The appointed hour is six o'clock, having been reached. I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals. My name's Steve Judge. As chair of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals, I call this meeting to order. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order to spending certain provisions of the open meeting law, general laws chapter 30A, section 18, and the governor's March 15th, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This public hearing of the town of Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but the public can listen to the proceedings by clicking on the link in the town's webpage. In accordance with provisions of Massachusetts general laws chapter 40A and article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw. This public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. We will begin with a roll call of the regular members of the ZVA. Steve Judge, chairman is here. Mr. Langsdale. Here. Ms. O'Meara. Ms. Parks. Here. Mr. Maxfield. Here. And associate ZVA members, Ms. Waldman. Mr. Berick. Mr. Greeny. Mr. Meadows. Here. Also attending is Maureen Pollock Planner. Rob Mora, building commissioners will be attending and Dave Washevitz, senior building inspector. The Zoning Board is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 40A of the general laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important sections of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw is section 10.38. Specific findings from this section must be made for all of our decisions. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification or additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public comment. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raised hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, present your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered, followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information and time, it will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition is heard by the board is distinct and is evaluated on its own merits. And the board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for a special permit, the board has 90 days from the close of the hearing to file a decision. For a variance, the board has 100 days from the date of the filing to file this decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members and is filed with the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there is a 20 day appeal period for an aggrieved party to contest the decision with relevant judicial body and superior court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of these to take effect. The public can view the recording of this meeting on the town's YouTube channel. Tonight, we have the following agenda. Public meeting ZBA FY 2021-13 and Massey for the review and or approval of a de minimis change in the previously approved site plan of the previously approved special permit ZBA FY 2016-23. In order to allow a two and a half foot tall, removable Victorian style metal fence to be located on the south side of the building, wall associated with the dwelling unit number one, located at 32 North Prospect Street, map 14A, parcel 32, and general residence RG zoning district. We'll have a public hearing on ZBA 2021-03, Pioneer Property Services LLC, request a special permit to convert the existing detached garage to a residential unit, which will increase the number of residential units converted dwelling from one to two under sections 3.3241, 9.22 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw, located at 275 East Pleasant Street, map 11B, parcel 63, neighborhood residence, RN zoning district. This has continued from January 7th, 2021. We will have a general comment period that follows both of those items, as well as other business that is not anticipated within the last 48 hours. The first order of business tonight is a public meeting on ZBA 2021-13. I have recused myself from this matter as I am a neighbor of the property. Mr. Maxfield will serve as acting chair and Mr. Langsdale, Ms. Parks, Mr. Meadows and Mr. Berrick will serve on the panel. Mr. Maxfield, you have the chair. Thank you. All right, who will be presenting for the application here? I believe Anne and Macy is present. Yes. And I have made her a panelist. So Anne, if you could turn your microphone on and camera if you have that. Oh, yep, I see you. All right, and this will be for the board to determine whether or not this is a de minimis change. We decide yes, then we will not have to, will not require a special permit and you'll be able to go ahead with this. You can go ahead and just state your name and address for the record. Yeah, it's Anne Macy, 32 North Prospect Street, unit number one in the Lovell House condominiums. Thank you. All right, go ahead whenever you would. What we, when we purchased the condo last June, we had with Bert Ewert, the developer, we had worked with him to ask for permission to put in a small fenced area off of the side porch of the condo building, the main building, the house on the property. And so we've been trying in the middle of the pandemic over the summer and into the fall, trying to secure a vendor, a fence installer that could do something. We were unsuccessful partially because of the pandemic supply chain problems. The local four vendors were not particularly interested in the small nature of the project. And I think largely because they were way behind schedule. So in the interim, in November, we purchased the metal Victorian fence that is a removable reconfigurable fence that we installed on the side of the property off of that side door for our dog to use to go out. And I had spoken with Jennifer Mullins just to check because we had done some other work interior to the property and checked with to see if we needed a permit. And she said that we didn't because it was, we hadn't poured any concrete that it was not a permanent structure and that was not our intention. And so our intent with the removal of fences until we can get a more permanent structure, which we would then get whatever approvals we need if we need to get a permit, if it's concrete, if we need any additional zoning permits, we would just use this removable metal Victorian fence, sorry, it's sideways there, but in the interim. And then if we are gone for any extended periods of time as we've shared with our other association members, our intent is just to remove the fence, take it out because we can take it out for mowing purposes so that we would not cause any trouble in the mowing. So. Thank you. Do we have any questions from board members? Maureen, that fence is currently up now, correct? Yes, it is. Do we just have any photos of that fence available to us? Oh, should we do? You know what, I might have forgotten to put it in this specific packet. You sent me a picture of it, Maureen, which was nice. You did, you did see it. Before it was buried in snow. You did send me a photo of it. I can pull it up in my email. I think I, the accident didn't include it in this. And let me see if you bear with me for a moment. The luxury of being remote is I have a computer right in front of me. And we don't have to be out in the cold. Exactly. What about that? Mr. Chairman, I have a question. Go ahead, Mr. Langsell. Thank you. Ms. Massey, you were talking about this fence that you've put up, the Victorian looking fence, which looks quite nice to me. And I like the idea that it's movable and it's removable and that you have a Korgi style dog. I like Korgi dogs. They're really smart. My question, I guess is, why would you then want a permanent enclosure? Oh, yeah, there it is. The intent was that we were going to try to do something comparable, not necessarily exactly like the other wooden picket fences that are in the back building, the four units to the back. So that was the original intent when we had been working and talking with the builder slash seller a year ago. And so that's what we were trying to get and we were unsuccessful in 2020, we were unsuccessful to do that. But why would you want to go forward sometime in the future with something that's much more substantial than this?  And that was a question that we have for the board is, and this is why we came forward with it. I spoke with Jennifer Mullins about the permit, but also trying to understand, we're new to Amherst, trying to understand the zoning rules and regulations and whether this fence is something that we could continue to use. As I said, we would take it down when we're not here for extended periods of time for mowing purposes, not to interfere with that. And so that is a question. Is this something that we could use when we are here or should we apply for a more permanent structure? And that was part of my question when I had approached Chris and the zoning office in December. Well, I think if you want to apply for a more permanent structure, that would probably require a special permit. But I think for this fence here, the one we're looking at today, from what I've seen in the presentation and the information we've received, I do not think, or rather I do think this is a de minimis change and unless any other board members have any questions for the applicant here, I would entertain a motion that we find this to be a de minimis change. Do I have a motion? So moved. Do I have a second? Any other questions from board members? Yes. Elaine Steele. So if we approve this de minimis change for this fence and they come back later and want to get a special permit for a more permanent kind of fence, does our approval of this fence influence the approval of something more permanent, I guess, in the future? My understanding to that is no. This is essentially if someone were to come to us asking if they were putting lawn chairs out on their lawn, is that a de minimis change, we would certainly say yes, we don't need to grant you a special permit for something like that. And I think that's essentially what we're asking here this change specifically, is this de minimis or is this something that the board actually needs to issue a special permit for is what this motion is. They do want to come back to us with something that would require a special permit. They'd have to apply for a special permit and this application here or this essentially question to the board, does this require a special permit for what they've done here would have no bearing on that. That's very helpful. Thank you. All right, any other questions? If not, then we will go ahead and move to a roll call vote. Chair votes aye. Mr. Langsdale. Aye. Mr. Barrick. Aye. Mrs. Parks. Aye. And Ms. O'Mara. We don't have Ms. O'Mara. I'm sorry, is it Mr. Meadows who's sitting in? Correct. Yes, that's correct. Aye. Meadows. Aye. All right, we find that this is a de minimis change and does not require a special permit from the ZBA. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks Maureen for your help. All right, pass it on back to you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Maxfield and Mr. Barrick for participating as well. The next order of business is a public hearing on ZBA FY 2021-03 pioneer property services LLC. Requests a special permit to convert the existing detached garage to a residential unit which will increase the number of residential units converted dwelling from one to two under section 3.3241, 9.22 and 10.38 of the zoning bylaw. Located at 275 East Pleasant Street, for example, 11B, parcel 63, neighborhood residents district RN continue, this is continued from January 7th, 2021. On this matter, Mr. Meadows will replace Ms. O'Mara on the panel. So are there any disclosures from the board members? First, I want to go through the submissions we have received since our last meeting. We have received from the applicant, transmittal of supplemental information prepared by this engineer, dated January 24th, 2021. A plan set prepared by this engineer, dated January 24th, 2021. Which includes a title sheet, existing plans, existing conditions and removals, site plan and details. Updated basement floor plan, found on the revised site plan prepared by this engineer, dated January 24th. The basement floor plan has been updated. The proposed floor plan found on the revised site plan prepared by this engineer, dated January 24th, 2021. No updates to that. Light fixture specification sheets. We also have received since that time, staff documents prepared in preparation of the January 28th meeting, project application report dated January 27th and comments from the town engineer, dated January 27th. We have received public comments since that meeting, including one which we had failed inadvertently failed to note the public record for Mr. Jeffrey Cobb, dated December 14th. We also had comments from Bruce Carlson and Ira Breck, dated January 21st and 22nd. Comments from town council president Lynn Grismire, dated January 22nd, 2021. A legal opinion provided by attorney Tom Reedy, dated January 25th, 2021. And comments from Mr. Richard Rosnoy, dated January 27th, 2021. There are some updates to the site plan which we talked about. I don't think those have to be read into the record again. Do they, Maureen? We've already referenced those already. And the life specification sheets. Yes, if you referenced them. Yep. Yep, that's right. They're all referenced already. So when we adjourn the last meeting, we were in the middle of receiving public comments on the application. And I want to continue hearing from the public first. I understand that some neighbors have hired Mr. Reedy to represent them. And he has submitted a written document regarding this matter. So I'd like to hear from the neighbors first and then ask Mr. Reedy to summarize his submission. We've received it. I'm assuming we've all read it. So it's all that's really needed. And after the public comment, the applicant or his representative has a chance to respond to the public comments. So Mr. Sparkle, you have submitted minor changes to your earlier submissions. And I would like to ask you to describe them during your response to the public comments that period after the public comment. All right? Yes. And then board members will have a chance to ask additional questions of the applicant. And then we will determine whether we're ready to move to a public meeting for the board to discuss and consider the application, the findings we have to make under various provisions of the bylaw and any conditions to the special permit. Our board members clear about this process we're going to use tonight. And are there any questions on the process? Okay. So we first go ahead, Mr. Langton. Mr. Chairman. Yep. I don't seem to have, I know I haven't read and I don't seem to have, it's just trying to go through my emails. I don't have a statement or, I mean, from anything from Mr. Reedy regarding this application. So I would like to have, whenever it's necessary, I would like to have that written, read into the record so that I have a chance to hear and know what it says. So Mr. Langsdale, you have to, you can find it on the one drive that Maureen, email that Maureen sent us, which has a one drive link. And Maureen, maybe you could send him that link. It's a six page document, Mr. Langsdale. I don't know that we wanna read that six pages into it. But I don't want you to be operating without that information. Yeah, I mean, now, you know, you can send it to me, but I can't read it while everything is going on. Absolutely, absolutely. And maybe that we are not... And again, I'm sorry, again, we come back to, we get information the day of or the day before. I don't know when Reedy sent this, but we've got other information again, today and yesterday. I don't understand what's the problem with getting information early. We talked about this, trying to making sure that we got every, in all information a week before, so that we had time to read it and digest it. I mean, just... I think you're raising a good point. I'm very frustrated by this. This continues to go on with this board. And I don't know why. So I think this came in on... What's the date that this was received? Was it Monday? Yes, I believe it came in on Monday. And I believe I emailed it to each of the ZBA members. Perhaps I mistakenly didn't include Keith's in the email. So I apologize for that, if that is the case. But I believe I emailed it immediately after Mr. Reedy had sent it in around three o'clock on Monday. And ideally, Keith, Mr. Linesdale, you're right. We wanted to have this in seven days ahead of time, so that we could review it. It did come in four days ahead of time, which isn't as good as we would like. But I think there, I reviewed it, I think, on Monday. This is not just about what Mr. Reedy sent, and he sent it on Monday, fine. We have discussed this in months past about getting information a week before the meeting so that we have time to read it, digest it, ask questions, go over it and understand it rather than having it thrown at us during the meeting or hours before the meeting. This continues to go on, and I don't understand why we continue to deal with this and not just say, okay, we're gonna continue it because we didn't get the information, we'll continue it so we have time to look at it. And if you have any more information to send to us, you send it to us a week before the meeting. I mean, that's what we had agreed on from my understanding in months past and it continues to go on, I don't understand. You know, I think you raise a great point. I guess my opinion was that there was enough time to read the new information, which was for days to read the information. That's Mr. Reedy, yeah, but we got other information today and yesterday. And some of that was public comment. What do we receive today? Was it significant change to the, I don't think to the site plan, was there significant? No, actually we haven't received anything from the applicant. I've been receiving public comments that a few per day and I've been forwarding those along as they come in. But I think we all did. Oh no, I did, sorry, I did receive submittals from the applicant and those were submitted, I believe last, I believe they were also submitted on Monday, if memory serves me or last Friday, I can't recall. So yeah, you know, it's something that I think we all could do better on and being more consistent. So, you know, the board can do the best it can tonight and for things that you need more time on, you can continue it to the next meeting, but for items that you feel that you have, you know, prepared for in preparation of this meeting, you can certainly review and have a discussion and take public comments. So there's no rush. And that's one of the reasons that I said, we wanna have a discussion about whether we're prepared to move on to the public meeting portion of this before we actually close the hearing and move on. I'm, you know, Mr. Langsdale, if you're not prepared to move to a decision yet because you need more time and you need more time to review this, that's perfectly fine. That's a reasonable position for you to take. And I'm not sure that you wouldn't have some support amongst other board members for that. So there is no reason that we have to do this, make this decision tonight, but we can still talk about a lot of the things. And if there's more that you need, if there's more information that you need to digest before you can make a decision and you need to talk to either look at the site plans or the public comments or the memo by Mr. Reedy, those can be dealt with again and the next time we hold the meeting, if we continue the meeting to a later date. All right, thank you. What I have here in front of me is today from Maureen attached, you will find an updated project of application report dated January 28, 2021 for 275 East Pleasant Street. I've highlighted the yellow areas and there are three different, two PDFs and I mean, this is all information that came in today at 2.50 PM. Okay, so here's, let's do this Mr. Langsdale. I was the one that pushed the seven days for to insert the seven day information requirement in our bylaws and I really feel strongly about this. I'm sure, I think in the case of the project application report, that's an update of, it really is an update of the earlier project application report and that has got to come in pretty close to the meeting time. But what I'd like to do is have this discussion about the process and the rules and what we do with information in an administrative meeting rather than trying to settle it tonight. I think that's a legitimate topic on how we ought to work on our process, our procedure and what we require of applicants and of submissions. And I'd like to do that during an administrative meeting rather than trying to solve that here on an ad hoc basis. And I would be open to having that in the next meeting. So I'm not postponing it, but I think it's a legitimate topic to discuss. And then we could have it at the next VBA meeting, which would be in, I don't know, in two weeks, is it, Maureen? Yes. Okay, you could schedule it at that time. So what I'd like to do is continue on with the public comment, response from the applicant to the public comment, any questions from the board? And if we feel we're not ready to make a decision tonight, we need more information, we need to consider it longer, we will continue the hearing, the public hearing until a later point in time. But we can still continue, we can still gather public comment and gather information at this meeting. So I think those for the attendees who are, are there any other questions regarding process? Okay, let's go forward with public comment. Maureen, do we have people who are? Ah, yes. I've raised their hand. Yes. One moment, let's see here. We have Ms. Taran La Raya. Sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name, so bear with me. And if we could keep people to comments of between three and four minutes, and to the extent that your information or your position has already been stated by earlier speakers, there's no need to repeat it when you're going to great detail. But please give us your name, your address for the record. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay, my name is Taran La Raya, I live at Seven Strong Street. I wanna start by thanking the board for listening to the neighbors, many, many concerns about this project. We are all in agreement that this project would be extremely detrimental to our neighborhood. So many have already written and spoken about how, but I'd like to add a few more thoughts. While the address of the proposed addition is on East Pleasant, the building the applicant wishes to convert is completely on Strong Street. There's one rental on the part of Strong Street between East Pleasant and Wildwood School, but the land of that property, which is next to Amherst Ballet has been committed to renting to families. It's not an accurate, it's not accurate to represent the other homes that have been mentioned as two families and Bruce Carson very clearly pointed this out in his letter to the board. I'm not sure if any of you have seen Five Wildwood Lane, which is one of the homes they're using as a comparison, but that property is like an architectural gem with several connected buildings that overlook the pond behind the home on the cemetery. That house, which you might expect to see on the cover of say, Dwell Magazine or architectural digest is nothing like what is being proposed here. And that's used as kind of comparison home. So I wanna just say, let's not make those as if they're equals. As Ray Leraja described at the last meeting, we're a close-knit neighborhood of mostly long-term residents. We don't have anything against students. My husband's a professor. We live across from campus. And while we're disappointed, we understand that the existing house is being rented to students. Even though the applicants said they were planning to use it as an Airbnb and they were gonna turn the garage and the backyard as use that for a summer camp and after-school program for children, they changed their mind. Okay, that's fine. However, adding an additional unit, which is very likely to house more students would really begin to encroach on the field of this neighborhood. There's no reason to cram more students into the small lot. And to correct an earlier comment made at the last session, both the abutting properties are conforming in size. Seven Strong Street is a half an acre and 265 East Pleasant is actually a three quarters of an acre. I also wanna just say that I introduced myself to the tenants when one of them pulled into the driveway a few weeks ago. And it was then that I learned that there were actually four tenants in the house in addition to visiting partners and guests.  The applicant has many times presented to this board that there were three people living in the current house. In fact, the question was proposed at this last hearing and he didn't answer. But at other meetings has said that there are three in the current house and that he wished to add three more in the garage for a total of six residents. Well, there are at least four people living in the house now, not three. And I'm just wondering how we're supposed to believe that he'll only rent to the number of people he's telling us. So there are four there now and now he's changing it to want two more in the new house. So we're still at six.  And what about the many visitors the students have on the weekends? My understanding is that this can expand up to more than a dozen, even 16 people which somehow was raised at the last meeting. Another thing I wanted to bring up, the applicant has apologized to me several times over the past year about the large brush pile that is right up against our property. And he told me he'd move it. It's still there. Okay, promises made, promises not kept, I should say. What does this mean for the future when there are problems on the property? Even if he has good intentions, will he follow through? Where does this fall on his priorities during a busy week? I wanna thank Mr. Langstill, I hope he's still here for bringing up using the garage for parking. If safety is such a big concern of everyone here, I just am wondering like why has the applicant not had the cars be parked in the driveway all fall and winter and the storage put in the empty basement? It just seems to me that there's like this right to have three or more cars parked on the property. And I just don't understand. I've never understood that to be the case in Amherst. And since when is paving over backyards part of a plan to make Amherst a desirable town? Let's not kid ourselves here. The way to make parking safe and preserve a yard and garden on the slot is to make tenants park two cars in the existing garage. The parking, the noise, the lights, the runoff, the safety of students walking to Wildwood, I've mentioned these at other meetings and in letters I've sent to all of you. This is not the right site for this project. If the applicant thinks they could earn more money with an additional bedroom or bathroom added to the existing house, I would be in favor of that. But otherwise I urge you to require the owners to leave the garage for parking and or a workshop, the backyard for grass or a garden and to help preserve the character of the neighborhood I love so much. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. LaRosha. I think Mr. Huttling Cohen. Okay, Jonathan, you'll be able to talk in just a moment. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, thank you. My name is Jonathan Hulting Cohen. I live at 259 East Pleasant Street and I'm a relatively new homeowner here. I moved here in 2016 and most of the houses here at that time were owner occupied or single occupied. And I've noticed the trend over the last few years of this changing the house to the south of me also has changed recently to a student rental. And while those, the owners of that student rental in Amherst, we end up actually, my partner and I end up being the de facto landlords for these students. We have their phone numbers, we communicate about all the parties that they ever have and we communicate about the trash that ends up in our yard. And we end up, we actually had so much trouble sleeping that we actually had to change the location of our bedroom. And this is just one example of the kinds of changes that I'm seeing in this area. And when I look at this particular change to the corner property, which is a beautiful property and very attractive to new homeowners and to people in my pay bracket, you know, I would say that the likelihood of increased density would cause a lot of problems for us. We know that the sound travels here, we know that there's all the reasons that have been stated previously are not good. And also the change in the character of the neighborhood, I think would certainly be detrimental. So, you know, this is a community, I know all the people that live around here, there's also a characterization that the neighborhood starts at Strong Street and it doesn't, it includes East Pleasant. And sure it's next to campus, but that's why I live here. That works really well for me and in my place of work. And it's a great place to live, but I don't wanna see this kind of change. And the other thing I'd like to say is that I don't see this as a mixed housing issue. I don't see this as a mixed income. I'm all for mixed income housing. I'm all for students living around, but I do not see this in that light. I think that would be a very different project. I also think that the changes that have been made in the upgrades to the house have been quite minimal. The painting isn't finished. There are no gutters on the house. There's no, the painting doesn't look like it's been sanded. The windows haven't been updated. Maybe these are long-term plans, but it just doesn't feel like a responsible and ethical investment in this neighborhood that I have invested in. Because this is a place I'd like to live for a long time. Sure, you know, maybe I have an entry level house or something like that, but these houses are important for the housing stock. And I would like to see this neighborhood continue. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Holton-Cohen. Maureen, I guess it's Mr. Rosnoy. Hi, Richard and I are sharing a site here. So this is Susan Rosnoy. I live at 11 Strong Street. And I just feel like the more we learn about this special request, the more I believe the neighborhood will be significantly damaged if it is approved. Not only will it be detrimental to the area of Amherst in which I live, but the entire town could be affected because there'll be nothing to stop every property owner who owns a garage with turning it into an easy money-making structure. Approval will set a precedent that future ZVA boards will have to deal with. We have learned of many documented reasons for rejection. Stormwater problems, lot size, lack of owner, occupancy, parking issues, pedestrian hazards, insufficient setbacks, and yet the owner continues to ask for substantial relief from a long list of requirements, one of which is two dwellings on a 16,000 square foot lot when the required minimum is 26,000 square feet. That's 61% of what zoning laws demand. And in a RN zone, the requirement is 20 feet for the front yard setback, but this is 15 too close according to what he currently owns. These are just two examples of special requests. I'm also becoming more concerned that this neighborhood is reaching the 50% tipping point when there are more rentals than owner-occupied dwellings. In the past 25 years of living on Strong Street, I've witnessed an increasing number of college-age students walking to UMass for their classes and many more loud parties. So the change in ownership is increasing. The ZVA application FY2021-03 should be denied because it will be extremely detrimental to the existing neighborhood and could open a Pandora's box situation for the entire town. The ZVA has discretion to deny this spot-zoning request by carefully considering its impact on all neighborhoods in Amherst. Thank you very much for your attention. Next, we have Ray LaRaya. Okay, thank you, thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm Ray LaRage, I'm in a butter on Seven Strong. So at the last meeting, I talked about how the neighborhood is changing. Now, as we're all saying, we understand students need places to live off campus. And we have more than our fair share right now. And this project is, as my neighbor Sue was pointing out, it's a tipping point of overburdening and changing the family character of this neighborhood. Project obviously designed to squeeze in many students. So my concern today actually is about how this property use is gonna affect me directly as an immediate a butter. Tyra and I have lived here almost two decades raising our family. And this project proposes a huge increase in the impervious area, taking up a significant portion of a small lot. Right now it's all grass back there. And it's a mystery to me why the project mentions a gravel driveway. There's nothing like it on the property. I don't know how a project can propose such a radical increase in an impervious surface without at least providing a reliable stormwater report. What kind of chemicals, including oil, dirt, runoff from cars are gonna be going into the ground seeping into adjacent properties. And then there's the lighting. Knowing full well, as other peoples have attested, the unreliability of the property management so far, I can't simply accept on goodwill that lighting will be implemented well. I expect floodlights to face my property with plenty of glare, reflecting off the driveway or the snow or whatever, right into my bedroom and working study. And the proposed screening seems entirely inadequate, especially at the height of these lights going on from dust to dawn. So by adding this conversion to more students, the project minimally doubles the nuisances of noise, light and traffic, probably more because of its prime location for student visitors from campus. Weekends will be packed. We've already seen it this year. And we as neighbors, as Jonathan pointed out, are gonna be the de facto managers and enforcers. So let me just conclude by saying, I'm still puzzled how this project gets off the ground. These kind of exemptions were not the intent of the 1986 planning board report. This is real policy drift over time. The rental developers, they're pushing into family neighborhoods in ways unintended by that original purpose. And the exemptions, for projects that increase density, great and help neighborhoods. That's common sense. But waivers that fundamentally impact the butters like myself and transform the neighborhood and open a sous set of Pandora's box to bad conversions is hazardous. Not just to this neighbor, but the entire town. Thank you very much for listening. Thanks for your voluntary service on this committee. Thank you, Ms. Ulaja. Next. Who's next Maureen? Bruce Carlson. Hello, this is Bruce Carlson. Hi, Bruce. Hi, I'm at number eight strong street. I'd like to just reiterate what my neighbors have said and also point out that in the examples that were cited in the last meeting as being two family houses in the area, that those are really in law apartments that are built within single family homes. They're not detached dwellings. And that in over almost 30 years of living in this neighborhood, my experience has been that those units are usually one person because it's just one bedroom. The owner is in the same house or at the most it's a married couple. Because again, it's, they're just one bedroom. They're either studios or one bedroom. They're not student houses in the sense that the house next to me is which is also on East pleasant street that has four and related. But most of the others are just one person or two people in an apartment. So thank you all for your service. Thank you, Mr. Carson. Next, we have, I see a hand. Oh, David Boss. Hello. Hi, David. Hi. So my name is David Bossy. I live at 20 Strong Street. My wife and I have lived here for about 25 years. And we have seen the neighborhood change somewhat during that time. I just want to echo things that have previously been said about a new precedent being set here, composition of the neighborhood, which is of concern to us. And just wanted to speak for a moment about traffic. Our driveway is more than 500 feet from the corner of East pleasant and Strong Street. In pre-COVID times, cars would be backed up as far as our driveway. Eastbound, I'm sorry, westbound cars would be backed up as far as our driveway. So there's already an issue with traffic. And I think it's only reasonable to expect that if the garage is converted, there will be more cars parked there than we have been told will be accommodated on the paving. So there's, because of the way Clark Hill Road and East pleasant intersect, there's just a lot of traffic issues. And as I said, in 25 years, we've witnessed or have seen the results of numerous fender vendors that have occurred around the intersection. So adding more cars right at the intersection, I can't believe, makes any sense. And we oppose the garage conversion. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bossy. Next is someone calling from their telephone. Let me allow you to talk. Let's see here. If you could state your name and your address. I'm asking you to unmute yourself. Let's see here. I'm pressing the button to allow you to speak. So bear with us for a moment. I believe if you press star six, that might help unmute you. Okay, it worked. Hello. Hi, this is Jeff Cobb from Six Waterwood Lane. How are you? Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes, again, Mr. Cobb. Okay, great, yes. Hi. So actually I've spoken before and I've sent written comments. So I won't take a lot of your time. I just wanted to just make one other comment, which it may be obvious to the board members, but we just have in this town now, I grew up in Amherst. I was raised down on High Street and I've been here 50 years. And there's just so many options now for renters, not just students, but renters. We have new dormitories for students that are going up on Olympia Drive. We have another one that's coming up. We have all sorts, we have at least a dozen apartment complexes. We have many different options, co-housing. We have traditional kind of old, I think you all know all this. There's just so many options for students. And I see this trend walking around town on the fringe neighborhoods, Butterfield Terrace and Farring Street, and where the single family homes are being taken and converted into rentals, mostly for students, but some not, but it's just not needed. There's no need to take single family homes off the market for already rich, rich is very rich marketplace for renters in Amherst. And what concerns me is taking these single family homes off the market actually hurts the affordability of housing in Amherst because families and people who want to be single family homeowners, they can't get these small homes or these homes that are not as expensive as Amherst Woods or Echo Hill. They can't get that because they're taken by investors who then think they can convert them or turn them into basically rentals for profit. And what we've seen, what I've seen over the over time having been raised here is these peripheral neighborhoods along the university, Butterfield Terrace those one time was all single family homes my father considered buying a house there at one time. It's now completely changed. Farring and Sunset Avenue, they're just holding the line and you can see it creep up East Pleasant and you get the same sense if you're on North Pleasant when you, if you've anyone familiar with that area as well. Anyway, I guess I'm worried and concerned that we're considering taking a single family home off the market to allow a non-resident business person to rent it out to as many people as possible when there's no need. There's just so many options that that renters have that there's no need for an additional rental in Amherst. That's my comment. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cobb. Let's see here. Next, we have Richard Ranzoi. Richard, you should be able to talk. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Oh, I didn't see the pop up. This is Richard Rosnoy at 11 Strong Street. We are the next neighbor past the larges. So we're within the 300 foot boundary of the application property. I recently sent in a memo, which I hope you'll find is brief, made six brief, but I hope you'll find salient points about this. So I won't take too much of your time, but I wanted to just point out the scope of this application in relation to the one time exception that's allowed under the 1986 bylaw amendment is just so far off of what was ever envisioned as being used for the one time exception, that if you grant this application, if you grant a permit here, you will have a hard time ever coming up with a reason not to use that one time exception. I think there's been lots of language that you've seen. So I won't go through it from our attorney, attorney Tom Reedy and from others. And town attorney, Mr. Bard has said, yes, it's within your purview to accept the application under that exception. And that's fair enough. But then if you go to the next step and say, well, using this application under that one time exception is acceptable to you, think of what will happen following that. I also want to say that our attorney, he represents us also, Susan and me, attorney Reedy has submitted a, I think rather comprehensive explanation of why this should never be approved, why it should be not accepted and denied. And I hope that you all have had a chance to read that and review it. I also, when we started this, a couple of public hearing sessions ago, there were thoughts that, well, maybe there were some ways that the applicant could modify the application and or you could put some conditions on a permit. But as we get further and further into this, it just becomes more and more clear that everybody here in the neighborhood and certainly I believe that only a denial really is possible here to satisfy the requirements that are needed to grant a special permit. As you know, the burden on granting a special permit is high, it's a heavy burden on the applicant. Every condition required for a special permit must be met by the applicant and hardly any are met here. I put some language in the memo that I submitted about what's necessary in this regard. So I hope you'll review that and that it won't take any more of your time. Thank you very much for all you do. Thank you, Mr. Rosman. No one else has indicated that they like to speak. Oh, someone has, hold on. Carrie Strayer? Yes, Carrie Strayer, 226 East Pleasant. Sorry, I thought I raised my hand earlier, I guess it didn't pop up. I'm a little further down the street than most of the people who have spoken today but I have the same concerns that they have. I spoke at the last meeting of the ZBA and I don't want to repeat my comments because I'm already on record for that but this is just a bad project in the wrong place. If it's approved, it's gonna change the character of the neighborhood and you're gonna have other landlords who are gonna be encouraged to try to do the exact same thing and we're gonna have a whole line of houses up and down East Pleasant and on Strong Street, full of landlords trying to put two housing units on their properties. It's not a good thing and I had to request the board to reject this application and I also thank you for your service. Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Strayer. Anyone else? No one's raising their hand virtually. So the one, I see nobody, the one thing we were going to do is have a summary of attorney Reedy's memo, knowing that not all members of the board had a chance to read it and digest it and then we may need more time than what's apported to us tonight but I would ask, I intended to have Mr. Reedy summarize as best he can the memo that he submitted in support of, I mean, for his clients who are the neighbors to this project application. So Mr. Reedy, can you give us a summary of that memo? I'd be happy to, Mr. Chair. For the record, good evening, Tom Reedy, attorney with Bacon Wilson out of Amherst here on behalf of the neighbors in opposition to the granting of this special permit. As they say in the law, the document speaks for itself. So I would suggest or commend all board members to take a look at its nine pages. I got it in on Monday afternoon, which was the deadline given to me by the town. And so I think it's worth the read. Essentially what we've done is laid out the genesis and intent of that 1986 zoning bylaw amendment. And I think as you've heard from my clients, the original intent was, for those larger homes in town that they're just a few feet shy of frontage or setback requirements. And I think it's pretty evident that this does not fit into that intended purpose. And then we've just brought up some issues relative to potential mischaracterizations of not only the neighborhood, I think as Mr. Carson suggested, those two family homes that were referenced previously are actually more in the lines of like a supplemental dwelling or an in-law apartment. Because what we had also done was attached the decisions for both of those. And they were both for apartments in the basement of an existing single family home. So again, differing from here where you've got a totally separate structure. Also on the plans, you see Mr. Reiser's, Randy Reiser, the surveyors plans have existing conditions that don't match up with Mr. Sparkle's existing conditions relative to the gravel driveway. And also what the proposed coverage will be. Mr. Reiser's plan, just his proposed plan is different than what you have from Mr. Sparkle. And so some of the basis of comments relative to the impact of stormwater where you have Mr. Sparkle saying, well, there's 4,000 some odd square feet of already existing impervious surface. And we're only adding a small amount that's gonna have a minor impact. When you look at Mr. Reiser's plan, there's much less impervious surface. And so we would assume that there's much greater impact. And so given a project like this, even though single family, two family homes aren't required to comply with the Massachusetts stormwater standards for the findings that the applicant is looking for because we do believe that it would be more detrimental to the neighborhood than the existing use. A stormwater report seems to make some sense as would a photometric plan because I think as you heard Mr. LaRajah suggest, when I start to look at the plan and I look at the parking lot and I wonder how high the floodlight, dark sky compliant or not, the floodlight is going to be so that I can cover the entire parking lot. And it's going to face directly at the LaRajah's home. Even a photometric plan is not going to, even if it shows that the foot candles diminished by the property line, it is still going to have a negative effect on the abutters. And so besides those few things, you look at the neighborhood and you've got 92% of the neighborhood in the 1,000 foot radius or single family homes, 79% of them are owner occupied. And here really what they're looking to do is to put two single family homes on each 8,000 square feet. You've got 16,000 square feet total and they're looking to put two single family homes on them. So not in concert with the neighborhood. And so then what we've done is we've just gone through 9.22 which are the necessary findings that the board needs to make in these circumstances. And I would agree with Attorney Bard, the door is open but the board does not have to allow the applicant to walk through. And what I mean is it looks like, you know, condition two and condition eight of the converted dwelling does allow this to move forward at least to get to the place of discussion with the board. But I think as you'll see in the memo, what they're looking to do is substantially different in character. So they're changing a garage into a home. And then as far as the property goes, they're changing a single family home on a property into two single family homes on the property. And then we also think that because of the increased density because of the increased lighting, increased traffic, increased stormwater, increased impervious surface that it is going to be more detrimental to the neighborhood. I guess, you know, most summarily put it's 10 pounds of sugar in a five pound bag utilizing a mechanism that relief that was never intended to be used for this, never intended to be stretched this far. And so we would suggest that it's different in character, different in effect and substantially more detrimental in effect on a neighborhood than what you've got there existing. And so, you know, through 9.22 and through 10.38, we would suggest that the board has the authority and should deny this special permit. Thank you, Mr. Riddie. Are there any other public comments? Maureen, do we have anybody else that you've seen? Okay. The procedure is now for the applicant to respond to the not only the comments that you heard tonight but the comments from last week. I think you've already responded to some of those in your submissions and also Mr. Sparkle to just identify the changes or the new information that you sent the committee the board since your last appearance here on January 7th. Okay. Okay, happily. Thank you for your time. Hello. My name is Becky Sparkle and I am the applicant representative Pioneer Property Services. I have been tasked tonight with responding to a fair number of comments. We ran out of time last time. We received two and a half days ago, nine page letter from attorney Riddie. And tonight I am prepared to address those comments including the comments that we heard this evening. The majority of which is repetition of the theme understandably. So what I've done is put together again, a little presentation because there's been a large amount of content that I've been required to address. So I'm gonna start my screen share here and just confirming you can see the cover page here. Yes. Thank you very much. So first in regards to what has been submitted new from our side, what I've done is I've updated the proposed plan according to comments received from the town engineer's office, the fire department and really additional information on the basement. So just to home in on this, so you see that there are really very few changes here. There's some comments regarding the water corporation connection. There's some comments regarding the sanitary sewer connection. Let's see, other points we have. Oh, right, that we've talked about. There was questions about what's really going on in the basement. So the applicant submitted an updated plan for what, because now there's been so many questions, he's thought more deeply about really how's it going to lay out before it was fairly amorphous. So now he's putting a dividing wall in there. So basically one side of the West side is going to be mechanicals. And then the other side, which will have a steel door is gonna be a tenant storage room. So that it actually provides additional storage for the residents in the garage. I did update the lighting as well. They'll look very similar to before, but previously, though in effect, all of the submittals were dark sky compliant. I couldn't find the certification. So I went out and found virtually identical lighting fixtures that did need dark sky compliant certification. So those were added into the mix. But there's been no change to the parking. There's been no change to the stormwater management system. There's been no change to the impervious area. So effectively it is the same plan except for some utility details and information in the basement. I also want to bring to the table in light of the preponderance of comments and the substantial information we got from attorney reading on Monday. The applicant and I have been putting our heads together and really trying to decide, are there any changes warranted in the application or conditions that we would request even be written into a special permit? And there are a few. And I think this is going to make the neighborhood feel and hopefully the board field an awful lot better because while the applicant's intentions have always been a certain way, in the past he was kind of hoping to not have his hands tied just in case the world changes five years from now. And all of a sudden he gets stuck but he decided that really he wants to walk his walk and is willing to tie conditions to the application. So here's the update and how it lays out. We have, I have a column for the original application in October and what we're presenting today. So number of bedrooms originally, six in unit A was three and unit B was three. So when you see these letters A and B they refer to the farmhouse as A and B is the garage. The current application is just five bedrooms. So there's been a compromise with the community for less density. So it's reduced by one bedroom. Number of tenants, original application was up to 10. Six could be in unit A with four of them unrelated up to four of them unrelated and four could be in unit B up to four of them unrelated. And this is one of the big changes here. So the total headcount that could potentially be in the five bedrooms on the property remains at 10. Although it's unlikely to be fully maxed out that's possible. So we're being honest about that. With six proposed or still possible in the existing farmhouse and four still possible in the garage but all of them would be related. So what basically the applicant is saying is that the only occupants of that garage will be a family period unless it's a single individual. So it's hard to call one person a family although maybe some people would argue with that. So it's just going to be a family in the garage. In terms of guests outside previously the application was up to 12. It's been reduced to no more than 10. So that's when I say outside. So anywhere on the property combination of all people on that property so both properties, both dwellings no more than 10 people in the yard on the deck on the porch, that's the limit which is less than the previous application submittal. Number of vehicles could be previously up to six three for unit A, three for unit B with no practical limit on overnight guests. Although there are space limits but we can get into that a little bit later when we talk about gravel. Current application has been reduced to four two for each unit with a very strict limit of four cars on the property period. There are only four parking spaces parking off of the pavement. It's not allowed in Amherst and we can very easily be added as an additional condition if the town were so inclined. So that has been reduced by two. And then undergraduates and while many people in the community have stated previously and even this evening that they don't have a problem with students I'm not sure that is exactly what they mean. So originally it was stated that undergraduates were not desired but permitted. Yes, there are undergraduates now. That is a strange result of COVID effectively and doing a favor for a friend of the applicant who had student age children. So that's how the current situation occurred. It is not the preferred tenant by the applicant but as a by right use and helping out people in a pandemic they decided to go against their intentions and help out community members. But the current application still undergraduates are not really desired as tenants and most landlords are gonna tell you that unless they're willing to charge an awful lot of money and rebuild their buildings every year. But specifically in addition to the garage being just a family even if it's just a single individual there can be no undergraduates in that converted dwelling. So that is a strong control and we would be very happy for that to be written as a condition into the permit application. So there's a restriction on the tenancy. And hopefully just removing undergraduates from the equation and creating a family housing condition is going to address a large number of the comments, concerns and fears of the community. I would hope so. Talk briefly, the resident manager has come up quite often in comments. So just to kind of briefly touch upon this that the person needs to be qualified they have to have understanding of maintenance they have to have favorable employment references they will be compensated. So there is gonna be a financial benefit to being the designated resident manager. It will receive training specific to the property lease agreements and terms as well as other conditions of the special permit. And many times people the comment have comments from the public have said well there's no incentive for a resident manager to do their job.  So that is a significant incentive to be homeless because you didn't do your job that takes you 10 hours a year to do. So there is actually massive incentive for that person to tow the line, do the right thing. And if they're living in the garage it's gonna be a family and a member and adults definitely not an undergraduate. I've heard a lot from the community about even tonight multiple people said well the density is good. They don't have a problem with density. And I'm glad to hear that. Not everybody feels that way of course but just sort of a reminder that there's some statements about well we've got plenty of housing around but that's not true there is a housing crisis. Many municipalities in the region are facing this. There are an insufficient number of units it is driving prices up regionally. And partly this is due to what is some have called outdated zoning practices that actually have the ability to perpetuate certain racial and economic segregations. So the youth population, minorities, middle income they are driven from town disproportionately due to some of the zoning bylaws and many municipalities. And I think Amherst is one of them are now actively working to address these disparities. Those bylaws are not happening now so I'm not gonna talk about what might be happening. I'm just saying that the environment the regulatory environment is shifting culturally, regionally and very much in the town of Amherst. And in that shifting, it's important to increase density to increase the housing stock. So we're trying to do this. We're trying to reduce the expansion of roads, water main sewers as well as the costs that come with longer infrastructure lengths as well as preserve woodlands, preserve farms and surrounding the already developed areas of town. And this type of density is very much in line with the master plan, specifically the master plan even calls out this very neighborhood for increased density. And I think some of the upcoming bylaw changes are likely to reflect that. So addressing, I'm gonna try and aggregate because I've read more than 40 pages of public comments. So obviously I cannot address each and every comment. So I'm gonna try and group it a little bit here and provide context. As of today, there have been 18 letters, 72% of them have come from the three abutting households basically number seven, eight and 11 strong street. Every time I've been at a meeting, these households have come and spoken off to more than one household member. And while they're, they're absolutely fully and encouraged to bring their comments and concerns to the table and they have changed the applicant's perspective. So we thank them for really letting go and saying what you need. That way we are able to adapt. But it is a lot of this really is coming just for a couple of direct to butters as you might expect. And there are themes in the 18 letters and 40 some pages of documentation plus the verbal comments. There are perceived problems about the property in its current condition. There are also desires about what they want their community to look like. And separate from themes that are also unfortunately a fair amount of logical fallacies. And that's actually where I'd like to start a little bit here addressing the comments. There have been several suppositions made and I'm gonna try and move these through these quickly though I've been handed a lot of information to address. So comments almost everybody has said that converting this garage to a residence is going to destroy the neighborhood character. There are 69 dwelling units in the neighborhood adding one more residence does not alter the character of the neighborhood going from 69 residents dwellings to 70 residents. There's not a changing character to do that. It was talking about that attached in law style dwelling should not be considered as a second dwelling unit. And it's been brought to my attention a few times and I regret saying it. I had used the phrase to family in the previous meeting when trying to summarize seven pages of graphs and visual aids that were put together in the neighborhood report. It's a lot of information to try and reduce down. And I did use a word to family. I should have said to dwelling. That would have been technically accurate. So I regret doing that, but that either way the attached status or detached status of a property doesn't alter the number of units that are there. So there's not a big, not a major difference. Two units is two units. There's been comments that units in a house are okay, but the units in the garage would be a packed tenement situation. But the reality is the garage actually has a good deal more living space than the existing farmhouse per bedroom. The garage is 458 square feet of room per bedroom. The farmhouse has 295 square feet of living space per bedroom. So the notion that the garage is just gonna be some sort of crammed tenement situation is far from the case. It'll be a far more comfortable living situation than the existing house. There's been a lot of pushback on the resident manager as well saying they should be a professional position, that there are no incentives that there's gonna be cronyism undermining any of their responsibilities. And I can talk more about that as well, but I will say that there really is not such a thing as a professional resident manager.  The job requires five or 10 hours of effort a year. That is not a full-time job, is not a professional position, it's barely a part-time position or a hobby income. So to say that they should be have professional credentials as a resident manager is fairly ridiculous. And there's certainly an incentive I mentioned before that they're gonna lose the roof over their heads if they don't do their job. So that's a significant incentive there.  So also there's been a lot of talk about owner occupancy and the illusion, unfortunately, that owner occupancy guarantees a well-managed property, good property stewardship. I know for a fact from my own personal experience that is not true. And I know I'm sitting with this very board on multiple applications that the chair has stated, not the current chair, the stated that owner occupancy is no guarantee of good stewardship. You need to have a good owner to have good stewardship. Not every owner is great. So you definitely get problems with owner occupancy. That's no cure all there. However, that chair has said many times that it's the conditions of a special permit that provide the guarantee that it's going to be a well-managed property. And that's because if it's not well-managed, they lose their permit. They can't continue to occupy that space, which is again, from an incentive perspective, a significant incentive. This, the applicant would expand the money to rehabilitate this building. I'm sure that is well into a six-figure number. And then if they start having problems and violate the terms of a special condition, they don't get to use that as a dwelling anymore. It's over. So they lost their money. They're lost their investment. They can't even park cars in it anymore because now it's a kitchen and living room. So there is a significant incentive for the applicant to do what he says he's going to do as well as adhere to the terms of the special condition. Additional comments talking about the current problems on site. And there have been numerous discussions about safety and that the intersection is dangerous. There are fender benders. There are elementary school kids walking back there. And it's, they're all right. There are some meaningful safety liabilities for the current conditions. Reversing cars are unsafe going across the sidewalk, going into the traffic. And as well as having so many cars out there, four to six cars that can be out there at times, we've seen photographs of that, can create a more difficult situation, reducing site distance. So, excuse me. So if that's really a problem and it is, the proposal is a really significant improvement on safety. It's just going to be four vehicles on site. That would be strictly controlled. So you won't get this scrum of cars on the property. And those vehicles in the proposal are going to be away from the sidewalk. And that a sea of asphalt that's in the front, it's going to be converted to grass and yard. And it's going to look a lot better, but more importantly, be pretty enormously safer. Butters have also talked about flooding and drainage issues in the neighborhood, in the letters that they've written, one saying that they've been battling basements since 1995 is 25 years of battling flooding in your basement. And that is the property immediately downstream to, I think it's 65 East Pleasant, one of the LaRosier properties. And we're proposing a stormwater management system and I can go into that more, but it will make an enormous improvement to the runoff on that property. And the community and their letters and comments have also expressed certain desires that they want for their neighborhood. They want reasonably priced homes. What's being offered is a mid-price rental unit. It's not an affordable housing, affordable housing is something that the government gets involved in almost every single time or as part of a very large development where somebody is forced to take a small portion of the overall. But when you're doing one unit or a small development, even five or six units, you can't make any of those affordable housing from a governmental standpoint. So what we're looking for is mid-price in the rental market. That's what's being proposed. There are several concerns about the aesthetics that this property is the gateway to the community and to the neighborhood. Somebody said there's been 30 years of neglect to this very property. What is being proposed with the special permit application are new roofs, repairs to the siding, staining the siding, putting up nice clean white trim, updating lights, which now glare out into the community and removing excess pavement in the front yard. So the aesthetics are going to be significantly improved and that's a desire of the community. As I already mentioned that community members are already saying, hey, density is a good idea. It's good for the environment. It's good for transportation. It's good for business. It's good for the public in general. This is written in the letters that have been submitted and we're moving with that too. We're trying to add another unit in the area as well as decreasing sprawl in the attendant problems with that. And then people said they want family housing and we're listening to this, opportunities for that. So the garage, the new dwelling will be for families or an individual professional, no undergraduates allowed. So that is my summary of the general public comments. And then I have the attorney Reedie's letter to work with here.  If I look at the- That's not quite true. Just because I- I'm just looking at the bar here. I don't know how much you got. I do have more, but attached to the back end of this presentation is my presentation from last time. I always leave that on because of people want to see stuff that was before details or other information. I have all of that at the ready. I'm not gonna have my, I don't even know. It says 45, it's not that many. I'm at least halfway through here, but I'm considering the- I mean, I think you need to respond to Mr. Reedie's memo. So I should go ahead and do that. I think I'll be able to respond to it in less time it took to read it. Okay, but let's, yeah. We're at, you know, about 20 some minutes right now. So- Okay, here we go then. So just to move, I'm gonna parallel attorney Reedie's letter. He starts with a section called original intent of bylaw. According to our attorney representation, the advice is if the bylaw is clear, it's inappropriate to consider legislative intent. I'm also gonna ask the question that if anytime somebody challenges a bylaw and says we need to look at the legislative intent, is that actually gonna be on the table for each and every potential dispute over the meaning or intention behind rules that are already clear? I can't imagine the public process if that is going to be the case. Also, if the intention back then was truly different, the bylaw could have been different. Table three modifications could have had limiting qualifiers, objective qualifiers saying, oh, for example, no more than 5% or no more than 10% deviation from the regulation. It doesn't have any qualifier like that. There's been discussion and quotes from the planning board report that said the modification should be limited to a couple feet or quote, one or two feet change from the regulations. But if you took two square feet over the 26,000 square feet of this property, what you're gonna find is a number with a lot of zeros before you get to a digit. In fact, that kind of number with five significant digits, you can't even get a boundary survey to that degree of accuracy. So the idea that tiny modifications with the only modifications proposed is not even practical. You can't measure those kind of changes even with today's technology. So virtually no modifications could occur if it was just this tiny, tiny slice. But wisely what was done is establishing a standard that we've heard before. That the evaluation needs to show that it is not substantially more detrimental to the neighborhood. And we'll talk more about that later. And briefly just to say that 35 year old intentions are really kind of outdated. So even if we went back to those intentions, the 60s, 70s saw a massive increase in the population of this municipality more than doubling in that time period. And the mid 80s was the tail end of that. So the political climate and the development climate, what had happened to the environment and the community, it got run over. So back then the ideas in the community were different than potentially the ideas today. And today we have a housing crisis. Attorney Redi talks about several mischaracterizations that I have presented. And I'm here to say that I have made zero mischaracterizations. And here's how, and I could back this up with an extensive amount of evidence, but we're here short on time. So he talks about backing out of the driveway. Well, you could just back out and turn around and drive out and it's safe. It is not possible to do that.  You could never make a right hand turn.  You could only make a two angle left turn, which is unsafe turn, even if there was just one car on the property. If you have three cars on the property, then the turnaround area is now blocked. So it is physically impossible to do anything but back out in almost all situations. And even the best scenario, you're going over the sidewalk and you're making an unsafe approach to that intersection. So you have to back out. That is the only option. Attorney Reedy was not correct in that. There's been a lot of talk about the gravel driveway. So let's take a look at some pictures here. On the left is a satellite image showing the gravel driveway while it was still being used. I've outlined it in red. You can see two vehicles parked on it at the time. On the right is from the town's GIS system, which is no kind of guarantee, but the town at least at one point thought that there was a driveway there. If we look at the photo from October site visit, this is the front of the garage.  I know that's not evidence, but vehicles currently parked here. So the grass is not taking root in this part of the driveway. So you can see that there's still gravel in place. If you follow that around to the back, and I'll bring over here, if you go to the back of the house right here, back of the garage, this was a photo taken today. Neil went out there. He scraped off the frost. And what he did is he took a picture of the stone that is still there in place. So, and he showed me other photos of other holes that he dug, but this is the one that showed the garage. So I thought it was the most poignant. There is a gravel driveway. So anything related to the driveway not being there is just besides the point. So fortunately it saves me a lot of time because there's a lot of argument about stormwater and parking and coverage related to that driveway. It's there. So to try and skip through this a little bit, the stormwater issues aren't an issue. Heck, even if the driveway wasn't there, the stormwater design that I provided would be unchanged because it is based on 100% of the proposed and pervious area, which is greater than the existing conditions with the driveway. So the presence of the driveway one way or another has zero impact on the stormwater analysis that I submitted. And I can skip some of this too. So additional mischaracterizations. The attorney of media talks about a photometric plan. These are, in my experience, only for commercial lighting evaluations. Heck, not even all commercial lighting sites get photometric plans. I went and talked to my lighting designer that I work with regularly who designed most of the lights for the town of Amherst. And I said, hey, we've got this push for a photometric plan for the situation. And when he found out it was for a residence, he laughed at me lightheartedly, but it's just not done. And nor could you do that with the type of lights being proposed and which are permitted because if you have lights that are adjustable as the dark sky area lights are, as soon as you change it, the photometric plan is garbage. So you could not even evaluate the lights from a technical standpoint. And there's comments in Mr. Reedy's letter talking over and over about how single family homes being converted are somehow more worthy of conversion than anything else. But that's not what the bylaw actually says. It says in existing residence, a structure attached or a detached structure may be converted into a dwelling unit. So he's trying to paint a picture, I think that if you're not a single family residence, you shouldn't be attempting this, that the intentions weren't there. But the bylaw allows two types of non-residential structures to be converted. He also has some math errors. I don't wanna harp on this, not a big deal. But he says 92% of the neighborhood consists of single family homes. The correct answer is 65%. There are only 53 single family homes. There are 82 lots in the neighborhood. I think what he was trying to say is 92% of residential lots are single family. We throw out the academic and the cemetery. But if you're gonna take that, there are 53 over 62 lots, that's only 85%, which means that one in seven properties in this neighborhood are not single family residences. So having a second dwelling on a property is quite common in this neighborhood. So that again, the impact on the character is insignificant. It's we're within the character of the neighborhood. He also talks about 79% of the neighborhood homes are owner occupied. It's actually only 74%. And that also means that one in four homes in this neighborhood are not owner occupied. We're not really doing anything weird here. In attorney's readies letter, he talks about requirements of section 9.22, which should be fairly familiar to the board. And saying that the proposed use as a second dwelling is substantially different in character than the use as a garage. And this is about the only thing in the letter that I can say is undeniably true. It's true. A garage is not the same as a residence, but it also doesn't matter as far as I can tell because dwelling conversion is always going to be inherently different. You go from one type of building to another type of building. I guess you can go from a residence to a two unit residence, but that's also different in character. So it's always going to be different in character by the nature of it being a conversion. And of course, I said detached non-residential structures can be converted according to the bylaw. Later, attorney really talks about the proposed use is being substantially different in its effect on and more detrimental to the neighborhood than the existing use as a garage. And there's a lot of conjecture in these arguments. If you, when you start reading through them, he's saying there's twice as much trash, twice as much noise, traffic, et cetera, 32 people on site, 16 cars, none of that is real. Okay, well, there is going to be more trash, but it's going to be in the trash bins. We don't store the trash on the front yard. The same number of trash bins are there. There will be less noise because there are less people allowed to be outside. There will be less traffic because there are fewer cars allowed on the property. 32 people, 16 cars. I don't know where we got that from earlier in the presentation. I showed you the situation and the original proposal and even the reductions and further restrictions down to just four cars. And a small number of people allowed for social gatherings. So, and also, there are other factors to consider when you're talking about the neighborhood and many times the attorney reading and the neighbors have talked about precedent, precedent, precedent. Of course, at the start of every ZBA meeting, the board is never bound by precedent. What happened in the past doesn't matter. Each case is unique. So, the ramming of the idea of precedent by neighbors and a professional attorney is technically meaningless here. However, the impact on the neighborhood is not meaningless. So, I'm gonna take a look at the property four doors up the street as an example of how the proposal is not going to be a detriment to the neighborhood. At 319 East Pleasant Street, there was a ZBA special permit issued for dwelling conversion. For the 40 pages of comments and the many days of comments from the public, there are zero complaints about this property. So, clearly converting and dwelling does not automatically create a detriment to the neighborhood. That lot was 1,000 square feet smaller than this lot. There were no potential improvements to safety, drainage, aesthetics, and parking that would directly benefit the neighborhood in our proposal for 319 East Pleasant Street. There were no limits placed on vehicles, on undergraduates, on guests, on stormwater. No detriment to the neighborhood. So, we are doing far better than what else has occurred. I don't wanna talk about precedent, but what I'm saying is this is already demonstrated not to be a detrimental impact on the neighborhood. Nobody has complained about 319 East Pleasant Street. What they have complained about is 289 East Pleasant Street. Now, there's a litany of violations in the record. It is a blight on the neighborhood. I tend to think of it as an animal house based on what I'm hearing from neighbors. But the reason that it is such a problem and why it cannot happen for our proposal is that 2,890 East Pleasant has no safeguards for the community. It is a by-right use. It's not owned or occupied. There's no resident manager. There's no conditions of a special permit controlling what goes on there. So, what goes on there is easily problematic. That cannot happen in our proposal. And I'm not sure that the neighborhood is aware that it's a wildly different situation where Tommy Loud lives, according to what one of the neighbor calls the residents there. So, we have a lot of safeguards in place and we have a very strong incentive to maintain a peaceful property because if the special permit is issued and we don't meet the conditions, this property owner, the Mendelssohn's Pinder Property Services, they lose their investment, which is a significant issue. Impact on the neighborhood. Oh, for some reason, this did not fit on my screen entirely. So, we'll just go with what I have. So, this is tantamount to the discussion here this evening. It is what we're proposing substantially more detrimental to the neighborhood because that is the gateway to modifying table three. So, impacts on the neighborhood are really important to consider here. So, we have a condition of safety where we have reversing into a busy intersection. The proposal will fix that. It will be forward-facing departure from the property. Another safety issue, pedestrians versus cars across the sidewalk, we are going to have clear visibility. Vehicles are gonna be able to see, pedestrians are moving forward again in and out of this property. There have been multiple concerns about drainage, basement flooding. We're gonna capture that water. We are redirecting all of the water. That's all the water from the property that's draining south toward the Leraj's property, sending it all to the east around their house in addition to capturing a couple hundred cubic feet of water for each and every storm that hits this piece of the earth. Lots of comments about aesthetics, 30 years of neglect, we're renovating the exterior. So many cars in the front yard, that's being eliminated. The paving in the front yard is being eliminated. Lighting, there have been, the lighting is now broadcast, it goes out, there's glare, it's all going to be downcast. And currently, it's actually possible to park behind the garage. Well, that's never been practical just because it's more to plow for the existing situation. But it could happen now without any screening. We're gonna make sure that a screening fence is installed that has a six foot height and is going to block direct lights. The conversion of a creation of a dwelling adds a reasonably priced family home to the neighborhood stock. There have been comments about a lack of family and professional housing. So again, no undergraduates, families only. Outdoor gatherings are being reduced, cars on site are being reduced. I might have had more on this slide, embarrassingly, but I don't see any detriments to the neighborhood in terms of the impacts to the neighborhood for this proposal. And that is critical in what we're considering. So this is where I think most people are waiting for me to get to, right? So just to wrap this up, the applicant has heard an awful lot and has from the neighborhood and has really pulled back to what they consider their best offer. They're trying to address the needs. They do not want the animal house on the corner for them or the neighborhood. So they're putting very strong controls in place. We are improving a host of existing problems. So to say that the project is going to be more detrimental, utterly ignores safety and drainage and the variety of issues that I just covered that are going to be improved. And adding a family residence in a residential neighborhood, I do not see how that can have a detrimental impact on the neighborhood's character, especially when people say they want more families and they want more density. So I do have additional information. I could go into a lot more details. I'm open to questions. Thank you very much for the time and hopefully I don't have to address quite as many public comments at the next meeting. Thank you, Mr. Sparkle. Now the time for the board to ask questions of the applicant additional questions. We had some time earlier, but there's new information and we can have the opportunity to ask further question now. But first I want to talk about is the stormwater calculations that you proposed. So in your calculation, what you're really trying to tell us is the delta between the existing conditions and the new driveway is like, I think it's 400 square feet, 460 square feet. Yeah, 473, but yes. 473 square feet. And is what you're doing saying, I'm going to take care of 470 square feet of impervious surface water. And that's what I'm, water that is on 470 square feet of impervious area. And that's what I have the rain garden for or is yours for the entire area of the backyard and the driveway and all the front yard areas that slope to the back. How much are you, what are you taking care of in that calculation? Yes, so the stormwater calculations, for these situations they're always tricky because there are zero standards that apply and both Jason scales and I would really love some standards and that would even allow a peer review because you can't even peer review something like this. But what I've done in the past and what I've done here, particularly at Neil's insistence to try and improve conditions for the larges downstream of them is I have considered 100% of the impervious area proposed for the property. I am looking to capture the called the first flush volume which is the most polluted volume of water that comes off this site and infiltrate 100% of that volume into the ground before any water moves off site. So it is based on all of the proposed impervious area. So when you take, do you currently consider the gravel driveway impervious? It's quasi-pervious. So right now that's like 1600 square feet. If I look at your, with the earlier existing gravel driveway is 1588 square feet. And then you have an addition, the next driveway is gonna be 470 square feet bigger than that. So let's call it 2000 square feet of impervious area that you will have with the new parking plan and the driveway behind the house. So are you saying that you're capturing all the water coming off that 2000 square feet? Are you just capturing the difference between what is currently there and the 1688 or 1588 square feet and the 470 square feet? Are you just capturing that 475? Are you capturing at all? This is where standards would be helpful. Because I don't have a simple answer to what seems like a simple question. I'm not capturing all of the water that comes off of that property for every storm. What I'm capturing is the first half inch of rainfall that falls on the impervious area. I'm capturing 100% of that flow. And it comes out to 160 sum cubic feet of water. To put that into perspective, if you were to apply commercial storm water standards to this site, due to the increase in impervious area of only being 400 and some square feet, if you had the 100 year storm, which is almost eight inches of rain in 24 hours, you had a storm that big hit this property at a commercial development, you would be required to capture 140 sum cubic feet of water. I'm capturing 160 sum cubic feet of water. So if you were to take commercial standards, we're exceeding them presently with this design. So I'm not an engineer and you are, so I'm gonna try this one more time, see if I can get this right. How much of the gravel driveway, that absorbs water right now. Some water is absorbed by that. But you're right, and you're still counting that as an impervious surface. Why is that impervious? Well, so what I'm saying is that appears to me that if you tar over, if you asphalt over all that ground and get an additional 400 and some square feet, you have more than just the, you have the delta increase of water is more than just the 400 square feet because there's be some percolation to that 1,500 or 1,588 square feet of existing driveway, right? And I don't know if you, and I don't know how you thought about that. The way that was considered, it's a built into the, I built a model in HydroCAD, a hydrological modeling software that I put in all the areas for grass, roof, gravel, asphalt, walkway, all of that. Even the stone walls I have modeled in HydroCAD to get some meaningful numbers that helped assist me in coming up with a good judgment call and a robust system because Neil wanted to make sure we put in a robust system. So in when you're evaluating asphalt, there's something called a curve number. So basically the asphalt has a curve number of 98. So you can think of it as 98% impervious. There are cracks in asphalt, small amount of water gets through after a couple of years of it being there. Gravel has a curve number of 96. So you can think of it as 96% impervious. So the difference between asphalt and gravel is just about 2% in terms of its imperviousness. So it is nearly as impervious as asphalt when you're doing these types of calculations. Gravel has silt and clay and fine grains in it that bind it together. And as a result, water sheds off of it very, very readily. Water does not soak into gravel. It can soak into stone, like P stone. If you had an open P stone, that's very different. But you also can't really drive over that very well. It would just slide around on you. It might be going up track here. Yeah, I'm concerned about the permeability of the lack. I'm concerned that adding the additional asphalt covering up the gravel, there's not enough water being captured in your rain gardens. And I'm not the, that's my concern. I've got to work with that. And you've tried to answer it, but I do have that concern when I look at the plans. And we are a little stuck in this conversation because the question is, is there enough against what standard can I make that call? What I've done is what I've done for every other residential application in front of the ZVA, actually that were better than anything that I've done in the past that has been deemed adequate is capture the first flush off of the impervious area because that happens to coincide with a lot of the commercial stormwater standards for certain side storms that are reasonable. Of course, the state rules say that you could add as much impervious area to this site as you want and you have no obligation to retain, retain, infiltrate, clean it up, none of that is required by the only standard. Of course, you have to, in the bylaw, address flooding hazards, et cetera, without any standards applied for that. So what I've done is what's worked every other time that I have presented exactly this type of application to the town of Amherst, but I made it just a little more robust in this particular case. I'd like to open it up for questions from other members of the board and I can come back to my questions, other questions later. Do other board members have questions? Mr. Maxfield. Yeah, there was, as mentioned of being open to the board putting a condition prohibiting the renting to undergraduates, and I guess my question here is actually to the board, have we done anything like that in the past and are we even able to make such a condition? How would we, how exactly would we go about barring undergraduates? I don't think we're allowed to bar people based on their age of whether or not they're allowed to rent a property or not. It's not an age. I think Mr. Maxfield, that's a good question to ask town staff. My impression is that we could, you can restrict it to families, but that's, I don't have a legal foundation for that. So I think either Mr. Mora, Mr. Bard or Mr. Washevich, Waskevich please opine on that, if you would. Mr. Chair, Joel Bard, I'll be happy to jump in just to hear from the building commissioner's office. So this would be a condition and of course, a question I'm sure is on everybody's mind. So the way it's being presented to the board, it's a condition being requested by the applicant. And I think that's an important distinction and it's a condition that would be imposed by the landlord. Yes, it would be part of the special permit, but I think it would be a tougher question possibly. I'm not gonna opine on it, but if the board were to impose it unilaterally, but the property owner perspective landlord is looking to impose the condition. So that doesn't trouble me given that it's coming from the landlord. And in terms of, so can a landlord then say that I'm not wrenching to students? So students or specifically undergraduate students, students are not a protected class. So it's not making any distinction by any kind of form of discrimination against the different kinds of categories against which you can't discriminate. So a property owner can make that decision. And as you've heard, and I'm sure you've heard it as you've heard as part of this hearing, and I'm sure you've heard it in your years in Amherst, a group of students aren't necessarily the best caretakers of an apartment. So certainly any landlord can say, I'm just not gonna rent to a group of four undergraduates. So in my opinion, it is if requested by an applicant as you have been, it is a condition you could impose. Now the good question in addition to put the building department staff on the spot is how do you enforce that condition? I think that'll be an important understanding to have with the landlord, with the recipient of the special permit. But yes, in my opinion, under these circumstances, you can do it.  I mean, certainly would be, yeah, answer, how would you enforce that? Yes, to answer Mr. Maxwell's question, we have not done this yet. It's something that has been talked about over the years and as Mr. Attorney Bard laid out, this is a little different because the applicant's actually suggesting it. So we haven't gone so far as to try to make it a condition because we always felt like enforcement would be challenging. It seems like it's a piece of information about a tenant that would be difficult for us to obtain and be able to do anything meaningful to correct it. So I think this really has to be a pretty thorough part of the management plan by the applicant to show the board how this condition that they're suggesting would be actually applied in the rental and oversight of the property. And Mr. Chair, if I can jump in on that. So is the board choosing to go on? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Barton. Thank you, I'm sorry. If the board chooses to go in that direction, the wording of the special permit to address the issues that Mr. Mora just raised would be important, in other words, to give, to require that that information be provided to the town so that the town can enforce. Yeah. So if I, go ahead Mr. Maxwell, you asked the question, you should finish it. No, that answered my question of, is there a way we could impose that? And then it's, I think we'd have to think about how, if we wanted to go in that direction, how we would want to word that condition and then work with town staff on how that would actually be enforced. But that answered my question of, can we put that condition on there? But Mr. Mora, it seems to me that what you said is that we'd have to structure a condition that placed additional responsibilities in the landlord to ascertain that the tenants in the new unit were not students and were all in a single family, all were all related and then have to assert that or certify that some way to the town as opposed to the town going out and trying to do that itself. And then we'd have to rely upon the diligence of the landlord and his willingness to comply with those provisions, those restrictions and those ascertainment provisions for lack of a better term. And we'd have to rely upon that, it seems. Is that what you're saying? It is, that's correct. Okay. All right. Mr. Maxwell. Just another question. I was mentioned specifically what would happen with snow removal on the driveway? Where would that be moved to and how would that affect water runoff or any kind of flooding where would that go? Okay. So let me skip to, this is the older plan, it's just, it's colored. So I'm gonna jump into that. This is the one without the annotations from the DPW and fire department. We have a snow stockpile areas at this point designated to the east of the driveway here, parking area and to the south on this side, the gradient of this site drains toward the rain garden. So anything piled over here will drain to the south and this is going to be a designated low point in the property. So melting snow will end up heading down in this direction right toward the rain garden. Parks is raising her hand. Ms. Parks. I just wanted to go back to the other question, not all undergraduate students are the same. And I'm pretty sure that the wording there was preferred that families would be preferred. In the farmhouse they are. I thought that was the language otherwise. I would not be as comfortable putting a condition on to say who like restricting who you would rent to. I, you know, we would, you would prefer someone who's not destructive, but I wouldn't, I personally wouldn't feel comfortable saying that you couldn't rent to students or you couldn't rent to a student. And we're trying to address the concerns of the community. If that restriction is not included, it still doesn't change the property owner's intention to avoid undergraduates because of the inherent problems that come with them. They're trying to make a nice property and build it up over time. And running it out to undergrads is contrary to their intentions and contrary to the value of their investment. So if there's no condition requiring that the intention remains the same, the owner does not want them there and will avoid them if they can. The current condition as I explained with undergraduates is a favor to a family friend due to a shift in life circumstances as a result of COVID. Mr. Are you, any other questions, Mr. Parks? Any follow-up? I have other questions, but you can come back to me. Go ahead. Okay. No, go ahead. Go ahead. So on slide number seven, you were talking about how the space is larger in the garage. And so you were saying the living space or the bedroom. I'm looking at your plan here and the size of the bedrooms are, one is 112 square feet and one is 107 square feet. And there's also 12-foot square-foot closets in there. So effectively one bedroom is 100 square feet and one is 95 square feet. It's maybe how I presented it in the compact form is a little confusing. So let me tell you how these numbers came to be. These numbers are the living space of the entire building, the dwelling, divided by the number of bedrooms. So the farmhouse, according to the assessor card, has 184 square feet of living space. So when you divide that by the three bedrooms, you get 295 square feet available for each bedroom in the building. That doesn't mean the bedroom is 295 because the kitchen and the common space, all of that is rolled in. If you look at the converted garage, that's 900 and it's close to 950 square feet, but that's only over two bedrooms. So if you divide 950 by two, you get about 458. So it's not bedroom size. It's living space per bedroom in that dwelling unit. Am I being clear? Yeah, so my other question is in the other documentation, it looks like there's expected to be four people in each unit, so it would be eight people living there. And I guess I have a question about if there's four parking spaces, what is the expectation for the other four people? Well, as has been discussed and other applications and the ZBA, and in this case as well, it goes back to a couple of things. One, the bylaws require only two parking spaces per dwelling. If it's one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom is two parking spaces, as I understand. So there's a slight disconnect there just in the bylaw, but there was very strong pushback from the neighborhood that six cars would be too many. I think originally there was a preference for six parking spaces because there are originally six proposed, now five proposed bedrooms. Yes, more people can live there, but as has been brought up multiple times and is quite obvious, this is a location that for the employment and the graduate student body in UMass, you don't need a car, we've got the schools nearby, the high school, the middle school, you don't have to drive your kids to school and the tenants that would arrive here, pay a market rate that indicates that there is limited parking. So you have unlimited parking, you would pay a higher market rate. So it just isn't possible to bring more than two cars on the property as a result of the public pushback. If the board is interested in more parking, I'm sure the applicant would consider it. There's certainly room, I could increase the size of the rain garden accordingly. So if the concern is there is too little parking, that can certainly be rectified.  Yeah. Over the sidewalk. Well, the sidewalk will have a barrier curb put up across it, there won't be pavement there, there won't be gravel there, it'll be a yard. So I would certainly hope that people decide not to go parking on a yard. And personally, I think this site would be better suited for six vehicles. I do know that across the street, literally, Friday night and all day on the weekends through Monday morning, you do not need a permit to park. So if there are weekend gatherings, there is effectively unlimited parking across the street. Then one of the UMass slots, I think it's number 49. You do need a permit during the week, but for starting at 5 p.m. on Friday, anybody can park there. So they would have to coordinate a little bit, carpool a little bit, and we're trying to reduce traffic. So this is our attempt to make things better for the neighborhood and reduce trips. We reduce the amount of parking spaces and limit that. Okay. All set. Mr. Langsdale. Okay. Right off the bat, parking is two spaces per unit. We have two units, four parking spaces. That's all. That goes into the permit. It goes in as a condition. If that is a bridge, then there can be fines and other things levied. A couple of quick things, Mr. Sparkle. You talk about the aesthetics of the place and renovating the exterior of the barn, excuse me, garage, does that include renovating the exterior of the house from inspection and photos that we have just been given, of course. There are many places in the siding of the house where it's deteriorated, broken and painted over. So does that renovation extend to the house beyond just putting a new roof on? As to the lighting, yes, what is proposed is dark sky compliant. As to concerns for the public about the two spotlights for the back, those would be dark sky compliant, but it would also be required to be downcast, not shooting out. The other thing, one other thing is the first lady who spoke during the public comments, I'm sorry, I did not get her name, talked about, at the end of her statement, talked about a brush that she had asked your client to remove and has not yet been removed. If that's true, I think that might be something that should be dealt with tomorrow or as soon as possible, certainly at least in terms of neighborly goodwill. Yes. Yeah, okay, that's all I have for now. Thanks. I'm texting with the client right now because I can't just lean over and have a conversation with him, but the, all right. So he, Neil confirms that there are plans to continue repair of the siding for the existing farmhouse, including painting it. So that, like I said, it's a long game. It's a big investment. There's a lot of money necessary for that garage dwelling conversion, but some funds are being expended on the property overall. And he is saying that tomorrow that brush will be gone. Thank you. Other questions from board members. Mr. Sparkle, when we talk about parking, I'm concerned about how well the parking will be monitored and policed by the landlord. Current situation is, I've driven past that house several times over the last few months, just to see what the situation is. And I'm, and often there are four or five cars parked along that property all lined up, much more so than the two that are supposed to be parked there and two on the side. And I worry that while it'll be an improvement to have the cars behind the garage and you won't be able to park right up against the garage, you can still have cars that are parked off to the side of the driveway. I'm also concerned that the current rental permit provides for parking in the garage and two on the side at an angle, left of the garage at an angle. And that's not ever, and that's not the case at all, it's not being done. And the owner doesn't even pretend that it has been his intent to have those cars garage in the garage as the rental permit would require. So I'm really sensitive and sympathetic to the concerns raised by the neighbors about parking and enforcement of any kind of parking conditions when there hasn't been a witness, we haven't witnessed compliance with the existing rental permit right now. So I wonder if you could speak to that. I am going to speak to that. Regarding the number of parking spaces, I think that was the first in how to keep it to just four, what are the safeguards in place? Well, right now there is no resident manager on the property. So it's the property manager manages the property and they are not there all of the time. So we would have a full-time resident manager on site with the special permit and with the neighborhood being quite aware of every word we're saying now and as well as their involvement in the community, I am pretty confident that the conditions of the special permit, if they are not met, then we will hear about it and that will give the Pioneer Property Services an opportunity to correct that situation immediately to make sure that the conditions are maintained. Presently, there is no special permit. Yes, there is a parking management plan. I do see and have seen photographs where there are more than four vehicles parked on the property that are parked on the gravel driveway, but it's more that is in the permit. And I guess I'm not familiar with the requirements and impact of a parking permit as to say what happens if you don't follow up on a rental permit application if your parking plan is not adhered to strictly.  It's not a bylaw issue. So I would just say that, due to the proposed special conditions and the presence of a resident manager, as well as the ability of the butters to say, hey, this isn't working. There are going to be controls in place in the future that are just simply not there now. Okay, but that would mean that the renters have to, or the neighbors would have to contact the owner. At some point. Well, the resident manager, that's what the resident manager is for. Okay, but even I understand, and I think you've made a good case, the concern I have is that even with, in this time since October, when we've had this before us, there has been continued to be problems with too many cars parked there and not parked along the, and the parking hasn't complied with the rental permit requirements. So it is, I'm not sure that the rent, I hope that the resident manager would solve that problem, but I have some suspicion and some concern about that. I know this takes will be higher with a special permit. Yep. Mr. Langsdale. Yeah, I would like to say that given that over the last months as Mr. Judge has talked about, there have been cars parked there three or four, maybe more in front of the garage, which constitutes a really dangerous situation because they have to back into strong street. So all of the concern about having the cars in a parking lot coming up and facing, I don't quite understand. However, what I'm concerned about is that that practice of more than what, well, two cars, because right now there's one unit, which is the house, two cars, they're continuously being three, four, five cars parked there. Again, backing into the strong street, that it speaks to, and I know it's a minor thing, but this brush that has not been taken away that the owner said he would take away. And it's been, I don't know how long that that's been true. It speaks to how can the neighbors trust what the owner says he will do and because apparently it hasn't really happened in terms of the parking as it is at present. How does the neighborhood trust that what he says he will do will happen? Yes, we can put conditions on, but it shouldn't be up to the neighbors to say, there's eight cars down there instead of four. I don't know, I mean, I think it speaks to the problem with what we're dealing with this application that it will be done the way it's said that it will be done when things haven't quite been done that way up to this point. I would also like to hear from Mr. Mora in terms of if the parking is slated at four cars period, what are the, and if it goes beyond that continuously, if it becomes a real problem, what kind of sanctions or fees can be levied against the property and the owner for not abiding by the condition? Okay, anyway, thank you. Mr. Mora, can you respond to Mr. Linesdale's question? Yes, the parking plan, current parking plan or a future approved parking plan does become a condition of the residential rental permit, which is a general bylaw and that comes with a penalty for any violation of that permit or any of its conditions that comes with a penalty of $100 per day for each violation. Typically, there's some period of time that a code enforcement officer after receiving the complaint will monitor the property to try to understand what the regular condition is to establish a violation and 99% of the time simply asking the owner to do something to better manage the situation does take care of it. But for those cases that that does not happen in a responsive enough way, the $100 per day fine is what would be imposed. I'm curious if there has been any contact from the rental agreement of the town to reach out to the owner and let them know that they are in violation. Has that happened? Have they been given notice? Mr. Sparkle, that's really an enforcement court, not really a zoning question for us. I mean, but it would be the landlord's responsibility to comply with the mental permit that he signed. So he should know that that's the case, but we don't do the enforcement. You should clearly know the case, know what parking requirements are part of his rental permit. Mr. Chair, Mr. Mora is raising his hand. Hello, Mr. Mora. Yeah, I see that you wanted to move on from that, but I do think that's an important point to just stop and think about for a minute is that the town's inspection and code enforcement office is designed to be a complaint response team. So we're not out there patrolling the town. We're not out there looking for this situation. We wouldn't otherwise know about it without this discussion tonight unless a neighbor or somebody called to tell us about it. So it really is important that the owner of the property is held to the standard to ensure that the property is well managed. And what we know is that some properties are much more challenging than others to manage. And if this is a condition that sounds like, Mr. Chair noted that you saw this a few times over the last couple of months, if it's a regular occurrence, it sounds like this property needs to be managed in a little different way than it has been in the past so that the owner of the property, the landlord or the property manager has taken the responsibility to ensure compliance with the rental permit bylaw and the conditions of that permit. I believe that the significance of the parking situation is likely becoming far more clear and imminent in the minds of Pioneer Property Services through to this very discussion. And in my conversations with him, which is how I know the individual, they really do seem like they want to take care of things as this process unfolds and they are able to reach their goals for the property. They seem to me to be very willing to make changes and they're open to adjusting things according to neighbors' concerns and regulations. So that's probably about as much as I can say because I am not the property manager and I can't make promises for somebody else, of course. But it does seem to me that they do have clear intention and of course, if it does not go according to the permit, fines are available, they can lose their special permit. So again, this takes would be much higher in a proposed condition than the current buy-right use with a rental agreement permit. Mr. Sparkle, in your presentation, you talked about strongly, or last week in what you submitted, strongly blocking the light from the cars in the neighbors. You'd have a, there's a bank of Arbor of ID, I think, and then you propose a fence. Can you pull up that so we can take a look at that and see how, because some of the neighbors had concerns about that. So I'm wondering how well the fence will solve the problem. Okay, so let's first look at the fence that's being proposed. It's a six foot tall fence with solid boards. This one is existing, it's the only fence of the type and it's going to be replicated. I think that the gaps in the original construction would necessarily be eliminated because the purpose of the fence is to make sure nothing penetrates. So for the first, five feet or so off the ground, which is far higher than the headlights of any vehicle, is going to be a solid wall. And the placement of that, and I'll zoom in just a little bit here, the placement of that wall is, starts at the south end of the parking spaces that face the direction of the larges property and then extend further up just to provide an additional layer. So there's more screening toward the northern portions through here. I think you can also see that the larges of parking spaces where the headlights shine to the west, that's not part of the application, but something to consider about, people who have concerns about light intrusion also have unscreened headlights. And in terms of the existing vegetation, you can see I've got a generic green area over here and what that looks like is this. It's not Arbivite, it is Hemlock as far as the evergreens go and additionally, there are a few deciduous trees which of course don't offer the same level of protection in the winter. And if we zoom in just a little bit, you can just make out the siding and part of the roof of the abutting property. So the fence would go, you can see this brush pile is gonna be gone tomorrow, which by the way, my client said that one of the reasons he hasn't done it is because he's been fearful of bringing out the chainsaw, which would be necessary to break it up. He's been a little bit afraid of the complaints from the neighbors. So I think he was paralyzed there, but obviously he realizes that they much rather have the brush gone and deal with the chainsaw. So they should expect a chainsaw tomorrow I guess, but the fence would go across this area here. Okay, it would start where your hand is now. It actually starts a little bit off the screen if my estimate is correct and the parking area is roughly here and it extends slightly off the screen. And the parking lot is how many feet higher than, because everything drains away that way. So are we looking two feet higher than the tree line approximately? Everything's at existing grade. So basically if you remove the grass and put in the parking area, what you see is what you get in the proposed condition. Well, I know it's at the existing grade, but the existing grade slopes away, I think. Does it not slope downward? So if the parking lot would be higher than the level of the soil at the trees, the ground at the trees, it'd be one or two feet higher, right? Yes, so we have elevation 93 in the rain garden, 94 down here, 95 up here. Okay, so it's a foot. We're talking about a foot at the most. All right. And it's a five foot fence. So effectively it's a six foot fence. It's a six foot fence with five feet being fully obfuscated. And in this case, four feet would be fully obfuscated because it's higher than the level of fence. Okay. All right. But in this case, it seems like the fence is going to do the best job of screening because some of that hemlock is, and brush would provide screen, but some is going to be porous to light. So I think the fence has to be a solid fence in order to provide lighting, screening for the neighbors. That's the intention. And the other thing is when you back out of the spots there, if you look at the spot at the spot on the top of this, and they back out to go up the other driveway, that backing out will shine light at least as far as that fence goes. But that would probably not go, I don't know if that would hit the corner of the house, the bedroom or whatever this is for the lorges, but I'm not sure. I don't sure it extends far enough to block light flow to the house. So that might be a concern that we may want to look at in a condition to make sure that the light, the fence blocks the light totally from hitting their house. So it's just something to think about. I'm not sure it does that at the current dimensions. Okay. See if I can bring a line up. And if you were to draw a line from the end of that building to the end of the fence, any lights that would be on the below this line and turning and rotating would not reach that building. Eventually it will shine out into their parking lot, into the road as vehicles turn and complete that maneuver. And if we needed to put an additional fence section on and go from 32 feet to a 40 foot fence, I don't think that's a problem for... That's what I'm suggesting is you may want to think about a longer fence. I don't think that's a problem. We can definitely do a longer fence. Be happy to enter into a discussion with that neighbor to make sure that the placement was to their satisfaction even. We show up with that 32 foot or 40 fence and the neighbor can help put it where they want it. There may be areas of their house that, I mean, we don't know where all the windows are in this particular image. So that can be personalized and customized in the moment. Okay, good. Are there any other questions from board members for the applicant? Okay, so it seems to me that we're in a position tonight where at least one board member and I think maybe others would is not prepared yet to make a decision on this application. That there are other things that we need to review. One is, I think we need to have more time for to review the legal memo that we received on Monday. I think it'd be really helpful if Mr. Sparkle's presentation was sent to us so that we could review that his responses to a butters and neighbors concerns. I think that'd be helpful for us as well to have. We saw this here at the meeting and not ahead of time. So your presentation would be valuable for us to have and to chew on. I think before we have to decide on this application, we have a lot of very important steps we have to take. We have to make decisions about, we have to make findings that are on 9.22. We have to make findings on 3.241 about the converted dwellings. And we have all the 10.38 findings that we have to make, all of which involve questions of nuisance to neighbors and the ability of the property owner to have the converted dwelling in this place. We have to make certain findings about the effect on the neighborhood. And I think that some of the, and we also need to have more information. I think I need more information about the flow, the rainwater flow from the increased area of impermanence because when we were there before, it looked like grass to me. When we walked down in the backyard and looked at the site visit, it looked like grass to me and I was unaware that there was a driveway there. But I think that that is probably not a pure, calculations are probably that it absorbs more water than a pure, in a real gravel driveway wood because it's grass that has grown up and through kind of an abandoned driveway. I have three of those questions. So my thought would be for us to continue this matter until the next, our next meeting, we'll give people time to discuss this, not to discuss it, obviously we can't do that, but to think about it, to chew on the legal issues that were raised and to perhaps hear some responses from as quickly as possible on rainwater and other defense and the other things that were raised with concerns of the neighbors and concerns of the board members were raised. And I'd like to throw that open to people on the board to see what kind of a response they have to that. If they are indeed ready to make a decision, please let me know, but my sense from the discussion is that we're probably not ready to do that at this time. So I'd like to throw that out because I don't want to push this before we're ready to make a decision. So do any board members have an opinion on whether they're ready or not to make the decision tonight? Mr. Maxfield. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not sure that I'm ready to make a decision right now tonight, but if the board would like with the remaining time that we have, I'd like to have a little bit of a discussion amongst ourselves on kind of what my thinking is right now on this project and hear a little bit of where everyone else is thinking on this project. So over the next two weeks between now and when we would ideally make a vote on this, we all kind of know what we're all kind of considering here and looking at. And if it's all right, I can go ahead and start what my thinking on this project is right now at this time. Can I make one real quick request? Can we stop the screen share so we can see each other? Oh, yeah, it's here. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question for you. I think what Mr. Maxfield is talking about is the board to be talking with each other about this and that's going to the public meeting, which means we cut off the public hearing. I propose that rather than doing that, we have an executive meeting about this, which is of course open to the public, but would be specifically about our talking about this project at a different time. I'm not sure I understand, Mr. Langsville, what your suggestion is. Can you repeat that again? Yeah. To do what Mr. Maxfield would like to do, which I agree with, I think that means that at this point in time, it means we would have to close the hearing and go to the public meeting. And I think that's not what we want to do at this point in time. So how do we go forward with that then, I guess? I agree that I don't think we're ready to close the public hearing. There may be more information that comes in the next few days or the next two weeks or for our next meeting that we don't want to preclude ourselves from receiving. So I'd want to keep the public hearing open. I will leave it up to, I will ask staff whether we can engage in discussion amongst ourselves in a public hearing about our concerns. I'm thinking that we can have a discussion amongst board members during a public hearing about various aspects of the application. What I think is unique about the public meeting is that we tend not to have public input at that point. It was only discussion between ourselves unless, except for extraordinary circumstances where we need to get some outside influence, outside input. But I'm thinking that we probably can have a public, we can continue the public hearing and have a discussion among ourselves. But I'd like to ask, either Rob, Mr. Mora or Mr. Washevitz, what we can do. Mr. Chair, Attorney Bard would like to speak. Yes, Mr. Bard. Well, sure. Oh, you might be muted. Sorry about that. Yes, the board can do that. Typically you close the public hearing and then have a discussion among the members, but it's perfectly acceptable and common for board members to have a discussion among themselves at whatever level of specificity that your members choose and then see if you wanna seek further public comment. So yeah, you can do it either way. And certainly, of course, you can close the public hearing and then have your own discussion, but there's no reason why you can't have an informal or however you wanna stage it, a discussion while the public hearing is still open. Okay. Mr. Meadows. I agree with what Mr. Maxfield was saying. There's a piece of information that I would like based upon a comment that you made that there are some stipulations for the existing building that have not been met, which is the use of the garage rather than the parking area in front of the garage. Are there any other conditions that existed for that site? And I'd like to know what those conditions are so that that would have an influence definitely on what our ultimate decisions are. So Mr. Meadows, what you're asking for, I think the town building department can provide you or the, I don't know, who's provided the rental permit information and the restrictions and the parking plan can be provided to you with that. You can provide it to all of us, I think would be helpful. Please. Okay. Mr. Maxfield. Yeah, that was actually gonna be one of the things I'd like to know, because I've heard a lot of anecdotes about issues happening at this property. I'm wondering if there's been any formal complaints that we've received at the town of violations being committed at this property. That would definitely be very helpful in making this decision. I know right now the things I'm considering with this property is, I know there's been a lot of talk about the size of the lot and the exceptions being allowed for, you know, maybe one or two feet kind of thing. And it seems like the property and the structures that are there, the structures are currently there. There's no necessarily new structure. The only new surface area that's going up would be the driveway, which our own engineer said they believe it would improve safety as well as water runoff, which is my major concern with putting more in pervious surface when we're already hearing from neighbors about issues of flooding, where those are now both being addressed. So I don't see that the lot size being a major issue here. And we're talking about a garage, a structure that's, if they were trying to build that garage that this proposal was, we're gonna build a garage there or build another structure. I think the answer would be absolutely not that that lot is undersized and this is not the intention. But I think in this case where that garage is already there, it's a structure that currently exists that's being converted. I think that the argument on the lot size doesn't quite apply here. And I'd like to hear from other board members their tho