ing or whether we want to turn it over. Can I just add something? I mean, clearly, there's going to be a whole process of digesting the draft between the planning board and other public meeting and to work towards even going to the state for for the next next step, one of the points that out. Maybe I could add something more. We want your opinion, but well, I could I guess as these questions are raised, we can we can we can deal with them. And so I guess this is a 28 days document. So there is a lot to digest. Thank you. There you're not kidding. There's a lot to unpack here. A lot of good information. Thank you so much. That's a lot. I'm sure we're all like whoa. If you're willing to take questions now, I was going to open it up to the board first. So low out there. If anyone has questions, I see Maria has a question. Yes, thank you for that. I went to I think all all the public forms that you held and didn't manage to speak to any of you, but I really liked a lot of ideas proposed. And there is so much here I'm going to try to stay big picture and not get into the weeds right away. I guess maybe the big picture thing for me is the sort of demising line of how you create this overlay district. I looked really closely at this afternoon. And there are a lot of different owners of the parcels. But generally, I liked your idea of just putting the parking in the back, creating a streetscape. And there was a little bit of conflicting information here and there about whether it was a zero street setback or 15. And it sounds like you're heading more toward the 15. But I guess, yeah, it would have been nice to have a little more of a fine tooth comb and dividing the sub districts because there are some areas where it doesn't quite make sense. Like, for example, the post office is included. And there's this church that owns a bigger parcel, but we've divided it into two different sort of sub districts. So I guess I'd like to know more about. Do you see this as a general map that maybe it's malleable as far as its boundaries, but that we stick with like your idea of alright, if you want to create a streetscape, use these set of criteria. If you want to create more of a transition area, use these sets because right now I think the dividing of the blocks seem like they need a little more study. But the idea behind like urban versus transition versus residential, it feels right as far as what you've proposed. But just sort of big picture question is, you know, did you study the parcels really closely or were you just sort of mapping like based on general circulation of cars versus pedestrian? This is how you came up with that sort of dotted black line. That's the overlay boundary, because there's some areas that still feel like it's a little too heavy handed as far as it's this, you know, and so I wonder if you can speak more about just the overall, you know, the boundary that black dashed line that's in the sub district map you're showing. There's a lot of negotiation. So if we did like a time lapse of the different versions of that, you would see that black line wiggling around quite a bit. So we we we work with a number of people, I mean, Karen and I and Nate was very involved and Chris was very involved are just, you know, intuitive sense of what made sense. And it's not like this is right and everything else is wrong. And again, this is why we're we want input. It was our best guess as we're we, you know, allow the opportunities that 40 R brings with it, we're mixed use development, bigger development, multifamily housing development kind of made sense.  And I think the well, there was always plans for the fire station. But then the church with the larger more modern church piece behind it and the, well, I'm sorry, I'm jumping on another place. But I guess the more southern portion that's closer to the existing, taller historic downtown, that area looks like it's, it's maybe needs one more study. I love what you did closer to the two new developments up toward Tendrick Park. I think that what you propose makes a lot of sense. And the scale there makes a lot of sense. But I think that part that transitions between the existing historic downtown going north on North Pleasant, there's a lot of pieces there that I'm not sure are movable or changeable. And that maybe maybe that that should be considered, you know, some of them need to just be considered as landmarks and then others. And then you work from that. I think in your proposal, like from the massing, you did keep the church. And I think almost everything else is limited other than the newer developments, which I think is fine. I think I just yeah, I think that this little more finer tooth combing of like figure out the area in the southern part. But generally, I mean, the what you sort of come up with toward the east side of Kendrick Park, I think is really great. I hope that happens one day. But I spy specific, I mean, there was like a like a 50 page document of your form based code and took a lot of go through. So I guess if there's future meetings, we could go into like specific line by line. I mean, unless you want that now. But I guess, with the time we have, I was trying to stay more big picture kind of ideas. So yeah, I don't have a specific block. And I'm not sure you want the answers like that tonight. But yeah, now that's a good question, Maria. David and Karen, how would you be? Do you have any idea? Because I assume you work with other towns and other planning boards. What would be the best way to get our comments, detailed comments? I mean, we can give you lots of general. But how does that usually work? Okay. Yeah, Karen. I think the best to funnel them through Chris or Nate. And so they can see them and then they can channel them to us. Okay, that's good. Chris, it would be good to have some detailed comments and if they could be in writing, that would be terrific. And that's what I was thinking. Would you prefer us to like mark up the document? I think we are, we got it as one giant PDF. But if there's a way we can get one that we can do markup or something and then submit our comments to you. Sure. Do we want to send it as a word document? Sometimes it's tough getting 23 different word versions back as markups. Sometimes it's better just to get a list here are the 14 items from different people, but I'm certainly open. I don't know. You know, we, every line matters, every line of writing matters, every line on that map matters. And as an architect and planner, we work under other people's zoning. So I know the importance of all of this. So we welcome whatever form the comments take. So I appreciate, I don't know why we're going weird. How many speakers do we have? Anyways, I appreciate that comment. So maybe at this point, we should just do a bullet list, writing all of our comments to Chris. And then when we get to a finer version down the road, maybe that, you know, doing that and refine, but at least this first round, we Chris would get a feel of, because a lot of times, you know, what happens a lot of us are saying the exact same comments over and over again. And it could be comments that we really like a section too. So Maria, is there anything else or I'm going to why I'm going to move on to Doug, but first, I'm going to recognize Chris, but Maria, do you have anything else? Okay, you're good.  Okay, I was just going to say I agree that the bulleted list is the better way of communicating. I think that a markup is just really confusing when you have so many people working on a document. And we did actually get some comments from Rob Crowner. I don't know if any of you have seen them that could be that the consultant just saw them. But he sent in a list of comments and questions that he had. And then David responded to them. And there were all kinds of things like did you really mean to say this on page five? So I think, you know, referring to particular pages and particular paragraphs, and if you can find a paragraph number to refer to that will be helpful. General comments would also be useful. But, you know, we'll take them in whatever form. But I think that a bulleted list would be best. And Chris, when would you like our comments back to you? Um, I think if you could get them back, you know, let's see, what we what day is this? This is the 6th of May. Maybe by the 3rd of June. We have a meeting scheduled for the 3rd of June. And that might be that would give you a little bit less than a month. Reasonable. So like get them to you a couple of days before days before that. Yes. So maybe the week the Wednesday of the week before, which would be what? Maybe the 28th or 27th of May? Is that Wednesday? So if that's clear with everyone, we'll go with get your comments to Chris a bullet item listing out. And it can be positive to things you really like. But your comments to Chris by the 27th of May. Okay, great. Chris, anything else or I'm going to move to Doug? No, no, nothing else. Great. I recognize Doug. And I didn't haven't been to any of the public meetings and I'm new to the planning board. So I'm just figuring out this whole 4040 our regiments. But I did look at the presentation you made back in December. And so my first question was, how did the audience react or feel about the massing that you presented through the entire zone? Well, in one of the things is always dangerous doing that kind of massing, because people sometimes think, Oh, this is what they're proposing to build. And we're not proposing anything. This is an illustration of the kinds of things that could happen. It's also dangerous, because the current zoning would allow most of that to take place. There was certainly, um, there's some concerns about the size. I think one of the things that got said repeatedly was, well, you know, I can imagine it being that big along North, North prospect, you know, as long as it wasn't just a one five story building from bottom to top, I think people are reacting against what would what has been built.  So and that's in the design guidelines of sort of pushing down. So what was blocked out? Some of that would not be allowable, even though we did that modeling in the design standards as written because it scales it down towards the perimeter. Okay, and other people can weigh in.  But there were certainly concerns. And, you know, that's how they were addressed. And is it are you getting a lot of feedback? No. Okay, good. So I was puzzled why what I thought was a regulatory regimen focused on residential. Why it seemed in some of the locations in the text, it is also applicable to commercial office, cultural, civic, institutional and non residential uses. Why is that part of this and not dictated and left in our basic zoning? Um, I can respond to that. The the zoning has to be all inclusive. So whatever in the 40 are has been included in the bylaw and the 40 are does promote mixed uses and housing in in areas where there are multiple uses. But they the state didn't want to preclude other types of uses and development in a district as well. So it's Did I answer your question? Well, I'm not in a way that I understood. So let's keep 50% needs to be housing. But but it makes use in a mixed use property. At least I think it's at least 51% has to be housing. But there can be other developments within the district that don't include housing. And so those and so those developments would still be governed by our basic zoning code. Uh, yeah, well, we included we included those uses in the bylaw. But this is Nate, I can't raise my hand. Doug, I think one thing is if if someone decides to use a 40 are they can only use 40 are so if in the downtown, we said it was only for residential uses, the only time the only thing they could do would be apartment buildings. And so in the downtown, we'd want a mixed use building under 40 are so that's why you need to allow other uses. So in Northampton, in some communities, they have only a residential 40 are, but it's in an area where they don't need or want commercial or non residential uses. But in the downtown, if we want someone to use a 40 are, and we want it to be mixed use buildings, we have to allow that within the 40 are otherwise they can only do just the residential piece. So they can't, they can't mix and match. They couldn't say, Okay, well, I'm gonna do a little part of my product will be under 40 are part will be under the underlying zoning. It's basically all 40 are are nothing. Okay. But we are encouraging along North Pleasant, that there be commercial, be retail, be restaurants on the ground floor, and housing up above. But instead of housing, it could be office up above. Partially, but majority of it has to be housing. So it seems appropriate to have mixed use at least along North Pleasant and along triangle. That's what makes it a downtown. Okay, and I guess my last question is, is it correct that this really only works as a desirable framework for development if we substantially down zone, the areas that are in place now. And that should have been on our list of questions.  In our discussions, a couple of days ago with Chris and Nate and Karen and I, that was our sense that would make it much more effective to do the down zoning. But but there are still in the, in the 40 are kind of the preliminary boundaries, there's districts, the limited business districts and the 40 are would would apply would likely be there would be likely instead of to use 40 are instead of the underlying zoning. So that would be a boom to those areas. It's the it's the general business area where we would like to promote the use of 40 are instead of the underlying zoning. Thank you. I recognize Michael. Yes, a process question. If we're going to submit bulleted lists of comments on the on the presentation we just saw, I presume that's on the presentation as well as on the proposed zoning bylaw. If if we are going to get those, I wonder if Chris could circulate to the planning board members the comments of the other planning board members is I would think it would be very useful to get somebody's idea and spin off an idea off someone else's idea. So that if as as comments come in, Chris, whether you could send them out to us and thereby soliciting even more comments from those of us who'd already made them. I don't know whether that's a violation of the open meeting law or not, but it would certainly be helpful if you could keep in communication with us on this issue as things come in to you. I might be able to generally characterize the types of comments I'm receiving, but I can't really send out specific comments because of the open meeting law. So, you know, if I start to get bulleted lists of comments in, I could send out something that says, you know, people seem to be concerned about the height of buildings or people seem to be concerned about setbacks or something like that. But it would have to be very general. So I think what I'm imagining is you would send your comments to me by the 27th of May. And then we could have this as a topic of conversation on June 3rd, and then you could still have more time after that to submit more comments. This is not there's no timeline here. We're not like trying to rush this through or anything. We really want people to be able to talk about it. We want your input. So, you know, I think if we if we get the comments and we discuss them on June 3rd, then you can send in more comments and, you know, it'll be an ongoing process. Does that make sense? That makes perfect sense. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. That's great. I recognize Jack. Hello. I just want to say I'm I'm wondering, I apologize, but I have I have to I have to get up really early tomorrow morning. I was at a very, very long day. So I'm just wondering I'll hang in there for a little bit longer. And I apologize. Like I want to understand this better. And if you could kind of condense this material Chris in an email that, you know, what we're supposed to specifically review because we've gotten a lot of emails lately. Yeah. So, but again, I apologize for needing to check out. But if we're if we're concluding soon, then I'll hang in there a little bit longer. That's all I had to say. Thanks. Thank you, Jack. So at this point, I'm not seeing any other members with David did just raise his hand. Hold on. And I only see one attendee right now. So, Chris, I think Jack had a good suggestion. If you can just send a summary, maybe just like, what are our expectations and what your expectations are? What we're actually reviewing? Is it? Yeah. Okay, that'd be great. I'm going to recognize David. And then I also see Janet. And then I'll go to attendees. If there are any other attendees out there, I see one hand, I think it's a Brian, if there's anyone else put your hand in and we'll get to that. And then hopefully, we'll be sort of finishing up with that. Because we are over three hours right now. And we'll move on to the rest of the meeting. So right now I recognize David. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. There's a lot of meat here. And I'm looking forward to working through it. I just wanted to, and perhaps I don't, I just wanted to make sure I am understanding at least one part of it. And it seems as if the, in terms of the residential development, if a proposed project has fewer than 13 residential units, then the affordability issue doesn't come into play under the the bylaw draft as drafted. Can I respond to that right now? Please. I am really glad that you brought that up, because I did want to discuss that tonight. You know, the state used, they, you know, they have some, some guidance and suggestions, and they had a plugin figure at 13, and it didn't make sense to me. I thought it was too high. And, you know, looking at other 40-hour bylaws, they don't specify minimum project size. They just have that 20% and 25%. And given that the overall percentage of affordability in the district as a whole has to be at least 20%. 13 units does just does not make sense. And so my strong recommendation for your consideration would be just to eliminate any minimum project size in that particular section of the bylaw. Food for thought. Thanks. Does that answer any more, David? Yeah. I think there was. Shoot, but it flew out. You know what, David, I'll call you. Oh, no. Yes, I had. So could you, could you, um, could you describe, I mean, some of the financial incentives for that are available utilizing the 40R versus, you know, the, the, the, the absence of any using the 40B. But so, so that we can get a taste of some of that carrot as well. Um, I'll respond to that. See, see, there are no financial incentives under 40B. The big incentive under 40B is density and other waivers to zoning. In 40R, there is usually increased in density because there's certain, depending on the type of housing, there are certain thresholds of density that have to be obtained under the, through projects in the district. But there are also what's called incentive payments. So based on the incremental increase in number of units projected in the district, the, the, there is a sliding scale on the amount of payments that the state will make to the community. There is also a $3,000 density bonus payment that comes with every affordable unit that is permitted in the zoning district through the 40R. So, you know, quite frankly, in districts that are, that are designated for 40R that aren't very built up, there is obviously a bigger opportunity for these incentive payments as opposed to districts that have already, you know, are more built up where there's, there are fewer parcels that are undeveloped. And those are the main incentives. I should say, also add that communities that have 40R districts are more competitive for a whole range of discretionary funding estate. An example are MassWorks infrastructure funds, where a lot of communities that have 40R districts have also married their kind of development with these extra discretionary funds and capital improvements. And that's another example. Another carrot is that if a, and this is not, actually, this is not a big issue for amours, but for towns that are still under the 10% affordability threshold, the state has actually denied some comprehensive permit projects that the towns have kind of fought against if the town was making a good faith effort over their 40R district. Another example is bonus points, being more competitive for state funding for school development.  Thank you. I'm going to move and recognize Janet. Thank you. There's parts of, there's, I guess, there are attractive things to this proposal and the 40R district. I am pleased to see the recognition of the need for parking and having it in the rear. I'm a little concerned about a broad waiver of that requirement, since that seems to lead us down a path. I'm very much in favor of an increased affordable housing requirement. I've been pushing for a comprehensive affordable housing requirement for all development in Amherst. I like the idea of setbacks on the upper floors and the thoughtfulness to the pedestrian and shopper experience. And I think that's a central issue in economic development, like what will draw people downtown. And I love the idea of clear and consistent zoning rules that apply to everyone and having attractive buildings. People, developers can understand what they can build and residents can understand what can be built and not see all sorts of waivers and things. But I still see a lot of possibility for waivers and a lot of language about waivers in this draft. So I do want to say this because I think I was probably at the inception of this idea of a 40R downtown more than three years ago in a zoning subcommittee meeting. And I'm very concerned that the residents most affected by this proposal were not contacted and haven't been pulled into this process. This proposal of a 40R district downtown, mostly along North Pleasant Street, I think initially across Kendrick Park, was made by a planning board member in a zoning subcommittee meeting as a thought experiment. And this thought experiment has gone on. And through this process has always the downtown has always been listed as prime target for this proposal. There are three historic districts around the downtown. The downtown residents are extremely active. They proposed a residential properties bylaw. They meet monthly, very engaged people that they're really kind of protecting their neighborhood from being kind of squished in between UMass and all the activities downtown. I know a lot of people they really support more development and more building downtown, but they really want to participate in what that looks like and the size and scale of that. A lot of people who attended the 40R public meetings weren't there because they knew about the meeting from advertising in the town but because people personally contacted them. Like I was personally contacted and didn't hear about this meeting and I've contacted people from the neighborhood in subsequent meetings. If you attended a public meeting and you felt that in attendance form, you were never notified about the next meeting. There was no information about the 40R proposal. It was on the planning department website or the planning board website. It's been sort of hidden away on the housing trust fund. Even the planning board hasn't been part of this process. I'm almost astonished that we've come to this point. This very large proposal for reover zoning, a huge change in zoning in downtown is only we're only meeting now because of asking for it last January. You asked questions about how people reacted to this proposal in December 19th. I think people were really taken aback. A lot of people were upset and stunned at the size of the buildings and they've actually gotten the buildings that are being proposed are actually have gone from four stories to five stories in the BL. A lot of people were talking about not having a canyon of buildings on both sides of East Pleasant, North Pleasant Street. People talked about preserving New England's Amherst's New England Village look. It's funky look. Harvard Square has a similar look. It has a mix of tall buildings and small buildings. I don't really understand why one corner of Amherst was picked as the look for the rest of the downtown. I have a lot of questions about why this district was built, picked, the scale, the lack of involvement of the people who were most impacted by it. I hope this is really the beginning of a discussion with the planning board and the neighborhoods around the downtown. Maybe it's a good idea. Ford VR is a great idea, but maybe it's a good idea to start smaller using one Northampton or in a different part of town where it's not so consequential or so big to just basically say we're going to go from three floors of zoning to five stories in this scale. I have a lot of very specific questions about different parts of this, but I know it's late. I'd hate to have us all say, well, this is the proposal and let's just go forward. This is the site and let's go forward. We haven't even talked to the people who are most involved affected by it. I could say more, but that's the gist of what I'd like to say tonight. We have two attendees. Can I just add something here? And I appreciate Janet's comments. You know, it wasn't until it was well into the process when we even landed on the downtown. And that landing came from a lot of input. So, you know, we really try to go through a deliberate process of trying to identify the best place to start with the 40R district with lots of input from various folks. Now, you know, we're still, we're still not the process of getting public input has a ways, long ways to go here. I mean, we're planning the four, you know, hoping to have a fourth public hearing where we'll talk specifically about the draft bylaw and and really encourage those in the neighbors to attend. There are also if the planning board decides to move forward, there'll be required hearings where we provide another opportunity to for input. And, you know, we certainly look for, you know, more instead of less feedback in the community.  And a lot of your questions are process questions. Why didn't you? Why can't you? Those are reasonable. And any ones that can make it their way into notes about specific things, you know, whether it's the outline, like you think that that's a particular problem to include this property, or questions about, I mean, five stories, you know, to circle that and say, is this appropriate everywhere? You know, those are good comments, those would be from you. And then it could become part of a larger process. So appreciate more input on on all of these issues from you. She didn't muted. Christine, you're muted. Thank you. Chris, best of all, I see your handout. Yeah, am I muted? No, I'm not. Okay, you did. I had a printer going in the back. And thank you for reminding me. I wanted to acknowledge that we received an email from Maureen Adams today. And she is a neighbor. She lives on Beston Street, I believe. So she's very interested in what happens in the downtown and also in what happens to neighborhoods west of West of the downtown. She had asked me to read her questions. But I think you have all received her questions and can consider them carefully. And I think Karen and David received her questions today too. So the next time we gather to talk about this topic, you know, maybe you'll have had a chance to consider some of her questions. I think it's very late in the evening. And I don't really feel that I want to read all of those questions right now. But I wanted to acknowledge that we have received this very detailed and concerned email. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. We'll all take a look at that. I did see the email come in this afternoon. I see Janet's hand and then I'm going to move to the attendees. There's three hands raised there. Janet, you want to follow up? Yeah, I just, you know, I have a bunch of comments that one of just just three big ones is I don't think the proposal addresses or deals with the concerns about student rentals and filling the downtown with students. And so there are ways to stick and graduate from moving in wholesale into apartment buildings. And that's the worst nightmare is building a lot of housing downtown and having it turned Amherstown into like a student downtown primarily students and what the impact that would have economically. It also I don't see how it helps that middle income residents can live here. I can see people I could see apartments at the high end. I could see apartments that are affordable and I don't see how people with middle incomes will be able to afford to live downtown. And are there ways to put that into the 40 or I know Concord has done stuff with having people, you know, what they consider affordable or people with kind of higher incomes. I also feel like there's no protection of the downtown historic resources and community character. And then there's no real encouragement of remediation and reuse of existing buildings. Is there a way to protect facades? The cottages, the quirky storefronts when you're expanding, but you keep the building, you know, a lot of what people like about Amherst and shopping in downtown is in the BL along North Pleasant Street. And those those, you know, putting up a four five story buildings isn't going to help state that cottage Victorian look at different things. And so is there a way to put something in the 40 yard that in, you know, protects those resources? The historic buildings aren't just the churches on Hall in the library. So that's that's all. Thanks. Okay, I'm going to move to the attendees and with Pam's help. If I saw Brian was the first hand that went earlier, if we can go with that. So it is getting very late. I just want to tell them we really do want to hear your comments and your questions. But if you could try to keep it, you know, is brief and concise, we would appreciate that. And that will give more time for the consultants to possibly give a better answer. Brian, could you please state your full name and where you live? Yes, Brian Thompson, six sale in place. Welcome. Janet actually did a pretty good job. I should say I'm very used to apologizing for people for being between them and lunch. I'm not as used to apologizing for people for being between them in bed. So this is the first time for me. But Janet did a good job of really summarizing my question. I would just in it really touches on workforce housing or you might say middle class housing. I think it's how Janet put it. Amherst is it's a it's a destination. People people want to live here. And so if you build housing that is, you know, just the square footage looks like something a middle class family would be able to afford or you try to do it along those lines, you know, is still going to go at a premium. So I don't I don't think that just putting in mixed use is going to all of a sudden allow kind of workforce housing to be developed. I think you have to have different policies and different strategies to do that. That's my comment. Thank you. I'm going to move to Robert. Pam, if you can enable that.  This is really Dorothy Pam using your husband's computer because mine wasn't working. Can you hear me? We can. Welcome. Fabulous. Okay. 229 Amity Street. So I went to one of the early hearings and looked at all the kinds of houses that the they were showing us. And the only ones that I liked that would have looked nice and Amherst were the ones we can't have, which is like like East Hampton can have making over old buildings, old factory buildings. But it was all kind of general. And then the next one I attended. It was clear you were talking about downtown Amherst. And I remember that in the breakout groups, there was tremendous consternation. I could see it all over the room. We had four breakout groups. People were saying, what? You mean that here? And it was not a smooth event. So I guess everyone's told, well, it's just planning. It's not really here. So I can see how this could work out, but I'm not sure that it would work out. For example, waivers are allowed. So people would say, well, I'm going to, you know, wave the parking and we're going to have the same problem that we don't have enough parking downtown. But I'm going to focus myself really on what do you mean in subdivision three? Those are the areas that are really impinging on the residential area, which I represent. That's the west side of Kendrick Park. I see the stripes there above coals. I see them going right into North Prospect, North Prospect Street, which looks like it'll be just a little cut off strip of houses next to, I don't know what, but and then I see it go down further. So I'm really curious to know what the third subdivision would be. Thank you. And I don't know if anyone wants to answer. Okay. So Hilda, I believe you can speak. Introduce yourself. Or did she? Oh, she can't. Okay. Well done. She did have her hand up. It's down. Oh, yeah. No, it's still up. Go ahead. Hilda. Can she allow to talk? Okay, there we go. I think she's now I got it. Yep. Basically, I was going to try to shut up, but you know me. You're doing it. So state your name and your address. The green down to 98 monarchy road. Thank you. I have been the most of the hearings. I have read all of the literature and at the meeting, I want to say that Janet and Dotty have very much put their finger on all of my issues. The interview a list really shocked me because it was so biased left out most of the people who know what's going on downtown. And in any event, I just want to say that I want to refute what the develop what the consultant said about picking the downtown because I sat at that meeting around one of the tables with a former chairman of the planning board, with members of the Chamber of Commerce, with one of the big developers in that neighborhood. Nobody at that table wanted it downtown. Nobody. And that seemed to be the impression that I got from from reading also the interview letters that the downtown was sort of, you know, not really on the radar. And it looked like Beacon wanted to have it really badly up here in North Amherst, which wouldn't have thrown me either. But I think it would have been a better idea if you really wanted to develop some housing. One of the things that concerned me a lot by listening into the Chamber and the bid discussion Monday night. And again, that it shows up in the bylaw that you guys have written is getting rid of the design review board. And if you're getting rid of the whole zoning bylaw by a developer accepting the 40R in its place, then it looks like the local Historic District Commission and regulations for the Historic District also go down the drain. I'm very concerned about that. One of the other things that bothered me is the fact mixed juice building and have zero to 49% commercial. Well, that brings up a whole can of worms too. And I wanted to say the reason we got the design review board working very hard in town meeting was because of Amherst Savings Bank Exgressions right at the center of town tore down a nice little brick strip buildings to put up that ugly bank, which was stuck within perpetuity. So that's why we have a design review board, even though they're not taken very seriously. Okay, so getting back to the whole commercial aspect, since the new buildings were built downtown, I have very little reason to go downtown because it seems to me my kids counted it. There are 21 Chinese restaurants, there are bars, now we've got economic development in marijuana. The only thing I decided I go down for is my bagel fix or I go down and get my hair done when you can, but that's often that in the cinema. But I mean, basically, in the older days we had Matthew's shoes, we had Anne August, we had Walsh's. There was a reason to go downtown and go shopping. It doesn't seem to be a reason anymore. And if we're going to fill up the downtown with residential, there seems to be what are we going to get more Chinese restaurant, more pizza, more bars, more marijuana. So I think that this has to be looked at more carefully, encourage more commercial. I know that the square footage is going to be very expensive for commercial in new buildings because of the stretch code and the building codes, etc, etc. But when we got one East Pleasant Street, we lost the carrot shops. And I used to frequent creative needle. I used to frequent the music store to buy violin strings and music for my kids. And we've lost all this. And I don't see it coming back unless somebody makes a real effort to uncover something other than restaurants, bars, and marijuana for economic development. So now I've said my piece. Thank you. I'm going to go move to Rob Crowner. Pam, can we enable him introduce yourself and state your address? Rob Crowner, 44 Spalding Street. Welcome back. Thank you. So I'm pretty excited about this proposal. It's something that I've been looking forward to for a long time, rezoning downtown and not focusing just on the general business parts, but the outlying parts including the limited business parts and even some general residents parts.  So spreading it out a little bit makes a lot of sense. I like how the proposal makes several zones. It steps the density back towards the residential areas. I think the where the lines are drawn for the sub districts seem right to me. I'm not really sure what Maria was getting at. I think they look right to me. And I think they're also important because there's an opportunity to develop across sub districts where you have a larger building that actually becomes smaller towards the back. And so it's important to have these sub districts. I also want to point to specifically the RG zones on the west side of North Pleasantry that Pam was talking about. Right now the middle part there, not the one a little farther down, the middle part. Yeah, that one. There's already an apartment complex there. So zoning doesn't mean that something is going to happen. It just provides an opportunity for something to happen. And if that apartment complex were to be redeveloped, I think it would be great if it were redeveloped under 40R. And the last, the bottom RG zone where the church house is and the parking lots are, that's an RG zone. You can't do anything there except build some residential uses. But it's part of the downtown and it should be available to use for downtown type development. That, if you were to rezone that according to the bylaw that's been proposed, you will create an opportunity to actually build a parking garage there. And the parking garage doesn't, I don't assume will not be built by the town for a long time. But a private developer could build a parking out there under this zoning that can't be done now. That's an important piece of this proposal, I believe. So I don't want to say as we go on, but I'm excited about this proposal. I think it's, I think it's, it's, has a lot of the things that I've been looking for for many years. And I hope you'll support it. Christine, you're on mute. Yes. Sorry, I was cleaning up there. Can you, I recognize Janet Keller and can you unmute her? Yes. Janet Keller, I believe you can speak your name and address and your comment please. Thank you. Janet Keller, I live on at 120 Poblitt Hill Road up in North Amherst. And I would like to ask that an attempt be made to reach out to those who attended previous meetings, particularly the December 19 meeting. I was very surprised to hear that among those present, many of whom I know are enthusiastic about downtown development, nonetheless expressed serious concerns. And I'm not hearing them tonight. And so you can see who's out there and I can't, but I'd really like to request that you provide an opportunity for them to another opportunity for them to comment before this gets too locked up. I would also like to put in a plea for greater attention to the historic resources, preservation of character, and adaptive reuse, and maybe preservation of some facades, even if the building behind them is going to be larger. And finally, I would like to ask Chris, I understand that I haven't seen Corian Adams email, but it does seem kind of a shame that she took the opportunity to comment and I'm sure that was pretty taxing for her. And I wonder if you could share with us maybe her top three concerns. Thank you. Thank you. And I think Ken Rosenthal, can we allow him to talk? Thank you. Janet almost said what I was going to say about Morianne's questions. This is a recording that's going to be made available to the public. You've been very kind to let all of us have our say. Morianne wanted to be heard and that was how she was going to reach out to you and the public and the consultants. So is there some way that if you cannot read all those questions or comments, you could make them available to the public rather than summarize them yourself. I think she needs her voice needs to be heard and her questions need to be heard just as she presented them. Thank you. Thanks. So, Chris, are you there? Yeah, I'm happy to read Morianne's questions. She has four pages of questions, but it's rather large type so I can read them, but I don't think that there will be an opportunity to answer them all. Would you give me permission to read them? Is it four pages? Yes, I said the type is pretty big. It's probably 14 or 16 points. Seven questions. All of the planning board members have this document and we could read them on June 3rd, but if people feel very interested in hearing them, I would be happy to read them now. There's, I see some hands from members. If Janet and David could turn off their hands for a minute and I'll just ask the board, raise your hand if you would like them to be read tonight or should we read them and address them at the next meeting that this is going to happen on June 3rd. So, right now the hands are down, so if anyone wants to feel strong, I just want to see if we can at least get a simple quorum. And I just want to remind everybody we're three hours and 45 minutes into the meeting. I only see one member raising their hand. So, Chris, at this point, that's a long, if it was one or two pages, maybe. So, I'm checking hands again. Yeah. All right. One more hand went up. But is there any, I mean, Chris, you've read through them. Are there are these different questions and what we've heard or? Won't these, the emails that are sent in are made a part of the public record? So, they're readable by the public. Are they not? Yeah, well, we all got them. So, it's part, well, Chris, how is this going to happen right now? So, it wasn't part of our packet, but it did get emailed to us. Yeah. You know what? It seems like we're spending a lot of time talking about them. So, why don't I just read them quickly? Okay. I need to go. This is a four-hour meeting. It's really. Yeah. I think it's actually. Chris, can we, can you post them tomorrow somewhere? And? Post them. And I'll say to, you know, Ms. Adams and everyone else that, you know, now I see this is really important. I saw it came in today. I will read it tonight. I'm sure we will all read it and we will think about it. And these, all of her issues will be considered and we will continue this dialogue and more feedback from people. Like what I kept hearing there is people really want to be assured that people are contacted about this meeting, that they know it's there, that they can watch and all this is going to be put on the web so people can read. I mean, we're such at the beginning of this right now. Like we're not voting on anything. Like we're just learning about it. I know I'm learning a lot about 40R. I didn't know. So, Chris, if there's a place you can post them, where would that go on the planning board or the? We would put them on the place where the rest of the material about this 40R district is. I think Nate said earlier that it's posted on the Housing Trust website, but there's also a link to it from the Planning Board or the Planning Department. Nate, if Nate is still here, maybe he can answer that. Yeah, I don't know. Nate, are you there? So, I think, yeah, we could, you know, we could try to get documents up and, you know, I thought there was a web page under the Planning Department and we can try to link to it from a few different ways just so people can find it easily and maybe we could put it in the news again so that it becomes just a, you know, you know, it's one of those items on the front just for a bit. So, yeah, I think there's, you know, we can look at how to organize that material in a way that it's, you know, people can find it. Can you put, like, yeah, have a comment section? Because we got other people's comments too. I don't want to put somebody's more head than others. We got a lot of comments and we can't talk about them all. No, I'm not agreeing. I think we could, you know, we already have other presentations. We could put all the other, all the presentations and all the comments received so people can just click and download a PDF of comments. Could that happen, you think, within the next week or something? Sure, yeah. That would be great. We really appreciate it and, you know, we want to keep the information and transparency out there. Okay, so I think we need to end this for tonight. And I want to first off, I want to thank the consultants for coming. This is a lot of information for a lot of people. It's, you know, we're learning new things and there's a lot to digest. And thank you for all your hard work. We really appreciate it. I'm just checking hands here. So at this point, Chris, we're thinking it will come back June 3rd and you'll receive comments from us on the 27th. And in our comments, we can also comment on comments that we've read, you know, that from other people and affirm them or stress them. Okay. All right. So if it's all right with everyone, we're going to move ahead to old business item five. Is there anything under that, Chris? I don't think so. Nope. Unless you, you had asked me to report on the CRC meeting, but I don't know if you want me to do that. Is that old business? I could just quickly say the CRC meeting on the fifth discussed zoning by law revisions and the process by which we would do zoning by law revisions and who might be involved in various bodies that might be formed or existing bodies that might do that work. And I could probably write up some notes and circulate them. I assume CRC will be doing minutes from that their meeting, right? Could you send it out to us when they're meeting? Yeah. And there was nothing firm that came out of them, the CRC, because I was there and I think Janet was there. We watched it and it was, you know, it's just a lot of discussion right now. They've got a lot of things they're thinking about, but there was nothing firm that was coming to us yet. But when they have something firm, they'll be sending us information. Thanks, Chris. So item six, new business? No new business. Okay. Item seven, form A, ANR, subdivision applications? No ANRs. Eight is upcoming ZBA applications. Pam might have some, but the only one I can think of right now is the Colonial Village Playground. I think I might have told you about that last week. They received, they are going to receive some used equipment from North Village and install it in the backyards of some of those buildings at North Village, I mean at Colonial Village. And they're going through the ZBA to have that approved. Oh, I don't know if we had heard about that, but okay. Thank you. Yeah. Number nine, upcoming SPP, SPR, SUB applications? These are some I might have also talked to you about. We are on the verge of receiving an application, said probably review application from Amherst media to build a new building on Main Street at the corner of Main and Gray. That should be coming in. I have part of the application that I don't have the drawings. We received an application from Russ Wilson to build a three season porch on a house at 11 Vista Terrace, which is the Applebrook Applebrook cluster subdivision. And all about learning wants to expand its playground. I think I might have told you about those last two the other day last week. Yes. Thank you. Okay. So we'll move on to item 10 report of the chair. I have none. Number 11 report of staff. Thank you very much for attending the meeting in this unusual way and for sticking with us for the last several hours. We appreciate it. And thank you to the consultants. So that's all I have to say. Thank you, everyone. So if there's a motion to adjourn the meeting, if someone wants to raise their hand and someone else raise it to second it. Hello. Anyone awake? Raise some hands. Do you want to go home? Oh, you are home. Doug and Michael. Great. So I saw Doug's first. Adjournment. Michael second. All right. I think we're all in favor. Thank you, everyone. You know, we're still making our way through this new Zoom world here. But I think we're doing a great job. I'll see y'all in a couple of weeks. Take care of yourselves. Stay well. Dean and Christine and Pam and Nate and everybody. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Nate. Good night. Nate, do you still have my screen? Do you have to undo it? Me or Nate? Thank you, Pam. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Good night, everybody. Oh, that's a lot of minutes. Okay. Thank you.


Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another AI video. In this one, we're in chat GPT, and I'm going to show you how to win any argument or win any debate. I can pretty much guarantee it. Now, this is a two-part prompt. And if you follow this prompt step by step, I can pretty much guarantee you, you'll be ready for anything. So whether or not just defending your doctoral thesis or it's just winning that argument with your husband or wife because they didn't take out the garbage and you want to give it to them and stick it to them. Here's how you do it. So the first step here, and I've already run an example here, so we'll just go through it. The first step is you want to type this in. In a sense, it says you possess the unique skill of being a masterful contrarian, able to take any discussion and uncover the strength of the opposing perspective. I'll be providing you with an argument, notice that argument is in curly brackets, and your task will be to elucidate the equal or greater validity of the counter view. Utilize logical reasoning and rhetoric to develop your stance. For improved readability, please express your argument using markup language, which is essentially putting it into ones and bullet points and headings and things like that. Notice that again, that argument was in curly brackets. And then at the end of it, I go curly bracket argument, curly bracket colon. And now here is the here's the counter argument that I want against AI will eventually eliminate humanity. So I want the opposite of that. So here it is counter argument. So in a sense, I as a debater or an argue would be like, I think AI is going to eliminate humanity. I've got a bunch of reasons for thinking this. However, I want to make sure I'm right or I've got you know, when when my husband or my doctoral person, they come against me, here's what I'm ready for them. I've got my answers and my ideas ready. So here it is. It goes ahead and gives us in this case, seven good counter arguments against why AI will not eliminate humanity. This makes your position stronger. However, we go one step further and you'll see here, they've got seven good ones here. And then it says, I go, okay, great. Now provide a detailed examination of the other side of each argument presented and provide a detailed refutation for each one. If you run out of tokens, I will write continue. So I hit enter on that. And then now it gives the counter argument to the counter argument, which is a double negative. But the point is, is we started with the people, we started with our own idea and then said, Hey, here's what I think. Show me where I could be wrong. Great. Now we've asked it to go, Okay, well, you've shown me where I could be wrong. Show me what's strong about my position and make it explicit. And here we go. Counter argument one, refutation one, counter argument to refutation two, it goes through this and it basically takes both sides of any argument. You can go ahead and copy paste, prepare yourself against them. And not only will you have a strong argument, you'll be able to counter anybody's argument that comes against you and you should be able to win any argument or debate pretty easily. So there you go, guys. This is how you do it in chat GPT. Enjoy. Thanks for watching.


Hey guys, welcome back to Comic N TV's pop reviews. I'm your host Shannon And today we're gonna be going over the pop heroes DC Comics superheroes number 45 hot topic exclusive Harley Quinn vinyl figure. This is the pink and white version. So stay tuned Hey guys, welcome to keep it share with your friends. Good job. We have cookies and milk. Might be seen at that, sure. All right guys, welcome back. Once again, this is the pop heroes DC Comics superheroes number 45 hot topic exclusive Harley Quinn vinyl figure the pink and white edition for ages 14 and up. That sounds about right Because she does have the mall mallet there, which could possibly potentially break off as well as her Her headpiece here So yeah, I wouldn't give it to anyone maybe under the age of 13 And that's warning choking hazard may contain small parts You got on the side here pop heroes Harley Quinn Harley Quinn peeking up there in number 45 On the back here, you've got Harley Quinn here number one is Batman two is Robin three is Batgirl Six is Joker seven is Superman and eight is Wonder Woman collect them all DC Comics Batman Warner Brothers Funko And then you got a nice image of Harley Quinn right there So let's go ahead and open her up and take a look inside Here she is Harley Quinn. I did purchase this along with Castiel The evolving dialect and the black lander in reverse flash from Amber. She's trying to dwindle down her collection a little bit She's getting ready to get married soon. So head on over to her YouTube channel and tell her congratulations As you can see This Harley Quinn she's got the pink mask looks very bubble gummish But I like her I like her a lot.  So now let's take a look at this paint job pretty sharp on the mask here Little little fuzzy right here Overall not bad the hearts are pretty nice nice straight lines solid lines a little bit of paint bleeding right between the pixie shoes and the pants Overall not bad and once again, she can't turn her head all the way around like with most Funko pops Let's check out the detail on this mallet a nice little woodgrain look to it Not any woodgrain look to the handle, but on the actual mallet part here very nice very nice figure Gonna go great with my collection my daughter Ali has already said she wants this she wants this figure So maybe eventually when I start dwindling down my collection Maybe I'll give it to her. I don't know we'll see But there you have it guys Pop heroes DC Comics superheroes number 45 hot topic exclusive Harley Quinn vinyl figure So tune in next time take care


Hello, Didier Stevens here, Senior Handler at the Internet Storm Center. My dire entry about YARA and Cybershift was an example showing how you can use a YARA rule to detect office macros in a Word document with Cybershift. It was an OLE file, so the binary format .doc. I got a question if it also works for the new file format, the XML format, OO XML, Office Open XML, so doc.m when it comes for macros. It doesn't. You cannot use it like that, but there are some changes that you can make and then it will work. Let me show you. So I copy the recipe here, so I have my YARA rule here and now here I have a Word document, a doc.m file with macros, the new file format and as you can see here there is no detection. The reason is there is indeed an OLE file inside here, but this is a zip container and I showed you that zip container. You can also work with the zip container, but then you have to unzip it. So let's take this unzip command here and as you can see, still no detection. The reason why that is is because of the following. Then you provide a zip container like this Office document here, doc.m and you unzip it. Then YARA, sorry, Cybershift here will concatenate all the output as one single stream and so your YARA rule here will operate on all the different files considered as a single file. This YARA rule is not very suited for that because it searches for a string, that's okay, but then it also does a check. Is the beginning of the file, is there an unsigned 32-bit integer that when you look at its big-end representation equals to D0CF11E0 and that is not the case. So that is the start of an OLE file, but the very first files that we have in here are not OLE files, but XML files. So if I disable this here, you can see the XML files. And this here, VBAproject.bin file, that one contains the macros. So this is an OLE file, but it's not first. This will not work. One way to make this work is the following, is by not making the rule that strict that it has to be at the beginning, but that you just need to, that it needs to be present. And let me change the rule here, $B equals and then we will input some hexadecimal. So D0CF11E0 and that's the kind of lead speak for DOC file. And here we just say NB and now we have a match because it finds both strings. You can see here, it finds both strings. And as you can see here, the B string, so DOC file, it's not found at position 0, but at position 5,640. Now you can see here, there are four files in front of the VBAproject.bin file. So I opened the calculator here. Let's add these things together. 1, 4, 5, 3, plus 5, 9, 0, plus 2, 6, 5, 8, plus 9, 3, 9 equals 5,640. And if we re-enable this, you can see here position 5,640. So this illustrates that the different files are concatenated together. So you need to change your YARA rule. So also something I can illustrate in another way by disabling this, doing away with this file and taking another example file here, three text files. So this is a zip file that just contains three text files, 15 bytes each. This is line 1, this is line 2, this is line 3. If I now, for example, do a ASCII xdump, let's try this. Then you can see here that those three files are actually concatenated into a single file. This is line 1, new line, this is line 2, new line, this is line 3, new line. So you can do this here with YARA, unzipping the .m file. Then you're running your YARA rules on it. But you need to have YARA rules that will work. And also you can get false positives because it might find string A in one file and string B inside another file. And then the YARA rule will not trigger on those individual files, but here on the on the Recype with the zip file it will trigger. So it's not an ideal situation. If you can, then you need to unzip the files locally and then load them one by one here. For example, opening a folder with Cyberchef.


The Cass County Sheriff's Office is investigating the death of a woman in the town of Beena. Sheriff Tom Birch tells Lakeland News that the case is being classified as a suspicious death after receiving a report of an unresponsive woman. She was found in a home near the intersection of 4th Street and County Highway 8. Responders determined the woman was dead upon their arrival. Her name is being withheld at this time pending notification of family members. The neighbors tell us the victim was well-wifed. She was a good lady, man, you never heard anything coming bad from over there and you'd be glad to know her because you would help her out, whatever you want, whatever she needed. She was a good lady. An autopsy to determine the cause of death has been scheduled with the Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office. We will be bringing you updates here and online as information becomes available tomorrow. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


So this time we'll try working with some slightly larger numbers. So if I use 100,000 divided by 10 in decimal, then I know I should get 10,000 out. I'll start with my 100,000, just copied from my number line. And I am going to divide by 10. So I will scroll up, I'll see 10 is 10, 10 in binary. And I should expect to get 10,000 out. And so I will draw some guidelines for myself. I will start by pointing out that I have a 4-bit number here. It's not going to subtract into anything smaller than another 4-bit number. So I don't really need to bother looking at say this position or this position or even this one. I can just skip to where I have 4 bits and see which one is larger. In this case, this number is larger than this one. So I can do the subtraction here. So 0 minus 0 is 0. I'll need to borrow here. So 10 minus 1 is 1. And then I have 10 minus 10 is 0. Next I'll pull down a 0. Now I'm back to a 3-bit number. So a 4-bit number will not go into a 3-bit number. So I'll just write down a 0. Pull down the next 0. Now I have 1,000 and I have 1,010 here. So this number is bigger than this one. So I won't be able to do the subtraction again. Write down a 0. Pull down the 1. Now I have a 5-bit number and I'm trying to subtract a 4-bit number. So I know the 4-bit number will always be smaller than the 5-bit number. So here I know I can do the subtraction. So 1 minus 0 is 1. 0 minus 1. Lots of borrowing to be done here. 10, I'll borrow from that. There's another 10 to borrow. Now I've got something I can work with. So 10 minus 1 is 1. 1 minus 0 is 1. And 1 minus 1 is 0. And 0 minus 0 is 0. So now I'll bring down my next bit, which is a 1. Now I've got a block of all 1s. So this will obviously go into it. So I'll write down a 1 there. Do my subtraction. Get 101 out. Pull down my next bit. And I have 10, 10 and 10, 10. So those obviously match up with 0. Now I've come back to a 0-bit number. So I'm just going to wait until I've got 4 bits again. And now I've pulled down all... This case I would have pulled down the entire 10, 10. So now I have a 4-bit number which matches up with the 4-bit number I've got up here. So I can subtract 10, 10. This, of course, leaves me with 0. So pulling down more 0s won't change anything. And I will just fill out the last 4 bits of 0s. Now I can compare this to my 10,000. I've got 10, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, and 0. So it's my division. Match up with what I expect to see here.