It is Wednesday, April 12th, and 2017 in the Town Room of Town Hall, calling the select board meeting to order at 6.38 p.m. For those of you watching us shuffle papers up front, we have a bunch of revised materials that we're just going to have to paw through as we go along here to make sure we have the things that we need to have. As usual, folks, there's yellow highlighting for us that shows new material, and there is a new item tonight on the revised agenda and on the revised motion sheet, hopefully yellow highlighted, thanks to staff, that shows that an issue that came up with less than 48 hours' notice of appointing some people as temporary registrars of voters. So we will get that to that when we get to it, but that is basically the change. And for those of you who subscribe to the Notices Online, that was the difference between the original posting and the revised posting today was we got some information that we needed to do that, and we had less than 48 hours' notice. So, all my notes that are on a previous piece of paper are now not magically transformed onto this new piece of paper, so we will do the best we can here. In terms of there's that new item on the agenda tonight, are there any other new items on the agenda tonight that we are not aware of? Okay, good. And then tonight is gonna be largely about town meeting articles, as is always true this time of year, although there are some other issues that we are gonna be dealing with as well, including talking with the town manager about his performance goals progress report. This is his first opportunity to really talk with us about that. We'll also be hearing from our economic development director, Jeff Kravitz, about marijuana, and we've just shortened the whole title to just marijuana because there's so many different aspects to this particular issue, but that will be much later in the night. In terms of what order we're gonna do things in, I've heard from some people who have various other places to be, and so we will not necessarily be going in numeric order, but I will do our best to try and keep everybody apprised of where we are at any given moment. In terms of normally after we have these brief, hopefully, opening remarks and agenda review, we normally head into public comment and then frequently skip over the town manager's report and select board member reports until later, although I am gonna touch on partial reports from both of those issues, and then we'll finish those later. But in terms of public comment, is there anyone here tonight who had hoped to speak during public comment on an item that is not on tonight's agenda, meaning if you're here to speak about one of the town meeting articles, you're gonna have to wait? So, okay, great. So if you would, and so I only see one hand, all right. So if you would please come forward. Once you get settled in at the mic, please have it really close, like I do here, and make sure you identify yourself, anything you're affiliated with that you think it's helpful for people to know. And please try and keep your comments to three minutes. Thank you. My name is Ginny Hamilton. I am a South Amherst resident and a Crocker farm parent having moved to town almost five years ago because of this town's schools. I am a member of the Vote Yes for Amherst campaign leadership team, and I'm here tonight on behalf of that team. We are committed to ensuring that our town prioritizes education and moves forward with new elementary buildings in the immediate future. 56% of voters in Amherst voted for a plan that would have gotten our youngest learners and their teachers out of buildings that are inadequate for the demands of teaching and learning today. And yet, a portion of town meeting members overstepped their role and discarded $34 million in state funds without having any kind of plan B. In doing so, they sidelined an impressive education plan that would have also directly addressed the significant disparities for low income kids and kids with special needs in our town. Well, we wish the select board had been a stronger advocate for the school's project before the two town meeting votes. This loss rests on the shoulders of those who voted against accepting $34 million in state aid. Everyone in Amherst now has to live with the consequences of their misguided decision. You've likely heard these arguments before, but they bear repeating as a matter of public record. But just as important, we're here tonight to say that we are opposed to throwing good money after bad. In this case, replacing the Wildwood boiler and the Fort River roof. These band-aid fixes won't address the underlying systemic problems that teachers and students at Fort River and Wildwood have to overcome every single day. If anything, prioritizing these patches over a serious plan B would only serve to underscore the folly of the situation we find ourselves in today. And in a very expensive way, no less. So instead, we are calling on the town manager, the select board and the finance committee to prioritize education and to begin planning now to fund new schools. Recognizing that the loss of state funds requires a shift in capital improvement planning. Education is the business of this town. It's the primary reason people move here and schools are not optional. So now it's up to the town to fund new schools. And we on the vote yes team look forward to working with you to make that happen. Thank you. Thank you. I did not announce as I frequently do that we don't do talk back or dialogue. So thank you for, and we will take that under advisement and it may well be addressed in other comments and other conversations we have later. I should also announce that as usual, Amherst Media is broadcasting us live, taping us for later viewing both on TV and on your computer. And we also have the press here from the Daily Hampshire Gazette. If there's anyone else recording the meeting, we'd like to be able to announce that. So please let us know. In terms of we didn't only have the one public comment, and so as I said, although I don't expect to do the full town managers report and full select board member reports at this point, there was one item that was placed on our desk tonight that I wanted to give the town manager a chance to mention here early on in the evening. So the one new item that you had on your desk and that was in your mailbox was tomorrow there will be a recount for precinct nine for town meeting members. This was done by petition and in accordance with the law. So this room will be set up for recount. There are all kinds of rules that go along with this. It will be conducted by our town clerk and with our town council present. Two of our members of the Board of Registrar's can't be here. They need all four, they would like to have four here. So the request from the town clerk is that you appoint Janice Ratner and Charles Sherpa as temporary registers for the April 13th, 2017 recount. And there's a motion on your, I'm not sure if you want to add that on. Right, that was the revised, that was the revised material. In fact, we could in fact go ahead and do that since you have brought it to our attention. And I wanted just the public to know because they, not as many people might be watching us at 1030 tonight as we're continuing our conversations. And so we do have a motion to do that because of course we already have appointed registrars, it's just that some of them are absent. And so this is filling in just for this particular circumstance, one event. So if someone could please read that motion that's printed in yellow on our revised motion sheet. I move to appoint Janice D Ratner and Charles L Sherpa to serve as temporary registrars on April 13, 2017 for the recount of the precinct nine town meeting member office from the March 28, 2017, annual town election. Second. Great, and there is also a note on our desk which has also been uploaded, the memo from Ms. Burgess associated with that. And so, any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that passes unanimously. So that's one less thing for her to worry about is that she's got enough people to be there to do that role. All right, thank you. And in terms of were there any, why don't you, if you want, you could go ahead and do the road show mention as well while we still have everybody fresh. Thank you, I appreciate that. We're starting something new this year, and we call it town hall road show, sort of like the antique road show, but we're not going to bring antiques, we're going to bring department heads from the town to your community. On tomorrow night, which is Thursday, April 13, at 6 p.m., we'll be at the Crocker Farm School, and the format is pretty simple. We will have pizza, so if you're hungry, you can come and get a slice of pizza from 6 to 6.30. We will do a small presentation for about 45 minutes where we talk about what the town operations do. We will have our police chief, our fire chief, DPW director, and our assistant town manager for conservation and development who will all be making brief presentations about what they do, but more importantly, what's on the horizon coming up for the coming year. And then we're going to have ample time for questions and answers. People can pose whatever questions they want. We'll try to answer them. If we don't have the answers, we'll get back to you. And next Wednesday, April 19, the same show, except slightly modified because we think the interest might be different, will be done at the University of Massachusetts Police Department community room for the North Amherst community. This is the first time we're trying these things. I've experienced them in other communities. They usually are very popular. It's something where people who aren't the insiders who are coming to town hall all the time might come to listen about things in a place closer to their homes where it's easier to park and ask the questions. There are no silly questions that you need to be afraid of asking. And we've also carved out some time for people to have one-on-one conversations with the department heads who are there. Several other department heads said, well, I just want to be there, even if I'm not presenting. And if there are questions, people will be there for that.  Or something like that. Whatever it is, we welcome anything. So that's starting tomorrow night, Thursday night, at Crocker Farm. Next Wednesday, April 19, at the UMass community room, which is a really nice room if you haven't been into the UMass police department, it's right across the street from the Amherst North Fire Station. And while I have the floor, I'm also going to plug my cup of joe with Paul, which I'm going to be at the Black Sheep tomorrow, on Friday morning, from 7.30 to 9 with our police chief. And this, again, is a new attempt to reach out, be available to people. And if anybody wants to come in and talk, we'll just be sitting there and try to talk to as many people as we can. So thank you for giving me the time for that. Absolutely. And no pressure, but I tend to classify these pieces of paper after the meeting. And this one now says, how manager evaluation on it? So that means that people should come and see him, because if you have a party and nobody shows up, it's not nearly as much fun. We'll have more pieces of ourselves. Yeah. Great, thank you. And then I mentioned that I was going to dive in with a brief report as well. And I am going to try and make it as brief as possible. And we may talk about this issue later tonight, but I wanted to catch people's attention early on. So there's been concern expressed, just as there was concern expressed at select board meetings when we were developing the town meeting schedule for annual town meeting. So we voted on the town meeting schedule for spring 2017 on July 25th. We voted for that a long time ago. Then in December, we talked about the fact that we had added a Thursday to fall town meeting. And it provided three-day week schedule for the first week of town meeting, and then we only needed one more day. And so then we talked about adding back in Thursdays as had been historically done many years ago. And we looked at those dates on December 5th, and then we voted on them on December 19th. We talked about a lot of different concerns. I have a multi-page explanation of what all those concerns were that we went through when we did that, which I will be happy to share with anyone. It's not in our packet at this point. I've emailed it to a couple of people who've asked. So what I wanted to announce tonight without going into all that level of detail is that we are trying to be all things to all people. That is obviously difficult. One of the things that we have ascertained is that by providing as much flexibility as possible, that also makes things unpredictable for people. And so it's hard to know, do I really have to hire a babysitter for three nights a week or only two nights a week? Does Amherst Media really need to find interns and set up time for two nights a week or three nights a week? And which two nights might those be? Because there is absolutely no assumption that we will of course meet Mondays and Wednesdays, but maybe Thursdays. We could meet Wednesdays and Thursdays. That's been done. We could meet Mondays and Thursdays. We could meet only Mondays. We have lots of choices, but that makes it hard for people to plan. So just to review, we are trying to provide flexibility. We would not, for example, encourage people to necessarily hope and pin their hopes on meeting on a particular Thursday night because that's not what town meetings used to. When people come to the floor of town meeting and say, I really want to schedule my thing for this certain night because this certain person can be here and they can talk about it most effectively, probably don't want to pick a Thursday for that. But we ask that people be patient, try and figure this out as best they can as we go along. We will do our best to deal with it.  The base assumption, if there is one beyond flexibility, I would suggest is likely to be that we would not generally meet more than two times per week. We're just not to saying definitively at this point which two nights those would be. And there's lots of reasons for that, which include things like finding out about the budget from the state house, all kinds of other issues. So we will not decide the first night of town meeting what nights we're meeting for the rest of town meeting. We just aren't gonna do that. At the end of every town meeting session, as is always true, there is a motion to adjourn made by the select board chair.  And the select board chair makes the motion to adjourn the meeting to a day certain that we don't know at this point which day certain that will be. We will do our best to kinda check in during the night, see where how things are flowing, see how people are saying, oh, if I can't get to this article tonight, then I'm gonna have to reschedule the architect to come in for a different week. All those kinds of things will play into that. We will try and be predictable. If, for example, say it's Wednesday night, the 26th, the very first night of town meeting. Although we originally thought we were gonna meet on the 24th when we voted in July. In December, we changed the date to Wednesday, the 26th. So that's our first night of town meeting. At the end of that night, as select board chair, I moved to adjourn to Thursday night. People said, I'm not coming twice this week. They voted down. Then I'm gonna make a motion to move to Monday and then keep going until we come up with the date that everybody agrees to. I would suggest that that first week, we would try two nights, that would be my first motion. The following week, it may well be that we don't do that. That we try and just assume that we're only gonna do two nights and less for some reason. We need to juggle things around because we need a different night. I would also ask that if people continue to have concerns that they share those with TMCC, which will hopefully share those with the select board as well. I would also state that although we do have some new methods of contacting town meeting members, which is great that TMCC has been working on that, there's an older Yahoo group that's being sort of phased out. There's a new Google group. There continues to be the one-way listserv. There are new ways of contacting town meeting members by email. The select board is not going to monitor any of those groups. So if people go on a private group or even a TMCC group and say, I wonder why the select board did X, Y, Z, you're not gonna get an answer. You need to ask the select board. So selectboard at amherstma.gov. So those are great conversation places, but we don't have the time to go and monitor all those places. So please write to us directly if you have questions. Continue to send feedback to us and to TMCC. And we'll see how things go. So thank you for listening to that. Anybody who wants to see more of those details, please let us know and we'll have that emailed to you. So moving on, unless there's some other particular burning issue that the select board would like to share in one of their member reports now, although we definitely want to get to you before we're all really exhausted later on tonight, I would like to go ahead and move into our agenda. And I am wondering if the town manager, even though as I mentioned, we are not necessarily doing things in numeric order, would you like to do the peg access issue first? Okay. It's very brief. Article 20 of the annual town meeting is a warrant article that requests permission from the town meeting to enter into a contract for peg access with the access provider for a period of 10 years. Typically municipal contracts can only be entered into for no more than three years. So we've had many different opinions on this and in terms of how we were treating this procurement of this service, the inspector general, as you recall, some time ago made a reverse decision, said we did not have to follow a public procurement process. We could just enter into contract negotiations with Amherst media, which I'm happy to inform you, we entered into the first negotiation today. But the question remained whether we could enter into a contract for longer than three years. I have an opinion from town council that says that the agreement with Amherst media, a nonprofit entity, would be for public support and stimulation and not to procure supplies or services for the town. Is therefore our opinion that this qualifies as a grant agreement and therefore exempt from chapter 30B and its requirement for town meeting approval of contracts exceeding three years. Accordingly, a 10 year agreement with Amherst media does not require a vote of town meeting in my opinion. So the upshot is that the town meeting does not have to act on this warrant article and you could recommend that it be dismissed. Questions from the select board about this. We put this on when we were trying to figure out against kind of the largest possible envelope of discussion because there was that back and forth where we got one very strong opinion that said you must do this and then they completely changed their minds and said you don't have to do this anymore. So we wanted to make sure this was on the warrant because the warrant needs to be published at a certain date. So comments or questions from the select board as to yeah, any of this? Yeah, why don't you make the motion and then we'll see where we go. I move to recommend dismissal to the April 26, 2017 annual time meeting article 20 peg access term of contract slaughter to speak to the article on behalf of the select board. Second. Great. Further comments, any reason we see that we wouldn't need to dismiss this? Yes. Yes, Missal, but just I'm wondering if there's something we just when we get to article 20 you explain why we were trying or if we would have some paper or notice so that people already have digested this issue you know with the paragraph on the back table if it's worth trying to give advanced information or I mean I know it's really simple but I wonder if that helps. So I wonder, so two things in response to that thank you and one is that in theory I'm writing up this list of our positions somehow between tonight the end of tonight's meeting and tomorrow morning at nine o'clock and it could include that we are going to move to dismiss I think rather than recommend dismissal since this is our article we're actually gonna move to dismiss it that always gets tricky depending on whose article it is but if is that acceptable to you as the motion and as the seconder that we would have it be that we're actually planning to move to dismiss and therefore we're recommending dismissal to town meeting does that make sense? It was yes to me, yes. Okay great and then do you think that this document I know we're just seeing this in this format although we had heard from the town manager that we might be seeing this is that what would this format be the appropriate thing to put in the back of the room it's not gonna fit in the mailing but the appropriate thing to put in the back of the room about or maybe it will, maybe it will we might just shrink it somehow, it gives people confidence. Is there anything that's not again you're reading this largely for the first time but is there anything that isn't in here that would be helpful for town meeting to know or can we send this off figuring this will cover the issue? I think it seems very clear, no action but if anything pops into anybody's head then I suppose you could tell the town manager later tonight and he could quick revise it right before it goes out the door. Okay so this will go in town meeting mailing number two and it will be actually dismiss and therefore recommend that you agree with us. Further discussion? All those in favor please say aye. Hi. So we will be making a motion to dismiss and that's unanimous. Great, one problem solved and moving on we now have as you know a lot of different people coming to talk to us about a lot of different things but one of the things that we could talk about now if the petitioners are ready to do so is article 25 which is the general bylaw amendment for the local historic district also known as according to this list LSLHDSC. It's not maybe the longest acronym we have but it's getting close. So if you would like to just both get settled in at the mic and once you're settled in we can go through and see what materials we actually have on this issue. We had materials, I'm gonna go ahead and clarify a couple of things and perhaps ask the petitioners for some help on this as well. So in terms of materials we have already seen versus materials we are getting tonight. So in town meeting mailing number one which the whole world has and is online is a report called town of Amherst proposed North Prospect Lincoln Sunset Historic District summary report March 2017. In our select board meeting packet for tonight was a report that was remarkably similar but not identical referred to as the summary report of April 2017. So there are some slight differences between those reports mainly on the first page. There is also from the select board packet so those of you following along at home can look at it as well. The planning boards report on article 25 and that will be in the second town meeting mailing. And we also have on our desk tonight a letter that is in, oh and the other item that was that's also gonna be in the town meeting mailing number two that we also had in our packet was the minority report of the planning board. And we also have a response to the minority report of the planning board. And that is on our desk tonight. Unfortunately it's not stapled together but it is here someplace, yes it is here. We have many things that are not stapled because apparently our copy ran out of staples it just makes our lives a little more complicated. But we will find it, it's in here and it is looks like this and it has steep bloom at the top. And there was also some material left in the back of the room which I put on all of our desks and I assume the petitioners will explain to us shortly. So we often say please bring us materials while we have a lot of materials. The historic committee letter on stapled to the back of the April summer report. I believe it's a separate letter that got stapled in and did not go out in the first mailing. It is, I'm not sure if it's on what you're on. I don't know what we're talking about because these things are identical. March and April are identical except for the first page. That's the only difference between what we got. The town meeting mailing was the March report that ends with this map. The April report that was submitted to the select board for tonight's meeting is identical except the first page has some additional information in it. There is not, I'm not sure what other item you would be referring to that would be stapled to it. Let me make sure if I could just look at that and see if we can find it. Yes, that would be helpful. It's in the, it will be, it is. You know what, it's in the big packet. It's not going to town meeting. It's in the big part, the big one that you have. So the big, the big clip together one is in here. Okay, so we have not seen that until just this minute but let us look for it because you, you take yours back so you don't lose it. And we, how, how far back is it? Oh, it's right here. So it's very shortly after the April version. And so it's my understanding that based on some mailing constraints, we are not sending out a second version of a report that was already provided to town meeting that was dated March. We are not sending the slightly revised April version. So that can be provided for the back table but it will not act and online, of course, like everything is. So people will have it ahead of time and they can study the differences between the two versions but we're not actually mailing what says here, letter to town meeting members second mailing. That's not actually in the mailing. We are sending the historic commission letter that I do not know because that was not part of our conversation. The letter you just showed me that was from this one right here. And you think that one is potential in there? Yeah, on the back of this. But you think that's upstairs ready to be mailed? Xerox with this whole package. But the whole package isn't going to town meeting, is it? Right. Right, because we don't have the weight limit. No, we're not expecting, we just wanted to have the letter from the address historical commission. We understand. They're the sponsoring organization on the warrant so it seemed appropriate. Right. The letter needs to go. The letter needs to go. So you thought the letter was going? Right, well. This is the way we Xeroxed it today. Okay. All right, so the second mailing is not going to go and I'll send you my letter responding to the minority report but I'll get it down to one page. And then, right, because we got a weak problem. Okay, got it. And so we have that tonight. Got it, got it. Because that was provided to us tonight. Believe it or not. That will go in the town meeting mailing number two once it's smaller. That big one you have is actually not, it's, there's like another 400 pages to it. So we spared you. You were selectively curating to give us this much. I did the selectings and we appreciate it. So this will be in the town meeting mailing number two along with the Bloom letter as in town meeting mailing number two. And those are the two items for this article that are going in town meeting mailing number two. Does that make sense? The historical commission letter. Yep. And Mr. Bloom's letter. Which is one more sheet than we'd expected but hopefully the weight thing won't be a problem. We'll start printing them on onion skin or something. All right, so showing my age. So given that we all kind of know what all this material is that we have because we have a lot of it and luckily everybody can follow along online at home. What we have is we are hoping by the end of after the presentation and time for questions and answers from the select board potentially from the public depending on what our timings like associated with this item we would take a position on this article. The way we are going to do this is the way we do it with all the articles which is we have asked ahead of time that people plan to talk to us or at us I should say. For five minutes total between however many petitioners they'd like to split that five minutes and then we will ask questions. See if we have time to have the audience ask questions. See if we have staff questions, et cetera. And we'll go from there. So please introduce yourself to the folks at home. You'll be the first speaker. OK. I'm Steve Bloom, the chair of the study committee. And I'm going to read like a minute statement. We've already made the case why this should be a historical district. You have it in front of you and I think it's pretty conclusive. We've been approved by everybody. Actually I'm just going to start reading. I'm just going to read. I'm not going to get into the justification for it. I'm just going to read a conclusion. We've done everything we're supposed to do and so far I've been approved by everybody there is to approve us in this long and arduous process. So if I may I'll just read the conclusion of the comments I plan to read to Tom meeting as part of the study committee's PowerPoint presentation. This is a neighborhood which wants and deserves to be an LHD. It's not being imposed on the neighborhood because it was in fact generated by it. There has been little if any opposition to the LHD. And as we all know, people in Amherst aren't shy about voicing their opinions. This LHD is good for the whole town. It's good karma. It's actually amazing the neighborhood remains as attacked as it is, especially when it's so close to downtown. An LHD designation protects a significant chunk of Amherst's unique past and identity of what makes our town unlike any place else. Because as we all know, Amherst is a very special place with very special challenges. Personally, I don't know of another town its size in the entire country, possibly the entire world, which boasts not two, but three nationally known institutions of higher learning. On a practical level, the LHD will serve as a much needed buffer and filter between UMass and downtown and the cultural zone that has recently been established in the commercial center. In the course of the past few years, I've made it a point to visit other university towns. In places like Newark, Delaware, and even Ithaca, New York, where protections don't exist or happen too late, the downtown's and surrounding neighborhoods have deteriorated into unending, undifferentiated blight, excuse me, most if not all traces of the past gone. This isn't an effort to lock a neighborhood in Amber. As Max Page, the professor of historic initiatives at UMass, will explain at town meeting, LHD design standards are flexible. LHDs don't prevent rental conversions or densification. But what they will do is create a mechanism for the town and its year-round residents to have a voice in determining our collective destiny. Because once Amherst, one of a kind heritage and character and gone, they are gone for good and this very precious, fragile place we all care about so much becomes generic, just like any place else. Please identify yourself. Yes, yes, Morianne Adams. I'm also a resident of the neighborhood. I'm a member of the study committee. And I want to just add some of the legal context for this, both for the audience that may be paying attention and also reminding you that this is under Massachusetts general law, 40C. There are hundreds of LHD towns in Massachusetts and there are more than hundreds of LHDs. The purpose of which is to balance the preservation of the visible remaining history built into the architecture and the neighborhood with other kinds of development presses. So it fascinated me when I went back to the master plan to read it with great detail that there is a great deal of language in the cultural and natural resources section of the master plan asking that we do exactly what we've done. We have followed the guidelines that are laid out by the Massachusetts Historical Commission of Public Hearings, Working with the Public, having our meetings open. We've looked at the language in the 2005 preservation plan as well as the master plan. We've met with the current Amherst Historical District Commission, which is the commission that oversees the Dickinson Historic District. I'm being very careful with my language here because we sometimes call this Amherst local historic district by the shorthand of the one district that it oversees. We have met with that group. We've had long conversations with that group. They are welcoming us on board. And we have offered to help them with the necessary task that usually comes after an LHD has been established of coming up with the appropriate guidelines. I've established a file of some 20 versions of design guidelines for a number of historical districts in Massachusetts. There is tremendous range. I think that we have agreement with the Amherst local historic district that this will be a task that we will embark on as soon as possible. Partly because that commission through their experience with Dickinson has made some hundred decisions already that have not been contested. And we, because we've written all of those form B's, know the proposed LHD pretty well. So that's some of the context for the remarks that Steve was making. Thank you. Questions from the select board before I ask if the planning board wishes to speak to their article, their report on this. Please. I mean, I'm gonna pose my question and if the members of the planning board want to respond to welcome all input because they're just trying to get a little bit more of a sense of a couple of things about this. And I'm gonna start by saying that having just gone through a campaign, one of the things that happens uniquely during that brief period of time where one is campaigning for reelection to this board is that you run into people who raise their issues. And one of the people who came up to me was somebody who owns property on Sunset and was very upset about this proposal. And so I had the opportunity to hear her out because that's what you do. And I think that the questions that came up was that unlike Lincoln, Sunset is a street with extremely varied architecture and extremely varied economics and uses as you drive down the street. And so I don't think that I was reading her question as being opposition to the creation of the district, but feeling like at least the property that she owned was not in any way historic and not something that was appropriate for the district. And I applied her with some questions about it and one of them being to understand exactly what her concern was. And I think it's something that I've heard in the current historic district, which is that at times, since you're talking about exterior and if you're talking about, for example, windows that a very specialized window can be very expensive or impossible to find, especially if you're trying to look for a one also that's energy efficient. And so I think that just a little bit more explanation of why some of those properties because I did drive down the street just to get a sense of what she was talking about why some of those properties should be in the district and what would happen in a home where a request is made to change a house that really doesn't have any unique historic architectural feature in comparison to most of the rest of the town, quite frankly. Our parameters for this LHD is the period between the Civil War and World War II and anything that's not within those parameters is considered an intrusive property and is not subject to the provisions of LHD, to my understanding. And in terms of houses that are under those parameters, if there's a hardship in terms of there's a peculiarity to that house, which makes it very expensive to replace something, they can be given an exclusion for that as well. But this is the first time we've heard from someone heard about this, I wish we've had two public hearings and a mailing and a question. So this is news to me and we've documented most of those, we've documented all those houses, I'd be curious to know which property you're referring to. Yeah. If I could just quickly add to that, I mean, I think it's important to know that staff sent two letters for public hearings to every address in the district. And we had public hearings. We've had, people are of course worried about the detail of this and it is not necessarily the case that the most historically precise window is going to be the window that the commission asks for. And in the hundred cases that we've seen from the current commission, which would include this LHD as well, they are on the side of flexibility rather than being like Nantucket, which has a tourist town is very precise about every scroll and every window. So it's not the case that she would be refused window replacement. It is the case that we're encouraged to go with solar and heat retaining features. And it is the case that we'll be developing design guidelines that will be able to accommodate the entire neighborhood, which like Dickinson, although it's larger, has a very large range of architectural features. And we have to respect that range. One more.  And in the national historic districts, they're called non-contributing properties. For some reason in LHD, they're called intrusive properties. But one of the things the man dates that in LHDs and national historic districts, you have to have them be contiguous. So you have to, you know, pick a whole block of area. You can't just sort of like, you know, pick some cherry picket. And so that's why, you know, like there's a number of properties on Lincoln, for example, that will build, you know, that will build in the 60s. And those are intrusions and they would not be subject to the design guidelines that we'd be coming up with. Thank you, I think. I can't pinpoint a property for you because in the conversation, this particular voter was more interested in the principal than complaining, making her property the forefront of an input of my discussion. So she didn't give me the address. I didn't ask for it. So I do not know. Thank you. I'm sorry, which of you, whichever of you was first? Okay. If I could just, a little bit there to amplify what Mr. Bloom and Ms. Adams said. I mean, I think number one, first of all, you know, we've just been through a presidential election campaign. And you know, it's hard for people to sort out information and tell what's true and not true and ask the right questions. So number one, I would say, read the FAQs. It's a very nice information sheet because most of the concerns about local historic districts are based on a complete misunderstanding of what they do and what they regulate. They've prepared a very nice sheet that answers all those questions. So once again, to the viewing audience, look at the frequently asked questions and look at the answers and you'll probably find that your questions go away. The other thing I can just amplify a little bit on what Mr. Bloom said is that, you know, there's a reason, these are neighborhoods. They're not like local, they're not like national registered districts, which include and exclude properties. They're supposed to encompass the entire area. I mean, part of the principle is, for example, if this were a district here, we wouldn't decide to exclude Ms. Brewer's desk because it's not sufficiently historical because someone could do something terrible there. You know, so you have to regulate, you're protecting the entire district by encompassing all the properties. In other words, you don't want to allow infusions to come into these places here, but you're not forcing people to make their houses historical, people replacing like, you know, the same thing with the same thing is never a problem. These are really mostly just non-issues, and if that helps a little bit at all. But again, the idea is that you're looking for the ensemble of the character and you wish to avoid something that spoils the character of the neighborhood. So it's not a question so much of making, with this case, for example, the Dickinson district up the street here, there's a very nice ranch house at the corner of Sweetser Park and extensive renovations and expansion has taken place there. And they're in keeping with the house. It's just, they're not in conflict with the overall atmosphere in the district. So I think it's the best way to put it, that we're just trying to prevent things that are jarring and disruptive, not to prevent change and not to prevent the modern. Yes, Ms. Griefer, well, I don't know, maybe, I don't know if we should hear from the planning board and then we're gonna have more discussion or just wanna get it, kind of get it out now. But Mr. Weld, to spoil the neighborhood in jarring and disruptive are words that kind of bother me, actually, because that's what worries me about this type of review. One person's spoiling is another person's appropriate. So I think there needs to be some balance. And I know we don't have design guidelines yet and I wonder will the design guidelines give comfort or make it more prescriptive. So I feel sort of on the fence, I do see the value of a local historic district. I don't need to be convinced of that. I think the authority is there. I don't buy the, I think we're totally entitled to have that kind of limitation. What I wonder about and have thought about and I will admit I'm not in the weeds, I haven't gone property by property as you have. But the size of the district seems large. It seems like perhaps there's two districts that may each be valid local historic districts, but you've combined. And so when I see that large an area with that much diversity, I thank you for explaining the contiguous and that we're looking at whole neighborhoods. But my main hesitation is about the size of the district that you're starting with instead of something more circumscribed. This is originally started when by the College of Amherst Neighborhoods and the area that they actually requested was much larger than what we finally settled on. And when this was approved by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, they actually encouraged us to make it larger to include the other side of Amnesty on Lincoln, which we decided to exclude. I don't, as we wrote in, we make a very convincing case which the Amherst Historical Commission has endorsed and the Massachusetts Historical Commission has endorsed and the planning board has endorsed that this is not two different neighborhoods but this is an interwoven and very unique neighborhood because not only is it the grand houses and I would actually challenge sunset. I could go through sunset. I don't know which house would be considered not historical there, but I think if you read particularly the significance section, this is one neighborhood and it doesn't, the average LHD is 100 properties, but like we said, the island of Nantucket is one LHD and the province town is 1,000 properties. So this isn't really excessive. I just want to add that in the past, historic preservation has been grand houses of well-known public significance. What struck us and was verified by our research which I regret is so detailed but you can only get the story of the neighborhood if you read the detail in that very nice packet that Mr. Toppins put together. Even the summary doesn't do it justice. What we discovered was that as Amherst grew in the mid 19th century from the cluster around Amherst College and farmlands in the area that we're now talking about, the first area was North Prospect. A number of Irish who lived there bought the properties that are now Beston, McClellan and Page began moving over there. So there were families both on North Prospect and in that neighborhood. They bought land that they sold to other Irish and at the same time Lincoln Avenue which had some of the employers of the Irish and then were also the homes that the black, the African Americans both from the South and from farmlands in the North clustering on Beston and Page and McClellan were working in those houses, chauffeurs in those houses, but building a community that we have found from anecdotal evidence and from written evidence was a deeply interwoven community. It's hard for us to understand this kind of class mixing and race mixing and it's not something that we've put there because we believe in it. We found it there. This is unusual in New England. It's a critical part of Amherst's history and what's so valuable about it is that it is a single interwoven neighborhood that emerged from the ground up as these farms were developed into residential communities both for Irish immigrants, blacks moving from North and South and mass agricultural and other people moving into a more established neighborhood of Lincoln and also Irish moving into Lincoln Avenue so that the work relationships, the social relationships, the religious relationships and the family relationships tie this community get together. It's a very unusual, either it's a very unusual case or it's the first such case documented in Western Massachusetts and it's something that Amherst should be proud of and should write up and have part of the tourist and family attraction. Can I do a follow up? Possible. The problem is those vernacular houses in Tambrook are actually older than the houses on Sunset and Lincoln and those are because they're modest houses, they're the most vulnerable and it's remarkable that they still exist and that's what we're trying to protect. And to give an example of what Marianne is saying how the neighborhood is interwoven, like for instance, Beston Street was developed by an Irish builder named John Beston. He died, his wife ended up moving to Lincoln Boulevard to one of the grand houses with her sister and then her daughter ended up living on another address in Lincoln. It's all intermixed and we are protecting, this isn't just about grand houses, we're trying to protect the history. I just wanna be clear, I don't have a preconception that historic districts have value for grand houses, actually value the Beston Street. Area I always thought for the 50 years I've been in town that that's one of the neatest parts of Emmer. So I'm not implying that the value is about grand houses, that that was not my comment and that is not how I perceive this and I understand the value of the more modest houses in the history there. But I do question the size of the district and the two separate areas you've explained, the interwoven social history. Again, I am not the expert on the architectural specifics of one or the other, but I just don't wanna be misunderstood of saying if it's not a grand mansion on Lincoln, whatever, that it has value because I actually have some understanding of the neighborhoods from a long time. So I wanna stop here and so I wanna do a couple different things. I wanna make a statement, but then I also intend to give us a chance to hear from the planning board regarding their report and their and the minority report characterized there. Obviously we're not gonna do these things at length and then we'll have another chance to ask each other questions and have concerns and see if we have any questions for staff or again for the petitioners. And this is kind of an awkward scenario in that we talked about the five minutes at the beginning. Obviously we've had questions and you've told us some really terrific stories about and I say that in the best possible way. That's how things really get communicated in this town is good stories about how things work and how things have come to be to where they are. I'm gonna ask you a couple of perhaps more pointed and less interesting story type questions, but in terms of the practical application because as I think was said rather pointedly at the beginning here is that all the boards that matter already agreed to this and that of course did not particularly set well with me. But as a select point, but I understand it from the standpoint that we are not here to rethink all the work that you did because we know that's what you did. That's what we set up when we initially said, yes, let's go forth and have this study committee. So thank you for all the amazing work you did and so we're just trying to come at it from the different points of view that we bring to the table as town-wide elected officials, all the different things that are under our purview and also the things that we hear from the community who are also people who more than likely have not delved into the great level of detail that you have. So quickly associated with that two particular points I wanna make sure I ask about before I hear from the planning board. One is that it's clear from this packet and from what you have said that you have done a great deal of outreach and so that's terrific. I'm a little misunderstanding and partly I think the planning board and the minority report may touch on this, but also just in terms of the descriptions that I've seen so far, it is one thing to have a whole bunch of people come to a meeting and say what a great thing something is that is terrific. It is also helpful to understand how when we think about this district versus the Dickinson district and of course the Dickinson district had a whole different set of hurdles to get over in terms of it was the first one and people were very scared about things like air conditioner units and windows et cetera and so we had a lot of these conversations then and so to some extent we're past that which is great except for people who've never heard of it before and then it's harder. But it is a much smaller number of properties and so having more and as I understood it a and vaguely recall it, a larger proportion of those property owners were embracing the idea visibly. We're coming forward and saying we are those property owners and this is what we want. There were some that had concerns but there were others that came forward and said yes this is what we want. It's not entirely clear to me based on the different types of statistics that are quoted in the various pieces of paper that we've gotten as to how many residents who live in these houses think this is a really good idea. So if you could give us a sense of that versus all the people who came to a meeting who may or may not live in those houses. I mean a number, well a couple things. First off, can I just go back one for one second. If the objection is that this is two different neighborhoods and it should be two different LHDs. All the LHDs are gonna be administered by the same commission. So the work's already been done. Does this mean that we should divide this up and have another study commission for to repeat the work that we've already done? On a practical level, I'm just bringing that up. In terms of support, this started off with a barn being taken down without recourse and at that time I could read you the language. The Amherst Historical Commission encouraged us to seek an LHD and the neighborhood if you go back three years ago was in an uproar. There was like 50, 60 people. In terms of my own outreach, I canvassed probably 70 people. I didn't canvass everyone, I canvassed everyone pretty much on Cosby, on Lincoln Avenue, not so much on Sunset, and Marianne did people on Beston, McClellan. So yes, and fearing is like way behind this. So yes, I think that the support for this is absolutely overwhelming. And to quote these figures, people come because they object to something, not really to show support. Like I wrote in my letter, when you have a voting turnout that's typically 12%, and you have people that have, we have well over 25% who came to these meetings, plus another 25% that responded favorably to our questionnaire. Yes, I think the facts speak for themselves. Thank you, that's helpful. The people at the meetings were people from the neighborhood. The mailing had gone out to every property owner in the neighborhood. The objections that came from the property owners of North Pleasant were of a different kind, and we have cut North Pleasant out of it so that now it is a residential general neighborhood, where the LHD is supported by the homeowners. The only business there is the creamery, and it's fine with the creamery as well. Thank you. And the other question I had, you've already touched on Mr. Boone, but I'd like you to elaborate on, so one of the shorthand discussions about this is as you just referenced, the barn, the infamous barn. So how would things have been different if there was another property that had such a barn? How would it work now with the new district in place? How would that have changed the way that process worked? So I think that's a practical explanation that will appeal to some people. One regulation is changes that are seen from the public way. So we would need to establish that it was seen from the public way. Then the question would be the reason for the demolition and the impact on the neighborhood. I cannot speak for the current commission. I can only speak for their process, which is one of negotiation with owners to discuss ways of resolving their objection or their concerns about the impact on the neighborhood and the reasons that the owner has for wanting to do something that they object to. So I think that that is probably a question that would need to be given to the current, we should have gotten them here, Mr. Ergud, Mr. Schaefer, et cetera, who work on the current commission. I think that our concern is more with buildings as seen from the public way, when people wanna take down a deck or put up a deck or change a single entrance in order to build a duplex. That's a question that came up. That was an interesting question. There were two ways of resolving it. One is you can have the single entrance going to two separate stairwells inside the house. They would not be seen from the public way. The other is we have plenty of two front door houses in the neighborhood. So it could simply be made consistent with those. What I was struck with in the discussions with the commission is their flexibility and their concern to negotiate. So as not to create a hardship for the owner, but not to create something that is strongly inconsistent with the neighborhood. And I do wanna say that for the Elm Street in North Hampton, which we very much admire, there is a great range from very modern use of materials and modern design to buildings that are old. And in the neighborhood that we are seeking to preserve now, we have solar panels, we have heat retaining windows. So there are examples for that in the neighborhood that could be used by the commission to give permission to move in that direction for others as well. I can add to that as well. I think it was admitted in LHD that they would have, I'm not sure about this, but there would have been a demolition delay more readily. And I also, this has teeth. If the barn were judged, and I'm not saying a word would be judged at the end of this process, to have historic value, an LHD can prevent a demolition, which the Historical Commission cannot. And thank you because that was actually my question. And that is one of my struggles with this particular issue because I really appreciate the diversity of the housing that is there and the fact that we've gotten past all those questions about, will I be able to have solar panels? Will I be able to have a duplex? Because we know, we've seen it in action, that that is going to be possible. Speaking as a concern of mine and others that I've had shared, is that I don't know that I'm comfortable with the idea that the barn couldn't have been torn down because of, if this district had existed. And so that's the struggle, that's really probably the last struggle of having a business. It's not saying that that's a foregone conclusion. Yeah, it's just saying that that is, I mean, something of- That is a possible outcome. What if somebody wants to take down, for instance, the Burnett House? This can prevent the Burnett House from being taken down. What if somebody wants to take down the Robert Frost House? This can prevent the Robert Frost House. So thank you. I appreciate that it's difficult to differentiate between those things in such a way that- And the barn could be rebuilt. I mean, if the person wanted another home in that area, one could consider how the barn could be rebuilt into something that is consistent with the house that it goes with, but would have a different use that would meet the needs for profit of the owner. Or the barn could be judged not to be historically enough significant and could be demolished. You just don't, it's a case by case. What this does, this is why we've spent two and a half years, is coming up with a mechanism that actually has some teeth. Great, other questions from the select board before we hear from the planning board? We'll get another chance after we hear from the planning board. Okay, so if you guys wouldn't mind scooching over, then I know the planning board has a number of articles before us tonight, so I hope you've gotten comfortable. And this is just being the first. You have provided us a report, which will go on the second town meeting mailing, as I mentioned earlier, as well as the planning board minority report. And if you could briefly characterize, I know it's a lot of words to summarize into just a couple of minutes, but if you could do that, that'd be helpful. And then we may have some questions from you. Sure, I'm Rob Crowder, I'm a member of the planning board. Planning board has supported this article, but not unanimously, there was a diversity of opinion. This, the planning board obviously is very interested in the overall shape of the town, development of the town, and specifically the town center. And so we have begun thinking about how the town center might work differently. Better, worse, who knows. But part of planning for any change that we might want to suggest or allow to happen is to be sensitive to the surrounding neighborhood, which is actually an integral part of the town center. The master plan recognizes that there are competing interests and there's a need for economic development, but there's also a need for preserving neighborhoods and preserving the historical significance of neighborhoods. So we welcomed the work that the study committee did. We were impressed, I think, the story that they told. They were very persuasive in convincing us that the district actually was important historically and not just a nice place to live. So our support, I think, is an attempt to welcome all parts of the town center as important and needing care and attention by the town. So the people in that neighborhood wanted, we were persuaded that they wanted the protection that a local historic district offers. And the town through the master plan has recognized that that's an appropriate tool. So we supported it. I think to characterize the minority report, I think it is a big district. It's a little different kind of district than the Dickinson district. I think some people felt that the Dickinson district is more clearly a centerpiece of Amherst than the neighborhood that is the subject of this one. And some people were concerned, had similar concerns as has been raised here about what the impact would be on property owners and how it might impact development in a neighborhood that is so close to downtown. And therefore might be subject to more housing or other kinds of development in a central place. Thank you. Questions from the select board for the planning board about the report, about the minority report? Seeing none, okay. Do, does the select board have additional questions for the petitioners? Are we ready to make a motion and start moving toward a vote? Where are we at? Absolutely. This is a big issue. Yeah, I think, do you want to go first? No, I didn't have a specific, I just had a sense for you. I think that the question that I had was Mr. Bloom made, I appreciated his comments and report about the term which he recognized was an awkward term, but it was a descriptive term of an intrusive property. And when I looked in the list in this particular packet for properties on the street that I was talking about, there certainly are properties that would fit that definition simply because their construction date is beyond the period that was described in the description of the historic district is going through World War II. And so I made me then curious because I'm not familiar with the process in its entirety is to whether property that doesn't clearly fit within that description, as for the reason that I just described is has some automatic status that allows the homeowner to do what they want or is the homeowner bound to maintain the property in the general condition in which it existed at the time it was built. How is, I guess I'm still a little bit of a loss as to how that works because it's more than one property on that street and I didn't look at other streets because I didn't have time, but it seems to me that for every homeowner, their property is significant. So that's the question is a little bit more of an understanding of what happens in those circumstances if anyone knows, I'm sure all has any experience. Sure. Take sort of a, I didn't think we have quite so many controversies and questions about an institution that's been around since the 1930s and as part of messages state law. So we shouldn't be debating the nature of historic districts and their ability to regulate that's established by state and federal law. So I think we're having that conversation, we're having the wrong conversation. Mr. Steinberg's question is a typical one. I guess the answer is, I'll let the petitioners join in if they wish also or Mr. Toplans, you know, no one is required to, the point about these things, their neighborhood is homogeneous, they're not homogeneous, not every property is the same and this one, whether you think it should be one or two, whatever, it has a diverse character. So you've got small houses down by Besten and large houses on Lincoln. And I think the general idea is that something should be appropriate and let me back up maybe and start with a more philosophical statement. I mean, I think one of the problems we have in this town is that we don't trust people and time and again we've seen people say, you know, I don't trust what the select board is gonna do whether people at the front of the room or the planning board. And, you know, on some level, if you worry about the worst case scenario all the time you'll make yourself nuts and we should be thinking about the normal and the average, not the least likely possibility. And if you look at the way the Dickinson district has been administered, which has ranch houses, which has Dickinson historic museum structures, which has Amherst College properties and others, it's a highly diverse district. There have been a number of, as we saw a number of cases that came before it. It's not been controversial. People use the good sense of the average rational person. And I guess I would say also, you know, Ms. Breastrup can help out here. What's been underlying those decisions, aside from common sense and the common good, is the design review guidelines. You know, that's the basic idea which talks about conformity, not in the sense of absolute similarity or identity, but massing forms and so forth.  There should be a shape and feel that seems appropriate or at least you want to prevent one that seems wildly inappropriate. So I don't know if that answers the question of the infusions. So, you know, if you have a ranch house, more power to you. You're not required to keep it as a ranch house. But the principle we used in the case of the Dickinson district was when building permits are pulled, it goes to a preliminary review by the building inspector. And, you know, he may sign off and say, fine, nothing to worry about. And if there's any question, it goes to the commission and they take a look at it. And then there's a question, there's a process of questioning and conversation. But it's not, you know, we desire the Dickinson district, we try to strike the balance between making things easy for the homeowner and allowing some control to stay in place. Because as Mr. Malloy used to say, you know, if you regulate everything viciously, then that's no good. But if you don't regulate anything, there's no point in regulations. So the idea is always a kind of a golden mean where common sense prevails. And I'm not sure if I can describe the principle any better than that. I think if you try to specify, it becomes much more difficult. But the idea is that there can be a variety of properties. You just want change to be, in a sense, that wouldn't cause someone to walk down the street and go, what in the world was that? You know, what happened there? What big mistake took place? But this shouldn't prevent a modern building.  You know, so there's room for the modern, there's room for diversity. Can I speak to that as well if there's time? If you could do it briefly, that'd be great. Well, first of all, the Dickinson district covers pretty much the same range of styles and time period. I mean, police station, I think, is technically part of the Dickinson district. And also, if you look at the Elm Street district in Northampton, which actually has no historical parameters, it's just the parameters there are just geography. The range of styles is even more extreme. The range of time is 300 years, not 200 years or 100 years. And under the Elm Street parameters, there's a museum that was constructed on the Smith campus that's very modern that was deemed to be appropriate with the design guidelines. And then also, in terms of design guidelines, no LHDs are created with design guidelines in place. The Elm Street design guidelines were created 15 years after the Elm Street LHD was created. I'm going to excuse myself for just a moment. Continue to talk amongst yourselves. Mr. Walgreensons, this is clearly a favorite article of yours. You may go ahead and recognize people to continue. I recognize Ms. Krigger in that case. Mr. Watt, I think you did hit on it about trust. And just to be consistent with myself, I thought that the Dickinson district was too large when we discussed that, too. And if it were up to me, I would probably run it differently. It's not my area in the way it's your area. And I do want to trust that this could be done reasonably. And I have just been in a couple of historic districts in other states where either the downtown was completely included or the district went right up to the downtown. So I don't see that necessarily as a conflict. I am concerned when we're putting this level of regulatory control over so many properties. And I think it's appropriate, as a select board, to ask those questions. And that's not necessarily challenging the authority of a local historic district or questioning the philosophy of it. I think that these are questions that come up for ourselves and other people we talk to in the community. And it's OK for us to explore that. That doesn't mean we don't get the principle of it and the value of it. But I think we're doing what we're supposed to do. And it's an important topic. And it's an important area in our downtown. And if this passes, we're adding another layer of regulatory review, maybe an appropriate one. Maybe this is where it should go. But it is OK to have a range of opinions about these things. And that's why we're having a rigorous conversation. So I think we're within bounds of what we're supposed to be doing with that. So you didn't do anything. Yes, well, of course. But continue, please. Is someone ready to make a motion? Yeah, at this point, I think I will. And I really appreciate the comments, the responses that I've received. It's been very helpful because I'm going to make a motion to recommend to the April 26, 2017 annual town meeting article 25, General By-law Amendment Local Historic District, if he's willing, Mr. Wald, to speak to the article on behalf of the select board. Second. I don't think he has a choice. Then we'll take out the words if he's willing for the motion. OK, so that motion is on the floor to recommend, correct? OK. Further discussion, further questions, additional things that will help people understand this prior to town meeting or at town meeting? Ms. Krueger. Just I feel somewhat torn. I'm leaning more towards supporting it. But I do have those concerns, which I've gotten a chance to express. And you had to step out. So I'm wondering if other members are feeling a little mixed or this is just we're ready to go for this before we vote. Right, it's always difficult to figure out, do you go ahead and choose based on misgivings to not support something knowing that a majority is probably going to support it anyway? And so therefore, does it matter? And in that case, maybe there's no point in voting against it. But reservations are reservations. And those are appropriate, even if you disagree with state law, even at that level, or with anything in particular at the local level. And both the protection nature and the preservation nature, but yet what impact does that have on people moving in and out of the community, which is a question that we get a lot here at the Select Port. So it's a complex issue. And it's not something that, as I understand it, that once you go ahead and town-meaning supports this, that then they decide the following year, oh, that was a bad idea. We don't want to do that anymore.  And more things get worked out over time, as you indicated, some design guidelines in some cases that are developed over many years to be responsive to the community. May the petitioner make just two quick comments? If they're really quick. It will be really quick. I want to say that, first, the existing commission has heard 100 cases, and all have been successfully resolved. I take some confidence in that. The second is, I think we haven't said enough about this. We see this as an asset for Amherst. We think it's valuable to acknowledge a district of this sort, to publicize it, to put signage up, and to tell this dimension of the story for visitors and for our own history. So the work that we've put into this was not just for ourselves. We saw it as a real asset for the town that values its history, knowing that its history is very complicated. Other comments from the select board? Are we ready to come to a vote? Let's try and see how this works. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. So I hear four. And I was planning to not vote against, but to abstain. So am I correct in recording that? 4, 0, 1? OK. So could we don't follow Robert's rules? So I'm going to ask that we just reconsider. And I'm going to go ahead and vote with the majority. And so we are going to unanimously support this. And so let the record show that. And it's like the other thing never happened. So 5, 0, and unanimous support recommendation to town meeting. So thank you. We appreciate you coming forward. We appreciate all the work everybody's put into this. I took the historic commission letter out of this. But if you would like to be able to pass this along to someone else, because there's so much good material in here. Yeah, that'll be great. But I did steal the letter out of it, which I understand will be in the packet. So thank you for all your work. All right. So we are now going to probably to the chagrin of some people in the audience. We are going to move into the zoning articles. And we are going to not that's going meaning. We are going to start with planning board article 32. Table three footnotes. Possibly the most exciting title we have on this year's warrant. I'm not sure it. And so we did it twice. Yeah. OK. So I'm Rob Panner again. I'm going to actually do the first two articles. They're both. Great. So you want to do 32 and 33 together? Great. Are articles to remove to pair down the list of footnotes at the end of table three, the dimensional table. It's where all of the minimums and maximums for heights, lot size, frontage, floors, and so on are listed for each kind of, for each zone in town. But there's a long list of footnotes at the end of that that has caused some angst for people. I think it's unnecessarily confusing. And they don't really need to be there because article six of the zoning bylaw provides for a section where the dimensional table is interpreted, described, explained how to use. So many of the footnotes are more appropriately put in that section. So recently, the planning board has been attempting to gradually move the footnotes away from the dimensional table and into earlier in chapter six of the zoning bylaw. So article 32 deals with three footnotes that apply to setbacks, aside and rear setbacks. And all we're doing is moving the text of a footnote into article 6.1 of the zoning bylaw, specifically subsection 6.13, which deals with sideyards, and 6.14, which deals with rearyards. We're not changing how the bylaw works. We're just moving text over. And article 33 deals with two unrelated articles, unrelated footnotes, one explaining what requirements for a buildable lot, regardless of what the minimum lot size is for any particular district, all building lots have to fill the description in footnote H. And so we're just moving that into section 6.1 again. The last one is a footnote L, which applies to the entire dimensional table. It just points you to section 6.6 that says religious and educational uses. There's one exception. And there's no need to have it footnoting the entire table. You should be using article 6 in conjunction with the dimensional table anyway. So again, neither of these change the way the bylaw works. It's just rearranging words on the page. Great. Thank you. Questions from the select board? Luckily, we had these packed. Well, I won't say luckily, because I said they're not coming unless we have the reports in our packet over the weekend. So thank you so much for having the reports done so that we could have you here with us tonight. And we really appreciate that you got them done in time to go on the town meeting mailing as to. Because I know some years past, it's not easy to do. And there's a lot of work involved by both members and staff. So thank you for that. If there are not any questions, please. Yeah, that's one quick question, Schroeder. Just curious, and this is I'm looking at the planning board report under article 32, page 2. And it's under footnote 3, the last paragraph. And I read that about five different times, because I was going into the statement that had been made early in the report, that this was to just take care of this problem that there was both the footnotes in the section. But in that one particular paragraph, you say since there's no default standard that going on I'm trying to get, well, the default is really zero or at least 10 feet, the planning board proposes that 10 feet be entered in the table. Is that establishment of actually a standard as opposed to just clarification of placement? I don't think it is. Whether or not there's a standard in there, you would be using section 6.1 to interpret what the dimension should be. The dimension should be either zero or if there doesn't have to be a setback, or if there is a setback, it has to be at least 10 feet. And having a number in there that says 10 doesn't change the fact that you can still have zero. Okay. Thank you. So that was clarifying on page 2 of article 32. Thank you. Other questions from the select board? Were there questions from the public on articles 32 or 33, I'll bet footnotes really turned them out for the hearing as I believe you indicated in your report. So thank you. And no public input, strangely enough. So thank you. And for the work of the Zoning Subcommittee as well, of course, could we have a couple of motions? We can, I will also preface this with saying if people are worried about, you know, how they really have to give this stunning speech at TAO meeting with the select board recommendation, this could again be the kind of thing where we just tell the moderator to report what our vote was, assuming it is non-controversial. So would someone like to make a motion for article 32? Yeah, please. I move to recommend to the April 26, 2017 annual town meeting, article 32, Zoning Table 3, footnotes, setbacks. No one to speak to the article on behalf of the select board. Second. Put it on the list for the moderator. Make a footnote about that. Yes, we will not make new footnotes. Further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that passes unanimously. And similarly, a motion on article 33. I'll go ahead and continue. I move to recommend to the April 26, 2017 annual town meeting, article 33, Zoning Table 3, footnotes, miscellaneous with no one to speak to the article on behalf of the select board. Second. Further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that is also unanimous, because the select board is clearly a rubber stamp. So it's because this is a non-controversial thing that other people have already researched in great detail, and I am grateful for that. So moving on to article 34. Article 34 provides for changing the zoning bylaw in a way that does not change the substance of the bylaw. And hopefully to save steps, save time, save money, not have to go through town meeting for something that is a change, but not really an amendment of the bylaw. You may remember a few years ago, the planning board had contemplated adding a new overlay district. The problem is that there was no room in the zoning bylaw the way it's numbered to fit a new district of any kind. So in order to propose that district, we would have had to reorder section 3.2 of the zoning bylaw in order to make room for a new section. That would have resulted in something like 19 pages, or it did result in 19 pages in a warrant. And unfortunately, we made a mistake when it was printed. It was a waste of time, and it was really not necessary. We are proposing, as some other towns and Massachusetts have done, to provide for changing of numbering typographical errors or cross-framed errors after a public hearing at the request of the planning board and then at the discretion of the town clerk rather than a formal amendment process. Thank you. Questions from the select board? This seems like a really good idea. And so there will obviously be people who are nervous about the idea. But as you indicate, there is still a hearing that gets published about this. It's just that then you can go ahead and act after that. You don't have to then also get town meetings approval after the hearing. Right, and it wouldn't be the planning board who had the final say. We would request the town clerk to make that change, presumably if there was a lot of discussion at the hearing that we had, or if the request to the clerk was not unanimous, the clerk might decide to, might decline to make the change and ask us to go through town meeting, presumably. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Bader. Since we had a theme of trust earlier, I think this starts to move us a little bit more towards something of substance. And I trust the process and I trust the planning board process, I would say the board, but the members will always be changing. But I think this is an important kind of efficiency and makes sense. But I think it may stir up issues that people have had in the long history of people worrying about the wall being pulled and things like that. But I think that this is something that's well in the range of the reasonable. And I trust that this will be carried out appropriately. So I don't want to cut off discussion, but I'd be willing to make this motion as well. If you would go ahead and make the motion, we can continue discussion after the motion has been seconded. I move to recommend to the April 26, 2017, annual town meeting, Article 34, zoning, non-substitutive corrections. You could put me down to speak to this, but I'm also happy to just have the moderator say we pass this. But if it seems we want to go further, I would be willing to do that. Second. So further discussion. This is probably one of the shortest warrant articles I've ever seen from any issue, and the report makes everything very clear in terms of it does require that hearing and the town clerk's participation. So further discussion. Then all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that passes unanimously. We're trying to use this yellow corrected sheet. Don't ask us why there's a copy and paste error with articles 13 and 14 stuck in the middle. Just pretend you don't see that, because we already voted on those another night. I'm wondering why they asked for that. So it's just that they gemagically reappeared. It was not purposeful. No worries. Yes, you did not imagine that we already did that. And so we voted unanimously. And if somebody needs to speak, it'll be Ms. Krueger. But I will also tell the moderator. Excellent. And so that brings us to Article 35. Article 35 is an article that would enable, facilitate a project that Valley CDC wants to bring to town. That is an enhanced SRO apartment building for very low-income people, people emerging out of homelessness, an apartment, a place that they can live. They can rent at a low rate as they transition into other accommodations eventually. Unfortunately, that kind of building is not really possible under our current zoning bylaw, because the use category under which it would fit, apartment buildings, requires that there be a mix of bedroom counts, at least a 50-50 mix of bedroom counts in an apartment building. And Valley CDC would like to build all small efficiency units, a single-size unit. And they can't do that. So we would like that to be possible. We would like to see this project come to town. It's something that has been talked about for a while. And we're glad that someone is finally wanting to bring it. So the way we're going to make it possible is for an apartment building in which all of the dwelling units are countered as affordable, other than those occupied by a resident manager, the permit-granting body for that use could waive the provision that requires a mix of bedrooms, bedroom counts. Thank you. It mentions here, unusually, that under process that public curing was held. But it doesn't say if anybody came or anybody spoke for anything. No, there was. Maybe you remember better. We had a representative from Valley CDC. And she came and spoke. Her name was Joanne Campbell. I think she's one of the people who runs Valley CDC, Executive Director. And she explained a lot about what Valley CDC is proposing and thinking about. But there were no members of the public who participated. OK. One way or another. All right. Yes, Mr. Slatter. So the Housing and Sheltering Committee and the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust will actually take this up tomorrow and discuss this a little bit so they don't have an opinion about it just yet. I unfortunately will not be able to be at that meeting tomorrow. But there are some questions that some of the members have and they want to sort of explore those and tease those out a little bit before they make their recommendation. But they will be discussing that at tomorrow's meeting. So I want to make the board aware of that, that there's not an opinion from them yet. But they will discuss it tomorrow. That leaves us with a couple of choices. We could determine that we want to wait and find out what their opinion is. Or we could come up with an opinion. And then if we hear a different opinion from them, then we could reconsider ours. Ms. Krueger. Right. It does raise that because I would prefer to hear from them before we take a position. But I think we could have a little bit of a discussion now. And some of my questions, I want to see that kind of project as well. However, I have trouble changing a bylaw for one agency or one type of development. So if we don't have the bedroom requirement right in our zoning bylaw, then we should fix it. But I'm not sure we should just do it with the caveat that 100% of the units be affordable. There are other combinations of affordable housing that aren't 100%. And it's alluded to in the report, or not alluded to, it says you might want to consider changing that at a future time. Certainly, if it's a Chapter 40B development, it's going to be exempt anyway. But I just wonder if the planning board had looked at what we have now, which probably goes back 20, 25 years. And if it's time to just revisit the bedroom mix issue. I think some of the bedroom mix concern was wanting to make sure that there were some family size units. That's often what it's about. I think for other people, it's not wanting students. So we have a tension between not too many small, not too many big. And it would be great to be able to go ahead with an enhanced SRO type of development. But I'm more wondering about the usefulness of the bedroom mix and the existing bylaw and the best way to fix it. Go ahead. Yeah, that's a good question. We struggled with that as well. We are not sure that the way the bedroom mix is required is right. But we were asked by Valley CDC how this could be possible now. And so rather than go through a long process of actually fixing the apartment saners and additions to make it work better overall, it might take longer than Valley CDC has time. They would like to be able to start this year. They want to combine it with a project in Northampton to get funding. So it's not necessarily the case that it wouldn't happen if it didn't happen now. But now is the time that they want to act. So in order to make that possible, we thought the easiest way to do it would be to allow 100% affordability to have the waiver. We considered 25% or 50% because we would like to be able to waive it for any kind of affordable development. But we were afraid that that would be a harder thing for time being to swallow. We wanted to make it as easy as possible now. And then hopefully we will revisit it later. So if you could help me understand because this is not one that I've had adequate time to prepare thoroughly on. And so I'm sorry if you address this directly in your report and I'm just not reading it carefully enough. So with that caveat, at this time, that an SRO cannot happen. What they are trying to talk about there simply is no possible way to allow for it under existing bylaw. So if a particular project is to happen, we have to allow it somehow. And after much back and forth, you determine that this would be the way to address that project. Acknowledging that there are other larger issues as you just did and as you did in the report, is that accurate to say? This just can't happen unless you do this. And so that would be the risk of not adopting this is that it cannot happen. Is that correct? OK, yes, Ms. Brestrup. The only other way it can happen really is through the comprehensive permit process. And that would take much longer than this process would take. And there is also when with the adoption of this, there is not any place in town where someone could choose to do this without going through a process of special permit or you would. It would be special permit in most cases, a site plan review in the general business district. So this isn't going to just allow someone who happens to have the perfect property for this to just go ahead and just do it. That's not possible. But it enables it to happen under certain conditions. OK, thank you. That's helpful. Yes, Ms. Bader? Well, I'd just like to point out that Ms. Baker is here representing Valley City. See if we had any specific questions about the development project. But it's going back a ways. But I was at a zoning subcommittee meeting where this came up. And Ms. Baker made it clear that one way around this is to do a mix of studio in one bedroom, then you get the mix. But I'll let you speak for yourself, Ms. Baker. But that in this instance, even that change would drive the expenses above what was feasible. And it is true that a Chapter 40B permit is an expensive permit for one to obtain, because the state law prescribes so many different things that have to be done in order to fulfill that. So it sounds like this is somewhat of an action of expediency for something that we want, maybe not the ideal way to deal with our zoning. But anyway, just in case you didn't know that Ms. Baker was here. I mean, this did come up in response to that. If you could please identify yourself into the mic, that'd be great, because not everybody knows you. My name's Laura Baker. I'm the real estate project manager from Valley CDC. This idea did come up in response to one particular property at which the only real barrier to doing the type of housing that we were envisioning is this particular 50% rule. I would suggest that we looked carefully at the zoning bylaws for things that might facilitate creation of affordable housing and really did not find much that would favor that. And so I would suggest that this may be beyond this particular SRO project. Valley CDC is developing a larger building in Northampton now. It's 55 units of affordable housing. And 62% of those are two bedroom units. So it's just one example of a type of affordable housing project that wouldn't meet this standard. And the reason it's designed that way is that's what the market study says. So to have an arbitrary 50% rule that doesn't bear any relationship to market conditions again makes it, it's one more challenge in an already challenging business of trying to site and create affordable housing, especially in a town like Amherst, which has a lot of barriers already that are outside of your control like high market costs, limited stock. So this would just open the door a little bit to make it a little bit easier to do this kind of project. And we believe there has been a pretty well articulated need from a number of different groups in town for this type of housing. And it does not exist currently in town. Thank you, that's helpful. Other questions or comments? Are we comfortable with taking a position prior to housing and sheltering and the trust looking at this? Do we need to bring it back to another agenda? Do we take a position now and then consider revising it if they think of something that we didn't because obviously we look to them on housing issues. For more details, they've been talking about SROs for many years and the need has been well established in any number of studies. I personally am comfortable with this but I want to see where the slug bird's at. I just wonder if we already take our position if that kind of in some ways hampers or skews the conversation they're gonna have tomorrow because the slug bird already unanimously supports this. So whatever you say. So I don't think it really sets us back very far if we postpone because we've already had the discussion. We can hear in writing or through the town manager or Mr. Slater the results of that housing meeting and then we can just go ahead and vote some future time. Take two minutes. That sounds really simple but you know, given that we have old motions on our motion sheet and we have to keep track of things from week to week, I'm just a little hesitant to let go of something that's right in front of us. I get it, but Mr. Vakalman. The only other reason to act tonight would be that that would go into the packet that will go to all town meeting members that you voted affirmatively for this. So that might be a reason not to vote if you were nervous about whether you think Housing and Sheltering was going to support it. I will be at the Housing and Sheltering Committee tomorrow anyway so I can report to you prospectively after that. Not nervous, it's more of a courtesy of sort of letting them have their space to have the conversation. So if we don't vote, what do I put in the packet for tomorrow's mailing that says about this because I would rather not say we didn't decide anything because we didn't talk about it, but yeah. I appreciate what you're saying because we do normally look to them as I'd indicated. Do we have any sense of if they've been talking about this recently, I realize they meet less regularly than we do and so it's difficult to get things on the agenda in a timely fashion prior to town meeting. We don't have a meeting next week and then the following week is week. The week of town meeting. So can we just say postponed? In my previous community, the select men there would say we recommend the advice of the Housing and Sheltering Committee, something like that. As our position, waiting. As your position. Oh wow, now you're asking us to give over our opinion. That's a really, see that takes a whole new direction. To defer to them. We want to hear from them. We are not necessarily ready to defer to them. Madam Chair, we do have many examples where we haven't been able to take a position until. Right, I'm just talking about the simple management of the meeting and how it's not as simple as it appears. That is a difficulty we struggle with. But I won't let us forget that we haven't done Article 35. So how does the rest of the select board feel? Do we feel comfortable? Do we feel better about waiting? I could put that we're waiting to hear from the Housing and Sheltering Committee and our position, our little sheet tomorrow. I mean it's not gonna have long explanations. It's just gonna have yes, no votes, yes. So I would lean toward waiting until we get feedback from them. But I think you could say we're inclined to support this however we do want the feedback from them. You know, in case there's something they surface that hasn't come up with us or in our discussion. So. Okay, does that meet with everyone's approval? On the key at the bottom of the article assignment sheet and this was one used by the Finance Committee a lot is deferred until town meeting. Well, I'm not using that coding for our report. So that is a point of information, yes. But it's not that we're waiting to hear something like financial figures or something or to hear more about a motion that might be happening, but we are in fact waiting to hear from. Is it Housing and Sheltering and the trust? Are they meeting jointly? Yes. Okay. So it'd be both. Okay, great. Again, I will not be able to make it. I understand, but Mr. Bachman just told us. So we will say that we are inclined to support what we wanna wait and hear from them. And so we will postpone consideration of that, or I should say postpone, not necessarily consideration, but we are going to vote on article 35 at our meeting of Monday, April 24th. And it would be helpful if there is anything other than just, yeah, sure, from the Housing and Sheltering Trust if they have anything more than that, that gives them plenty of time to submit that to us that we could then have it to review prior to our meeting of the 24th. So appreciate anything in writing from their 413 meeting. So thank you. And we, I appreciate you being here and speaking to that. So we are now at the point of, we are almost done with planning board articles, as I understand it, other than the planning board's opinion associated with the zoning petition that was submitted by petition, which of course you also have to act on just as on other things. I do not see the petitioner for article 36 and a couple of other petition items here tonight. Do we know if Mr. O'Connor has responded to the written request that we've provided to him? No. He has not responded. Okay. And so we are going to just on the off chance that he shows up in a little while, let's shift things around just a little bit and let's go to article 31, limited release of restriction, which does not have a planning board position on it. But if planning board and wouldn't mind hanging around, we're gonna go ahead and I think we'll try and do 30. I don't wanna mix up my numbers, 36, so that planning board could do that. But I know that the petitioner for article 31 was in a different meeting too, so try and get everything done. And when I say the petitioner for article 31, this is kind of an unusual situation and that it was something that the select board added to the warrant because it was considered time sensitive. It was not a petition in the normal sense of the word. We do have a report associated with article 31 it was in our packet, watch me scramble, yes, we still have lots of paper here on our desk. And so thank you, I appreciate that. We still have lots of paper on our desk associated with everything and we know that you provided that to us and it's right here. Thank you so much. And so this is also in our packet for those of you following along come. And so if you would please identify yourself for the folks at home and tell us about this article. My name is Barry Roberts and I'm talking about a parcel on University Drive. The parcel number is 13B-33. It is located south of the New Market Center and north of 100 University Drive, the office building and 100 University Drive. The reason for us requesting an additional curb cut on University Drive is because of the amount of wetlands that are located in the parcel. The wetlands have all been delineated and approved by the Conservation Commission. But if you look at the little map that I provided or this figure one here, if you prefer, you can see that this is New Market Center over here. This is 100 University Drive over here. And this is one developable site here and this is another developable site there of wetlands, of uplands, excuse me. So the idea would be if we were to able to enter into this site here via University Drive, there would be less intrusion on the wetlands because the other opportunity would be to come across the wetlands here. There is a perennial stream that runs right to the center of here. So talking with Ms. Brewer this morning, she suggested that I go to Conservation Commission first, which I have just come from. They voted to support this unanimously. I can't quote exactly their wording, but they said that this was seen as a less invasive way to enter the site after exploring all other viable opportunities, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm sure they will provide that wording exactly to you. But the consensus is that this makes more sense than trying to come this way. I think you all know the history of University Drive if you want me to go over that, I'm happy to. There were six entrances allowed by town meeting when it was accepted, which already exists. We're asking for one more, which will take a majority of town meeting vote, we understand. This, we believe, is the last developable site on University Drive, so that wouldn't be additional asks, we don't believe. So we ask your support for this. And the warrant article puts it back in your lap after. It gives, the town meeting gives you the authority after we get town meeting approval. It would be at your discretion when you see what we're coming up with. We haven't developed a project yet because it's gonna change depending on how this vote would come out. Thank you. Questions from the select board about what is technically the select board's article at this point. Will you be available to speak to it at town meeting? I plan to, yes. Excellent. We also have our economic development director with us here tonight who said he would be available if we had any questions for him associated with this article. Do we? Oh, and also Ms. Breastrop, if you would like to come forward please and identify yourself in the mic, and thank you. I'm Chris Breastrop, planning director. I just wanted to point out that you have a map on the back of your packets that show in red the six existing access points and in blue the proposed access point. Thank you, that was actually quite helpful of a map. Appreciate that. And I'm now reminded of what happened low these many hours ago, which is that the transportation advisory committee handed me a statement where I was to read, which is that transportation advisory committee is recommending the select board support the deed modification in article 31 and that in the future when details about the actual connection to the road are developed as well as the development that they will want to make further recommendations. And then you said that I've also, we visited the Shade Tree Commission and of course they, as I said, they hate it when any tree has to be caught, we know that, but we think that if we were allowed access here we could achieve it by only having to remove one tree. I also met with Gilford Moran, director of DPW director and Jason Skeels, town engineer, and went over how this would work with the bike path and we came up with some solutions that might be possible to bring the bike path into one lane without destroying any trees. Cause it needs to be one lane when it crosses a driveway. So we would have to do that on both sides of the driveway. Did you get a note from finance committee? We met with them too when they voted to approve it. Thank you. We're supported or sort of. Other? I'm just wondering since we own this article because for the reasons that were already stated, when this comes to town meeting, we can make the motion and of course turn it over to the proponent, but I think it might be helpful to also have a graphic or a map that can be put up that would show people actually kind of how, even if it's a conceptual like what you, something like what you were just describing, here's an entry drive, here's bike path because it's hard for people to mentally see these things. And to just make sure that we have that material or that maybe the planning department can help us with that. So I'm looking at this and I'm seeing a restriction that goes back to 1963, which was 54 years ago if I did the math right. And I think in theory it makes sense to limit curb cuts. There was a concept of how it was envisioned this roadway might work, but things change over time, even wetlands change. So I think with the view that we are using now, what's actually happening on the ground, this makes sense and it is a compliment to what was already approved by town meeting to allow development on this parcel, but I just wanna make sure we get to town meeting that people sort of understand why we're doing this, that it's really clear for everyone that this is the mechanics of allowing what was already approved to go forward. I don't think a lot of people know, general towns people know that when University Drive was conceived that it was a completely different roadway that what's on the ground there now and it was conceived as a bypass all the way down to 116 in South Amherst, I believe. And we know it dead ended at Snow Street for whatever reason. But if I understand it correctly, it was supposed to be a four lane road or the grass median and that made a lot of difference and it was seen as a rapid transit road and that was the reason for limiting the curb cuts. So obviously that's not what it's on the ground there now. Yes. And I believe the Agricultural Commission had already reviewed this because it is agricultural use now. Right. And the town released the 61A. So when this transfers, the seller will be paying the rollback taxes to I believe about $40,000. It's assessed right now on paying taxes I believe at about $3,200. And of course we do a project there then we'll have more taxable property for tax rolls. Thank you. Did you want to start? Okay. Do we have questions from Mr. Kravitz or for the petitioner or the planning director? I actually have a logistical question. Are you currently a town meeting member, Mr. Roberts? I am not. Okay. So one of us should make the motion then and work with the moderator as to how to best transition that then over to Mr. Roberts. Just because our name's on it, I didn't think we had to make the motion but in this case one of us will need to make the motion. Since we're talking about logistics and strategy, would it make more sense to have there someone from this board or maybe Mr. Kravitz give some of that background history and then have Mr. Roberts or his designee come up to explain the details so that we're giving the history that we just described from a more neutral party. I was just asking. I think Mr. Kravitz or Mr. Moreing both know that history pretty well. So either of the one of them could do that. And it would be the idea, why is there a restriction now? And then they say why do we want it lifted because we want to develop this parcel for this? Right. That's the way you're thinking about setting up. Right, to give that overview of the history and then if there's some details about the specific mechanics or the part that Mr. Roberts just presented, then you could come forward, but I think it makes it a little more neutral to have. So it is at this point the town's article to use the staff expertise to present some of the background. So the select board member who volunteers to do this will want to coordinate with the moderator how the moderator wants to make that flow to go back and forth because it is slightly unusual but certainly workable, I'm sure. Figuring out a way to do that. What do you think, what's the best way to approach this? Yeah, I mean, we all get this nice little script later that will tell, but usually it's board after board, petitioner, particular petitioner who's a town meeting member or someone on their behalf making the motion. It's a little unusual to put staff in an earlier slot as opposed to an answering question slot, but it makes sense for exactly the reasons you just said. Mr. Slater. I've been thinking about whether or not I'd be willing to do this and I think I would be willing to speak to it. So we haven't made the motion yet, but whoever decides to do that can throw my name in there. But I think if that were the case, then I'd be willing to sort of give that background because I've heard it twice now because I was at the finance committee when it was discussed. So I've got to memorize now. I haven't got to memorize. Okay, well then that solves the problem. Obviously if there was something I omit or if there's additional questions about that sort of historical question, obviously Mr. Kravitz or Mr. Moran could step in at that point, but that kind of resolves that. Great, then we don't have to make it more complicated than it really is. Excellent. So I'm happy to sort of lay out that history of what would have been kind of a New Orleans boulevard kind of street if it had been built as original. Boulevard that never was. It never was. I think the other critical piece, if I may just to continue about this, that I think is important to stress to town meeting is that there's no known development yet and that can't happen good or bad. So there's no thumbs up, thumbs down about what goes on the land because they can't get there to do that yet. So it's really about like I say sort of following up on the original intent of changing the zoning on that piece of property to allow development, but then also this is in a sense the same sort of thing as like, oh, this is one more sort of technical step to allow for the exploration of what possibilities exist there or could exist there, I should say. Great, Mr. Steinberg. Yeah, I mean, I just think we should do this because it didn't recommend this because town meeting has already rezoned it and we've already released the 61A. And ultimately then with the question is to what way can those purposes be effectuated in the most ecologically friendly manner and the conservation commission is the body that we entrust to make those decisions and they have done so. So I think we should just go ahead and make a motion which I'm willing to do to move to recommend to the April 26, 2017 annual town meeting article 31, limited release of restrictions. Mr. Slaughter, to speak to the article on behalf of the select board. Second. Further discussion. I'd just like to make one point to what you said. Comcom said obviously we will be going back to them with any project that we develop and so they wanted to make it perfectly clear that they don't know what we're proposing it, nor do we. So but they like the idea that it's less invasive this way than that way. Thank you, appreciate that. Is this a simple majority? And I mean, I don't mean at select board, I mean at town meeting, sorry for the question. Okay, any further discussion? Then all those in favor please say aye. Aye. And that passes unanimously. So thank you. And thank you to the people for being here to speak to that. And speaking of quantum of vote, is it accurate to say that the, and Mr. Wald would know the answer to this too. The local historic district, is that a two thirds vote of town meeting? There was some question about that earlier. It is two thirds, correct? So that's the, that town meeting has to approve that by two thirds, as opposed to a majority. There was a question about it at one point and I'm just not, I just like to be able to tell people the right answer when they ask me. And I'm not sure if it was in our materials. Do you happen to know, Ms. Brestrup? Not that it's your area that you're supposed to know about, but if you happen to know. I don't know and the script is blank in that location. We have majorities written for it, but we'll confirm that tomorrow. Yeah, it would be good to know that before tomorrow. And I'm sorry, I didn't think to ask the planner who worked with the committee on that because they could probably have answered the question. Oops, I knew I had another question I wanted to ask. Okay, so moving to another article. We, I said that we would come back to the other issue that the planning board has written a report on as they are do and have hearings and do the whole process associated with petition articles associated with zoning. And so that brings us to article 36. The petitioner has not arrived. We suspect the petitioner is not coming because he has not responded in any way, shape or fashion to his invitation to come. And so we are going to assume that means he does not intend to show up. And then if you could just tell us, Mr. Crowner about your report, that would be helpful. Okay, so first let me summarize what the article does. It would rezone five parcels on the north side of Coles Road in North Amherst from commercial to a line residential and one parcel on Sunderland Road from commercial to low density residential. All of those parcels happen to be owned by the same property owner and it was represented at the planning board that the reason for the petition article is to provide balance, as they say, to the North Square project that has been proposed and permitted for a parcel that the property owner also owns. Planning board, there are a number of problems with the article, the planning board did not support the article. First of all, there was no planning process that arrived at, that explored the zone, explored the parcels, tried to determine the correct or inappropriate zone for the article, for the parcels. So and if there had been, it seemed to us unlikely that the zones that were chosen would have been chosen in a normal planning process. In fact, the planning board did go through a process a number of years ago for those parcels and the other parcels in North Amherst and came up with a different proposal for those zones, for those parcels. It would also be problematic in that it would create a patchwork of zones along Coles Road and along Sunderland Road in a weird way. Coles Road is currently, part of it is neighborhood residential and then the rest of it is commercial. If this were to change, on Coles Road, you would have neighborhood residential, then comms parcel and then several RO parcels and then another comm parcel, another few comm parcels. On Sunderland Road, you would have just two parcels but the way they're laid out, they actually would create a jagged effect of comm, RLD, comm, RLD, comm. It's very strange because of the parcel that is proposed to be changed, wraps around another parcel there. And that parcel on Sunderland Road actually has, is actually now crosses three zones, it crosses the comm zone, it crosses the FPC zone and crosses and RN zone, I forget what, RN. So the way the article is written, it's not really clear which of those are proposed to be changed or all of them. And so we are hopeful that a motion under the article will clear that up. In any case, the planning board didn't support the article. Thank you and so I wanna clarify, I'm trying to do too many things at once which was also checking the Finance Committee position which isn't listed here but I believe we do know the answer to based on the previous chart we have which is that they voted for zero to not recommend that they had three people absent. So looking at your report as I had asked about earlier in terms of the public response which you often do cover in your process part of the report and this specifically states that no one spoke in favor of the article. It also indicates the petitioner was not present. So we have a situation where a petitioner gathered signatures in order to put something on the warrant that we are required to put on the warrant because the appropriate number of signatures were gathered. The petitioner has not responded to a request to come before the select board. The petitioner did not choose to attend the noticed planning board hearing on this issue although we certainly have read some newspaper coverage of what the motivations were behind this. So this is all very vague at this point. We do have an email that was sent to us which I asked to have added because it was inadvertently omitted from our packet which has been added to our desks tonight that is from Michael Pill representing Cinejones, Devin Jones and W.D. Coles that has I believe also already been uploaded to our packet for tonight so that people can take a look at that. That item will not be in the town meeting mailing but of course the planning board report will be as town meeting members would expect. So we are in a rather odd position here. Is there anyone from the public who had intended to speak to this issue? Okay, good and then Mr. Crownard did you have something you wanted to add at this point? I want to say the petitioner did attend a zoning subcommittee meeting and we had an extensive discussion at that time. So that was where you heard from the petitioner at previous time. Okay, great. And once you get settled in at the mic if you would please identify yourself and try and keep it to approximately three minutes. Thank you. Good evening. Molly Lockwood vice president of real estate development at real estate and community development actually at WD Coles. Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity just to say a few words. You've had Michael Pills memo for a while. I don't want to recap what's already in there but just want to thank Mr. Crownard for going over in his review of the planning board recommendation which we also support obviously. Just a couple of things to point out from our thoughts and concerns about what we see is a poor planning effort for North Amherst which has already been pointed out by the planning board. But also that it's the disappointment of the time and money that will be spent if this were to pass a town meeting being that our position is it's not a legally defensible position and also that it ultimately will not change the zoning of those parcels because of the subdivision process it's open to us to use through the subdivision, Massachusetts subdivision laws. So if anything it might be an expedite development there to be commercial development versus changing it to residential. So just thinking about the overall growth of Amherst and how much land is left for commercial development. Already we have over 60% of the land is we all know is already protected in some way or institutionally owned and then over 90% of the tax base is residential so there's just very little opportunity for mixed use development in the business districts and there's just very few commercial lots left. The planning board staff included in its packet to planning board a lot of maps that we had looked at about showing the history of the area how has been commercial and industrial for over 100 years how those parcels are already degraded in many areas because of the industrial uses that have happened there. So and also we're, you know as Mr. Crown already pointed out where those parcels are surrounded by other commercial uses already. So thank you, that's it. Thank you. Questions or comments from the select board? Are we ready for a motion? And we can always have more discussion after that. I will mention the, as I said before I was at the finance committee meeting for another reason when article 31 came up but also this one came up and the petitioner was at that meeting and I think that the characterizations the planning board has in their report sort of sufficiently capture the intentions of the petitioner. So I don't think there's any news that we don't have in hand as far as the intent. So we're not guessing it's, okay, thank you. That's good to know. Other comments or questions from the select board? Is someone ready to make the motion? I have a comment. Yes, it could be after the motion or before but I think we've seen tonight, zoning isn't this pure abstract thing. It has a context just as we talked about the bedroom mix. There's things that are happening around us that we're responding to. And everybody, Mr. Crowner and Ms. Lockwood were very rational in giving some information, some history about why this doesn't make sense from a planning perspective. This kind of petition article makes me mad. I think this is grudge zoning and attempted grudge zoning that people were unhappy, that the Beacon Communities Project was supported and was approved by our zoning board of appeals by this board and other committees and boards. And this is some kind of a statement or a retaliation back. And I have a real problem with having to spend time responding to this kind of a grudge zoning attempt that does allow the petitioner to get up before meeting and other committees and voice some displeasure with that outcome. But to pretend there isn't a context to where this is coming from, I think isn't something I wanna pretend to be part of. This, I am adamantly opposed to this rezoning. Thank you. Would you also like to make the motion? Sure. I move to recommend dismissal to the April 26th, 2017 annual town meeting, article 36, zoning petition, amend designation of Coles Road Lots. And I'm worried if I were the one to speak to it, I might lose my Coles, so maybe somebody else, because we're not supposed to talk about motivation and intent when we're moderators, it's not like that. Okay, so first of all, do we have a second, even though we don't have any money? All right, so. I guess I have a question on the motion and that is recommending dismissal but since dismissal is a majority vote and if it's not dismissed, we wanna have also say dismissal or recommend against. Right, so. I saw modified the motion. So we could say to not recommend or recommend dismissal since those are our standard phrases, not recommend or recommend. In the second or concurrence. We will not, however, make the motion ourselves to dismiss. We, at this time, we do not expect to be in that position as opposed to some other article, like the Peg Access article that we talked about, where we can make the motion to dismiss it. Because it's, when it's our, that's our position. Right, exactly. So, exactly. Just to clarify, the motion is to not recommend or recommend dismissal than the rest of the motion, right? Yes, right. So either not recommend or recommend, so whichever way, whichever comes up first, that's how we're doing basically, and then the alternate one. And I really don't wanna make things even more confusing but now that I'm looking at my notes on article 20, what I was just referring to it, where we are actually gonna make the motion to dismiss because it is in fact our article and we will make that motion, is that, who is speaking to that? Who is making that motion to dismiss article 20? Did we, did we breeze right past that? Must be you. I'll swatter. I think I said yes. Okay, you were just trying to hope maybe I had. We didn't write that down. Okay, that makes sense to me, but I wanted to double check. So although we can, of course, not to confuse the public even more than I just have, we can, of course, choose to make a motion to dismiss on an article that's not ours, would we choose to do so? That is not what we are doing in this case. We, in this case, are either saying we don't recommend voting for this or we would go along with a motion. We would vote positively on a motion to dismiss. Does anyone want to speak to this? Does anyone have an opinion, and parenthetically, does anyone have an opinion as to whether or not we should have anyone speak to this or we should just tell the moderator those are our positions? Just have a question for Mr. Bachmann. We have the letter from Attorney Bill has, if the answer's no or you feel you can't answer the question, either one's okay, but if we heard anything from our own town council that we might want to consider too. We have not heard on this opinion. He will be here tomorrow morning, so we can ask him a question then. So let me ask the question, a different variation of that question, because that was an important question, so thank you. A different variation on that question. If this zoning passed at town meeting, and of course every zoning article is difficult because it's two thirds, but if this passed at town meeting, given the information we've already received, and we know there are lawsuits over zoning bylaws all the time, it's a regular occurrence, but given that, is there a reason for us not to say anything in terms of keeping ourselves in a neutral, not having added to any fuel to the fire associated with a future lawsuit is there any particular reason we should not speak? No, I think you can take a position as you see fit, and then it's up to you in terms of if there is a lawsuit, how you defend that lawsuit. Okay. Spruer, yes. I feel like it's important for the board to have a stated position, it could be, I think this is something I would like us to take a position on and make a statement about, even if it's somewhat brief, I don't want to suggest. I don't want to be identified as my issue per se, but I think it's important to have a statement. But you would rather we didn't just tell the moderator to go ahead and report out on. So I would suggest, I'll speak to it if Ms. Gruber would be willing to work with me on the comments a little bit because I have some thoughts myself, but I think this could be one where we want to strike a good balance, I think. Because I think there's points to be made, but we also don't want to... Inflame. Yeah, get onto topics that are broader than what this is particularly about. Be short. But at the same time, there are pointed points that could be made. Thank you, and thank you for volunteering and thank you to the two of you for working together on that. So, further questions or discussion before we come to a vote to not recommend or recommend dismissal, depending on the will of town meeting, what comes first. Okay, then. All those in favor of that motion, please say aye. Aye, aye. And that is unanimous. Thank you. That is helpful. Okay, where are we? Are we at? We do have a couple more petitioner articles from that petitioner, but they are not associated with zoning issues and the planning board. So, I believe the planning board's all finished. Thank you so much, planning board, for coming tonight and planning staff. We can now move at last to article... Wait for it, wait for it. 28% for art. Are we ready for that? Okay, so before we do that, I know it's like, you gotta, it's so close. We're gonna take less than five minute recess, but then you can go ahead and get settled in at the mic when you're ready, but you don't have to go there the second. So, we are gonna take a very brief recess and then we are gonna return. And Amherst Media, you can leave everything on. Everyone be aware that your mics are live and we will go to article 28 when we get back. It's brody. Keep track of that two-thirds issue because that could influence our position as well. So, it's in our little sort of prep packet that we, I just got before we came down here. Deborah, it says majority, but it couldn't be majority. It's like zoning, right? Right. I mean, Joel, my notes from the last review say, Joel was gonna check. Jeff looked it up. Yeah. That makes sense. So, Mr. Slaughter, thank you for mics. You're still live. I know, I know that. That's how I'm walking all the way over there. I look at my pile here and I'm like, Mary's gonna say, come on, go, go. And I'll be like, I don't know where to put it. Just turn it over back and start it at home. But then sort it at home.  She has to set this meeting up for the recount tomorrow. This room up for the recount tomorrow. Exactly. There's five stations. That's a part of her saying, and Jennifer's saying that you take back to stuff and you start the meeting, you watch TV or, in my case, you put it off for years and years. So, this is going in the mailing, but the petitioners withdrawing it. I'm a little confused by that. It is what it is. It's like, oh, it's the same thing. It's a little bit, not urgent. It's not urgent. Okay. If we want to. Do it now. It's not urgent. This has the detail on it. That's what I was trying to be clear. You might not look at that till right before it happens. Well, right. It's just, we're early with the information, right? We're ready for it. I think you put it on the consent calendar anyway, which is where it normally goes. Yes. All right, so we're all back. Thank you, everyone, for being patient, especially to the Public Art Commission. If you would please, go ahead and identify yourself for the folks at home, and you have up to five minutes to give us a presentation, and then we'll ask you a bunch of questions. Okay, fine. Good evening. My name is Eric Brody, and I'm a member of the Public Art Commission that is bringing in this article to town meeting. I know you're familiar with the article from last year's presentation, so I'm going to focus my briefing marks on the revisions that we made, and leave lots of time for questions. There were three areas of concern that were expressed at last year's town meeting. One, being the omission of performing arts as eligible for percent funding. The second was the concern that the town manager had final say over the art itself. And third, the additional cost of taxpayers or added taxes, some put it from the program. Additional