There she is. All right, we're recording. Okay, thank you. Good evening. It's December 21. And happy winter solstice. While this is the longest night of the year, I hope it is not the longest town council meeting of the year. And with that, let me just say that will take all of our cooperation. Governor Baker's March 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to meet virtually. Given that we have a council I'm calling the December 21 meeting to order at 632. And I will call on each counselor so that they can tell us they can hear us and we can hear them. And then please mute your mic again. So we'll start. Shall we bomb them? Yeah. This a brewer. Present. Happy Angeles. Present. Darcy DeMont. Here. Then Greece Meriz. Anarchy. Present. Here. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Here. Steve Schreiber. Here. Andy. Present. And Sarah Schwartz. Present. Okay. This meeting is being recorded. It's available later with Amherst media. And it is also a video. There's no chat room. If we run into difficulty. Please let Athena know. And we will, if we need to stop the meeting to make sure. You are reconnected. Very quickly. There's a few meetings posted in the announcements. And I'm not going to go through those. And I also just want to make sure that, you know, the COVID hotline is still up. But also we urge you if you're asymptomatic, you can contact the public comment. We have a public comment. We would like to be tested. Contact you mass and go online and schedule appointment. And go be tested. We have no hearings tonight. So we are going to be moving immediately to public comment. This is the only public comment of the evening. And. I'd like to see a show of hands of those people who would like to talk about COVID hotline. We're going to allow three minutes. We bring you into the screen and please make sure you unmute your mic. And we're going to start with Pam Rooney. Please come in. State your name and where you live. Hi, Pam Rooney, 42 cottage street. Thanks for, for letting us talk. As I understand, you're going to be talking a little bit about. Moving zoning discussion to the town manager and town staff to work on. And I would love to suggest that you hold off on that. And send it to them later so that there's a little more time for public discussion. I do, however, strongly support the CRC's recommendation to. Use existing consultant fees. And have them directed to form-based code and design standards for the town center. I think that's a great idea. Let's do it first, however, and make sure that. That the consultants engage the community and also take the time to help us articulate what we really want to see. As a shared vision for the town center and the village centers. I think that it's a really critical first step. And then some of those owning actually plays into that. And allows us to tailor zoning. To meet the expectations of that vision. I think doing it the other way around. Is a little bit backwards. So. If, if you do decide tonight to send things back to town staff to work on. I would. I would certainly ask that they not come to back to town council until they are good and ready. I would certainly ask that they not come to back to town staff. I would certainly ask that they not come to back to town staff. I would certainly ask that they not come to back to town staff. And have had a very, very thorough. Inclusionary conversation with the community. I think that's a good. Have a, have a good, have a good meeting. Thank you for your comments, Miss Rooney. Bonnie Isman. Please enter the room. State where you live and your name. Hello, I'm Bonnie Isman. I'm at 635 South East street. I'm here tonight representing the voters service committee at the Amherst League of Women Voters. We're excited to hear that you're considering rank choice voting tonight. And we would like to reassure the town council that the League of Women Voters is very interested in assisting in. Training our voters, introducing them to the new equipment and the new voting process. And we would like to thank the Amherst League of Women Voters of Massachusetts endorsed question two. So this is something that's on the radar for the League of Women Voters throughout the state. And so we are familiar with this issue. We understand that there's some question as to timing, but just to reassure you that there is an army of volunteers, a league of volunteers. That's ready to help out whenever you are ready. So thank you very much. Thank you for your comments, Bonnie. And Alex Kent. Please state your name and where you live. Alex Kent, 83 North Prospect Street. I haven't read the recommendations, the CRC in any detail. Some of the reading that I've done on the Amherst Indy leaves me concerned. However, as a downtown resident, I would like to. I would like the council to encourage zoning that would discourage the building of five story. Large buildings in town built to the property line that crowd the sidewalk and make downtown Amherst. Unpleasant for walking and socializing once we can do those things again. So I just wanted to. State my view that those sorts of buildings, the kind that. The city of Amherst. At one East pleasant street in Kendrick Park. You really don't have a place downtown. Thank you. Have a good meeting. Thank you for your comment, Alex. Are there any other public comments at this time? Okay. Seeing none, then we are going to, in fact, move on to the consent agenda. And the consent agenda is pretty straightforward. They were considered to be routine. And it was reasonable reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting asked that it be removed. When I list them. And to remove the item does not require a second. So the motion is to move the following items and printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. To authorize the president to send the memo to the town manager regarding DPW and fire EMS. Eight G three to authorize the president to send the memo to the town manager regarding update a financial model for capital projects. Nine a approval of town manager appointments to the following multiple multiple member bodies. Agricultural commission. Community safety working group. Disability access advisory committee. Public arts commission. And 11 a approval of minutes of December 7, 2020 regular town council meeting. Please let me know if. You too. Full screen. Is there anybody who is asking to remove anything? Is there a second? Any further discussion? I'm going to move then for roll call. Okay. Alyssa Brewer. Hi. Pat D'Angelo's. Yes. Darcy. Yes. In Greece. I am. And Joe. Hi. Dorothy. Pam. Is there a second? Shane seconds. Thank you. Any further discussion? I'm going to move then for roll call. Okay. Okay. You are moving to move. Okay.谁. I. Evan Ross. Hi. George Ryan. George Ryan. All right. Hi. That's Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yeah. Candy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Hi. Callan Balmilton. Yes. Yes. agenda passes 13-0-0, no absence. We are going to move on to rank choice voting. And let me just start by saying that since we last met, there have been a couple of things that have occurred. First of all, questions were gathered and those were sent to Tanya, these who is with us tonight, the chair of the commission and Suadette, the interim town clerk. They have provided answers to those questions and they are in your packet. And so we're gonna start by seeing if there are any other questions from counselors or any other comment or statement that either Tanya or Su would like to make, although I don't see Su. She in the audience. Tanya, anything further you would like to say at this time? So while the commission would really like to see rank choice voting move forward, we would really like just to follow essentially the guidance of the acting town clerk in her ability to more realistically assess the different timing, but in particular one issue is that it sounds like the voting machines could not be purchased until July because they're in the next budget year, which would make it pretty tight in terms of training the town staff and different employment workers on the new equipment and the new system. Unfortunately, I don't see her here. She thought she could be here, but we'd really like to follow her guidance because she really has the best sense of the sort of constraints that her office will be working under to get all of this set up in a timely manner. I'd like us to not focus so much on the date of implementation. We will be getting to that when we get to the rest of this discussion. And I'm glad to share that with you, but do you have other questions?  Is it possible for her to answer the questions because we have a lot of people in attendance and part of this whole rank choice voting thing is just getting information out bit by bit. It's too much to gather to get, understand all at once or is that would take too much time? I just thought it would be good to include that. We were able to post them and they're publicly available on the town website. So I'm reluctant to take too much time at the meeting. If there's any highlights from the answers to those questions, perhaps Tanya would like to share them with us. So one of the key questions is that of voter education and we think especially, we mentioned in our responses, the League of Women Voters would be a wonderful resource and we heard the speaker from the public also reassuring us that volunteers will be on hand to help. So I think the town is primed with the recent ballot measure. It was actually pretty popular as passed with something like three quarters of Amherst voters. So I think now actually would be a good time to restart the voter education. I think people are really interested in learning more about it. So that's sort of the main thing I would emphasize this time is just getting people thinking about it and maybe getting some materials so they can start learning about it. And it could be a one year process of learning or it could be a two year process of letting them learn about it. And it doesn't hurt if it ends up being a two year process then the town will be really ready to do it and really understand it. Okay. Alyssa, you have your hand up. And I just wanna mention Suadette is joining us momentarily. We actually got through the earlier part of our agenda a lot faster. Alyssa. Yeah, I was just gonna follow up on Dorothy's comment as much as I like to spend our town council time educating the public about what we're actually doing. I don't think it's an appropriate use of our time especially given the length of tonight's agenda. And I do appreciate that the materials and the packet although some of it the public would have only seen today in terms of the answers about the voting machines. The other thing I wanted to make clear is that because it was not clear when we received the initial presentation that really the only choices we have here are two. We have a choice about the date and we have a choice about the voting. And so we may have more questions for Tanya about that particular issue of the voting and the way that's counted but there are not when it says amendments that makes it seem like it's a broad open field but really it's just two things that we would possibly want to amend. And I haven't heard any indication yet that we want to amend any of those things but those are really the only two wiggle rooms we have. And I appreciate what she just said about the timeline too, that was helpful. All right, hi Sue, welcome.  Yeah, I agree with Alyssa not to make this long but my understanding also is that our decision was about a date and when I read the background that we weren't going to get the machines to July it looked like the recommendation was to not try to implement it in the fall of this coming year. So I just wanted to check and my question is the attached act do we have to vote to fill that in tonight or can that just be done? You know, so is that what we're voting on tonight? So there's a draft document with a new edit on the title and the title of the thing no longer says ranked choice voting and I would move to- I'll explain that momentarily, okay? But I just, is that what we're voting on tonight? So the sending it up to our legislatures with the attached draft act and it's got a blank right now for the date. So do we fill that date in tonight is my question. Okay, but we will be, let me give you the rest of the report, okay? Mandy, Joe, is there something else besides the discussion with the legislature or can I- I did actually want to mention two things and one of them has to do with the motion sheet versus the act that is attached to the letter. And so I'll be quick on both of these. Number one with the timeline. One thing as a charter commissioner I failed to mention last week and I thought I'd mentioned tonight while the charter commission set up this timeline with the report back and the council adopting in time in hopes that it would be in time for November, 2021 elections. The charter commission at that time when it picked those dates of September one and then passage by the council by essentially December 30, 2020 it assumed once the council voted that would be enactment and rank choice vote voting for municipal elections would be the law of Amherst. It did not at that time believe or assume that it would then need to go to the legislature for special legislation. And so the fact that that has been determined after the charter passed certainly changes would have changed potentially when the charter commission was attempting to put this forward as actual law. But I just wanted to put that forward that the charter commission assumed no less than nine months for between when you knew it would happen and the first election. So that's number one and number two in terms of the act, the motion sheet has two changes to two different sections that I wanted to point out that's not in the original one. The first one is in section one adding the word city known as before town of Amherst to again indicate our actual title just like the title changed to do that. And the other one was in section six and it put instead of an actual date on the motion sheet it put that it could not be used the first election to be used would be no the elections had to be 120 days or more after signing by the governor. And that was in terms of I wanted to point out that I made that change instead of a specific date of enactment because it seemed easier because you don't know when you'll have a special election if any immunizable elections. And so you don't wanna necessarily say 2023 versus 2021 if you don't know there might be some random election in 2022 that it could possibly be enacted for. So I wanted to point that out as the rewording in the motion sheet of potentially how to choose the time. Thank you. The Zoom virtual background is available for your meetings, webinars.  Thank you. We, so let me just mention that since we met last one of the things that the town manager and I needed to do was have a discussion with the state senator Joe Comfort and also with Mindy Dom the state representative. And we did have those conversations and then in addition to that they have conferred with each other. And so I wanna summarize what we've learned, okay? The first is they're totally supportive of this as it says in the letter Amherst voted 58% for rank choice voting in the last election. However, that statewide referendum failed. And so therefore that is one of the reasons we have to go for a special act. They will do everything they can to help secure its passage. However, I just wanna say in representative Dom's words, the chances are slim to none of getting this through the legislature by July 1st, 2021. They don't even, every two years the legislature is sworn in, they reorganize their committees. Those committees very often do not even start meeting to March. And I wanna mention that because the council also gave the rank choice voting commission a three month extension because of COVID that still would not have made a difference. And so we wanna just say that we really appreciate the speed with which you did the report giving you the extension did not change when this would be enacted. It also depends on which committee it goes to and that I'm gonna explain in a moment the reason for the first, the title change and the paragraph that is in the beginning of the letter. They representative Dom is absolutely committed to providing us with a step-by-step outline of the process. There has to be no less than, I would say eight to 10 steps just to get this through and get the governor to sign it. And they will also check to see if there's any other rank choice voting acts that have been passed recently. Unfortunately, the other bill that was in the legislature at one point was to give communities a rank choice voting option also seems to be languishing and not going anywhere. So finally, what we have tonight before you is a letter that changes the title and makes it very clear that this is a completion of a charter requirement. That title will also then help make sure it goes to a committee that is more likely to act on this as a community versus an election. The second thing is, as Mandy Joe mentioned, we made sure it says the city known as the town of Amherst and then in addition to that representative Dom suggested that we give a little bit of a preamble which is in the red part of the letter that you have in your packet. And that preamble basically says this is when the town of Amherst voted for the charter and that we have been enacting or taking care of and moving forward on each of the charter requirements. And this is one of those final charter requirements. So I think at this point, we should go to any additional questions and then also the motions. Are there other questions or comments? And Sue, since you've joined us do you have any comments you would like to make at this time? No, and I'm sorry, I was late. I was under the impression we were starting at seven. So I was just hanging around. Thanks for calling Paul. No, I missed the intro and what was talked about before I jumped in so I'm not really up to speed on what's been discussed. So I'm just gonna be quiet and listen. Thank you. Okay, any other questions? And thank you very much for weighing in on the questions and providing us with the answers that you did. You're welcome. Anything else you would like to say? Tanya. I just wanted to point out you're talking about recent pertinent legislation the town of East Hampton in 2019 successfully passed their ring choice voting special act. And that seemed to surprisingly smoothly that we heard it's gonna maybe hit some hiccups but it seemed to go okay. So packing in with them if they have any tips on helping get through or maybe some advocates that could assist with it. Thank you. And actually Mandy Jo did some research on their letter and that was part of what helped fashion the letter that you have before you. Darcy, you have a question. So the letter I read in the packet does urge attempting to get it through for the 2021 election. Does it not? Yes, but that's because they wanna file this now but they fully and I do mean fully expect that it could take at least until next fall to get it done. So yeah, no, I understand that. I just wanted from the perspective of a ton of Amherst residents who voted for the charter based on a number of these elements in the charter including ring choice voting, wanna make sure that best case scenario is in there. And we, thank you Darcy. I think it's very important for people to understand we're trying to do everything we can and to get it through as fast as we can including taking the advice of both the Senator and the representative in terms of the letter, et cetera. But they wanted to be very realistic with us as well. Mr. Bachmann, do you have anything to add to that comment? No, okay. Are there other questions? All right, so then we have two motions. One is in a coordinate and I'm going to make the motion and seek a second but I am not going to read the full act that's in your packet. In accordance with charter section 10.10 to adopt council order 21-33, enact relative to rank choice voting and municipal elections in the city known as the town of Amherst as proposed and recommended by the rank choice voting commission as follows. And you'll notice that in the actual thing then we change it to enact relative to the implementation of elements of the charter for the city known as the town of Amherst and it goes on then. Is there a second? And a key seconds with the amendment that the council order title and the motion be changed to. I, thank you. You're right. Reading that I'm going, not okay. Enact relative to the- We just missed it in that one spot. Yep. We were doing these rewriting today. All right. Is there any other questions or at this time, Alyssa? I'm sorry I was trying to hit my question earlier but the question that I mentioned earlier in terms of really the only other thing we can adjust other than the date Tanya outlined helpfully for us in writing as being in section three A and honestly, I don't think I understand it based on some other comments that were made at the rank choice voting presentation. So I want to make sure I'm really clear on what it says. So I'm not doubting what we're going to vote at this point. I don't think, but given that this is literally the only thing we could adjust, I would like to know this. It reads now, for each contest, the ballot must allow a voter to mark rankings for at least the smaller of option one, the number of seats plus two, or option two, the total number of declared candidates plus write-in candidates. So a couple of questions about this. One is that we talked about the fact that write-in candidates, sometimes there's an official campaign, people know about the writing candidate, they've been given instructions, blah, blah, blah. Other times it's something that happens like right before the election and they haven't even tried working with the clerks office and they're just able to do that. We talked about the fact that at one point there was the rule that however many seats there were, there had to be blank spaces for X number again of write-ins. Like you didn't just say, oh, if it's eight seats or if it's two seats, you always get to put two lines for candidates for write-ins. The number of candidate light-in votes. I'm trying to understand the intersection of the number of lines that we have on the ballot versus the number of lines of people that we can rank because it sounds to me like, and I'm sure Tanya can help me out here. It sounds to me like those two things are not equal. And so you don't have a grid that has six candidates, four write-in spaces and 10 rankings. You might have only four rankings or the number plus two or the number plus write-in. And I don't know how to interpret and I don't understand who makes the decision. And so are we offering this to the legislature for them to tell us how it's gonna work? Are we saying the Board of Registers gets to decide how it's gonna work, who makes this decision and why do we need this at all? So, lost. Sue, I believe last two weeks ago you answered this based on state law. So let's start with Sue and then see if we can be helpful. Yeah, let's, sure, Alyssa, you're right. So if there are three seats for a race, then we have to provide three lines for write-ins. That is state law. So going beyond that, Tanya can explain on how we came up with how many rankings we're going to have. So say we have a contest with six seats and we've got six write-in spaces. Now you've got 12 places where you can rank. This is what we discussed on how far do we wanna go with how many rankings we will allow. Tanya, jump on. Feel free to jump on in that, yeah. Yeah, and I think maybe some of the confusion here is what it should really say is not writing candidates, but lines for write-in candidates. A priori, there's no way of knowing how many write-in candidates there may be a lot. So the idea is we wanted to make sure we are providing an ample number of rankings for people to be able to rank here. Certainly more than the number of actual available seats because there may be a lot more candidates in that to rank, but you're also limited by the ballot size that at some point it just starts to become kind of silly.  And I think the confusion here is that maybe you wanna insert a word there that would clarify it's not the number of writing candidates but the number of writing candidate lines. If I could follow up, that's exactly what I was looking for. I was hoping that was what it meant. Thank you so much. And so if we can figure out how to do that. And then my question, my other question still remains which is who were we giving this option to? If it says one or two as now revised who makes that decision on each individual ballot? Is that up to the town clerk with the support of the Board of Registrar's or is that something like the legislators would decide for us or who decides it? Daniel or Sue? Well, I think it's just a rule. It's the lesser of those two things. Okay. It's going to be the lesser of one of those two. Right. So the only thing that really needs to be maybe clarified in there is what the meaning of writing candidates is. But yeah, once you understand that then it clearly there's no like other decisions. Okay. Although it's, what we were suggesting was is if someone felt that provided an inadequate number of rankings or too many, the town council could adjust that rule. But we felt it was a pretty reasonable number of rankings that would be provided kind of a nice middle of the road rule. So I want to just clarify, you're suggesting that in section three A that for each contest, the ballot must allow a voter to mark rankings for at least the smaller of one, the number of seats plus two or two, the total number of declared candidates plus right in candidate lines. Yes, Sue, what, is there like a term or should, if the number of writing candidates equals the number of seats or something, it might be a simpler way to phrase that. I do want to, this has been legally reviewed. So it's not as if we're coming into this writing, you know, our own legislation. Yeah, but that doesn't mean it makes sense. Okay. So is, is there... Line spaces... Required write-in spaces, because you said it was a state law, Sue. Yeah, it is a state law. So like required write-in spaces. Or requisite. Requisite. Requisite, that sounds good. Oh, okay. Would end by saying candidates plus, requisite write-in candidate spaces. People will think they have to write in somebody, it's required. Remember, most people are not going to look at the law. They're going to look at the ballot and the ballot is what there will be education on. Just like every other time we ever go to the polls, we have an option to do writing candidates. It's just that if you write in, then you also have to rank them. Okay. There are questions. Mandy. Yeah, so I'm going to make a motion after I clarify what I'm thinking I'm hearing for the language, you know, for language we've been talking about. But I just, I guess it's not a clarification. It's an example. So if we have, we have a school committee that's five members. If five people are running for those five seats, item number one on three A would be seven and item number two would be 10 and therefore it would have to allow at least seven ranking spots because that's the smaller of one or two as this is written. If only one person was running for those five seats, item one would be three and item two would be six. And so it would have to be at least three because that's the, oh, no, wait, number of seats would be seven, but so one would still be seven. One stays the same no matter how many declared candidates they are, but number two would only be six because there's only one declared candidate and there are five spaces. So you'd only have to provide rankings for six instead of the typical seven. So I think that's what this says, giving specific numbers out there. And so if that's my understanding, given what we've talked about, I guess I'm going to make a motion to amend section three A. Yeah. So that item number two reads the total number of declared candidates plus legally required write-in candidate spaces. Legally required. Write-in candidate spaces. Candidate spaces. Is there a second? Ryan second. Thank you. Are there, is there any further questions or comments at this time? Mindy Jo, further comment? No, I just, I'm doing that based on clarifying what Alyssa and I were having trouble understanding last week and this week. So I hope this provides some clarity. Alyssa, further comment. Yes, my only further comment and I'm not going to, sorry, I'm belaboring this because I've got confused again when I read it again this week is the, if we want to give that option, I mean, what do we want? I mean, in all reality, rather than saying it's going to be the smaller of the two, we could say it's going to be the total number of declared candidates plus write-in candidates. That's just what it's going to be rather than you have to pick. It's one of the smaller of the two. But given the example Mandy Jo just gave that it was really only a small difference between seven and six, then it's not huge. It's just, I needed to play out more examples, I think to see it in action, to say, are you trying to wedge 13 rankings, as Tanya points out on a ballot, when, in theory, there are going to be people who say, if there are 13 people on the ballot, I want to rate them one to 13. So let's be clear, we're not giving people that option. Neither one of these is giving people that option. If there are 13 people on the ballot, they're not going for five seats. They're not going to get to rank 13 people. They're only going to get to rank in this case of the, so there's 13 candidates for school committee. That means there's 13 lines plus five lines for write-ins, right, because it's five seats. So that's 18 spaces for school committee because obviously our ballots are getting really big. 18 spaces, but they're only allowed to rank seven, right? Right, that's not what some people are going to understand, rank choice voting to me. They're only going to have seven rankings that are available to them. Could you please confirm that Alyssa's understanding is correct, Tanya? Yes, yes. Thanks, Sue. Anything for you? People don't typically want to rank more than five or so they tend to run out of steam. So it tends to still be adequate for conveying preferences to have at least a couple of spots beyond the total number of seats. Okay, fine, thank you. And I want to thank you both for those examples and making sure we've clarified that.  I think that last statement worked for me. So it's the ranking that we're talking about. So we could get the ranking number plus two in this instance. It's not that there won't be space for all the people. It's the focusing on the ranking. Very helpful. For any other question, I want to bring the amendment to a vote. Okay, the amendment is to edit section three, A, small Roman numeral two or II want to read the total number of declared candidates legally required candidates. It's the total number of declared candidates plus legally required right in candidates. Right in candidates. I had it that way, but then I didn't read it that way. Thank you. It is the total number of declared candidates plus legally required right in candidate spaces, period. Any other questions? And then we're going to vote on the amendment and then come back to the original motion. Okay, the amendments. Let me begin with Pat DeAngelis. Hi. Darcy Devon. Yes. Lynn Grishmore's I, Mandy Johannike. I. Dorothy Pam. I. Evan Ross. I. George Ryan. I. Beth Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. I. Andy Steinberg. I. Sarah Schwartz. I. And Shalini Balmillan. Yes. And Alyssa Brewer. Yes. The amendment has passed. So we are back to the original motion and the original motion is in accordance with sec charter section 10.10 to adopt council order 21-30 and act relative to the implementation of elements of the charter for the city known as the town of Amherst as proposed and recommended by the rank choice voting commission as amended as follows. And then it goes on from there. That has been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? All right. Then let's move that one to a vote and we'll start with Darcy DeMond. I'm sorry. I missed that. What are we voting on? We're voting on the full of the original motion. But that now. Oh, okay. Yes. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Fine. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Bruce Murray's I, Hannake. I. Pam. I. Evan Ross. I. George Ryan. I. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. I. Sarah Schwartz. I. Melanie Balmille. Yes. Melissa Brewer. I. Pat DeAngels. I. That is unanimous. And the second motion now involves the letter. Okay. And the letter, this is the motion and Mandy Joe just make sure I get it correct since we changed it. To petition the general court for special legislation and to authorize the town council president to sign the letter, town of Amherst and act relative to the implementation of elements of the charter for the city known as the town of Amherst as amended presented rep requesting Senator Joe Comerford and representative Mindy Dom. Petition the general court for special legislation set forth and council order 21-33 and act relative to the implementation of elements of the charter for the city known as the town of Amherst provided however that the general court may make clerical or editorial changes or a form only to the bill unless the town council approves amendments to the bill before enactment by the general court. That's a motion. Is there a second? Any seconds? Thank you. Any further discussion or questions? Okay. Then we're going to move to a vote and Griezmer goes first and I am an aye. Randy Joe Hanicky. An aye. Thank you. Dorothy Pam. Aye. Evan Ross. Aye. George Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Aye. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Sarah Schwartz. Aye. Shalini Balmilm. Yes. Elisa Brower. Aye. Pat DeAngeles. Aye. Darcy Dumont. Yes. It is unanimous and we want to thank Tanya and Sue and the entire commission for your incredible hard work. We also look forward to coming back and asking you when we get ready to educate the public along with the league and all of the other people that Sue will be bringing into that process. Thank you. Great. You've fulfilled all but one thing of the charters. All right. Belcher Town Road. It's time to move on and I believe we have David with us and we have John Kornick with us and we have Rob Morrow. Right? That's correct. If you would put the presentation up on the screen are you ready for that David? Yes. Thank you very much Lynn. Great. Okay. So thank you everybody. It's a pleasure to be with you twice in less than a week talking with you tonight about another exciting opportunity, another potential project for the town of Amherst. Join tonight by Rob Morrow, our building commissioner and the assistant director of conservation and development and also by John Kornick, the chair of the housing trust. We're here to tell you tonight about a very interesting and exciting opportunity that we believe is worth pursuing on Belcher Town Road, Route 9. We recognize you have a full agenda tonight so we're gonna move quickly through our slides. We believe there'll be ample opportunity for a deeper dive into the project in the coming weeks with the review by the finance committee and the CRC and we hope to bring this back to you in four or five weeks. We're really thrilled, I will honestly say to bring this opportunity to you to partner with the housing trust and really be proactive in trying to acquire what we think is a very developable piece of land on Belcher Town Road for affordable housing. We see this tonight as really the first look. So we are not looking obviously for a decision tonight but rather would like to present the project, get some of your feedback and then we hope to move this on to the finance committee and the CRC. So next slide. I'm not gonna go through everything in great detail. I think some of the elements of the project, I hope you've seen the slide deck over the weekend but suffice it to say that my staff and I have spent the last couple of months working with John Hornick, Rita Farrell, Nate Malloy from the town staff, assessing the property on route nine and we feel like it's an excellent opportunity for the town to move forward in partnership with the trust to create additional affordable units. We believe that potentially 40 units are possible and I'm gonna have John and Rob talk about that, that potential later in the slide deck. So property context, let's move on. Next slide, please. So I think you're all familiar with the East Village Center. This property is on the east side of Belcher Town Road or route nine as you're headed toward Belcher Town, toward Echo Hill, if you will. It is outlined in red in the slide. It is near the Village Center for reference for those people watching on the Zoom. It's near Cumberland Farms. It's near Florence Savings Bank. It's within walkable distance to Fort River School. Just to the east is the 20 acre Fort River Conservation Area, which is identified on the slide, as well as the East Street School property, which the town has also been working with the trust to develop into affordable housing and John and Rob will say a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But the reason we're interested in this property is for all the elements listed on the slide. It's in the Village Center. It's on public transit. It's walkable to nearby commercial and retail shops. And the context really makes sense for the development of an affordable building and or more than one building for affordable units. Next slide. Just wanted to give everybody who has not seen the images tonight a sense of the property. This is looking east. It's on the east side of Belchamdown Road, as I said. It's about 2.66 acres. I'll go into more detail on that in a minute. It's right across the street from Colonial Village. And you can see in the upper image that it is a flat, dry piece of property. It does contain two houses. One is number 80 and one is 72. And as part of this acquisition, the town working with the trust would acquire the acreage as well as the two rental houses. And there's some creative options we think that we'll talk about in the coming weeks, creative options for the reuse of these structures. Next slide, please. So as I said, here in red is the outline of the property. It's actually three different parcels. One is in the back of Flaglot. And then as I said, there are two houses on, so two out of three have houses on them. And overall, it's about 1.75 acres of flat, developable land. Significant amount of frontage, 280 feet of frontage, along Route 9, Belchamdown Road. And we have a signed purchase and sale agreement, obviously with the appropriate contingencies. And we have completed all of our initial assessments of the property, appraisal, wetlands, and some preliminary development scenarios that Rob will talk about in a few minutes. Next slide, please. I'll turn this over to John. And I get the project need. This is John Hornick talking about the project need. A major lack or severe lack of affordable housing has been identified in at least three town documents that were published between 2013 and 2017. If you let your eye go to the bottom of the page, the table comes from the 2013 Housing Production Plan. In that plan, the town committed to a minimum of 250 affordable units over five years to try to partially satisfy the need, which really runs into the hundreds, if not thousands. And the fact is that less than 50 units have been added in the last five years. So the picture that was presented in 2013 of need has not really changed. And as people know, in general, excepting for the pandemic, we have a very high occupancy rate everywhere in Amherst for all our rental units. And so adding 40 units is gonna help us. It's not gonna solve the problem, but it certainly pushes us in the direction of satisfying some of the need. Let me go to the next slide. Okay, so why are we doing this now? Well, one good reason is the properties become available. And I wanna thank whoever in town hall identified it as an opportunity. The three parcels that are shown were the third ones recently come on the market. And because of the total acreage, it really represents a terrific opportunity for us to meet that need for affordable housing. It's a collaborative effort, as Dave mentioned, between the town and the trust. I really wanna thank people in town hall for all the effort they've put in on this. The trust itself has met two or three times in executive session, and we are very enthusiastic about this. One other thing that I wanna highlight here is the trust will consider bundling this property with the East street school property in order to make a more competitive project for tax credit programs sponsored by the Department of Housing and Community Development. Without this, it would be more difficult honestly to develop both properties. The other thing I wanna highlight is that the purchase place for the Belcher Town Road property is actually below the appraised value that we've received. Next slide. Hi, this is Rob Moore, a building commissioner. So we have the three parcels that we would be thinking about combining for this type of a project. The most western parcel is the flag shaped lot that has the single family dwelling in the back of the property. That is a mid 1990s modular unit. As you can see, if you zoomed in on the development potential plan shown there, we are thinking creatively about possibly that building being relocated and reused on another parcel. Out front to the right, the most southeastern corner is where the number 80 is a 1930s single family house is located. It's so far into the corner of the property that we think possibly it could be repurposed as part of the development because it doesn't really get in the way of development when you look at the setback requirements and where buildings or parking would be positioned most likely. So here is a concept that is just to demonstrate that there is a nice possibility to develop this property. Certainly the developer that comes along will have their own ideas and be working with our land use permitting board to see that through. But this shows a 13,000 square foot footprint of a building up front with 60 parking spaces along the side of the building into the rear. The wetlands have been delineated. So we, during our inspection period of the purchase and sales agreement, we wanted to confirm exactly where the wetland boundaries were and any limitations on development. We've completed that and we've contracted with a survey or two over the next six weeks to so perform the baseline survey of the property. Now, these properties are located in the neighborhood residential district, which means our zoning by-law does not permit apartment buildings in that district. So we would be thinking of this affordable housing project as a comprehensive permit under the 40B regulations. Up to 40 units, we believe is appropriate and achievable with the area that's available for the development here. Next slide, and I'll pass it over to Joe. Okay, the budget slide. A couple of things to highlight here. First of all, where you see the line housing trust, $225,000. I just wanna make sure people know that those are all community, also community preservation act funds. They're funds that were awarded to the housing trust in prior years by CPA and town council. The next line CPA funds shows $600,000. We had originally requested $800,000 from CPA. They voted to recommend the entire amount of $800,000 to town council. But since they made that recommendation and I do wanna take thanks Sarah Marshall and the entire Community Preservation Act Committee for that recommendation, we have determined that we don't need $800,000 from them, but $600,000 will be adequate for us to be able to purchase this property. I do wanna highlight the fact that that enables the trust to retain enough money in its existing funds so that we can pay for the emergency rental assistance program, which we just extended for an additional six months and a liability that we have to be sure we will be able to cover. Otherwise, we might have had more funds to devote to this project. The purchase price is shown there. There are various technical services, the appraisal, a wetlands analysis and a few other things, legal fees, property management. And then the contingency is primarily for unanticipated expenses, particularly for the possibility that we may need funds to help resettle the existing occupants of the building toward the front of the property that Rob mentioned earlier. So we're looking at total expenses of $825,000 and between the amount that we're asking you to bond and the existing trust funds, we have sources that will equal that amount. I should say that the trust is responsible for all of those expenses. We are not asking for the town treasury to cover any of those expenses. They will come either out of the bonded amount or out of existing trust funds. I think that's it for me. Next slide please, Athena. So we put together an approximate timeline that we hope to work with the council to assess the need of course and the opportunity we are presenting to the council through your various committees. And we've outlined that here from tonight through a potential closing on 2-16, 21. We think it's an aggressive timeline, but it's a reasonable and realistic timeline given that we have achieved all of our due diligence on the site. And we believe it has great potential, as Rob said, to potentially create up to 40 units. And again, as John mentioned, the potential to bundle with the East Street School property and be in the neighborhood of 70 units total. I just wanted to end I think by saying that I think we're all aware of how competitive the real estate market is in Amherst. We have a number of very successful investors. And I think we're very fortunate to have stepped into this opportunity when we did before it was snatched up by somebody else. So we have a great opportunity to be aggressive in the marketplace, to work collaboratively with the trust. And we're thankful that the CPAC has recommended an amount. And as John said, we actually don't need the full 800,000, we're more, as he said, in the $600,000 range. And then depending on funds that are already in the trust control. So we thank you for the opportunity for this first look and we welcome your questions as we move through the process. Thank you. Let me just make sure we clarify that the vote that will come to the council eventually is to proceed, but it was also to allocate the CPA money, which will be an off cycle allocation of CPA money. We have questions. Dorothy? When you talk about possible 40 units, does that include a diversity of family or group size? Because it kind of, I know that the drawing you gave was just for illustration, but it looked kind of like a motel. And I'm just wondering, is this an SLO? Or is there a second floor? Is there gonna be a mix? And a sense of community area with the greenery. Those are the questions. Rob or John, do you wanna jump in there? Yeah, I can jump in. Rob estimated three floors. I think with respect to them, we would expect a mix of units. The housing trust will be putting together an RFP. I anticipate we'll do something similar to what we did when we developed the East Street RFP, which to say that there would be a mix of one, two, and three bedroom units. The preponderance of units would probably be two bedroom because at the time we were looking at East Street and deciding what to do there, we found that at Olympia Oaks, and I think elsewhere in Amherst, the longest waiting list were for two bedroom units. So I think that's what we've been looking for, Dorothy, but it would definitely be a mix. Good, thank you.  Yeah, am I correct in understanding all 40 would be affordable is the first question of these, or would you have a mix of incomes also would only some be affordable? That's question number one, and I just want to package it with two. Does the developer wanting to do this project also depend on them getting a large amount of money from the state either tax credits or what we saw with 132 North Hampton Road. Valley DC is anticipating a huge subsidy for the building of the building. So is it dependent on that? So just the are all affordable and how dependent is the actual development, successful developer development on state money? David? Bigel, John, would you like to? I would agree. We're gonna be highly dependent on state money. When I presented this before the Community Preservation Act Committee, I said that this is one of the best investments they can make because you're looking at a town investment of CPA funds that will bring back probably eight to 10 times that amount in money from the Department of Housing and Community Development or one of its various programs. So the answer to your second question, Kathy, is yes. The first one I would say is it depends. It could be 100% affordable, but it won't necessarily be. In other words, when again, we put out a request for proposals for East Street, we said that a minimum of 50% of the units had to be affordable. But if the developer found a way to finance the project that included some market rate units, we would entertain a proposal for that as well. And I think the same is going to be true here. It may well be that at the end of the day, what we see is something like we saw at 132 North Hampton Road, where 100% of the units were at least 80% AMI and many were at a higher level of affordability. George, you have your hand up and have not asked a question yet. Just wonder if you could explain the thinking behind bundling this with the East Street School, whether that's for sure, that's what's going to happen or you're just in entertaining that idea. And if you are entertaining it, why you would be entertaining it? Sure, George. As chair of the Housing Trust is the moment that is my preference, but the Housing Trust itself will have to look at that as we develop an RFP for the two sites or if we decide to go ahead as opposed to having two separate RFPs. The main reason to do this in a single word is paperwork. For the developer, for the Department of Housing and Community Development, for anybody else who's involved, there is a ton of paperwork involved in these projects. Nobody wants to do these projects, honestly, if they're gonna be small. And when I say small, from having talked to developers and people involved in financing, small means less than 40 units. And the sweet spot people say is at least 50 units or above. So in order to get to that point, which gives us the best chance of taking advantage of housing tax credit programs, which as I mentioned in response to Kathy Shane before is the most likely direction we're gonna go in. In order to get there, we're gonna need more units. It might be that Belchutown Road itself would be sufficient, but honestly, my concern is that East Street could be orphaned on those circumstances. So we know that DHCD will entertain two sites together. They probably do have to be separately permitted, although that's up to ZBA, not up to us or up to me. But we think there is an advantage, or at least I think there's an advantage. Let me be clear about that if we can put these two sites together in a single RFP. Okay. Dorothy, you still have your hand up. Is that from before? Just a quick question. So the town buys the land and then leases it to a developer. And then the town retains the ownership of the land. I'm just asking, will we get tax income from this property? Yes, Rob can answer that probably better than I can maybe. I believe we get tax income. It's based on the rental income since it's affordable property. We get less rental income than we, or there be less rental income than there might be hypothetically if it was a private for-profit project, but either way, the town does get tax income based on the rental value of the property. David, before you add anything, I'm gonna just add on to that question and say, so in other words, we would garner more taxes on this property by having it developed this way than we are presently. Is that true, David? Yes, I believe that is true. I mean, we're talking about potentially an eight to $10 million investment by the state that will be taxable, as John said, based on the rents that are charged for each of the units and in total. So yes, there are two rental houses on them right now that as Rob said, one is in the mid-1990s and the other one is significantly older than that. And again, I don't, off the top of my head, have the taxes that are paid on those two, but I think it's fair to say that yes, we would be getting significantly more money if a building of the size that Rob laid out were built on the property. I wanna also make the point that in order to get that leverage, in order to capitalize on the state dollars and the federal dollars that come through DHCD, the town needs to show that it's active. And again, Amherst has an excellent reputation. Our percentage of affordable housing is strong. We have always been active in this arena, but as John said, and we all know from the various reports and the various meetings we've all attended that we need to do better. And the way to be in that game, it's really we need to show intent and commitment over time. So we're talking, you know, some between the two properties. I mean, we might be talking, you know, north of $15 million of investment by the state, but it's gonna take a few years to get these going. So we're partnering as the town and the trust right now. We want to package these in a way and it hasn't been decided yet because of course we don't own Belcher Town Road and we are coming to you with this opportunity, but there will be time to figure out should they be bundled? Is that the best route to go? We'll get advice from our great staff from folks at the state level, but then we will decide on how to move forward, but we need to get some of these in the pipeline. We need to, you know, we need to make the investment over time. So what the state looks for is to say, oh, Amherst has come to the table and put $750, $800,000 on the table for this property and they're also willing to donate to affordable housing, the E Street School property. That's a significant investment that the state will look at and say, wow, you know, Amherst is stepping up to the plate again. And so my goal working with Rob and the rest of our staff is to try to keep feeding things to that pipeline, feeding things in so that it's not five years or seven years or eight years before the next project moves forward. So we can go back to Butternut Farms, Olympia Oaks, more recently 132 North Hampton Road. We need to keep making progress year in and year out because this will be a few years, even if we move forward on this, this is gonna be a number of years before we can leverage the money through the state. So that's what I think is exciting is showing the state how we are stepping up to the plate here with potentially two properties. Thanks, I just wanna emphasize because we've been asked by the public by doing this, we do not take this property off the tax rolls. In fact, we continue to get taxes, real estate taxes on this property. So I wanna, people have asked that question and when they need to re-ask that question. Kathy, additional question? Yeah, I just wanted to make sure on that point, Lynn, is the land itself is no longer taxable but the rents on the building is, is that it that the, it's publicly owned land but it's got a building on it? Is that the way this would work? Or are we gifting the land? So I just wasn't sure whether we buy the land and then give it to the developer or if we're leasing it, are we? Well, none of that has been decided yet. It's way too early in the process but I did wanna just clarify when the town, if the town moves forward on this property and purchases it, there will be a temporary, while the town owns it, there will be a temporary loss of tax revenue. However, we will also again, if the decision is to be made, we potentially can continue to rent one or possibly both of the houses and that would be income to the town slash trust moving forward. And then decisions will be made about the long-term disposition with the goal of having the development pay taxes when it is built. And likewise, East Street School would do the same. Yeah, I should mention for East Street School where there's no tax revenue on that right now. In fact, it's costing the town money to keep the building up. So once we can get that into the hands of a developer, from a tax point of view, will be much better off. I also mentioned that when we were looking at our original RFP for East Street, we decided on a 99 year lease from the town to the developer. And my guess is we probably wanna move in the same direction for Belcher Town Road. Okay, thank you.  Yeah, my only concern was, which partially John has answered is that we buy the land and then we don't have developers to do it the way with East Street School. And so what I'm hearing is that if we combine the two, the different properties that we are likely and just wanna make sure that based on the past or like, how do we make sure that it will be developed and that we don't incur more costs and have more land? And are there other land that we own that have not been yet developed for affordable like East Street? Let me maybe add, if I could answer that last question first. We, the town owns land all over town. However, in our preliminary analysis, clearly the East Street School is the best property to be developed. Some of the other parcels that are unencumbered by restrictions are either significantly wet or have very difficult access points or for other reasons are not likely easily developed. And that's why the East Street School was the first one to really move out of that process maybe two years ago, through that process, two years ago. And again, not to go into detail, but we did put out, working with the trust put out an RFP that we only got one respond into. And through that process, we identified some issues that still needed to be worked through on the East Street School. We're doing that now. And our hope is that if we can work through those two, there's two or three issues there that created some uncertainty for the developer. If we can work through those issues, clarify those and then put it back out, we have a higher likelihood that we'll be successful. This property is very unencumbered. Rob, myself, Rita Ferrell, who's on this call and is an advisor to the trust. We've all been out on this property. As we said, it is flat. It is relatively dry. It is quite developable. So we're very confident that we can move forward. Again, there are variables in state funding that none of us can predict or control. But the idea is to get things in the pipeline because if you're not in the game, we will not produce units. This is a way to produce 40 to 70 units in the next couple of years. If we're aggressive about this and active in the marketplace. Thank you. Any other questions from counselors at this time? I just want to mention to the person in the audience with your hand up, we've already had public comment and there will be no other public comment tonight. So the motion is to refer council order FY21-21-08A an order authorizing the acquisition of Belcher Town Road property for community housing purposes and the Community Preservation Act Committees December 7th, 2020 special report to the Community Resources Committee and to the Finance Committee for review and recommendation to the town council by January 25th, 2021. Is there a second? Ryan, second. Okay. Ryan is seconded. Any other question at this time? Okay, seeing none, we're going to start with Mandy Jo. Fine. Dorothy Pam. Aye. Evan Ross. Aye. Kirk Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Tara Schwartz. Aye. Shanley Belmill. Aye. Alyssa Brewer. Aye. Patty Angelis. Aye. Garcy Jamont. Darcy Jamont. Yes, sorry. Okay, and Lynn Griezmer is aye and that is unanimous. And each of those committees have been told that this is coming. We are going to move on to zoning priorities and let me begin that conversation by stating the following. Tonight's town council is being asked by the Community Resource Committee to request that the town manager direct planning department staff to work on these zoning priorities and to come up with a proposal for each zoning amendment. The amendments have not yet been drafted and I want to stress that the town council is not being asked to adopt any zoning and amendments at tonight's meeting. There will be future public meetings of the Planning Board and the Community Resources Committee and others if needed where these proposals will be discussed. The Planning Board and the Community Resources Committee are required to hold public hearings on any zoning amendments and to make a recommendation to the town council before town council votes on any amendments. And when the actual zoning bylaw or amendments come to the town council, each requires a two-third vote of the council. Tonight's meeting is an opportunity for the Community Resources Committee and the town council to make a statement about what the town's priority should be as we move forward with drafting zoning amendments. With that, I'm going to call on Mandy Johanicki who is going to make a presentation and I believe you have slides. So, Sean, could we have the slides? Yes, thank you. So, I'm going to wait till the slides are up but as Lynn stated, the initial part of this is CRC has recommended in accordance with town council policy goal three, economic vitality for the council to encourage the town manager to direct staff to develop zoning amendments. Town council, town manager assessment and performance goals that we passed in September, policy goal number three, economic vitality has a section that says that facilitate the review and revision of the zoning bylaws to promote diverse neighborhoods, affordable housing and new growth in downtown and village centers. That's one of the town manager's goals and it's how we put in for him to fulfill that goal. And so, if we could have the next slide, we've received a lot of emails over the course of the weekend regarding these recommendations and I want to clear up some misunderstandings that those emails seemed to indicate. As Lynn said, their zoning bylaws are not being revised with tonight's vote. There are no revisions being voted on tonight. If the vote passes, the zoning bylaws as of tomorrow and 14 days from now are the same as they are today. We as CRC was asked to actually provide the council with a plan for approaching zoning bylaw revisions. That was a referral from the council a little over a year ago actually. And our first part was that flow chart we talked about on how you actually do the revisions. And this is the final part of that, the plan for zoning bylaw revisions. So it's the beginning of a process. It's not the end of a process. And the CRC, there's been a lot of talk about the CRC didn't do a community impact report. And that process is used when there's concrete proposals with specific language in front of the CRC. We don't have concrete proposals. This is a plan. This is to recommend what priorities the town council wants the zoning the planning department and through the town manager to focus on to get some vote zoning bylaw revisions made. So it's hard to do an impact report when there's nothing to actually analyze. The next slide please. So if this recommendation passes, here's what happens. The town staff will go through the manager and start drafting revisions that may include planning board and CRC comments on the drafts. And then when those drafts are ready they'll come back to the council for referral. We'll receive the proposed amendments and the council would need to then refer them back to the planning board and CRC for review, hearing and recommendation. We've done this plenty times before. Most recently for the revisions to zoning bylaw article 14 temporary zoning. At that point, once the referral is made then the state process in the zoning bylaw amendment flow chart you've seen before happens. CRC and the planning board must hold public hearings that can be joint or separate. CRC would undertake a community impact review. The planning board and CRC would vote on recommendations and submit reports to the council after the hearing and the review. Then it would go to GOL for a review on clarity consistency and actionability. And then it would come back to the council for two readings at which time generally public comment is also taken. So that's the next steps. And I thought it would be good to start with that so that people understand that this really is the beginning of the process. So the next slide. This is gonna show what our recommendations from CRC are. And again, this vote was a four to zero vote with one absentee. Councilor Brown-Millen was absent from this vote. And we have a timeline for these recommendations. And the goal of the first recommendations are to have that proposal back to the council for referral back to CRC and planning board within about three months. Those fall into two general categories improving downtown zoning and unlocking housing development. And I just wanna read a couple of master plan goals and objectives that relate to these two items. For improving downtown zoning, the master plan goal and objectives state to preferentially direct future development to existing built up areas to create vital downtown and village centers that are walkable, attractive and efficient. The master plan land use strategies include encouraging denser development of appropriate scale and design, undertaking rezoning efforts that direct more intensive development to appropriate areas and limit development in key resource areas and encouraging increased upper floor residential development in downtown and village centers. The master plan demographics and housing strategies say to revise zoning regulations to encourage mixed use multifamily development projects. And this was also based, this improved downtown zoning was also based on councilor priorities that when we surveyed counselors variously referenced fixing downtown and improving downtown zoning through a variety of strategy. Footnote A changes BL district requirements which at least four counselors mentioned the planning board identified improving downtown zoning as zoning is one of its three priorities. And footnote A was actually mentioned by the planning department as one of its priorities. Unlocking housing development the apartments development package is we reordered them in apartments into SPR removing footnote M, the apartment definition. And then the non-group dialogue items is the SDU bylaw supplemental dwelling unit bylaw demo delay bylaw and starting a conversation on housing type also fall into master plan goals, objectives and demographics and housing strategies increasing the opportunity for infill development and the location of housing development in your services revising zoning regulations to make it easier to create attached and detached accessory apartments and duplexes out of existing owner occupied housing stock in all residential zoning districts and revising the zoning regulations to promote infill development and strategic locations. And the counselor priorities at least seven counselors in that survey and discussion that the first meeting we had when we were formulating this identified unlocking housing development as a priority. And the planning board also identified unlocking housing development as one of its three priorities. And there is also, and I mentioned the master plan goals, objectives, strategies because we just adopted that and these follow it. So if we can go to the next slide the six to 12 month priorities also fall into two general categories improving village zoning and unlocking housing development. I won't go into the master plan items for the unlocking housing development again because I just read them, but they apply here too and some of them actually apply a little more specifically including allowing two family houses by right in all residential zoning districts and reducing or eliminating lot size requirement differences for one and two family homes. Those are strategies specifically listed in the master plan the council just adopted for improving six to 12 month priorities of improving village center zoning. The master plan states to create one of its goals is to create vital downtown and village centers and to change zoning to allow denser residential occupancy near existing services and public transit. And the village center planning was mentioned by a number of counselors as their priorities. And then the final recommendation is the use of consultant money for form-based zoning and design guidelines. It was mentioned as a priority by at least seven counselors. It has been identified as an appropriate use for the already appropriated money and in the master plan and in the master plan it fulfills the strategies of using flexible zoning techniques such as form-based codes to promote mixed use development and revising existing zoning to encourage and include incentives for well-designed energy efficient infill redevelopment projects and developing design guidelines for multifamily dwellings such as townhouses and duplexes integrated into the context of existing neighborhoods. And so as I said, four to zero was the recommendation at the CRC. At this time, I would like to make the motion which is to direct the town manager to present zoning amendments that promote diverse neighborhoods, affordable housing and new growth in downtown and village centers in accordance with town council annual policy goal three economic vitality in the following time periods. By March 15th, 2021 adding the BL district of footnote B adding footnote A to maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage proposed a revised SDU bylaw similar to the 2018 town meeting proposal, the demolition delayed bylaw revisions work with the council to begin a conversation on housing type expansion in preparation for meeting the September 1, 2021 priorities below moving apartments to SPR and more zoning districts removing footnote M revising the apartments definition and by September 1, 2021 dimensional regulations in the RG and RVC lowering barriers to development of duplexes and triplexes frontage regulations for residential zones looking at the appropriateness of the use table for VC what kinds of businesses are allowed or encouraged in village center districts food entertainment services things that make community and meet basic needs within walking distance transportation issues which may not be zoning and for the use of consultant money form-based zoning and design guidelines. Is there a second? Ryan second. Thank you. Now we're going to begin questions. Pat DeAngelis, you have your hand up first. Thank you. I don't have a question. First of all, I'd like to thank CRC for the thoughtful and detailed recommendations you've made to our zoning priorities and also to the comprehensive housing policy. And while I support many of the recommendations in both documents, I am concerned about unintended impacts of some of the recommendations. And while I believe that it is for its own health and survival and Amherst needs to grow and it needs to change, we need more time to look at ourselves and actively decide which changes will foster and increase the economic and social diversity of our community and which changes may negatively impact the character of our community. I am requesting therefore that we postpone our discussion and the vote on CRC suggested zoning changes. So therefore I move to postpone discussion of CRC suggested zoning recommendations to a date certain following a public dialogue session to be scheduled in January, 2021. And to postpone a vote on CRC's recommended changes until February at the latest at a regularly scheduled council meeting. I understand that this is a plan for approaching revisions. And I think it's time to dive back into the community and hear their voices a bit before we say, hey, these are the priorities that we want to move forward. So the original motion has been made in second. There is now a second motion and that second motion is to delay the vote to a date certain and also to have additional dialogue. Is there a second to that motion? Change seconds. Okay, so we're going to now have a discussion about whether or not we're going to delay, but I also want to take the opportunity to make sure that other questions that councillors have regarding this presentation also get answered. But the motion that's been made and now the second motion to delay is the one that's on the table. Pat, did you anything further to say about your motion? I'm not at this time. I probably will speak again, but not right now. Okay, Kathy, your hand is up. Yes, thank you. For those public as well as councillors who have been reading material CRC has submitted to us one of the, I thought quite excellent documents that came to us over the weekend was 26 pages that tried to go through each of these priorities. And as I read through them, it may increase my concern that these are major changes. And when we say priorities, it's one thing to say that we want diverse housing. It's another thing to say, let's put a footnote A here and a footnote B there. And one of, we are talking about a list of recommended changes that have potential to alter the appearance and characters of Amherst downtown, village centers and all residential neighborhoods for decades to come. These aren't small conceptual changes. They were very specific. So I think we need that time. And one of the wisdoms of the council in its rules of procedure was to create something called a public dialogue. And it was for complex issues where we could take an hour before council meeting. So what Pat just proposed is that we set up one of those. We're not taking a vote at the end of January, but we have a, and we could invite planning staff in to say explain to me how B works, how A works. And I had asked Lynn and she did post a memorandum done by Chris Breschup that's in all of our packets on what would happen if we added B to the BL district. Now, this was a 2016 memo that did some analysis. So an impact, beginning of an impact. And it said, let's assume that each unit is a thousand square feet. And I just looked at the new units that are being built. They're more like 300 square feet and the most recent development. So they were generous on square footage. They kept the building coverage size of the lot limit to what it is now where you can only do 35% of the total space can be the building. And it was eight units, 12 units, 24 units on very small pieces of property with no provision for yards or spaces. So it's not a small change. It's potentially a large change. And there was a proposal to get rid of the 35% restriction on how much could be the building so we could potentially have the whole lot be a building right out to whatever the existing sidewalk is. I think we need to have a long conversation on why is that a priority? Why are we asking the planning department to come back? So that's just an example. The other one I think is you brought to our attention or whoever wrote it, the long document is that the apartment changes are not small. Right now, if you're building an apartment you're restricted to 24 units in a building. If you want to go bigger you have to come in for a special permit. We got a inclusionary zoning law that says if you want a special permit and you're going beyond the maximum unit size or you're going to maximum building size on the lot for any of these purposes you want to build you have to provide affordable units. So it's recommended to take that out of special permit and allow apartment buildings to be much bigger. And I've always thought there are inclusionary zoning what's on the books right now is very clever because it provides an incentive. If you want something you've got to give us something back and it's called affordable units. So you could go a bit larger. You could go a bit wider you could go a bit taller but you have to put in affordable. We shouldn't give that up. The other thing about our current apartments and this is said to be the merit of it is it requires a mix of units. We just talked about that with John Hornick on what would this new affordable unit? Some one bedroom, some two bedroom that nothing dominates. And for those of you who haven't been watching builders like to get a maximum number of units out. So some of the new units I don't think of them affordable are 300 square feet in the newest building and they rent for about $18,000 a year. So I think we really need to have a longer conversation. Some of the ideas are potentially very good if we have a design. So that's why I'm strongly in favor of waiting to have a longer conversation and go through each of the recommendation priorities. Talk about how they interact before we tell the planning board staff to get to work on these. We ought to understand them and all of us ought to be able to explain them. And we should probably vote on each of them separately but that would be postpone the vote on the February meeting. And I think it's critically important because we have a lot of really smart people in town who are planners, who are builders who can come and talk with us about what, which of these things might work where, why and how they interact. And we haven't had that discussion. We just haven't had the time to have it. So priorities do set a work plan. They aren't, I agree. We're not voting on zoning tonight. But if we set these are the priorities that's what's gonna come back to us. We better be sure these are our priorities. Why start here rather than someplace else? So I think we just need time to really read what was sent to us to learn more before we vote. So I'm strongly in favor of the motion to postpone to first a public dialogue and then two weeks later a vote on whatever comes out as our priorities.  Well, I'm agreeing in delaying but I do think we need more time than just a few weeks. One of the problems is we haven't agreed upon a vision. We have not agreed upon goals. The master plan talks about density but every time somebody uses that word they mean something else. And more density, okay, that makes sense but I've seen something maximum density, greater density and density in itself is not a good at least not in our downtown. And yes, people said they really wanted to have housing but did they say they wanted that housing to be in the center of town? I think that some things have been a little bit loose there. I will point out that when Mandy Joe made her motion some of the words that she used and I was just writing them down as you said them were diverse, affordable, something about economic development and vitality. I like all those words, okay? I didn't hear the word density, that wasn't in the motion. So I think that we really, we have a master plan but it's got a term that's like faith like it means something different to everybody else. I think that we have to really find out how much density do people really want in the downtown? How much change so that we can agree on that? So I mean, there's some things that we should do before we get into the weeds. Why don't we do have that dialogue about what our vision for the downtown is? Knowing of course that we're gonna follow the master plan in increasing density but figuring out how much and what kind. Why don't we do the form-based zoning code before we get into all those little details? Why don't we do the inclusionary zoning in a clearer thing so that we could, if we had inclusionary zoning in this past two years, I don't know, John probably knows the number but we probably would have had 50 more at least affordable units, maybe even a hundred. And it would have been a little bit here and there and it would have been what I think is the best way mixed in with other kinds of housing. So I know this is just to get the planning board, give them some direction but if we say, okay, we're gonna go here and this doesn't find this and this is okay, let's look at that. I begin to feel like I'm a little lamb just entering a chute on a long, long walk to the slaughterhouse. I mean, we're being guided, we're being kind of guided along the way. So I think let's talk about where we wanna get to. Let's talk about what our vision is and make sure that we all understand it before we do the details. Thank you. George Ryan. As Mandy pointed out in her presentation, this is the beginning of a process that involves ample and repeated public comment and discussion. I assume my colleagues are paying attention. Town council, well, then if we move tonight as I urge us to do, we'll send this up to the planning board and the CRC. Both of those bodies will discuss in great detail the priorities that we've asked them to look at. There will be more than enough opportunity for public input and comment. Many of the questions that are being raised this evening by some of my colleagues will be addressed and answered. Then also goes to GOL, another opportunity for public comment finally comes back to the town council for yet another opportunity for public comment and discussion. So this idea that somehow we need more discussion and more public comment strikes me as just mistaken. We are entering our third year of service and now is an opportunity for us to actually grapple with some of these questions and some of these questions are good questions, but we need concrete proposals that we can work with. And so let us not delay any further in terms of the process. Let's get the process started. Let's get some concrete proposals back to us and every step along the way, there will be ample opportunity for the public to provide input and for counselors and members of the public to ask questions and get answers. Evan Ross. Yeah, thank you. So I'm excited about us considering these priorities. I ran, the sole reason I ran was because of housing because of someone who has lived in rental housing for the past nine years who has dealt with trying to find affordable rental housing. I was motivated by trying to increase housing affordability and that's really what I think underpins these proposals. And so I'm excited about them. I'm excited about, especially for someone who is single, moderate income and looking to buy his first house. The idea of diversifying neighborhoods, smaller houses on smaller lots, the potential to increase duplexes, these are things that speak to people who are in my position who otherwise cannot buy a house in Amherst. And I'm telling you right now, I'm trying to buy a house in Amherst and I cannot. And so these are proposals that motivate me because I see what they can do. What I wanna say is two things. One, Mandy pointed out, I think very smartly, all of the roots of these which are in the master plan. And so we're having these conversations about we need to have more dialogue, we're having these conversations about we need a vision but we have the vision and it's the master plan. And these recommendations, the vast majority of them were pulled directly from the master plan. And so they're part of a vision that I'm sure Alyssa could tell us was a long process with lots of public input already. And so now we're saying we have to repeat a visioning process when we've done that. And now we're saying master plan gave us strategies, let's implement them. What CRCs bringing forward aren't just things that CRC thought of off the top of our head. We showed you in that addendum document, they're rooted in the master plan and also in the 2013 housing production plan and the 2015 housing market study. I think someone cynically said to me once, Emerson loves to pay for studies but doesn't like to actually use the results of that. And I think we get frustrated by that all the time.  But one of the things this is doing is pulling the strategies from those studies that were done by experts that did the analysis that we're looking for that said, here are some strategies we can use. And so now we're taking them forward. So to me, I don't think that we need to delay this any longer. I think what we need to do is get to a point of actual proposals so we can have a real public dialogue when we have actual proposals in front of us. But the process of visioning, the process of coming up with strategies, that's been done. It's been done for the past decade and now we wanna move forward. I'm concerned about postponing because one of the reasons I like the idea of coming up with three month and six to 12 month priorities has to do with the timeline of the council. You know, we have a lot on our plate in this last year of our term. We have one year left. Some of us might not be here next January, right? And so, January 2022, if we delay and we don't send these to the planning board, to the planning department until the end of February and they need three months to put them together and they don't get them to us till May. Well, now we're in budget season and then it's gonna be pushed until maybe July or August when we can actually start to consider these. And then I'm already envisioning people saying, well, you can't do anything in Amherst in the summer or you can't have public forums or public hearings on important things in the summer. No one's here. So now we're pushing it off until September, October when many of us are running for office, right? The timing becomes really problematic. And so I'm a little bit worried that delaying and postponing too far means that we're not gonna get these done in our terms. And so many of us, myself included, ran on issues of housing and zoning and would be devastated not to be able to make any action on zoning and planning in our first term. And so I'm hoping that we can move on these tonight as priorities and that we can have these really full discussions and this really rigorous public vetting that we all want when we have actual proposals on the table. Alyssa? Wow, so many things and trying not to repeat. I wanna make sure I mentioned one thing which is that no one can say it's a fact that if we had a different version of inclusionary zoning in our bylaws that we would now have 50 or 100 units. That's absolutely pure speculation. No one has figures on that because we know for a fact actually that many developers said we're not gonna develop there if you're gonna make us put in affordable units. Now, we don't appreciate that attitude and we've tried working with people in many ways over the years but that is the fact that having inclusionary zoning means you get no development. That actually makes some people very happy. They would rather that Amherst never built another unit in the town of Amherst, do not let people fool you. That is part of what some people would like. So inclusionary zoning has to be very carefully crafted which is why we struggled with it so hard over the years. And we're obviously not seeing it as the first priority here, not because it isn't in fact many of our first priorities but because it's so complicated to develop in such a way that we believe development will still happen so that we still get additional units and that some of them will be affordable preferably in that integrated way, Dorothy mentioned. As I stated at the last town council, I'm concerned with the paperwork we have received that says X number of town counselors felt this. We weren't surveyed on X series of things and we were just given an open-ended question. Many ideas I may have supported had I bothered to think of them were things so you could have added me in some categories, subtracted me and others, we had no limits on that. So don't take the numbers like too much of a survey result but that doesn't change the fact that these are the kinds of things we've been talking about for years as Evan said during campaigns and at different times. As I stated at the last town council meeting and others have mentioned, we do have that vision. It is our master plan and what I maybe didn't emphasize enough again is that that master plan was developed by hundreds of people over thousands of hours, not by 13 individuals, not by a two hour listening session or a one hour listening session, not by 13 individuals who are serving in this role now, most of whom didn't engage in that master planning process even though most of them were living here then and most of them didn't serve in representative town meeting. Therefore did not have to grapple with zoning articles prior to running for town council. What we're doing here, and I admit that, when I gave a CRC member some grief about the fact that although it was presented very well tonight in terms of what are we actually doing here, that was not entirely clear to the public as they read these documents. But in fact, for those of you unfamiliar with the old process and those who are conveniently choosing to forget it, which is some of the writers we've had so far, this is an additional step to zoning that we never had under the old process. This is not talking about the postponing because I'm totally against that. This, what we're doing right now is an additional step that has historically was not done in the previous form of government. And so while many representative town meeting members had in fact participated in the extensive nearly decade long development of the master plan through the comprehensive planning committees planning hours together process, due to our lack of a formal process of implementation of that master plan, which I know we've heard, yes, we actually have done some of the things, which is great, but we haven't really had the formal implementation piece as so defined. Most representative town meeting members coming into an annual or special town meeting each year had no idea anything was coming for zoning changes until they got the town meeting warrant that already had an exact bylaw on it. And that's what they had to react to. Yes, certainly a few did pay attention to the legal notices of required planning board public hearings. And so therefore they had some sense of how things had developed before they heard about it because the select board was taking a position on a recommendation to town meeting and at town meeting itself. And sometimes the planning board report was available when the warrant was available. And sometimes it wasn't available until the seventh or eighth night of town meeting. So this is actually progress. It may not seem like it to people. I know that people are scared that this means we're going too fast, but this is actually more open. This is more clear than what our previous process was. Do I agree with every one of the priorities? Probably not. So that's okay because we're going to have all those meetings and hearings. We've heard the planning board express frustration that their priorities since the town councils come into place haven't been addressed because the town councils getting organized. We know we don't want to have all the hearings in the summer as Evan just referred to. Amherst has been very diligent about not just getting stuff done over the summer or during the month of January when a lot of people are not around because of the academic calendar. I can't emphasize enough that listening to theories about what inclusionary housing might be, listening to theories about what density might be is not a valuable use of my time or of the public's time. We need actual bylaws that can be analyzed, run through that process that CRC is going to use, run through the GOL review so that we can determine whether or not that bylaw as presented will execute the values we say we hold or maybe the bylaw won't. Like we can say we thought it was going to do this but when you put it together with these things that's a crappy bylaw and then we'll vote against it and that'll be great. But if we don't do the actual bylaw development if we just say, oh, let's listen to some more theories about how we might consider constructing a bylaw we are wasting time. We need to move forward. Garcy. Thank you. Am I unmuted? Yes. I support Pat's motion. I see that we not only have this item on our agenda as an action item that's been labeled as second discussion. I argued at the last meeting that we didn't even see a proposal in the packet and it was not only unclear to the public what we were talking about as having been proposed but that it was also unclear to the counselors. So I do see that it now has been put in a separate document and we got a separate slideshow and it has a title. And so at the very least I believe this should be considered the first discussion and that we shouldn't be voting on it tonight. Secondly, I haven't had time to deeply analyze and think about the proposal or to get feedback from my constituents about it which I value. And my son is home for the holidays after having tested negative and I consider the weekend before Christmas to be part of the holiday. So to schedule a vote on a recommendation of a major overhaul of the zoning bylaw on the Monday before Christmas, in my opinion is crazy at best and downright Trumpian at worst. And I think this council should be better than that. Aside from that, I believe that the process through which this proposal has evolved is inappropriate and potentially violates the charter because the council is proposing to direct town staff to create specific bylaws without there being referred to the planning board first and I request a KP law opinion on that matter. The charter section 8G regarding the master plan states that quote, if any proposed bylaw involves a matter addressed in the master plan concerning land use or development regulations, the town council shall first refer the proposed bylaw to the planning board. The planning board shall report its recommendations and writing to the town council on the proposed bylaw in accordance with MGL 40A section five and so on. So the town council should not be doing anything other than referring a proposal to the planning board so that they can come back with a recommendation to us with that's more fleshed out. And based on their expertise, since we, by the way generally don't have expertise on this and they do. The planning board was poised to make recommendations to the council on zoning changes in September of 2018. I know because I attended a couple of meetings of the zoning subcommittee. I was pleased to see that the zoning subcommittee had a list of priorities that seem to address some of the clear complaints that had come out during the town council campaigns, in particular addressing building height and setbacks and the provision of more moderate income housing. We were primed to amend the dimensional table so that it no longer would allow zero feet of setback for development in the center of downtown. We saw how that worked out because that will never, that we'll never have a view of East Pleasant Street again, down East Pleasant Street. The planning board had a plan to submit a specific zoning bylaw overhaul within the first six months of the new council taking office. But then the zoning committee was dissolved as a result of a request by some counselors and the town manager in order to give the council a greater role. Having a zoning subcommittee of the planning board is a necessity for the planning board to function as it was intended under the charter. How can the planning board recommend or respond to zoning changes without a zoning subcommittee? Zoning bylaw proposals need to first receive a report from the planning board. I for one would like to hear the original proposals that were just getting started on at the September 18th, 2018 zoning subcommittee and planning board meetings. Why on earth would the CRC need to start this discussion from scratch, asking each counselor to submit his or her wish list when we have a planning board with experts who have already put together priorities in the beginnings of a plan. The planning board was created to serve this function. It's notable that eight members of this council during the 2018 campaign pledged to the political action committee embers forward to vote to support zoning bylaw changes to densify downtown and village centers. Some proposals from counselors seem to clearly advantage downtown developers who of course want to develop downtown as much and as fast as possible with a plan to create multi-story apartments that will house students. In our next foray into downtown development, I would advise to go slow and avoid what happened the last time with our first two tall buildings downtown. For example, why would we want to fast track the development of the west side of Kendrick Park which has a beautiful and historic look before we developed the east side, which is a mess and is already in the core district. This piecemeal approach to developing the downtown doesn't make sense. And most important of all, how can we make decisions about how dense the town needs to be before we answer this foundational question? Are we planning to create housing for UMass undergrads in our downtown and village centers? Are we looking at providing in the tens or hundreds of additional apartments or in the thousands of units? If we are not planning to house UMass undergrads and I fervently hope we are not and we are only looking to house families, town and UMass staff and retirees. We need many fewer units and they need to be designed with different outcomes in mind. Are we expecting folks to live there for one year or for 10 to 20 years? If you are living there for 10 to 20 years you need more green space, a balcony, thicker walls for soundproofing, energy efficiency and more amenities in general. I want UMass to take responsible for its undergrad students now and in the future, housing them on campus and in UMass student apartments, not in the downtown or in our family neighborhoods. I strongly support Pat's motion to delay and to have a deeper analysis. I would actually agree with Dorisie that we need even more time than that and to request a KP law opinion on what is the main motion violates the charter as I've argued. Thank you, Schreiber. Wow, that's a hard one to follow. I feel like I've missed a few meetings because I feel like we're talking about a completely new zoning by-law and that this is a public hearing for that zoning by-law. We're not talking about that. We're talking about basically a roadmap, a AAA roadmap as to that we're gonna give to the town manager that presumably will be given to the planning department as of what we think they should be working on. As Councilor Brewer mentioned, this is the first time in the history of Amherst that the legislative branch has gotten, at least the entire legislative branch has gotten involved like this. Before this, it was primarily a function of the planning department and the planning board itself to set these priorities in consultation with the select board and the town manager. So this is completely a new process. We're all we're proposing here is a roadmap, a timetable. Nobody is talking about any specific zoning by-laws. The other thing is we have a zoning by-law. It's the one that's giving you these five-story buildings. It's the one that's causing all this angst about inclusionary zoning. It's the one that's causing all this angst about setbacks. It's all the one that's causing all the angst about the lack of balconies, the lack of green space, the lack of apartments for families. Pretty much everyone who has spoken now has complained about the zoning by-law. We have a zoning by-law, a delay. The delay won't be until January. We're not gonna get any more information about density or you're not gonna understand density any more between now and January. You're not gonna understand the implications of many of these proposals between now and February. It's just not gonna happen. So a delay is basically a vote for keeping the zoning by-law exactly the way it is. So if you wanna vote for keeping the zoning by-law the way it is, then vote to delay. Andy. So I was gonna try not to repeat what is previously been said by a number of people including just recently Steve but also Evan and others in Alyssa. But I wanna add a couple of additional things. One is that we're talking about finding appropriate development and CRC suggesting that we need to begin a process that allows us to figure out what is appropriate development. And a point was made about the fact that there are some people who really secretly don't want development but they come up with all sorts of reasons why we shouldn't do anything because they don't wanna say that we don't want development. I just wanna remind people that we're gonna be talking about the budget guidelines later this evening. And one of the problems that the budget guidelines is that we're getting complaints from certain quarters because there isn't enough money. Well, what do we do about the fact that there's not enough money? One of the things we can do without asking voters for an override to increase their taxes is new development. And that is what the state law that governs two and a half is all about. It creates the exception for new development. And if we want to be able to do what is important for this community and not ask our voters for an override and not devastate some of our other existing programs, we have to always be thinking about what is appropriate new development and delaying the process of having that conversation. Just delays the whole end result of that to the point that it doesn't serve any purpose because it's gonna force us to make horrible budget choices before we ever get there. And I think that the other thing that was alluded to a little bit but I was going to expand on it is that we are a council that is nearing the end of its term. Future councils are gonna be two year terms. I think that all of us look at the state legislature and look at the Congress and recognize that on both the state and federal level, things don't move very quickly because every two years there's a turnover in membership. And as there's a turnover in membership or reappointment of leadership and a reappointment of committees. And we just heard about that a little bit with rank choice voting. I think that councils are not exempt from that reality and that we had the luxury in our first year because we were trying to organize new form of government also of being the only three year council that's ever going to exist. And if we can't move something within our three year term, I don't know how a future council is ever gonna do it. And delay on something that is really not more than putting off the start of a process just doesn't make sense. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and call on Pat DeAngelis. I'm not sure how to do this, but listening to my colleagues, it seems clear to me that my asking for a delay was misguided. And I would like to withdraw the motion and move forward with the original motion. There's two options. And I always look for anybody else's advice, Andy Joe, anybody. We go ahead with the motion and we see if it passes. The other one is that the person who seconded it has to agree to withdraw. Who was the second? Why don't we move to go forward to the vote then? Kathy second to that. I was the second and I'm not prepared to withdraw it. And I just want to point out, I would, when you say that it's a vote to keep everything as it is, this is not a conceptual list. Adding UL district to footnote B, adding footnote A to maximum lock coverage, proposed SDU law similar to 2018 demolition delay. This is a very specific list. And Steve, if on the priority list, you had said setbacks deal with the parking issues, you would have had a different reaction. This is a set of priorities where we're taking staff in a particular direction. And there is a vision. I spent the entire weekend just so people know why it would be thrilled with smart development, smart growth in airmars, which was balanced, which was saying we want to do, Steve said, take a look at triplexes and duplexes. So I found them in Bend, Oregon with unbelievable, they said, you've got to have 258 square feet of open space with your little complex. They should have balconies. They drew some pictures of what they could look like. I'm pretty small lots, but they were quite beautiful. So I don't think we're saying you just can't do anything. We just don't want a list that seems to, my best analogy is is clear cutting a forest or strip mining, just coming and saying more waivers, get rid of this provision, get rid of this, rather than a vision. And I just, the last thing, Andy, when you say growth, we have an incredible urban history in the United States that proves to you that just denser growth rather than balance growth does not solve fiscal problems. It just doesn't. And one of the interesting things I found in Bend and Dartmouth has this in Hanover is they have impact fees. So when a new developer comes in, they have to finance sewer, water, schools, other kinds of expansion things. So it's not, so there are ways of thinking of really creative bringing downtown to life. And I just don't think this is the list. I think if you had come up with another list and you asked us all for our priorities, I sent in a very detailed one, not a single one of those got on this list. So there was some kind of a process in CRC. I don't know whether you put lots of detailed ones. If you said detailed, I think we would have come up with some of the ones we're zoning subcommittee. So I don't think we're asking for not doing anything, just a much more creative list. And I would be happy to vote for a list that has some different things on them with a cohesiveness to them. This is where we're going and these three things go together and the planning staff. So I would be willing to go there. I'm not anti-development. I did not run on that. I just think how we develop really matters a lot. And we don't need to be smart about it. So I respect the people on this committee. So I would like to put this to vote rather than just rescind it, not go down on a vote. It was a two-part and I could give it to you in specific language. I moved to postpone the discussion of this priority list to a public dialogue on January 25th where we invite others, planning staff and to talk about this specific list to understand it better and then postpone a vote on the priority list. And it could be a change priority list on February 8th. So it's a two-part postponement. It's not to not do anything, but to be very careful that all of us can explain why do we think starting with footnote B and a change in the way we define apartments and a change in the land coverage is the right way to start. Where we start, and Steve, I love your thing about a AAA roadmap. Most roadmap start from someplace and bring you to someplace. If I don't like where it's bringing me, I wanna start in a different place. So I would really like a very thoughtful discussion before we put these priorities to a vote. And when we do put them to vote, I'd like us to vote on each one of them rather than a package. Some are not bad ideas. So I'm not saying they're all not good ideas but really come back to it. So I would like to keep that motion active and we can put it to a vote. All right. Melanie, you haven't spoken yet. Oh, I'd be happy for Steve to respond first. All right, Steve. Yeah, thank you, Councillor Shane, for that explanation. And I definitely, if we were voting tonight on footnote A, I would be very much against that because it hasn't been fully vetted. So back to the AAA map, there are many different ways to get from here to New York City, right? So I think that footnote B as an abbreviation for footnote A, even a more interesting one, footnote A, it's an abbreviation for footnotes that may or may not be obstacles to achieving the town's goals regarding sort of sensible what I consider to be sensible development. And in particular, the area of concern is one that everybody loves to talk about is the BL zone. So it's sort of head slapping if you read Chris Brestrup's memo that you cannot put a single unit, not one single unit of housing into the BL zone until you get half an acre. Now that's astonishing. There's no other part of Amherst where we have that low density. And here we have that right in the center of Amherst. So I'm not gonna get, so the CRC and the groups that are involved in this have talked about many different tools that we can deal with to address the issue of housing both in the center of town, but also on those areas of BL, which is meant to be transitioned. So the footnote is definitely one way. The overlay district, the 40R proposal is another way. Simply tinkering with the dimensional table or some of the use table is another way of doing that. So footnote be a sort of a reminder that we need to deal with some of these obstacles that prevent really something less than the half acre zoning right in the center of town for one housing unit. So, but I appreciate that concern. And I understand how the intense specific, if we're talking about footnotes, the footnotes are part of a larger body of something. So it's not just a footnote, it's referring to something much greater. But I appreciate you explaining that concern. But it's still the fact is that we have a zoning bylaw that we all think has broken parts to it. And that will be the zoning bylaw until we deal with it. Melanie. So I wasn't there at the meeting when this discussion took place, but I did get to watch the video finally. So it's okay. There's just like gazillion thoughts going through my head right now. I'm gonna try and articulate just randomly what's coming up. So one thing that, for example, I'm hearing a lot of concerns is this is gonna create five-story buildings and whatnot like we already have. The fact is that we have like many people have shared a zoning bylaw that is already allowing that. And the footnote B actually, the document that we got written by Chris Bestrup actually shows that the three-story buildings are not going to go any taller. So then the changes that are being even suggested that we start looking at them, none of those, to me, what I understood is that they are not talking about increasing the number of floors to beyond the three floors. So let's get that out of the way. The other thing is that I do agree that there's a lot of specific things that's hard for the public and hard for us. I had to speak to a couple of urban planners to get a sense of and understand what are the implications, what does this mean? And what I understood was exactly this, that this is not increasing the floors and so forth. And this is increasing the density by let's say 12 more units and it's not explosive or anything that big, but I can understand that public and some of the counselors do not have that understanding of what that is gonna look like. But what I'm also hearing in the process is that this is, we are gonna get a debrief and an impact study of all of this when it goes to the planning department to town manager. Am I right with that? That each of these is going to be discussed and broken down and explained in more detail. And my concern is that when people are asking for a delay, what specifically are we looking, what are we gonna discuss? I mean, what we need is information and explanation and impact and all of that from the planning department. What are you and I going to discuss that will allow us to understand anything more than what we already know or don't know. So yeah, and just one other thing is that why now and as we speak, we all are getting emails, I'm sure from residents who are saying we can't afford the property taxes. We're gonna be evicted. We're hearing from people who can't afford to rent here. Our own neighbors are renting out and selling their homes to people so that they can be rented to students. The fact of the matter is that we are a college town. The demand is more than the supply. And if we don't do anything, this is going to be a town for only rich people. Right now, by not doing anything, we are not fixing anything. We can just keep going back and forth and back and forth. That's what's been happening in Amherst for so many years as these discussions back and forth. And there's kind of like a stalemate of nothing ever changes. And it's an either or kind of camps, either we're for progress or we're not, and then we just keep get lost somewhere. So my request to everyone is to think about to move forward, what are the specific questions, what clarity we need? And can we get that clarity from the planning department? We already know what public really, besides the people who come and speak and send us emails, there are people who are suffering with rents, with property taxes, with all these issues. We know many of the issues already. And especially if many of us who went on camp entrails and knocked on doors, we already know people want a walkable, livable downtown where there's community spaces where we can enjoy, we want more setbacks, we want, we don't want buildings to come to the edge of the roads. So let's start talking about those things and come up with very specific questions of what do we wanna see and how can we make that happen? That's problem solved. How can we make that downtown happen the way we're all envisioning? Cause it's pretty similar, I think. That's all I have for now. Thank you for the message. Excuse me, Shalini, thank you. Sorry. I am actually going to take a moment to speak, thank you. Yes. First and foremost, there is only one other thing besides taxes that make people nervous and it's zoning. And what we have seen in this conversation and in all the other conversations about this is people get nervous. Part of the reason they also get nervous is because it's not an easy topic to understand. So I was in the room when we first started talking about trying to start doing something about zoning well over a year ago. You were all in that room. And if we continue to just say, oh, let's talk about it, that's all we'll ever do is we'll just talk about it. We have a vision. I was at some of those meetings, Alyssa, thank you very much. And I also want to say that I think the document that was added to the packet for this meeting greatly improves and ties in our understanding. I want to thank both Mandy Jo and Evan who are listening carefully and doing that for us. This is a beginning. And I will tell you personally, when somebody comes to me with a zoning bylaw, I'm gonna say, what did it look like before? Show me what it will look like now. And I'm gonna go through all of the issues that might bother me. Will this prevent this from sitting right on the edge of the sidewalk? Will this give me an overhang? What will it do? But I can't do that until I see a bylaw, until I have something to compare it to. So I'm not gonna vote to delay, but I am going to ask, and I know that CRC will do this, that when you come forward to the council, when the planning board comes forward to the public, they do everything they can to make what we're hearing and seeing understandable and understand its impact and allow for full dialogue among the community. That's my only request. Thank you.  Yes, I'd like to call the question. I second. The question's been called. It takes a two thirds vote. Is that right? Okay. We move immediately to the vote. We don't have discussion. Just move to the vote. This is a vote to call the question. Okay. Dorothy Pam. Abstain. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. I'm voting on whether we just are ending debate. Is that what I'm voting on? That's correct. Yes. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Aye. Shelley Balmille. Yes. Elissa Brewer. Aye. Pat DeAngeles. Aye. Darcy DeMont. Yes. Lynn Griezmer. Yes. Mandy Johannike. Aye. The vote is 12 in favor. None opposed. One abstention. No absences. We're going to now move to the vote for the delay. Okay. Athena, would you please read the motion? Post-blown the discussion of the CRC suggested zoning changes to January 25 at a public dialogue session to be scheduled one hour before the January 25 council regular meeting and to postpone the vote on CRC recommendations until February 8th at the council regular meeting. That vote's been made and seconded. To vote in favor of this, you say aye. And that means you're in favor of the delay. To vote against this means you're not in favor of the delay and will proceed to the full vote. And we will start with Evan Ross. No. George Ryan. No. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. No. Andy Steinberg. No. Sarah Schwartz. No. Shalini Balmilm. No. Alyssa Brewer. No. Matthew Angelis. No. Darcy DeMont. Yes. Lynn Griezmer is a no. Mandy Johanke. No. And Dorothy Pam. Yes. The vote is 10 to not delay, three to delay, no abstentions, no absence. We're going to move on to the actual vote. I move to postpone, Lynn. I'm gonna just check. That means we may need to require a second. Just confirm that Darcy's using her charter right? Yes. Is that what she's using? Yes. Then it does not require a second. One counselor can do it. The vote is postponed until the next meeting, which is January 4th. There is no more discussion. We're going to take, There is not. We're gonna take a five minute break. Thank you. Please mute.   Thank you. Please show your screen to indicate your back. Mandy Joh, what do you have in your hand? Gloves to keep my hands warm while I type. Please show your screen so I know if you're back. I'm going to be moving to the budget guidelines. I wanna just Thank Sean Mangano for joining us. We know you were on vacation today. So this kind of is in this category of above and beyond. And Shalini, are you back? Please. Okay. We're gonna get started. Andy, let me just preface this section of our discussion by the following. While the adoption of the budget guidelines is the next step in the budget process, we are still at the very beginning of the process and things change, information becomes more clear. And we know that there will be opportunities along the way for additional public comment. In addition to that, there are also continued to be four town meetings on the regional school budget and other issues provide an opportunity for additional deliberation. But the guidelines and Andy's going to introduce them are just a step along the way. So guidelines, Andy? Yes. Thank you. I'm not gonna try and go into any great detail because it's a long document and I think that I tried to get it to you early and it's really covers the topics that were presented in the financial indicators meeting. The committee worked very diligently on reviewing each aspect of the recommendations made by the town manager and finance director and looked at the recommendations with great care because we recognized that asking the town manager, the superintendent and the library director to level fund the operating budgets for each of those departments was a big ask because it was gonna be a challenge for each of those professionals to develop budgets to meet those guidelines. But when we looked at the other alternatives, we could not find that any of the other alternatives were better. The capital is still below what the target is but it's higher than last year but there's a consequence on capital because we had cut capital in half last year and so that there's a huge backlog of unmet capital needs in all segments of the government in including schools library and town departments and our fleet of vehicles and our maintenance is just one year further down the line to where we would have been had it not been for the whole COVID crisis. So when we looked at that, it was difficult but it seemed like a logical decision. There were two other aspects of it that are gonna come up and one has to do with do you ask for an override? Because we are limited in what we can get from property tax to a 2.5% plus new growth and there is some new growth. It has been paired back from because of the economic downturn but it hasn't been eliminated but it doesn't help us because there are things that are going up that we can't control and which is why we end up where we are and to ask voters to consider an override now seen to the finance committee to be something that we couldn't recommend to the council that it asked the voters to do and then the last piece is saying that our reserves are partially a rainy day fund and can be some of it should be made available. I think that the problem that we grapple with there is that we have made a big commitment to form a new building projects and a large part of the purpose of building the reserves to this point was to make it manageable to manage the four projects over a period of time and to smooth out tax increases or not tax increases, excuse me for saying that smooth out payments of bonds as they come do using reserves so that we don't have to go to undo tax increases or otherwise affect budgets. So for all of those reasons we came up with the guideline proposal that is before you and I know we have been getting some emails from advocates of school budgets. We haven't seen detailed school budgets and so there's sort of like there was this global ask from the Fort Towns meeting but there wasn't any real budgets behind it so that there was nothing to examine and look at but if we just take the view that there's gonna be consequences to the reduction of budgets well that's true of all of the budgets that are funded by the town and we get back into the question of if you're gonna take one group and say that they are a special circumstance then which one is not gonna be the special circumstance and we have to be prepared to respond to that and then we get back into the question again about overrides and capital and so that was kind of the ultimately the finance committee and with that I will just turn it back to women and see if there are questions. Okay, I'm going to make the motion to adopt the FY20 town council budget policy guidelines as recommended by the finance committee report of 12, 21, 2020 as presented, is there a second? A second. Kathy Shane seconded. Any further discussion or questions? Mindy Jo. Yeah, I just want to point out I fully support these guidelines and I wanted to point out mainly for the residents that our total revenues that are projected for next fiscal year are projected to be one and a half million dollars less than the FY20 fiscal year revenues that we just finished and so we're in a hole and that's assuming level state aid and so it's one of the reasons I'm supporting these financial guidelines of level funding. I know it's gonna hurt many, many different departments for that but we have to face reality that we're not even at the revenue that we had last year, the year that just ended in June. We're gonna be one and a half million dollars less despite costs increasing in absolute dollars we're one and a half million dollars less. Thank you. Dorothy. Well, first I really want to congratulate Andy. I read the report again and we read it in various versions and it was really extremely well written and balanced and anticipated questions and answered them. I did have one thought. I know that some of the budgeting is relatively conservative. If in fact we have better revenues than projected would we be able to give some of that back to some of the institutions such as the school that are level funded to help alleviate some of the problem? Andy or Paul, do you want to answer that question? I can start and answer and that's either Paul or Sean once said we said in the guidelines that these are preliminary and that if there is additional revenue that we would expect to come back with amended guidelines to reflect the increases that we have. I think that one of the things that we recognized is it's harder to do, and maybe Paul or Sean can add to this or explain it, but from my experience in doing budgets for non-profits so it's harder to do the lower budget where you would anticipate cuts and that if additional money comes along in that process you've identified where the hardest cuts are and if money becomes available to add back there's the ability to do that more easily than to have to do late last minute later in the process and so that it seemed to be a sounder planning principle to start with where you thought you were gonna be at the lowest point. And of course that is where we sort of said if things actually turn out worse and I think that the most likely place that would be is if the state ends up coming up with less than level funding for state aid that then we would probably come back and actually reach the reserves question and consider using reserves so that we don't have to ask for further reductions after the development. So we were holding off on the reserves so that they could be used for that purpose. Sean has his hand up. Paul, did you want to go ahead or have Sean go ahead? Okay, Sean. Thank you, Lynn. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Great. So yeah, that's a great question Dorothy and Andy answered it perfectly. We wanted to put forward a conservative budget that we didn't think would get worse. We wanted to give people a baseline with which to plan from. And this year, more than any year I've seen either at the school or the town there's a number of variables that are gonna be coming up that will inform our projections moving forward. In January, there's a couple. We have the governor's budget that will come out and we also have health insurance. I think it's hopefully gonna be the case there may be some sort of federal stimulus that has to be factored into over the next year. So far, the plan has still not been a normal year with the college and universities and looking at what revenues are gonna do there. So we've only planned on doing a pretty big update of those projections as we come up and then the town manager will factor that into his budget proposal. Thank you.  Yeah, I just wanted to comment that I really appreciate that the guidelines take into consideration the need for flexibility regarding funding the new initiatives that have come up this year, including the climate action plan and the proposals for the community safety working group with regard to racial equity initiatives. And I wanted to remind the council that the energy and climate action committee is going to be submitting their annual report and funding requests to the town council before our next meeting. Before January 4th. Is that what you're saying, Darcy? Yes. Thank you. Beth and Shane? Just