Cute. Okay, Mr. Marshall.  We are recording. I believe. Let me just double check that. I see the little, I see the little light. I could see it with my screen shared. So we are good to go. Okay. All right. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of February 16th, 2022. My name is Doug Marshall. And as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6 31 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media. Minutes are being taken pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This planning board meeting, including public hearings, will be conducted via remote means using the zoom platform. The meeting will be held on the agenda posted on the town. Websites calendar listing for this meeting or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. If you have any questions or comments, or any reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings. As soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name on mute yourself. Answer affirmatively and then place yourselves back on mute. Maria Chow. We know that Jack gem sec. It will be absent tonight. Tom long. Present. Andrew McDougal. Present. I dug Marshall and present. Janet McGowan. Present. And Johanna Newman. Present. Board members, if technical issues arise, we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, we will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raised hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to remute yourself. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware. The board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment can also be heard and given at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address in the meeting. Please put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds there a lot of time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. All right. So the time is 634 and we can start with item one on the agenda. We will now move on to item two. We will now move on to item three. This is minutes for approval. Chris or Pam. As far as I know, there's only one set of minutes, which is from February 2nd. Our last meeting. Of this year. 2022. So. So why don't we go right into discussion? Are there any comments on the minutes for our last meeting? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It was really great. And they were done. Right after the minute after the meeting when I can still remember it. So I. I don't know. There's more. But I would move to approve these minutes. All right. All right. Does anybody want to second that we can have more conversation after the second. I'm seeing Janet McGowan's hand raised. So why don't we recognize her as seconding. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know these minutes from February 2nd. I do not see any hands raised. I guess we can go right into a vote. So we have a motion to approve the gen or the February 2nd minutes. We'll go through the role. Maria. Approve. All right. We know Jack is absent. Tom. Approve. Andrew. I. I'm an eye. Hi. Janet. Hi. And Johanna. Hi. All right. I have one question. This will go to Chris. So Chris. Andrew McDougal, you were, you were not here at the last meeting. Is that correct? So does Andrew need to abstain versus. In the affirmative. Chris is muted. So why don't we give, let Chris unmute herself and answer. Normally people who are not there or we're not there would abstain. I don't know if there's an absolute rule on that. Okay. I don't know either. I've heard it multiple ways. Okay. Sorry, Doug, if I spoke at a turn, but. That's, that's not a problem. Yeah. I've heard, I've heard that it's. It's perfectly acceptable to abstain or to vote in the. In whichever way you choose. Okay. All right. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt. No problem. And, and Chris, do we have any other outstanding minutes at all? As far as I know, we're caught up. I believe we're caught up. Yep. All right. Well, there, there were. So there's minutes from November 3rd that were reviewed by the planning board. And I believe there's a draft on. The website and. We need to go back in and reconstruct what Maureen Pollock said. In order to the Janet had some questions about that. She said it. What Maureen said wasn't fully. Represented. Although other discussions and other comments were, so I have not had a chance to go back in and reconstruct that. So the 11, three 21 minutes have not yet been approved. All right. They're posted. As drafts. All right. Do you have a sense of when you might get to that? Well, I hope it doesn't take an open meeting.  I don't want to, I don't want to go there. Request that I do it by the next meeting, which is when. March 2nd. March. Yeah, March 2nd. We'll promise to do it by March 2nd. All right. Thank you. All right. So. Moving on to the second item on the agenda. The time is six 39 and we will now take public comment. And as a reminder, this is public comment. On items that are not on our agenda. So that would mean. I, you know, the solar bylaws. Conversation is not allowed for this public comment period. Let's see. So I'm seeing one. That's from Marshall. Oh, there it is. I was having trouble seeing me. Yes. Okay. So I see Jack Hirsch's hand. Pam, why don't you bring Jack in and he can give us his name and address. Are you feeling like three minutes? Yeah. Why don't we give him three minutes? All right, Jack, you are in the participants. Thank you very much. Very good. Now we can hear you. I'm Jack Hirsch. I live on Flat Hills road in Amherst. And I had a general question, I guess, or maybe it was a reminder, but I was reading about the proposed subdivisions. And I see in state law that allows developers to submit. Fictional proposed subdivision plan and free zoning for seven months. And I'm just wondering what protections do individual residents have when the land is around them and the home that they bill bought is in a residential zone. And then the pressure is to change it to a very different type of land use that the homeowner had no idea was as it was possible. In fact, was relying on the zoning laws to prevent. So I'm assuming is that sort of the planning board responsibility? Who protects the homeowners? Chris, I see your hand. Why did you want to respond to that? I'm not typically doesn't respond to public comments. He couched it in a form of a question so I can try to answer the question if you would like me, let me do that. So state law tries to. Protect the rights of landowners to develop their property. And when a zoning change is proposed, the landowner may fear that he will not be able to develop his property in the way that he originally thought. And so state law allows the landowner to file a subdivision plan, a preliminary subdivision plan, followed within seven months by a definitive subdivision plan. And if that definitive subdivision plan is approved by the planning board, then the zoning can be frozen for a period of eight years. And that's state law. And we've gone over that with our attorney. And, you know, that's just the fact. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. All right. Let's see, Jack, do you have any other public comment you want to continue with or not? Well, I would just mention that residents deserve some sort of, of I understand that that state law, but residents should deserve some sort of reliance on zoning to protect their interests also. And if zoning change is made, isn't the theory that that's there to for the public good that that's what zoning is for. And it's, it's designed to protect everyone. I believe that is the just one of the sort of arguments for zoning. Yes. All right. So. I don't see any other hands. And I guess we can move Jack back to the attendees and. I guess move on to the third item on the agenda. All right. So the time now is 644. We have as a general topic for the item three on the agenda, the solar bylaw zoning proposal. And, and then we may get, if we have time, we may get to some other conversation about zoning priorities for this coming calendar year. So I thought it would make sense for Chris to start the conversation. You know, you sent around some thoughts this morning or this afternoon. And maybe we can use that to frame the conversation. Pam, I think you have those comments that. Chris sent. So whenever Chris is ready, you can put them on the screen so that, that our listeners and viewers can see it. Yes. So Chris, go ahead. Before, before we talk about those comments that I sent around, I wondered if I could just give a brief introduction to the process that we're entering into. And item A says drafting a zoning amendment on large scale solar amendments. So Stephanie Chicarello and I have been working with Dave Zomek, the assistant town manager. And Paul Backelman, the town manager to set up a process for creating a solar bylaw as well as for doing a solar resource study. And the solar resource study is an effort to look at land in Amherst to determine where it might be appropriate to site large scale solar installations. So first I wanted to say that we're all learning about the impact that solar has on the landscape and the environment. So I wanted to put that out there because we don't have all the answers. We're searching for the answers and we're hoping to get a lot of the answers by listening to the public and by having a group that can kind of be the focal point for this work, the work of creating the solar. Bylaw and creating and working on the solar resource assessment. So the town manager is in the process of creating a committee. And right now it's called the solar assessment and bylaw committee. And it is, it's sort of. Well, the committee membership will be, it'll be a temporary committee. That'll be in place until we have the solar bylaw and the solar assessment done. The idea is that it would be a public, you know, it would have all these meetings in public and all they'd all be posted. And the representatives or the membership would be representatives of the energy and climate action committee. The planning board. The conservation commission. The water resources protection committee. We're hoping to get a forest ecologist on board. We also know that we need a representative of the legal profession to advise us on legalities. It's been suggested that we include a member of the Board of Health. And we'd also like to include someone who knows a lot about solar installations, but is not a representative of a solar developer. So this committee will have two subcommittees. This is the way it's being proposed. Two subcommittees, one of which will work on work with a consultant on the solar resource assessment. And one will work on the solar bylaw. The energy and climate action committee will be working with Stephanie. On the solar resource assessment. And I will be working with the planning board and the planning department staff on the solar bylaw. And as I said, we're all learning as we go along. We're hoping at the end that the delivery of solar bylaw will be an overlay on the town zoning map. We're hoping at the end that the deliverables will include a map showing sites in town that are considered to be suitable for solar development, for large scale solar development. And we're imagining that this map will be an overlay on the town zoning map. And then we're also proposing that there be a new section of the plan. We're also proposing that there be a new section of the plan. And we're also proposing that there be a new section of the plan. So we have money to hire a consultant. The energy and climate action committee has money. And so we're going to be hopefully hiring a consultant fairly soon. And that's kind of this. The outline or the framework of how we're hoping to move forward with this. And then we're going to move on to the next slide. And then we're going to move on to the proposal. I think he's generally on board with it. And it's just a question of him actually, you know, finalizing this. I think he has to get town council approval for this new committee. And then he will be appointing members to it, but that's kind of the way we're envisioning working on this. So the planning board will have. The plan. The plan. And then we're going to be working on that. Creating the zoning bylaw. And we will be learning about the solar. Sighting or resource assessment as we go along. And aspects of that work will influence. Our work on the solar bylaw. So I just wanted to say that upfront so that you have some sense of how all this, how all the pieces fit together. Oh, Chris. Thanks. Thanks for that update. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. One question. The work of this. Of this one or two working groups. Will their. Recommendations. Come to us for recommendation to town council. Or will. Their recommendations go straight to town council for council to. The planning board. I think we learned things from last year from.  I won't say missteps, but just, you know, we learned things about the process that we don't want to repeat this time. So we're proposing to keep the planning board. You know, really informed about what's going on. And with planning board member or members on this committee. That the planning board members will be able to report to the planning board as well as I will be able to report to the planning board.  So the planning board will be part of the development of the zoning bylaw. And since planning board members will be on the committee itself, the larger committee, you will be kept informed about the work of the consultant on the solar assessment. So we're hoping that by the time this is brought to town council.  And that the public will also have heard about the planning board. And then once we bring it to town council, which we don't think will happen for several months. And it gets referred back to the planning board that you'll have a really good sense of what it's all about. Okay. I guess more to come and we'll see what, what's. How it falls out. Or how it plays out. Janet, I see your hand. Chris, thank you for that update. That was super good. And it sounds like a great process. I have a question about the solar. Assessment resources assessment committee. It seems, I wonder if we could put somebody with farming or a suggestion to add a farmer to that. Since most of the. Large scale solar facilities have gone on to farmland. And I don't think it's like a, um, I think dual use sounds fantastic. I'm not sure how it's been working out and it'd be good to have somebody who really understands fields and soils and, you know, things like that on that committee. And I know that our farm committee is kind of. In hiatus, but I wonder if somebody, if we can get a farmer involved in that. I'll make that suggestion. Obviously busy people to begin with, but. I guess I'm, I can't resist saying. Most of you probably don't know that I am a farmer. In that I happened to have inherited my mother's farm in the Midwest. So I have a small window on farming, but it's not. I don't know much about the local. Environment. So anyway. So Chris, why don't you go ahead and, you know, help us get into this conversation about the issues that we might be able to deal with. And think about. With the solar bylaw now. Actually, I, one other thing occurs to me. Do you have an update on that? I know they had the first reading from council, but have they had the second one? We're expecting that the second, well, the second reading is scheduled for the 28th of February. And we're hoping that they actually take a vote that night. So that's, that's the schedule on that one. Okay. All right. So, okay. So. In your packet, you had two examples of solar bylaws. One was from the town of Palmer. And the other one was from Hadley. And we just sort of chose these because we've got, you know, we've had, we have lots of solar bylaws and you've seen some of them. We've sent some of them to you already. These seemed like. Recently, good examples. Palmers is relatively strict and provides a lot of limitations. Hadley's is a little bit looser. And we know that Hadley has several solar installations in, in place. So we thought those were, you know, good examples to start out with. But I wanted to. Talk about Palmer's example. And this one was sent to me by a member of the public. I can't remember who it was. And the person who sent it to me thought it was a good example. So, you know, I think it's, it's well written. It's well organized. It's got a lot of good information in it. It's also. As I said, fairly strict. And I think it's a good example. So I put together some, some thoughts about the by-law and maybe Pam can. Bring it up on the screen and we'll post it on. On the planning board. You know, packet. Probably tomorrow. But. Some of the things that I noticed about the. Palmer's by-law were, well, we'll go through them one by one. So one of them is. The extent. Of solar array. And the question in my mind is, should Amherst impose a limit on the extent or size of a solar array. So just to let you know the array that. Amherst has proposed or that. A solar developer has proposed for the Hickory Ridge site in South Amherst. Is 26.4 acres. And that's part of 150 acre site. So that's one of the. Several uses that are going to be. Proposed for Hickory Ridge. Hey, Chris. Yeah. Can I interrupt just to ask Pam. Could you do a one page view? And. Substantial. Substantial part of the width of the screen. Good. Okay. So that way everyone can read it. Yeah. So, and this is a question that I don't know the answer to. Should Amherst impose a limit on the extent of a solar array. So Hadley has a limit of 10 acres. Amherst has a limit of 15 acres. And Belcher town has a limit of 20 acres. I think Amherst should be cautious about imposing a limit on the size of the solar array. And I think that it's really related to, you know, the size of the site that's being proposed and how suitable that site is. One thing I know from, you know, just kind of generally talking about this topic is that there is a limit on the size of a solar array. And I think that that many. Really suitable sites in Amherst. And if we find a suitable site, it may not be the best. What decision to limit the size of a solar array on a site that is particularly appropriate for solar. We may want to limit the amount of clearing of forested areas. We may want to limit the amount of land, but to put a blanket size limit on an array. May not be useful, especially since we're trying to reach the town goal of combating climate change and, you know, reducing greenhouse gas emissions substantially by 2050. So I don't know if people want to talk about this particular topic. It might be useful to hear what people have to say. And like I said in the beginning of what I'm, like I said in the beginning of what I'm talking about, I think that I'm learning about this now. I'm, you know, I, I'm coming at this with an open mind. I don't have a. Point of view, but I think, you know, we're all going to learn about it. We're all going to teach each other. And hopefully by the end we'll have a product that is at least acceptable to most people in town. So. All right. Thanks for that introduction on. On this particular aspect. Andrew, I see your hand. I think I agree with you Chris. One thing that popped in my mind is, you know, could the developer just subdivide their parcel to sort of work around any type of cap anyway, if, you know, assuming that site is equal to parcel in the language here. So that was, that was one thing that popped in my mind. And also I think that you, you mentioned something which I think is a critical importance as we consider this is that. Especially in a site that's this large, there's going to be, there's going to be variable suitability across the site as well. So I think the note, the notion of, of having kind of one size fits all or cap may not be adequately responsible or representative of the conditions in that particular site. I think this, I think it'd be interesting to take a look at this once the suitability work comes back. I'm curious whether that suitability work would actually be of a fine enough grain where we'd be able to, you know, allocate portions of parcels as suitable or not, or whether the intent is going to just be like a, a Boolean kind of yes, no, you're good or you're bad. So those would be my thoughts in this first one. All right. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, I was also struck when I saw the map of the Hickory Ridge solar array in our packet and just how sort of much interruption there was in, in how irregularly shaped they were because of the site constraints. Anybody else have comments on this? Janet. So I thought this was something that we, you know, we could get guidance from the solar resource assessment by law and by law committee because there's a lot of different paths to choose. And I had the same thought as Andrew that, you know, someone could break up their parcel and, you know, put in, you know, seven, five acre things instead of just having a large facility. And I would sort of defer this question, you know, because there's going to be different impacts and consequences and benefits. And I also wondered why did the towns pick the, the, the, the acreage that they did? And I just wonder if that could be some phone calls to Palmer and Belcher town planning department and just say, you know, is there, is there a factual basis or some evidence behind the site size over another? Like I just, to me it was just, I don't want to be picking numbers out of the air, but they obviously did pick numbers. And I wondered how did they get, you know, what was the information that led them to that number? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's something you would be interested to make those calls. I could do that. I'm always happy to chat on the phone. Yeah, we've had, we've had, we've also had the one individual who's come to a couple of our hearings. Who I think is from shoots, Murray and has indicated that he. Was part of putting together the shoots, Murray by law. I don't remember his name, but. I think it was Michael D Chiara. Yeah. That's, that's kind of what was in my head too. I just thought, how did you get there? Yeah. Well, I think it's worth asking. All right. Thanks. Tom. Hey, thanks Doug. I just wanted to comment that I felt like I read here or somewhere and I just read a lot of things in the last 48 hours, but. Yeah. I just talked about the size limitation being a derivative of the actual size of the property rather than a finite size in and of itself. So instead of capping it at 10 acres, if we have a property that's much larger that that could have, you know, a larger array or. Multiple smaller arrays on a larger property or something like that. So, it's not as much bigger as what we've seen in the past. I think it's more of looking at. Something that's scalable when it's sort of a max proportion or something to that effect rather than a finite size. And it goes along with, you know, area, the cleared area. And it goes along with open space that's in there, which is a percentage or 1.5 times the solar array. So I think there are ways to, to think about it as a proportion that's scalable. I guess I'll mention a couple of things that were on my mind. One is I was thinking about whether, you know, for a given size of solar array, is it better to have one large contiguous place where all of it happens, or lots of little places?  And I found a guy at the Harvard Forest, you know, forest fragmentation, and the scientific, there wasn't a consensus yet on which way was preferable. But he also said that if he had to guess, you know, because every one of these things has to have a road to it, and has to have, you know, some measure of, you know, setbacks and, and fencing, that his guess is that it's probably better to have fewer larger arrays than to have lots and lots of little ones, just in terms of a forest. And obviously that's a comparison, if you end up with the same, you know, if you're comparing a certain number of acres in one place to the same number of acres in another place. Whereas if, you know, if you say, well, we're not going to limit the size and we're going to allow big things, you know, the practical result might be you have a lot more big things and a lot more acreage of solar arrays in your town. So that's just one piece of, I think that's an part of this conversation. Thanks, Doug. Yeah, I guess I, I'm inclined to like Chris I appreciate your thinking about this, and I think I also kind of echo the caution sentiment because I think you could have the unintended consequence of essentially less solar but just as much disruption of open space. If not potentially more through the fragmentation of it. So, and, you know, we want like, we need a lot of solar. So, yeah, I think this is the I, I'm appreciating the conversation and I appreciate, you know, what what folks have said and I think we want to be. If we pick a size limit, we'd want to have a really clear reason why that's chosen and have it be grounded in our solar study rather than just a kind of a number picked out of the hat. Okay. One other thing that occurs me and I think it was brought up. Well, I don't remember who brought it up. If you're a landowner, and you have some woods in a residential that are resumed residential. You could clear cut it and put in a subdivision. Now, and I don't know whether you'd make more money than if you put in a solar array on a substantial portion of your land. So, you know, the all the by limiting solar, I wonder sometimes whether we are inadvertently making development of the land, the more attractive option for, you know, people that own land in residential areas. So, I don't have any other thoughts for this particular topic.  That's good. I wanted to start the conversation so this is really good. Okay. Okay, now we'll go to the second. Second one, which is the extent of forest land clearing so if Pam can scroll down a bit. Yep. I've been talking to Stephanie chicarello the sustainability coordinator about this and we amers will need to make a decision about whether it wants to have a limitation on the extent of forest clearing. And belcher town actually does have a limitation they say no more than 10 acres of land of forested land can be cleared. And so my conversation with Stephanie had to do with well, some forested land is very valuable for its habitat or other environmental values and some forested land is less valuable either because it's you know, sort of a scrubby meadow that's grown up in the forest recently or, you know, it doesn't have very good soil or isn't part of, you know, doesn't have a lot of water stormwater recharge or whatever the reason is there are differences in in the value of forests, whatever your criteria are. So, the solar, the person, the consultant that's helping us with the solar site assessment. We're hoping to have a forest ecologist as part of the committee. So we're hoping to get a handle on. Is there a difference between one type of forest and another where with the first type of forest you may not be as concerned about having it be cleared. So we're hoping that we can get an answer to that question but in the end, Amherst is going to have to make a decision do we want to put a limit on the amount of forest that's cleared and do we want to that limit to be tied to, you know, the value quote value I don't know enough about this to determine the value but you know, related to the value do we want to have a limit on clearing so if people want to talk about that I'd be interested in hearing about that. Well, let's see Tom I see your hand. Thanks and thanks Chris, I guess my question about this has a little bit to do with. Whether this belongs in a solar bylaw or whether this belongs in a general bylaw in the sense that why are we talking about this for this sake but not in case someone wants to put like a go cart track or if they want to put a pig farm in their backyard or they just want to rolling landscape and they want to clear like what why is this something that we're limiting only to solar and not something we're thinking about as something we are concerned about protecting our forests or we're concerned about protecting habitats. It should be a kind of universal bylaw, I believe, and I think that goes for some of the other comments I might have about things going forward that seem like we're nitpicking solar but we're not thinking about these as broader issues that affect that are affected by a lot of other kinds of changes to our land. Great. Thanks Tom. Andrew you get yours was the next hand. Thanks Doug. I think that's that's actually a great call out Tom I hadn't thought about that. And I would agree I think it would make sense to think of this in terms of a broader context to me. It's just like a couple of musings like I would definitely want to force ecologists if we're going to try to make an assessment as to value because I think that you could probably have, you know, 10 different opinions on what constitutes valuable habitat and what doesn't. So I feel uncomfortable at this point making a declaration certainly one expert opinion on that. I think like I would have a clear picture of this based on suitability analysis right if all of our for it like if every like gently sloping southern facing property and yeah I'm not even sure if that's what you want but if that's like the ideal scenario for solar I'd want to understand whether those are all forested lands because I would probably change how I would think about this. You know, in terms of what the potential full build out scenario might look like. Thanks. Thanks Andrew. Janet you're next. I think this is an, this is, I think at the end of the day, it would be sort of a community value on the land not just the foresters value, or I guess a forest ecologist is broader. And because I looked at that word value and I thought, what's high value what's low in like what are the factors recreation, oxygen production, carbon uptake and storage wildlife. There's a lot of wetlands in there water supply hunting, you know it's the forest have lots of values to them and so. And then if you're limiting the size of cuts or how much can you know like it does seem like we need to sort of step back and say okay this is our forest land. Should it be protected what should we do with it and I think we should have done this a while ago and it gets to Tom's point of, you know, if, if, you know why should this just be about a solar site, you know, it could be a go cart track or it could just be a little end owner can go in and very heavily cut. And then it becomes a degraded forest and maybe then it's suitable for you know for solar or other facilities and so I was kind of concerned about that might be, you know, there be an incentive to cut and change habitat or there's no real controls of how forest land is handled here. I think that's another great thing to kick to the resource committee like picking sites and why we pick sites and that I think about it ultimately is sort of a community decision of what the values are.  So if you're changing the animals and the plants that will be there, and how animals move that whole environment and so it's anyway that's it. All right, thanks. Thanks Janet. I'm going to just make one comment kind of in response to where you mentioned picking sites. And that seems very prescriptive to me. And so I guess I think there's going to be a sort of fundamental approach conversation or there should be about whether we're actually saying where it should be. Or are we saying simply, it can be anywhere except some particularly critical places. And, you know, I think that's, that's a pretty fundamental decision and it also reminds me of that amicus brief that we received from you Chris, that I think it was Michael pill had had sent for the wall fam lawsuit.  It doesn't really happen anywhere. And so, you know, if we come into this with putting a lot of effort into a bylaw that is very restrictive. And, you know, the courts say you really can't do that. We will have sort of wasted some effort and, you know, maybe put ourselves open to a lawsuit. If, if that's the way the judicial decisions are going. All right, Johanna. Thanks. I think back to I think when we first started talking about the solar moratorium, I asked a bunch of questions, like how much for us does Amherst have and how much of it is developable. And for me, those are like questions that we need answers to because if we have a bunch of protected forest, then I might be totally fine not putting a limitation on private forests that can be cleared for solar. But I would say if most of our forests could be developed, then it might make sense to put a restriction on it. So I just need more information. You know that parallels something I have written down which had to do with, you know, how much of our forest is in town conservation land already. And then that begs the question of, is the town open to using some of that for solar, or are we going to limit solar only where there's private land. So, good point, Johanna Andrew. I have another question. Maybe this had come up in a previous meeting, but while I know in previous meeting there's some talk about, you know, what Amherst's share of the state goal would be. And, you know, is it appropriate to think in those units, right? Like, maybe we could do it, but maybe you could get much better production, much more suitable lands out of a different area. I was just wondering whether anyone was aware, Chris, maybe as you looked at these are other towns trying to solve this sort of on their own for their quote share or is there a possibility to like partner with other communities to try to to share the burden in a more sensible, broader view. It's just, you know, it's, I get a little nervous that that us trying to do our share which is very noble might might result in kind of some standard or inferior actual installations when it's when it's done. Not knowing a ton about technology to be honest but our other towns approaching it kind of as a this is their job to solve entirely. Yeah, Doug. Yeah, sure Chris. So Cape Cod. Cape Cod Commission has put forth a solar model solar bylaw to help towns on the Cape to, you know, address this issue. I think they've necessarily gotten together, but they have this model solar bylaw that's been prepared for the Cape that the towns can use and, you know, we have our Pioneer Rally Planning Commission guidelines as far as, you know, developing a solar bylaw I'm sorry there's a somebody vacuuming upstairs but anyway. We can't hear the vacuum. So, the answer is not really they haven't really been getting together to deal with this in concert, which doesn't mean that we can't do that. So, some of our neighboring towns already have solar bylaw shoots very Pellum and Hadley, but and Belcher town, but, you know, we could reach out to them and say do you want to try to do this together. I think that's probably a larger longer term conversation and probably we're not going to be able to have that conversation before we feel like we need to put a solar bylaw in place. In terms of what is our share, you know, I think that's probably a good question to ask, and to be solved regionally rather than, you know, town by town. Well, it's, it's, it is true that Amherst has something like 40,000 people, and most of those surrounding towns are much smaller. So, if you want to think in that terms, regionally, you know, our share may actually be the majority of the power demand in for us in their surrounding towns. And I guess I guess I get a little nervous when people talk about our share, because it feels like everybody's trying to do only as much as they have to.  There's a whole lot of people in the eastern part of the state who don't really have available land for solar and maybe they're all going to get their power from wind. But, you know, I'm not sure whether the legislature would want the towns out in this part of the state, saying we're only going to do our share. So, Janet. So, on the good news front, which is so rare. The Boston Globe had an article today saying that Massachusetts had hit its 25% reduction goal. And I'm not sure if that's like a firm number. Part of it may have been due to the pandemic but mostly it's from the conversion to natural gas away from oil. So, there is progress being made. And so I think we should and you know it's obviously, you know, it's not every town doing like 25% reductions and so I do think it's a quick it is a question about like how much do we need how much solar do we knew where do we get our energy from I'm not sure it all has to take place in the borders of Amherst. Chris, I have a question for you because I've been sort of following this is Amherst looking at a number from Darcy Dumont talking about community choice aggregation which is a kind of towns banding together to buy energy, and it's not necessarily energy within their borders it's like energy that's available and it, you know they can buy green energy and it turns out to be cheaper than what you're buying, you know I buy from, you know, actually I'm on propane, but you know it's cheaper because you're buying in bulk is that is a town moving towards that I think we should work with Northampton and Hadley and so does that affect our calculus of what's our share from solar. Doug, may I answer that? Yeah, sure Chris. Yes, Stephanie Chickarello is working on that. And she is working very hard with other communities to establish community aggregated energy program. I'm not sure what the timeline on that is, but I could find out from her, but that's certainly something that is being worked on. Okay. Maria, you're next. I'm a solar expert so I'm coming at it from like sort of the regulation side and I'm thinking through like planning board roles and private property owner rights and so I guess what I'm having a weird time with this all of this is okay so we're talking about people's private properties that we're putting this new layer regulation on and like for example site plan reviews and special permits we look at like whether the proposed projects are detriment to like the butters, whether they have light or noise pollution so for this we're looking at sort of, we're putting on this extra layer, you know, of like we're folding in the environment and it's where like is this a detriment to the environment and it's interesting because every site is different as we know from all these permits we've reviewed and to put in number of limits on all these things same seems very strange to me and then also these values of like, you know, significant or important or critical. It all seems so, I don't know, I feel like it needs to be something similar to how we approach it with like special permits and site plan reviews where we look at the parcels we look at the adjacencies we look at what's the parcel as far as what's not buildable and how much square footage it is overall what's it next to what zone is it in so I feel like there's not like a blanket answer it seems like every project like we know it's going to be different so I guess what I am trying to lean toward is we really should have these committees with these various experts and perspectives that have actual facts to get into the things we're talking about. I guess what we should be doing is really just come up with a question right to ask, but that we're not really going to come up with sort of direction or answers. I'm just, I'm trying to, you know, like the letter from my fulfill just sort of the, you know, what is a private property owners rights and for us to define them. I guess I'm just what I'm having difficulty with this is also that the end result is you know solar energy which is such a necessity in our sort of existence and and we're trying to limit it and control it and say what's not allowed and so I just feel really really torn about like putting all these really restrictive things but at the same time yeah we kind of like site plan reviews and special permits we need to be careful about you know how it impacts its environment and maybe the big picture. So you know I don't know the answers to any of things you're asking Chris but I certainly appreciate us going through like the questions we should be asking but my view is that we should be really careful about limitations and saying you know this many acres this many feet. I feel like we really need to realize that the types of projects that do large PV installs installations are usually huge tracks and so putting numbers seems very, I think Tom touch on this you know doesn't make sense to say a specific number. It should be more about like like the far kind of thing you know where you take a portion of each parcel and do percentages but I guess I yeah I'm kind of this is not my realm I don't know how to really insert information other than just feelings and thoughts at this point but I do look forward to getting sort of expert information and data and to help us move ahead but um yeah I just I'm kind of in the sort of side of like don't put so many numbers and restrictions that it becomes such an unwieldy process that Amherst is like to be to PV developers like oh stay out of Amherst you know I definitely don't want that to happen so I guess that's my contribution. Okay, thanks Maria, Chris you have a comment. Yeah, I just wanted to say, I should have said this earlier that one of the things that we're hoping that the consultant will help us do is to establish community values, like, what do we value do we value forests do we value wetlands do we value having alternative energy what are the communities values that we should reflect in our bylaw and coming to some sort of agreement about that because I think right now there really isn't much agreement about it and having that discussion out in the open. We know from a lot of different people with a lot of different points of view, and we're hoping that that is, you know, that helps us to make our choices and make our decisions about these things. So that would be a series of public meetings or a townwide survey or, you know, both, any of any of those. Yep. So with more board hands I'm just going to mention a couple of things that I was thinking about with respect to the extent of forest land clearing. And the first first thing I think I've mentioned before in a previous meeting which is, you know, if you're a landowner there's nothing prohibiting you right now from cutting down pretty much all of the trees on your land, except where there may be wetlands that are conservation commission jurisdiction. So, you know, if we're going to be, we may prove. If we if we put a restriction on this for solar arrays, we may create a sort of undesirable incentive for somebody who's thinking, Well, maybe I'll do one in five years I'll put a lot of solar panels there. I'll cut my trees down now so that, you know, I'm not cutting forest when I go and look for by solar permit. And so I think the timeline is something you'd want to talk, think about and whether we need to say, you know, if you cut your, if you cut your all your trees down. So, less than two years ago, we're going to count them as though they were there, or something like that. And then the other thing is that, you know, I don't know what the number is. But there are transmission losses in electrical systems from the distance that you have to run the electricity and wires to get to the wherever the demand is. And so I think as electricity gets more expensive, because we're going to be doing it sustainably, we may want to really, really be doing our share and doing our share as close to the demand as we can, which may mean, you know, we don't want to do it in the outlying forests, we want to do it kind of near to where people are. So I think last time I mentioned, gee, maybe every 25 houses in a subdivision should that parcel should be solar. So I hope we're not just going to be thinking about forest land or farmland. Okay, Johanna. As we're talking about the solar bylaw, it's so much of it is focused on these utility scale solar projects and we're not, you know, we're not having kind of a comprehensive conversation about how do we maximize rooftop solar and how do we incentivize solar on the built environment.  So I don't quite know where that conversation happens or, you know, whether that's part of the solar bylaw conversation or whether that's a different conversation that Town Council does, but I, it strikes me as being important. Okay, thanks, Johanna. Janet. I was just going to say before Johanna was what about incentives to encourage behavior or actions that we want and it'd be interesting to me, like what other communities have done to, you know, encourage solar where they want it.  And what are some things that we could put it could be it may not belong in a zoning bylaw might just be along in the regular bylaw. So I wonder. I mean the tools that Amherst has. I mean the first one that comes to mind is the property tax structure. You know you could get an abatement on some of your property tax if you have some number of megawatts of solar or something. But that implies that those who don't have solar are probably going to see their bill go up a little bit more just so that the town doesn't lose revenue over in the in the overall. All right, Chris is that probably a good. Oh, I'm sorry Tom go ahead I thought maybe we were done with forest land clearing. I just wanted to follow up on the incentive question like I mean I understand why we would want to incentivize this but I also think we have to think about who has access to doing this kind of. These kinds of updates and whether we're incentivizing the same people who already are being incentivized and not thinking about people who don't have access to such things so. I think we should be cautious across the board about things like that, especially when it comes to these kinds of investments. You're reminding me I listened to it. It was some sort of Ted talk style presentation that was on the UMass Amherst clean energy extension website that Aaron Baker the engineering professor had done. And she was talking about the fact that any solar incentive is probably going to be utilized first by somebody who owns their house. Yeah, and secondly somebody who's got the cash to outlay in order to participate, you know to get it built and then participate in the rebates that you get on your electric bill. And that that's not very equitable for the people who don't have enough capital to own their house or, you know, put out a big chunk of change to put solar on their roof. Absolutely. And then wealth begets wealth because that just continues to save them money over a long period of time. Right, you know so it's problematic in a lot of different ways when we think about those incentives for sure. So anyway just something we should be cognizant of as we have these conversations. Well, I mean we are, we are talking about how we're going to get our energy, not from the, you know, fossil fuel burning plant in Holyoke in the low income neighborhood with lots of particulates in the air. Instead we're going to need to do it here in town. Yeah. All right, so Chris, maybe we should go on to the third topic. You want to introduce that. So the third topic is solar on prime agricultural soils. So Palmer has a prohibition on having solar installations on prime agricultural soils. Unless they are dual use and in other words unless they have the solar arrays and also farming, whatever format that takes, you know, animals grazing or raising crops or whatever. So the question is, does Amherst is Amherst interested in this kind of restriction or this kind of limitation. And in general, I guess, you know, how does Amherst feel about putting solar on prime agricultural soils. So I just wanted to say something that I, I think I understand, maybe I don't because I'm just learning. But I think I understand that most of these arrays don't really.   But my point is that they don't have a negative impact on the soil unless the soil gets eroded or removed as part of the project but it's not necessary in most cases to remove the soil in order to install these solar arrays. Okay, so I think that should be part of this conversation about, you know, does Amherst want to restrict prohibit installation of solar arrays on prime agricultural soils. If so, would Amherst be willing to, you know, engage in having a dual use. Is that a better thing to do so. Let's have a conversation about that. Well, nobody else is jumping in. I guess the first thing I would want to know and I hope our solar study will somehow tell us this or pass along. Do we, how many, how much solar, how much prime agricultural land do we really have. And, you know, because we're certainly not had we. So, Tom. So I'm just going to chime back in about the bigger picture stuff and whether this belongs in a solar specific set of values we have or is this a general value we have because there's lots of things that we can put on prime agricultural soil like monocrops that might damage them and create a runoff or toxins or destroy habitats or things like that and we know what is our bylaw that protects that land in that case and not so much just in the solar case so this is one of those many things I feel like is part of a larger thing we want to talk about do we want to protect these lands if so this should be something that we don't talk about in relationship to solar we just talk about it as a principle or value that we have as a community. Thanks Tom. Janet. So I think one of the positive things that will come out of the solar assessment is sort of answering that question. It doesn't make sense to say you can't put solar and prime agricultural soils or soils of statewide concern or importance, and then put a housing development, you know, and I think this sort of goes back to the master where we are supposed to be inventorying our resources or natural resources which would include their farmland and deciding what goes where and you know when you set up a zoning district and you say residences that means you're not putting in factories and when you if you set up a zoning district and you say farmland that means you're not putting in factories on that farmland and so I think the consequence or the result of this is always going to be going back to that question Tom about like, where should things go. And, you know, if you protect the forest from solar but it winds up being a subdivision, or a go cart, or a pickleball court, you know, a set of pickleball courts whatever you really achieved you know and so I think we might wind up, you know with a different zoning plan or changes in districts or overlays that we didn't expect I think but I think these are good questions to ask we have to ask them and we had to find the information. Okay Tom. Thanks yeah and thanks, Jennifer following up I mean I just want to be clear that I'm not against these as ideas. I'm like I like the idea of conserving forests and prime agricultural land I just want to be clear that I don't think it necessarily needs to be nested specifically for solar and so I think we want to think about these things and you know maybe if we do talk later about our zoning priorities maybe these become zoning priorities to talk about the bigger picture rather than the sort of micro bullet points within our solar by law. Good. Okay, any other hands for this one. I do want to make a big pitch for farmland, especially where we live because we live in an area with really amazing soils and that I think it's going to be a key sustainability thing to have local food production. Our national agricultural system is based on fossil fuels and long transport and you know losing 40% of the food by the time it arrives in your grocery store where but a bunch gets thrown out then. And so I think these soils are really precious and I kind of rude not just the solar arrays but you know, a lot of the development has taken place already on prime soil so I think we should conserve those for ourselves. I think it's going to be a very critical sustainability strategy as the years go by. All right, so maybe Amherst needs to add more farmland to its conservation land and put its money where its mouth might be. All right. I'm sorry I don't mean to prolong this, but I keep thinking about the town owned conservation land that is Wentworth farm, which is kind of behind our, you know, it's kind of the conservation area that I'm most familiar with and just this morning, as my husband and I were talking about solar he was like, What do you think about putting solar there and you know it's funny because technically that is still farmable land, like a farmer could lease that land from the town and, but they haven't gotten any bids for years and years and years, I think maybe because of a combination of the restrictions that are on the land and, you know, the fields are relatively small and kind of cumbersome to manage so. I don't know it's, you know, it's funny because I feel like there might be prime agricultural soils now that are not currently being farmed because it's restrictive for some other reason, and solar might be the best use for the next 20 to 25 years. So, I don't know, I would be got, you know, I would kind of take our cues from the solar study. And if we want to pursue the protection of prime agricultural soils. It seems like something that would be in the general bylaw, rather than the solar bylaw. Those are my two cents. Okay. I'll take down your hand. Is that a reasonable start on the third topic. Yep. All right, accessory uses. Yeah, so the next one relates to accessory uses do we want to control accessory uses for instance, Hampshire College has eight acres of a 20 acre parcel done on Bay Road. It provides the college campus with energy, and they don't sell the energy to anybody else, they just use it for the college. And is there any reason why we would want to limit the size of an accessory use if it provides power to a particular landowner, and you know, that could be a farm. Sometimes farms have solar arrays that provide power to their, you know, their operations. So this is, you know, something that came up in my reading about about solar and I believe that I don't have an exact quotation but I believe that Palmer does talk about accessory uses in its solar bylaw but I don't. I can't remember exactly the context. So is there any interest in limiting the size of accessory uses. Well, it seems to me that if we, if we're going to put a bunch of restrictions on how someone can configure a solar array on their land, shouldn't it apply equally to everyone. My question, we're all, we're all part of the electric grid.  I don't know if I'm not, I mean, seems like it kind of begs the question. Andrew. I would second that and that was my same thought I mean you've tried down the street you don't know where that particular energy is going when you see the array so I'm in a similar spaces you on this one. Well I could also create an incentive. If you've got 50 acres you you find what is you what it is that you can put on it that would need all the solar that you want to put on it. Sort of work backwards. Johanna. Thanks. I can't tell if I am. It's possible that I'm just not totally understanding the accessory use thing but I think what I. I know that there are instances where there are, let's say structures like warehouses that use relatively little energy compared to their solar potential on the warehouse roof and local rules literally don't allow them to maximize the rooftop solar potential because the energy usage of the building underneath it. Like they're only allowed to build as much solar as they can use on site. And I think that's perverse like we should be maximizing that entire rooftop and so it's possible that, you know, that wouldn't be considered a accessory use, and that we would come at that more through a community solar project where other people could then use the energy from those solar panels but I would just want to make sure we don't put anything in place that restricts us from. Like if somebody wants to put solar somewhere but for some reason they wouldn't be able to because we have limited it. Okay. Chris if we're going to be doing an overlay. There could be an overlay over every, you know, all of the different type district types that we have, including educational. You know, I mean, we haven't really talked about the details of how the different restrictions might apply but we could have, you know, we could treat it differently in the educational zone from the residential zone, or from the commercial zone. And would that be, I mean that might be a way to be more responsive or, or, you know, more appropriate for the different types of uses that would be on the land that would be potentially accessorized with solar panels. So Hampshire College's solar array is not in their educational zone it's on, I think it's on RO, which is why the planning board got involved if it were in the educational zone. The planning board would not have gotten involved in permitting it. So that's another question do we want to have any control over the institutional lands that are in the educational district which there's quite a lot of land in Amherst College Hampshire College and UMass own. Of course UMass doesn't come under our zoning regulations but the colleges have a lot of land in the educational district. And do we want them to be part of this solar study. And then do we want to be able to regulate what they do with their land as far as solar goes and that's not a question here on this list but it's a question for the planning board and everybody to think about. My sense is no, we don't do any, we don't have any curfew over ED with their buildings and their structures or parking or anything so why would solar suddenly be included in that. Is there precedence for that happening where solar suddenly is treated differently and what a zone that normally would have it, you know, be regulated by a town suddenly is regulated. So, there's nothing that says we couldn't regulate things in the ED district you would just need to change the zoning bylaw to include regulation of solar in the ED district it's up to the town to do that. In the past we've never regulated anything in the ED district except things within 50 feet of the, of the, you know, edge of the district but the town could choose to regulate these things if it wanted to. Okay. Well, I guess that's just to start at the conversation. Do we move on to the minimum size. Sure. So, Palmer has imposed a minimum of five acres for property in rural residential areas that can be developed for solar and a minimum of 30 acres with a frontage of at least 250 feet in their general business areas I haven't looked at their zoning maps so I don't know the extent of these two districts but the only reason why Amherst would want to impose a minimum acreage on solar arrays and, to me it seems a little bit, what, I don't know, not logical because large scale solar arrays start at one acre. So wouldn't you want to be able to, if it were possible to have small one acre solar arrays here and there around town if there were appropriate land available. And the question is, is there any reason that you all can think of as to why Amherst might want to impose a minimum size of a property for installing solar arrays. Andrew. Thanks Doug, I may have misread this I thought this was saying that they're like capping how big it could be. No. They say limit to five so it's a minimum of five not a maximum. Minimum of five acres in the rural residential area. Yeah, okay. No, I, I, I, I would agree with you I well I'll say this, not an expert. I did the five doesn't really mean anything to me, but it does seem like to the extent and I know many have said on phone already if we can get the power from somewhere then we should be open to it and if it's 4.99 that shouldn't preclude someone from being able to pursue it in my mind. Well, this might be another question that Janet can ask to Palmer. How did you come up with this, these numbers. Janet you've got your hand up I know you're taking a note there. I'm just, I was like thanks Doug. Okay, I need a bigger piece of paper. I think, I think I was a little confused by this I think this means like minimum lot size. So you need a five acre parcel before you can put any large scale array which is like a one acre thing and I don't know what the zone is the rural residential area like it might be a zone where you have to have a three acre lot to build a house kind of like is it RO or RLD we have zoning like that in this town. And I think it would, I think the maybe what they're getting at is, you know, if you lived in a residential neighborhood and the minimum lot size is I don't know like a quarter acre or third acre. Somebody who has two acres of land in a residential zone can suddenly put in a two acre solar array or you know maybe an acre and a half with some setbacks and so I think I think that goes into the disturbing thing next door category and of like, can you imagine what it'd be like to live next to a, you know, three or five acre solar facility in your neighborhood that was zoned for basically housing.  Light size to create buffers for farmland, you know, buffers for scenic areas buffers for, you know, the rivers and things like that and we're trying to create neighborhood like zones of small residences. Residences around a village center and so think about, if we don't have a minimum lot size for different districts, what could that look like and you know even in RG people own one or two acres or a developer could buy up a few lots and put in just a really large solar array and that visual kind of cue or shock I think would be kind of, we should think about that impact on the town and how it looks. And that sounds all sort of very elitist but it's kind of the essence of zoning districts anyways like the look the feel of the neighborhood. Or the protection of resources nearby live on the fringe of those kind of zoning things. All right, thanks Janet. Tom. Thanks Doug. Yeah, I think some of what I'm Janet saying I would tend to agree with I mean I do see a need to think about the impact that has in certain zones. So I think, you know, maybe this isn't like a universal A or B, as we see in the, the Palmer one, where we're seeing rural and then general business you know there might be different values for different zones that we have but I think a lot of what we think is a minimum lot size being or what might work as a minimum lot size in relationship to the proportion of the installation itself so whether that's, you know, if I have a one acre installation, I have to have a three acre property or whatever that is that, you know, that's where I think the open space or some of these other setbacks or other things might help limit that size of the not so far, you know, based on the property itself so property here we have minimum size, minimum size and determine how big a piece of solar array you can put there so that would just be a thought about proportion. Yeah, this reminds me of a couple of the bylaws that said if you clear, or if your solar array is one acre, you need to put in reserve four times that much land in sort of permanent reserve as Woodland during the life of the project so that would, that would turn into a five acre, you know, parcel if you do one acre. So, you know, it seems like it's related to the sort of set aside requirements that we've seen in some of these bylaws. Yeah, totally and some of the open space ones as well. Yeah. I guess my sort of at least at the moment I don't see why we would want to have a minimum size. I may I may learn why I would think that would be a good idea.  Okay, I'll drop you. Any other hands for this topic. Okay. Chris, why don't we go to the next one. Okay, the next one is a size of a solar array. Palmer limits the size of an array to this is the power that can be produced by an array. They limit the size to five megawatts. And I wanted to point out that the array proposed for shoots very road was more than twice as much as that. Seven megawatts. At the same time that array proposed for Hickory Ridge that the town is developing would be more than five megawatts it's 5.24 megawatts so would Amherst want to limit the amount of power that can be generated by an array and Amherst and I had trouble with this one. I just didn't understand why the town would want to limit the amount of power that could be generated in other words, I can understand why you would want to limit the size of the array itself. But, you know, as Andrew has brought up in the past, the technology here is always changing so, you know, it could be that in a short amount of time, a smaller array could produce more energy so that's the point of limiting the amount of energy that could be produced by an array. So that, that is the topic here. Okay, thank you Andrew. I just want to say my last comment, I thought we're talking about six so when I said that we're talking about capping this is the question I was looking at so if anyone notice that. I agree with Chris I mean this seems antithetical to what we're trying to do right it's like to maximize efficiency and if the technology can do that then fantastic we should keep pushing in as far as we can. Okay. Tom change is this mind, Johanna. Yeah, I agree that we want to get as much energy from clean energy as we can, and then my one thought is the only rationale that I can think of is if there's some kind of grid interconnection reasons why you can only put a certain amount of load onto the grid at a particular geographic location, but it seems like that would happen elsewhere. So, I would recommend we don't pursue this. We'll leave that up to the electric, you know utility to decide whether they can accept, however much power is being generated. All right, no other comments on this one. Okay so the next one is setbacks. So, this shoots berry and palm, not Palmer Pellum had pretty big setbacks, but Palmer, which is the bylaw that we're focusing on has a front setback of 250 feet and side and rear setbacks of 100 feet. And I personally thought this seemed excessive. Amherst currently relies on the setbacks that we have for structures for solar arrays so for instance the solar array on Bay Road that is owned by Hampshire College, you know, lives within the requirement of I think it's 25 foot setback. So, is there any reason why, well I can see that Amherst may want to require more than the 25 foot setback or whatever is in the dimensional requirements of table three in our section six there may be a reason to go more than 25 feet or 15 feet or whatever the setback is there, but would we ever want to go to the extent that Palmer is and set setbacks of hundreds of feet. It does that appeal to people is that something that people think would be a good idea and Amherst. Anybody want to give their two cents on that. Janet. So this is, when we got to these kind of things, including just the size of the array is I felt like we needed some site visits like to go look, you know, at some, you know, like, just to see different arrays that have different limits and, you know, a fair amount of flexibility within a short drive of here but I just thought, you know the Hampshire College one. It's right there, you know, and even if they're trying to put a vegetative buffer it's it's it's not buffering and it's also, you know, like it's part of a scenic view shed from, you know, a little bit of a boundary and so I'm not anti Hampshire color solar but it that is a different look and feel than 100 feet or 50 feet or 250 feet and so I would assume the parcel has to be pretty big to have a 200 250 foot setback but I wonder again like, are they trying to preserve their views, you know to make their town look more attractive. That kind of thing I did. I just thought it'd be good to have some site visits to look at stuff I know at all was very concerned about scenic views and that was part of them trying to attract tourism and, you know, keep their New England look and you know that kind of thing and so I just thought it was like let's go look at that or some of us can maybe as we drive around, look at that and try to figure out the distances. 50 sounds really big, but you know the difference between 100 or 50, you know, or 25 or 150. And it might be just very site specific to like, you know, we have scenic roads in Amherst and if they're all filled with solar arrays, whatever that benefit is in terms of the beauty of Amherst can be lost or it might be harder to screen if it's too close to the road. Thanks Janet. You're reminding me that I remember the Hadley bylaw had a fairly small typical setback, but they made an exception for that on route 47 which was their, their scenic roadway through town and increased it there so maybe we want to think about that kind of approach where, you know, we are pretty liberal in allowing a pretty small setback except where we have particularly scenic, you know, roadway. Johanna. I like that idea of exploring that and then I also feel like scale matters here so if you have a one acre array, a small setback, a smaller setback feels potentially prudent whereas if you have, you know, I don't know, a 20 acre array or 40 acre array, I could imagine wanting to recess that more from adjacent properties so I'd be curious whether other towns or whether there are models for like a scaled approach to the setback depending on the size of the solar development. Interesting. Okay. I guess one of the questions I have and this might relate to the vegetated buffer also is that we're making a value judgment that most people believe solar arrays are ugly. And that we want to hide them and I don't necessarily know if that's the case for everybody. And it doesn't apply to ugly buildings. So I could put a giant ugly metal warehouse building on my farmland 20 feet from the 25 feet from the road, and people in that scenic view shed would have to look at that ugly thing, and we're not saying that that's wrong. So I guess this is an aesthetic value judgment and some people think it's beautiful that we're harnessing the sun to create energy. I'm not, I'm not playing one side or the other but we don't hide a lot of other things that we deem ugly, or some of us might deem ugly, just because other people think it's ugly so I think we want to be cautious with this and I do agree with you that different scales might require different setbacks. So I think that that seems like an appropriate thing to pursue seeing if anyone else had done that. Yeah, I think at the last meeting, Chris, you had mentioned that Hampshire College was really proud of its solar array and wanted it to be visible. And it's part of their image as a progressive institution that's using a lot of sustainable energy. So maybe that's part of Amherst's self image, or could be.  I'm going to take it down. I guess just Chris I tend to be on the small setback. I'm not into the spectrum and my reaction to this kind of thing.  We are defining the economic parameters for the generation of electricity. So I hope we can try to make it as affordable for everyone as we can. I guess that reminds me of one other thing is that I'm not an expert on utility law, but there seems, my impression is that utilities have fairly wide latitude to do what they need to do to provide the utility service to the Commonwealth. And so the legislature at some point went out of its way to kind of clear the obstacles that local towns might might make for transmission lines or pipelines or those kinds of things. You know, I wonder whether the current law that has been discussed with, you know, not allowing unreasonable restrictions is in that in that vein.  They don't want to have brownouts or or have long blackouts. So, why don't we go to the next one. Okay, so Palmer has a requirement for 100 foot vegetated buffer around each solar array installation. So I had a few thoughts about this. Sometimes you can actually get a pretty good dense screen by planting lower story and upper story plants. And you may not need to have 100 feet of buffer. So I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts about this and whether they think that, you know, an extended vegetated buffer around a solar array is necessary or, you know, potentially less than that. So what are people's thoughts. Thanks Doug. I think it depends on the purpose, what it's for if the idea is that it's, it's there for visual boundary. Then I think you make a good point if it's there for like wildlife benefit then then it may need to be larger. So that that was, as I looked at these two, I was thinking, you know, fencing is, it's, it's privacy and it's security vegetated buffer could be, you know, privacy, but it also could be for wildlife benefit. So I don't know how to answer, answer this at this point, or what kind of guidance to share, but give it at that. All right, thanks Andrew. Tom. I'll just chime in and say I'd love to put a vegetated buffer around some of my neighbors houses to because I don't like them but I don't know if we need to hide all of these. So I like, as Andrew said that I think it's okay to start thinking about how it affects our landscape and our ecologies and wildlife. I don't necessarily think we need to hide these things with 100 foot road buffer. So, smaller is better for me if we require it at all. Planting might be enough as opposed to hiding my thoughts. Thanks Tom. Janet. Most people find solar arrays, but unattractive and if, if you knew it was coming into your neighborhood but you would never see it, you'd feel so much better about it. And so I would, and I'm also just, I would think a good thick vegetative buffer oak trees, you know, evergreens plants, you know, it will sequester carbon it will be habitat for squirrels and birds. You know, I think it'd be great to have a thick screen I don't think you need 100 feet. But if you really couldn't even see them in your neighborhood or they don't, you know, you're driving down the street looking at the Pelham Hills, and you don't see it. That's fantastic. So I do, I do think, you know, I, in handling I know they have those, those sad plantings around the solar arrays and have them have died and I thought, you know, what if that was thicker and better and it would be more useful for for animals to be more cleaner air and things like that and everybody would feel better about it so I don't know as that as a negative I also know if you just let everything go in Amherst with these great soils things go wild so I don't think it has to be a super formal planting. But I think it'd be great to screen that and people knew that it would be screen they'd probably be more supportive of having it closer to their houses or whatever so. Okay, thanks Janet. Maria. I'm glad we're having this conversation because we have different viewpoints and I actually find solar rays rolling across hills, gorgeous. I just drove back into Logan Airport and there's always fields along the turnpike and I love seeing them. I really like seeing the sort of rolling sort of wave of the blue and seeing it all on people's houses I've seen drawing up to Burlington they have these arrays that are on poles on farms and I love it it's like a new, our new world or the way we need to think about energy the way we're going to harness this free resource that's we're going to be bombarding our planet surface every day that we're not, you know, taking better advantage of. As far as the buffer versus fence.  But anyways, the idea that I was a dog that had about you know putting the huge arrays along those big swaths of electric easements. And he said, actually, you know, those are places where animals cut through a lot and if we were to suddenly you know fence this sort of corridor, a lot of the animals won't be able to get through the small ones to get under but you know like dear spare whatever larger So the buffer idea, not necessarily the hundred foot bubble but the idea of vegetation instead of fences might be an interesting one. I don't know which is more expensive but it's interesting in that it would maybe forget is the fence going to keep people out. I think the fencing, it's not either or I think the fencing is needed for public safety to keep you electrocuting yourself. Oh, well then, well, we'll don't only need the fence but as far as the buffer. I, I don't mind seeing them and so you know those are just varying new points. Some people hate them and some people love on it so to say one way or the other. Because it's just a subjective thing. But if there's a rational public safety issue, then yeah I would say, let's put that in but to assume everyone hates them. I think it is probably not the way to go. All right, Maria Andrew. Hey Doug, I don't want to put words in your mouth Janet but when you said it I was thinking that there are definitely people think that they're beautiful, but people who seem to be pushing against it are pushing against it because of how it looks. Maybe right and so if, if putting a vegetation, putting some type of screen up there would make it more compelling for people who would otherwise be against it. Then, then I think that would be a good thing. Alright, a little more diplomatic. First it's about 815. And we haven't this so we were around the time we usually take a break. Chris I don't remember how many of these items there are and whether we have a you know we don't have a really heavy schedule tonight, but we do have some other. You know we were going to talk about some other things. Should we just take a five minute break now. That sounds good. Yep. Anyone object so okay. All right so it's by my clock is 817 and we'll come back at 822. Excellent. All right, the time is 822. So, I invite everyone back. Okay I see Maria, I see Tom, I see Chris. Oh, there's Janet. There's Johanna. There's Pam. We can get Andrew will be back at full strength. I suspect Andrew is warming up inside his heated part of the house. All right, Pam, you are muted if you wanted to say something to me. Hello, Mr Marshall. Hello Pam. Why don't you bring that that list back up. And we'll see if we can finish those items off. And maybe that would be a good time to take some public comment. So I can just say we can sort of skim through the rest of these things, but I think there are things that we need to contend with as we're writing our solar bylaw. So one of them is fencing. And Palmer limits the fencing to six feet high. So I think it's important to remember when we've been reviewing solar installations in Amherst that the solar developers really want to have a fence that's seven feet high. And so the one at Hampshire college is seven feet high. And if you want to drive by there and see what that looks like. Go ahead. They actually needed a special. Well, no, they needed to put it. Seven feet from the property line in order to have a fence that was seven feet high. So I think that would be a good time to talk about that. Do you want me to just run through the rest of these quickly, Doug? Sure. All right. So then open space requirement. Palmer requires an area of open space that's equal to the area of the array. So in other words, if you have a one acre. Array, you need to have an area of one acre that's open space on the same property that's available. So that's something that Amherst needs to consider. Um, And so the. Um, Glare is an issue. And, you know, some of these, uh, Arrays are moving, uh, around. And so I think it would maybe harder to control glare on the ones that move around, but in any event, that's also something that we should consider. There's the homeowner on Montague road, who has, in Montague does cause glare to come into her house, particularly in the winter when the trees don't have any leaves on them. So we need to think about that and determine if we wanna regulate that in any way. And I understand there may be things that can be done to the panels themselves that will minimize glare, but it's an issue. Another issue is slopes and Palmer limits solar rays to land with slopes that are less than 15%. So is this something that Amherst wants to do? I think one reason for limiting the slope is that there may be more of a chance of erosion if you put these things on steeper slopes, particularly when you're going in and actually building and I think once the things are there and in place and there's vegetation growing around them, there's not as much of a problem with erosion but there will still be water falling on the array and then the water runs off the array quickly and lands on the ground. So there may be reasons to have a limitation on the slope. The other thing that Palmer does with regard to forest sequestration and habitat areas that they ask or require developers to preserve an area that's one and a half times the size of the solar array in addition to the open space that's required. So again, does Amherst want to have this type of requirement? Screening is required in Palmer but they say where possible. So I'm not exactly sure what that means, especially since they have a 100 foot vegetative buffer. Impervious containment for hazardous materials. This seems like a really good idea, especially if you have battery storage as part of the array and there's a concern about leakage of some kind of hazardous materials. So we'll have to look into that. That needs to be investigated. I don't really understand that very well. And the last one here is noise limitations and Palmer has refers to a state law that limits the amount of noise that can come out of certain activities but it doesn't give a specific noise level. Not like Amherst has a specific noise level for onsite entertainment, which is 70 decibels or something like that at the property line. Anyway, we need to think about noise. I understand from someone who works in our office that who lives in Conway that there's been a problem in Conway with noise emanating from a solar array and whether the solar array isn't properly installed or what the problem is up there. I don't really understand, but this topic needs to be investigated and we need to think about whether we wanna put some sort of limitations on noise emanating from these facilities. So that's all, but I certainly feel like I've learned a lot from reading Palmer's bylaw and also from listening to you tonight and I'm glad that we've had this conversation. It's really informative. All right, does anybody have a comment they wanna make about any of those last five or six topics? Janet. I have a comment. I don't know, the forest sequestration habitat area and mitigation. And we were at the last presentation they were talking about setting aside four acres to mitigate the loss of one acre. And like I never understand that it's like saying like I robbed your house and as mitigation I won't rob the next four houses next to me. Like, I don't understand like if you are cutting down an acre of forest removing all the soils and all the roots and you're worried about the loss of the carbon being sequestered how not cutting the next four acres next to it actually mitigates that damage. And so I wondered if people are looking at offsets.  So I just wondered if we could look at the issue of offsets instead of mitigation or mitigation through offsets but something that very concretely if you're removing trees or something beneficial how do you repair that or offset the damage that you've done there? And so that was one issue I was interested in looking at. Thank you, Janet. Andrew. Thanks Doug. My question is real quick. When I'd done a little bit of research I pulled up the model zoning for the regulations of solar energy systems from the Commonwealth which has a lot of the language around like some suggested language around how these bylaws can be set up as, do you know what that is the framework that these other communities have used or that we would be using or? Is this the one from DOER? Matt, let's see. Yeah, it looks like it. Yeah, I looked at that one and it didn't look to me like that was the basis for any of the actual bylaws in some of the surrounding neighborhoods. It looked frankly to me like maybe one of the neighborhood, one of the towns originated it and since Michael D'Kiarra had called in and acted like he had kind of drafted the one in Shootsbury that maybe that was the first one and then Pelham adopted it and Belcher Town used it and edited it and so, but none of them seemed very close to the DOER one. Yeah, I didn't know any of the background and just when I saw it I was maybe I get surprised because originating from the Commonwealth and having addressing some of the same things we're talking about right now. Okay. Chris. So yeah, we're gonna look at the DOER model bylaw. We're also gonna look at Piner Valley Planning Commission's guidelines for establishing a bylaw and I have recently been reading the Cape Cod, what do they call it? Cape Cod Commission's bylaw, which I think is really good and so I'll send that to you all but we're gonna be kind of like putting the best of the things that we can find together to try to make a really good bylaw for Amherst and I don't know if there's one particular one that we're going to pick that one and go with it. So that's all I have to say. Thanks, Chris. Janet. Chris, could we add Athols to that list? Cause I thought that was a pretty good one and sort of creative in terms of how it was addressing problems that the community cared about. So I thought they had good language. This was the study that they... Yeah, and then it's hard. I think we could... I think I ran across a separate version of it that wasn't embedded in like a two million page report but I thought that had good language too. All right, Johanna. Thanks. I have a question about the slopes and a question about the forest sequestration one. So the slopes, I'm just... I'm like mentally mapping Amherst in my head and trying to figure out where are the parts in town that have slopes greater than 15 degrees? I imagine towards the Pelham Hills, there's something like that. But I, again, I'd just be curious how much potential land are we taking off the table with that restriction? And then the second question, the forest sequestration and habitat area. Are they... In Palmer, do they only require developers to put into conservation additional land if they cut down forests for solar? Or is this just standard? Like if you put in solar, then you also have to set aside an area one and a half times that big in conservation. And does it have to be in the same parcel or could you, yeah, could you like buy land in Alaska? So I don't, I guess I have questions about that. And then my guess is I would not support that type of requirement for solar developments in Amherst but I feel like I'd need more information to know. All right, Johanna. Chris, I guess my comments on these, first of all, on the fencing, I noticed that one, at least one of the bylaws not only had a height at the top, but it had a minimal amount of clearance that was open at the bottom to allow small animals to pass without restriction. And I thought that was a good idea. On the open space and forest sequestration, I feel like I'd be very reluctant to support those, partly because the town has so much conservation land. And if we were in a town that had very little conservation land, maybe I would be more open to that. But since we, you know, something like a third of our town land is already conservation land, I questioned the need to be setting aside more kind of by fiat, if there's people that wanna buy more land in town and set it aside, then that's a different conversation. Glare, I agree that's something we need to be sensitive to and whether it's, but I think we'd wanna study it on a case-by-case basis, maybe simply say that the developer needs to take into account the impacts of glare on adjacent occupied structures and mitigate any negative impacts. And then we talk about it on a project-by-project basis. That's, I guess that's all I'll say on these. All right, I don't see any other hands. Why don't we do some public comment? And so I see 15 public attendees at this time. Thank you all for hanging in with us on this conversation. I know there's been a little bit of attrition as we've gone through the evening. Yeah, let's start with three minutes and please do everything you can to not exceed that amount. So at the moment, the only hand is Dorothy Pams. Could you give us your address? We all probably know your name. Okay, 229 Amethyst Street, Amherst. Two comments. We're lucky we're talking solar and not wind power. Before we lived here, we lived in Norfolk for seven years. The highest occupied settled place in Connecticut and it has wind. It has some fabulous wind power, but they're causing problems for people around them in terms of noise and rear things. So there are a lot of problems. Solar is kind of quiet in comparison, but I do want to comment on what is beautiful. There are several different ways. You may love something for one reason, but aesthetics, there are some agreed upon codes. I was born in Long Beach, California, my dad worked for Shell Oil, and he thought that the Derricks in the water off the off the coast were beautiful. And people who live in the place where oil was struck on the land, they think they're beautiful. So I'm glad some people think solar arrays are beautiful for the same reason my dad loved those oil Derricks, but that's not what people are talking about. So I think it's been really interesting, a wonderful list of questions. And I don't know the answers to most of them. I do think that somewhere, I don't know if there were any questions about efficiency in terms of, do some sizes or arrays increase the power production or is solar kind of equal, no matter what the size is that you can do it. So I think some of those questions might be looked at and to gotten some answers, but I think you have a great start on what you've been starting talking about tonight. So thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. Do we have any other members of the public that would like to make a comment this evening? Okay. So the time is 841. Chris, do you think we've had a sufficient discussion for your purposes tonight? Yes, thank you very much. This was really helpful and interesting. Yep. Great. And we did not go through the conditions that the ZBA has imposed at, I think it was Hickory Ridge that you had included in our packet and you included a little site plan of that installation. You know, I guess maybe at a later date, we can come back and talk, look at one of those and just see kind of what the parts are that need to happen. You know, in terms of vehicular access and you know, you can confirm my understanding that the fence is required for public safety. You know, and if there's any knowledge about a battery and you know, was that supposed to be close to the road and the vehicle, you know, needs to drive up to it or I also have heard, you know, you might talk to someone at the fire department about the batteries because I've heard it was an anecdotal second or third hand thing about some sort of requirement that Hadley was imposing on batteries that sounded kind of nonsensical to me like they thought they might go up and, you know, fight a fire at a battery with water and you know, that's electrical and you probably aren't gonna do that. So I'm probably wrong about what I heard. So I'm not trying to offend anybody in Hadley but that's something we should look into. All right, so Janet. On the issue of batteries, I think it's a question for the fire department. Battery fires really, really burn and they're really hard to put out and so that would be an issue. Can the fire department handle that?  It might, if it's a large battery, it might be too much for them to handle. Yeah, it may be that we want it just in an enclosure that allows it to burn and nothing gets out. Yeah, and you don't have to do that. You can't really fight it because you really can't put it out. But we don't want the chemicals to be just, you know, diffused. Nathan, Nathan, Nathaniel, I'm seeing your hand. Do you have it? Can everyone hear me? Yes. Yeah, I don't know if my video is working. I was on my phone earlier. The, yeah, I think the battery storage is interesting. I've heard at Hickory Ridge that the utility companies in fire like it to be visible from the road so that they can do drive-by inspections and that that to be easily accessed, whether that means, you know, close to the road or, you know, outside the fence enclosure and then right off the access road. So I do think it's something to consider if there's larger or, you know, arrays that are in forested areas or setback from the road. What does that mean for, you know, utility connects and batteries? But, you know, that's what I've been told at Hickory Ridge that the location was really for visibility from the road and access, easy access along the, you know, in the site. Okay. Chris, do you have your hand up? Do you want to say something? Yeah. I heard from someone, I can't remember who it was that battery storage is going to be required as part of solar arrays going forward. So that's definitely something that we need to consider. And I think that we're going to be seeing more of that. So, you know, whatever limitations or protection or whatever is involved with batteries, we need to think about that. Yeah, as I understand it, it's a tool to even out the power that's going into the grid so that, you know, if we suddenly, if the clouds break, we don't just suddenly get all the electricity streaming into the grid, we can put some of it into the battery and even out the peaks. Okay. So let's conclude, consider this the end of the solar bylaw discussion for this evening. The time is 8.46. Chris, shall we turn to the other zoning priorities conversation? Yes, that would be a great idea. And I can start to go through that with you. Yeah, we had two sheets. One was the one that I had put together of last year's stuff. And then yours with the department's suggested priorities. Do you want to go through that chart, that colorful chart that you put together and talk about the things that we haven't done or do you want to talk about the things on the planning department's priority list? Which one? I think we should start with the chart of last year's priorities. So, Cam, can you put that on the screen? That's almost there, I think. Yep. Not this one. Yep, this is it. This is it. Okay. All right, so you want me to launch into this? Yeah, you should do it. The content is yours. I only put the colors on it. So just to say that obviously the town council has a little different makeup this year than it had last year. So the things that were priorities to town council last year may or may not be priorities for them this year or for the next two years. But in any event, there were certain things that were town council priorities that we did manage to have adopted. And one of them was revising this supplemental dwelling unit bylaw. We drafted a new accessory dwelling unit bylaw and the planning board did recommend that and it was adopted by town council. Town council also had an apartments. One of their priorities was to look at the apartment's bylaw and try to make it easier to build apartments in other locations. So we did draft a new bylaw that allowed apartments to be built or approved by site plan review in the RVC zoning district. But at the same time, we made it more difficult to build apartments in the BG by making it a special permit. And that was recommended by the planning board and adopted by town council. Town council had another priority of the temporary zoning bylaw to help people to cope with, to help businesses cope with the COVID crisis. And Rob Mora drafted the bylaw. It was recommended by the planning board, actually two versions of it. And the last version was in December that was recommended by the planning board and it was adopted by town council. So this temporary zoning will carry through December of 2022. So we're very happy about that. Another town council priority was rezoning the parcel 14A-33, which is the parcel behind CVS to allow, they originally wanted, the sponsors originally wanted that to become a BG zoning district. But the planning department worked with Rob Mora and developed a bylaw that created a parking facility district, an overlay district. And the planning board recommended that and that was adopted by town council. And then the last one here, that was a town council priority that was adopted was a change in the parking regulations for residential uses. So we drafted a bylaw, it was recommended by the planning board and it was adopted by town council. So those were five very, I consider them good successes of town council priorities that were adopted. Planning department also had a couple of priorities that were adopted. And one of them was to revise the mixed use buildings definitions and standards bylaw. And so we did that, it was mostly the definitions that were revised, although I think we had a few standards in there too. And that was recommended by the planning board and adopted by town council. And we also had a very good experience with the inclusionary zoning bylaw where we drafted the bylaw, we planning board recommended it and it was adopted. And it does promise to produce new units which we are becoming more and more aware of as people propose new projects. So that's a great thing. So going back to things that we didn't make much progress on, adding footnote B to the BL zoning district, that was an attempt to loosen up zoning in the BL district, particularly around the downtown. And those are areas north of Triangle Street and west of the downtown in the vicinity of Halleck Street and what's the other one, North Prospect Street. Anyway, so allowing more residential use and Rob Mora and Nate Malloy came up with an overlay district for that area. And we did discuss drafts of it with the planning board and the planning board never really, well, it didn't really go through the process. So we kind of got, I don't know if you want to say distracted, but we got taken up with other things. And so that's something that we could go back to if people were interested in that. Town council also had demolition delay bylaw revisions as one of its priorities. And we did draft a new bylaw and we presented it to the planning board in June of last year. And then again in February of this year, we actually had a very good conversation with the planning board on February 2nd and Janet McGowan came up with several concerns and questions. And recently, Ben Breger and I had a great meeting with Janet and discussed a lot of her comments and concerns. And we think we have something that most people will be supportive of. And so we're hoping to bring that back to the planning board soon. I think it might have gone to the historical commission tonight, I'm not sure. But anyway, it will have to go back to the historical commission to get their blessing because they're the ones who are really bringing it forward. But we think that the changes that were made are gonna make it easier for this thing to be adopted and it would be going from the zoning bylaw into the general bylaw. So Janet may have some comments that she wants to make about that when I'm finished here. So another town council priority was removing footnote M and I'm sure you will all remember all the research and presentations and discussions we had about that. The planning board never really, that never really got off the ground so to speak. I think there are aspects of that that we might wanna bring back but probably not the full removal of footnote M for the whole RG district. It may make sense to remove footnote M for certain parcels around the outside of the RG but we have to go back and look at that. But we did put a lot of work into that and it's an idea that's still there but we never really saw it through. Revising the apartments definition was also a town council priority and that was to remove the cap on the number of units in an apartment building. And again, that was something that we drafted and we discussed it with the planning board and that never really got off the ground either. So we're gonna probably go back and look at that. Town council had another priority which was setting up design guidelines or design standards for looking at form-based code and town council approved funding of $100,000. The department planning department is developing an RFP to hire a consultant to help us out with that. And we're hoping to hire a consultant later this spring and get going on that project. So we're really excited about that. Nate has put together a good RFP that we'll be bringing to you at some point once it's gotten really, really gelled. So what else do we wanna talk about here? Let's see, in orange, we have the temporary moratorium on solar installations that was presented to the planning board. The planning board recommended against it. CRC recommended for it but it seems that some CRC members are having second thoughts about that. So in any event, it's going back to town council on the 28th of February and we'll see what happens with that. Town council had a priority of adding footnote A which is allowing some things to be modified with a special permit and that would relate to maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage. This is something that, I think there was one particular council member who's not a council member anymore who was very interested in this. So we'll see where that goes. I don't know how wedded the town council is to that particular item anymore. Working with town council on different housing types, that is still front and center for us and that relates to duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, converted dwellings, et cetera. It's an effort to allow more housing to be built, perhaps not at the grand scale of apartment buildings and mixed use buildings, but on a smaller scale but that could allow some infill to happen. So we're very interested in continuing to work on that. Dimensional regulations in RG and RVC. Again, there may not be that much interest in that anymore on the part of town council but we haven't heard from them on that item. It's not something that we in the planning department have as one of our high priorities. Duplexes and triplexes, I already talked about that and that relates to the different housing types. So yes, we're very interested in doing that. Frontage regulations for residential districts. Again, that probably really relates to the RG district and that's not on our list of priorities but we'll have to hear from town council about what their priorities are. Looking at uses in the village centers, I think that's a really good one. That was something that Dorothy Pam brought up a long time ago and for putting more residential units in village centers, then we need to think about allowing uses that are appropriate for people who are living there. And so that's probably something that we'll want to look at. Transportation issues, I never really understood exactly what town council wanted us to do with that. So that's a topic for discussion, for future discussion but it's not on the planning department's list of priorities. Recodification of the zoning bylaw. We made a pretty good attempt at recodification, I guess it was maybe two years ago and Ben Breger came up with a format that seemed to work really well but we got so involved in other zoning amendments that we haven't really pursued that. And so that may be something that you'll be seeing in the future. And then this last thing, the planning department had a priority of working on the flood maps and text. That is certainly a priority for us. In fact, it's become more of a priority now because we managed to get through our third appeal process in December without having any appeals. So we're moving into the time when we'll be hearing from FEMA, they'll be sending us a letter. It's called a letter of final determination and it means that they're satisfied with the maps, the flood maps and that we need to move forward with developing a zoning bylaw to accompany the flood maps. And to get the flood maps, the zoning bylaw and the flood insurance study adopted by town council in the next six to nine months. And Nate is working on the text of the zoning bylaw to accompany the flood maps. So I think that gives you an idea of where we are with last year's priorities. Thanks, Chris. So does anybody wanna say, maybe we should go on to the second slide, which was where the, which was the planning department priority list, at least as you guys have drafted it.  Yeah, yeah. So the town manager has seen it, Dave Zomek has seen it. CRC either has seen it or is going to see it on the 24th, CRC being the Community Resources Committee. Some of these things we absolutely, we know we absolutely need to get done. And obviously flood mapping is one of them. We have a limited amount of time, now that we've gotten through this last appeal period, now we have a limited amount of time in which to get all of this adopted. So we're going full bore on that. In fact, we're having a presentation before the town council to remind all the previous town council members and also familiarize new town council members with this whole project. We're giving them a presentation on the 28th. It won't be a very in-depth presentation, but it'll just be to introduce the topic and to tell them we'll come back in a month or two with more information. So that's, I'd say our primary priority. Then of course we have the solar bylaw and solar study assessment. And that was brought to us by two town council members and really the moratorium was brought to us by the town council members. So we knew that we had to work on the solar bylaw as a result of people being very concerned about solar installations that were being proposed. So we know we have to work on that. Design standards is something that we've talked about for years. And I think there are several town council members who are, if not all of them, really interested in this, setting up design standards for buildings as well as streetscape in the downtown area. And so we're working hard on hiring a consultant to help us with that. Number four is article 14. And Rob Mora, building commissioner is very interested in allowing some of the uses that were for which permitting was loosened up a bit during the COVID period, allowing some of those uses to not have to go through special permit process with the zoning board of appeals to be allowed to happen. For instance, class one and class two restaurants, he's been able to approve several of them under article 14, but article 14 is going to be expiring in December of this year. So which of those uses that was allowed by article 14 can be allowed by an administrative approval by the building commissioner, if there are appropriate criteria and conditions set for these things to be allowed. And then temporary uses is a category that we've been aware of for a long time, but we haven't been able to really deal with it. And it's, if someone wants to do something for one day or a weekend or a week or whatever, and it could be something like Bank of America wants to use the parking lot behind their building for some sort of festival, a dance festival or an art festival or whatever, they really can't do that now because there's no mechanism in the bylaw to allow them to do that. If someone wants to use a farm out on Southeast Street and have a wedding set up a tent, have music, have people come and then may have a caterer or something like that. And that could be a type of use that could support the farming enterprise. We can't do that either.  So that's something that we're interested in working on those first four things. And then as I mentioned before the demolition delayed bylaw, we think we're getting into the home stretch on that. And members of town council have shown interest in that. And certainly planning department staff and the building commissioner are very interested in getting that through town council. The number six here is something that's been, so those five things we're working on now and hoping to continue to work on them through the spring. The sixth thing is parking. And there are so many aspects to parking that are troublesome to people. The municipal parking district, how does it work? Is it working well? Do we want to keep it? Do we want to change it? Do we want to be able to have a fee in lieu of providing parking? In other words, is there something about the municipal parking district that we can say, well, maybe developers have to provide half a parking space per dwelling unit, but they don't have enough space on their property to do that. Well, can we charge them a fee in lieu of providing the parking that would feed into a transportation fund that could help us to pay for a garage or building a second story on the bulletwood garage or something like that. So that's what that's about. We also want to do a structural analysis of the bulletwood garage and find out, could it really in fact take another story? That was something that was planned for when it was developed in the early 2000s, but we're not sure now whether it really can accommodate another story. And then looking at other locations for parking structures, in case we decide we don't want to go with the CBS lot or bulletwood garage, are there other locations? So there are a lot of things here about parking that we'd like to explore. We're not going to plan on doing that till the fall unless we're given a directive by the town manager to do that. But so this is our plan. We'd also like to speak with private landowners, especially in the downtown about how they manage their parking and whether they'd be willing to partner with the town to explore shared parking. And this was something that was mentioned as a recommendation in the parking report from Nelson Nygaard that we got a number of years ago. So those are the planning department's phase one priorities. Phase two priorities really just means that we'll probably work on them after these first six things. Again, number one has to do with different types of housing and how do we make it easier to build these different types of housing? And maybe in A, duplexes converted dwellings and triplexes, maybe some of them have to be owner occupied. We don't really know. We haven't explored it enough but we realize that these are important things to talk about. And I know Maria has brought up the idea of the missing middle. And so we have single family houses and we have apartment buildings and mixed use buildings but we don't have these smaller kind of infill types of housing that we really need. So that's something that we want to look at. Number two breweries, wineries and distillers. I'm not sure how many distillers we have but breweries and wineries is something that maybe many isn't the right word. Several people have come to us and said can we have a brewery somewhere in Amherst? And you can do it in some places like down on University Drive where the hangar is located. ABC used to have a brewery down there. ABC also had a brewery in the building that now is going to house the Drake. But those are fairly limited locations. Other people have asked us if they could have breweries with beer tastings in outlying areas. And one of the places that has been mentioned is an old concrete Apple storage building on, I don't know if it's Middle Street or Southeast Street in South Amherst but it's a building that's been vacant for a long time and nobody can figure out a good use for that. So as I said, a number of people have come forward to say can we have a brewery there? And not right now, you can't do that. So we'd like to explore that possibility and we actually got a district local technical assistance grant from Pioneer Valley Planning Commission to explore the idea of breweries and wineries in Amherst. And it would be good for economic development, potentially good for the tourist industry. So we'd like to be able to explore it. And we know that other cities and towns around here do offer that as a use. Student housing district, that's something that Rob Mora has been interested in looking into. It was the thing a long time ago. There was a student housing district close to the university, but a lot of problems occurred as a result of rowdy behavior in fraternities and sororities. And so the town rezoned it to not allow those things to happen. But we're thinking that maybe we could go back to that and explore it in a more careful way so that we would have control over behavior. Marijuana uses, that's another thing that many or several people have come to us and said, can we look at the buffer zones? We have a 300 foot buffer zone around places where children congregate. Can we look at that and to see if there's any ability to loosen that up? Because right now it means that there aren't very many places in town where you can have marijuana uses. Another thing is people want to look at the idea of delivery service. Other towns allow delivery service. And so right now there's a delivery service that's based in East Hampton and it wants to be able to deliver to Amherst and it will be able to deliver to Amherst. But we currently don't allow a delivery service that's based in Amherst to deliver to Amherst. And so if we did, that would be another economic development and potential source of revenue for the town. And then other people want to explore the idea of on-site consumption. That's something that keeps coming up. We get phone calls frequently about that. So those are things that we'd like to look at. And there's one thing that's not on this list which is the rental by-law. So we have that rental by-law that requires anybody who's renting a unit to register it with the town. And a number of council members have approached the building commissioner about working on the rental by-law and making it more, what should I say, making it more robust I guess is the best way of saying that. So the building commissioner has been working with this group of council members to try to figure out how to make the rental by-law work better and potentially control behavior and potentially control the number of houses that are converted from single family houses to student rentals. So that's something that I'm not working on but the building commissioner is working on it with a group of, I think there are five to eight council members who are interested in this topic. So that really doesn't have any, I don't think it has zoning implications, but it may. So I put it on my list. It's not on the list that's up here on the screen but it is part of my list that I've been talking to the town manager about. So I guess I'll stop talking there and listen to you if you have anything to say about any of these things. Yeah, I guess thanks Chris. That was pretty in-depth and you had a long monologue there. Take a glass of water. I think one of my hopes for this material was if board members had things that they, that we worked on last year that they hoped we would come back to. Yeah, this would be a good time to mention that. We could also put this on the agenda next time and let people think about it a little bit. So I guess I'd add asked the board of what kind of, do you wanna do anything with this or should we just move on to whatever the pressing topic of the week is? Maria. Did I hear you say pressing or depressing topic? I hope, okay. Well, yeah, we worked really hard back when we had the ZSC on a lot of these initiatives with a few people who are no longer with the board and there were some that were really exciting. I felt like we had learned a lot from and learned that, oh, our initial trajectory should actually really change and one of the big ones that I think has been gone, well, all of them have gone for decades but the BL district has always been a conundrum but I think with the form-based zoning maybe that might take care of some of that. The housing of course is always really close to my heart but that's sort of an ongoing thing as well and it's a big thing to take on. I guess my question is for phase one the list that Chris showed, that's a lot of work and so I don't know if it's the right time to tackle a lot of the ones that are in the color chart because phase one is stuff they have to do and has definitive deadlines. They also start spring of this year. So yeah, I guess it's sort of, I would lean on the planning department to tell us whether they can take on, whether it's configuring the ZSC or if we do that thing again where a lot of people from the planning board were on the ZSC so I might as well just have these discussions with the planning board. So if our agendas are kind of light moving forward it might be nice to take on a few of the ones from the color chart and honestly I'm about to step down in June so I'd rather people who are staying on to take the initiative and pick things that they're really passionate about and take the lead on diving into those. So that's why I'm not gonna prioritize I'm just asking questions like, A, does the planning department have time to dive into these other initiatives and B, if the other board members have particular things maybe it's not tonight but maybe the next one. Any of these priorities in the color chart whether they need more information or if they're really interested in diving deep into one or two of those at a time. So I think we felt like when we took on too many it was just too much. So we kind of dove into one one month and then another another month. So, but yeah, I think it's great for the planning department to do some, I'm sorry, planning board to take on some planning. That's especially with really great new members who are just really diverse and really intelligent and thoughtful about so many things. I think we should definitely take advantage of that. The members of the new planning board and dive into some of these priorities. So, but I'm not gonna choose any particular one because again, I'm leaving in a few months. So, but anyways, thank you. Yeah, for putting these lists together and not just dropping it because there was a lot of works not just from us but from decades and decades of previous members who sort of got us to this point. So, yeah, I'm not sure I said anything really, but that's it. All right, Maria, thank you. Chris, your hands up. So I wanted to answer the question of whether the planning department has the capability of working on more things. And I think the answer is in the near term, probably not. We have items one through four that are pretty pressing. But item three, the design standards, that's something that's gonna stretch out over, I'm guessing 18 months to two years. That's gonna be a long-term project. And so that, we don't feel like we have to finish that any soon. Obviously, we'd like to get something in place before there's a lot more development downtown, but that's gonna be a longer-term project. But flood mapping, solar bylaw are certainly short-term. Article 14, since it's expiring at the end of December, we wanna get something in place if this is something that people want to do. We need to get something in place certainly before the end of the year. And the demo delay bylaw I think is, people have been working on it for a long time and wanna get that taken care of. So in the near term, I think, until probably sometime in the summer, early fall, we probably don't have enough bandwidth to work on new things. But come fall, we certainly will. And this parking issue, it's something that's been bothering us for a long time. There's also a council member who's brought this, or will potentially bring this to council, a number of these things and she wants people to start looking at these. So we thought we'd just put it on our list and say we're gonna work on it starting in the fall. So that's all I have to say. All right, thanks, Chris. You're welcome. I mean, ultimately, I think I'm inclined to defer to the planning department staff on what the key priorities are. You all are paying attention to the town council and what's moving there and the deadlines for what's expiring. I will, I think it's my understanding that the town council was on a retreat this weekend to discuss what their shared priorities are likely to be for the coming year. And I don't know if the, but to me, housing feels like an urgent, important issue in our town. And so I'm glad to see it on phase two. And there's part of me that wants to nudge it up into phase one just because the longer we don't move on it, the greater the problem gets. So, but again, totally defer to you and this seems like a really solid list and we'll stop there. All right, thanks, Johanna. Maria, are you have another comment? Just a short one, then doesn't sound like we should reconvene the ZSC. And yeah, I would love if we had light agendas in the planning board, just to bring up a topic of housing or BL or apartments. But yeah, again, I same with what Johanna is saying, I defer to the planning department to put the most pressing things in front of us, but yeah, that's it. Okay, Janet. I completely agree with what Maria said about the timing issues and the amount of work that phase one will take. And okay, I think it was like two years ago that the planning board, we thought the priority should be downtown planning, which looks like it's gonna be taking care of partly by the design guidelines and also housing is a really critical issue. And then the recodification, which looks like it's gonna move ahead at whatever pace it can. But it does, this phase one is a formidable list. And when Maria was talking about housing, I was like, you had all those great ideas for the missing middle, so maybe we'll pull you back in. Or something to, you know, in terms of the design and the look of buildings. So I think that's really important to people as density increases in neighborhoods. So I just wanna support Johanna's comment too. I just agree with what she said. I think this, in terms of the parking, I think that we've had a lot of reports on parking and there's a lot of good ideas, but the parking issues which aren't all zoning or really lack of home in terms of like a group or a department taking it on. So I think if it's coming to reside in planning, I think that's great because it's got a lot of different facets. And some of them are, you know, some of them are zoning issues, some of them are, you know, just talking to landowners share parking, which I think is a great idea because a lot of those businesses just function in the day and so there are lots can use at that time. So I think it's exciting that the planning department is sort of taking, you know, hopefully taking that on in a holistic way because I think there's a lot of ways to tweak it, but no one's really been in charge of it in terms of solutions and adjustments. All right, thanks, Janet. Chris, I guess my probably first priority on phase two would be the housing and whether it's explicitly student housing or whether it's the, I would probably put the student housing over the low and medium density housing, although that might be part of the solution to the student housing issue, but I do think we'd be well-served to think about where we wanna put student housing and where we can have more of it so that we take the pressure off single family homes. We have more students living closer to campus, so there's less driving and carbon emissions and maybe so that more students are living in town as opposed to in Hadley and we can recover some of their purchasing, you know, whether it's groceries or clothes or whatever. All right, Janet, is that a legacy hand? All right, so Chris, I guess that's our conversation about that this evening. Yep. All right, the time is 9.25 and we're through item three on our agenda with zoning discussions. Item four is old business. Chris, do we have any old business? No old business, no. All right. Any new business? Not anticipated, no. No new business. All right, form A, A&R, subdivision? Yes, two of those that Pam will show you. All right, great. I'll show them, but Chris, do you wanna talk about them probably? Yes, so Pam created this locust map for property on Sand Hill Road and there are three lots there, the two turquoise lots and the one yellow lot. And the idea is that we're going to combine one of the turquoise lots with the yellow lot and slightly change the property line between the two turquoise lots. So Pam can bring that up. Here it is, yep. So she's got the existing lines in green and the one existing line that is to the right in green is going to go away and the two lots, the lot with the house on it and the lot that's vacant are going to be combined. And then the property that is farther to the northwest is going to, I think that also has a house on it, but it will gain some property, that little rectangle that's 25 feet by 100 feet is going to be added to the house, to the property there that Pam is moving her cursor around. So that's really it. It's really just a question of combining those two lots on the right and adding a little piece to the lot on the left. And if you would allow Doug Marshall to sign this on behalf of the planning board, that would be lovely. All right, Chris, thank you. Do we have any questions about this, Janet? I think I understand what's happening. Do you know why or what their plans are? We don't, no, they haven't talked to us about that. Nope. Okay, are there any other comments, questions? All right. Can I have a motion to allow me to sign this on our behalf that we agree approval is not required under the subdivision by law? Johanna? So moved. All right. Second, Andrew? I'll second. All right. We'll go through the roll call. No more discussion, any hands for discussion? Okay, Maria? All right. Tom? Looks