n standard associated with that rather than just what they might imagine to be good faith because those are the people that we all are at the problem with thank you Mr. Zomek sure I can I can just have at this so the bylaw doesn't get into the the kind of micro of those steps but it does in section 12 13 and 14 outline a very logical graduated increasingly clear series of steps that staff would need to take with landlords whether it be staff from the building department the health department the fire department or in concert multiple departments with the landlord for various things that might be happening at a particular property so I think although we couldn't get into the specifics of you must first phone call first certified letter or letter certified letter it does leave obviously some room for the figure be it the building commissioner or the health director or the fire chief to use their discretion but it does lay out a process by which those steps would happen including if an inspection was necessary for x y or z reasons and then it it even has the appeal process laid out in the bylaw as well if a landlord feels as though they have been not been treated fairly so that's really the way we dealt with those steps in talking with our building commissioner for instance there are multiple ways that good faith efforts can be shown some of them have been reported by mr morrow to this to this board as well as to the town manager in terms of responsiveness about parking we've had excellent success over the last couple of months with mr morrow simply working with landlords on voluntary measures that they can take let's get all those cars on the pavement let's create a short of this bylaw an informal parking plan that shows or installs stones here or a split rail fence here or some hedge to to block so again those that discretion and it will be up to the code enforcement person but I think there's a way way to do that that that is in line with section 12 13 and 14 other questions or comments from select this time is there an online site for the building and sanitary code because health and safety are you know dealt with very closely referring to that and I'd be curious to know what kind of health issues for example I'm sure there is I'd be happy to get that for you I don't know it off the top of my head because it's not something I'm just curious because health and safety it says health all the time but you know I'd like to be able to know that a landlord or a person who's interested could go and check out what the health standard should be well I will say that as part of this effort and we had extensive conversations about this in the working group all of this this program if if supported by town meeting and and and and funded will by and large be online so there will be a website created there will be applications created that are all essentially fillable forms so landlords owners can go in fill out those forms submit them online see how their application is being processed where it is in the process of being approved and then there will also be an online component of course with the reference material to links to various codes or other materials that landlords owners need to and tenants need to be aware of but then there will also be a way for anyone the general public to follow the if there are enforcement actions to follow those enforcement actions as they proceed and again Mr. Mora Ms. Federmann have been very upfront with their reports in the last five six months as we've gotten a better handle on how we're following up on complaints in the field this will be a complaints driven system as Mr. Muzanti said there will be no mandatory inspections so really the work will be upfront in the application process the reviewing of those applications the reviewing of the parking plan and then the maybe I wing of a permit okay um I got a call this week from a tenant very unhappy with the conditions in the facility in which he's living and I would like to be able to go and see if his complaints are reasonable by comparing them to whatever the standards are so I think other people may also have that issue sure well I'd be happy to get you a link that's fine thank you to the you want the health right sure because we you know it's part of the health and safety initiatives so knowing what the health concerns are legitimate sure but the useful happy to get you a link to that health code and and they could always meet confidentially with staff in the health department as well if they had questions the questions or comments from select board okay um questions or comments on the article in general it's Barbara Denise Barbara at precinct nine this doesn't sound like this is working I'm assuming it is doesn't yet sorry it is working it is okay all right so I have thought a lot about this bylaw particularly because as a renter it does affect me and I think I've finally come to understand what this bylaw is actually about as I mentioned probably about a month ago residents have been pressuring town hall for help in dealing with increasingly disruptive student behavior and while I don't know a lot about that I do know that in the first probably about can you speak a little louder because the people in the back can hear you and I'm having trouble so hold on just one moment Amherst media if you're able to increase the amplification of the speakers in this room that would be helpful so they will try and do that and we can just keep talking because they need us to be talking so that they can hear the happen so okay Barbara please continue but talk as loud as you can because they lead the people on the back wooden here they can also move up okay here we go again I haven't directly experienced the fun that people in Lincoln Avenue and Fearing Street and Main Street experience though I can hear Main Street definitely Thursday Friday and Saturday and probably in the last four or five years we have had increasing herds of students coming up the street one two three sometimes earlier sometimes later in the morning they usually don't disturb me because I'm usually still awake at those hours but nonetheless I'm very much aware of their presence so this was the impetus for this particular rental by-law it interferes with people's quality of life to the point where some people have simply said this is enough this is not what we bargained for and we're moving out of town and they sell their house and they move out of town which is very unfortunate so the safe and healthy neighborhood's working group and I want to mention again that that was a group of homeowners there were no renters not even a token renter not even a student on that group they came up with a solution in the form of this rental regulation by rental registration by-law but to my mind at least there is a problem what they were supposed to what you they were supposed to be solving was the disruptive behavior that people were having to put up with more and more and more in their own neighborhoods but it appears that the problem you have focused on instead is the condition of rental housing in town approximately 50 percent of the dwelling units in town interior and exterior conditions now I didn't realize that this was a problem now Diana has brought up at least one problem but I didn't realize that there was a widespread problem with this in town and as far as I know there hasn't really been any documentation presented as this being a widespread problem in town yes there are parking complaints apparently a lot of the part a lot of the complaints that have come to the building inspector have to do with parking some problems with the condition of apartments but as far as I know it is not a widespread problem and that is very unfortunate so now with this new by-law we're not talking about the two percent of landlords as being weird did you say as Ms. Brewer said we're talking about the combined total of the two weird percent and the 98 no problem percent to make it 100 percent of the landlords and tenants and dwelling units in town that will be affected by these rental regulations there's and essentially what they will have to do is prove why they are not a problem so rather than us looking at the problems that are already known that you can see that you can hear and that sometimes you can smell as you're driving or walking by those are the problems we know but that doesn't matter that's not what we're looking at we're going to look at everybody else presume that they're a problem and through paperwork and parking plans and checklists and certifications saying that by God all your what was it the non-porous surfaces are without interruption we are asking people to prove that they are not the problems and they're going to have to sign in a test that everything is up to code under pains and penalties of perjury so essentially this makes those of us who are not included in the voting members of the working group feel like we are bad like the landlords are bad like they are not keeping up their properties like the tenants are bad and they're like children because they don't know what their rights are and they are not capable of looking after their own health safety and welfare and in the meantime homeowners who may be in need of having their own health safety and welfare looked at just as much as renters and tenants will will not be subjected to these particular regulations this is a very unfortunate situation i know that the working group has worked very hard and they have presented something that purports to deal with the problem but unfortunately i don't think it does i think it distracts the town from dealing with a real problem which is a serious one how do you control this behavior nobody's come up with a pretty good solution at this point and i think people will say well they've worked hard this is better than nothing but it is not it is intrusive it is insulting to people who not only who are could you tell me what's intrusive about it as a tenant having somebody come in and going through and checking and saying this this this this and this if you're an adult you don't want to have your mother or your father come in and basically tell you make sure that your room is clean this is not something that any homeowner wants to be subjected to i don't think tenants should be subjected to it just because they're not paying a mortgage so that's why i find it to be intrusive and also insulting because it says i'm incapable of looking after my own welfare and i am certainly quite capable of doing that and i think you will find that most of the people who rent in town are and quite frankly if the town is looking to attract more high-end renters if they come and they find out wait a minute they're gonna come in and inspect my place they're going to go to north ampton they're not going to go to amherst thank you very much and then there's the the final thing i want to comment on is that this is not ready to go it is not better than nothing it should be referred back to the committee and the committee should have a different composition for the second time around to include renters because the fact that there was not a single renter on the committee yes you got input but no renters were voting members of the committee that is sort of like taxation without representation and that shouldn't be happening in amherst thank you thank you very much so i have to categorically reject miss barbara it's um uh categorizing this uh as a needing everyone to prove that they are not a problem um that's not at all what this is um this is a set of really it's a compilation of existing regulations the idea that that the landlord needs to attest to everyone's dwelling meeting the already defined health and safety codes there's no change in what those codes are and really this is a tenant protection you could quibble on the details of of how one determines that your your dwelling unit does in fact meet the health and safety codes but i think that as a community we all want to make sure that they do and at this point they don't um this isn't about two percent um this is about an opportunity to address a whole bunch of issues while it's true that the behavior issues in um and the the conditions of certain houses is what has brought a lot of this to the forefront we also have a new inspection staff that is finding horror stories like you can't believe in um in rental housing so when we have situations of illegal apartments illegal bedrooms um we have this is this is a a system that has been um not had enough attention paid to it uh up until now and so this is really an opportunity to try and uh protect tenant safety uh protect uh neighborhood quality of life and determine expectations and clarification on those expectations that's going to raise all properties i think it's a big mistake to think about this as a punishment to anybody this is no more a punishment to landlords and tenants than our food truck regulations were a punishment to food trucks or the taxi regulations are a penalty to taxi companies this is when when you reach a certain critical mass of having collective impacts you need to be able to have to exert some kind of community control over those if as a community you decide that that is in fact what you want to do so we are giving town meeting uh an opportunity to say okay are these the kinds of of controls that we as a community want to have in response to the concerns that have been brought to us so um so i just need to reframe that a little bit to the point of not having any tenants on the committee um the their efforts were made to get students onto the committee and they failed and i can't speak to why there weren't any non-student renters on there but the the fact that there were no student renters was uh was very unfortunate for sure but um but that was not that was not by design so mr zomec could i just add also that the committee and many members of the public who were involved in the multiple multiple meetings we had including night forums um also um um gathered information from communities like ours all over the country so this the set of bylaws that um the bylaw that is being proposed um two town meeting has many of the elements of other university and college towns throughout the country and so it is very much in line with what other communities are are doing to try to as you said bring together um health regulations other regulations under one the auspices of one program in this case one bylaw and um apply them fairly and and raise all boats in town i agree with you 100 percent that this was not about behavior this was about looking at our housing stock our rental stock throughout town and i guess i would challenge anyone to you know simply drive around amherst and take a look um it is it is not in the best condition it is not in the condition overall that i think a lot of us would like to see it so um some of it is very good well kept well maintained but uh hopefully this program will help raise all of that so that these are better dwelling units for all tenants thank you and i'm just the final point i wanted to make also is that um miss barbara mentioned that this is applying different standards to renters than to homeowners and that's just not true there's no there's nothing in here that is specific to renters um every every home is supposed to meet all of the health and safety requirements and as it turns over as you turn over a house when it's sold that's the only opportunity to make sure that they do um the parking situation if you were to change your parking situation and suddenly you were to need to park a bunch more cars in your home at your home as an owner document the exact same parking rules would apply to you the only thing that's different is the uh you don't need to register your property that's the only thing that's different so um none of the other no other specifics are are are at rental properties rather than owner occupied they apply across the boards this time i want to make two points one is that this is a a complaint driven process um in the case of where somebody feels there is um there are issues with a particular property and the owner has filed the list the uh the checklist and signed off on it and the tenant feels that that's or a neighbor feels that that there are things that are wrong it makes a complaint that's when things move forward and i'd also like to read a particular portion which says an owner shall not be found this is um well anyway an owner shall not be found in violation of the cell certification program if they have been refused access for an inspection by a tenant slash occupant however in such instances the owner shall either provide the town with a signed statement from the tenant slash occupant indicating that inspection was refused etc etc so i don't think this vision of people being forced to to have an inspection without a reason in the first place and even under those circumstances they could deny it so i just uh that struck me when i read this that um that in fact a tenant would not have to have their property inspected and there's also a separate provision for um long-term tenants having to have that self uh right have the landlords attest to the um status less frequently so the reality is we live in a community with a ton of students who are renting properties for the very first time it is a very unsophisticated rental audience rental consumer market that in some cases is being taken terrible advantage of and so we as a community because we we have a vested interest in it as well but also just because it's right are trying to take steps to also protect the tenants in this miss burr a couple quick things um building on what you just said about being taking advantage of that was one of the things i was really pleased to see that we covered quite clearly is that um when when if something does go egregiously bad it isn't the tenants are going to end up out on the street because that that's something we wanted to avoid and that was something we've always had some struggles with associated with the four person bylaws that it it's not the tenant's fault that six people live there it's the landlord's fault in many cases okay especially now because if this if this is to pass then the landlord is attesting that they understand and have made clear the tenant is receiving the information saying guess what this is the law this will be enforced i mean i deal with students all the time some of them have no idea that this is a bylaw in amherst and so and they'd have no reason to know any you know even if they were to be really you know want to comb through things it's just not something that would occur plus they see it happening out in the community so therefore they wouldn't be concerned about i also and and again the the inspections are not proactive so to speak i mean yes the landlord's attesting to the condition of the property but it's not like they're coming in and bugging you to do inspections so um it's a very different feeling and i also it's probably not worth trying to clarify who knows what'll show up in the newspaper anyway but the the two percent weird thing that was referenced that i apparently said is associated with the fact specifically of people in the very small percentage of landlords who seem unclear on the concept associated with good faith efforts associated with behavior so it's a very small drill down percentage of people that i'm talking about i'm not talking about because i know the theory's been thrown around well just because of a few bad apples they're making everyone suffer and i think for all the reasons that you very clearly elaborate mr so it's elaborated in the conversations we've had all this time have elaborated on that's not what we're attempting to do we're not attempting to put in some big bad system to deal with three really irritating people really irritating weird whatever we want to call them it's that we're doing a proactive thing given that we know that there are some people who really don't get it i was just trying to see what teeth we have to make sure that we feel like we have the discretion to be able to say to them yes that means you really have to do something so i was satisfied and at the end of the day this is not going to solve every problem no it's not going to create every protection to every tenant to every neighborhood this is this is going to do the best it can to establish kind of a new a new norm and and very clear expectations all right uh it's like we're need more information before it takes or takes position okay you want to speak so just like we need more comment on this from folks objecting to it mr gross cup you've been here patiently so we'll let you speak anyway please introduce yourself then gross cup town meeting member in precinct nine and just had a question about uh miss stein read section c of uh section seven about the um how it would be okay for a a tenant to refuse access to the to the landlord but i just was reading section d about the lease terms actually requiring that access be granted like that be part of the lease that you sign that you would actually have to grant access to the landlord so i was just wondering doesn't that doesn't that section sort of contradict the section that you read from so if i might answer that i'm still getting a handle on this it doesn't refer to the people who worked on the safe and healthy committee the fact is we live in a state with great tenant protections and so we started off with a wish list of things that we would regulate here that all just kind of disappeared because you simply can't do that in this state um so no matter what your lease says you as a tenant can deny access to your landlord you can they might not renew your lease or something like that but um but a landlord can't enter without your permission no matter what the word so c overrides d in this case the the we can't do anything locally that override state law is the bottom line so your your lease can say whatever it wants to say um and that also that's that's just an agreement between you and the property owner you are still protected as a tenant by state law so but but but a tenant is presumably going to know more about the lease that they signed and they're going to know about state law so it is you don't have to sign a lease that says that you are agreeing to provide access if you don't want to but having signed that lease it's an it's it's an understanding between the tenant and the landlord and so to qualify for a tenant for a permit as a landlord in Amherst your lease would have to say that if you use leases if you don't use leases not all landlords use leases um then they have to make clear in some kind of a letter that good faith effort is made to um to allow access as as practical or whatever I can remember what it says but as the as the tenant you always have the right to oppose that prohibit that it's your house it's your it's where you live you don't have to let anybody in that you don't want to all right other public comment all right so actually before we take a position on this I think it's important to get the um get the sense of the petition article because I don't want us to have taken a position on one precluding the other so um if the petitioners could come forward and and give us a um an idea of how your article is different from this and what the status of it is thank you so I'm Maureen Adams for town meeting rep from Precinct 10 I guess I should put my teacher voice on right to try to get the folks behind me they will be waving to you if they can't hear me right Steve Bloom is the person who submitted this on behalf of the coalition of Amherst neighborhoods Mr. Bloom is unable to be here tonight he sends his regrets and since I'm part of the et al I thought I would come along and represent our position as you know as a citizen position we had to get this in by March 11th while the shinwig as we call it the working group was still working hard so we presented a petition that represented much of what is in the working is an article 29 much of what we agree with although there are some differences that I will go through with you in just a moment uh basically uh we strongly endorse article 29 and so what remains of 38 will really depend on what happens with 29 in some part except for the places where we disagree and then I think we'll need to make a decision about how to go forward with 39 38 29 38 thank you I have to get the numbers correct so let me just say before I kind of go through this sheet that in a similar discussion with the finance committee we the finance committee concluded that they weren't really certain what there would be of article 38 in the aftermath of decisions about article 29 so in that case we have agreed to have a meeting prior to the discussion of 38 but after the discussion of 29 and so that seems to me one reasonable way to avoid the kind of extensive discussions of ifs and thens which is very hard to evaluate at this point so what I try to point out uh what we try to point out in this one page overview to go with the mailings is that we agree with the working group that a rental permit requirement for landlords is one of many tools not the only tool to just to deal with the kinds of problems that we've all been talking about this miss barbaret was talking about etc in other words we're not talking about hordes of students on the streets we're talking about conditions created by the commercial use and in some cases abuse of rental property that have just that are destructive of the quality of life within a neighborhood so we agree with that very specific focus of the working group and we will be saving clearly the other problems for another day so that we agree with the idea behind a rental permit this is something that we wanted so much that we put in the petition to be sure there'd be something on the town meeting agenda pending the decisions about 29 uh we in an effort to create the least honoris permit system possible and I think that both the working group in our position is what you might call rental permit light it's nowhere nearly as demanding as other permit systems are in other municipalities and other college towns so that we agree not to have mandatory inspections as most other jurisdictions require but instead only that inspections be complaint driven so that they rather than being punitive they encourage compliance when violations are found so I've outlined the basic areas of agreement that we have with the working group now there are several striking differences one is that because we were so concerned about the commercial use of student rentals we did not include all owner occupied rental units and that's a very important distinction between the two proposals so rather than including all owner occupied as well as non-owner occupied rental units our rental permits cover non-owner occupied what we see as essentially commercial rental units I think that our reasoning was that we wanted to start incrementally and so rather than affecting the entirety of the rental stock we thought that we would take a more incremental approach I think that there are political dimensions to this as well that I won't go into but I'm just emphasizing the substantive reason why we made that decision our research had shown that all the nuisance houses were non-owner occupied we had found that owner occupied one or two rentals were not nuisance houses our concerns were about the regulation of nuisance houses and that's why we went in that direction the second difference has to do with the fees we had felt that there was greater parity and fairness in charging by the unit than by the address in other words we felt that there was a basic unfairness in someone by the working groups approach having two rental units paying essentially the same fee as someone who had 200 units we know that there are reasons there are arguments on one side or the other this is not something that we will live or die on but it is a difference between the two proposals and finally unlike article 29 we do not take up parking we felt that parking was a very complicated issue we felt that it involved uh non-rental households as well as rental units and commercial rentals and we felt that we would look forward to another day when the town's parking problems would be addressed by a separate town zoning bylaw so those are the three major differences are you planning to amend move to amend anything in 29 to uh my best understanding and uh I can only talk about my own plan I don't under I don't know what everyone will do who is in town meeting I have no plan to try to amend 29 I think we've had a number of discussions with with you with the town manager with others there's an interesting discussion at the finance committee about some of the political dimensions of issues on which we differ namely whether one does an overall approach to all rental units in town in order to get hold of the rental stock or whether one approaches the non-owner occupied essentially commercial rentals and starts there their political dimensions as well as other dimensions and our understanding was that those of you on the working group would have your own amendments on the ready if you felt that was appropriate in in response to the discussion at town meeting our purpose is that uh our purpose is to have something as a backstop to the working group and something that is more modest in scope and cuts out some of what we consider to be the more contentious issues because what we want is not that one article or another article succeed or fail what we want is a rental permit and that that is the reason for our having the backstop to article 29 okay so so it's a backstop it's not an alternative because you're saying that you're you yourself are not looking to move amendments to 29 and you would not be looking to oppose 29 and support 38 and that that's not my intention and I believe that that's not the intention of many people who are the at alls within the coalition okay all right but I I can't speak for what people might do on there for sure for sure okay so select board so so how would you like to deal with this do you want to deal with the pros and cons of the elements that are different here or do you just want to say like the finance committee we could leave this to a future discussion if 29 fails um so process miss burr I'd like to touch on the difference in the owner occupied or not because I know that was a conversation that we had here briefly and then I know that you had lots of conversations about and that's a component that's very important to me personally that I in supporting the whole process so while I understand the philosophy behind doing it one way I also appreciate that a lot of this was purely making sure there was space on the agenda so to speak on the warrant to make sure something happened so if everything went curfewy with safe and healthy neighborhoods there'd be something happening over here so I appreciate that it doesn't appear to be attempting to replace but I think it's worth having a brief conversation associated with the owner occupied you want to ask questions about her you want you're looking for a comment on the safe and healthy side I guess I'm looking again for the reiteration on the safe and healthy neighborhood side I mean I think it is a basic philosophical difference as I've understood how this is unfolded because you know are we looking at our entire rental stack or are we focusing on what we presume to be based on some gathering of data to be non-owner occupied one of the things that I think is is a big flaw in the owner occupied and what I was concerned about when that was seemed to possibly be the way safe and healthy neighborhoods was going is that we know that there are people who will say they occupy a rental that don't but it's really hard to prove that they're liars so if you don't have to have that conversation then you solve a whole level of problems because that's a person that's more likely to be a problem landlord in the first place so if you had anything to add to that beyond what I remember of this so I could just emphasize that point a little bit more so not only is it is it creating kind of an incentive to pretend that you're an owner occupying that's not just that's not just a difference in your your how much paperwork you fill out that creates a whole big problem solving process for the building commissioner so it takes a great deal of time to try and establish whether or not somebody does live there in and if you're going to now be applying different standards to that so so that seems like an something we would not want to encourage at all furthermore the we originally had had an owner occupied exclusion when we had mandatory inspections because we decided really people who owner occupy their houses are probably not stripping out the smoke detectors and blocking up their egresses and whatever and so that that seemed onerous to be to be requiring of folks who who rent out rooms in their house or whatever once we took away the mandatory inspection part of it we realized that actually we've left we're left with something that's not onerous at all so even under article 39 you would still be looking to have them register the only thing you would not be having them do is fill out the self-certification that their places are safe and then they would also not have the the permit attached to that but the attesting that their units are safe is important not just for the town but for the tenant so for that permit to go online so that the tenant can look and see and say wait a minute I'm I don't have any smoke detectors down here or whatever or in the case of illegal apartments in somebody's house that person wouldn't even they wouldn't even you know admit to that if that was the situation but now it would be much easier for a neighbor to say actually see they've got a they clearly have you know there are a couple of cars so there's clearly other people living there if the owner did not get a permit for that and identify that that dwelling unit then there's there's just no reason since there's not a high hurdle there's no reason to lower the hurdle at all for the owner occupied because it really it's the tenant that's put at risk furthermore we did hear very compelling I or I personally found compelling comment during a public forum that there is no difference whatsoever in the eyes of the law between an owner occupied rental unit and one that's not so if you're having the as the owner as the landlord or if you're having the biggest possible tenant headaches with your with your tenant it doesn't matter if they live in your same house or if they live in that house down the street that you own your your situation is exactly the same under the eyes of the law so it didn't seem reasonable to make any kind of a distinction in our regulations Mr. Zomek did I miss anything important that was very complete I did if we wanted to jump to fees for just a second because that was that is another clear difference very very briefly through staff input and and and and a and a thorough discussion among the working group really we came to this the the the conclusion that we did about fees and ultimately the select board will set the fees but the reason that we I think ended up at a one fee per property is really Mr. Mora made this case a number of times that again we took out the inspections this is really about the application process each owner of a property will apply once whether they have one unit or 450 and so we're really it's really all about the cost of and the staff time to review that application that parking plan it doesn't really need to cover the cost of what comes after that so to speak so it's it really is a is a fairness issue and and what is the cost to the town of reviewing each and every application and the materials that come with it so whether you own one unit here or a smaller four unit complex over here it's one application and you'll say I have five units and I I attest to the same things in unit one two three and four add a few points on on another point of view as you remember our basic point is we want a rental permit that will pass town meeting and so I just like make a few points in that connection one is we're very aware of people who are deceptive in their claims of owner occupancy we know perfectly well that they don't live there we know where they live we know where their tax records are we know where they vote the difficulty was that the zoning bylaws that not allow the kind of access to go in to prove what we already knew as neighbors so I don't think that the argument that it is particularly honoris to figure out whether something is owner occupied or not I I don't think that that argument has merit because it's actually quite easy to find that out what is more difficult is having the access to enforce it when the landlord is claiming that to live there in order to crab more students in so I just wanted to make that point I think that that's not a okay a second issue has to do with our wanting to focus on the non-owner occupied for two reasons one is because those are the nuisance houses and that's what our group wants to control the second issue I have to say is political town meeting I believe is peopled with folks who have owner occupied rentals and I was very struck at the fall town meeting how people were saying you can't tell me what I can do with my house and I can just hear a reprise of that argument in town meeting scuttling this part of the permit so I have a political argument there when it goes to fees I've noticed even though Mr. Mora has a very convincing point about the paperwork that people's basic sense of fairness and profits from their rentals are offended by the disparity of the amount of fees they have to pay in relationship to the number of units that they are that they are renting and so again I see that as a political issue of fairness as an argument in town meeting as well as a substantive issue so these these really a lot of this in our thinking was strategic to make sure that a rental permit passes okay let's not get bogged down to fees since it's 10 o'clock and exactly that's not that won't be set by the bylaw so it's select board if the bylaw passes the select board would be charged with setting fees the recommendation from the building commissioner endorsed by the safe and healthy neighborhoods group is that it would be $100 and then would apply equally to all properties but if this passes we can argue about that for months so so let's not talk about that part anymore miss brewer I'm not talking about the amount I'm talking about the permits themselves I want to just make sure everybody's clear on if one landlord owns five separate single family houses all over town they're getting five permits if one landlord has 200 units on one property he's getting one permit but that makes sense even though on the face of it it seems like oh that poor person who has five single family homes oh that's so cruel that they have to do five separate permits but they're five very different units versus 200 units that are basically all the same and if the if the permit holder for the 200 units had a unit that was egregiously out of compliance and they were being egregiously um non cooperative with they would only lose the ability to rent that unit they wouldn't have the permit taken away for 200 units so it does scale that way um okay um so uh the owner occupied thing there are a lot of different political arguments you could make and counter make on that so I I think that we should just leave it with what's the will of town meeting it will either be amended down at town meeting to to take owner occupied out of it or it will stay there and so we'll see um we already talked about fees parking so obviously it's better if we could get a parking component to this than if we can't but if you're saying that if there's people don't like the parking component then we're still left with something um uh let's see isn't there anything else then to talk about with this Mr. Walton okay um all right uh so it was just one other point I wanted to make about the owner occupied thing which was um I spoke before about unsophisticated tenants and um one something else that I found compelling at the safe and healthy group was the idea that um owner owners who are looking to rent out rooms in their houses are actually kind of often among the least sophisticated of renters so like suddenly if I were gonna start renting out rooms in my house I wouldn't have any idea this what the rules were like I would if I were investing in a property you know it might be expected to have more plans um so some of the um property managers said that that requiring them to self-certify which is really the only difference between whether it applies to owner occupies or not to to certify as to the safety standards that their um rental unit is also meeting is a way of educating those uh landlords as well so that that is helping to bring them into compliance and protecting their tenants so uh that's all seemed very reasonable okay so basically everybody everybody who's not supporting the rental regulation has left is that true is there anything else to argue about now okay so I think we're ready to take a position on 29 and we'll talk about how we deal with 38 I'm okay I move to recommend to the May 6th 2013 annual town meeting article 29 residential rental property bylaw second further discussion no favorite say hi hi that's unanimous thank you okay what do we do abstain on 38 and then decide based on what happens at town meeting I don't know this bro well I mean it seems like one of the obvious solutions would be to say that um we it it's going to be chances only seems to be logical although logic in town meeting but you know we're a tenant that that if 29 passes that there would be no need to have 38 so the petitioner would ask to have it be dismissed because obviously there would be a residential which may or may not have been amended on the floor so it's moved if it gets dismissed and if and if 29 fails we could we could have a backup vote a backup plan for a 20 you know assuming that 38 gets moved whether or not we recommend it right so um so I think I like what you're saying so if 29 passes doesn't make any difference if if 29 doesn't pass then we will have learned a lot from why 29 didn't pass and at that point we're going to want to have more of a discussion like these these elements might be the relevant points there might be different something completely different to sort of amend and strike and start again or whatever so um so let's just defer a position on 38 and only take a position if it becomes necessary if 29 fails okay there's a way to vote to defer yes sure okay I move to recommend that the select board defer taking a position on can residential rental um which is article 38 sorry I did that out of order do want me to repeat it I move that uh for the May 6 2013 annual town meeting article 38 petition can residential rental um the select board defers um making taking a position at this time second for the discussion Mr we want to be a little more definitive about when the the time would be that we would take a position no I don't think so because 29 fails right we've got a lot of space between 29 and 38 unless we move very fast I just just just as long as we agree on that I guess that's right well I think actually we should be clear on what is our message to town meeting so they're gonna I don't know if they're gonna know it yeah they're taking a position clear on what our town meeting is that we're not choosing between them it's I think that I think the key point that needs to be included is if 29 fails yeah right okay right because it isn't the circumstance under which we might find ourselves in another situation where we say no matter what happens we don't want 38 pass no we're not we're not at all but that's why I think you just defer taking a position but then I want to say if 29 fails it's that's I don't want anybody to have the miss uh the uh misconception that we're considering it potentially an alternative to 29 so we're supporting 29 and 38 really is only it's only viable if 29 fails okay so how do you want to right so in that case taking a position until town meeting and only if 29 fails yeah we could say we will we will consider it's way too late for me we could just say no we could just vote no and then change our minds if 29 well that's why I said we just abstain all right you can't abstain it's a recommend it's a not right all right so what's wrong with leaving it the way I said to um that the select board differs taking a position on the May 6th annual town meeting article 38 petition can resident rental um until town meeting and it only if article 29 fails it's fine yeah that's clear I was going to suggest that you don't even say anything about 38 until you get there but I mean I mean the only possibility would be if we were asked to comment on 29 as a petitioners for 38 and we would speak in support of 29 but the select board itself you are not making a statement about 38 until we count up to 38 unless we get into the fact that these are parallel articles so it will come up in conversation so we don't want it under the consideration of 29 people are going to say well what's going on with 38 the moderator may approve considering them together whatever there's going to need to be some distinction made so the select board's position on you are you are supporting 29 and you understand that the coalition has presented 38 as a backup to 29 uh it's it's sorry it really is okay the way it is because we supported 29 five to zero and this is saying exactly where we stand you know we're not against 38 but we'll take a position if 29 right because we don't want to go into 38 if 29 failed we don't want to go into 38 with a position of opposition to 38 but we also don't want to go into it supporting it because it's not that we're supporting it we're supporting 29 so we're deferring okay we're good we're trying to meet a number of needs we're trying to put it in a box because there's a little box we have to fill out here and we're also trying to put it on a script and we're also trying to be able to all be clear if we show up at a precinct meeting and somebody asks us at a precinct meeting which isn't at town meeting but yet will influence people so tell me right we want to make sure we're all on the same page anyway mr heaton it's way too late to even think about asking this question much less try to get it answered but um so i'm only going to ask it so it gets into the minutes um what are we going to do about um what could we possibly do about amendments that we that might get offered to 29 yeah but that's that's why i want to stop there but that that is gonna i just um yeah yeah that's gonna involve a lot of too much too much for tonight too much for now to be determined okay um what happened we've got a motion it's consecutive we've discussed it all in favor say hi hi hi that is unanimous hallelujah okay um i think we are we're not going no i think we are we are we are okay by god i spent so much time on this thing you know we've we've got all right let's let's keep control here so we have a lot of things to do next week also or else we defer i mean if we thought we weren't gonna be here until this time next week and we would change something all right so so where are we at we're not going to be here till next week so let's um assign speakers to these so we already have miss brewer on 15 mr hayden is going to finish up 16 the zoning ones are first let's choose the ones that so converted dwellings is just kind of a technicality mr hayden as a planning person you want to do converted dwellings number 30 yes and mr wild um because you were our village center zoning person would you like to speak to kind of the other ones so um number 33 is different that's the building commissioners thing about non-conformance are you happy you don't mind doing that okay so then we'll change seats that night yeah okay so then mr wild is going to take 31 through 35 do you mind doing 36 okay are folks happy with i know that's mr wild and uh so if you don't mind i'm going to do 29 um unless anyone wants to know we're gonna wrestle you for that we make so much sense at this point yeah so 38 i'll just sort of wing 38 also however that needs to be dealt with right okay good we're done with that all right tell managers report thank you uh very quickly state budget update two things uh the house of representatives in boston began deliberation today on the house proposal on the state budget including several hundred amendments which is actually normal uh and in their own legislative way they are dispensing with those amendments throughout this week and we think by the end of the week they'll have an adopted budget we'll then go to the senate and the senate will do their thing during the month of may reconcile in june get it to the governor etc etc so that's happening and there's a good information on the mass municipal association website uh in terms of updates about what the some of the particulars are on potential amendments in which ones uh cities and towns are supporting etc so i encourage you to read up on that the second thing legislatively the transportation finance bill uh different versions have been passed by the house and senate both very different from the governors in terms of scope uh but we believe uh similar and uh positive related to support for regional transit including the pbta and we're dedicating serious money to begin to address local road repair needs in particular 300 million a year for local so-called chapter 90 work which is our local local streets uh so that bill is now there have been conferees named by both house and senate uh they will begin to meet and we expect that to be conferenced out with a bill that is quite possible to be closer to the senate version when all of a sudden done which we think would be a very positive outcome uh so that's state budget um safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative in the online packet are the latest in a series of uh code enforcement related reports from health building and uh uh excuse me health building and uh health and building including you know kind of outcome focused and so you get a sense looking over the last 12 month period the number of of complaints filed and the status and the vast majority of which are in the resolved category and so that's good reading it's by property address the nature of the complaint who responded and what the current status is of those so uh that's an ongoing work in progress that they're all posted online on our safe and healthy uh neighborhoods uh uh web page on the town website and uh they're on tonight's meeting packet online encourage people to uh inquire and learn about particular properties being addressed one by one uh let's see uh staff recognitions i wanted to mention uh we had a number of uh public safety staff who were called to duty in their uh mutual aid in other roles uh related to the marathon bombing you know in the greater boston area uh we had uh two police officers who were uh activated uh detective janet lopez is in the 747th military police unit an officer uh gohan let madrano's unit was put on standby but he did not have to respond but janet was down in the boston area uh for a few days and he meted aftermath of the bombing on the day of the marathon we also had three firefighters tom messer bill messer and read fraily who were called into service uh the messer brothers were both on security detail securing the perimeter of the 14 block area in the immediate area of the of the bomb site of the explosions having that be a secure site for the uh you know various uh you know investigations that were going on forensic and otherwise uh and read fraily was also in service on a security details i want to recognize all five of them um so while that event happened in boston watertown etc you know there were law enforcement and other public safety resources called upon state local and federal and our our folks were part of that i want to commend them commend them for their service on that um a couple other things recent and upcoming activity uh umass is having another springtime emergency alert system test uh we've been noticed on that it's happening this wednesday morning uh that will include sirens and other uh you know text messaging it's a test of their notification system so when you hear those sirens go off that has caused some alarm uh anxiety in the past it's part of a test and just well we're trying to get the word out and this is another way to get the word out that's happening this wednesday the 24th um on the uh 27th is our fourth annual sustainability festival in the town come in 10 to 4 there's a whole uh news blast on the website bring the family come on down learn about tree pruning other sustainability initiatives it's a growing event encourage people to come and participate uh let's see uh last week i had the opportunity to meet again with chancellor supe swami we had a really good good discussion frank discussion on many of the issues uh we're working on together very positive discussion and that's that's ongoing and university is really renewing its effort to be a really positive partner with the town uh and there's a number of initiatives we've had some tremendous outreach on the part of students in particular any number of events i think there's there's a award ceremony and reception happening tomorrow night the student government inviting a bunch of us i know a bunch of us are going to that there's this online undergraduate uh training that's being built into the uh residential life piece about uh what it's like to be a young new tenant for the first time and what your rights and responsibilities are as a tenant living in a rental property within a larger community so i want to applaud the university on that and help try to do what we can to help them have that be a success also we have the uh founders week activities going on all week at the university including the inauguration of our new chancellor this coming saturday morning at 11 at the mullen center and looking forward to that uh also had the opportunity to meet with a group of pakistani local government officials who are in massachusetts with an institute for training and development uh overseeing this program uh and they were getting exposure to how we do things so we had a great discussion with them with some staff about uh local government and local government democracy new england style and amherstyle it was a good it was a good i'll stop there thank you very much questions or comments from mr c i'll just note a couple things um thank you very much for announcing our public safety uh representatives involvement in the boston situation i think that amherst can be incredibly proud knowing that uh our folks were there as part of that extraordinary effort um so thank you to them um the umass alert i appreciate your um announcing that i think it's really important for us to be spreading the word on this like more so than ever um i think people by and large are kind of used to the fact that oh that happens they hear it sometimes people are hearing it for the first time and think it's weird but now people are going to be hearing it very differently um and people may well be concerned that that is actually an incident as opposed to a test so the degree to which we can spread the word about the fact that that is only a test on wednesday by umass's system i think is very important um and that's all i have to say about all right uh where are we member reports liaison representative reports need to know basis miss brewer two seconds so you mentioned the sustainability festival one part of that is the whole gardening 350 initiative there was a meeting in this room our room you know this is our room right gardening meaning wall to wall people so that was pretty impressive Thursday night and then the other thing was i went to craig's store's um open house on saturday they had even more food they had a ridiculous spread of food on saturday but two of the interesting things that came out of that beyond just the great opportunity to talk to board members and hear from some people there um is that they felt i said well you know what's the big difference between last year and this year with the increased capacity and they said they felt like they were turning fewer people away which is obviously a good thing um at least one person stated that they thought that that was probably you know kind of a good number in terms of future planning for a different site also um that they are still continuing to work with various other agencies and successfully transitioning a number of people into transition transitional housing so that there are people who actually you know have sufficient income that with some support services as we've been talking about for a long time have actually been moved into half of the house so that's also very exciting so in addition to you know finding individual placements there's also this kind of cocoon effort in the in the intermediate space so lots of different things going on and the amazing eight-foot cow is going to be down by the um installed perhaps the end of the summer mr. wild has told us about this this is a fundraising thing that's going to be a sculpture outside of chair shops raising money instead of the frog i'd forgotten i'm sorry i'd forgotten the cow all right all right i can report all right i attended the satree public hearing about saving the 113 year old oak tree and the bottom line is the unit the vote was to try to save it and unitarian church is going to do its best to help out on that um went to personnel board meeting on wednesday they discussed the non-union employee meeting that had been held it's important that the job descriptions be complete but the data from that are critical some departments do annual performance evaluations like dpw some don't it be might be worth doing so there'd be one member felt that there should be a paper trail of successes and weaknesses um they thought it would be good if staff successes um as you mentioned tonight be put on the website because a lot of people don't listen to us hard to believe but that's a fact and it would be nice if you know the staff accomplishments for this week were listed and then it was kind of kept up so people could even go back and look in a previous week and i think making appreciating our our staff and showing that so in a way that more people know about it would be good and that came up um there's a revised um sexual and other unlawful harassment policy which is now included in the personnel manual went to the board of health meeting that night and there's um a lot of effort underway about the medical marijuana being established and there's going to be um probably we will try to get a medical marijuana dispensary in Amherst which is um there's if you want to know more information about that you can google frequently ask questions about the medical marijuana policies in massachusetts i did and it's very helpful and the other is and um Julie Federman our health director felt that the state was handling this issue very well she was very reassured about what she was hearing and that was going to be hearing the next day at Northampton um the other thing that they're working on is tobacco regulation modifications particularly about minor smoking and they are trying to have the policies be um the tobacco coalition would like the policies to be the same from one community the next so they're going to be working on that and there will be a public hearing June 19th um at 7 0 5 p.m. on the tobacco regulation modification and um i also attended the craig store reception which was great and i just made two quick announcements one is on may 18th um the survive at the survival center there will be uh a say goodbye to Cheryl's oh who has been so wonderful um so it's come and have a bagel from 10 a.m. to noon and the other is that this uh fraternity that a lot of us had supper with dinner with pie kappa five is having this is the first annual disability week that they're sponsoring but they've been active in disability all along and they're having a bike a thon a 36 hour bike a thon and i think they've done that maybe 38 times before um as part of push america but this is to earn money for disability projects thank you i'm done um yeah so that's a stationary bike a thon so they just so they they raise awareness by all being on campus um taking turns on these stationary bikes bicycling in place for 36 hours raising money and the other thing they're doing is having a um shooting beauty film right um that's wednesday night at eight o'clock in mahar auditorium and this is uh i think it's 8 30 is it 8 30 well that's what i have down on that double check it's eight or eight 30 in mahar auditorium on campus and um that is going to be um i believe it's about shooting like a day in the life from the perspective of the disabled person i think that's correct people in wheelchairs use them cameras is a large part of it right so that i'm hoping to get to that and again wednesday at eight thirty and it's on the front page of the town website so oh great next all right uh other questions or comments from miss stein all right other liason um i'll just nothing you need to know well i just want to get full credit so you need to know that i did the walk this way thing again on saturday night so walking around wearing many layers trying to stay warm from 10 o'clock to about two o'clock uh saturday was quite a it was a pretty quiet night so i was going to say the cold weather is bad for you but it's good for keeping it's true and saturday was an incredibly busy day with the extravaganja festival um all the greek houses uh or chapters had four moles that night there was a big concert at mullen center i think people were very occupied or very tired or whatever um so uh but it went well and it was the best part of it really is about the um the conversations that students were having with each other so it's a very kind of different experience for me so i was kind of part of a group that was roaming around all the time checking on all the other groups but the groups of students who were having the conversations with each other there were a lot of students going out not so many coming in um but but even less so of both than the previous week um and the reactions that they're getting from each other and we talk a lot about peer influence and how valuable that is so um i i was pretty impressed by it we didn't i don't think we diverted anybody to a different route but we did raise the awareness about um about being respectful of neighborhoods so um that's all i have to report uh okay so let's do our untimed items and get out should we do the liquor licenses first while we can still talk sorry i've lost somehow i managed to lose the emotion sheet the motion sheet but i i won't know what i meant to if i can't find my own i don't know how i did that all right so why not i think it's actually better to do the uh the Lincoln Pleasant thing before our brains melt so or melt further so yeah how do you want to do this because i didn't expect anyone to be here about this i didn't expect historical commission to come i expected it to be an internal discussion so i mean obviously we're public but so i don't know so this is a technicality right historical commission has asked us to do this so we're doing it right what else is there to need to talk about so you you had told us you wanted us to do it now yes and not wait into the future because it does kick off this whole process of needing to solicit yes um representatives as as uh mandated by state law from the different boards of professionals that's the first thing that has to happen so if we can do it now if we establish this district now then Nate Malloy senior planner who does who takes care of these behind the scenes things for us can solid it can make those solicitations together with the same ones from the um North Amherst historic districts so um is there more to know than that so we're doing it from timing wise we're doing it now to to maximize to optimize uh uh that process and and because they've asked us to do it the the only thing we would do is say no and that's not really what we do to request like this so mr wilde yeah that's basically and the again the Dickinson commission in some sense under state law has the first option of this but they're meeting on the 29th so I presume with the process could start soon thereafter so what do you mean they are first option I mean I think again we're back to that state law issue uh which is back to why are we doing that yeah right so under item three of why are we doing this don't we have to wait for the Dickinson local historic commission to decide if they want to be the study committee well they've already had a conversation about it they've said it's too soon for them to serve as the study commission for somebody else because they're still new to this and they are planning as far as we know to vote on the 29th to not do this by us doing this today yeah what we're doing is we're taking ourselves out of the process so that we're not holding anything up as we get even busier closer to town meeting because they have to vote that they have to say nope that's right we don't want to be the study committee we will have preferably already tonight based on this wonderful packet of information Debra pulled together for me after I've sent her all these separate links that we will we will set up both yes we want to study committee here's the charge of the study committee then we don't have anything else we have to do for a while because Dickinson has to vote yeah we don't want to serve as the committee it's fine for us if the select board does it and then immediately Nate can send out that letter soliciting the professionals for both North Amherst and this committee at the same time get that process going we have to wait 30 days to hear back from those folks and then we can actually appoint people but if we take ourselves kind of you know do our part and then step away then we're not in the way of making this move along as quickly as it possibly can okay so we're all set to do this so what would you like please come forward and identify yourself actually speak into the microphones um so the people who are delighted that the select board um is you know following the recommendation of the historic commission to form a study committee for the sunset pleasant what will hopefully soon be a local historic district there's a number I mean there's a whole group in the sunset pleasant neighborhood that is very supportive of this in hopes that it can move forward as quickly as possible and they have actually already solicited you know volunteers from the groups that have to be on the study commission so I don't know if there's a way to bring those names forward to try and expedite the process because we have been told that the um Dickinson study committee is not going to want to take this on so the part that's mandated under state law we can't do anything about so actual isn't it true that the solicitations need to go to the professional organizations of the architect society and whatever they are so we don't um they could communicate with the architect society they're professional architects in the neighborhood that they have to let this right it doesn't matter if they live in the neighborhood or not and so right as you know so the individual right she says they tell their professional hey I'll do it and then they can write their name down and then that'll make it that much faster if they actually respond because if they respond to us in two days we can start appointing if they but if they don't we have to wait 30 days for them to respond right they have right a first refusal within 30 days basically for the right okay so will um guidelines be public I mean how would we know what the guidelines are for who needs to let who know that they may be interested it's in the state law it's in I mean it says which organizations are soliciting okay we have that okay you have it already this is all in the select which page tonight yeah okay so our web materials have all this information so I'm just curious I don't want to take it you know time um what is kind of the soonest that a committee could be formed if it has to go to the Dickinson and then come back to you so I'm not gonna come back to us so Dickinson is going to do their vote they're going to punt on this and so then um then the vote that we take tonight will take effect then does it go back to the local historic district so it goes to staff so this is what we're time out the letter so what happens next after so we're gonna do our part now Dickinson's gonna vote on the 29th in theory the very next day assuming all the other thousands of things he has to do Nate will send out these solicitation letters but until he sends them out the 30 day clock can't start okay so that's why we're trying to combine the two letters because we haven't been able to make the time to send out the letter on the Northamers study committee which we've already done this part of the process for and the charge assuming we vote it tonight will be already available online and individual people from all over can go ahead and fill out citizen activity forms so we would be so after the say for example some of those agencies probably won't respond at all so we probably will have to run out the clock at 30 days but then if we have a pool of people to pick from that'll be great as as opposed to sitting here twiddling our thumbs because I think two people have applied for Northamers even though we've known for months that people want okay that's great but and then Nate Loy is the person that that fiddles through and then we do the appointments here eventually right okay that's thank you very much okay thank you sorry for the for the rush on that but all this is also there and you've seen all of it before okay so miss stein I move to us that the select board establish a seven member local historic district study committee for the Lincoln sunset area per ends lhd sc dash lsa and per ends per chapter 40 c of the massachusetts general laws for a term to expire june 30th 2014 sc c o n d what just prolong what second for the discussion if anybody asks the question as someone pointed out earlier originally on our agenda it said Lincoln pleasant we are calling it Lincoln sunset it doesn't matter what we call it but what matters is that it actually has something to do with the actual national historic register district so that's why it's being called Lincoln sunset not Lincoln pleasant as you may have seen previous references well it also has a different right that's why it's not Lincoln plus right we're not calling that I know I move that the select board did we vote oh the wording is different let's do all oh I was going to point out that the wording is different in the title of the motion the title of the motion doesn't matter right so yeah no it's Lincoln sunset all right I thought I heard sunset pleasant so we should clarify this doesn't matter but Lincoln sunset everyone's going to wait to be recognized or else we're just devolving into madness and it's too late for that mr wilde do you have a recommendation for how to correct the inconsistent no I just just want to note that the title of the the common heading for the motions is Lincoln pleasant the individual motions themselves are Lincoln sunset okay there's a reason for that so and so you're saying that the appropriate motion is Lincoln sunset so I wrote the agenda who cares what I wrote on the agenda the reason the reason it's like that is because that's what the historical commission said we have changed it since then but it was posted that way so that's why the heading of the motion yeah I just want to motion yeah I'll make sense and your your larger point is no matter what we call it that is not in any way defining the boundaries of it the committee will determine the boundaries and that they need to be they need to have a relationship to be national or some geographical geographical whatever okay right so this is so this we've just spent three minutes talking about nothing okay right but for him favorite vote yes all in favor I unanimous okay next I move that the select board grant the local historic district study committee for the Lincoln sunset area special municipal employee status as of April 22nd 2013 second no discussion my favorite say I meant we didn't vote on the charge because Deborah says we don't have to vote on charges okay good there we go so next up special licenses thank you I move that the select board approve an extension for a special wine and malt license approved for concessions at the fine arts center UMass Amherst Saturday April 27th 2013 from a 10 p.m. to a 12 30 a.m. closing time Judith Bardwell clerk second I move that the select board approve a special wine and malt license to Elizabeth Bridgewater on behalf of Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity for a fundraiser event on the grounds of cows calls I can't even stalk anyone calls building supply 125 Sunderland Road North Amherst on Thursday May 2nd 2013 from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. second discussion no favorite say I I move that the select board approve special wine and malt license to Danielle Laferrier and Greg Wardlaw on behalf of the Amherst College catering for a cash bar catered event at the King dorm quad at Amherst College on Thursday May 2nd 2013 from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. second for the discussion all in favor say hi hi that's unanimous okay so two things we just need to make note of is Thursday we have a joint meeting for all of us who can attend it's not a requirement but if you can attend it's a joint meeting in this room with the finance committee for the new updated actuarial study for the OPEB report and so you should have gotten hard copies of the report if you requested it so that's in this room seven o'clock if you can't be here don't worry about it someone who's there will report back plus of course it will be televised the other thing is next Monday the 29th at five o'clock is our coffee our reception honoring Harrison Greg so please be here for that spread the word possibly can be that's going to be in the bulletin this week that is all does anybody else have anything that needs to be said before next Monday I move to adjourn and without objection this meeting adjourns at 1042 thank you very much


Upon its invention in the 19th century, cellulite acetate plastic was heralded as a marvel of modern chemistry. A number of sectors, ranging from the medical sciences to small-gauge motion film manufacturing, began using acetate plastics to create what they believed would be permanent images and fire and decay-resistant objects. By the 1950s, however, this image would begin to be tarnished when acetate microfilm collections began to show the first symptoms of deterioration. It seemed acetate was not nearly as tough, nor long-lasting as originally promised. Industrial leaders, archival institutions, and even the Kodak company themselves scurried to find a cure for what was described then as an unexplained outbreak of, quote, the measles. Within a few short years, this mysterious malady became a named phenomenon, the vinegar syndrome. Acetate-based media products were soon phased out and replaced, first by polyester films and eventually by digital media formats. And yet, even as acetate film products were hurtling towards obsolescence, the signs of their material undoing would also become an alternative visual aesthetic in the hands of both avant-garde filmmakers as well as amateur photo editors. In this paper, I will interrogate how the aesthetics of acetate plastic aging and decay inform the works of two visual artists, Owen Land and Vincent Price, who I promise aren't actually the same person, though it seems they use the same beard stylist. I'll focus specifically on Land's 1967 film, Bardot Fallis, along with Luther Price's 2013 to 15 series of cinematic slides entitled Light Fractures and Light Windows. Each of these works bring new life to acetate film by killing it, while also recuperating decay as both an aesthetic tool and a beautiful visual experience. In these works, decay is not critically demonized nor presented as evidence of acetate's failure. Rather, it is celebrated and allowed to persist in a spectacular visual display worthy of being witnessed, valued, and even preserved in and of itself. I'll further argue that Land and Price lay the foundations for an intriguing ethos within 21st century visual culture, namely a type of obsolescence fetishism that embraces technological outmodedness and offers an alternative to current cinematic restoration projects, which typically devalue signs of analog aging while chasing after visual clarity and high definition digital images. Ultimately, I use these cases to launch a counter-reading of acetate's unique aging process as not simply leading to failure nor loss, but rather as providing the foundations for an alternative value system that realizes the potential for valuable patina within photosynomatic art objects by allowing decay to have its day. In the midst of acetate's mid-century undermining, a shifting discourse and perspective towards film as an art form was also materializing within avant-garde cinema practices. As chronicled by scholars P. Adam Sidney and Peter Goddall, American experimental filmmakers began to directly engage with the material and structural elements of film, giving rise to a new genre of artistic practice termed structuralist-materialist filmmaking. Well-known practitioners, including Stan Brackage, Paul Chartis, Hollis Frampton, and Owen Land, attempted to reveal the essence of cinema by eschewing narrative and instead contemplating its filmic materiality, formal structure, and how the medium of cinema is its truest message. In Bardot-Falise, Land explores the material essence of film by destroying a reclaimed home movie strip printed on 16-millimeter acetate plastic safety film. The original film depicts a southern beauty queen as she waves goodbye, or hello, it's a bit of the ambiguity, to a group of tourists as they exit a pleasure boat ride. Land proceeds to repeatedly loop the film strip through a motion picture projector, subjecting it to intense light, heat, and friction until the individual film cells begin to blister and pop. The beauty queen image literally melts before our eyes in what essentially becomes a snuff show caused by the deterioration of acetate plastics. Land's elaborate deconstruction process is accomplished by using a motion picture projector as well as methods of optical reprinting. Historically, these techniques have been used to bring still photographic images to cinematic life, to create pre-digital special effects, and to preserve analog film objects. Most basically described, optical reprinting works by mechanically linking a film projector to a motion picture camera. While a film strip plays through the projector, the link camera records the projected image, thereby transferring it onto another film strip. So this made up Land's experimental process. So he played this home movie through a projector so many times and at such repeated pace and light exposure that he then recorded the deterioration processes that happened. When acetate safety film was first introduced as a replacement for volatile nitrate stock, optical printers were used to transpose nitrate-based film content onto what was then presumed to be a safer, more stable exhibition and preservation format. In the case of Bardo Fallis, however, Land does not use this technology to save nor preserve the content of the home movie. On the contrary, he repurposes the optical printer and brandishes it as a creative tool or a destructive weapon, depending on your perspective, that triggers acetate's autocatalytic decomposition process and brings a different sort of special visual effect to life. The scintillating dance of acetate's materiality and a plastic degradation. Whether this is an act of destruction or creation, however, hinges upon and literally brings to the surface if one thinks about cinema as an art object or as a media container. And if photosynomatic materials should be allowed to age or accrue patina, and I'm particularly interested in applying this concept of patina to film objects, a term that's been theorized more typically within art historical and fine art conservation contexts and particularly as a sign of aging, time passing, historicity as actually adding value to fine art objects. Different case in film object contexts. So it is, as motion picture films are projected, they pick up nicks and cuts, scuffs and scratches to the plastic backing of the strip. And it is on this surface layer that the film object collects battle scars, which are actually referred to as artifacts, that attests to the life it has led as an analog film object with its own history of projection. The topmost surface layer, however, is where the actual image contents are held and remain impervious to the same processes of wear, tear, aging and natural decay that the bottom plastic layer is vulnerable to. In Lan's process, he disarticulates these layers and brings the typically invisible bottom most plastic layer to the foreground by stripping away the typically prized and privileged image. What he stages then is more than just a destructive death, it is also a generative rebirth. Like the proverbial phoenix, the acetate film base bubbles up and arises from apparent destruction to become newly visible through its visual spectacle of decay. And so another interesting point about Lan's work, he actually does label and segment his film into progressive stages, which again, depending on perspective, one could read as sort of the same chronicling that we give to biological diseases, so the stages of cancer, for example, or Lan is particularly interested in certain Tibetan philosophical practices that actually then see stages in that sort of forward moving progression as a way to leave behind the material world and attain enlightenment. So part of the title, Bardo Fali's Bardo being a liminal sort of state on the process to that path is referenced here. So in traditional cinematic restoration and preservation practices, this type of work that Lan is proposing to us would not really be allowed to happen. In these contexts, film objects are seen more as vessels and containers and the image contents take priority while the dinged up decay prone base layers typically stripped away and replaced in order to preserve visual access to the image. Other industry leaders and even the Koda Company has stated that the primary goal and the majority of these motion picture conservation scenarios is to preserve the irreplaceable image content supported by the film strip, not the actual film strip itself. Best desires for the image and access take precedence over the film as objects and all resources and technical interventions are typically allocated towards the maintenance of the image. Lan questions and even reverses these paradigms by repurposing an old preservation technology to neither serve nor protect the image but rather to make the off invisible base materials visible even if it is through their own destruction. Working through many of the same themes though almost 50 years after Lan's Bardo Fali's Luther Price began his own experience with acetate decay by encouraging his photos cinematic works to age, crumble and eventually dissolve into oblivion. While Price's body of work includes a wide range of film practices including collages that piece together medical films and home movies with hardcore pornography, I'll be focusing on one particular strain of his work so never fear, no pornography. His light fractures and light windows installation pieces. In these works Price uses damaged pieces of 16 and 35 millimeter acetate film to open a window onto the sublime beauty of decay as well as shed light on a growing ethos for ephemeral images and roughed up aesthetics that are becoming more prevalent in popular and contemporary visual culture. Using materials inspired techniques, Price employs physical manhandling, chemical baths even underground burial to instigate acetate's natural decomposition processes.  In fact, Price's images are so impacted by their physical alterations that they cease to be playable through standard motion picture projectors. Price's films actually even inflict damage to projectors instead of being damaged by the projector as in the case of Lance's work with Pedro Fales. To overcome this obstacle, Price turns his cinematic snippets back into still photographs and presents them to his viewing audience as a care-selling parade of decomposition. Price's slideshow format not only brings cinema back to its photographic primal scene, but reenacts the early practices of travelogue exhibitions, a genre that desired to show off beautiful sites and preserve exotic experiences of travel and turning them into lasting visual souvenirs. The evocation of travelogs is especially poignant when further thought through the lens of the recent fetishization of ruined landscape images within contemporary visual culture, which have colloquially been referred to as ruin porn. There is no standing definition for ruin porn, though perhaps some of you know it's ever-present on many a tumbler feed, in the same way that one just knows pornography when they see it, but there is a common theme within most ruin porn images, decrepit man-made buildings and other feats of civilization or technology that have fallen into ruinous disarray or have been literally overtaken by unchecked natural forces. What is desirable in these ruins, even if objectively so, is to see, confront, and embrace the ruining of previously exalted structures. Price's images of decay conjure these same aesthetics and sentiments, though within the context of ruined film materials and acetate film structures. While acetate safety film was previously exalted as a preservation platform, in Price's work, they are overtaken by aging and decay. Repressed natural forces have returned with a vengeance to overtake the plastic technology that was meant to keep them at bay. Price does not intervene to stop this process, but rather actively assists it and invites his viewers to partake in the sublime experience of coming face to face with film's mortality. In Price's ruin porn treatment of film, he does not reject material decomposition as a troubling sign of failure, as would be the case in some restoration contexts that use digital technologies to battle back and control the unruly messiness of aging analog formats. Rather, decay becomes a type of patina in Price's work. Through a mixture of natural and assisted processes, Price invites us to see the temporal process and signs of acetate aging as simultaneously valuable and beautiful, emotionally gripping and also critically thought-provoking. The aesthetics associated with decrepted film products, fading colors, age spots, surface scratches, brittle cracks, have typically been labeled as serious problems and flaws that media preservationists need to intervene upon and fix. The July 9th, 1980 front cover of Variety, for example, proclaimed that old pics, as in pictures, don't die, they fade away, and used acetate's color fading as a rallying call to save film prints and archive collections by correcting their color changes. It's previously alluded to contemporary practices in film preservation and restoration have continued to utilize reproduction and optical reprinting and other visual manipulations like base stripping or emulsion scanning to fix acetate-based films. However, this corrective process also ends up threatening. What makes these film objects unique? The individual scars picked up from a lifetime of projection and even vinegar syndrome decomposition, which only affects acetate-based films. Instead of valuing these features as would be the case with antique furniture or other objects in antiquity within the fine arts, these cinematic artifacts are recast as fatal flaws needing to be cleaned up and corrected in the name of image clarity, access, and permanence. This institutional focus, however, also seems to be mutating within popular visual culture and consumer contexts. Now, the same faded colors negatively associated with aging and old film materials have been reclaimed as signs of an authentic, fetishized past tense-ness and analog realness within an increasingly digital media landscape. Instead of lamenting over faded colors and age spots as disturbing signs of pictorial death, new digital applications have introduced add-on filters and after effects to actually mimic these same signs. A return and revaluing of these aesthetics, even if only in an imitative form, reveals a certain obsolescence fetishism characterized by not disliking or turning away from an appearance of decay or outmodedness, but rather embracing these as newly valuable and even desirable. Acetate may have been rendered materially obsolete by the end of the 20th century, but it has also visually emerged from the dust and ashes to become a nostalgic aesthetic within digital image production. As noted on the iTunes page, for two recently released digital photo editing and sharing applications, 18 millimeter vintage camera, which was released in 2011 by Nex FICO Incorporated and a program called NLIGHT, which was released by a company called By Light Tricks Limited in March, 2015. So these two programs allow users to apply digital filters to their images that reproduce the analog style of vintage film stocks, from the vibrant familian hues of Kodachrome photographs to the tell-tale grain lines of super eight millimeter motion picture film. These applications designed mostly for mobile smartphones and social media uses, digitally recreate the unique features of analog media formats, including the hallmarks of their decomposition. In essence, they attempt to re-infuse digital images with an analog sole, through the imitation of grain, scratches, color fading, blistering pock marks, and even some of the symptoms of the vinegar syndrome. In her chapter on dying media and loving a disappearing image, film theorist Laura Marx has described how one comes to love the aesthetics of oldness as a way to reenact, quote, something like a perpetual mourning, something like melancholia, and its refusal to have been done with death. The same ethos can also apply to the love lavished upon dead and resurrected analog film formats, which are now beloved because they offer an aesthetic appeal and antique index that deviates from this sanitized pristine world of high definition digital formats. Freelance photography journalist, who I'm showing you a quote from here, Rod Loutin, aptly encapsulates the sentiment in writing about his desire for, quote, dirty, quote, a quote, a quote from filters. So he describes how photographers are never happy. We couldn't stop complaining about our dirty faded color transparencies when they were all we had, and we couldn't wait to swap to nice clean everlasting digital images. Now that they're the norm, we miss our grubby old transparencies. Photographers are clearly never happy. In contrast to the discourse and value system that has come to define contemporary film restoration and industry trends in high bit resolution rates and crystal clear images, amateur users like Loutin are willingly choosing to degrade their shiny new digital snapshots with lo-fi filters, grainy after effects, and faded color washes. So to conclude, as photography and cinema cease to be film-based imaging media practices, as we go forward into the 21st century, analog media objects and their associated aesthetics are in themselves becoming a kind of endangered disappearing entity. This apparent loss, however, whether caused by natural aging and decay or forced obsolescence, also opens the door for a nostalgic return and a retro-revaluing of these unique features, including the ways in which analog plastic film objects age, fade, and decay. These signs have become valuable aesthetic hallmarks as in the tears that we sow privilege and value in vintage clothes or the wormholes in antique furniture or even the same sorts of visual signs, color-fading, channeling, that we continue to allow and praise even within fine artworks. These same features can be rediscovered in acetate film and the processes of their decay reframed not just as loss but also as an opportunity for something valuable and unique to be found. Thank you.