All set folks have a good one. Thank you. So at 202 p.m. on October 13, 2020, seeing a quorum of the Community Resources Committee, I'm going to call this meeting to order. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspended in certain provisions of the open meeting law and jail chapter 30 a section 20 allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the CRC. The meeting is being recorded for future broadcast and all votes will be by roll call. At this time, I'm going to call upon each committee member by name so that we can confirm. You can hear me and we can hear you, and then please mute your mic after saying present. Shalini Balmill. Melanie's mic is not working. We will come back to Shalini. I am here. Evan Ross. I'm here. The Shriver. And Sarah Swartz. So Shalini, have we figured this out yet? She can hear us though, because she can answer my question. We still do not hear you. Is it trying the right mic? Try rebooting. She's doing from her phone, I think. Can you hear me now? We can. Okay, so I will. I'm on my phone, but I will. Yeah, we can start and then meanwhile I'll figure out the computer. Okay. You sure? Okay. So we are all present and we can now all hear each other. Let me get back to my. Agenda screen. And so we will move on to our first order of business. Which is general public comment. Public comments on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC. Can be expressed by residents for up to three minutes. And at this time, I think we have. Not no phone callers. So if you'd like to make public comment, please just hit the raise hand button and I will, I will recognize you and then do all of the controls myself. I see Kate Atkinson and I'm going to. You should be able to unmute yourself now, Kate. Yes. Can I start? You may. Hi, I'm Dr. Kate Atkinson and I'm a family physician. I've been taking care of people in the Amherst area for almost 20 years. About 10 years ago, I was in a space that was too small and I needed to move to a larger office space and I could not find anything that I could afford in Amherst. At that time, I discovered that most commercial real estate was owned by only a couple of people and those people were able to keep the costs very high and because of the zoning regulations, there were very few business places. So I managed to actually luckily find a piece of property where I could build myself. And it took almost two years. It was well over a year to get it approved by the town of Amherst for me to build my primary care doctor's office.  It took a lot out and every hearing I went to people cast aspersions on me, accuse me of dumping and toxic waste. And at each meeting, I had to bring a lawyer and an engineer and a landscape engineer and an architect. And at the end of all of that, it cost me almost $100,000 more over what it would have cost just to build the building anywhere else. I feel like the process of such restriction in Amherst, in terms of commercial zones, actually favors the huge corporations. The Walmart's and the Dunkin' Donuts and the CVS's who can afford all of that. Pretty hard for a small locally owned business to do that. Such that when a friend of mine a little over a year ago bought a local doctor's office in Amherst, after seeing what I went through, she moved it to Hadley. So if we want to have local businesses and especially the kind of services that we need more of, for example, primary care medicine, I'm really hoping that we can make things a little bit more feasible for small businesses and not keep us on the same requirements that you would have for a big corporation. I want to point out through the pandemic, my office has remained open. We are a medical home to thousands of patients from the area and provide really high quality medical care where anybody, any one of our patients can be seen the same day if they're not seen. We currently have a problem that we do not have enough parking for our staff. There's a little lock right down the street from where my office is. We had a plan to put 10 spots and hide them in the woods so that it wouldn't bother anybody. And we were told that we have to go through that same process that I went through years ago in order to get this approved. And since, as I said, that was one of the worst experiences of my life, I'm really hoping that you would reconsider the way the zoning is written. What I'm frustrated by is they're telling me this would qualify as a commercial lot. I would argue, and my attorney agrees with this, the definition of a commercial lot is parking that you sell to people.  So I'm really just encouraging this committee to look at the bylaws, the way the zoning is written, the definition of a commercial lot versus being able to park employees, especially in light of how these things affect small local businesses. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Atkinson. Are there any other public comments? Seeing none. We will move on on our agenda. Which moves us to our presentation discussion item for today, which is comprehensive housing policy. We will be spending the bulk of our meeting on this, probably till about three 30, and then we will move on to the rest of the items on the agenda unless we finish this portion of today's discussion early. I have a feeling we won't because housing policy can take a while. I'd like to accomplish potentially three things on this housing policy today. I want to start with last meeting we started with going through the goals, as they were listed modifying the language and then the little sort of description of the goals below that, each of the goals. And we got through about two and a half of those. And so I'd like to finish getting through those and review the ones we reviewed last time and then move on to the strategies. This is right now pretty much a dump. In terms of idea dump. That we've just put everything that I've come across. And so we talked about last time needing to. You know, sort of clean that one up. Before anything goes, you know, before we start seeking some opinions on the housing policy as a first look. And so if we have time, I'd like to get to that. And then I would like to talk a little bit about the plan for getting more feedback. And then we'll move on to the next slide. And then we'll move on to the next slide. And then we'll move on and all as we move forward. So those, those are the things I'd like to accomplish today. For housing policy. I know it's ambitious. We'll see if we get through it. So I am. At this point, going to screen share. The housing policy. This revision of it. So that we can look at it. And this one. I'm not putting everything in the packet, but I did put beyond the housing policy. I put. Two word documents. And then the master plan chapter of demographics and housing. The word documents. Had were summaries that the zoning subcommittee. Planning board member, Jenna McGowan had created at the request of. Maria Chow as chair of the zoning subcommittee about a year ago, that she had forwarded to me and they are summaries of the housing market study and the housing production plan. And I'm not sure we had seen them yet. So I put them in the packet as the summaries instead of the hundred page documents. To give you an idea of one of the things I did, I took those three items, those two summaries. And the master plan check chapter. And this is HPP is the housing production plan. And then the master plan. The H M. Let me see if I can find it. HMS is the housing market study. And then the MP would be the master plan. So when you see those abbreviations attached to some sort of strategy or measurable, it will, it, that's what it's referring to along with the page numbers or the section number so that we can see where things came from. So we're going to start with this. And then we're going to go through the final. Housing policy. Goals. Before we move on to the objectives and the summary below the objectives, a few of these got. Rewarded. So. We're going to start with this. And. Go through each one of these five to see if the wording of the goal themselves actually will start with, we'll just start here. And then we're going to go through five goals and objectives. And then we're going to go through five goals and objectives. And then we're going to look at the wording of the goal, the objective and the blurb under the objective before strategies for each of these, and then we'll come back to strategies if we can get through all five goals and objectives. So this first one. And I believe we touched on. Last week, last meeting. I've reworded it to try and make it a little more clearer. And the objective was reworded. And so if we've got any requested changes or thoughts on this goal or objective or blurb, please raise your hand and. Mention them. No hands makes me think everyone loves it. Which I'm good with. And we will move on in another 15 or so seconds. If we don't get any hands. This one was one we talked about last week. So. We'll move on to the next goal. See no comments. We're going to move on to the next goal. Get to the next goal. So here's the next goal. This blurb is a bit longer. The goal is to promote a diversity of housing types, integrated communities and access to homes at all income levels. I reworded the goal based on our discussion of objective and summary. So this is one we looked at last time, trying to make the difference. A clear difference between the prior goal. The goal is to promote a diversity of housing. And building housing. And this goal of different types and. Non-monolithic sort of locations of stuff along with the access to them. Thoughts on this one. Any requested changes or. Editions and stuff. Steve, you were muted if you were trying to say something. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Goal objective and paragraph. So monolithic. I get the point. And I think we've discussed this, but monolithic. Doesn't seem like the right word. And I get the point that we don't want neighborhoods that are of. One type of something necessarily. Maybe homogenous. That's closer. But they might.  We're trying to. So, so I'm not sure that. I mean, there may be, it's not the. Cohesive neighborhoods. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of what we're trying to get at here. So cohesive neighborhoods. I guess I see monolithic as being a look of something. It looks like a monolith. Yeah. I mean, Homogenous gets closer because that's talking more about. You know, who lives there or the culture within there. Yeah, maybe homogenous is a better word. We can leave that. I found one. We try to avoid the use of the word citizen. So I'm going to change that to residents. Residents. Yeah. So I guess I'm. The only other thing I'm wondering if we wanted. Our, our objective says integrated in both income level and racial diversity. But our, our, the blurb is really only focused sort of on. Income diversity. So I guess I'm wondering if we want to, if that wanted to be. Worked in there, you know, pockets of town that only support one type of housing. Available into a small range of income. So we keep coming back to this idea of, you know, affordable residents that may just stage his life and signs as a family later to encourage units types. Right. So they're affordable to residents of many different income levels, but we have actually never touched on racial diversity in the blurb, but we do mention it in both the. Top goal and the objective. And so I'm guessing I'm wondering if we wanted, if that wanted to be. Worked in there. And so we keep coming back to this idea of, of, of income diversity, socioeconomic, but not necessarily the racial component that we, we mentioned in the objective. I'm not sure what my solution is. That's going to be my next question. So stages of life, size of family. It's tough, right? But it just, it just feel, I'm not sure how to work it into this blurb, but it feels weird to mention it in the objective and not in the blurb. Yeah. Cause the other thing that, you know, we're talking about integrated communities here. And so I'm just wondering if that needs to be. In this. Yeah. I mean. I can sit down this and try and think of, of wording, but. Yeah, maybe, maybe we can try and figure something out. You know, that, that better does that. I guess I'm thinking, have you ever seen that racial dot map? I think so. I'm not sure others have. Can you explain it? So each dot is a household or a person and they're different colors for different races. And so you can kind of look at how integrated or segregated a community is. And so if you look at Amherst, there's certain areas that are pockets of very white. And then there's certain areas that are pockets of people of color. And so part of our goal is to make it. And so I feel like that sort of, I'm picturing when you said pockets of. In here. I'm lost about. Yeah, creating pockets. My, my mind actually immediately went to that racial dot map before I went to like pockets of just single family homes. They're related. But I guess I'm wondering if maybe that's a place to, to work in. I don't know. I have to think about this, but I guess I'm just questioning if we mentioned racial diversity and the objective and the goal, and then we can also be reflected in the blurb other than just in that first sentence, but we can come back to that. I'll just make a note. Any other thoughts on this one? It's, you know, it's the, I'm, I'm googling racial dot map as we're speaking here, but you know, that's a hard one because in the way, Amherst is so small, right? Compared. So if you look at the. And we can't do the housing production plan or we can't, we're, we don't have the authority to work beyond Amherst, but we're such a pocket, you know, within a larger ecosystem. What we want to avoid is being. The racially undiverse community within a pocket. You know, we want to look. We want to at least look at what. You know, the whole. We want the diversity of Amherst to represent at least the diversity of the greater region. So we don't want to be the pocket of. Non diversity within the. You know, the larger community. It's tough because neighborhoods, we all have a different definition of neighborhoods like a neighborhood could be a street literally because Amherst is so small. That some people might think of their street as, as. Being the neighborhood or. They're building, you know, even. So it's, it's, I think it's a great goal. It's, it's a. I'd love to know how we are. Well, actually. I want to look at the racial dot map and kind of see the patterns that Evan's talking about. Okay. Any other comments. Seeing none, we're going to move on to the next goal, which I think is one we did not discuss last meeting. Sorry, it's on multiple pages here. What is my comment down here? Oh, this is one. So, so here we go with this is one that's split up into multiple sub objectives, I guess. The goal is to create safe, secure and environmentally healthy housing. And so I'm going to. And I popped into this one, the support for housing consumers that came from the Missoula one. We had incentivize repairs of rental properties and legislative quality building standards as a sub goal and tenant supports as a sub goal. Those were three different sub goals within one. One question we have to have is. Whether we want sub goals in this document or whether under each goal, we really just want one objective. The other two, we've only had the one objective for each goal. This one potentially has three. Some of these might be able to be combined. We might be able to put them into one objective instead of multiple sort of sub goals with different objectives each and then strategies that address them all. So I don't think I can get this. Well onto multiple paid. See the whole thing without you being with you still being able to read it. So I think the first question is, do we like splitting a goal into multiple objectives or do we want one overarching objective?  So because the first two, which are really important, only have one objective. It kind of makes sense to me to say consistent with that. But then there's also different things within them. But I guess I'm wondering if really we just have one objective, but then we divide our sweet divide our strategies into categories. So we're all working towards the same objective, but we can break them down in different ways because I think, I think we're probably going to have to do that. I mean, if you look at obviously this is, you know, just right now it's just a sort of everything, right? But you started to do that. Well, I don't, in, in for the strategies in the first two, there's just so many. And you can start to think of how you might want to group them, you know, zoning, multifamily, that kind of stuff. And so I'm just wondering if maybe the better way to do is have one objective for each. And that, and with one blurb that sort of gives the overall view of what we're doing, but then group strategies and to sort of these, so these categories that these different objectives you have right here might instead actually be headings for different groupings of strategies. What are others thoughts on that idea? I'm seeing a nod from the Shalini on the computer that does no audio. And Sarah. Yes, Shalini. I'm just using my phone for audio and screen for. I figured. Yeah. So I was actually figuring out my system early, but I would, so we're not going into the strategies, right? We just not right now. We're going to get through all the objectives and then come back to the strategies for each one. Got it. Yeah. Okay. I do like what Evan just proposed about having one objective and then within that we can group them into. Specific things. Actually goal is a broader thing. So it could be goals because we never really reach a goal, but objectives are like smart objectives or whatever. So we, I mean, we could work that in a way that. They could be sub. Or subject. Look, they would be multiple objectives within a single goal. Sarah, you were not in your head too. Yeah. So my next question is, did we have multiple sentences in our objective? No, we didn't. One sentence and one sentence. It's the blurbs that have multiple sentences. So we need an objective on safe, secure and environmentally healthy housing. This one is housing should not harm the health and safety of residents and families. This one was improve the living conditions and rental housing and the protections afforded renters through the creation of housing. The housing consumers one. Didn't quite go to that per se. Sorry for paging back and forth. I'm just going to use this one as our main one. So is it environmental too? So there's a stab at it. I'm wondering if we can get rid of this one completely that was taken from Missoula. Since we're writing our own. Evan. Yeah, I guess. I assume you wanted to talk. I guess we could probably delete it. I'm not quite, when I first read that, I was thinking of sort of support services or support programs. Like I don't like first time home buyer. Stuff or, or think, but we don't, we haven't really talked about anything like that. But I guess we could, or, or, you know, maybe like if you're thinking about the. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the supportive housing model. The support of housing model on this behind the value, the CDC's that pairs housing with social service support networks like this sort of touches on that. And if we were going to talk about that stuff. In this housing policy, then it would, I would say it would go in this section. We just haven't. Really. Yeah, I think if no one objects, I'm just going to delete the whole thing. This whole group. So this is the objective I'm working on which I pretty much copied this objective and added it into that one. And then we've got the blurb. Evan. So just looking at this. It's a little bit repetitive. And I'll say that one too. Yeah, yeah. To do this, we need to expand the policies we already have in place to monitor almost sounds like a straw. We're getting into strategy. So I wonder if it just can be the safety and security of our residents is paramount because Amherst has a high number of rental units. We need to ensure that those rental units are maintained in a manner that provides safe and secure housing and then all the way about it. Ensure that renters can fully participate in community life by reading that part. So something like that. Yeah, I feel like that kind of covers everything and safe and secure rights protections. Provide safe and secure housing and we need to. Word Smith that connection. Yeah. I wonder if it's just a so that that won't work. I. Yep, Shawnee. Yeah, I was just looking at the master plan. They, I like that it's kind of very explicit what that goal is. They say it in terms of the community's ability to ensure the basic right depends on the resources that town commits to okay here to inspection enforcement and coordination. I don't want to get as specific, but it actually details out what we mean in terms of safety. And so it says commits the town commits to inspection enforcement coordination of building fire accessibility health codes. Do we want to mention that. I mean that's where the town runs into problems is the codes and stuff like that. And we've heard about that a couple of times the health codes. Yeah. They have three things inspection enforcement and coordination that go here. It was inspections. Welcome Dave. Enforcement. Thank you. And inspection enforcement and coordination. I don't know what the coordination part is, but definitely inspection and enforcement. How's that for people. For a first blush. It's a very long sentence. What if we split it further sentence now. We got a couple of high fives her. We're ready to move on from this objective and blurb. We have two more to go before we come back to strategies. So we will move on. We can come back and this one looks like it just has the one objective. We make sure. Yep. So we talked about this one last week. We're going through the goals, objectives and little blurbs first. We're on our fourth of five goals. To get them where we're fairly happy with them. And then we're going to circle back to strategies and clean them up. So that there's some, some of the things that we're going to be doing. And so let me know if I made the changes. That we were talking about. While people are reading, I'm going to update Dave where we are. We're going to spend most of our time on housing. Comprehensive housing policy draft today, Dave. We're going to be moving them up so that there's some. I guess plan and logicalness to the strategies listed. And then we're going to move on to what we're going to do next. Steve, you might need to unmute Steve. I'm just reading through the paragraph. So this is a hard one because. So the next. All right, so. So are actions. I'm in the second sentence, including prioritizing policies that will result in existing and new structures that are standing bill operated and located where services are. So if we're talking about existing structures. Then they, I guess, sustainably built or renovated.  That are. We could just say that are sustainable. that are renovated or sustainably built or something like that. Sustainably renovated or built, maybe. But I think sustainably is modifying both built and operated. Weirdly enough. Yeah. That represent sustainable that are used sustainable practices or something. Maybe it doesn't matter. And then also look at where services are. So that doesn't. We might need to be more specific. Like I would say where. Near village centers in our, or near village centers. As a priority. That does. Yeah. And that. That's open for debate discussion. Kevin. Yeah. The other thing I was going to say. Is in the end of the next sentence, we must implement our farmers that result in housing that reduces the use of fossil fuels. I was thinking we might want to write housing and neighborhoods. And I know as Steve said before, we all have a different idea of what a neighborhood is, but I want to make sure that we're communicating that we're not just talking about the individual structures themselves. But also that we're looking for them to exist in sort of. Walkable, bikeable, multimodal ecosystem. So even if it's, so even, I guess, what I'm getting in there too is even if it's a neighborhood that's not located in a near village center, we still want to make sure we're looking at it through a climate lens of like, well, is, is this still bikeable or walkable or, you know, that kind of stuff. Any other thoughts. Seeing none. Well, the. I don't want to talk about housing type. So maybe, maybe this is just too much. But so when we all, we look at housing stock, maybe many of us think single family house, but really housing stock could be also a five story mixed use building. So. And maybe the village center. Point makes that point, but I think I'm okay. For now. Yeah. I'm sure we're going to get tons of comments when we send this out for comments. We will move on. And so this one looks like I also put a couple of objectives, multiple. Many goals and objectives in let's figure out what they are. So this is a line and leverage existing municipal funding and other resources. To support affordable housing. And then a mini one was municipal funding. And I think this, there might have only been two. Distribution of town owned land. Up. And expanding affordable home ownership options apparently. So there's three of them. But I think the expanding is leveraging everything else. Let me copy these up into the first one so we can play with them. Municipal funding. Where's the next one? So those were our three objectives. We've got to be able to combine them into one. So does that take care of the objective at least? Ignore these two. Everyone's okay with the objective is rewritten. We'll go to the blurb and I'll add the three blurbs up. Apparently the. Affordable home ownership options are a Missola blurb. So we might not be able to use that one. Shalini. Separate objectives and not strategies under affordable housing, creating more affordable housing. So this wouldn't be this one. It'd be like this. But I mean, it's to support affordable housing. So isn't that a strategy to support affordable housing? Why is that a separate? Goal. Oh, well, that's your question. Yeah. So good question. Unless you want to highlight. It might be the highlighting that you're just referring to Shalini of, we've got specific. Funds. And here are the strategies for how to use those funds versus just the general. How to use the funds. I know in the affordable housing. Priorities policy that the housing trust provided us last year. They were talking about like per unit. Costs. And making sure it fit under that or prioritizing certain funds for certain types of units or certain types of. Funds. So that's a good question. Yeah. So that's a good question. So I think that's the general idea of a goal. The aligning the use of these funds and the use of that to. The rest of the goals. And then listing it. Separately. Yeah, actually, and now I think back in finance committee to, there were a lot of discussions about the land. You know, when it's given over and to have some clarity around. How that's to be dealt. Okay. So it makes sense. I think that's a good question. Yeah. That's a good question. That's a good question. And then we'll have a little paragraph too. Evan, I think you were thinking about saying something. Yeah. So, um, one thing to just put out there. So, um, some time back when I talked about sort of. Prioritizing CPA funding for. Affordable housing. You know, though I was a little bit more specific than this. Um, from a member of the CPA committee who basically said, we're an independent body. Um, and didn't feel like it was appropriate for the town council. To try to put any type of pressure on the CPA committee. To have them, um, to put a general focus on their money. I don't know if that's appropriate for the town council. To put their money. I think that this is vague enough that it doesn't. It just says that the town can leverage CPA money for this. Um, but I guess I wanted to just bring that to our attention as we get to the. Strategies part of this. Um, is to some extent, there's almost a conversation in there about that. We've never really had as a full council out. between these, I think with CDBG, there really isn't any. With CPA, it's weird because we do have to approve their recommendations. But how much independence do they have to decide? And so I think that this is probably fine, it's just highlighting two potential funding sources. However, I wanna just say, as we get maybe to the strategies part, that might be a conversation we have to have is, what is that relationship when it comes to this stuff? And if the council is passing a housing policy that says, we really want funds to support affordable housing, where is that line of telling CPA how we want them to spend their money?  Right?  And then the only other thing is this really focuses on CPA and CDBG, but I guess in theory, there are other funds that could be used or identified. And I'm just wondering if we wanna just expand CPA, like CPA Community Development Blackfriars or others, off top of my head, the only thing I can think of is, I believe our inclusionary zoning bylaw right now allows a payment in lieu of units into the housing trust, which would be another revenue source. So I guess in theory, there are likely other revenue sources the town could capitalize on other than just CPA and CDBG. Definitely what I can think of right now, but there might be others, grants or whatever. Or they might be able to create revenue sources through some of those funds.  Shalini. Yeah, I think in the master plan, they talked about state advocacy to create, to get funding. And I think we get it under 40R maybe or 40B. We do get funding for, so like advocating for that, those sort of fundings to flow in this direction. Good point. So are we good with the splurb for now and the objective? Before we go back up to strategies, I'm going to clear clean this one up a little bit. Actually, we're not going to get to that later. I'll clean it up for the next draft. That brings me. Yep, Steve. Yeah, so maybe on the theme, so private funds also, right? So it doesn't all have to be government funds. We seek to, and you were kind of talking about that with the tax incentives, but no, other revenue sources does it. So, but it's not necessarily all public funds. It could be some private funds. And that's also to Shalini's point of the 40B. So do we want to change the goal language then from leveraged existing municipal funding? And instead of- Well, you have other resources. Other resources, yeah. Or municipal and other funding or something like that. I think it's fine. Okay. I'm going to leave it like that for now. Are we ready to go up to strategies for a bit? Yeah, and as you've noted, we're only putting the ball into play. This isn't the final draft. Oh, no, not at all. So strategies gets long because we get a lot. So I can't put them all on at once. But I think we should, so this is the goal. This is the increased production and strategies. I think we might, before we get into culling and cleaning this up, identify what we want out of the strategies section and have a discussion. So I'm going to stop the share for now. Have a discussion on, you know, do we want a comprehensive list of strategies? Anything we can think of, do we want to try and, since this is a council policy, list those that the council wants to better prioritize, whether that be zoning or others, you know, and so that it really is a smaller list than pulling everything out of the master plan and everything out of the housing market study and everything out of the housing production plan and putting it all in, do we want to try and limit what it is to what we want focused the last, the next couple of years? So thoughts, Shalini. I just wanted to say thank you for doing that. That's a lot of work, but pulling from the master plan, all the strategies and all from the production plan and then putting it all in here. So thank you for doing that. So I'm going to thank Janet McGowan for summarizing because I pulled from the summary. So it wasn't in the summary. Thank you, Janet. It's just a document. So on this one, we need to go back to the document, but yes, thank you. It's an interesting list though, Steve. Yeah, so in some ways, I think the strategies is the most interesting part of the document because in a way reading the strategies actually helps explain what we mean by the goals and objectives. So I like what you've done. I don't agree with everything that we've put in there, but I think that a comprehensive list which is pulled from various documents that have been produced over the years, I think that that's useful. And but I think we also need to be cautious about some of the things we put in there because not all of it's been vetted, but I like the idea of the big comprehensive list. Shalini. I think I would maybe suggest organizing them, something to what I think Evan had alluded earlier that we could collapse the strategies within the zoning's incentives. I mean, those are the ones that I'm just seeing, but I'm sure there's a way to group them and then having them within that I think is good. I don't know, does it help to suggest where we got it from? Because then it's like, oh, the consultants in the housing production plan and the master plan already vetted these and these are coming from there. So I don't know if in the final policy that we send to council, whether we should provide that reference. I think the references are helpful partially from a, when we're presenting this around, people know we didn't just make this stuff up. It came from somewhere. And so it's not necessarily CRC's ideas. It is listed from all of these different studies that the town has paid for and we're using them to move forward and all. Okay, other thoughts, Evan? I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around this a little bit. So the things that are listed under strategies are from the housing production plan, the real estate market study and the master plan. Plus, right? Plus. Okay. So I guess if all we're doing is grouping, I guess I'm trying to figure out what the value of this policy is, right? To the council, to the planning department, right? And so if 95% of the strategies are just things that we pulled out of existing documents, is the value is just what? That we're grouping content from multiple documents to for people, like what's the value? So then the other side is there's stuff that's from counselors in here, but of course we might disagree on those things, right? And so it'd be hard to say this isn't adopted. So I guess I'm just trying to wrap my head around the strategies, what the value is that adds value beyond the existing documents that we have. Nalini? I think that the fact that we have so many strategies out there in different places and if this policy could be the composite of all of those things, then it also gives direction to the planning department that's been asking us like, where do we put emphasis on? And there were a lot of like things around zoning and so forth that were there in different consulting documents. So I think this policy kind of gives direction that we've vetted through all of those things and this is what we should be focusing on instead of starting in a new place. Let's look at what's already been done and let's start working here. To me it feels like it's all taking all of those different pieces and putting it in one place so we can look at them. And we have the references so we don't have to go to the separate pieces to look at them. Can I just? Yeah, you can just respond. So the strategies that are pulled from the master plan, right? So the master plan has been adopted by the planning board and I assume will be very soon approved, I think that's the language that Charlie uses by the council. The recommendations from the production plan and the studies have never been approved or adopted. We just, we get a study but we don't necessarily, sometimes we get studies and we might disagree. I mean, we oftentimes disagree with things in them. So I'm trying to build on what Charlie said is the idea being this, the stuff that's being pulled from those studies by putting them into a policy we are sort of officially endorsing those recommendations. So right now they exist as studies but this adds a level of endorsement and support to them. Is that sort of what we're looking at? No, it's okay. I'm trying to just figure this out in my own mind so you all are helping me out with this. Cause then the other side of that is then, do we want to include any strategies that were recommended by counselors as part of that 13 page list but that didn't come from the three documents that we talked about. Cause then that's a whole different thing. I mean, right now it's all in there. I guess I'm gonna take my turn to speak and then Sarah, if you've got anything to add, you've been very quiet. So I wanna give you a chance to say something. I'm concerned about a comprehensive list simply because then it doesn't serve the purpose that I'm hoping a comprehensive housing policy will serve which is to give some direction and Shalini said to not just the planning department because not everything is zoning, but CPA, CDBG, housing trust, I can't think of other bodies, but even just other departments, the conservation department, this is Stephanie Chickarello and ECAC as they start looking at what to do to meet the climate action goals and plan. So I see it as a better idea if we try to limit what we list under each strategy so that it doesn't seem overwhelming is one of my thoughts. So Sarah, if you've got anything to add? So I guess when I looked at everything altogether, in a way, I don't know if we wanna just, so in a way, seeing everything altogether kind of, it gives you sort of a comprehensive roadmap where Amherst in different places has made priorities. So and then in some ways, even if you don't agree with some of it or it hasn't sort of been ratified, I think being able to see them all together maybe in some kind of an index and just showing where they came from maybe able is just like an index. And then it would be up to us to pull out what we as council think are very specific things to that we want to concentrate on and maybe even like what we have left for our last year and a half. So I would think that it would be like and maybe in two separate places. I don't know that I would get rid of everything that's altogether because I think it, when someone is pondering, like, well, it's good to have them all in one place but then I would, we should maybe, I already said this, I'm just repeating what I said. So yeah, that's what I'm thinking is that way you know where we're headed but you can also see, if somebody goes, oh, well, I think, I don't know what, taking money from private sources would be great to do this fund and you can say, well, we've been there, where do you want to put it in? It's been explored.  I did. Okay, Shalini. I think something I always believed in research was triangulation, which is don't rely on just one methodology. And so the way I'm seeing these different consultants reports and including then counselor is like, maybe like, I don't mind doing that, like creating a comprehensive list of seeing, because there's definitely overlapping strategies because I started with the plan, master plan. I'm like, oh, you already have that under, you know, that was what was recommended in the housing plan. So I wonder if there's a way that we could see that these were the most, you know, heavily promoted strategies by multiple bodies, then those become like, oh, maybe they're rising to the top. And then including then also other stakeholders, like, you know, what's been proposed by John Harnick and his suggestions, what is, I don't know, at some point, this is gonna go to the community. And so, you know, so we start off with what we have and then keep looking at what other stakeholders are, you know, giving weight to and then make that sort of the ultimate priority list. That's all my brain works anyways. Steve. Yeah. So I think it's useful to put all this stuff out in the sunshine. And yes, if we adopt it, so if we adopt this as policy, then it puts some things that may have been forgotten or sort of left on the shelf, puts it back in the sunshine and becomes policy. Like I was looking at the various comments about two family houses, duplexes. And so sometimes those are in conflict with each other. Like one says two family houses should be by right and only these certain zoning districts. And another one says no, they should be by right in all zoning districts. Those are two ideas that are in conflict, but the idea is the same that two family houses are a good way of addressing, you know, many of the issues that are being discussed and it's very much within the realm of our action, you know, to enable something like that to happen. So, I mean, there's little things like that that I think are really useful to put out in the sunshine as part of this plan and see where it goes. So, I guess my concern is if we list too many things, we end up not getting anything done because there's no structure to what to tackle first. You know, and so for example, we've got five goals. If we list 20 things under each goal, do we tackle 20 for increasing housing stock first, building more housing first before we ever get to goal four, which is climate sustainability? Do we tackle the first two on each one? Do we have to list them in whatever priority order there is? You know, I think, you know, and then I go back to, or is the strategies more of, as some people are saying, what people can take as a way to explain the plan and explain the policy makers' ideas of how to get and fulfill the policy because as a council, we're the chief policy setters of the town. We're not really the, you know, there's not too much of these strategies, the zoning strategies, we would have to pass, but some of the other strategies, we don't have much say in, we're not the ones implementing it. So do we list things so that the people that would have the plan and get an idea of, oh, hey, they think this is one way to fulfill this policy goal that they have of creating more housing and not, oh, and on the inverse side, does not listing something also give information to the implementers, you know, say, I'll take Steve's two family examples, say we choose to list as an example with two family, whichever, you know, pick one, two family by right and only certain districts, does that give the policy setters in terms of making proposing revisions a, an idea that we wanted only in those districts, not everywhere like this other policy said, like, is it a way to signal what the council might, might consider better than other strategies by leaving some strategies out, or leaving some ways of doing those strategies out. Shalini. I think the different strategies are not all implemented by the same body. And like, I'm thinking, for example, some of the strategies for promoting diversity of housing focusing on seniors. So some of the strategies within that were, I'm looking at the master plan was, you know, giving incentives to developers, whatever to build senior homes and so forth. So that's like, we're not doing anything. I mean, I guess we are, I mean, not the council is not doing but the town staff will be involved in working with developers to figure out how to give them the incentive. But what I'm saying is that different strategies are going to involve different bodies. So they're not all falling on the same people. So I think we do need to have them so that it also sends a message out to the town developers who are going to be there, or even families who are looking, hey, we want diversity. We want you to come and live here. And here is how we're working to build. So I think it's important to have the strategies and which ones because the other gazillion of them at this point. I mean, to me, like I said, I would maybe start with the ones that are coming from multiple sources and we can highlight those that these have come from more than two or more places. And so we can start by how putting all of them but highlighting those and putting those on top, the ones that have come from the master plan and the any housing with production plan. Are there any others? Is there only one? I thought there were two. So there's the master plan, the housing production plan, the housing market study. Some language from the housing trusts draft priorities. Right. Exactly. From the counselors that I pulled from the. Right. Doning list that you've compiled. Right. And not to forget like the master plan and many of these actually included the community input. Right. So in some way, we're saying that these reflect the majority, not majority, so my bad, these reflect many voices, not just counselors or town staff. The master plan, not necessarily the strategies to get to the goals, but the goals and objectives of the master plan would have had a lot of input, but I'm not sure Dave can correct me. If I'm wrong, the housing market study or the housing production plan probably didn't have a lot of community input because it was more of a study. Right. That's generally correct. Certainly the housing market study didn't housing production plan. Certainly I think was vetted at various meetings like the planning board and or I'm not, that might have been done before we had a housing trust. So there certainly was public vetting of it, but not a lot of community involvement. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good comment. You know, they're one of those plans. Thanks, Sarah. Okay, so getting to Mandy Joe, what you usually say is taking a look at what exactly we're trying to do in this document. So if what we're trying to do is policymakers is to hand down to people who have to then. Generate strategies and, you know, make these goals happen. And then I think if I was on planning board or ZBA or town staff, I definitely, if I'm the one doing the job, one, I'm not sure I would want town council has never done this before to give me strategies, although I would appreciate the calls. Do you know what I mean? So then if we are going to give strategies, I feel like maybe then we shouldn't just, you know, unless it's an index of if you want to look at all the strategies that we've ever had from everywhere here, they are and take a look if you're right. If I'm starting out, maybe it's good to have that, but I don't know that we should make those policy. So I think in, in that, in that vein, I would say that whatever we put forward as town council as strategies that we approve of, or would like to see or think have teeth, then we definitely would only have to, I would say we'd have to do the few that all of council, or most of council feels like has teeth. And, you know, we would really like to see, even though we don't do this all the time, we would really like to see it. So in that, I think, yeah, I think we should be much more specific and maybe not have everything. Although I think it would be a service to the people who are trying to achieve these goals for us to have an index of maybe every single strategy, you know, you could find, but not ones that they're just like an index. If you want to look up what strategies are in blah, blah, blah plan, but I think that would then in that case, we do have to say here, the few that we would suggest and we would like to see used. I don't know if that makes sense. So does that, you know, lead towards under strategies, a prioritized strategies list, and then an other strategies potentially. That's a question. I would say yes. And I think also if we're looking, I mean, what it's going to be less confusing to the people who have to look at who are saying what does council want, right?  I would think that we probably want to be more specific. I think that was our issue with the downtown parking working groups study. Had so many. Shalini, that is the question though, how are we, what is the criteria for deciding which ones we want to leave and because I, I mean, I don't think what the counselors want is the, the list. I mean, unless we, I mean, we can't say that we know more than the consultants or we know more than the other. Processes that have gone through. To come up with those strategies, like we know more. So what is the criteria we're using to finally leave in some of the strategies. And I think to Sarah's point, and like I was saying earlier, the stakeholders that are going to be impacted or who are going to implement them should be part of this process at some point. And I don't know what that looks like, you know, whether it's the planning board, whether it's the planning department, whether it's the community, the people. So, and then of course we already heard from John Harnick. And so at what point do these different people come into this process. That's a good segue into the last 10 minutes or so of our conversation as we continue after these strategies, which is one thing I want to talk about is at what point do we ship this out to others? Do we potentially do, you know, some sort of forum or a larger public meeting that's not maybe not at two to four p.m. on a Tuesday is maybe on a different day or a different time that more people might be able to attend to get feedback to get suggestions. And what are we seeking when we send it out on feedback maybe given our conversation, one of the things that pops into my head is maybe we're ready to go out for feedback on the large goals, whatever color those are green or whatever, the objective under the goal and the blurb under that. And then a lot of questions about what would be helpful to be in this document for the stakeholders that are going to seek to, you know, sort of apply the policy and meet it. Maybe that's maybe potentially now is the time to start going out and asking questions like that and seeking feedback on the main goals. But that's that's a discussion I'd like us to have in the next five, 10 minutes is thoughts on should we be sending it out now for specific questions and comments, even in its sort of unorganized strategy listing form and thoughts. Shalini. My perfectionist self would say let's organize these in a coherent manner and then send it out. My entrepreneur self would say this is the minimal viable product before we put in too much more time into it. We should send it out and get feedback rather than do all the work of organizing it and then, you know, come up with a totally different way of handling it. So just the two perspectives. No solutions. Anyone else. Well, we could send out the thinner document without strategies, and then include all of those that lists that you've generated as an appendix as a sort of an unsorted appendix as to the kinds of comments that other documents have said about the issues that are related to housing. That would be one approach to this. So I don't think that this document is ready to be sent out right now. If we were going to send it out. I would kind of go with what Steve said of a skinny version. But I also wouldn't include everything in the appendix in the appendix. I think that gives people too much to get bogged down in. And if we're thinking about stakeholders, I mean, where would this go, right? Maybe the housing trust, the planning board, town staff, or planning department, maybe ECAC to look at the sustainability portion or the climate portion. And what we'd be doing is basically saying, here's what we're thinking of goals and our objectives. And what we're thinking of goals and our objectives. And what we're thinking of goals and our objectives. Did we miss something? Before we move into strategies under those, but the unsorted list, the chaos. I know when I first started reading this last time. Before I realized what you had done and just putting everything in is I was like literally making notes on each goal. And then I went, wait a minute, this is a waste of my time. She just threw everything in here. And it's taking notes on individual. And it's so easy to get bogged down in that. So I actually don't think we're at a point where we need to solicit feedback yet, but if we are going to do that, I would just recommend just doing goals, objectives and blurbs and cutting everything else from the document and keeping it very focused because that way also it, to certain extent there's a benefit of them having a very could put 15 to 20 minutes on their agenda to discuss this. But if you if you attach everything, you're talking about really big conversation for these groups for something that we haven't even gone through yet. Melanie? I think, okay, what was coming to my mind is that the that firstly what is the goal of doing that? I guess the if the goal is to get the overall objectives and goals approved, then yes, let's just do that. But we obviously don't want to have a policy with just that. And eventually we do want strategies and measurable because only then it's going to be implemented. Otherwise, it just becomes one on one other document and with some broad goals in it. And so at some point we are going to have to tackle the strategies and measurables. And so do we want to send them this and then come back and then send them again? Or do we? I mean, would it be helpful if if we sent a document, maybe not now, maybe we get another review with a potential cleaned up document a little bit that doesn't include any strategies, per se, has a note that goes along with the document that says, we're looking to include strategies, what method would be most helpful if we included strategies and then give some, you know, some options or give us, you know, or comment on ask, ask these these bodies to comment on what would be most helpful adding into the document, whether it be more blurbs under objectives, more descriptions under that of what we're going for, whether it would be strategies, whether it would be measurables or not, you know, and sort of ask for feedback on what else would be helpful to them if this policy is passed in best describing what the council wants as policy and goals. I mean, that that's an option is we don't just have to send it off without any description, we can actually ask specific questions that we want responses back with beyond just feedback on the goals, objectives and blurbs. Sarah? So I think that might be the better idea if we're looking at this document as sort of a roadmap, you know, for the policymakers and we're giving this to other boards and committees as a roadmap for what we want. I think that it would probably be helpful to do it the way you just described, Mindy Jo, because then the people who are going to have to take action on this are giving us some feedback about either how they would do it or what more information they need in order to achieve the goals that we've just sort of roughly set out. Thanks. Shalini, is your hand still up? I was wondering if you could get feedback from Dave, what would be helpful from the town staff perspective, like what what sort of a policy document would be most helpful to you? Oh, nothing like putting you on the spot, Dave. And if there's nothing right now, I'm okay with that. I mean, just something I was just wondering if we could get, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. That's okay. It seems to be the way the day is going. I don't know, I may be talking more in generalities but so yeah, I mean, I happen to be working on a couple of affordable housing projects right now, so it's very topical for me. I think the stronger you all are, the policy setters for the town. So the stronger the policy message can be in this document, the better. I think, you know, I think it's a fine line between kind of setting that policy and how specific you get. That's a really fine line as to, you know, where the line is between a policy and, you know, telling essentially Paul what he should direct his staff to do. I guess I'm, you know, I think the stronger this policy is and the sooner we articulate it, the better.  We're going to be working on this for the next, you know, 15 years. I mean, it's not, we're not going to solve this in one year, we're not going to solve it in three. It has to be an ongoing, just like climate action, we have to, we have to be working on affordable housing at every level of government. So I think you guys are on the right path. I'm not afraid of the specifics but, and I welcome the policy. I think this has come a long way from the original document that was presented to you too. So I think you've made improvements but. Thanks, Dave. Can I ask a follow-up question? What would make a policy strong according to you? I think clarity, you know, words matter. So I think this will ultimately be the council's policy, right, the town's policy on affordable housing. So I think a clear policy using active language that anyone can read and say Amherst is committed to affordable housing. These are some of the broad ways that Amherst can achieve affordable housing. You know, we have various policies and other policies and plans that indicate where that affordable housing should be. Things like that. I think one of the challenges for us at the staff level, I know I've gotten in many conversations over the last five or ten years when, you know, because I wear many hats but, you know, I can tell you how many conversations I've been involved where people say, well, you know, wouldn't you know, Dave, there's a piece of property out on Bay Road that's five acres. Wouldn't that be the perfect place? Why isn't the town moving forward to acquire that for affordable housing? And so I typically have to go through this litany of reasons why we as a community have said maybe way out on the branches of our town, way out on Bay Road where there's no bus route. There is no, there's no sidewalk. There may be no water and sewer. That's not the best place for affordable housing or housing in general. We want our housing to be in the village centers. I go back to the master plan and I say the town has said it once and it makes all the sense in the world from all the, for all these reasons, that housing should go near services, near bus lines, walkable, bikeable, and from an energy and land use standpoint, it makes all the sense in the world to do dense, affordable, and mixed use housing in our village centers. There's still plenty of room in our village centers. There's still room for redevelopment. If you look at the East Village Center, if you look at downtown Amherst, there are dozens and dozens of one-story buildings that were built in the 1950s and 60s. Steve, you all know this well, being a former member of the planning board. And I don't want to pick up buildings because sometimes people get sensitive. They go, I love that. I love shopping there. And I'm like, wow, that's a one-story cinder block building that probably should be demolished and we should go up two stories or whatever. But the East Village is a classic case. I mean, there's lovely stores and wonderful folks who live down there, but we have tremendous potential to redevelop the East Village with hundreds of units of housing and commercial and retail. So there's room. It's not that we're out of room. We need to be more creative in densifying the village centers. So that's probably the long answer, Sean. Any other thoughts before we move on at this point? We'll just put it back on the next agenda for further discussion, cleaning up of that, and hopefully figuring something out with where to go from here on it, maybe getting it ready to send out with some questions to people. Seeing no other comments at this time, we'll move on on our agenda. We have one action item. This stems from a discussion last week, last meeting on the policy that we had adopted for recommending appointments to planning board and ZBA. After we've implemented it one time, we talked about that. And at last week's, at last meeting, we didn't have any suggestions for changing the policy that CRC has adopted for those recommendations. But there was some mention that there seems to be some disagreement or not disagreement, a fine word, but some discussion every time we get to these types of appointments, including there was some issue. It's not just with planning board and ZBA, but about what to do about those who are on a body that we appoint that are seeking a second term, how to deal with that, how to consider those applications, along with whether the council wants to implement any type of policy related to term limits. And what came up last meeting was some differences on whether that is an issue. I don't think there were differences, but there was some discussion as to that that's probably a better town council matter than within CRC, since CRC is not sort of, we shouldn't be setting policy on a council level as to what the council does with things like term limits and reappointments. So the thought was to potentially bring up at this meeting, hence the action item here, as to whether we want to ask the council to take up the issue as a discussion and potential action item of how to deal with individuals who seek reappointment to a second term to a body that the council appoints. And also not just a reappointment issue, but also then, because they could be seeking a third term too, whether we want to ask the council about any institution potentially of a term limit policy or not. So it's on the agenda for an action item. We would not be recommending any potential policies. The action item on the agenda is whether we just want to ask the council to discuss these matters. So thoughts. Shalini. I think it's a good idea to have that discussion at the council level, because it will help to bring out all the pros and cons of the ways that different people think about it and then to have a make an informed decision. And then everyone is on the same page because it seemed like there was a lot of ambiguity where some people like, well, we've always done it this way. And but the fact that wasn't in this way means that these councilors voted this way because of XYZ. And so there were a lot of assumptions and accusations and reading into intentions and all of that that could be avoided if we all came because I personally have a particular opinion about it, which, you know, may be different, but I think it's important for us to agree on what that is moving forward. Steve. Yeah, I guess we're not expressing our own opinions, but I would be very reluctant to isolate experience as one of the qualifications that we either have a yes or no vote on without considering the whole range of if we if we think that developing a rubric of evaluating candidates is a good idea. I might be fine with that, but having experience as the single marker that we have to make a decision on or that we're has to influence us, I strongly object to that. So that that's continues to be my opinion that we can talk about experience all we want, but we also need to talk about all the other qualifications. Thank you, Steve. Let me ask you, would you be in favor of asking the council to discuss the matter as a whole body or not? I mean, we can ask them, would it be binding or non binding? Depends on what the council does with it. So obviously, we're, you know, we're three weeks away from all kinds of elections, and some candidates are running an inexperience and other candidates are running a lack of experience. So it's a political decision, you know, in other words, I think it's up to the candidates to put the best foot forward, and if experience is part of their best foot, go for it. But we in this town have decided that it's the town council that appoints and the towns around us, the planning board, and I think those aren't boards of appeal are elected. And so those candidates are are saying you should reelect me because I have experience in another one saying, but your experience is not the experience that we want. So you should elect me because I don't have that experience. So I think that it's up to the candidates to, you know, put the rest foot forward and I would be very and you know, I don't want us to be boxed in where we have to give preference to someone with experience when there's other good candidates in the pool. Evan. So I think that appointments, council appointments have been the most contentious discussions that we've had on the council by far. And certainly part of that has come down to perhaps who the people are who are being recommended for appointment or who is not being recommended. But a lot of that conversation that comes down to whether or not people get reappointed, whether or not there are term limits. And I think part of that is because some people have very strong opinions, and some don't, but most of us have very strong opinions on whether there should be a preference for reappointment, whether people, whether we should have more rigid term limits, whether we should have no term limits or whatnot. OCA had one policy that we used, which was essentially the appointed committee handbook. That appointed committee handbook has never been adopted by the town council or discussed by the town council. CRC modified our policy and how we treated that away from the appointed committee handbook. I fear that if we don't end up having a council policy on this, then we're going to continue to have really contentious discussions where there is debate over whether there are term limits. Right now, there are no term limits, right? Because we have never adopted the appointed committee handbook, but some of us are applying term limits and some of us are not. And so I think that that chaos and that confusion and that disagreement about whether in the absence of having adopted the appointed committee handbook, we have term limits or not or a preference for reappointment. There's a lot of conversations about precedent. It's just become a mess. And honestly, it's eaten up so much of council time during these discussions. And it has provided a cloudiness to the appointment process and the expectations. Because what we heard in the last one was, we have a history and a precedent of always reappointing, but the council has never discussed that and never adopted that individual committees have. And so I think having a council policy is important. That said, this would be a council policy. And I think that that conversation originates in GOL, which deals with the policies and the rules of the council. I don't think this goes straight to the council. So what I would actually, my preference for us to do is to make this specific and say that we are requesting, and we've had this before where one committee makes a request of another committee and that committee can ignore it or not. But we are requesting that GOL look at sections 2.3 and 2.5 of the town's appointed committee handbook to make a recommendation about whether the council should adopt them or adopt modified versions of them. But I think that because this inevitably will be a policy of the council, the discussion rightfully sits in GOL. Certainly not in this committee. It did sort of rightfully sit in OCA as a new committee that included appointments, but now we split up appointments. So I support the council having adopted a policy. I think the first conversation is actually in GOL. Sarah. So I would agree that this is the most contentious thing. And I honestly started having ocular migraines after the second time that we, for real, that we did this and some serious health problems. It's really weighed on me. I don't have a problem with it going to GOL, although I think that right now through two discussions, I think we know almost every single person's personal preference on some of these things. But I do think, you know, we could put it through GOL, but after the last really horrible conversation that we had, and I will never forget when looking at all of us and telling us we better pretty much get our process straight because she never wanted to see that again. I feel like when we are reappointing people, it has to go, we have to have rules that the entire council or the majority that we can vote on. So we have a majority they vote, they win. Those are our rules because if you are looking to get reappointed to a committee or to get on a committee, you need to know what bar you have to reach or what some of the rules are. If all of us are going to, as a council, you know, say, yes, we agree on this person, you have to have rules to follow. And if we don't want to do that, right, then I think the entire town council then needs to have a discussion of do we want rules that we can measure every single person by, or are we saying that this is political and we absolutely don't want any kind of rules or framework. Hardly any. We're not doing term limits. We're not, you know, very roughly. And I think so I'm fine with GOL doing it, but I think whatever we decide has to be decided by the majority of the council. Otherwise, I have no idea how we're going to do this all over again and not have it be another horrible contentious conversation. Melanie. I think yes to what everyone said pretty much, but I think it's important to have this conversation and to decide one way or the other. I don't think we're discussing at this point what our individual preferences are. But if you don't have that conversation, it'll just stay ambiguous. And I think it's just important for us to have that consistency and also for the different committee people who are joining committees to know going in what the expectations are. And it doesn't matter whether it's one way or the other. As long as everyone knows those are the expectations going in. And if you were to go personally about, I don't think I'm not going to say that because I don't think that's the discussion. I'd love to share what my point of view is about it because I feel so strongly about it. But I don't think that's the point right now. So I'm going to restrain myself. Steve. Yeah, so I feel uncomfortable about avoiding uncomfortable discussions. So I think that the CRC discussion of this was a very frankly, I think both discussions were within the realm of a lively, robust discussion. I think it was uncomfortable because we were talking about people that we knew that were watching. But I think that there were important discussions to be had about very qualified candidates for a board where there were too many candidates for enough spots. And if that's the way that the conversation has to happen, I'm totally comfortable with that. In fact, if there was an easier route before us, I guess what I'm saying is that we need to be comfortable with having uncomfortable discussions, even when we're talking about our neighbors and friends who are candidates for these positions. And at the same time, they need to, they're applying for positions in which they'll be very much in the public eye and subject to scrutiny by the same bodies that are scrutinizing us. And that's part of it. And I think that we can certainly improve, but I'm not afraid of being scolded.  Solani. Yeah, I'm not afraid of uncomfortable conversations either. I think that's not what we're discussing here. What we're discussing is whether the council should agree on the term limits or not. And I think the more clarity we have around those things, then it just creates clear expectations. Because I think it was everything else was okay with the way the discussions have, which as Steve said, I think that's, I think it went really well given the awkwardness of it. But I think the only part that was not so clear is that how everyone came in, knowing for sure that, oh, of course, we have always done this, so there should be term limits. And then they were, oh, we've never accepted it. So therefore, it's not a criteria. So I think let's just put that whatever, let's just put that to rest one way or the other, what we decide. And I think that's something that the more clarity we have around that. And I think it's fair to the committee members to know also one way or the other what it's going to be. So I'm drafting a motion here. So here's my draft motion. And before I make it, we're going to modify it so we don't have to do revisions to it after it's made. So my draft motion is to request the council refer to GOL, sections 2.3 and 2.5 of the town's appointed committee handbook for recommendation to the council on whether or for report and recommendation to the council on whether to adopt a council policy on term limits or reappointments. Let me see if I can figure out a way to get that on a screen. Before we make it, let me know if there's any changes people would like. Steve. Yeah, so I still am uncomfortable with asking them just to look at these two issues. So whether or not the council, there should be a council policy on weight given to all of the qualifications for candidates, which might be professional experience. It might be academic experience. It might be lived experience. It might be their experience on this particular board. It might be too much experience on this particular board. But I remain uncomfortable about picking just two of the qualifications. And then I also remain I also remain uncomfortable with basically writing a bylaw this way. So the bylaw very clearly states what the term is. And so if we think of the term should be longer, then we should address that through bylaw change. Or I think it's bylaw or charter change. I'm not sure. The charter has ZBA and planning board terms. Okay. So they're also in the zoning bylaw, right? They probably the bylaw probably mirrors the charter. Yeah. Evan. So I guess, you know, again, my point in having those specific things and those specific references to the appointed committee handbook is that some members of the council are operating under the assumption that the appointed committee handbook language in these two sections is currently in operation and some are not. And I would like us to have a definitive answer as to whether or not these two things are something that the council should be holding itself to. I think the question of how we evaluate candidates is much harder. But I think to me right now it's these two sections and really it's actually one sentence in each of these two sections that are causing so much debate and confusion in the council appointment process. And so to me, I would like us to just have a recommendation about at least their start about whether or not the council wants to adopt both of these. I guess my one thing is, you know, so again, 2.3 and 2.5 are have a couple other things in them. There are really two sentences, like I said, that we're looking at. But I guess I'm wondering, yeah, whether that's what I was trying to get at. Because there's also things like I'm looking at that right now. Like 2.3 also has in it the general policy is to appoint an individual to know more than two permanent committees at a time. Like that's something we've also never adopted, but there was some conversation about should we be appointing someone to both ZBA and planning board is someone allowed to serve on both. And right now we have no policy around it. But those kind of things are also might be important. And so these are sort of not criteria or evaluative of an individual candidate, but just generally policies on how we go about appointments. I reworded it to the last half report and recommendation to the council on whether the council should adopt with or without modification these sections. I'd be okay with that. Any other thoughts on this before we formally make the motion? I'm not seeing any. So I will make a motion to request the council refer to GOL sections 2.3 and 2.5 of the town's appointed committee handbook for report and recommendation to the council on whether the council should adopt with or without modification these sections. Is there a second? I second. Sarah. Any discussion? Seeing none, we will roll call. I think I'm the start of the roll call and I will say yes. Evan. Yes. Steve. Yes. Sarah. Yes. Felony. Yes. That is five unanimous. I can spell. Okay. We have now made that motion. I will get that and pass that. We are on two minutes. We have the September 29th, 2020. We're just going to stop the share. We have the September 29, 2020 minutes in our packet. Are there any requested revisions to them? Seeing none, I will take a motion to approve the September 29, 2020 minutes as presented. So moved. Steve, motions. Is there a second? I will second that. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we're starting with Evan. Evan. Yes. Sarah. Yes. Steve. Sorry, I did that out of order. Steve. Very cool. Yes. Shalini. Yes. Mandy. Yes. That is also unanimous. Sorry for surprising you, Sarah. Totally okay. I was so ready. Can't see when I was so ready. It was like I just surprised her out of order. With that, are there any announcements? Shalini? I don't have an announcement, but I just, since Dave wasn't there when Dr. Kate Atkinson spoke, I just wanted to bring that to his attention that Kate was here today to talk about the parking issue in her zoning where it's been considered commercial, even though it's going to be not used for renting out, but it's going to be used for her own employees and stuff. And so she, I think, came to appeal to us to either look at zoning overall when we are discussing how to deal with that, but also I think she was looking for a resolution for how to move forward with her particular situation right now. So she doesn't have to go through the special, the process because that entails a lot of money and whatnot. I'm sorry I missed that, Shalini. Yeah, I'm aware of her situation. I don't want to take up all of your time on that today, but I'm aware of her situation. We did offer her a logical solution working with the abutting landowner. Rob Mora kind of put pen to, pen to paper on that. So I'm not sure, you know, there's really only one solution and that's the one that Rob suggested to her, which I don't think was, was that costly. You know, there's no question the zoning up there is not conducive to what she would ultimately like to do, but there is a, there is a solution. We met with her months ago on that and I'm not, you know, I think we all went a little deep dive into COVID, including her as a medical professional. And we're now hopefully at least, we're not out of the COVID situation, but we at least have a little breathing room here in the valley. So I'd be happy to talk with her again. I'll check in with Rob to see if he's had any recent conversations with her, but he did propose a potential option for her. And then the long-term option might be a zoning change there. I would say I think she was appealing to CRC potentially for zoning changes. Yeah, I just want to say she's been writing to me personally about the particular parking situation and I don't know what to say to that. So maybe I can take this offline and yeah, I'll reach out to her because Rob and I would Dr. Atkinson have an email string. So let me refresh that a little bit and see where we are on that. I think that would be nice also just because she came and then we'll just thank you for your comment and then, you know, there was nothing back. So I think just even if you just circle back to her at least it'll be like she was heard. Yeah, thank you. Now the future agenda item, I just didn't get my hand up early enough, quick enough earlier. With regard to the report on our request for the referral to GOL, just in the report as maybe attachments if you could, just because I am expecting the council might be confused by this include the two relevant sections from the appointed committee handbook as an attachment to the report and also section or section 4a of the CRC appointment process and the recent OCA process. I can send you that if you don't have it at your disposal just so you they can see how it's been implemented in two separate ways just so they have the full context of why we're asking this. Thank you. I'll also include GOL process section. I think it's the same as the OCA one in that section but I will make sure I include that. Any other announcements? Steve? Just the 4DR meeting is tomorrow night at 6.30, yes? Yeah. On Zoom. Yeah, that's the public meeting. The announcement I have is more future agenda item. I'll be able to confirm by Friday or Monday that we got the announcement in the paper in time but plan on November 4th at 8 p.m. for a planning board joint CRC hearing on changes to a zoning article 14. I have received a draft of that today. I'm waiting for confirmation that those are the final drafts before I ship them out to you as a committee. I will do that as soon as I can so that you can see them and all. So I'll get that out as soon as possible. Our next meeting is the 27th. We may put that on as a brief discussion item prior to the hearing just so we can understand a little bit more about it. The 27th will also be a continuation of the zoning priorities discussion so we might not end up with housing on the 27th. We'll see what I can fit in and all in terms of future agendas and all. So I think those are my announcements and future agenda items. Any other agenda items for next time or any other time? Not seeing any. I don't have any items not anticipated. Does anyone else? No one else does. That means we will adjourn at 4.05 p.m. Thank you, everyone, and thank you, Lindsay. Thank you.


This is a story about two young men from Birmingham, UK, and it happened in the year 1969. I'm not claiming that this is exactly how it happened down to the last detail, but still, this is, more or less, a true story. Terence, a man from the working class, around the age of 20, had been interested in the occult for some time back then. He had painted his room in matte black and decorated it with inverted crosses, pentagrams, and various pictures of demons and Satan himself. He read and wrote about dark cults, the supernatural, and about everything that is evil and unholy. His mate, John, knew this well when he stumbled upon a book that was obviously written at least a couple hundreds of years ago. In Latin, he went straight to Terence and gave it to him as a present. None of them had any idea what it was about, since they did not understand Latin, but it was obvious from the appearance and the sound of some of the words written in it, that it had to have something to do with black magic or witchcraft. Terence was so amazed by this book, that he forgot to ask John where he had found it. He spent the whole evening trying to figure what this book could teach him, but even after a couple of hours of intense studying, he still could not find a clue. Frustrated and exhausted, he put the book on his desk and simply went to sleep. He awakened in the middle of the night, not sure what it was that had interrupted his deep slumber. And then he saw it. On the end of his bed, barely visible in the dark of his room, stood an enormous black shape with fiery red eyes. And it pointed at him. His natural reaction was to switch on the light, which he did, and the thing was gone. And as it turned out, so was the book John had given him. He looked for it everywhere in his room, in his house, at his friend's house, but the book had simply vanished. Of course, this incident left had a big influence on both of them. The influence was so big in fact, that they decided to write a song about it, and later renamed the rock band they played in after this song. The song's title was, Black Sabbath. And that is how Heavy Metal was invented.