Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. All right, you're all set. Thank you, Athena. And thank you, Angela, for doing our minutes today. And this is, it is two oh two in the afternoon on July 21st, 2020. And I am calling the meeting of the community resources committee to order. We have a quorum under Bakers, March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. Chapter 30 a section 20. That allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the CRC. This meeting is being recorded for future broadcast and all votes that we take will be by roll call. At this time, I'm going to call upon each committee members by name so that we can confirm that we can hear you and you can hear us. And afterwards we will mute the mics and go into our meeting. Present. Mandy. And Ross. And Steve Schreiber. Here. Will be absent today. With that, we will move into our agenda and our agenda. The first item of business is the bylaw banning the use of the wild and exotic animals. This is sponsored in the council by councilor Balmille. We have a number of. Resident and community sponsors present today to go with us through this. And they are Laura Hagan, Cheryl Becker, Kara. Honquist and Rebecca Schwartz. So we look forward to having everyone. Here to join in this conversation. At this time, what I will say is I'm going to share my screen to put up what is a. Combined. Bylaw compiled. We have had a lot of requests from a lot of different sources for potential amendments. And then you will notice that it looks a little different than the original proposed amendment. It is an attempt to put it into what our general bylaws look like without actually changing or removing any. Language of the bylaw. Or intent of the bylaw. And the, the community sponsors have seen this version before. So this is not new to them. But I think we will be able to do that. So I would like to go through each section and particularly each set of proposed revisions to talk about them, see where the community sponsors and the counselor sponsor might be with them. And as a committee talk about them and hopefully in the next 40 minutes or so, we'll be able to get through the whole thing and maybe get to a vote on whether to recommend this to the council. And so we're going to start with the penalties section. Are there any comments that, and I will remind everyone, if you have any questions, if you have any questions, if you have any questions about a section, just hit the raise hand button and I will recognize you. This we hope is sort of a conversation, collaborative process to get through this. And are there any comments, questions, recommended or potential changes to the penalty section, the criminal enforcement and the non-criminal disposition. And I will try to monitor all of the hands. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everyone on my screen. Oh, Rebecca has a hand. I'm sorry. Raise hand like this. Or is there something that I don't see? If you show the participants. The list of participants at the very bottom, there should be a button that says raise hand. Got it. Thank you. For me, I'm going to try and watch, but I don't always have every video on screen. So I don't always see the actual waving of a hand. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't see Evan. I almost didn't say this because it's not actually in our jurisdiction, but I feel like it's better to fix now, but non-criminal disposition can't be arranged. Correct. I don't think so. I'm not sure. It's why I wasn't bringing it up now because I think. It's a GOL question, but I feel like it's not our question, but I guess the point would be if it can't be arranged. What I would ask the sponsor is. If it can't be arranged. If it can't be arranged. If it can't be arranged. And we could potentially draft them today. One, if it can't be arranged, one option is the first offense, second offense with different numbers at each offense. Different values for non-criminal. The other one is to just pick a number. And. If there's a preference from you or from the committee as to which way to go. Maybe it's better to have that now before it goes to GOL just in case it. It can't be arranged. So that's the first one. And we're trying to rack our brains as to what the answer was without actually having looked it up. So from the sponsors thoughts on that, Laura. Sorry, just to offer context in your decision making about this. Most of the other animal ordinances. Within the last few years that I've passed it. Past in Massachusetts. Have been just the flat 300, which I think is the most that you're allowed to do without, you know, going to the state legislature. So that's been what's been pretty common across the state, whether it's circus or happy male, that kind of thing. But just wanted to at least share that information with you in that context. Rebecca. So it also seems to me that having the flat fee at the 300 is best because I mean. If you. If you have the offense, you should just. Have it at that one level. Just my opinion. If we were to delete this, would that be at this point, something you would support? If we go like that. I'm seeing nods from Shaolin from Evan and Steve and Shaolin. If we just make it the flat 300. And a nod from her. So we're going to do that. Any other questions on the, this set of sort of penalties. Thoughts before we move on. Anything on the purpose. I am not seeing any. So we'll move on. The definition section has some things I think we need to talk about. Unless someone wants to discuss circus person or traveling show, we are going to move. Two. The one, the first one that has some comments. Which is the. And I put these abbreviations in. The definition proposed by the PSPCA. Maybe it was supposed to be the ASPCA or the MSPCA. That that. Added the words, including hybrids. Including hybrids with domestic species. That with a comment that said wild captive animals are hybridized with both other captive wildlife and domestic species. So it would change the definition from all these orders, whether born in the wild or in captivity. And also any or all of their hybrids, which referred only to wild. The hybrids of those to add that hybrids of those listed below with a domestic species to thoughts from the committee or any comments or thoughts from the community sponsors on that potential. I'm not seeing anything I'm going to assume that means that the community sponsors would be okay with that addition. I am seeing nods of the heads with that. What about our committee members? Is that something that they would support? Do you want to have a conversation about that? I guess my only question would be what could, could we get an example of what a hybrids would be? Does anyone, just to give me an idea. Laura, I think you're, you're looking like a rice peak. Yeah. Cats are pretty common where you, they hybridize a wild cat with a domestic cat. And you've got the, the resulting animal is usually. Quite wild in nature. That's, that's, that's a, that's a good question. I guess my only question would be what could, could we get an example of what a hybrid of one of these animals with a domestic species might be. Does anyone. That's, that's one animal. That's, I think more common than probably anything. That would probably be the most common case you don't, there, there are cases where they have people, what they claim to be wolf dog hybrids. I haven't seen those in Massachusetts too much, but I know they do exist in like roadside zoos and that kind of thing. So that is possible. But I think the more, the most common is the, the hybridization with domestic animals. Okay. Thank you for that explanation. Any other comments, questions? I'm not seeing much from our committee. Given that I am going to assume that this committee is okay with that addition. Since I've already seen the sponsors are okay with that addition without having to go to a vote. So what I'm going to do is remove the comment. So that it just shows in there. And then we're going to go down to the list of animals. Evan, in our first review, you had wanted to potentially add llamas and alpacas to this list. Is that still an addition you would like to make? And if so, I'd like to hear from the sponsors on their thoughts on that one. Yeah. Sorry, I was waiting on sponsors. Yeah. To me, given, especially what we have in the Hadley barn at UMass and the potential for them, maybe to bring them into town of domestic llamas and alpacas. That's something that I would like to see added. And Rebecca. Yes. This is a good addition. And I'm very happy with it because it was a good suggestion and it should go in there. Okay. I don't think I see any other hands. So unless I see any hands. Opposing that at this time, I will delete that comment. And we will leave that addition in. And I will make a note of that. Or the report. So, so the question is just in that case. The question is what are the pinnipeds and giraffe's giraffe, the die pinnipeds. They said all species and. See lion type issues and giraffe. Die are giraffes. And their comment was that they're used in traveling shows and circuses that exhibit in Massachusetts. The one question I have about this, I'm not sure we need to specifically put them separate. Rebecca, what are your thoughts? I see your hand. Oh, is that an old hand? That, yeah, that's an old hand. Sorry. Laura or some Karen, do you have a? Yeah, that's actually, I'm fine. That's, yeah, I just missed that because that is the, the Giraffidae is the family, I think, and the order is the, I'm not a scientist. They are to do a Dactylia, and so we could just leave it in there. That's perfect. We could, so we could take out that Giraffidae edition. Thank you for flagging that. And what about sea lions? What are the thoughts on adding the pinniped, I don't know whether it's an order or family that would include sea lions. I assume it might also include seals, but I'm again, not a scientist that knows this. Thoughts from the committee? I'm getting a lot of shrugs. So with those shrugs, I'm not seeing a lot of opposition to that. Community sponsors are seeming to shake their heads that they're okay with that edition. So with the committee not showing any comments to that, at this point, my, as you can tell, my thought is to leave in the requested editions if we as a committee don't have much of a comment about it. So I will delete the comment. And you can see the change there is to delete the Giraffidae because it's covered up there, but leave the pinnipeds in and we will move on. So the next one is what a wildlife, oh, Evan. So I guess, so two things. So one, I just want to make sure we actually bring up because it was brought up last time and it was brought up in the materials provided was I, in addition to llamas and alpacas, I had also suggested camels as something that I had seen at some of UMass's farm shows that were brought in from private owners. That was not added and there was a response in our packet to why camels should not be included, which I found fine, but I did want to at least bring that up because that was an issue I brought up last time was camels. And then the only other thing, I guess I have a question is as I was trying to think back to what these things might look like, right? I was thinking of sort of petting zoos that I've been to and what animals would be okay and then what wouldn't versus circuses which I loved as a kid, but recognize they're problematic now. But the other thing I was thinking of and I don't know if this is something that even happens but I do remember when I was a kid, we used to have a lot of like wildlife rehabilitators that would bring sort of educational animals into the schools. And I don't know if our schools do that. I know we have someone that does hawks which are not on this list, Birds of Prey. But I'm wondering if there was a thought that we wanted to prevent those types of things or if this is constructed to allow them. I didn't necessarily see any animals that might be in that other than I do know a possum was brought into my school once which would be banned under the marsupial under E. And so I guess I was curious. I saw this sort of as the target being mostly circuses and perhaps petting zoos that have like elephant rides and giraffe rides and stuff like that. But just some thoughts on some of these other more educational things or is the feeling that the exceptions cover those sufficiently? Rebecca? Hi, okay. So the camels, you know, I thought about a lot and they're not really domestic animals. And they are, you know, they were used by circuses and zoos. The big E, the Cumberford Zoo have them. I think two years ago was they were videotaped really abusing these animals, the camels and forcing them to the rides, they were collapsing. They're not, I don't, they're not domestic animals. So, you know, though they maybe have brought them to these events, I just feel like they just may not be able to bring camels anymore because there's really no teaching purpose. It's not like, you know, llamas and alpacas, they're farms around here, they're used domestically for wool and whatever other purpose where the camels really are wild animals. And it just, I just felt like they shouldn't be allowed anymore because they really don't serve a purpose educationally for the barn events or any other teaching purpose. So that's why I didn't want to put those back in. And yeah, I purposely didn't address them because I don't want to see them allowed, basically. And then as far as, I mean, the intent, as you kind of mentioned is to limit, you know, the circuses, animals traveling for our entertainment and forced to perform acts. The idea of a hawk or a rehabilitated possum for school children to see, I mean, that's not a traveling exhibition. And I think, you know, in terms of the terminology, I mean, Laura can probably address that better, but the intent is not to limit that type of activity. So I don't know, maybe Laura, you could explain how that's, you know, put into the language here to allow that. Yeah, sure. And I think, Counsel Ross, you hit it right on the head, which is that it's the functionality, it's done that functionally by limiting the species that are impacted. So many of those like educational exhibits that are going to schools are often reptiles, for example. So those you'll not see listed in here. And, you know, as Rebecca said, the idea is to impact those animals that are being used in circuses. And so, you know, marsupials, for example, often kangaroo are animals, you know, that are more apt to be used in a circus. You know, if it may do feel more comfortable to exclude opossums from the list to, you know, just make sure we're not inadvertently hitting those particular educational exhibitors.  So they're not often animals that are raised for the purpose of being exhibited. But I think other than maybe that limited example, the limited nature of the list should prevent it from impacting, you know, to my knowledge, you know, we don't have and shouldn't have educational exhibits that include monkeys, you know, any primates or bears, you know, coming to school. So I think that that, I think functionally it should do that. But if there's another like exception we need to add in, then that, you know, could be a strategy. Okay, can I just quickly follow up? So I guess I'm thinking less so of trying to, I don't want to play this game where we try and think of every possible animal that might be, right? I guess my question was the intent which you answered. And then if the exception, specifically the exception of any wildlife sanctuary would kind of cover that specific thing instead of trying to carve out animals. Got it. Yeah, and so I think it should, you know, like for example, I know sometimes NASA Audubon has animals there at 501C3. So for the most part, if they're under the IRS code, if they've taken that step of being a 501C3 and they meet the other requirements, so they're not breeding animals for exhibition, I think that's another important part of the wildlife sanctuary exemption. Then this should cover those activities. All right, perfect. That was great, thank you. Okay. Thank you. I recognize we have one attendee who has come for this.  So I'm not ignoring you, but I will take public comment on this issue as we move through. So I think with no more comments there, we're going to, we've got this propaganda change to propagation, that was just a typo. So I'm not sure we need to discuss that one. I just wanted it to be seen that it was happening. And then it brings us to a lot of these revisions here. The exception section, which is sort of the, well, actually I skipped over the prohibition section. Any comments, questions about the prohibition section that says unlawful for any person to conduct, sponsor, walk, exhibit or operate a traveling show or circus that includes live wilder exotic animals on any public or private land within the town. That's sort of the heart of the bylaw. I am not seeing any questions, comments. So we will move on to the exceptions. This is the one where we got a lot of comments on. So what doesn't getting included in the prohibition? So we'll start with number one, institutions accredited by, and the change is to put the association of zoos and aquariums. The revision was stated as an update to the actual name of the AZA. I am going to guess that if that is the correct name that we are okay with that change to make sure that we're referring to that organization correctly. Unless someone raises their hand to indicate they are against that, we will move on to the next one. And I will delete this comment. So then any questions about number two, wildlife sanctuary, I think we might have just covered that one. And then we come to what was three, now is three and four, they're all very similar. So the, and I'm going to explain this for the benefit of the public and all, the original proposal that Rebecca, you and all, and you submitted to Shalini to submit to the council, I believe had the first number three that is now lined out and museum educational governmental or medical institution, blah, blah, blah. And then when it came to this council, that had been deleted, I believe. And once it's been in this committee, we have received a couple of requests. The new number three, the one that is not labeled number three a performance that takes place at a non-mobile permanent institution of other but might be supposed to be or other fixed facility provided that the covered animal is not transported to such location for the purpose of such performance is the language that PETA provided. And then there was language provided by the MSPCA that suggested, I did not fix some of these, a similar language, the chapter shall not apply to an exhibition that takes place as a non-mobile permanent institution or other fixed facility provided that covered animal is not transported to such location for the purpose. So it's very similar to the one from PETA. And they actually said that they don't, they believe that if that is adopted, number one would not be necessary, according to the comment I have here on here. Sorry, I keep scrolling because that comment ends up that I can't see it because of other things I have up. So I'm going to stop scrolling. So people aren't doing that. So that's, we need to, I think, discuss this. I think my first question to the community sponsors, Rebecca and crew is what was the reason for originally removing it? And then what are your thoughts on either the PETA or the MSPCA recommendation to put it back in? Rebecca? Sorry. Actually, I'd like to defer this to MSPCA and the Humane Society because it was based on their recommendations. Laura? Sure, I can start and Kara from the MSPC, if you want to jump in as well, please. I think these were joint comments that we provided. So we provided them alongside the MSPCA. So the concern with number three was that it was too broad. Circuses and traveling shows will often try to characterize themselves as educational and use those kinds of exemptions to continue performances. And while I do realize there is not currently a circus coming to Massachusetts, more and more cities and towns are taking up these types of bands. And so I think they will be looking for other places where they can go. So I just wanted to, and we were looking at this, wanted to make sure that we were hitting what we wanted to hit with the exemption. And so one, the suggestion that was made by both PETA and the MSPCA and the Humane Society, which are I think the same or similar, was language that had actually been built into the proposed state law to exempt facilities, like for example, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums facilities, or maybe Mass Audubon, if they were doing an exhibition of rehabbed animals at their facility, because the, I call it the bricks and mortar exemption. So if you have a stationary facility, then that would allow that institution, a permanent institution to engage in a display if that animal's not being transported for the purposes of that display. And then that would also encompass, I understand you Mass Amherst is there. And so there was some concern about, well, what about animals that may be handled in the lab or something like that. And so the idea, and again, with the broader kind of language that was brought in from the state bill to kind of encompass those things with some more kind of language that doesn't bring in those educational exemptions and those kinds of things that can be misused by circuses and traveling shows who are trying to kind of get around a ban. So that was the goal with the proposed change. So I guess my question is the thought then from the community sponsors is to essentially add in number three, number four is the same other than the mistype that I did on number three that I would correct but put that back in because it is more directed and confined language and you guys would support adding that back in? Support number, whatever, number three and the new number three. Yes, yeah, the old number three. Not the old one, not the one that's lined up. But correct, the new, yes. The new, there's two of them, we'd only put one of them in. Yes, yeah. Committee thoughts? The listed three and four are the same other than one just has the preferences. One's an exhibition, one's a performance. Evan? I guess I'm a little, I'm trying to reconcile the last clause there. Nope, actually that I misread this. Provided that the animal is not transported to such a location for such performance. And then I'm looking at the definition of traveling show which just means any mobile or stationary actor exhibition, blah, blah, blah. And this is where the animals are taken from their permanent residence and required to walk or travel for any distance. And I guess I'm trying to figure out what that actually means. Like if it's a stationary, if it's a brick and mortar place and the animals on one side of the park and then it has to walk across the park to its exhibition, is that not allowed under this, even though it's a brick and mortar because they're transported for some distance? In my reading, it would be fine because they're not transported to the location. And the exemption applies to even that traveling show prohibition because it's a broad-based exemption to the prohibition. So those would be fine. And that's often what like an AZA, American, the Association of Zoos and Aquarians facility would do is they may take an animal out within the facility, very limited animals. But yeah, does that answer the question, counselor? Yeah. Okay. So I have a question to follow up on that. I mean, we don't have a zoo in Amherst, but my experience with some zoos or sometimes they do like zoo parties where they may bring animals into a house or away from the zoo, not even traveling across the zoo, but still on the property, but off the zoo property to some, for a birthday party or something. If we leave one in that would still be allowed for the zoo. If we take one out, but put three in, I'm not sure it would be. Am I reading that correctly? So not quite. So the reason that is not correct is because, so the Association of Zoos and Aquarians does not engage in those types of house parties situations. The only kind of live exhibition type thing that they're gonna do, like I said, is they may have a smaller, sometimes they're smaller cats, well, cats. Sometimes there are other animals that they'll take out as I think they call them animal ambassadors or something like that, that they'll use for public education that are not actually in their cage. So the AZA's guidelines and rules would not permit anyone taking any of these listed species into a home or anything like that. And so if you left number one in, that still wouldn't, I guess it effectively wouldn't be permitted because the AZA doesn't engage in that type of activity. So it's, I'm not hearing anything from our committee. I am going to, based on that and the sponsors delete that one, performance or exhibition, one had performance, one had exhibition, I'm fixing the typo. And I will get rid of the comments. Pardon me, well, I will get rid of the comments late. Oops, that's not the right one. As we finish this, let me, so that would leave number three to be a performance that takes place at a non-mobile permanent institution or other fixed facility, provided that the covered animal is not transported to such location for the purpose of such performance. And I'm getting nods from the committee and nods from the community sponsors. That moves us down to, oops, I somehow, oh, it got moved up when I deleted four, got moved up, it was five. It brings us down to what were five and six. And those are institutes of higher learning and any demonstrations or exhibitions hosted by a college or university for bona fide educational or research purposes. Let me change my thing so I can see who provided what. I had brought this up at the last time. And so I actually contacted Amherst College and Hampshire College and UMass with the bylaw and asked them how it might affect whatever they're doing with animals. I emailed the groups that deal with research on animals or I don't even know what they're called. They have some weird long name that do all of the approval of using animals in research on the campus. I have not heard back from UMass other than a thank you for contacting us and I've recontacted them a couple of times. I think they're dealing with some more important things right now. I did hear back from Amherst College. I have not heard back from Hampshire College probably for the same reason. But Amherst College did get back to me and the language that they requested was this any demonstrations or exhibitions hosted by a college or university for bona fide educational or research purposes. I believe this one was, I might have deleted the comment already but might have been by PETA or someone else or even you all in response to my concern. It came from someone that was not me. And I apparently just deleted the comment to indicate who it might have come from. Maybe it was me but I don't think it was. So I would like a discussion on that because I personally I'm leaning towards number five, the one requested by Amherst College but I would like to hear from the community sponsors on that language, their thoughts and also honor from our committee. So Rebecca. I think that comment I saw it on there before came from ADI, Animal Defenders International possibly. I don't think that was from us. That is probably the fact. Christina is on the in the audience. So maybe I'll go to her. Oh, okay. Do you wanna go to her right now? Let me get my participants up. Christina, if you would like to speak to that addition if it was you, she has raised her hand. So I will allow you to talk and try and unmute you and you can respond. Sure, thanks. Hello everyone. I merely suggested that because it's a fairly simple language that's well accepted. I certainly would see the reason to support going with the information or the request by Smith and Amherst College because the two phrases are duplicative in my opinion. Thank you. Rebecca, do you have any other comments? So I guess my only question is, I mean, how do you define a bona fide educational purpose? And as I said before, I mean, the idea is not to limit this type of thing because like the universities do great work in conservation and I'm like a full, like very involved with that actually. But it just, I just worry that how do you stop someone who decides that they think it's educational for people to see, I don't know, elephants and they wanna bring the surface to campus. I'm just like not sure how to protect that. Does anyone have any thoughts or comments? Laura? Sorry, it's just I'm eating myself. I share Rebecca's concern because you do kind of leave it open with a broad based exemption like this where if they want to do something on campus and as I said, these circuses and traveling shows do say we're educational or promoting conservation. So there is, I think in this exemption as it's written some level of trust built into built into kind of trusting the universities that they would abide by the purpose and spirit of the ordinance. I would say that I think that the way this is written gives me less pause than the way the original exemption three was written because it is narrower because it would basically have to be one of the local universities that are sponsoring a circus to bring them on. So it gives me less pause than what was originally there. And I understand the concern. They're a really big part of the inverse community. So I share Rebecca's concern, but it's less of a concern than it was with the original language. So if this is something that the council feels they need to do to move it forward, we could live with it, but I think Rebecca's concern is a very, very valid one. And so if there is some way, I think that I have, you know, it's hard for me to imagine them saying, oh yes, we're gonna bring an elephant here. And it's, there's some bonafide research purpose for bringing an elephant to UMass Amherst. But the way it's written that could easily happen. So that's kind of it, you know. Thank you. Any thoughts from fellow committee members before I go back to Rebecca and Christina? I have a comment. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, so this is just a weird fact, but things like the Mullen Center and all those fields, I think those are all in Hadley. So if we were to, if UMass were to bring the circus to town, that would be the most likely place that they would bring them. And they're sure what that means, but I don't have a problem with the way this is written. I guess we also have to be aware that we're also only talking about that part of the university, which is in Amherst. Thank you. Rebecca. So also just based on what Laura said, also like, I just wanna clarify.   You know, does this open, does this completely open the door or not? So I guess my question maybe is to the council members, like, what do you think?  I mean, based on what you say, that, you know, that's kind of is important to know. So I guess my thoughts are, since I'm the one that sought this out, I am really looking to protect them from the animals they have on campus being suddenly disallowed. And like I said, I don't know exactly what colleges keep what animals, but it came from sort of Evans. We know some of them race what could be considered domestic. Maybe we haven't included them all in this list or some are in there and we haven't excluded them all. So for anything to join for research, but then if they have them for potential research or, you know, UMass is a farming community who knows, you know, like I said, I don't know exactly what animals they have throughout campus for that. If they want to have a tour of their stables and happen to have an animal that's on this list, I don't want them to be prohibited from having a tour of their stables or even bringing that animal onto campus for that purpose since it's the university. You know, that I'm not looking for an exemption that says they can host a circus. Does that make sense? It's more of whatever they've already got on campus. I wanna be, they're not AZA accreditation, you know, they don't have that, but I don't want to prohibit them from what they have on campus already using for educational purposes, even if they happen to be on this list of animals that might not be, you know, that we are trying to ban essentially. So I wonder if the word hosted could be changed to something else, because it sounds like that might be more of the concern is hosting potentially is bringing someone in and saying we're sponsoring this thing versus, you know, owned is not the word I want, right? But I'm still struggling to come up with the correct word to replace hosted with that would represent sort of where my concern was for wanting some sort of exemptions for the institutes of higher education. I'm gonna go to Christina again. I think I have to unmute you. Hi. So to respond to that concern, several suggestions. The first would be that you could remove the word hosted and not replace it by anything. And the second, just have any demonstration or exhibition by a college university for bonafide educational research purposes. Secondly, you could, when you were debating between three and four, whether to use the word performance or exhibition at a brick and mortar. You could change the word performance at both the beginning and end of that sentence to exhibition. And between those two should cover your concerns. Regarding some of the concerns that were noted earlier, we share those concerns. However, I think the phrasing that was suggested by Amherst College is helpful because there is some state law and regulation that would give you something to put your teeth in as to what is bonafide conservation or educational research or research purposes when it comes to animals. Because there is a current regulatory permitting and licensing system in place in the state of Massachusetts for both wildlife rehabilitators and falconers. And in the case of wildlife rehabilitators, the framework largely calls for these animals to be rewilded and the use of animals in education setting is only for those animals who are unable to be rewilded successfully. So I think if you, so I think that gives you something, the phrase college and university helps you and also the phrase bonafide helps you because you have a state framework to base it on. And then I think if you take out hosted, which I do think is a problematic, and then if you change performance in item number three to exhibition in both places, then that might cover you as well. Thank you. Before I go to Laura, any committee members have issues with me making those changes that Christina just suggested to the word performance and then deleting hosted? I am not seeing any, so I will make those changes now. And Laura. Just a suggestion, I agree with Christina that yeah, taking hosted out could be a good change there. And then in addition, what we could add to the end of five is and a not for amusement or entertainment purposes, which would I think just go that extra step to make it extra clear. And I think those two changes with the hosted and that last clause might close any concern. Defer to Rebecca, of course too. I wanna be sure she feels like that's addressed. Thank you, Laura. Cheryl. Yeah, actually Laura just said what I was thinking. She, I want, I'm a little concerned because Cumberford Petting Zoo could possibly hold an event. They call some of their events now educational and that's a concern they could possibly be at UMass or one of the colleges and claim it's educational.  So I'm not really sure what you can do about that because I'm not sure what bonafide educational means. Like, you know, where do you draw the line? But what Laura said actually, you know, it's important to add a little something there to five. I'm concerned about Cumberford Petting Zoo or any petting zoos claiming that they're educational. I just added that. I'm seeing a nod from Steve fellow committee members. Any objections to what is now number five until I delete the words Institute of Higher Learning above that and it will now become number four. And I am seeing some nods from Rebecca and the other community sponsors that this might be unacceptable at this point, addition. Two things, seeing no hands there. I'm going to delete that. Oh, it didn't become, it'll come number four when I start doing other things, I'm sure. The hand I see is from Christina. I think that brings us to the end of the review from what I can tell. One, anything else from our committee members at this time? I'm not seeing any, does that mean we are ready to vote on this? If so, I will take a motion to recommend the town council. I'm making this motion assuming that this is the way this committee wants to go. Motion to recommend the town council adopt the bylaw banning the use of wild and exotic animals as amended at the meeting, just as amended. Unless someone thinks we need to have a date on that as amended. I will make that motion. Is there a second to that motion? Shalini, do you want to make that motion since you're the sponsor? That's okay. Go for it. Sorry about that. No, no, that's totally fine. Also, Christina has a hand up. Do we want to hear her out now? I will recognize her now that we have the motion on the table. Thank you for that again. Christina, I think you are unmuted. Yes, I'm sorry. Could you scroll down? There's one small thing that you might want to change and that is to put a comma after research purposes and also to move the or down in that series. Minor change, but it does affect the meeting. The or is currently online too. This one? Oh, no, this one. Correct, that one. So that's a formatting it should get. Yeah, it, it. Because one of those things will exempt it. Thank you. I think that's what you were referring to, right? Right, thank you. Yeah, and those things will also get a good look at it GOL as we go forward, but thank you for pointing that out. Any other discussion on this motion? Seeing none. We are going to take a vote by roll call. We are going to start with Shalini. Yes. Mandy is a yes. Evan. Yes. Steve. Yes. That is a four zero unanimous vote with one absent. What I will do for the sponsors that are on Rebecca, I will send you this copy when I get it fully fixed and all, and I will copy you on the email that I forward this over to the GOL chair for indicating that this committee has now finished with it and everything like that so that you are kept in the loop and that the GOL chair knows who to contact. I will keep Shalini in that loop too as the counselor sponsor for that. It will move on to GOL at this point for their review. Thank you all for showing up and for asking us to do this and for Shalini for sponsoring it. We will move it on to the next committee for review. Yeah, just a quick thank you to Rebecca and everyone else and also to Mandy Jo for being inclusive and reaching out to the universities and everyone's thoughtful comments. I really do believe every act of kindness right now really has ripple effects. So thank you all. Thank you everybody. And Shalini, thank you so much for sponsoring. Of course. Strong ditto there. Thank you everyone. Thank you. And you guys are free to leave and sign off. And with that we are going to move on to our next action item we are close to on time. And that is a title that I could barely come up with which was master plan zoning process and zoning by law revisions. Rob has not rejoined us, it looks like. He will probably be on soon, I assume. Christine Brestrup is here and Christine Gray-Mullen, our planning board chair is joining us again. We thank you for that. What we forgot to do last night, Christine, is thank you for all your services, planning board chair. I know you are not. Your term is up in about a month. So may end up in front of our committee. So I want to say thank you for your service on the planning board and all you have done for the town during all of that time. And in the last year, or I think it's been a year that you've been chair and all the hard work you've put in. So it's a weird title here. And I think the preview of why this is on here was in the CRC report of last night. On July 1st, the planning board had a discussion at the behest of Christine Brestrup, the planning department head, regarding the master plan and our request to the planning board to update that with some changes. And after that discussion, the planning board happened to vote unanimously to recommend requests that the council consider putting the update on hold, adopting the approved master plan as it now stands and focusing on bylaw changes. So this whole session is to start with that and hear from Christine Brestrup first about what prompted her to bring this up with the planning board to have that discussion, to then go to the planning board and how they came to vote unanimously for that request so that maybe we can consider it, do our own requests to potentially the council based on that. And then move on to zoning process. We have a zoning flow chart, but talk about, I believe there were some things that came up in that planning board discussion about workload, not just for the planning department but for the planning board themselves. And so that's why it's this kind of nebulous title. But I'd like to start with Christine Brestrup and her, just give her a chance to talk about the master plan, what it's been like trying to update it and what prompted bringing this concern that you have to the planning board that then resulted in a unanimous vote to request the council essentially stop the update process and just adopt the master plan. May I speak? Yes. Thank you. So we began work on the master plan update probably in January or February and soon realized that we weren't really changing much what we were doing was giving information about how we had or had not accomplished some of the things that were included in the master plan or recommended in the master plan. And it really just, in my mind, I started off with the chapter that I'm most familiar with, the land use chapter and it really became more like reporting on things that had changed reporting on things that we've done. And it didn't really seem like much of an update to the master plan. And I think I got that impression from hearing or getting feedback from some of the planning board members. So rather than being a master plan light, it really turned into more of a report. We already have several plans that have been accomplished since the adoption of the master plan including a transportation plan, a housing market study, a housing production plan, open space and recreation plan, et cetera, et cetera. The ECAC is currently working on a climate action, adaptation and resiliency plan. So we have all of these things that are kind of part of or could be incorporated into the master plan. But the master plan itself seems to be pretty solid. I've gotten a lot of feedback from planning board members saying that there's really nothing that they strongly disagree with in the body of the master plan. And that includes members of the planning board who come from fairly different points of view. So planning board seems to be kind of comfortable with the master plan and is almost saying, well, maybe we don't need to update it at this time. We're probably going to be starting an update on the master plan in 2025 anyway, because by 2030 the town council will need to adopt a new master plan. So the planning board discussed what could we do with the master plan? Well, we could look at the implementation matrix and we could talk about what we've accomplished and what we haven't accomplished in the implementation matrix. That's chapter 10 of the master plan and really zero in on things that we want to take up. I want to move forward with and with the advice of town council, which of these things do we want to move forward with? So rather than spending a lot of time at this time, trying to rewrite or update the text of the master plan, why not look at what the master plan says and see what we should or should not implement? Another aspect of this is that, as I said, ECAC is working on this climate action adaptation and resilience plan that is due to be finished by the end of the year. And our impression, originally the impetus for updating the master plan, we thought was that town council had a lot of questions about, well, why didn't we include more about resiliency and climate change, et cetera? So once ECAC has finished its work, that seems like an appropriate time to try to either incorporate their ideas into the body of the master plan or take a vote of the planning board to incorporate that plan by reference into the master plan. So that plan, that climate action plan was supposed to have been done in June for various reasons, I think, including COVID, the timeline for that has been extended to the end of the year. So we won't really have the body of that information for a few months. In addition to that, we had wanted to have Stephanie Ciccarello, who is very involved in that, working with ECAC and she's the sustainability coordinator. We wanted to have her go through the master plan and try to infuse it with issues related to climate action and resiliency. But perhaps that could be accomplished by finishing this climate action plan and incorporating the whole thing by reference. So in the end, it seemed like there was a lot of energy that was being generated, both from town council and from planning board members to look at the zoning by-law and try to change some of the things that are difficult about the zoning by-law. Things that result in buildings that we don't like or things that result in buildings being too close or not enough opportunity to have residential use close to downtown or whatever the issues are that we have been seeing and talking about. In addition, another one was just recently brought up or I shouldn't say brought up but kind of brought to light by Mandy Johanicki talking about demolition delay and the historic commission. We've long known that mixed-use buildings are a problem. Parking is a problem. We need to incorporate design guidelines into our zoning by-law. We have problems with the transition zones around the BG and issues related to setback and height of buildings. So since these issues are so interesting to people pressing on us, it seemed that it was a better use of town focus and resources to kind of change our view and rather than working on the master plan which as I've described some of the difficulties involved in that, refocus our energy on working on things that people really feel the need for. They feel some urgency to tackle. So I think that was one of the impetus for the discussion that came before the planning board on July 1st and the planning board did agree that we shouldn't abandon the master plan but perhaps with some small tweaks including incorporating the plans that we've already done and looking at the implementation plan and setting up an implementation whether it was a committee or something like that. Eventually in a few months maybe we could then kind of put the master plan aside for a few years and really focus on the zoning by-law. So that's what we are bringing to you. And I did send Mandy Jo and email this afternoon. I had a conversation with Christine Gray-Mullen to kind of remind me exactly of what the motion was. I listened to the tape of the July 1st meeting this afternoon and together we have put together the wording of that decision that the planning board made. So I don't know if Mandy has access to that but you might wanna show it on the screen that the motion was made by Christine Gray-Mullen seconded by David Levinstein and there was a seven to zero vote in favor of refocusing attention and resources from the master plan effort on to the changes to the zoning by-law that we all know that we need so much, so desperately. I'm going to try and put that on the screen now. Let's see if I can do this so that everyone can read it. Do you want me to read it? I'm sure you can read it out loud. At the July 1st, 2020 meeting of the planning board Christine Gray-Mullen moved that the planning board recommend to town council that they consider adopting the approved master plan as is for now and focus the town's attention and resources on the zoning by-law changes including establishing design guidelines and revisit the issue of the master plan at a later date. David Levinstein seconded and after discussion the vote was seven to zero to zero in support of the motion. Thank you, I'm gonna stop the share. Christine Gray-Mullen would you like to talk about the planning boards thinking around this and the discussion any more and anything? Chris did a great job summarizing pretty much how it all went down. I just wanted to stress from the part of the planning board that we really were backing her on this situation because we've been watching this just too much on the plate for the planning department and Chris Bastrop specifically and to do anything right we felt we were too scattered even ourselves. So by just the master plan is the planning board's responsibility. And one of the things that came out of this as Chris started to dive into doing an update is there is this thing she was saying the master plan implementation committee that is spelled out specifically in the master plan is a committee that's supposed to sort of be the oversight and keep the initiative going and keep everyone aware of the master plan being there and each year all these things that get done. So since we haven't done that for 10 years we really realized right off the bat like oh we don't have that information being collected. So we do highly recommend and this is in the planning board's world not your all but that committee needs to start happening so that we will be in better shape to redo the master plan properly in 2030. And just one other reminder that we were doing this as a director from town council we've already approved this master plan and it is our master plan and we want you all to adopt it but there was this sentiment that oh does it need to be updated? And I think what's happened is we've given it all a hard look and we think it's okay, it's a framework no one of course could it be better? Yeah, but that's why you keep redoing them every 20 years and COVID's going on and we don't know even if the efforts we make right now to update it could be a brand new world in a couple of years. So with that, if that gets removed off Chris Bester plate and her department there were some other things that we analyzed as a planning department. The planning board needs to get this master plan implementation committee going and it could involve two or three or I don't know how many members would want to be involved in that and that takes up some bandwidth from people and the planning board is already pretty rigorous intense committee to be on. So we also looked at the zoning subcommittee also is maybe not being needed and that also being able to reduce workload on Ms. Bester up and her department as one less meeting they have to do every other week and we can talk about that more. So we are really pushing, pushing we wanna get those bylaws starting to be changed and updated and modernized and we also stress that design guidelines we're realizing are really critical and other towns have them and we don't and this could help us take care of not using like we're talking about the SPR and that, you know when that starts being looked at as the tool to control design that's not what it's supposed to do or be and it doesn't do they get accepted through the SPR process but by having other better bylaws and guidelines that would be critical. So we're pushing back at you all to please rethink, adopt possibly sooner rather than later and then redirect us what we should be working on especially the planning department. Thank you. Thank you. Any thoughts before we move on? Thoughts on master plan and the unanimous recommendation or request from the planning board, Steve. Yeah, so first of all we don't often see seven zero zero votes from the planning board, so that speaks volumes but the second thing is that you really had me at COVID so the work in updating the master plan really started pre COVID. So despite, I mean COVID has distracted everyone right now but it's gonna be even more distracting as we try to update a master plan that's talking about things like density and public transportation and how we use the public way, you know et cetera, et cetera. Everything is fluid right now and so there's basically nothing settled and we would have a really hard time just saying change this to that without looking at the way we use sidewalks or the way we, you know, on and on and on. All of this is important but I don't think that, I think that accelerating the new master plan from the schedule that, you know, Chris described to me would be much more favorable than trying to now update this with both with your workload but then also with our change of the way we think about the built environment. Thank you, Shalini. Yeah, I agree as well with this suggestion and I had a question about the zoning by-laws. I agree again with that suggestion too that we focus in on zoning by-laws and specifically focusing on what's most needed and that's my question is how do we determine what other zoning by-laws that we want to tackle right away, immediately ASAP? And for example, I just got an email from a local doctor who's been asking about the changes in zoning by-laws because her practices in a research park and every time she wants a change my understanding is that it requires more money, time and effort because it's a special permit then. So, I mean, that's an example of we are pushing our doctors, professionals away from our town because it's so hard for them to find a space that allows their practice to thrive. So to me that like we need doctors more than now, now more than ever. So that to me seems like a good place. One of the good important zoning by-laws to change but I'm also looking for guidance. How do we determine which one and how do we start? Let's hold off on the zoning by-law question till we finish the master plan question. I am hearing two, I've heard two people support essentially support what the planning board is recommended with respect to the master plan. Evan has not raised his hand. We are missing one member. He is throwing his thumb up. So is there a motion that should be going to the council from CRC related to this? And if so, would someone like to make that?  Evan? So I guess essentially the planning board motion had a whole lot of stuff involved in it but it sounds like our motion is simply to recommend the town council adopt the master plan as they're feeling that it needs to be more complex than that. Cause I feel like all of that broader context can just be explained in a report. So I guess my question is, do we want just a simple adopt the master plan and we explain the context or do we feel like it needs to be as complex as the planning board's motion? I think my thoughts were maybe something in between but I'm willing to go with whatever the committee was something that reflects on the original request to the planning board to update. So something that says recommend the town council and we put in that request to the planning board. So I don't know what it would be. The planning board was, we had a couple of them, but recommend the town council, I guess it would just be if we adopted the master plan. I think you're right, Evan. If we just recommend adoption of the master plan that would sort of stop the update of the master plan in some sense but would we want to make a statement stopping the if we don't feel beyond just recommend plan as is, we don't have to. Steve, sorry, Steve, you didn't have your hand up. So the motion, I was gonna say is the motion, Evan, to recommend the town council adopt the master plan as is? I would make that motion. I'm making that motion. Thank you. Is there a second to that motion? I will second it just to move things along. Any discussion on that before we move to the other two areas? Not seeing any, we will vote. I believe I am the first one to vote. So I am a yes, Evan. Yes. Steve. Yes. Melanie. Yes. That is a four zero unanimous vote with one absent. I want to thank the planning board and the planning department for bringing this one to our attention and asking us to use our staff time and planning board time more wisely. We will forward this motion on to the council. Christine, you raised your hand. Gray Mullen. Christine's. Thank you. I think that was an appropriate motion but please I hope either with you all as CRC or the town council, there can be some discussion and prioritization to bylaws which ones and you know, if you need suggestions to reach out to Miss Bestrup or the planning board, we do have an ongoing short list. It's been there for years of things that we knew that needed to be worked on. I think you've probably seen it in the past but these things need to come back because you are all really the drivers of this, the starting of this and the end of this. This is where you are the ones who make these changes happen and your guidance and pursuit of this is what's going to help prioritize Miss Bestrup and her department and the town resources. You know, we're in tough times and there's a million to do's but I think we really have to be smart as a town in really focusing on what has the most banks of the buck, what is gonna help our economy as we come out of COVID. You know, as Shalini was saying, you know, supporting businesses, making processes, maybe a little less difficult or expensive because like everyone goes back to the big buildings, it's not just the big buildings, it's about the whole town and what property owners need and what small businesses need and what the residents need. We still have those capital projects that are out there that need to be built and we're gonna need the money for that. So thank you, thank you all for your hard work. It's been a pleasure working with all of you and I look forward to seeing some new bylaws. Thanks. Thank you for that. Feel free to stay on, your part's not done yet.  I just wanted to note that we are looking for guidance about your priorities but some things have already gotten some traction and I'm gonna mention the demolition delay bylaw. That was something that the historical commission has been working on for years. The historical commission personnel have changed. We have a new planner in our office who's going to be taking over work with the historical commission. There seems to be a lot of interest in that particular bylaw. Mandy Jo Hanneke brought it to the attention of town council recently. So I guess what I wanted to say is there are some things that already have a certain amount of traction and I've asked Ben Breger in our department to be kind of the go-to person, the point person for redoing the demolition delay bylaw, bringing in what the historical commission has already worked on, bringing in what the building commissioner has already worked on, trying to put together a single proposal and that's something that actually, perhaps it doesn't rise to the top of the list of priorities of town council, but it's already got some traction. So I just wanted to acknowledge that and kind of say that we can work on a couple of things at the same time, work on things that we've already got going in the pipeline and work on things that the town council gives us to have as our priorities. So we don't have to just focus on one set of things is that's what I wanted to say. Thank you. Shalini. Oh, we have the building commissioner Rob Moore with us and I would love to hear from his experience what he thinks about this issue and the kind of changes he might propose if this is the right time for that. That is perfectly the right time. You're wrong. Welcome. Oh, thank you. Yeah, there are just so many and where to choose and where to start. So I don't even want to start naming off, but just so many areas of the bylaw that we could begin working on and thinking about how we change things and how we regulate less special permits, getting a better handle on what we want things to look like. It really is just all over the place. Okay. I guess one of the thoughts I had, we've Dave will know and Steve will know we've had these discussions many times about how, what's this process? This goes back to the flow chart part of what I put on the agenda. As mentioned earlier, planning boards got a lot of work on its plate. The planning department has a lot of work on its plate and we've been trying to figure out where CRC fits into that, where zoning subcommittee may or may not fit into that. And we've heard from a number of planning board members that they don't necessarily want to be involved in the writing and early review of the bylaws that maybe that should be part of CRC. Instead, I'd like to hear from the planning board chair on that Christine Brestrop, who's the one that as planning director is sort of figuring out where all these bylaw changes are and then is the one that has to show up to all the meetings wherever they are presented to deal with in terms of as we move forward with the building commissioner drafting changes with the demo delay changes getting made with any other changes. Christine Brestrop mentioned a whole bunch of stuff that could be ready. What is the most logical progression of where they show up first before they're ready for hearing? We have the SPR voting requirements that didn't really follow a true process until it hit the hearing because I kind of drafted some stuff. Christine and Gray Mullen and I worked together to sort of come up with some language. We brought it to the two committees before we went to the council and all of that. But when something comes from the planning department, what do people feel might be the, not just the most efficient use of time, but the best sort of method through getting the feedback. Back and forth, Rob, Christine, Chris, any thoughts on that as we look towards asking you to prioritize stuff? Christine Brestrop. Christine Brestrop. So, well, like I said, there are a number of things that are already either written and were never presented to town meeting, were written and were defeated at town meeting are being written now. So I think that from our standpoint, the reasonable path to go would be to start to bring some of these things to the planning board and have the planning board send them to town council if the planning board thinks these are good things. I know that members of the CRC and town council watch planning board meetings from time to time. And if you are watching these meetings and hearing things that you're interested in, you can certainly contact me. So my comfort level would be served by bringing things to the planning board and having them determine whether they wanted to bring them to town council or not. If you have a different approach, if you would like to have planning staff approach town council directly, although that seems a little bit out of whack, I'd be willing to consider that. But it seems from my standpoint, we work closely with the planning board. The planning board works with the zoning bylaw a lot and they would be my first stop really if I had ideas about the zoning bylaw. So that's what I think. Thank you. Rob or Christine Gray-Mullen, any thoughts on that as we move towards getting some potential changes ready? Christine, Gray-Mullen, you're muted. Thanks. I just thinking about how it was working or not working the last few years. Part of what's happened is some of the bylaws we need to change right now are really complex. They've been hanging out there for over a decade and they're not easy answers. Thinking specifically of the limitations of the BL district. I'm thinking of the right balance of inclusionary zoning downtown. I'm thinking of town-wide varying levels of parking requirements. These are really complicated issues that are far more complicated than anything that the zoning subcommittee or the planning board, people look at us as the experts. Well, maybe we know a little bit more about zoning than other people, but we're not the experts. So I just wanna toss it out there that we're looking at the planning department and their resources, but I want to also suggest that we do have, we already have some money to hire consultants to do some of this. Sometimes you need an outside specialist who does this for municipalities across the nation or at least regionally. And they've, you know, we're not asking, it's a bit of a boilerplate. They come in, they already know what they're supposed to do and they tweak it to fit our needs. And at that point, working with the planning department and then it's vetted out and fine-tuned, you know, and brought to the planning board. That gives an opportunity for the public to come in and give their thoughts on it. And it gets a little more refined. And at that point, to me, it would be more ready to then go to CRC and Town Council. But I just wanted to really put in there that also the need for consultants, and I think Chris Baster will back me up on that, that some of these are, this is why they, if it was that simple, we would have done it years ago. Thanks. Thank you. Shalini. This is something I saw, one of the workshops at the MMA conference that we go to, and it was this consultant who presented and I think it was economic development for maybe workshop.  What was appealing about her is every project that she consulted towns with, they seem to be money coming in from the state because she knew what brings in smart growth money, for example, and I don't remember exactly, I can pull up the name of the person exactly, but it seemed like she not only came in with the consulting thing, but also had connections and the know-how of what kind of changes in our town would make a thriving downtown, for example, but also bring in appropriate fundings from different levels and grants to implement some of that. I just wanted to put that out there. Thanks. So I think one of the things that I'm starting to get a handle on is, as we figure out how this works is, we've heard it before and I'm hearing it again, the planning department, the planning board, the building inspector all need some sort of guidance and they're looking to the council for that guidance. And the question, I guess, as Shalini was putting along with the two Christians and Rob is, how do we get to that guidance? So thoughts from our committee on a couple of options and I have not thought many of these through. One is presentation directly to the whole council on what could be done, what some thoughts are, maybe some thoughts from the planning department on and building inspector on what could be prioritized directly to the council first and then maybe a referral to CRC or not a referral and the council sort of talking that through and handing that guidance to the planning department. Another thought is that that sort of, we schedule a presentation in CRC with that chart with the planning department, potentially planning board, potentially not. I'd like to hear the planning board chairs about that. CRC comes up with based on all of this presentation, a recommendation to the council on what it thinks the priority should be and then the council can have that discussion with sort of a CRC recommendation there. There's probably 20 different other options that I'm not thinking of right now, but I just wanna throw that out there as maybe that's what we need to figure out how we get that guidance to Rob and Christine and Chris to start moving these and which ones we want them to work on. Dave, you've got your hand raised. Welcome, Dave. Thank you. Yeah, so I don't know about anybody else, but I'm having kind of deja vu. I feel like we've been here, we've been at the station before and the train left and now we're back at the same station. I don't know if the track goes around and round. I hope it doesn't. Circle. I feel like we spent a lot of time on process back pre-COVID and during COVID. I guess I'm trying to recreate in my mind where we left that off. And I thought, and I could be wrong on this, but I know we talked about this idea of Rob and Chris coming into the council and the council giving them feedback and I thought we kind of moved away from that. And I really thought we kind of put the responsibility with Rob and with Christine to really kind of generate in their minds as the professionals doing this work, what the priorities were. And I can't recall whether it was bringing it to the planning board or bringing it to the planning board and I'm going back to your flow chart, Mandy, which I thought we did a lot of work with the planning board on and with CRC on. And so I'm just kind of wondering, I hope we're not abandoning all that work because I thought it was really good work. But I thought we were gonna let Rob and Christine really come up with kind of the template of priorities to then vet that with the planning board, with the CRC, and it was really incumbent upon, I thought the CRC and maybe you acting as chair of the CRC to bring that to the council and kind of say, here's the direction we're going council. Now's the time to say, and there are committee reports, right? Each meeting or periodically. So you could through your report, say, here are the areas of affordable housing, downtown zoning, et cetera, et cetera. Here are the directions, here are the main priorities that are being set right now. Speak now or forever hold your peace because we're moving in these directions. So likely the zoning proposals you'll be seeing will fall in the following categories. But again, it's been a while, we've been through COVID. That's kind of where I thought we were going, but Rob, Christine, Christine, others, maybe I'm seeing things through a different lens, but I thought that was kind of where we were going. Christine, brush up. So I have to say that we haven't thought a lot about zoning priorities recently. We've been working very hard on trying to get the businesses back in running shape. And we've been working on these specific zoning amendments that have been brought to the town council, the article 14 and the article 11. In addition to that, people are ramping up and applying for a lot of permits. And coming before planning board to get site plan review, et cetera. So there hasn't been a lot of focus on the zoning bylaw recently. So Dave is sort of reminding me of where we were back in February, I guess. And I think Rob and I would be perfectly happy to come up with priorities and bring them to town council and present them and then get some guidance about which ones town council thinks or CRC, whichever group you think would be a more appropriate one to go to. So get guidance on which ones we should focus on in the immediate future. There's, so there's that. And then there's this other track that Rob has talked about working on, which is really revamping the entire zoning bylaw. So those are two things that are being proposed. They're not mutually exclusive, but they're not necessarily completely wedded to one another. The complete recodification of the zoning bylaw is a project, it's a very long-term project that's probably gonna take more than a year to accomplish. Meanwhile, we have these specific things that we want to change in the zoning bylaw. And I think those two things can happen at the same time. So I have had a recent conversation with Rob about bandwidth, how much time do we have? How much brain power do we have? When can we get going on this? And we've talked about towards the end of the summer probably makes sense because by that time we will have seen the big rush of outdoor dining or outdoor retail or whatever it is we're going to see. And that we will have more mental capacity for focusing on the zoning bylaw, both the recodification and the figuring out what we think should be the priorities. So I could propose that maybe towards the end of August that we come back to you with a plan end of August, beginning of September as to how we're going to approach this, come back to the CRC and give you some kind of a presentation about that. Does that make sense? I'm going to send that question off to the committee. Does that, from the committee's point of view what Christine just said about a plan for, I think I'm going to reword it in what I heard, a late August, early September plan that has potential priorities in a list of what you think might be the most important things to tackle in the near future on zoning for discussion and it coming to, and this is where I think I've never been clear CRC or town council. And I think that's one of the ones we need to absolutely decide which ones it's going. I will say, I think at one point we decided town council COVID hit and that presentation for a number of reasons has gotten pushed, pushed, pushed on a council agenda. From my vice president and my chair of CRC point of view I do worry that if it goes, I have two conflicting things if it goes directly to the council it could be seen as something that continues to get pushed, pushed, pushed as we have more decide we have more important things to deal with, whereas it might not get pushed in CRC at the same time, I know there's a huge risk of it coming directly to CRC and not to the council because there are not just the five of us that wanna talk about zoning on this council. And so maybe a potential compromise between that is a CRC meeting that is listed as a full council meeting where that presentation might happen. So thoughts from our committee members on what Christine said and where, Evan. Yeah, so the role and charge of this committee is to advise the council on matters of planning and zoning and the whole reason we have committees is so that committees can do a bunch of the work ahead of time so that by the time something gets to the council it's been vetted, it doesn't need as much discussion or debate. And so I understand the concern about sending zoning which is of high interest which can be contentious to these five people first, but I also feel like if we send it to the council first, that's not the why are we here, right? Like our whole purpose is to advise the council on these things and so to me it actually makes sense for it to come first to this committee to have a discussion about priorities because that's what this committee was tasked to do which was to advise the council about that. And I think that we're actually, you know what I'm thinking about the composition of this committee right now? I think that we're actually a well-equipped committee to do that. I mean, we have Steve's tenure on the planning board and his knowledge of the zoning bylaw and his background architecture. I sit on this committee as a renter which is important here I think and as someone who has a lot of background in sustainability and climate stuff. We have Shalini who brings the perspective of economic development. We have Mandy who has worked on a number of these issues already and especially with the rental registration bylaw implementation. And we have Sarah who I think brings a really important perspective both as a farmer but also, and I'm gonna say this because she says this all the time as someone who represents a district that is often very skeptical to development. So I think that we're actually a really well balanced committee to help come up with priorities for the council. And if we present them to the council and the council rejects them, then that's that. But it seems like that's our job, right? As the CRC to advise the council and to make recommendations when it comes to planning and zoning. And so I think that actually to present, I also can, that's an entire full council meeting, right? I mean, we have 13 people who love to talk, right? And on an issue like zoning, it just seems to me like it should be filtered through a committee first so that the council can work more efficiently and expeditiously. I like the idea of Rob and Christine coming to us when they can. I also think that this is a committee that has people who are very interested in this stuff. I know I've had conversations with Steve in the past about this. I know I had a lot of conversations back in December with Chalani about some of this stuff. So I also, I'm hoping that this committee can feel free to also bring our priorities to that meeting to figure out where some of our priorities aligned with the planning department's priorities to move forward. Thank you. Chalani, you had your hand up at one point, but you unraised it. Do you have a comment? It's okay if you don't. No, I was just going back to read the charge for the CRC because I forgot whether we are, I mean, what is the order? Because I've been completely in agreement with Evan and at the same time, just knowing the council we have, I think I was just trying to see what is written down in terms of order. Do we go to the town council and then they push it down to us or can it go directly to us? And then we made, I was just trying to, and the other thing I wanted to clarification was what is the meaning of recodification of zoning? What did that, what is, I don't remember talking about that, so if someone could clarify what that entails. That may have been talked about before you were on the committee. Rob, could you talk about what that project you're working on in terms of recodification is? Yes, so, you know, that's really looking at everything from the structure of the bylaw, organizing it, getting it into, prepared for digital formatting and going through it page by page, eliminating conflicts, looking for ways, places to insert these bigger discussion items that we have to have and modify larger conditions or sections of the bylaw. Really just kind of establish the framework in an up-to-date way to then move ahead and start putting in these bigger amendments. Thank you. So we're gonna have to run. This is a follow-up question. Is that work gonna be more than, like, is it more administrative? I don't know what the word is, but is it more impacting our actual implementation of zoning or is it more like cleaning up and administrative? I don't know for lack of a better word, administrative. You know what I mean? Like, will it have practical implications for businesses or is that more something we want to do just to have clean, you know, like something we did with our bylaws when we changed to Town Council? Does that make sense? Yeah, it does, and I think it's both. So, you know, there's definitely the clean it up, make it look and work, make it easier, less complicated. Everything's in there where we want it to be, no conflicts, but then there's also things like Christine brushed up mentioned the demo delay bylaw. We have problems with the bylaw where it's telling you to do one thing and one section and another, and the applicants don't know what to do. So there are a lot of things like that that will have an impact on process and from the applicant standpoint. Great, thank you. Thank you. We are getting to the point where we need to move on in our agenda, because we have some important items regarding planning board appointments to do. I wanna sum up and with what I think is our plan going forward so that we're all clear where we stand. And that is that Rob and Chris are going to work on their sort of idea of priorities for addressing zoning bylaw, what changes they may wanna see. I will send this out to Christine Gray-Mellon too who's here. If planning board gets a chance to talk about it or they have their own ideas, that would be great to have that list too. That work will happen over the course of August in an attempt to get to a late August or early September meeting at CRC. We have a September 1st meeting that might be an ideal date to aim for for a potential discussion of zoning bylaw changes priorities and how to prioritize that and give that guidance to everyone. At the same time, we as CRC members will be making our own lists of what we would like to see and bringing those lists to that meeting. And I as chair, given that it won't just be us counselors on this committee that have their lists will reach out to the council through reports to the council for asking for other counselors lists that can be brought to that meeting. I would like guidance on whether we should potentially make that meeting a meeting of the full council in case other counselors would like to come to that meeting when we know an exact date knowing that we're aiming for September 1 but it may not be September 1 because we don't know what'll happen in August. And then at that point, we'll have a meeting and we'll discuss and at some point vote to make recommendations to the council on the guidance to provide to the planning department on sort of an even more focused priority list beyond what the planning department and building commissioner have brought. That's my sum. I know I see the planning board chairs hand up. I will take hers and then any comments on that summary and then we will move on in our meeting to the next item agenda. Christine Gray-Mellon. Thank you. That's all very clarifying and I'm also speaking to Christine Bester. I think we can put this on the planning board August 5th meeting. Like we've mentioned before, there's been a longstanding prioritization table that has sort of come out of the zoning subcommittee and that planning board works. We will reexamine that, give it a look, you know, with COVID and current times and workloads and we will sharpen that up and maybe also do a short list of like the top five really like please, please, please and we'll get that and that will probably help Chris Bester too on focusing her list that we'll get to you for later in the month. Thank you. Sounds good. Any other comments from our councilors, committee members? Seeing none, I want to thank Rob and Christine, you guys for coming to the meeting, for talking about stuff. Also all Christine, it's so confusing having two for coming, for taking the time. We are going to get through this. We're going to get that guidance to you as we figure all of this out. This will be the first time it's the most painful to get to, I think, and then we'll know how it works and it won't be as painful and as time consuming moving forward once we get through this first time. So thank you at this point. We're going to move on to our next agenda item. Everyone may feel free to stay. It is the presentation and discussion items, 3A, update on the status of the planning board appointments. So at this time, according to the process we have adopted, we need to make a decision on whether the current, whether the pool is sufficient or not. This is part of, I believe, step three in our guidance. And that I, at this point, we have a list. We've got information as to who has applied that information. Based on that information, we need to make a decision on sufficiency. I have emailed applicants who have filled out CAFs since the new bulletin board posting was done on July 1 and shortly before that. Since the, I guess what I should say is since the responsibility for making recommendation has changed to CRC, I have done that. I have received responses from everyone that has filled out a CAF at that time saying they are still interested. I have not contacted anyone who filled out a CAF prior to that. I spoke to Evan yesterday, I think it was, on that we have information as to what OCA did in the past on that and where those applicants may have stood. A thinking is if we declare the pool sufficient that all applicants on that list, unless they are no longer residents, would be contacted for potential submission of a statement of interest. Whether or not they responded no or yes to when OCA was looking at this matter. But we did not reach out. I did not reach out before this. So I would like some information if we're ready to vote on whether the pool at this point is sufficient. We have potentially three openings we are trying to fill in terms of terms that are up. Thoughts? Shalini? I'm raising Evan's hand. Go on. Yeah, I want you to speak to this because that when you seem to have, at this point you have the most experience in the appointments. So, right. So if we're looking at the process, right? A couple of things that we're looking for is we want, we want to review the pool holistically in the context of the board and the composition of the vacancies. And so I have the process in front of me. So I'll just read these three bullets in case you all don't have in front of you. So we're looking for the number of applicants relative to the number of vacancies or impending vacancies. CRCs drives for more applicants than vacancies. So we have three potential vacancies. We don't discuss numbers of applicants publicly, but we can confirm that we have more applicants than we have vacancies and impending vacancies. So we can check that box. The second bullet is the demographic diversity of the applicant pool. CRCs drives for a diverse applicant pool, including racial, economic, gender, and generational diversity. That is a place where I think we can admit we are perhaps lacking a little bit in that our pool is, from what I remember, is exclusively male on a, so the planning board right now is, I won't, I won't expand on that. I would say that we aren't necessarily meeting the diversity threshold, I'm not going to use the word threshold, the diversity ambitions, right, that we might have with regard to the pool. And the third one is the current needs of the body to be appointed, including any current burdens placed on the body by a vacancy. And this, I think, is a really important one. And the reason is that if there was no burdens on the body whatsoever, if they could continue on functioning, you might consider whether or not we wanna try and recruit a more diverse pool, right? But the reality that we have before us is that we extended the terms of the three members who are up for reappointment to the end of August. We pretty much know that Christine Gray-Mullen and David Levinstein are going to leave by the end of summer at the latest. And so we don't necessarily have the opportunity to extend their terms. Once they leave, that leaves two vacancies on the planning board, which brings it down to five. And so of course, we know, at least right now, a special permit requires five. Site plan review requires five. And so what that means is if one member votes no, or if one member is absent, or if one member has a conflict, projects come to a standstill. And so if Shalini's asking for my opinion on whether the pool is sufficient, I would say we have more applicants than vacancies. The diversity is not what we would hope it to be, but given what I would say extreme burden that would be placed on the body if we don't fill these vacancies by end of summer, because there are two potential vacancies that could really impede the function of the body, I would say that it would be prudent for us to move forward. Also recognizing that just because we declare the pool sufficient doesn't mean that people can't be added to the pool. People who apply next week or two weeks from now can still join the pool. The cutoff is once the statements of interest are posted. And so we can declare the pool sufficient to move forward, start setting everything up. That doesn't actually prevent anyone new from joining the pool, or it doesn't stop us from recruiting new people if we feel like we want a more diverse pool. That cutoff isn't until we post the statements of interest. Thank you, Evan. You did that much better than I did in any of that. So Shalini. Can we appoint one person to replace the male and then continue to get more people till we have a diverse pool for the second? Evan. So the part eight CRC recommendation of our process, it says CRC may choose not to make a recommendation. CRC may also recommend fewer appointments than vacancies or impending vacancies. And so what I would say is, my personal opinion is we should move forward. And if we interview and we feel like there are three great people and we go, you know what? We wish we had, we wish the pool wasn't 100% male but these are really three great people, then we can appoint. If we feel like we only have one or two great people, there's nothing that says that we have to appoint all three. Of course that does place a burden on the body because that leaves a vacancy. But we don't lock ourselves into filling all three or any. I mean, if we interview and we're like, we don't think any of these people should be on the planning board. We actually don't have to appoint anyone to school awkward, but so yeah. I don't think we should go into it with that mindset. I think we should, but we have that option. Sure. Thank you. Any other discussion on sufficiency at this time or are we ready to move to a vote? Because I think our process, we assess the pool and yeah, we have to vote to declare the applicant pool sufficient to proceed to interviews. If there is no more discussion, I will take a motion if people think it's sufficient. So if someone does think it's sufficient and wants to make the motion, please do so. That's what I'm gonna say. So I can make that motion since I've been doing all the talking. So I move that the CRC declared the current applicant pool for the planning board sufficient to proceed to interviews. Second. I'm just writing the motion down. Shalini seconds. Any other discussion? Seeing none, we will vote. We are starting with Evan. Yes. Steve, I think that was a yes. You were muted. Yes. Hey, Shalini. Yes. And Mandy as a yes, that is a four zero vote. Our pool is declared sufficient. That means we have a couple of additional things to do and I know it's almost four o'clock but we're gonna try and get through these things and get through minutes. And I hope to do it in less than 10 minutes or maybe more. We'll see how long guidance takes. So the next thing we have to do at this point is number four, selection guidance. There is a draft of selection guidance in our packet. Let me see if I can screen share that. So this is the draft in anticipation of the potential for the pool sufficient. I contacted the planning board chair for item B. Item A is a exact copy of our process other than number four, which I took from a draft thing that says to be added. Item B is an exact copy for our rules of the email from that I received from the planning board chair, Christine Gray Mullen and all per the rules. So Evan. This is just when we voted, we voted to maintain the word term limits there. I think so. I for some reason, I thought we had struck that, but I guess maybe it's similar that we've got against term limits, we've still labeled it, but okay, just wanted to make sure. At least that's how I had it, it could be wrong. You're probably right. Shalini. Yeah, I have the same question about term limits. I thought we removed those. I will remove it and I will remove it from our adopted process. How about that? As a Grivner, I screwed up in not highlighting everything we deleted. If everyone thinks that. Characteristics of an effective planning board member, I think this is something that we have an option to add, but we do not have to, is that correct Evan? Yeah, so the first selection guidance that Oka put together had B input from the body's chair, put their verbatim, event A was just the criteria for healthy member body, and then we sort of felt like the input that we asked for for the body's chair, we might also feel like there are things that we as a council are looking for and that aren't covered there, and so that's what we would add there. We don't have to include that. It's basically, if we feel like there is something that we as a committee are looking for that isn't adequately covered by any of the other content there. So just because I don't think the selection guidance that Oka passed was in the packet, right? No, it was not. So just to give you an idea of what Oka had in their selection guidance under four, it was one, open-minded, two, able to work in a collaborative spirit, three, openness to compromise, and four, understanding of the regulatory function of the body. Of course, that was done with different input from the body's chair since the chair has updated her input. Yes, just any, oh, sorry, Evan, go. I was gonna say, I feel like I see all of these four things that Oka had passed in the chairs input. In fact, just on the screen right now, I see understanding the regulatory function of the board, fair and open-minded, ability to collaborate and compromise. So that's literally the four things I just read. And so what Oka had put is now in what the chair has provided us. So the only reason for us to repeat those things would be we wanted to make clear that Oka, I'm sorry, that CRC is really prioritizing those things. It's not just the chair that's prioritizing those things. Thoughts? Sounds good. Is that a sounds good to add it into our selection guidance too or just leave it as down here? Steve. Put it under number four or to put it, just leave it where. So it's where it is. The question is, with your sounds good, would you also add it up here? No. I'll just leave it. Is there any CRC member that wants to add anything to item four? Why don't I start with that question? I am seeing no hands. So I think that means I will delete it. And if there are no other requests, let me look at my process again since this is all new for me. We have to vote on this. Yeah, adapted by majority vote. Yeah, adopted by majority vote. Are we ready to vote on this document? So I will accept a motion to adopt the selection guidance as amended for filling the vacancy. I guess it's, yeah, I think it's adopt the selection guide is that amendment or fill into vacancies on the planning board. Did you make that motion? I will make that motion. I'll second. Any discussion? Seeing none, I think we start with Steve Schreiber. Hi. Shalini. Yes. Mandy's a yes, Evan. Yes. Okay, we've adopted selection guidance now. That means we have to get a tentative schedule for statement of interest deadlines, interviews and interviews, essentially, and then a meeting for determining interview questions. Let me stop this share. Our upcoming CRC meetings are August 4th, August 18th and September 1st. Planning board has a meeting on August 5th and assuming they go every two weeks, I believe they also have one on August 19th and September 2nd, the days after our meetings, which means if we were looking for interviews, we would be looking for, I believe, given what we go with, the Wednesdays between that, either August 12th or August 26th. There is a council meeting on August 20, what are we, August 17th and August 24th? I guess the 31st, yeah. I didn't write the council meeting days down. I think we have meetings on the 3rd, the 17th and the 31st for the council. And the 31st, yes, not the 24th. Okay, that's what I couldn't remember. Yes, and the 31st. So given those meetings and the 17th is generally set for only town manager evaluation at this point, where's the 31st is supposed to have other items on it? It looks like we would be aiming for the 31st to the council. Which would be aiming for interviews, I think given that on the 26th is the Wednesday. That sounds like a good plan, which means given our selection guidance or process, statements of interest need to be posted one week in advance of the interviews. And so they need to be due sometime before that to give us time to post them. Which would put them posted the 19th. Any idea on when we should have a deadline for them? Evan, you never did statement of interest. Do you know, would two days sound like a reasonable time if we had to do the 17th to turn it around for posting? Yeah, I mean, so again, my recommendation is that once you've confirmed with the applicants that have applied that they're available on that date to just post that meeting, just do a skeleton posting. So then all it really takes on the 17th or 18th is you emailing Athena and saying, can you add these documents to the public meeting posting? And if you give her a heads up that she needs to be able to do that on that day, she can make sure, so that should be plenty of time. Okay, so we'll aim for a deadline of the 17th of August, posting on the 19th, interviews on the 26th, what time for those interviews? I think planning, Christine Gray-Mellon, are you still there? Yep. What time does the planning board normally start its meetings? 6.30. 6.30, so do we wanna try for 6.30 on the 26th for interviews? And is it that you want the remaining planning board members to be there or... No, we're trying to schedule it on a non-planning board night. The goal is to have the interviews on the night that the body normally meets, in terms of day and time, so that... Oh, like in a normal day, okay. So I was wondering, do they start at 7.00, 6.30, because we'd try to start at about a similar time, even though it's not for planning board, right, Evan? Is that what you guys did? Yeah, obviously, with some flexibility given applicant and counselor schedules. Okay. So we will tentatively go for 6.30 on August 26th for the interviews. I will contact all the applicants. Last thing on this, before we move to minutes, I think, Evan, can correct me if I missed anything, is my next steps are to contact all of the applicants and give them the selection guide and follow the process, but essentially give them the dates we've done, check with them to make sure they're available on the interview date, give them the deadlines for the statement of interest, everything that we're supposed to under our process, give them for filling out the statement of interest. And I will be contacting, in terms of the information, we have all the applicants that are still interested, those that were contacted by Evan and either responded yes or no, or did not respond, but not to those that responded, they are no longer residents. I'm not going to, my plan is not to contact those that told Evan three months ago that they were no longer residents of town. But contact pretty much everyone else that we know of that has submitted a calf. Even if they had indicated they were not interested three months ago when Evan contacted them. Does that sound like a plan for the committee? One thing you might just for simplicity's sake wanna do is the ones who we know are interested is confirm a date with them. And then you can email everyone else and say, we're doing interviews for the planning board on this day.  If you are interested and you're available that night, let me know. But I don't want, because my concern is I don't want you reaching out to everyone and feeling like you have to wait to confirm a date until you hear back from people who might not ever actually respond to you. Okay, that sounds like a good plan. Shalini. Sorry, I have to leave. Is that okay? That is fine. I think we're almost done. I think we're down to just- An address show. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other comments on the job I have to do now for planning board? Seeing none, we are going to move to minutes. We have three sets. I really want them passed so that our minutes are not too backed up. That's why we're gonna try. But we have a set for June 10, which was joint with the planning board. We have set for June 16 and a set for June 30. Those were not joint meetings. The planning board has adopted the minutes for June 10th. They adopted the minutes without any of the deletions that you saw that I posted. Our meeting did not have their initial stuff and their end stuff. So I deleted pretty much everything between the planning board's call to order and our call to order and then everything after our adjournment and fixed that it's our minutes. So that's what I did to that. But those are the adopted minutes from the planning board. Any suggested changes to those three sets of minutes? I'll move to approve. Steve moves to approve those three sets. Is there a second? Evan seconds, any other discussion? I think we're down to me again. I am a yes, Evan. Yes. And Steve. Yes. Those three sets are approved. With that, I don't have announcements next agenda preview will be more planning board appointments. I haven't even thought of the next agenda. We've almost cleared out most of what we're doing. So I think we might end up with some housing policy on it. Evan. So between now and then, I would recommend you reach out to the council for them to submit interview questions. Okay. And then that's going to need to be on our next agenda is developing interview questions for the interviews. Okay. And we may not finalize them because we might wait to finalize them. We'll see. Till our 18th meeting on the 18th, but we can start on the fourth. I'll have to look at the process. I will work on all of that. I haven't fully... We're giving interview questions to interviews in advance, right? Yes. Okay. And so you're... Oh. Okay, no, no, that works. That's... You can still get them. The SOIs are submitted the 17th. If we finalize the interview questions on the 18th, we will have the SOIs in order to be able to do it. That does not mean we can't talk about them on the fourth. Right, okay. And we're close to finish. I got my dates mixed up a little bit. No, I think we're good. But thank you for that reminder. I will go through the process and work my way through and probably call you a couple of times to make sure I'm not screwing anything up. But yeah, I think we've cleared out nearly everything we have to do. We'll see what zoning is, but I'm not sure we'll have anything there. So it might be planning board appointments and housing. I'm not sure there's anything else. Anything else from anyone? And thank you guys for letting us go 15 minutes over because we had a lot to do today.  Thank you so much. And also with that, we are adjourned till August 4th. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Angela. Where's mine?