a dialogue about that to get them going. They're working on the existing conditions now, but they're not going to quite have them all done by the 30th, they didn't think. So that's what they're going to start with.

All right. So we'll have a third meeting in September. Bruce.

Apropos of the old business item related to the Clean Energy By-law and the Council's decision on Monday night, I would just like to register my complete astonishment that the Town Council, in adopting the two motions, amendments, has essentially declared that they believe that water dripping off PV arrays is twice as dangerous as a potential source of contamination than a buried septic system leach field.

I second that, Bruce.

It's outrageous. Stupid. It's embarrassing to be a part of this town which professes to want to encourage the deployment of solar PV, and you get this kind of mindless nonsense. If you could print that in the minutes, Walker, in bold capitals, I would be appreciative. But I dare say you will restrain yourself.

I'm sorry, I don't think Pam heard you, Bruce.

Oh, I heard.

All right, Jarrah. I almost forgot what I was going to say, although I do agree with everything you had to say, Bruce. Walker, so you were asking where in the East Amherst study area we should do a community engagement event?

Yeah, if any of you know if there's like any community gathering spaces or something that might work in that area. I reached out to the JCA and I'm going to look and see if any of the apartment complexes might have a community room or area that we could use. Can we use the school? I've kind of been told by the town that I shouldn't try to do that right now with it just opening and everyone feeling, I guess, overwhelmed about the school. And in the past, they've had some issues trying to coordinate with the school on public outreach. So that's being discouraged. Okay. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be ideal.

I totally hear you. I think it would be a really wonderful place to get... very targeted and very relevant feedback. Yeah.

And if you want to reach out to the school, I would be happy to. And something more to come up, I certainly wouldn't say no.

Great. Okay. Is there someone in particular? I mean, I know I've, so my son just started there a couple of weeks ago. And so I have already been in contact with people, but is there anybody in particular you would suggest I reach out to?

I haven't been in contact with the school before, actually, since I've been working here. So I don't know who the primary contact with the town are.

Okay.

Regardless, I'm the principal or somebody.

Yeah, I would try to go through the principal or the front office.

Okay. That's what I figured.

But great. It also, I mean, I wondered whether that Maple Farm facility that's been dormant for so long, the structure is big enough to have a large open space inside of it. But I don't know.

I wondered that too, as far as I know, it's just someone living there at the moment. And I don't like, I don't know who they are, how I would get in contact with them. But I suppose that is something that, you know, we thought of.

leave a note on the door or something.

Well, I think, I mean, what's the name of the apartment complex there?

There is Colonial Village.

Does it have a common room?

That's, I'm not sure, but I've reached out to them already about coordinating with them. And the consultants were interested in also potentially just putting up a tent in a parking lot near the businesses and just going and talking to the business owners potentially at some point. So they can do some just outdoor stuff in the area too.

Okay. jesse what's the status of the old school there the street school.

Way finders is going to be applying for funding this year they've tried and we're not planning previously so.

Sorry, I meant as a potential meeting place is it like.

I think it's not accessible. So we can meet in the park out back if the weather was nice but i'm not sure for an indoor meeting space.

Chunk in. Have a morning meeting. All right. All right. Is that it for old business? All right. So we'll move on to new business. Any new business for topics not anticipated? Walker or Pam? Nope. No. All right.

Nope.

All right now for me and our subdivision applications. I think I saw one in the packet.

We do have one. I'm going to see if I can bring up some documents. Walker, do you want to explain this?

Yeah, I mean, this one's pretty straightforward. They've got space, barely, for two buildable lots. So they're just splitting the lot in half. They're trying to sell the house right now, and I think they want to retain the other half as a building lot or sell them as two separate lots. So it looked like the plan looked fine. I didn't see any issues with it. They meet all the criteria. The DPW reviewed it and didn't see any issues. So I think this is pretty straightforward.

So there'd still be frontage, you know, sufficient frontage and we've got the circle.

We've got the circles and they've got, yeah.

Yeah.

There it is. Yep. It meets the criteria.

Yeah. All right. Any, Jesse, go ahead.

Not to be nitpicky, but that circle doesn't look like it really fits in those lines.

I'm sorry, say that again?

That circle, the circle, the lot one, 4,396 square feet, the circle looks like it's, is that meant to represent some minimum distance from the lines? Forgive my ignorance. Yes.

So mean, if you zoom in, it meets the proposed parcel lines, but it doesn't go over them.

Okay. Tangent.

Yeah.

It's also a requirement that they show this on the site. And sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But the building commissioner has taught me that they don't have to show the circle.

Okay.

Thanks. You're welcome.

All right. Does anybody have any objection to my signing this? And we all agree that this is not subject to subdivision, our subdivision bylaw. Speak now or raise your hand if you are not in support. Angus.

Sorry, I just have two clarifying questions that I always forget in our subdivision plans. One is, do abutters have to be notified of a subdivision plan?

Not anymore.

Okay. And then second, behind the scenes town staff Dave Kuntz, verifies that each lot meets the requirements for the for the zoning yeah yeah that's that's what I thought okay just want to make sure.

Karen Hollweg, it's also reviewed by the town engineer, and so he has returned this to us and said no comment.

Dave Kuntz, All right. Thanks, Angus. And Pam, I guess I'll make an appointment to come in and sign the drawings.

Okay. I'll be there the next two days.

Okay.

Stop by.

All right. Any other A&R or subdivision topics? Nope.

Nope.

All right. Time is 7.07. Upcoming ZBA applications. I'm sorry, Jarrah, go ahead.

So, yeah, I just well, I mean, now I'm getting ahead of I'm definitely getting ahead of things, but I'm just wondering, I'm thinking about ballot question number seven and what that would do in terms of A&Rs. And maybe this is a conversation for another time, but I hadn't really thought about how that how question seven might affect that kind of thing.

Is that the one that

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, That's the 5000 square foot and like 50 foot frontage requirement for or minimum requirement for all right single family lots PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Well, I don't know, just something to say just something probably be aware of everything into chaos. Don't you think PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Well, I'm thinking this will like if it's a 50 foot frontage and then this is PB, Harmon Zuckerman, 270 feet, you know, theoretically, this could be five properties. But I mean, I don't know the technicalities of it well enough yet.

I think if it does get voted into place, it still has to be regulations still have to be written by the state. So they would kind of like how they put up ADU regulations after. They would have to look at all this and get public comment and figure out how it would actually work. Right.

I mean, obviously, there's a structure that covers three of those properties, theoretically, so it wouldn't be practical in a lot of senses, but...

Yeah, they'd have to have some way of determining how many feet you have, how many square feet you have open on your lot potentially, or how much of the frontage could be used. Can you, can you do flag lots in this case? I'm not sure. Oh, wow. I didn't even thought about that. It could get complicated. Oh my God.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I guess something to think about is we may have more A&Rs coming our way in 2027. Okay. Okay.

So think about it and then get back to us.

Will do.

All right. SPP, SPR, SUB applications. Anything on the horizon? Nothing?

Nothing that we haven't talked about before.

Okay.

So I do have a ZBA one now.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I do. So I learned about a special permit for 28 Shea Street that's actually going to go before the ZBA on September 24th. So we didn't get a whole lot of notice. So it's currently a two-family permit. with an owner occupancy condition. So they're seeking a new special permit to alleviate that as well as to allow for six cars. There are already six parking spaces available on the lot. They just haven't allowed six cars. So it's going to go in front of the ZBA for those two reasons. The owner circumstances have changed for the owner. So he's older and his central living is in New York City, but he's going to have a property manager. Yeah, so he would like to eliminate the owner occupancy. It's pretty straightforward.

All right. Yeah, that doesn't really have very much sort of dimensional or physical implications. So I think I wouldn't feel like we needed to see that one.

Okay.

Plus, we don't have a meeting before the 24th.

No. No, and I learned about this in between our last meeting and this meeting.

All right. Does anybody else feel like they would want to? I mean, I think at this point, if you're interested in that, you should plan to go to the meeting on the 24th that CBA holds. All right. I guess that's it for ZBA and SPP, SPR, SUB applications. Jesse?

I was just going to make one related comment, which PB, David Ensign he or he will start to think about more wondering if other people feel similarly about parking, especially with all the ad use i'm seeing go up some streets now have many more cars visible and just on. Not on the street, but basically on the street. So there are several new sites that now there's six, seven, eight cars parking regularly. And it very much changes the dynamic of the street experience. So it's been on my mind to just try and think about if there are ways we can influence where cars are parked or maximum numbers and such.

Well, I can say, you know, Cambridge certainly has robust infrastructure to deal with parking. Go ahead, Jarrah.

Well, I'm curious if the town has ever thought about expanding permitted parking, you know, or even like even directionally up towards and around UMass or something.

Yeah, we actually were just talking about that the other day. Interesting. They're talking about adding permitted parking up like in the Fearing Street area.

That could be an interesting solution.

I know, I mean, in my neighborhood, we don't have very many people that come and park and then take the bus or ride a bike to UMass. But every now and then there's a couple of cars that I wonder if that's what's happening. Because we're, you know, we're not on campus, but we're close enough to pick up a bus or ride your bike or walk if you really have to. All right, Jesse.

Yeah, that's part of the equation. I was referring to more the on-lot parking, which is now much more abundant with more people living there.

Have you got properties that an ADU has already gone?

Yeah, so I think it was maybe the first one. It's at the corner of Lincoln and Fearing. The address is a fairing address. So it's technically behind the main house. There used to be four cars there and they made the payment bigger. They're now seven cars regularly. And I understand that's what's allowed, but I'm thinking more of the visual experience. Like if there's ways to require screening or, I mean, I don't know what the solutions are, but it really changes just the streetscape. And I worry if the ADU density keeps increasing, which I think we all know it will, There are going to be many streets, which you'll walk down the street and it's just parking lot after parking lot after parking lot is your visual and nearby experience. Like you walk on the sidewalk there and you have to walk by multiple cars within reach of your, you know, within arm's reach. And so again, it just changes the character of the neighborhood in a very significant way.

Jaron.

Jaron.

Jesse, you bring up a good point about the on-site. There's such a thing as parking maximums as well. Most people have heard about parking minimums, of course, especially anybody on a planning board. But there's also a lot of cities out there that if they can't eliminate parking minimums for political reasons or even legal reasons, they do maximum parkings so that you cap how many cars can actually be on-site. And if you were to do that in conjunction with an expanded permitting for off street, like that might be one way to tackle an abundance over abundance of cars, both on and off. Just thought.

Great. Well, I suppose we could also, isn't there something in the zoning bylaw now about you have to have a certain number of spaces that are more than 20 feet from the road? I could be mistaken, but I think that's about me, isn't it? We could say that, you know, you can't park within some number of feet of the roadway and all the parking has to be set back.

Correct. I'm trying to think about things just like that. I don't know that that's practical everywhere. And then the problem in my mind is, well, we're allowing another ADU to be built. So then potentially there's eight people living there. Can we really say maximum four cars? Maybe we can. I'm sure we can. Yes, I'm just exploring those things in my mind. Right. Okay.

Angus. I mean, I guess it's, so parking minimums are a major blockage for denser developments in a lot of cases. So, I mean, I think we could also think of, I think we could think about all aspects, all kind of parts of it, parking minimums, which we could get rid of, and you could see then more housing built without any additional parking, potentially. But if you partnered that with permits for on-street parking, which would bring in revenue for the town and also lead to some controls, and then also put in some parking maximums for developers who want to attract people with cars, then, I mean, I think all three of those strategies in combination could kind of cover all aspects of the issue.

Okay. Jera, and then Jesse.

I totally agree. And Jesse, just to expand on my excited point of, yes, we can say that. The privilege of having a parking space guaranteed makes anything more expensive. And so if we don't force those places to have a minimum or have a cap, then some of those places are going to invariably be going for less and will be more affordable and more accessible to people because they are not coming guaranteed with a parking space. And so like, I just, that is its own really important, like natural, not, policy-driven or funded way of making places more affordable is just don't make it as attractive by imposing parking requirements for all of them. Because there's going to be kids who don't have cars, who want to walk, who want to bike. And those are the kids who will rent those ADUs. presuming it's the kids at the school. But I'll end there. The point is that I, you know, my whole thing is about housing choice. And that means that choosing homes without a parking space should also be a choice. I'll stop there.

All right. I'm just waiting for Roy to raise his hand at some point because he's in the room. Roy, no hurry, no obligation. Angus or Jesse, you're next and then Angus.

Yes. I mean, my thoughts started with maximums. And then I thought about over the last three years, my involvement in planning board, every time this is more in the context of some of the mixed use building conversations, the overlays, every time reducing the minimums comes up, there are not on this group, but in larger conversations, there are, very loud, very opposed voices. And I'm not saying that's not a reason we should try and do it, but that's an element that we will have to contend with. Again, maybe some of you could speak more to this, but I would also posit that developers who are building another ADU would be very opposed to that. And of course they want the extra parking, exactly for the reason you said, Jared, to have the increased cost for higher priced units.

All right, Angus.

So I guess I've been dug as heavily into the parking regulations as I should have. I've been focusing on PRP, but parking is another whole realm that we can tackle to try and provide more options for housing. I guess I have kind of a couple of questions about this, and maybe this is more for a future meeting. I'm just looking back over the bylaw changes for ADUs that we discussed. that we incorporated. So in 5.0.113, general requirements for protected use accessory dwelling units and local accessory dwelling units. There's a couple of different letters or subsections that I'm a little unsure about. So one says, a parking plan shall be submitted to and approved by the building commissioner and shall be in accordance with the design and landscape standards of section seven of the zoning bylaw. Then later it says, sorry, there shall be no more and two on site parking spaces provided for any ADU. That's letter I 5.0113. I does that mean that if a new ADU is built, they can only add two parking spaces to the law?

Yeah, sorry, Doug, can I comment on that?

Sure. Walker, I will note, has nodded her head. Yes.

I mean, I remember discussing that, and that's correct. The issue or the get around is that if your driveway is already bigger, if your lots already can accommodate six cars, you can then add two more. Okay. Right. And so I think that's the case I was just describing where there was space for probably five already. they made it a bit bigger with the ADU construction. So now there's more cars there, right?

Well, and I mean, it says, you know, you can't add any more than two parking spaces for the ADU, but could you add four to the principal dwelling? I mean, could you add additional, could you say, oh, those aren't for the ADU, these new spots are actually for the principal dwelling?

But I don't, I mean, I don't think the town regulates that to that level.

Yeah.

We don't have a parking inspector for single family houses, right? As far as I know. And so, so like, yeah, even before that ADU, there were four or five cars there regularly. Right. Right.

I'm just trying to get a sense of this is a maximum that's in the bylaw. Correct. But as far as I know, it's the only maximum that we have.

Correct. So like you have a hundred foot driveway that's double car wide, you could put cars all along it, right?

Yeah, I was going to say to Jesse's point, regulating parking spaces is not the same as regulating the number of cars. You could be parking on the grass. That's probably not allowed in the bylaw technically, but I know people do it.

Brett KenCairn, All right, well, it sounds like this might, is this a topic we want to talk about to put on the our agenda, or do we want to just kind of wait and see how the edu topic of all before we tackle it Angus.

Angus King, Well, I think, I think this is a great thing for us to continue to work on and talk about, but I think someone would kind of need to take. Angus King, Like.

Sarah Mastrianni, charge of it or like it would become their their baby, if you will, um, Well, you almost sounded guilty that you hadn't dealt dived into that that topic. Yeah. Sarah Mastrianni, Okay, Tara.

Um, uh, PB, David Ensign he or he. : gosh so many times I raised my hand and then forget what i'm going to say, because somebody says something funny Oh, is what this may be more the charge of the transportation and parking Commission, maybe or like is this something where we'd want to have a joint. PB, David Ensign he or he.

: session certainly they certainly have a part of it if we're talking about on street parking I mean, I think, when you get into the public way it really becomes their baby and we can just things and see what they think. Bruce, and then Jesse.

Doug, I think it would be interesting to agenda a conversation around what Gerra suggested of a maximum, because that's a very definable topic. Should we consider imposing maximum parking allowances or requirements on certain sites in certain conditions? And if we do, which would be those sites? What would be the condition? In other words, spend some time focused on that particular question, and then I would ask Sarah whether you could perhaps write a two or three paragraph position paper on that, because it sounded like you knew what you were talking about. So I think that would be the point of entry that I think would be easiest to talk about. And also, I think, as Jesse or others have said, it might also be a lightning rod for public participation. So that would be good, too. I mean, we get public comments and so forth. So I suggest that that would be the most productive and the point of entry with the most horsepower.

Okay. I will say, you know, based on my observation of the rental unit kind of across the street from me, there's the nominally four people that live there, and often there are actually five. And then there's all the boyfriends. And the boyfriends are generally parked along the street. And so a maximum, if our maximum really only applies to the property itself, that excludes the people that are coming and parking on the street. So it is kind of spanning public and private.

Well, I agree, but now you're having the discussion. I mean, I think we could talk about this.

Okay.

Because I think it's, I want to understand whether there's a there there. And I don't know whether there's a there there, but I haven't thought about it enough.

All right.

Jesse. Jesse. Two quick comments. One is that the Transportation and Parking Commission, as I think someone just said, only will deal with street parking, not anything else. The second point was Even though I brought it up, I brought it up more in the context of screening and streetscape because I worry we spend 200 hours working on something. We get it through council. It's a maximum parking. And then it's like the four unrelated by law, which is probably flouted by 70 or 80% of our rentals. And we don't do anything about it. So is it worth, is the juice worth the squeeze? But happy to, at the same time, I'm still happy to talk about it again some other time. Okay.

Well, maybe we, I mean, just as an aside, maybe we ought to recommend that we change that four unrelated to five unrelated.

I have opinions on that too, but just because just for the fun of it. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Um, Let's see. We were on SPP, SPR, and SUB circled back to housing and parking. I think we are now up to planning board committee and liaison reports. Time is 728. Bruce, anything for PVPC? No. Okay. Roy, anything for CPAC?

Good news. I got a note from Angela in the town manager's office that I need to go in and become a member of. I hadn't received anything until the other day.

All right. So you're in the process of becoming a full-fledged member of CPAC?

Correct.

All right. Well, congratulations.

Thank you.

And for DRB, I have nothing to report. We haven't had a meeting or any communication since our last meeting 2 weeks ago. All right report of chair. I don't think I really have anything to report this evening. Oh, wait a minute. Walker, what did, and Pam, didn't we also have in our packet the evaluation of Eversource's draft environmental impact report on the transmission right away?

You did public comment. Yeah, we had received a public comment from a member of is it the Chutesbury? Yes, I do.

Yeah, it was Chutesbury.

So that was the attachment that he included. So I I put it all in the packet. Everybody should have received it through the comment form because he sent it that way. But because I put it in the electronic packet, I printed it for you, Doug.

Yeah, okay. So, well, I just didn't want to get through the meeting and forget about it. So, you know, he was just alerting us to the fact that the midst of upgrading some right away conditions. And it sounds like they're looking at clearing a bunch of land that may also already be forested at the moment. Is there is there anybody on this committee that's interested in looking at this and talking? You know, I guess maybe what I should just do is say, could everybody at least sort of skim through this for next time. And Pam, can we just put this on as an actual item on the next meeting? Although I suspect the next meeting is pretty full and this may be something that has a time limit associated with it. Walker, what were you gonna say?

I was just going to say that I've passed this on to Aaron, Jacques, and Dave Zee, and they will also be taking it to the CONSCOM for comment, who I think are maybe a little more knowledgeable. But if anyone's interested in also going to the CONSCOM meeting or watching the video of that or something, you might get more information. I'm not sure when it's going to be on the agenda, though.

Okay. All right. Good. So CONSCOM can kind of take the lead on it. Great. Jesse?

Yeah, I guess that answers part of my question. I was going to ask, who else in our town will look at it? I mean, that sounds like appropriate. Are there any other bodies that have jurisdiction sort of on this? Because it didn't seem like we actually do.

It did go to the Historical Commission as well, because it goes through and close to some historical resource areas, although no significant impact was noted by the Historical Commission.

Okay. All right. Good. Great. Thanks, Walker. That's good. All right. So back, yeah, I don't have anything else to report in terms of chair's report. Anything from staff, Walker and Pam?

I don't think I have anything.

So Alexis is getting up to speed, and at some point we will see her.

Yeah, she was out sick today. I actually was going to ask her, but maybe the, yeah, I'd like a quieter meeting, I guess, for her to come and just talk, but maybe October.

Come and listen too.

Yep. I'll see what, I'll see how busy she is.

Yeah. So for next meeting, we have the East Amherst consultants. Do we have anything else on our agenda that's unique? I don't think we do know the bulk of the meeting will be that. And then we don't have a meeting October 7. And our next meeting is the 21st or something like that. Correct. Yep.

All right.

All right. Good. And if anybody have anything else. We got to let Jesse go at 8 by 8 o'clock and we're going to looks like we'll make it.

Well done for change if I can say

Yeah. All right. All right. Well, thank you all and enjoy the rest of the evening. 734. Good night.

All right. Thank you. We did it.

All right. Good night, Pam. Good night, Roy.

Good night. Recording stopped. So you assumed, oh, let me know when you want to come in to sign the A&R. I'll get us a space.

All right. Bye. I might as well try to do that. I can't do it tomorrow, but maybe Friday.

I'll be there.

Okay.

Okay. Bye.