o the planning board to truly decide what it believes is necessary and obvious and we can only offer our suggestions as to our views of that. Janet. So I'm trying to clarify for myself about what you see as the importance and the purpose of the master plan. Like who's bound by it? We have a master plan in effect. Do you feel like the town council is not bound by that or town staff is where boards and committees are or I mean what is the document mean to you in government and also just legally? So I mean I can't answer that for the town council at this point, I can only answer that as a personal observation or as a charter commission observation and that question goes exactly back to why the charter commission asked the town council to put in the charter for the town council to adopt it because it wanted the council to feel more bound to fulfilling the master plan than it felt the prior legislative body felt. So does that mean the town council is bound to our current master plan and then if there's a newer vision and it adopts it and then new counselors come on, they're bound by it legally? Man, I don't understand it. Personally I would not say there's necessarily any binding, it's more of a trying to signal we are on the same page with the planning board and the implementation of this document. As I pointed out of the charter, the council by state law, while we need to on zoning bylaws get a recommendation from the planning board on any zoning bylaw, the council's not obligated to follow that recommendation, obviously. But my personal opinion is by adopting and requiring an adoption of a master plan by the town council, it might bring the counselors into the process and give them a little sort of feeling of, and I hate to use this word, but ownership of saying, yeah, we agree with this or we as a council agreed with it even if it's not a unanimous decision, even if it's not a unanimous vote, being able to say, well, the council has adopted this plan as something they want to respect and follow potentially is a way to format a debate or work, format the way a discussion happens in discussing a bylaw change or a different policy change or that as the chief policy makers that the council are. But again, that's my own personal thoughts. That's not something that CRC or the town council has necessarily discussed at all. I would just remind them, go ahead, Dave. No, I just wanted to interject from the staff standpoint, I think, we think of the master plan as a guiding document that is the umbrella for all the other plans. In fact, many of the ones that have been updated or new plans since 2010, like the housing market study, like the housing production plan, as Mandy Jo referenced, the open space and recreation plan was just updated a year, a year and a half ago. So our current master plan doesn't even acknowledge some of those new plans, the economic development work that Jeff Crouse has done and others. So from a staff standpoint, we look at the master plan as an overarching umbrella guidance document that we do refer to and we do use on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis as we're planning and each one of those other plans support the vision that is articulated in the master plan. So from the staff standpoint, that's the way we look at it. And I just wanted to remind everyone for your reference, the mass general law chapter 41 is in there describing master plans. And if you really just read the introduction and number one and number nine, that's telling you, it's a statement designed to provide a basis for decision-making regarding the long-term physical development of the municipality, identifies the goals and policies of a municipality for its future growth and development and specific municipal actions necessary to achieve the objectives of each element of the master plan. So again, it's a framework. It's like you said, it's a guiding document. It unfortunately doesn't give you the next steps to do. It's a contemplation thing as you're doing the plans and the next steps. So I think there's a lot left in interpretation but I just wanted to say that too. I think we could all read a section of the master plan and be getting different gleamings from it. I think I'll steal something from something that Chris has said in many meetings is that since 2010, one of the things we've talked about a lot of the staff and at various meetings is that if we could go back in time to 2010 to now, we would have spent more time, energy and probably money on implementation. However, as Chris has done Nate Malloy and others as we tick off things that were articulated in the 2010 in the master plan, we've actually accomplished quite a few things consciously, unconsciously. It's just happened. So this is an opportunity now to say, what has been accomplished since the master plan was adopted back in 2010? So we can look at our to-do list and say, wow, we got six out of 10 things done in that category. Are the other four still relevant in 2020? Are they? Yes. If they are great, we should tick those off and have a plan for getting those done. If they're not, because things have changed, demographics, whatever, then we could take them off the list and they're not relevant anymore. Thank you. I see Jack, I saw and then Michaels next. So we have all these, let's call them subplans. So these were all developed and approved by probably all different. And I'm not sure to what extent, I don't remember the plain board looking at any of these. So I'm just wondering in terms of what input was provided in all these individual plans, just in a general sense, but because we're now folding them in and updating. So many of them have actually been adopted by or incorporated into the master plan by the planning board. I would have to go back and look at minutes from different years to figure out exactly which ones and when they were incorporated, but that was a conscious effort to bring the planning board into the process so that the planning board would be conscious. And of course, the planning board did attend many of the meetings that led to these plans, but then at the end when the plans were finally finished, we presented them to the planning board and we said, would you incorporate these into the master plan? And they voted to incorporate them. So I'll have to look that up and I will do that, but I think that's an important thing to recognize. And just to add to the list of draft plans that are starting to come together, maybe note if it was approved by select board or town council might be helpful down the road. I don't think that many of them were approved by the select board or town council. You may know differently from that. Yes. So that would be, you and I should collaborate on that. Right, exactly. Cause there's other things like the economic development and the complete streets and other initiatives that are on that did go. I had acknowledged Michael, but then I also saw Maria's hand and then I saw Janet's hand. So go ahead, Michael. Okay, I hope you've thought about this and discarded it. I assume you have, but I'd like to know why you discarded it. The idea that I'm suggesting is that perhaps it might be more efficient to have the council at this point adopt the existing master plan and have us immediately move to as we were, as we were supposed to be doing by the existing master plan after 10 years be creating either a new one, not a revision, but a new one. I've spent some time in the last month since your initial memorandum to us looking at the master plan and thinking about it and what I would think about it in terms of changes or additions or subtractions. And particularly in the implementation section that you mentioned a minute ago. So why not just adopt it as it is works and all. And we all understand that when it says town meeting it means town council and all those kinds of silly little changes that aren't silly but are substantive. But we can all understand what they mean at least on a temporary basis since it's not a statute. And let us get on with the business of making a new master plan. CRC did consider making that recommendation to town council and decided we didn't take a formal vote but decided pretty much by consensus that it could not in good conscience make that recommendation to the town council. It obviously would have been the easiest path at this point in time. But given that the master plan was approved by the planning board approximately 10 years ago and that pretty much from the day that council took office and started being educated by town staff on the master plan there have been a lot of indications from staff that things are missing from the master plan. And I say much more concern about the missing and mainly the sustainability portion. And the town council's recent not just adoption of the climate action goals but its focus on climate resiliency, climate action addressing climate change at many of its council meetings. The community resources committee did not feel that it was prudent to recommend the council vote on adopting the currently approved master plan that many councillors in looking at it and read it say it's outdated with respect specifically to that that it, you know, unfortunately the councillors are political beasts we are elected, we have constituents to respond to and the CRC believed that adopting a master plan that was apparently missing such an important part of the council's first year making that recommendation to the council to adopt something that was missing a item that was a large focus of the council's first year of work was not something that the committee could in good conscience recommend the council do. And that is why we came up with this process. Can I just add, isn't it supposed to be like re-approved every five years? So we're already behind. Well, we have heard that council has heard from town staff that best practices is that every five years a planning board revisit the master plan for tweaks. And it has been 10 years since it was approved. And so that's another thing that the council has heard regularly is it's already been 10 years it's probably due for an update. And so again, when CRC considered, well, yeah we could go and just say to the town council our recommendation is to adopt as is and wait the five years or the 10 years until the charter requires the master plan be updated by the planning board every 20 years. So that would be another decade from now. We could just wait and go with it, but with what we had heard from town staff the CRC took that recommendation to heart and said we really shouldn't recommend passing it without adopting it without updates. You have another? Okay. I understand that the charter mandates that the council adopt the master plan. Could you or could we spend two years making a new master plan and the council not adopt a master plan until after two years and when we've developed a good one as opposed to this sort of somewhat haphazard fixing of the existing one? So I will go back to it as the planning board's decision on what and how much to potentially revise it at this time. This is the proposed process and here is simply a recommendation to the town council to have the town council recommend necessary and obvious updates. The charter itself does not have a time limit for adopting. It just simply says that after a master plan is approved by the planning board that the planning board forward it to the town manager for the town manager to forward onto the council and then the council must adopt with or without amendments. It does not put a timeline in that. I'll go with Dave and then Chris, but then I think was it Jack or Maria? Maria? Okay. And then there was Janet. So, okay. I guess I wanna say speaking from a staff perspective working with Chris and the rest of the planning staff and inspection staff and conservation staff, we believe that the master plan is a very solid document. The bones of this plan are excellent. Hundreds of people participated in this process. It took years to get to that point. So we believe in this document. We believe the foundation pieces of this document are solid. When you look at it, when you read it and you understand the village center concept, when you understand the community's commitment to open space preservation, to the preservation of agricultural land, active agricultural land. When you look at the housing sections, we believe it's a solid document. It is simply outdated at this point, sustainability, resiliency being one thing that I honestly doubt anybody in this room was really talking in 2010 like we are today about climate change and resiliency. So that's a major piece. And then, as we've said before, updating and referencing all the documents and plans and reports that have been done since then. So we think this thing has legs. If it can be updated in a straightforward process that is timely and efficient, then we buy ourselves a lot of time and perhaps we can focus on things that may need, frankly, more attention like the zoning bylaw. So that's from where I sit. Sorry, David, I see you, but you're in the queue. So Chris. You're in the queue. Chris.  Last time it took from roughly 2004 until 2010, which was a period of about six years to come up with our master plan. There was a lot of public input. There were surveys that were sent out to randomly selected households. There were many, many public forums that were held. A large comprehensive planning committee was formed of, I think it was 28 people, and eventually it was edited by a subcommittee of the planning board, but it also cost a huge amount of money. It cost at that time $200,000. I can imagine that it would cost more today to do that same kind of thorough process. So that's certainly something that came up in conversations about the master plan when staff was talking about it are we ready to do this? Does the town want to appropriate 200, 250, $300,000 to redo the master plan at this point? Given the fact that town council had just taken its seat, there were many, many changes that were going on. It was determined that probably this isn't the best time to undertake such a large operation. It takes a tremendous amount of staff time, a tremendous amount of the residents focusing on this, caring about it, coming to meetings, and there's so many other things that are really feeling urgent to be done now. And so putting it off till the mid-20s to start, maybe 2025 or something like that, with the goal to getting a new master plan done by 2030, that seemed like a more reasonable way to approach this. And to update the master plan at this time. So that was our discussion that we had. Thank you. Maria, you were on the queue. No, I'm okay. You passed. Okay, so I have Janet next, then David. I have sort of three related comments. I think that Michael's idea of the council adopting the master plan, when I read this master plan, I see tons of language that would talk about energy conservation, transportation, you know, I mean, it's not screaming about climate change, but I think you could read all sorts of, all your sustainability initiatives can easily be found in language in this plan. So I wouldn't dismiss it saying, oh, you missed that. I mean, like, there's a whole section on transportation, but then the transportation plan comes out of that with much more detail. So I don't know if you can dismiss this plan saying, oh, we weren't talking about climate change 24-7 in here, but there's a ton of information here about energy conservation, sustainability, how you do your land use and to promote people's health and reduce car use and transportation and putting more money into the mass transit system, like all the sustainable initiatives, changing housing codes. I mean, you could find that in the master plan. So I wouldn't dismiss it outright as a strategy. I just happened to have the master plan and I was looking at this and it says objective IM-6, update the master plan at least every five years. The master plan shall be formally updated on a five-year basis. And then it says in the strategy, the implementation strategy, design the master plan updating process. The planning board assisted by the master plan implementing committee will design a process by which the master plan will be updated. The board will also work with staff to determine the resources necessary for undertaking an update and she'll recommend the funding and other resources needed to the select board. And so I think that if we had updated this five years ago or had this implementing committee, it would be actually be pretty easy. And so I think when we dig into it, it's gonna be awkward and tougher than we think at first. But I actually think that the town council could adopt this plan in good conscience knowing that we're on a good path and we're gonna do some supplementing or we could move into updating the master plan. I don't think it would take $200,000 in six years. This is a really strong document that we're working off of and we need to update the demographics because at that point we were building more housing than we had people and then UMass has sort of added 3,000 people to our community without us noticing in the last 10 years. And so that stuff has to change anyway. But I think when you're in that process, you might be in the process. And I think we should think hard about how an update should go, find out some information and move that. But I also think, so I think we really need to talk about what the update would look like and what resources are needed in terms of time. It could, this update could lead to a zoning bylaw overhaul which the town council is talking about or people are talking about. And how could we do that? And I wanna do everything we do really well. That's super important to me. And then tomorrow night we're gonna be talking about an overlay district for the downtown that will create a whole overlay zoning and design standards. And then meanwhile the zoning subcommittee has been working on three or four really solid zoning bylaw changes that we think are necessary. So I think as a planning board, we need to, this is an interesting timeline, but I think we have to look at this larger piece and talk about the resources that we need and what the processes will look like and how that's gonna affect the planning department and how we can kind of work together. There's like, this looks like a very heavy pull for a year or two to me. So I think we should look at this in a more holistic way, but I don't think we can just say, oh, let's just change the select board and turn that to the town council and we have an update. Cause if it's that easy, then I think the town council could consider just adopting it knowing that those words will be changed in the update. Do you know what I mean? So I think that's a very long-winded way saying, I think six months is a little short, but I think we have to as a planning board plan for how we're gonna do all this. I just want to remind everyone that we don't really do it. The planning department does it for the most part and then with our guidance and our suggestions and then they bring it to us to review. So it's not like we're rewriting a master plan. That's not our job. That would be their job. So if you're feeling the heavy load bearing down, I don't think we end up. I think the planning department is full out all the time from what people say and you said. And so I think that should be part of the calculation too. Actually, Chris is gonna be full time. This is in fact, Chris won't even be our only person, probably even helping us on planning board. I think Nate is coming on board too. So this is their job with helping planning board. We are currently contemplating some changes in the planning department, but I don't think they've really been solidified yet. So it's probably better not to count on. But my point is that you, it's your work. This is what you're hired to do. So you're gonna maneuver people to, and I think you're also saying that this is a priority that you have chosen. This is long, it's overdue. We need to update the master plan and they're willing to give us whatever resources they can. They will get the heavy work done and that's what's going to be brought to us is a priority and other things will maybe be pushed back. We still have our business as usual with our site plan reviews and special permits, but this is what is coming from staff and from town council that we need to do. This is our work for 2020. And then the zoning bylaw overhaul I keep on hearing about is coming from when and where. That will be later in the year we get this done first, but that is necessary. And that's one of the reasons why we're, we can't do a full overhaul because that also bears importance. So what's happening right here is the staff is trying to figure out their workload and what resources they have and what are their priorities. And then we're also figuring out our priorities. I think one of them is that it's overdue. We need to at least update. And like you said, there are a lot of references to climate and stuff and transportation, which is great. When you said that, the first thing I thought is great. There's less we have to do. Like, so I think it, you know, it's about defining the scope. We're not trying to rewrite. We're just trying to do what we're supposed to do every five years and give it a revision and an update. So it shouldn't be, if it's starting to take too long, then we've taken too big of a bite. And those things need to be set aside for when the redo happens starting in five years. So I would just add that the six month timeline, I think is an intention on CRC to also indicate a potential scope that CRC is recommending. The town council ask the planning board to do and a quick timeline like that does limit scope tremendously. And so it's another way to sort of have recommended the town council that this is not a complete overhaul. This is really a limited review that CRC is recommending the council ask the planning board to really just do a limited review that can be completed in six months. Did CRC talk to other planning experts or departments or towns that had done kind of an update but not to get a sense of what is involved and how long it took them? So CRC has talked to our illustrious assistant town manager over here and to Christine Brestrop and Christine Gray-Mellon and your planning board chair came to a meeting to discuss a little bit this. But CRC really has relied on the council of town staff on some of their recommendations on coming up with this proposed plan to recommend to the town council. So we haven't had our discussions really and it was supposed to come to zoning subcommittee. So what I'm hearing is maybe nervousness or worry of how herculean and effort this is and maybe it's just easier not to deal with it right now but I really think we can chunk this small enough and develop a scope that it's doable and we'll get it done in six, seven, eight months and we'll be happy that it's updated and hopefully town council will feel better about it and they'll accept it, adopt it. David, you were next in the queue. I'm not exactly sure where this discussion is going. It seems to me that, and I'm also, I just wanna, I'm not sure exactly what the role is that CRC is playing in all of this. Sometimes it seems that you're a surrogate for the town council. Sometimes it seems as if CRC is directing in a certain way, wants to be a partner without owning anything. It's not clear to me. However, it seems to me that in your memos, necessary, what you wanna avoid is that town council being presented with a master plan that it wants to, that it's not comfortable with, wants to either amend or not adopt. And so wants to kind of anticipate, wants to anticipate that so it doesn't happen, these potential inconsistencies between. And that what the memo comes up with is a necessary and obvious. If there's necessary and obvious, it seems to me that you've got those things in mind. If those things aren't there, then the town council will want to ask the planning board to revise or will propose amendment because those things aren't necessary and obvious. And you listed a few, a number of them. And so it would be my suggestion for to identify who it is that owns some of the things that are considered necessary and obvious. For instance, climate sustainability and resilience are the fruity tic-tacs are going around. It's all I got. I got all green ones. If the climate action plan is what's missing or needs to be updated, it's not missing because it's permeates throughout, but it hasn't been foregrounded or made more explicit or highlighted or updated in whatever form. Then the party, and I don't know who it is, the ECAC, is that another acronym? That is. Did I get that right? You did. It seems like perhaps they're the owner of that and could suggest the language too because everyone is out of capacity, suggest the language to the staff that compiles it. And I'm pointing to the planning department staff, perhaps. So that that can then be reviewed. So that it's not the efforts that have been made in these various climate plans or transportation plan can just be, we can stand on those shoulders, right? But the someone, actual people or departments or we're responsible for that and they can come forward. It seems to me to who, I'm not quite sure, the planning department, with we think that this is a necessary and obvious amendment. We propose that this be included in the review. And since we've defined a six month timeframe, we were asking for these proposed amendments to be submitted within six weeks, two months, three months, I don't know. And that that's a way, because it seems, so necessary and obvious, it seems like there are three different categories here. One is conforming changes, town council instead of whatever. Updates to plans that have been done. The housing section of the master plan from 2010 has been updated with housing things, housing production housing and the, and John Mr. Hornick's affordable housing policy and these seem to be the three highlights for that, right? But that can come from all of the people who've done that work already, it seems to me. And then, but the last one, so there's the change in the form of government, which seems to me to be conforming changes. There are changes that reflect work that's been done, whether it's been implementation work or what have you of reprioritizing. No, I didn't want to use that word. The work that's been done to update those changes. And then there's this fourth, the third category seems to be changes in town priorities since. Now that seems to be a different beast altogether. That seems to be, you know, we could, maybe the climate resilience falls into that, but what other priorities, you know, that's much bigger, bigger than these two other types of changes then, that have been proposed. And so I don't quite know where to go with those because I don't know who would propose those amendments. I don't know whether the planning board decides what those priorities are or through the working sessions. You know, that's what troubles me, but again, I think that as the Charter says, proposals to amend the master plan, not originating in the planning board, all of these things that you've highlighted as necessary and obvious are submitted to the planning board. So bring it on. But that seems to me to be a way to not overwhelm the capacity, overstretched capacity of the planning department and elsewhere and to reduce some of the mystery in this, I think. And also, I think for the people who are responsible for these things to just come and continue doing that, providing that service. Chris. I just wanted to note that we have reached out to Stephanie Ciccarello, who's the sustainability coordinator, and she works closely with the ECAC. So she and I are going to be working together to bring their concerns and the things that they're working on into the master plan. I've given Stephanie a hard copy of the master plan and she's gonna be going through it line by line and trying to figure out how issues related to sustainability and climate change and resiliency can be worked into the master plan throughout the plan. But I suggest that the going line by line, that intensity of work seems to me is different than the impression that's given to me in the presentation that's made. Here, about update, that seems to be much more if you go line by line to see where this issue and line by line to see where that issue. Now that is, that's a rewrite. That's not, I think on a level with, or perhaps I don't understand, and that's, I think, what we need to clarify if that kind of intensity is what is desired or expected. I just want to clarify, Chris said line by line. I think she means Stephanie would be reading it line by line looking for things like Dave had mentioned like our wins, the things that are already done that can be removed or this needs a reference to this climate energy goal. So it's not necessarily, it's not rewriting all the lines that's saying, oh, this is a good place to insert these two plans or the complete streets or this transportation. You know, and this will have, we need to do this, but narrow that scope that it's about updating. If you're actually rewriting paragraphs, then that probably should be tabled for the redo a few years down the road. I think there's some great added to what Chris said there. So I'd like to emphasize at least from the community resources committee's point of view in how it came to this recommendation to the town council was some of the things we talked about was taking these plans, the transportation plan and just referencing it and saying, oh, since, you know, for more information or for more details on how to do this, see the transportation plan that was adopted on this day. You know, that's the type of additions in community resources committee that were discussed as potential updates were taking, I think Christine has mentioned, trying to get a list of all these plans and initiatives and just sort of adding references to them. So that's where CRC is coming from in making this recommendation. I hear everything you're saying and yes, in looking at this one, that is a very ambiguous clause that could present some potential issues. But again, I wanna emphasize that CRC was tasked with trying to come up with a way to get the council to adopt a plan, to fulfill its charter requirement of adopting the master plan. And as I stated earlier today, we started with should we recommend to the council to adopt the current master plan? Or can we do that in good conscious and CRC ended up with a decision that said, no, we can't recommend that to the council in good conscious. And so then CRC went, well, if we can't make that recommendation, then where do we go from there? We're in a new form of government. We wanna be able to adopt something. We wanna be able to follow through with our requirement as a council under the charter. And how do we work with the planning board to get to that point where we can as a council fulfill that requirement without going through and saying, these are the exact changes we want to make because we as a community resources committee didn't believe that was our role. And the community resources committee after talking said, it's not our role to go to the planning board and say, these are the exact amendments we want. We didn't feel like it was our role to do that, which is why this process that is being proposed to the town council is so vague. And this wording necessary and obvious is very vague because we were trying to say, we can in good conscious as CRC ask the town council to adopt the current plan, but how do we signal to the planning board what we would as a CRC be able to then recommend the council adopt and what potential revisions that we might be seeking without going through and essentially saying, here's what we need and all because we don't see that in CRC as CRC's job. We think it would be potentially usurping your state given primary role with the master plan. The adoption is a secondary role that the charter happens to require and we're in a new day, it's been mentioned. And we have to figure out between the town council, the community resources committee, which is the town council subcommittee to talk about in greater detail and make recommendations on things regarding land use and zoning bylaws and the master plan. We have to figure out our own role in that and how we can collaborate with you and be, you know, work together on the many things that I'm sure we'll be working with because I hesitate to bring up zoning but the town council now has a hearing it must hold on all zoning changes, zoning bylaw changes in the prior form of government. The legislative body did not have to hold a hearing but now it does. And so there's a lot of new work with the planning board that because of the form of government we have, the town council has to figure out how that's gonna operate. And this is a first attempt, this plan is a first attempt to say, well, let's see how we can do this with still respecting the planning board's primary role in the whole master plan process and approval process. And so I understand it's a struggle for you guys to figure it out because it was a struggle for us to figure out how to even propose something that would fulfill those charter obligations while still recognizing you guys's role. Thank you for that. So it's 1038 and I just wanna say, we're glad you're here and if there's more questions from the board, that's fine but I wanna just bring everyone back to, I think a lot of the questions we have right now are about how we're gonna handle this master plan and what we're gonna do. And like I said, there was supposed to be a zoning subcommittee meeting but it didn't happen which was supposed to start the dialogue. So I think a lot of our questions right now are going to them and they can't answer them because they came to us, just to remind everyone with the memorandum, trying to delineate process from when we're almost ready to finalize it, final draft, get final questions and issues, hopefully from CRC and Town Council so that it will be better prepared and more readily approved, accepted, adopted in that final stage. And then it is still a little vague. We identified earlier where the actual communication updating but I think, as I said earlier, I think that will come after we figured out our own plan. So if there's any more questions to our guests regarding the memo and the process of interaction between Town Council and us and the master plan, please ask. Jack. Let's say it's past my bedtime but I just wanna note that an update is very, I know what an update is. It's really, it's a relief because that's really easy. I mean, from what, I understand there are policy changes that would like to be sought but an update is an update and I hope we don't complicate it any further than that because I think everyone has made it clear that that is, and the other good thing is that we have a master plan. The Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, their Southwick, Town of Southwick representatives said how much does a master plan cost? Oh, geez. And I think they were low from what Chris was talking about. It depends on the size of the town. And I just do, I feel like we have a good one, like Dave was saying and those are just some thoughts. Oh, the one question I had, other than having the master plan cited within the charter, is there a state level mandate that we need a master plan? But I know like Dave, when you did the recreation plan, you needed that for the CPAC, but really no municipality is required to have a master plan from the state law. We are required to have a master plan. I think there was a reference to the exact section of the state law. I wanna say 81, but I don't know which portions of 81. 81 governs, chapter 81, no, chapter 41, section 81 governs the planning board's role in all kinds of things, but one of those sections talks about the master plan. I can send you the exact references, and I believe that Ms. Hanicky has listed some of them towards the end of this memorandum, but there is a requirement by state government that you have a master plan and you get extra points on your grant applications when you can check the box that you have a master plan and it's been approved. So it's a good thing to have a master plan. And the only thing I would add is that there is no state requirement for a legislative body to adopt or approve the master plan. It's statewide, it sits solely with the planning board. The deal in Amherst is because the charter says the town council must adopt. It has nothing to do with state law as it relates to the town council. Any other questions for our guests regarding the memorandum and their process? Just that I think we'd be happy to come to future meetings of the zoning subcommittee to continue this conversation. We will keep that in mind, thank you. Yep, thank you. Okay, I'm lovin' item six. Planning and zoning, Zee, zoning subcommittee report. We didn't meet. We didn't meet. Okay, let's jump to old business. I have nothing listed, Chris. Good. Eight, new business. Okay, timing of receipt of permit application materials discussion. Oh, do we wanna have that now? I wanna just lay out the idea and push it off to the next meeting. Okay, so this is partly from something David said and something that I've experienced, which is kind of what seems, anyway, so I have found a flood of chaotic and last-minute things in my email that are submitted by applicants and part of the, sometimes applications aren't complete, which is part of the process. And if I'm not able to, so I'm getting a packet that is mailed out on Friday, it comes to my house maybe by Tuesday afternoon at the latest or Thursday after the planning board meeting and then there's been sort of different emails sent and sometimes they're very long and things. And so I thought that it would be better for the planning department and the planning board itself to, if we could set up a system where applicants submit their materials by a certain day and then they don't submit anything between that day and the planning board meeting and that would give us the planning department time to get the packets together, to get them out earlier for us to receive them, read them, mull on them and not receive like long things at the end or documents that are impossible to read on a computer. And then I don't think that would preclude reports from the fire chief and the police chief, but I would just think coming from a situation or a profession where there's a lot of deadlines and if there's a deadline saying you have to get to this board or this judge by this date, you just do it. And that will give us some time to reflect and collect information. And so that was the basic premise is that, you know, the same day of the hearing that we have or the day before or on Monday or on Sunday, we're still getting materials at the last minute. And the idea would be to require people coming to us for a permit to just get it to us by the dates or give the planning department time to process it, us to receive it, read it and reflect on it before we talk about it. So are you just talking about SPRs and special permits? Yes, yes. Or everything? Like meaning today, like? So an example might be getting a memo that was rewritten and I haven't read and someone's presenting on it. And so, you know, I'm sitting there kind of reading it and I'm not really listening.  And so I understand that I was in the meeting where they changed the memo and things like that. But I think that we need to get some control of what we're getting and when. And I think, you know, I've been in Boston sometimes on a Tuesday and so I'm looking at something and I'm at a CRC meeting on Wednesday. And I mean, you know, it seems very chaotic to me. And I just thought if we set up a deadline that on a special permit or a site plan review, it has to come to the planning department on a Monday. They have a few days to review. They mail stuff out on Wednesday for the following Wednesday hearing. That would be my proposal. But I don't think this is the great moment to consider it because we're all tired, but that was just the general idea. It's like a drop dead date that we're not getting a stream of information that we can't read or absorb or reflect on. So I hear you, Janet. We've tried a couple of new initiatives. Chris is now emailing the packets out also on Fridays now. And she's working on the ability to be able to put the larger files that can't be emailed like drawings into like a drop box for us. There's a similar situation that happens with the animal set select board. With town council, you know, they have a deadline and stuff has to go into their packet and that kind of thing. But maybe Chris can think about different levels. And the ones I'm thinking of is there is the permit applications that are very important and we have to make very often a vote and conditions and all that in that night. And it's hard to do on the fly. So maybe there could be rules for those, but then there's also rules for in-house documents. It's hard when we're getting something. I don't want to get so much up, but like a town engineer, we'll just pick on him again. If you're getting something at five o'clock on afternoon, so maybe in how, but it would be unreasonable. It shouldn't have to be like the week before for him, but maybe by noon or something or even the day before. And then other things like Amherst Hills, that's not really a permit, they're just here, but you know, I have to admit, it is hard when things are coming in in the afternoon. I actually think it will speed us up. I think we'll spend, my guess is that, so you know, I'm not criticizing anything in like people's behavior, but so if you get an applicant for a site plan review, and you know, you just, you know, if you had time to read it, first of all, you'd like to get more of the requirements in and not have them dribble in. So that's obviously sort of a separate issue. But if you had your packet and you read about it and reflected on it, I think the meeting, the font next week would go better and you already would have more clarity and more time to think and reflect. And I think we could say, hey, we need, you know, we hear what you say, here's what we need and we need it next week or in two weeks, but I think they will actually, our meetings will become more efficient because we'll have had more time to reflect and get materials. And you know, part of my issue too is like, I feel like I'm getting information in a packet. I'm printing out emails. I'm getting emails. I'm just like sorting paper all the time and it's still coming to me when I walk in. There's more paper in the packet or sitting on the table and I'm just thinking, maybe I'm just not that great at paper management, but I have four ways to get sometimes the same information and sometimes I'm like, oh, this has been revised on this date, which I, today happened. I realized, oh, I was working off an old copy. It just feels very chaotic to me and I think it will free up time for the planning department staff if you had the packets done and out and weren't getting this continual stream, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know. So that's the idea, but it's almost 11 o'clock. So every idea at 11 o'clock doesn't sound good. No, no, I think it is good. And so my hope is that at the next meeting, maybe Chris can have a little proposal of some deadlines for different types of information. And I want these deadlines to be firm, but yet there is still at the discretion of the director of planning to say like, oh, I know this came in this afternoon, but this is really important. This could change someone's decision. So make hard deadlines for people and so it doesn't become the norm that, because now it is the norm that everything just keeps flying in on the last four hours. I also have to say, I think it's great that we changed the zoning subcommittee to Tuesday. I think this makes life a lot more sane for Ms. Bestrup also. So there are some changes. And like I said, I'm appreciative that my packet now arrives in my email on Friday. So I have the weekend to start looking at it. So I will keep the momentum and Chris, please put that on the agenda for the next meeting. Thank you. And thanks, Janet. Please no ANRs. Mr. Nielsen. Is that why you're still here? I was so afraid. I thought you just liked us. I'm like, oh, he wants to hang. Item nine, form A, ANR, subdivision applications. Really simple. And I have to stay even longer and sign them. So I just want to introduce this to say that it's on North Whitney Street. It's on the east side of North Whitney Street. East side of North Whitney Street. I'm going to pass a GIS plan along here. It's along the railroad tracks. So you can see where the location is. North Whitney runs between Maine. It runs north from Main Street. That's the railroad. So there's a hatch line right here, just garage. This is all, this hatch line is the property line. What we're doing is two things. We're moving that property line here to include this garage with this. Oh, weird. Yeah, weird. And then the second pieces, so then that would leave, if this wasn't, the line wasn't here, that would leave this being my lot. And then we're just subdividing this to get another building block right there. So at the end of it, there is one new, oh, thank you. At the end of it, there is one new building lot and all we're doing is modifying this block line over here. There is a sewer line that, there's a sewer easement that goes through here that surfaces this property and we put it out. So we sent it over to Jason's skills. And he said, Chris had a question as well. Yeah. With that sewer easement there. First thing I thought. So a couple of things. Is there sewer actually there or it's just the easement? I don't think that there's sewer actually there. I checked on the genius too. This doesn't appear to show up. So it's, there's a note that says that the owner of the property can relocate it at their sole cost and expense, provided it doesn't frustrate the intent or purpose of what they're trying to do. The practical effect is they might bring it this way and this way if they're gonna put their house here. They're not gonna build a house over in these. You wouldn't want to now. No. No. So, yeah, sure. So this is that sewer easement showing here. It's a proposed sewer easement. It's not like we too go there. But we have a note on the plan saying that a lot of them can relocate that sewer easement at their sole cost and expense and then provided it doesn't frustrate the purpose of why it exists. Which is actually the case that said they can do it. We don't have to put the note on the plan. It's just gonna make it easier for everybody. We put the note on the plan. Do you know what the slope is on that? You don't have to give me a number, but which way does the property slope? Just wondering. I assume that way because that's a downhill and that's where they go. And did Digg say for anyone take a look there? I mean, is there anything in that easement? No, I don't think anything. There's nothing in there. Right, so it is at some point before the time. Yeah. I don't see this as the building circle to show that they're gonna have to figure out exactly what's happening here. They don't have to come back to you for a new ANR because this lot would be approved. They would likely have to record a new easement. Show them exactly where that easement goes. But that doesn't have any variation. So you want to react to it? That's correct. In actual, not only to react. So the specific changes here are to change the property line to include the garage and then to subdivide that second portion. You've got it. Correct. That's it. Yeah, and the building circle fits. And it's really all right with that easement. Yeah. It just looks whack. Okay. It's a private easement. Okay. Oh, that's helpful too for that top property and they're not using it. No. I would imagine in the future they may, but that's between the private parties. Oh, that's what I was just thinking. ADU, I'm like, yeah. And so the people that are in the showroom is telling us we'll continue to own this and then a new buyer is gonna own this. If someone wants to buy it. Yeah, they're all like, yeah, it's 11 o'clock. Let her sign her life away. We don't care. Give her a sharpie. Give her a sharpie. God. I think I would have pushed back harder if it was eight o'clock at night, but I'm like, whatever. If someone wants to buy it. Okay. I've read these policies. Yes. Yes. I completely agree. And use technology where you can. Okay, item 10, upcoming ZBA applications. We don't really care, Chris. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead. Oh, no, we do, but it's. Bye. I'm sort of joking. I'm sorry, I'm being flipped at 11. Sure. There are two Marijuana's on University Drive. One for medical and one for retail. I don't think you need to look at those. Okay. Eagle Crest is gonna increase the number of residential units at 171 Lincoln Ave from three to four. I don't think you really need to look at that. 171. I don't think there are a lot of site issues. I think it's more management issues. Allen St. Hilaire wants a special permit to allow land to transfer a new court. I think it's very confusing and it's not worth your time because there really aren't any site plan issues related to it. I'm sorry, it's a new court, new court. Tom Mitchell wants a special permit to modify a previous special permit to remove a condition for 44 Belcher Town Road that requires the permit to expire upon change of ownership. So that's not anything that has to do with site plan. And U Penn Sang wants to remove a condition that requires owner occupancy at 321 Lincoln Ave. And I also think that that's not something that you would really wanna look at. So essentially no site plan issues related to any of these. But interesting, thank you. Number 11 upcoming SPP SPR sub applications. There is a dog park coming back to you. The dog park wants to move a fence and I think they wanna move the shed or something like that. Well, they also wanna present their kiosk to you where the signage is gonna be, where it tells exactly what all the rules are. So they'll be coming back to you but I think it's just at a public meeting and they're gonna present things and then you can tell them if they need to file an application but I don't think you're gonna be telling them. And when is this? That's January 15th. Oh, okay. John Roblesky is coming back with changes to his site plan at 462 Main Street on January 15th. And you may get a wayfinding sign location on January 15th. You're also gonna get a Chapter 61A release request for property up in North Amherst. Okay. Excuse me, what is Chapter 61A? I'm sorry, it's a tax, it's a section of the state law that deals with taxes. If you have your property in agriculture, you can request that the taxes be reduced if you keep it in agriculture and that's Chapter 61A. What property is this? The Zala property in North Amherst, it's on Sunderland Road, on the east side of Sunderland Road. I don't really know. Is that the one we just bought? No, there's another one up there that the town bought. This is one that's being proposed for development. Okay. Thank you. Item 12 is the Planning Board Committee and Liaison Reports. I'll just say, does anyone have any vital information to, Jack has vital, okay? Well, I can discuss this next time. But there's items, the top 10 resolves, the census and the tech grants or should be coming out, or technical assistance grants. I'd be look for those. There was a guy that, a bylaw specialist there that could seek his assistance. What was his name? Ken Komia, but he's only been there six months. He was with Southbridge or something like that, so. He's working for towns in the capacity of, you know, helping them with bylaws, people of the towns that have smaller planning departments or no planning departments, most likely, so. Yeah, no planning departments, right. Great. I think is that a resource that the town of Amherst is a larger, could you use? Right, it was folded in through the tech, but we can apply for a tech grant and we've done that in the past and one of the tech grants we had recently was for a pedestrian and bicycle network and we've had them for other things. Sometimes we get them and sometimes we don't. So if we think of something that we want to apply for, we can do that. So tech means technical, not technological. Technical. Okay. I miss, Miss. Thanks. If you wanna like the census, give it for the next, is it detailed or do you wanna do it? Just, it's interesting the census. The Mindy Dom is championing this, that, you know, get everybody counted. It's only to our advantage to get our population numbers as high as possible, but after all this work and all this canvassing, I think they, they guesstimate, I don't know, 30%, or I mean, they're just not, still not accurate after all these efforts and it's a little bit of a mystery in terms of how they come up with the number in the end. Interesting. Any other committee reports? Okay. Report of the Chair, nothing. Report of the staff. Thank you for your sustainability tonight. Yeah. We are resilient. I just wanna say happy holidays to everyone. I hope you and yours have a wonderful couple weeks here and I'll see you on the 15th. I think Mike Wistlow just got a huge volunteer award with Mass Golf and USGA, statewide recognition. Congratulations. Thank you. Golf ball. Well, congratulations. I'm glad you do something fun besides this. Do I hear a motion to close this gig? 11-04? It is. 11-04 motion. Are we done? Yup. Second. All in favor? Good.