We're recording. Please go ahead. >> Thank you. Hello everybody. It is it is April 9, 2026. This is a regular meeting of the community resources committee of the town council. Um let's see. I don't
have my I don't have my uh my my Anyway, welcome. Um, you can access this meeting by remote means if you go to the town website link. I don't have my text in front of me. So, we're going to move on. Let's
call the meeting to order. Um, it is 102 and U. Councelor Walker, can you hear us? >> Yes. >> Mandy Johann >> present. Um, Andy Churchill.
>> Yes. Pam Rooney is present. We are waiting for Jennifer Ta, but we will get started. Um, there are no public hear and there's Nate. There are no public hearings today. So, we're going to move to item three, which is general public comment.
If there is anyone in the audience who would like to speak, please raise your hand. I see one hand raised. Um, this would be public comments on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC. You're welcome to express your thoughts
for up to three minutes and we will not be holding a dialogue on any uh on any matter raised during public comment. So when I call on you, please state your full name and where you live. I have Jim Jamal Mcquid raising a hand.
Jamal, come on in. Jamal, can you uh unmute? >> Hi Jamal, can you hear us? >> Athena, is there some way to help? >> They put their hand down. So maybe let's move on to Ranata and come back. >> Okay. All right. Let's go to Ranata. Hi Ranata.
>> You can unmute yourself and in on that. >> Welcome. >> Hi. >> Hello. Can you hear me? >> Yes, we can. Please, please go ahead. >> Hi. Um, because we're discussing um solar uh I mean the energy bylaw.
Is there uh any consideration into plug-in panels? I've been hearing a lot about that and it works really well in Germany and there are companies doing this in the US. Some of them are uh trying to get UL certified and I just
want to make sure that there's no barriers for us to have that in our houses. Um you know cuz Ammerst put barriers on everything. So I just want to make sure that you don't. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you. We'll we'll explore that get back to you on that. Is Jamal able to attend? Jamal has disappeared. Um I would like to make a comment that that um following the presentation I
would be willing to open up the floor for public comment um for a short period after the presentation by thinker if no one has an objection to that.
So, we'll move on to action items and we are very happy to welcome Peter Flinker and Dylan Susman from Flinker Associates. Um, and we've got Nate Mallaloy to introduce them, I think. Go ahead. And
we're we're looking at, you know, to 45 minutes to an hour of presentation if that's needed, uh, with some time for for questions from the committee and or the public. >> Sure. Thanks, Pam. Hi, everyone. name Malloya planner with the town. Yeah,
Dodson Flinker will give a presentation of the downtown design standards and then you know we can have public comment and questions. You know, I would encourage committee members in the public listening. There's a web page in the planning department and there's an online form to use and it does ask specifically you know how, you know,
what areas of the of the standards you have questions on or comments and we we want to pe want people to use those forms because, you know, then it's in the same structure and we can it's easier for the consultants. We'll still accept emails, but you know, if you can put them in the forums, that's great. Uh the standards have been, you know, you
know, almost two years in the making. So although this is kind of the first public viewing with the CRC, you know, Dawson and Flinker has been working with, you know, a working group in the town for a while. Um there's an open house last month. They presented to the planning board. Uh they will be presenting to the commissions for
persons with disabilities next week and the historical commission. And then there'll be, you know, uh, synthesis of all the comments received and then perhaps an updated draft uh, in a few months and then, you know, another round of, uh, public comment and input. Uh, so, you know, this is kind of the first
chance for the CRC and as I told the planning board, you know, the idea would be that this could be on the agenda after the consultants are here for the CRC to talk about it. Um, you know, there's a lot of information, right? there's a lot of lot of lot of lot of material there and so you know feel free to discuss it without them and staff can
be here to help and also you know to relay any comments or concerns. So the planning board did that last night um you know for 45 minutes and has some some questions and comments and so I'll that'll be relayed to Peter and Dylan. Um so yes I'll just I can turn it over to them um if there's any general
questions about the process or anything um you know I could pause now for that. >> Sure. Any any anyone have comments or questions? I don't see anybody raising their hand. Let's go.
All right. Um, yeah. So, I think Peter's going to start off the presentation, but before we did that, I just wanted to check if we've done the presentation a few times. I know I saw some of you at the um the open house kickoff meeting. is how many of you have have saw have
seen a previous version of this presentation? So, Pam and Andy. Okay, >> we do have people in the public in the audience though who may not have seen it and would appreciate >> Okay. >> understanding the the full depth of it. >> All right. So, we'll go through the the
full thing. Um I'm going to scare share my screen if that is an option. It looks like it is. >> All right. Good afternoon everyone. It's great to be here finally being able to present the final draft of some of these
ideas for your consideration. Uh we're going to do a quick overview of sort of the process that we went through and then present the three different elements of the the design standards. Um, as you probably know, there's
currently u design review um, standards from some decades ago that are support the work of the design review board jurisdiction in there that outline in blue is sort of the core of the area that we're working with, but it
was expanded to sort of include some of the logical adjoining blocks. Next slide, please. Um, among the things we did was look at the implications of the current zoning for sort of future development. We sort
of carefully mapped out how much you could build on each lot and what it might look like. Um, next slide. Uh we also did uh measured cross-sections and other sort of inventory work on the main street
because part of this project was to look at both the sort of what we call the private realm of the private lots adjacent to North Pleasant Street and the other streets and then also the public realm um with a focus on updating the streetscape design standards. So
part of that was looking carefully is exactly how do the how are the streets and sidewalks and um planters and ramps and so on working now in different areas. And what we discovered, spoiler alert, is that there's a lot of
diversity. Um and so part of the final recommendations is to simplify and sort of unify the standards throughout the downtown. Next slide. Uh we also did a fair amount of public outreach including sort of field
outreach at the farmers market um where we heard from individuals about their vision for downtown Ammerst. We also had some public workshops. Uh we're starting with a sitewalk on a
beautiful late summer day, walking up and down different groups, talking about what works and what doesn't work in the downtown. We always find it's really good to start with sort of listening to people's uh concerns about the place where they live and work. And that
continued with an evening workshop sort of focusing on again what works and what doesn't work, what needs to be preserved and what needs perhaps to be changed. And that was followed on the next day by a visioning workshop. Um
whereas some of you recall, we brought a big model of sort of the core areas of the downtown and let people manipulate buildings to sort of experiment with what would happen if you fill in some of the gaps along the street, some of the parking lots with new buildings that
could bring um more sort of continuous activity to the to the street. And then what would be the implications for parking? Where would you put the parking? How would you get around town downtown? We found that was really uh
really helpful as we move forward. Next slide. Uh we did a visual what's so-called visual preference survey which is basically asking people to look at photographs and comment on whether they thought this was a good fit for downtown
Ammerst or not. So we had 377 responses to a survey about building design and 252 responses for design of streetscapes. Some of the results um predictably uh
perhaps people really responded most favorably to fairly traditional building styles including some of the historic buildings shown at the upper left there. Um for contemporary buildings, they preferred those perhaps that are still
reflect sort of the shape and scale of traditional buildings. And the ones which they like least going down to the lower right there are ones which are you know a little bit more uh I guess regimented and contemporary. Um
and so based on this we um try to distill you know what are some of the principles behind what people like and don't like in the downtown. The next slide. Uh this is visual preference survey of sort of outdoor designs and along the
streetscape and and again um I think what we concluded is that people like active lively streets where there's a lot to see and do uh but which are well organized where you can walk easily um through this environment but there's
clearly places to sit good access to buildings and a lot to as I said a lot to see and do and enjoy there and a lot of shade as well. Um, as you know, we've been meeting over
the course of almost two years with an ad hoc committee or working group that included uh representatives from lots of different um institutions and and representatives of different constituencies within the town, from
residents to developers from Emer College and the university. Um and we found had really great discussions I thought over the course of that time. I think it really it bore out the uh the
idea behind it which is to get a have a place where you could talk openly and objectively about issues before you have to make decisions. uh which I think resulted in what we hope is uh kind of a balanced plan for
growth and and continued success in downtown Ammerst. We uh based on all of this feedback, we sort of diagrammed out sort of the simple principles of what we heard, some of the strengths of the downtown. um the historic buildings around the common,
the common itself and the other parks, Kendrick Park and Sweetzer Park. uh the fact that it's very walkable now with a lot of interesting things to look at and uh the including the town buildings sort of at the core of North Pleasant Street
uh corridor and uh the nice streetscapes, places where people like to sit, a lot of nighttime activity and the fact that there's a lot of people who live and work in the downtown and around it which really adds to the the vibrancy. See,
next one. Some of the weaknesses. Um, as you can imagine, sort of empty spaces that are filled with cars. In many cases, people people realize they need parking. They want to have parking nearby, but nobody
wants to look at it. Um, some people focus that North Pleasant Street corridor is kind of chaotic, particularly if you're on a bicycle. It's a lot of traffic. It's not very wide. Uh, and there's a lot going on and there are challenging intersections especially for people
walking and and biking. People pointed out the lack of a grocery store, uh, the lack of u sort of consistency in the streetscape, perhaps too many curb cuts, awkward and unused terraces in front of business businesses, and inconsistency
between the newer and the older buildings. and the fact that um some areas are too dark and the adjacent neighborhoods are not necessarily well connected. Next slide. Some of the opportunities uh are really
focused on taking some of those empty parking lot spaces and some of the less historic buildings and u finding opportunities to create more places for people to live and work. uh to improve the functionality of the parking and
have better outdoor spaces. And then along North Pleasant Street to create more room for pedestrians and bicyclists. Uh that said, our recommendations really focus on the design of the sidewalk space between the curb and the
buildings. We did not address the design of the street itself. So, we're not going to talk about on street parking or bike lanes. and we didn't have any real recommendations for that as part of our our concluding report. Um
just just to jump in here and the reason for that is because when you get into designing the street it's a more complicated engineering process that was basically just beyond the scope of the project. So, um, if you want to talk about bike lanes, um, especially bike
lanes that might be grade separated at the level of a sidewalk or something like that, you might get into moving curbs and drainage and and it quickly becomes a very complicated process. So, we focused on the space between the existing curves in the front of the buildings for the public realm design,
>> right? And then a lot of focus u of the project was on sort of what's the existing and future character of downtown Ammerst. Um the current guidelines and and the zoning as well really what one of the things it says is well when you're building a new building
make it fit into the context of what around what's around it. And then what we discovered uh is that there are many contexts in terms of design in downtown Ammerst from the historic center around the common to know contemporary
buildings the north end and pretty much everything you can imagine in between. So this u next slide please. This sort of led to a some diagrams really showing how that that works where
we have sort of a solid traditional area in the lower lower left there around the common. We have in the north a very sort of modern block between East Pleasant Street and Triangle Street. We have sort of cozy
residential block on the west side of Kendrick Park. And in between there's sort of a mix of a very funky sort of mixed uh retail commercial area and then something which we call the hinge which is kind of the space where the churches
and the post office really create a a literally a hinge between the historic downtown and the northern end of the downtown. Then this sort of became the basis of how we're shaping the the guidelines. So was sort of carried forth into what
we're calling character zones. Um again the sort of lower left the downtown traditional main street area um which is sort of the historic core surrounding the comet. um what we're calling the downtown village, which is in purple,
which is kind of a transitional scale in between the larger buildings uh in the core and the more residential blocks around it. And then um what we call the downtown modern Main Street which is the the block again between
North Pleasant Street and Triangle Street which has the newer contemporary buildings but really has been in transition since after World War II properly. It was a lot of sort of automobile related uses ever since that time and now is becoming something else
again. And then finally, uh, what we call the downtown neighborhood, which is then the green, which are these little less dense blocks, uh, west of Kendrick Park and on some of the outskirts of the other blocks where you have a mix of of
uses u, but generally more green space. And part of that is because um, there's some wetlands in the back. There's also large deep lots where the front of the lot is developed and the back of the lot is vacant.
Next slide please. So we developed um the design standards in three volumes and the first one is sort of the overall context and vision. The second is the design standards for the private development and the third is
design standards for the public realm. And we wanted to start with the vision because um what we find frequently doing design standards if you don't know what you want even if you have very specific design standards for individual elements
like the design of a building or tree plantings or so on it's very hard for people to um review development effectively. And we find that having a clear vision um that's stated really develops the
principles behind the design standards and gives you a touchstone. So when someone comes forward with a building and you say no, we really want to have a wide sidewalk in front of this building and they say, "All right, I don't want to do that." Uh you can refer to the vision uh as well as the standards
themselves. So, it's not just we want a 10-ft sidewalk, but it's we want a 10-ft sidewalk because we're trying to achieve this vision for our downtown. And so, we'll talk about how that's that's set up within these three volumes.
Uh the first is sort of includes the sort of existing conditions analysis and then a vision for each of the sub areas within the downtown. And this can be used uh to guide applicants during the design process. And it can also be used by boards during discretionary reviews
especially the the design review board uh whose standards are really about largely about fitting into the context. So again the vision describes um how the what that context is is meant to be in
the future and it potentially could be adopted as the rules and regulations of the planning board. the ZBA and the design review board. Next is volume two which is the
design standards for the sort of private private lots and this includes zoning dimensions and use standards, building design standards, site sign and lighting standards. And it's really again uh meant to provide sort of more objective
information that can guide applicants during their design process and then be used by the planning board and ZBA during the site plan and special permit review as well as by the design review board and potentially can be adopted um well some parts of it will need to be
adopted into the zoning um to sort of bring the zoning in alignment with the vision. Others could be adopted into zoning or the rules and regulations of the planning board and ZBA and could be adopted by the design review board. So the the first volume is
is basically the here's where we're trying to go. The second volume is meant to be more of a a checklist of specific standards for different elements that people can say have you done this yes or no. Then the third volume is really focused
on the uh public realm. Again, the as Dylan said, the design of the space between the front of the buildings and the curb uh including the sidewalks and street trees and furnishings and so on. Um probably going to be used most directly by the DPW when making
improvements downtown, uh but also can be applied to development projects when they're going to be digging up that space between the building and the curb. potentially could be adopted by the DPW andor by the town council.
So the um I'm going to talk about the first volume and then Dylan will review volumes two and three. So this volume starts with a history of the downtown terms of sort of design
context because a lot of that is sort of based on the very historic 19th century primarily uh downtown design. On the lower right you see a image that talks about when buildings were constructed
and you can see around the common it was pretty consistently in the 1830s to the 1890s 1915. Um, and then as you go north, there are newer buildings, again, post-war buildings in orange between 1946 and
1968, including that block, much of the block east of Kendrick Park. And then the newest buildings in in yellow, which includes some of the new apartments on that block, as well as, you know, the Bank Center and some of the other
buildings around the outskirts of the downtown. Next slide. Um, so we looked at the sort of pattern of development in the the private realm, which included sort of looking at
existing massing and fenestration, how buildings are designed currently in the downtown and what elements they share, like windows being lined up in rows and columns, that sort of thing. uh we looked at the the way that buildings enclose the space along the
street. You know, what are the setbacks? How tall are the buildings and what does that resulted in in terms of the experience of the street? Next slide. Um we took you know based on all the
discussion at the workshops and with the working group um we'll read all the fine print here but basically developed a written vision again as sort of overall guidance for where we want to go with the downtown includes elements of uh
being community oriented oriented welcoming accessible comfortable livable prosperous and uh resilient. And uh a lot of good information there when you have time.
Next slide. Um this is the existing zoning map. As I said, part of of this is thinking about how zoning is going to have to change, but currently there's um sort of pre-existing zones, which I
think we're very conscious that there was a lot of discussion that went into the current sounding, but big picture is sort of a core mixeduse district along North Pleasant Street and then districts with somewhat less density surrounding
that to create a transition between the the activity along the North Pleasant Street and the surrounding neighborhoods. And that was a theme that continued throughout all of our discussions uh with the working group and the public and is part of our
recommendations sort of continue that pattern. Next slide. Uh this is the existing overlaid with some of the proposed changes. So from the basically the the general business zone, we're
proposing divide it into two uh areas. One is sort of the traditional core um to the south and then this modern sort of main street to the north, that block between North Pleasant Street and Triangle Street. And then to modify
the the pattern a little bit, changing some of those interior blocks from the BL to what we're calling the downtown village and then changing the RG a little bit which we'll show in some
subsequent slides. Um but first I want to talk about the sort of vision for each of the sort of downtown subd districts. Uh the first one is the traditional main street district and the intent there is really continue more of what works very well in
that buildings close to the sidewalk, a wide comfortable sidewalk with places to sit, places to eat outdoors, trees and attractive street furnishings and a lot of transparency on the ground floor. The next slide.
Um, one of the things we did was explore potential development, redevelopment of some of the blocks in each of these zones. So, this is on the upper left. There is the main corner of the main street, North Pleasant Street, and Amity Street. Uh, with a key building, the
Bank of America as it is now in the upper right. and then the lower right sort of a potential redevelopment under the um recommended vision. So the idea is basically to continue the pattern of
the existing 19th century buildings um around that corner to really create a more substantial and um I won't I won't claim that it's more attractive, but something that uh really fits the context I think a little bit
better. Um and part of that is just doing some simple things which are elucidated in the design standards like lining up buildings in or lining up windows and doors in regular rows and columns. Uh to have again an open
transparent ground floor that would be good for business and add life and interest to the pedestrian experience. And then to do some simple things like stepping back the top floor a little bit to prevent um the kind of looming facade
that you sometimes can get when a building is right on the sidewalk with five stories. And one thing to keep in mind is that um currently under the current zoning you can build a five-story building right on the sidewalk with no setbacks and no
stepbacks in the upper part. Um, so this is again sort of recommending some simple changes which we think can help new buildings fit a little bit better into the current historic pattern of the downtown. Um, one of the things to keep
in mind too is that these these are just imaginary scenarios. They're meant to to demonstrate the principles and the ideas in the vision and the design standards, but they're certainly not required uh for any land owner, including the Bank
of America, to build this building. Uh that will have to they will have to comply with the zoning. Uh but the design and the whether or not they decide to ever change that building is entirely up to the the individual owners.
Next slide. So each of these uh sort of sections has what we call precedent imagery including in that case you know the Ammerst house which used to sit on that corner a very um interesting 4 and a half story building and then we have precedents
from other places like on the lower left a building that's fairly contemporary in its design but reflects a lot of the historic again the historic patterns with um you know material s and windows and doors and transparency that
basically, you know, would be recognizable to someone 150 years ago. And then on the right, some examples of um shady, attractive, walkable uh streetscapes sort of show where we're trying to go
with all of downtown Ammerst. Next slide. Uh this is um again the other end of North Pleasant Street between Kendrick Park and uh Triangle Street. It's this
area we're calling call calling modern Maine. And here you know the overall massing is basically the same you know four and fivetory buildings. Um but sort of recognizing that this area has been in transition for a long time. it
already has got some very interesting contemporary architecture is to sort of continue that pattern. Um, but do it in a way that's perhaps less blocky. Uh, that has a little bit wider sidewalks, a little bit more of a setback from the
buildings and buildings that step back on the upper story again to create a little bit more um sort of light and and space along the streetscape. And um sort of that combined with as you see here a lot of interesting
streetscape materials, places for dining, places to sit and a lot of trees uh to really make something that again complements the the traditional character around the common uh but also is you know can be very contemporary and interesting in its own way.
Next slide. Oops. Right. So then in between is is something we're calling the downtown village. Um and that's sort of represented by the lower left there, which is the corner of Cow's Lane and
North Pleasant Street. Um, so it's sort of replacing, you know, one and twotory buildings with something that might be three and a half or four stories, but doing it in a way that reflects more of the, you know, what we call the the scale and proportions and character of
the surrounding residential blocks. So basically uh there's been a lot of interesting experimentation with this in recent years, but it's basically taking you know residentially scaled components like a three and a half story building with as you see in that image at the
lower left but then combining those together into a larger structure. Um and then some of the precedents include examples um which really show what the intent is which is to combine the buildings and the open space to continue
the kind of interesting experience that is in that area right now. A lot of people really love sitting in that sort of sunny side of the street enjoying enjoying a cup of coffee. there's a lot of greenery and so the idea is to you know allow the buildings to be a little
bit better bigger um if not and hopefully better um but also maintain a lot of that greenery and outdoor space. So the next slide shows you know again two different alternatives for for that block between
Koh's Lane and Hock Street. Um and sort of one of the ideas is to have somewhat smaller more complex buildings along North Pest Street to continue the existing pattern of buildings. But maybe because you have
some room behind that, you could have a larger building with an interior garage as shown in the lower left. You could have town houses or somewhat larger apartment buildings on the upper right. Um but the idea is to show that you know across this range of building types and
and changes in density there are some things we want to hold on to which is buildings that have again the massing and the roof lines that reflect more of the residential context and a lot of attention to outdoor space to sort of
continue that wonderful you know interior spaces that are found in a lot of the blocks on the downtown where you can sort of go in between buildings and discover for, you know, interior spaces, places to sit, um because that's part of what makes the downtown interesting and
lively. Next slide. Um and then this I think is the final area which we're calling the downtown neighborhood is shown in green on the in the upper left there. Biggest biggest
block is the one um west and north of Kendrick Park. and then some of the outlining areas to the south of that. But again here the it's kind of the same idea a little bit smaller scale try to
have you know encourage new development and allow a sort of modest increase in density but in a way that really reflects again what's going on in the surrounding residential neighborhoods. So on the upper right, that's a simulation showing
sort of in the back of the existing structures a new row of buildings. Again, in some of those deep lots, there's a lot of room for buildings which could be lined up along the open space with parking in between. And part
of the idea that we're promoting is instead of everyone having their own driveway and their own parking lot, you connect the parking lots together with interior driveways that cross the lot lines. And that allows you to close off some of the curb cuts, the driveways
that are coming out on North Pleasant Street, and replace those with attractive buildings and places for people to sit and greenery. Um, so again, it's sort of trying to maintain the best parts of of that
neighborhood, but also allow some growth that's going to, you know, allow for housing that people need, uh, but also encourage people to replace some of the the buildings that should be replaced um over time.
And some of the imagery for that is sort of a simulation on the upper left. Again, the idea is to use kind of a residential scale for buildings which, you know, they may be larger than a single house would be, but they look like several houses that have been connected together and have a lot of the
elements that people like, like yard spaces to sit, porches, and so on, and great pedestrian connections. And then some of the precedent imagery includes infill development of this type um which um we know works very well
seen a lot of examples of of how it can allow again sort of modest increase in density and new homes but still feel like uh pretty quiet residential neighborhood. All right, I'm going to take over from
Peter. I'm Dylan Susman. I work with Peter Flinker at Flinker and I'm going to talk about the second two volumes. I'll try to move through them quickly so that we have plenty of time for you guys to ask questions and um share your thoughts. So, as Peter said, the first
volume is about the existing conditions and the vision. Um it's primarily would be used to to sort of guide applicants when they're preparing designs for projects and then by the design review board um with their sort of mandatory
advice process. The second volume is um focused on objective standards for private development. So this is more closely aligned with with zoning. Um and in fact, you know, we found that zoning in Amoris, as in most places, is one of the sort of
primary controls on design. So, zoning is a design cookbook. Um whether whether you like the results of it or not, it sets the basic parameters for development. Um how buildings sit on lots, their basic height and and
massing. Um and so there are some changes that we're recommending to the basic zoning um because we think they're necessary to get uh better results for downtown Ammerst. So in the second volume um slicing and dicing things further there are four
different parts to the second volume um and that basically are designed to um be implemented in different ways and also with a little bit of a sense of you know what might be the most the highest priority and then
um secondary priorities. So, the first part is is making those zoning changes that um zoning map changes that Peter talked about a little bit before. Uh there's a proposed zoning map in this volume that uh makes changes to the zone
and also adds some features to the zoning map um that go beyond what's on there now. So, regulating uh where there should be ground floor commercial um required to be occupied basically. And then in other areas where it would be
acceptable to build spaces that can can be occupied by commercial but not necessarily requiring them to be occupied at this time. Um so it's a a change from the way ground floor commercial is currently regulated in your zoning. Um and then establishing
areas on the edges of the zoning district where uh they're butdding up against existing residential areas. um that would be outside of this downtown and that would apply basically sort of transition transitional regulations
about height um to provide some relief for adjacent properties. Um so these zoning district changes, the map changes are necessary because um we think it's important to separate out the traditional main street around
the common um and on North Pleasant Street from that modern Main Street area um because we think it's important to establish different dimensional standards there. Uh, basically we want to keep the kind of street wall or the buildings lined up along the street
around the around the common but have slightly larger setbacks, front setbacks in the modern main area where you don't have a kind of established pattern quite yet. Um, and you could provide some more breathing room for wider sidewalks and more public spaces along the streets.
Um, and then in the areas that are are BL and RG, the idea is to separate those out out from other areas of the town. Um, so you can have customized standards for those. That's why why we're proposing zoning map changes.
Part of this is uh includes sidewalk with classes. So I can talk about that a little bit more later. Um, so I'm just going to show some examples of what this looks like. We encourage you to look at it, read through it, and as Nate said, submit some comments to the town website
using the form that's available there. Or if you have a lot of comments, there's an Excel sheet you can download and make comments through that. Um, it is really really useful for us to get comments that are specific to a page, uh, specific text and specific
recommended changes. um and that we get that in an organized fashion so that we can compare different comments from different people. So, an example of um a change that's recommended, this is would require a change to the to to the zoning that
exists. Yeah, you know, to change the front setbacks um adding a little bit of a front setback on the traditional main street, a little bit more in the modern main street area. Um and a bit more than that in the downtown neighborhood. Um and establishing maximum front setbacks in
all of those areas. uh with the idea that you want buildings to be within a range, you know, close to the sidewalk but not too close and not too far as well. Um there's a recommended change to building height. Um increasing the building height a little bit in the
areas that are currently the the BG district. um basically to align with the way that buildings are are currently built um and to reduce the need for waiverss from the planning board. And then increasing the height in the
downtown village um to allow again buildings that seem like they would be basically more economically viable. Um so there's a in every community
uh there's a sort of an economic formula of how much people paid for properties and then how much uh development they need to get out of it to make it worthwhile for them to make changes to those properties. So, if the
goal for downtown Ammerst is to um have more commercial spaces and or higher quality commercial spaces or more housing or more tax revenue or uh more places for people to live so they can
either, you know, so they have a place to live and as well so they can support businesses by being within walking distance. Then if you want any of those changes, you need to make it economically viable for property owners to do that. Um, and so the changes to height and some of the other ones I'm
going to talk about are are intended to do that. Um, so part of this is about improving the design of of new construction and part of it's about improving the design in areas where there existing buildings
that could be replaced by by better ones. Um but in order to do that you need change. In order to have change you need it to be viable. All right. So moving on. Um other necessary or other recommended zoning
changes that are in this volume are about um uses changes to allowed uses primarily switching things from special permit to site plan review. Um what we've heard from developers in Ammerst and in every
other community we work in is that predictability is very very important. Um so a developer needs to know that if they're going to invest in very costly engineering and architectural plans to
produce a permit application that that's going to result in a project that they can actually implement. Um and it goes beyond that. It it also ties into the availability of financing. So, a developer often needs to um be able to line up their financing and um lenders
are sometimes not willing to lend to projects that um require a discretionary permit. Um other necessary zoning changes, we recommending a change to the mixed use requirements. um basically changing how
the formula for that works so that it's based on the percentage within a certain depth of the sidewalk. Really focusing on the area where where ground floor commercial is most important which is that that area where you can see into a store where it's bringing uh street
life, bringing people to the street and making the place look interesting. Um it's the the highest value sort of commercial space on a main street. Um, and those changes are in line with what was recently adopted for the University Drive area. And then changes
to required lot area. Um, additional lot area per family, which is a sort of key limiting factor in the RG in the BL currently. Um, changes to frontage and lot coverage and building coverage and setbacks and parking requirements. Um,
all of those are based on those drawings that Peter showed earlier. So, our approach to this kind of project is to look at specific sites to to draw plans showing um what we think are kind of ideal buildouts of specific locations
recognizing that what somebody proposes for those are not going to be exactly what we show because they have their own program and they have their own needs. Um but we do those drawings so we can then abstract out the zoning dis the zoning standards, right? So we can look
at our own drawing and measure how much lot area um how much lot coverage is is necessary there. What are the setbacks that we're showing? Um and so that when people like yourselves look at the zoning, you can look at the vision, you can look at the the plan drawings and
see whether it looks like something you want and know that those dimensional standards are based on a vision. They're not pulled out of front out of out of thin air. All right. Um the new design standards
cover many aspects of building design um based on feedback we heard from the public and also looking very closely at the existing conditions and trying to figure out what it is that's making those those buildings that people like in in downtown Ammerst. What are the the
key characteristics of them? Um so that the planning board or the design review board has objective standards by which to review projects um and so they can say yes this meets the standards or no this doesn't meet the standards um and
everybody can know what is expected from the beginning which includes includes the applicants as well as you know residents of Ammerst and abutters. Um so this is general approach is trying to make things as objective as possible
as predictable as possible. Uh some some examples of that there's a standard for the maximum length of a building side. Um then within that if a building is is over a certain length then the facade is required to either step forward or step back. So there's
variation along the street and then within that breaking up the facade into sort of recognizable bays which is a very common characteristic of those kind of 19th century buildings along the the north common in Ammerst. Um there's standards for storefront
design customized to the different areas of the downtown and then standards for things like um how to deal with grade changes along the front of a property um retaining walls, new curb cuts, surface parking,
landscaping and plant types, etc. Um in addition, there are some guidelines for lighting and signage which are topics that are covered by your zoning already. Um, and so in this case, these are not objective standards. They're guidelines to try to get clearer
about what's what's intended. The third volume is about the public realm. So these would, as Peter said earlier, would be used by the DPW to try and standardize things. Um, a lot of them are based on the current practices of the DPW, but writing them down so
that they um continue to be implemented consistently. And then there are other topics that um the DPW doesn't have a consistent current practice and so this establishes um requirements for those. So what we noticed in the downtown is that um it's pretty diverse and that's
the result of kind of incremental testing and experimentation um by your DPW responding to what they hear from the public from what I understand and also responding to what they see about how how different designs
work over time. So um how how concrete ages, how um different scoring patterns crack, how concrete spalls etc. So um the the design standards try and deal with those those different challenges of
inconsistency um elevation changes, competing uses etc. Um they're they cover most aspects of of the space between the sidewalk and the front of
the building. Pretty much everything we can think of. Um as I said before, there are these different sidewalk with areas that are called out. Um, our general approach to this is that we heard that Ammerst probably is not going to do a
wholesale redesign and rebuild of downtown anytime soon. And so change to the streetscape will be incremental um through the combination of of town projects, you know, small town projects
over time as well as um any improvements associated with redevelopment. So we're working kind of within the existing framework of the curbs and working within the idea of it being incremental change. So we looked at the space
between the curb and the front of the building throughout the downtown and came up with basically that there's sort of three different types of widths in downtown. um a large sidewalk of 15 feet or greater, a medium sidewalk of 10 feet
and 10 to 15 feet, and a small sidewalk of less than 10 ft. And so based on that, we set requirements for the the parts of the sidewalk. So, um the part you walk on, which we call the the throughway, the space between where you
walk and the curb, which is the furnishing utility zone, which is the location where where trees are planted, benches go, bike racks typically go. um trash cans go in that area. Um and then a few extra areas that are sometimes
sometimes there and sometimes not. And each of these has a minimum width. Um and it also has standards for materials and construction of of those areas. So examples of what the the medium and the small sidewalks look like. You can
see that the con the constituents parts get smaller. Um but that in the in the medium and the large sidewalks the basic pallet of materials remains the same having a concrete throughway with um regular scoring and then um unit pavers
concrete unit pavers in the furnishing utility zone. And we had a lot of discussions both in we had a a dedicated workshop about streetscape. Um we got feedback from the survey etc. Uh we had a lot of conversations about what these materials should be. Um and generally
what we heard is people they want a concrete place to walk and they want some distinction for the area for sitting. Um and that um the proposal here continues those concrete unit pavers which you have in some places in downtown. So trying to manage that
transition over time as I said because it's going to happen incrementally. Um, as I said before, there's specifications, you know, for the materials and construction for those. There's a section that deals with
elevation changes, um, standards for things like parkletits, which are temporary uses of parking spaces for on street dining. A lot of attention paid to street trees and how to plant trees so that they survive to maturity. Um,
and I'm gonna I'm gonna stop there. Um, there are a lot of other standards in all of the of in in volumes two and three that I didn't cover. So, again, encourage you to look at those um and think about what they would mean for the
future and and give us feedback. >> Thank you very much. That was um every time I listen to your presentation, I pick up some additional information. So, I appreciate it. >> The change is every time.
>> Hopefully, we're not ourselves from one to the next. >> I need to note that Jennifer Tab joined us at 110. So, that's for the record. Um, Paul, we have Peter Flinker and Dylan Susman with us and Nate, are there any
questions um from any of the CRC members? Mandy. >> Yeah. So, I I want to thank um Dylan and Peter for coming and and giving that. I started delving into this yesterday and
I will be filling out the Excel sheet, but as as the pres presentation went forward, I I had a couple of sort of overarching questions um that that sort of stood out to me um and I'm hoping you can can give me your thoughts on those
questions. The first one is if this is really design guidelines, design standards, we're putting them into the zoning, is it logical? Is it necessary? is is is a design review board actually still needed at that point if we adopt all of
this into our zoning? Um, you know, a lot of what I've read about creating more housing opportunities and all and making it um less cumbersome to buy is every review you need to do adds costs and and if you're trying to make things more affordable, you you kind of don't
want to add more reviews. And so if you've already put all the design standards into the zoning code, do you actually need a design review board when another board is already looking at that design? So that that's one of my first questions. Um and I I just have four of
these sort of. Um the second one is it looks like some of the area of the BL, although now that I'm looking at it, I think it's one property only, is going into downtown neighborhood instead of downtown village. Um, and I'm curious why you decided to to remove that
property sort of from I think what is sort sort of your intention to be an equivalent BL type neighborhood. Um, it's north of um, K's K Street. I think just the one property north of that. Um, seems like it that's a little bit of a
downzoning. Um, and in your description of downtown neighborhoods, similarly seemed like the goal was small-cale multi-unit development. Yet, I noticed in the design in book two that you were still allowing single family homes in
that neighborhood. So, could you speak to why you wouldn't say no to single family homes in that neighborhood if the goal is small-cale multif family? Um, and finally, is this intended to be the zoning or is
this intended sort of more as an overlay such that the underlying zoning could also be a developer could choose to be built under. Um, those are my four for now. Thank you.
>> Why don't um go u Nate and then may maybe give them a chance to respond. >> Sure. Thanks. Those are good questions, Mandy. Um, in terms of the designer review board, you know, staff's also kind of had similar questions, but we haven't reached a conclusion. So, it could be that, you know, they're
empowered more through these standards and they can apply them in a similar role. Maybe they actually become more regulatory, you know, or not. And so, we haven't really made that decision. Uh, I think it's something that is part of the conversation. I mean, really it is then, you know, how do we apply and implement
the standards? And so, it kind of gets to your your last question. You know, we've talked about this. Is it formbbased code or is it zoning? I actually don't think it can work as an overlay. I think we actually have to change the base zoning and it's a combin it's like a hybrid of say traditional zoning and forbased zoning. So I think
if you know if you like what you see um in some of the renderings what we have now doesn't get you there. And so I think it has to be you know kind of a careful assessment of where in the zoning it would change. And so, you know, um, an overlay, you know, an
overlay is nice because you can say it's it applies to this maybe this one use and you have a, you know, kind of a simple thing that you can kind of narrow in on with an overlay. I think this is too broad. Um, there's too many factors and so, you know, um, you know, in terms
of the use, you know, they're recommending use changes, dimensional changes, um, architectural standard changes. And so I think it'd be really complicated to have an overlay and then you know this being an overlay but someone could still do a mixeduse building not in the overlay. So I just
um but you know again that hasn't really been decided. I think you know what they've illustrated is that to achieve what they're showing need zoning changes. I think we still have to get to the point like you know do we agree with some of the recommendations and what are the right steps to to get them to be you
know achievable and implementable. So um you know and you know so they're you know the plane board is asking kind of similar questions. So I think you know that's all part of the process. Um but I do think for instance like if we think in the BG you can go right to the zero lot line and because there's not a consistent setback from the property
line to the curb line you can have a building 5t from the street or 10 ft from the street. They're recommending, you know, a two to five foot setback so that during permitting, you know, the regulatory board could say, you know, could this building be three feet back so then we have a consistent sidewalk width. And so, you know, to me it's
like, okay, if there if the standards say we want 15 ft sidewalks, 15 foot wide sidewalks in the downtown, that's what's comfortable given the building height, then we need a certain, you know, set front setback. And so that it kind of all works together. It's I think it'd be really difficult to somehow do
it, you know, with with an overlay and something else. But >> I'm going to follow up before before we hear from the consultants. Um, just on the sidewalk width and the setbacks, we already allow up to 15 ft from the property line. And in the case of 11
east, our one east pleasant street planning board itself did not push back and require that we maintain a consistent sidewalk width. So as as typical, if somebody is putting money into development, you're going to you're
going to max out if you can anything that you build. Um I'm going to go to my question, then I'm I'll let other people talk. Um, so if if zoning were to be considered, if if we were to consider a zoning change,
would the zoning map look a little bit like the colored plan that is is shown in these drawings that we have a whole new um a whole new district. we have a downtown village or a downtown
neighborhood and with it would be required standards. Um or is again that up to the desire of you know can you can you link um can you link
criteria and dimensional standards to a zone specifically? I'll look for answers and then let other people talk. >> Okay. Um, yeah. So, I guess I'll I'll answer Pam's question first and then
circle back to Mandy's questions that didn't get answered. Um, and I guess this also relates to Mandy's question. So, yes, we're recommending changes to the to the base zoning. We're not recommending an overlay. Um, because we want the purpose of this is to increase
consistency of design, right? Um, and so you don't want it to be you don't want to create a pathway for people to opt into good design and to be able to opt out of good design. That that doesn't really make sense. Um, so we're we're recommending
changes to the base zoning. We're recommending that you create new zoning districts um following the map that we showed. And the purpose of creating those new zoning districts is so that you can um have dimensional standards that are specific to those zoning
districts. Um and you can adopt the design standards as um standard standards, regular regulations of your zoning that are required of applicants and not optional. Um the
reason that those building design standards are numerical uh predominantly, you know, they're x number of feet is so that they are objective and they can be included in zoning. Um and you can review projects based on them and there's, you know, a
legal basis for that. So, um did that answer your question, Pam? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um, and hopefully it answered your question on the your last question, Mandy. Um, so your first question was,
"Is the DRB needed?" I think Nate responded to that. Um, I think that's a kind of bigger a bigger question for the town of Ammeris than than we can answer. Um, I would say that
the structure of what we produced um would work whether you have a DRB or do not have a DRB, but the volume one is particularly useful for a board like the DRB. Um and
um I recognize both the need for streamlined permitting and reducing the number of meetings and reducing potential conflicts between boards. Um as you can probably tell I'm a fan of objective standards. Um and so we focused on those. But at the same time
there are aspects of design that are not objective and where having sort of local local experts apply their subjectivity and their creativity is really valuable. Um and so I think it's a question more
of like is it is it working in Ammerst and is the extra step in in permitting um overall beneficial or is it overall getting in the way of progress. So, it's it's like a policy decision for the town to make. Um, and either way, the tools
we produced would work for you. Um, the BL to the DN. Yeah, there's there's one parcel north of Alec Street that's changed from BL to DN. And the reason for that is basically
just it's best practice to not have as much as possible not have um your your zoning district transitioning on the edges of properties, but instead have it transitioning on on street edges. Um so that one property was kind of an orphan.
I assume it's an orphan due to uh the the use at the time. So the BL is a business district and the other one is a residential district. Um, so I assume that was why it was an orphan parcel. And I think that answered Mandy's
questions. >> There was one that said, she said, "Why are there still single family homes allowed?" >> Oh, yeah. In the DN. >> Um, honestly, never considered whether you
should not allow single family homes. Um I I I don't have a great answer for that one. Um there is one existing single family home as far as I know in that district. So I think it's a question of do you want to make that non-conforming.
Um I think that our general approach is to allow more um consistent with the town's goals. Um, so I don't know that you want to force
more, but maybe allow more development if if somebody feels like it's beneficial to make change. >> Thank you, Jennifer. >> Yeah, I thank you again for the presentation. I don't know how you both do this so many times with this and I
keep smiling. Um, yeah, in terms of single family home, there is only one and it's hard to imagine anybody would buy property there and build a single family home. So, um, see, I have a couple questions. Um, I don't think I quite understood that there were
proposed zoning changes in the RG, which seems beyond the scope. These were downtown design standards and the RG districts are not downtown. So, why would there be proposed zoning changes for the RG and And what are they?
>> Yeah. Um, so it became clear early on in our conversations with we had focus group conversations at the very beginning of the of the project and one of the messages we heard from those focus groups which were with a diversity of people was that if we didn't make
zoning changes, we were going to be missing a major opportunity. um because um there are fundamental aspects of your zoning that are not sort of in in line with a design vision for the downtown
and that are um preventing change. >> What are the RGs though? That's not downtown. >> And so, um as part of that, I think the discussion was well, where is the boundary of downtown? What what is the downtown? Um, so if you define the downtown as the areas in the BL and the
RG currently, no, that's not part of downtown. Um, but if you design if you define the downtown as the areas that sort of people told us felt like downtown, then that extends up to the north end of Kendrick Park, which is sort of a a key part of the downtown.
So when you talk about the RG, what blocks where you they would changes would have to be very specific to not to the whole RG which >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >> Like Whitney and Taylor Street or >> No. Um Oh, sorry about that. Where'd
that map go? Um, so these areas that are shown in green here, which is the the west side of Kendrick Park from Mlullen Street to Fearing Street, um, basically kind of mostly one parcel deep, but in a
few cases there's like two parcels that are used as one. um is proposed to be split off from the RG and reszoned to a new zone called downtown neighborhood which could have most of the standards for the RG now but a few changes. Um the
triangle between East Pleasant Street and um what does that become there? Triangle. It's not Triangle Street becomes North Pleas. Um so that triangle and then um St.
Bridg's Parish Hall um and North Prospect Street from Cole's Lane to Amity Street, the green area here and then a bit of Cottage Street um up to Kellogg Avenue. >> So I know
>> those are all proposed to be reszoned to a new zone called Downtown Neighborhood. Um, there are dimensional changes to those and some use changes proposed for those. >> Yep. >> Yeah. So, I don't want to get too in the weeds, but because we discussed this at
the open house, >> um, so that northern part by Kendrick Park that you would take some of the RG for the neighborhood village. Um, and to not if you we you got rid of the curb cuts
>> on North Pleasant on the west side of Kendrick Park and the entrance to the garages or parking lots for those were from Mlen Street. You know, Mlen Street is about the size of a lot of people's driveways and width and it's right now a
two-way street with parking on one side. It's also the driving school. It's a state permitted that the there's a driving school that uses that street. You literally you cannot drive down that street. So between the cars parked on
one side and there's tons of infill on Mlen. So there are like eight cars in the driveway and there's you can park there with the downtown parking sticker. There's bumperto-bumper parking on one side and two-way traffic. And if you're going one way and a car is coming the
other, there's no place to pull over. So you literally have to go into a driveway. So if that became the point of entrance and egress for the dense the densification of, you know, the west side of Kendrick Park, it it that street just can't handle it. So
anyway, I know that might be later on, but >> yeah, it's a it's a good point. I mean, again, the the drawings that were shown were meant to explore sort of design intent on a on a broad scale. They're not required. uh and they wouldn't they
wouldn't certainly override what you do with any development proposal which is the traffic studies and the impact analysis and so on. Um so if that was an unsafe place to have a driveway you wouldn't do it. >> Yeah. >> But the idea was to illustrate a principle of you know let's try to
connect these um rear parking lots, rear parking areas um without so many curb cuts along the street. Obviously it would have to be done safely and so on. Um and in terms of the changing those blocks to zoning
again um it's sort of following the vision right and everything that we heard um from people participating in the process is that these these areas are different than the surrounding residential blocks. They're kind of a transition from the RG to the rest of
the downtown. So, it really seemed to make sense to give them their own district that would, you know, provide some mitigation again to maintain that transition, but to allow a little bit more growth, um, but do in a way that is respectful of the surrounding neighborhoods and really
make a balance there that would, um, you know, take advantage of that wonderful location right next to the downtown, right next to Kendrick Park um, and encourage people to build wonderful new buildings. then mitigate that with any,
you know, negative impacts. >> Okay. Thank you, Andy. >> Yeah, I I um I guess I'm just impressed with the that you're not trying to do one sizefits-all on the downtown, and I like
the four four different districts. So, I like that that there's sort of a a respect for the the funkiness of the of the downtown and and the and the variety that we have and and at the same time trying to uh you know have a little more
coherence and and a little more density as our master plan calls for. So, um, so my understanding then also is that, and I think it's been addressed already, is that these would be new zoning, um, categories for just for the
downtown area. And that, so we're not if we're if we're putting So, we're not changing something for other parts of town. So, it's just you're resone you're renaming the downtown zone so they have their own zones. >> Yep. Um,
so that's great. Um, you talked about design review boards. Um, and we a little bit about whether we whether we need them or or how, um, if you're if you're entering design standards, the zoning, you know, do you
need the design review boards? Do you have any examples of other places that have done this kind of zoning? And do they, you know, that do they have, do they retain their design review boards or do they get rid of them or is it sort of all over the map? >> A little bit all over the map. Um, so
Northampton, um, when we did their zoning for their downtown, um, they had an existing, um, downtown design review board essentially, um, that actually had the power to issue permits. So, it was a little bit more
empowered than yours is where it's just advice. Um, and as part of the reasoning, we um the their purview was scaled back. The area that they regulate was scaled back to basically the historic core of the downtown. So, it had grown over
time. Um, and so when we added more objective standards to cover other parts of the downtown, uh, their their regulated areas was shrunk down to the store core, but but they were they they were kept. Um, other places, you know,
either most places don't have a design review board to begin with, and so they don't add one. Um, there are examples in in communities outside of Massachusetts. I'm not aware of any in Massachusetts that have a what they call a town architect.
>> Basically is a paid position that's there to review projects um and make sure they're in alignment with a it's more of a like a place that has a real robust form based code and a lot of new development. Um and then there's another approach
which I don't know how much you guys do which is um using you know outside peerreview experts for design review. Um so we do some of that for other communities where um they adopt new zoning and then they hire a peer
reviewer when there's a project and the applicants um the applicant has to pay the peer reviewer to review compliance with your standards. >> Interesting. Um, and I guess I just had one other just sort of I don't know if it's a one wondering, but when I look at
the at the um the drawings and the the you know sort of mockups of how various things could look like could look, there's always it's always summer and there's always outdoor dining and you know h how do you accommodate h how do the standards accommodate New England
winters and do we still make does that make a difference in your design? You want to answer that, Peter? Um, yeah. So, winter is a real thing. It happens like what, nine months out of the year or something? Um, >> yeah, >> if if we showed renderings in the
winter, it would be a lot less appealing. Um, so whether you have wide sidewalks because you're providing great places for people to sit or you have wide sidewalks because you're providing space for snow storage, it's still a good idea
to have a wide sidewalk. Um, I think that one caution I guess I would have is not requiring too much extra public space because in the winter those extra
public spaces can become dead spaces. Um, so that's one reason for our approach of sort of establishing a maximum front setback. Um, so I think there's often a a tendency
in towns like Ammerst to may maybe want a lot of public space in front of every building, but if you have too much, it it gets to be too much. Um, so snow storage, um,
you can still sit outside even in the winter. Um there's been a lot there was a lot of really interesting work done around that um in the COVID period looking at examples of places like Montreal that has like a lively out outdoors scene in the winter um in other
places in Europe where you know providing outdoor heaters um providing wind sort of wind sheltered areas um and doing programming in the winter can make a big difference. So having, for example, like the ice sculpture festival that they have in Northampton um to
bring people out to look at something. So I don't think a downtown has to be a dead space in the winter. Um and I think what we have probably works regardless of the season. >> Anything else, Andy?
Okay. Um, I'm going to follow up just with some consideration of what what we would be needing to consider, needing to ponder. And I think one of the items that struck me um are the dimensional
recommendations that you're making uh in particular as you show your sort of heavy dark lines around the transitions from uh this down these downtown districts to the surrounding
neighbors. Um, I I think it would be really really helpful if there were some simple graphics to illustrate um the buildability of property up against the adjoining neighbors. Uh, and
I'm looking and I'm thinking I looked at the uh uh the triangle street. The the drawings that you did are really really great. They really help uh illustrate what could happen. However, when you look at the dimensional standards that are being
recommended, um the outcome could be very very different. And your illustrations are, you know, with a great landscape architecture eye and what would be an appealing place um if somebody is spending money to develop, they're going
to probably maximize what they can build. So when you have uh rear setbacks of you know 15 feet next to a 50- foot building I think that's incredibly
inappropriate because right over that property line is uh a house somebody lives there. When we thought about proximity to taller buildings uh in our university drive overlay,
the consideration for an existing housing cluster uh was such that we suggested that no building face be any closer than um than 30 ft from the property line. And your
recommendations are 15 ft plus two for every story. So you're talking 20 ft. Maybe we're saying let's have a minimum of 30 ft to a to a building face. And secondly, 150 ft from the nearest building, the
nearest home would be 3 feet, three stories max. that gives a degree of separation that that um the dimensional standards that you're that you're recommending do not
give. And I'd like to see that concept considered and and perhaps given some more weight in um just just that that proximity. Um
I'll just stop there. Let Yandy go. Um, I I was actually going to comment on you you'll notice Pam and I have various different very very different thoughts on on these matters. Um, my my comment before she spoke was actually wondering
why on Mlelen Street between Hollock and Mlen there's only it looks like essentially two properties in the downtown neighborhood. Why wouldn't you go farther out to sort of match the property line um of the downtown village that's south of Hock? So why wouldn't
you sort of expand the downtown neighborhood a couple more properties west? Um you know sort of so it's more of a straightish line. Um and and I actually wondered at one point, is downtown neighborhood necessary? Um
or could we move much of that to downtown village? You know, as a consideration of um this is our commercial corridor. It is already really tiny. If we want vibrancy
and activeness, shouldn't we be considering expanding it slightly more? It sort of builds on my question of why were we pulling out that one one unit, one parcel from the sort of BL and downzoning it almost to downtown neighborhood? Why wouldn't we
expand all of the Kendrick Park west east west side of Kendrick Park to downtown village? um or or something like that. Um I'm not as concerned about the setbacks. I actually on University Drive didn't
like the 150 foot thing because when you and especially here, at least there when I did the measurements, it it didn't take away most of a property, but here I I don't have my GIS out, but if you required 150 foot to three to the to the
wall of a three-story building from a property on say the North Prospect properties, you might cut out half of the downtown village district from having any building on it at all. And my understanding is that's not what we're
going for. Um change is is necessary sometimes, but I think we have to also think about, you know, people like to bring up history. What was this used back then? It was for that era, that time frame, what was
considered dense housing for workers. How do we reproduce that more dense housing at a at a price point that that the um the bluecollar workers can actually live in. And if we restrict too
much, we we can't respect and honor that history of our town, which is the ability of bluecollar workers, theresses of the hundred years ago, the the
mechanics of today, the the um facility workers at our colleges to live in our town in a way that is that. So, I would actually go the opposite direction and say, how do we expand the downtown village side or even the
downtown neighborhood side to include a little bit more Jennifer? So, not surprising. I'm going to respond to that. Um yeah, I think we absolutely have to
maintain a transition between the um was it downtown? We should have the downtown neighborhood and it shouldn't eat any it should minimally eat into the RG. So we talk about how we're challenged. I mean yes, we want a vibrant downtown. Of course we do, but we're also saying that
we can't fill the commercial space that we have and that we're allowing to be built. So, and it is with 9,000 students that the housing production plan consultants say live outside of Amherst that would probably like to live in
Amherst, it is unlike it will be a long time before this building is at a price point for for workers. So, it's you know, we have to assume for the foreseeable future it's going to be housing priced
for students. the RG district that borders that downtown neighborhood. I mean, that's where, you know, music teachers live. These are my neighbors. Um, people that, you know, have uh, you know, Pilates studios cuz, you know, uh,
in their ADU. Um, I mean, there's we cannot the concern about pushing out the BG and having these tall buildings, you know, right up to people's backyard, which is what you're going to have. I mean, I'm not even nec necessarily objecting to it. You know, Beston Street
is is like worker housing. It's small houses and the people that live on that street really are, you know, they're high school teachers. They're the workers in our town. And so now you are going to have student housing that's going to be
on the west side of Kendrick Park that's going to be going right up to the end of their driveway. I mean to their backyards. That's what that, you know, when you look at the west side of Kendrick Park and expanding the downtown neighborhood, that's where it's going up to is the backyards of the small modest
houses on Beston Street. So again, I would be very mindful that in the RG districts is where you have a lot of people living in small houses on small lots, the people that we want to continue working here. And I actually made a list because somebody made a
statement recently that it's the students living downtown that are the lifeblood of our businesses. But there are, you know, 10 businesses that are really only patronized by the year- round residents. You know, Zanas is not a place where they're not even catering
to students. It's not a place where 20-year-olds, you know, it's just not the fat. I I shop there all the time, but you know there's I could list businesses here by Harlo, the toy box, past um Pine and Aster, Xanas, the the
list goes on, and they're frequented first and foremost by all the people living in the neighborhoods which are pretty much RG that surround downtown. So, I'd want to be really mindful of not pushing out the residents of the
modest houses that are now adjacent to downtown. >> Thank you, Nate. And then I think we're close to wrapping up as we transition to not to neighborhoods, but to clean energy bylaws. So, Nate, do you want to
wrap us up here? >> Maybe. >> Maybe talk a little bit about next steps. Yeah, the planning board had similar questions and so what I you know yesterday we we tried to talk through it and I said you know what I what we'll do is staff will generate a kind of a summary memo from the planning board
that they they have the same questions they were thinking maybe only three zones make the ne you know the green area actually further north along North Pleasant and you know whatever right they have these ideas and so I'm not going to say we're not going to have Dodson redraw the downtown and come up with all these new new zones right so
we're not going to have them do that so I think I think that becomes a local decision after this process as part of the adoption and implementation. So if you know the planning board really wants to expand it and Mandy and others do. So you know maybe the CRC has a summary memo that has some of these higher level
policy discussions right about where does it really apply? What happens to the designer review board and you know actually how does this get implemented? Is it wholesale or is it in phases? And then I encourage the planning board members if you have individual comments or as a board you know specific to what has been proposed that that can also be
a separate memo or in the same memo. So right again kind of like those setbacks or some pieces like the snow storage I thought you know there's some good questions there but we're not going to have you know I'll just say we're not going to have Dawson go back and say oh we're going to reconfigure boundaries at this point. I think that becomes a local
decision after the fact. Do we do we where do we want to have those changes happen? And so it could be that everyone likes say the few zone three of the four zones and maybe we move forward with adopting those at one point and we we table the other one for a time being but that's a decision the town can make
after. I just don't want to put that on Dodson to kind of come up with a whole new plan in downtown design standards. I will say staff gave them a big area >> and I don't think we should be limited by our current zoning. So what the planning board said is if we like what we have, great. But we if we actually want change, then we shouldn't be
beholden to the limited BG and have it one property off North Pleasant Street. We're not actually advancing anything if all we have are the design standards apply to us BG right now. And I really agree. Right. So to Andy's point, I'm actually hoping that some of these standards say in the downtown village,
if we like them, apply them to the BVC so they they're in effect in North Ammeris, East Ammeris, Pomemoroy, and Atkins, right? Or whatever. like if you know I think this is can be a tool that we can use and adapt elsewhere in town although it is specific to the downtown and I think they've done a really nice job in terms of their existing
conditions analysis and actually having those different categories and different visions for each of those zones. I you know maybe they apply elsewhere but I think for now I'm not going to have them say let's go down to three and come up with a whole new third category category >> but I think a cover memo from the CRC
will be important. So the planning board is kind of asking those questions too and then like okay what happens next like what is the adoption process and you know so right now all I've said is let's get our comments in you know staff's keeping track of all the comments um bigger picture policy comments and I think those will be cover
memos that'll be given to Datson and I think it can be given to town council and you know cross reference planning board gives it to CRC and vice versa and then it becomes a community conversation okay how do we move forward with adoption and I think that's you know will be a really important piece and you Peter and Dylan have asked those
questions and we haven't had, you know, we don't have the answers and there's a probably a number of different ways it could be adopted. Um, and so I kind of want to see how, you know, what happens in the next few months. How, you know, what do the boards and committee say? What does the public say? How comfortable are we with some of these
pieces? Is it all of it? Is it some of it? Um, and so, you know, I don't think it's too early to tell, but I think, you know, I like where the comments are going. I would say just keep, you know, read through them. If you have comments or questions, you can fill out the forms. you can email staff um if you don't understand something and we can relay that back to the consultant. So if
there's something that just you know technically you need some help with you know we're here to to provide that assistance as well. So thanks >> I'm just going to say I'm not sure maybe the the consultants can answer this um if there isn't if there isn't real
consensus and I understand the working group didn't have real consensus on some of these elements as well. Um, it'll be interesting, you know, what what do we expect Dodson and Flinker to do with our comments if in fact it's not
going to be incorporated into changes in the text? What's the point of what's the point of commenting? >> I'll just jump in quickly and sorry, Peter and Dylan, if you want to speak. Yeah,
>> you know, I think it's still important to get all the comments, but for instance, like the change of the zone right now, that's something we can decide what to do with as part of the adoption. And so, if there's really something like, wow, you know, we really, you know, something about say some of the design features of the rightway or the architectural standards
or the setbacks, I think those are things to consider. But if we're asking them to come up with a whole new set of design standards for a part of downtown, you know, they've already kind of done that, right? And I think what they've come up with is reasonable design solutions, as Peter said at one point. And so what I think was really important
to mention is that the working group actually had consensus and agreed on the vision, right? They agreed on a lot of things. It's then the details that become kind of tricky. And so they agreed on the design intent of all those four districts. They agreed on the vision. So you know the making it
accessible and comfortable and resilient. They agreed on all of that, right? They agreed on even the four different places. And then where they differ is kind of on those details on how to get there. Is it three stories? Is it two? Is it three under a roof? Is it what is the setback? And so I think that's really important to reiterate is
that they they they agreed with existing conditions. They agreed with the four zones and the design intent of each of those four zones. So if you like the downtown village and the you know and design intent is this. Everyone in the working group agreed on that. It's then kind of the details that they differ on.
And so that's why I'm kind of pushing back and saying well let's have them redesign this whole area. I think they've done a really great job at that. And so I still want to have all those comments come in because maybe there are tweaks that can be made and maybe, you know, district boundaries do change a little bit, but not wholesale at this point, right? Not like we're going to
wipe out all of downtown village. Um, right. That's something we can do afterward if we really want to if the town really wants to do that. >> I mean, that was that was a planning board recommendation is to consolidate, which I disagree with. But Mandy, >> right? >> I think Nate just asked the question. So
if we had ideas or or answered my questions, but I just want to confirm if we had ideas of a different boundary for say downtown neighborhood or for downtown village, even if it expands it out or not, it's worth putting that in
the comments. But that's not necessarily something that would be presented. I'm getting exactly what Nate said, presented by Donsid and Flinker as as their downtown design standards portfolio, but we could then bring that back into the conversation when we go to
do that. So, it's still worth mentioning that ideas when we make our comments. >> Yes. Yes. Very much so. So, even like what you said, Manny, that one property and maybe that one property changes or maybe they already answered it, you know, to keep it, you know, have a formula or have a consistent setback that's why that one property didn't
change. But to be like, oh, I think we should, you know, make a whole new block be something else. That's, you know, I still put it in, but I'm going to say like I don't we're not going to ask thoughts and then redesign everything and measure the setbacks in those areas because they've already done that and come up with, you know, they've already provided what they think is reasonable,
what they think is actually a good, you know, design standard. So, um, yeah, you and that's all. >> So, I should say we're happy to keep working small adjustment to our contract. We've been having a lot of fun. You're great people to work with and we gladly
continue for the next five years. I want to quick I know you're short on time, but I wanted to quickly comment because that that block west of Kendrick Park is kind of the the one area where the consensus was difficult. Um, but I wanted to point out, you know, to Jennifer's points that, um, there's that
Tan Brook runs through there and basically creates a natural boundary between the, you know, the more purely residential districts to the west and that block. And that's going to create a create what's going to create a permanent natural buffer to that street that you you mentioned,
Jennifer, that the people on what's that street called? >> Beston. behind bestin their backyards are backing up on that >> right that's why I wasn't pushing back you know >> yeah so that so I think that we did we were conscious that that creates kind of
a nice permanent barrier between any change along Kendrick Park and the interior neighborhood so I just wanted to keep that in mind >> yeah I mean concerns about Tam as you build that close to Tamrook it impervious but that will be
>> righter ation. >> Yeah. >> Mission planning board will deal with that. >> Yeah. >> Um I want to go if you guys will allow us to continue to talk to you. I want to go back to Manny's question about like what kind of comments you know are are
useful. So I'm going to share the actual comment sheet. Um so this is what's available for downtown. So you know we are looking for like the volume, the page, what it says now in your suggested revisions and then
really importantly the rationale of you know why this is a good idea and on the suggested revisions it says here try to think of ideas that would be acceptable to people in Ammeris with a different viewpoint than you and to decision makers. Um, so you know, the the goal
here is to to understand not just what the change is that you're suggesting, but why. So, you know, Pam was talking about we need a bigger setback because I'm concerned about, you know, overshadowing on neighbors. Like that's really important. Um but then
also like coming up with decisions that are going to work so that for people with different viewpoints because we've seen a lot of times in Amoris that people have diverse viewpoints. you're wrestling with real real challenges in your community
related to um you know housing and the role of students in your in your housing market and the value of new development versus historic preservation um and what this downtown should be. They're they're real weighty policy
discussions. Um so I think that trying to figure out a balanced approach for the future um that enables Ammeris to move forward is really important and and not getting caught in um we can't all
agree so we shouldn't move forward. So I also want to respond to Pam's question of who decides. Um you you had said like if there's different viewpoints and there's there's no consensus then who decides? Um, so
I think that's an important question for your town council. Um, ultimately >> I don't think that was I don't think that was actually my question, but >> Okay, what was your question? >> Well, the point was that you might get you might get Mandy Joe's comment and you might get Pam's comment
and they would be they would be diametrically opposed, which is not unlikely, >> right? Yeah. and and and and so you know in that in that mix how do you say okay so who do who do we pick if we're going to make any adjustments and tweaks here I
understand that ultimately this would have to come to the CRC it will have to come to the planning board it will have to come to the town council for adoption of any any sort of thing I think in response to the the reactions to some of the dimensions some
of the setbacks all of that is very strongly based on where someone might live in town. If someone lives in town where there will be no additional future development, it it's it's a very different reaction to say it's okay to
it's okay to build up to that neighbor's property line. Who cares? you know, we don't really care that that neighbor could turn from a single family home into another student rental because it becomes so ownorous to live next to a four or fivetory building. I'm sorry,
that's not the impact we want any of this zoning change to have on existing stable neighborhoods. That's that's that's my guiding principle is what impact will there be on a on an existing
neighborhood that is in my mind critical to keeping anybody in town who cares about the town. Andy, sorry to rant. >> You're m you're muted. >> Yeah. Um,
I mean, we have a particular geography and and supply and demand situation here with the university sitting right near our downtown. And when you look at those all those nice buildings that could go up in these
different sections, who do you envision living there? And does that matter? >> Is that a question? >> Jennifer. Jennifer, I'll let you answer. >> I'm just going to say it does matter. >> Wow. >> We don't want students, but it does
matter if what is going up adjacent to your backyard. And again, we talk about worker housing. We are these many of these are bordering very, you know, modest housing that, you know, people can still afford to buy. Um if you if
what goes up to your property line is you know multi- is our families or you know retired we have a large you know uh senior citizen population in town versus if it's all students that that makes a big
difference >> right but this is just to expand on that this is a downtown and a college town and I don't know how much um you know Dodson and Flinker have dealt with other other communities like that. But um you know when we talk about places to live in Ammeris, there's the whole there's
the whole town. And so what does design what does redesigning the downtown for greater density and greater revenue and greater vitality look like in a college town? Yeah, but we still have to be mindful >> of of course, but I mean there change is
going to change things and so it's a matter of what are posit you know what are on balance positive changes for the town and how much do we give veto power to existing circumstances and I you know I'm just curious if the if the
consultants have any thoughts about how this stuff plays out in a in a small town with a large university right next to it and and you know anything that we should that that any thoughts they have on that. >> I'm going to I'm going to before they answer I'm going to go to councelor
Walker who has not spoken before and give her a chance to speak. >> Um thank you Pam. I just wanted to say very briefly um thank you to Dodson and Flinker for the presentation. I have not seen it before. This was my first time.
Um, and as a new CRC member, I just did a lot of listening and taking notes, um, because I just don't have any prior knowledge about this. So, it's really helpful. Um, but just in response to sort of the conversation happening between Andy and Jennifer, I do think it's an important to consideration to
think about um what that would look like and what that would mean for not only the town overall um but also our downtown businesses um and what that kind of turnover means in terms of like long-term residents versus student housing turnover and what that means for
building new housing and increasing density. Um because I know that we do have a shortage of housing for all folks, you know, town residents, students, but it's it looks different when students move into a place and
they're here for four years or one semester or one year and a family who is planning to stay here or an individual who works in the area and is planning to stay here long term. Um so I think it's important to think about those impacts of our on our neighborhoods but also on our downtown and our businesses. Um, so
yes, I just wanted to say thank you and I unfortunately have to leave early, so I did also want to announce that, but I look forward to being in more conversation about this with you all at our next meeting. >> Thank you. And thanks thanks for letting us know
you needed to leave. Uh, Jennifer and then Nate. >> Yeah, I just want to say it is extremely important that non- studentent residents live within walking distance to downtown. We talk about not wanting suburban sprawl. We talk about people being able to drive instead of walk,
people soliciting downtown businesses, the neighborhoods that are closest to downtown. I walk into downtown several times a day. I spend money downtown every day, as do all my neighbors. It is very important that we have a core of
long-term residents that can walk and live near downtown and live on smaller lots. We have all that now. But to say, you know, you chose to live in walking distance to downtown near the
university, so you know, that's kind of your is is very um concerning because I I really feel I know I'm looking out for my district, but I think it's important for the town again and and a lot of the
houses surrounding downtown are, you know, modest houses that people can still afford to live in, But even if it doesn't, it won't impact where people who live in outline areas live. But I I think there are already
there are lots of students that live in downtown and that live in the RG districts and there will continue to be, which is great, but we need to be mindful that there is a tipping point and it and there's other college towns which no longer have any non- studentents living near the university
or downtown. And I think that would be a real loss for businesses in Ammerst and for Ammerst. And in terms of, you know, we want to be ecologically responsible. We should be encouraging and welcoming more year-round residents, non- studentent households, whatever you want to call them, to live within walking
distance to downtown. >> I I'm I don't want to be, you know, I wasn't putting any value judgment on it. I was just asking a question from the point of view of you know experts who have dealt with a number of other towns and thinking about the dynamics of the
downtown. What is likely to happen if we build a bunch of new housing downtown? Is it is it likely to be taken over by students or is it likely to be a mix or is there ways of designing it so that it's more attractive to families or young professionals or do you know the
the the fear I hear is that it's just going to be you know you know a frat row or a dorm you know dorm center downtown and and I'm not I don't I don't actually know. Um, so I'm I'm curious if if
that's been discussed at all by the the committee and by and if you guys have any thoughts about it and if not that's fine too. >> I'm going to let Nate and then we and then we're going to not do by solar bylaw today. We are going to go to the rest of our business so people can leave
it too. Um, but this is a really good conversation. I would love to talk about it all afternoon but I'll keep my mouth shut. Nate, >> sure. Thanks. Yeah. So we you know we asked you know Dawson and Flinker to look at the design standards and really you know you know the appearance of
buildings in the right of way and not the uses and they did that a little bit in terms of uses but we didn't ask them to do you know a study in terms of occupancy or how to have interior design to change something and so you know we just had a housing production plan. I think you know though there are ways that if we were going to move this
forward staff and the planning board and its subcommittee and you know you can look at the CRC can look at other things. you know, we've talked about with the I've talked with the planning board and the housing trust with having up to 120% AMI in our inclusionary zoning, you know, uh having different, you know, standards for regulating
students or non- students uh in the zoning. So, staff's looking at that. Uh the housing subcommittee's talked and asked questions about that. And so, you know, we're also doing things in other parts of town to encourage certain housing, right? So, we have the University Drive overlay. And so, it's not you I think there's many different things happening to try to address the
housing in in Ammerst. And so, you know, this right here is really, you know, it's it becomes zoning. It was really about design standards and nice right-of-way standards. Uh, inevitably, it's like who is the user of that? But I think we're doing other things. The Amoris planning board is looking studying at East Ammeris for
densification, you know, whether it's from, you know, Hamshell Lumber down to Stanley Street somewhere in there along, you know, College Street and Beluretown Road. So I think there are many um factors and many things happening to address the housing in town for all different users whether it's students, families, you know, singles,
professionals, whatever, retirees. I think um we didn't ask Dodson to look at this. So, you know, Ithaca does it one way, right? They have their own regulations. You know, State College does it differently. You know, whatever. Southern universities do it differently. Out in Colorado, you know, UC Boulder
does it differently. And so, we didn't ask them to do this kind of housing study. And I think those are again things that as we move into implementation we can be thinking about you know is there a corlary zoning change to inclusionary zoning that could maybe benefit uh in this area that maybe applies just to this area or something
right for instance. And so I don't you know I don't I think it's a really important conversation. I think you know planning board had similar conversations. I just, you know, I think again I would like I like I told the planning board, we can note this in a memo and, you know, I don't know, you know, I've been thinking out loud, you know, in my head and as I hear these
comments, you know, is there a compendium to the downtown design standards that, you know, catalogs these comments and so it's it's there as part of the report. Uh, and then it's, you know, so if someone's looking at it, they can see all these comments from the CRC and planning board and the public whether or not they're, you know, amended as part of the downtown design
standards. And then it's again part of a local decision-making process afterward. Um because I think they are important questions but I don't you know we're not asking Datson to spend another year figuring out how to design those buildings so that you know who the end user is. >> Thank you.
I think we can let you all go. really appreciate your time and thank you and thank you for your um widespread effort to to discuss and to display and to uh hear
feedback. I think you've done Yman's yman's work in reaching the boards and committees that um really have any kind of interest in this. So, thanks. >> You'll say you'd work with us again. Oh, we'd love to. But I think you should
I think you should take some credit, too, because the the only reason this happened is because you were willing to pay for two years of meetings at discussion. >> Uh, which a lot of towns are not. >> A lot of towns get grants to do the design, but not enough public process
>> and so the thing just falls flat. So I think you've really uh you've done well here to have you to to foster this discussion which wouldn't be possible of course without your paying for our hours to have all those meetings. So thank you and good job
>> and and kudos to the the planning staff as well. I mean the planning department has been very proactive and helped foster all of this. So we appreciate that as well. Thank you all. We're going to wrap up our business here and um appreciate your
time. >> Thank you. See you. >> See you again soon. >> We have we have meeting minutes from uh April 2. Did anyone have any corrections
or adjustments to those meeting minutes? They were they were helpful to me since I missed the meeting. Um, I didn't see anything that I I didn't know what to correct, but if not, do I have a motion to accept them?
>> So moved. >> Second, I'll second it. Let's take a vote. Uh, Andy, >> yes. >> Mandy, >> hi. >> Jennifer, >> you're muted. >> You're muted.
If I wasn't at the meeting, can I approve? I guess I'll say I would. >> Yeah, we can. And I'll say I as well. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to adopt it. Okay. Thank you. Um, next agenda preview. We have we have one
more meeting the 23rd during which we really should wrap up our conversation with um clean energy. We have comments from one planning board member and I think I heard from Nate that there were he was going to
summarize comments from the planning board. Um I'm I'm I will follow up with him on that to make sure. Mandy. Yeah. Um thank you. Um, I think
if we want to move that forward efficiently, we have to vote next meeting and whatever we end up with is what goes to hearing. It can include a memo that says, "And hey, we're still dealing with this stuff that's likely to change." Um, but I'm not sure we should be afraid to
say I I I think it's okay to admit to the council this is near ready, but it needs to be we need to start the hearing process and just be honest about that. Um, instead of holding it up for a meeting or two to finally get through
all the comments from the planning board. You know, they're going to get through them because they're going to do it during hearing. So, but we just >> move it forward, send whatever we have so the council can get initiated to it and and say we'll try and keep you updated. That that's my thoughts on that
for next week. >> That's reassuring, Andy. >> Yeah. Last time we talked about that Doug Doug had you know given a fair number of specific comments which I thought were pretty useful and in terms of scanning them but and I think
Stephanie was talking about I'm not sure if I probably shouldn't attribute it to Stephanie but there may be a subset of those that are sort of easy like this is redundant um change this wording here >> um can we get those in can we sort of
divide those into those two categories and get those put in or I don't know how that happens but I thought there was some fairly useful fairly mundane changes that could improve things and then the other ones there may be a few that we need to talk about.
I was suggesting that that I take a stab at just incorporating Doug's, you know, edits, I mean, basic edits, uh, into the document as track changes. And then all of those uh items that that actually
needed some consideration any you know any decision making point um could be just uh included as a note just like we've had all the notes from you know Stephanie's the staff input and from Mandy's input that kind of thing. Um,
Mandy suggested that that per open meeting law it would be cleaner if we did it within a meeting itself, but I was trying to preload the material into our version 9 document just so we could go through it faster.
>> Yeah, to consider. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, it's tough, right? Because if we preload the question I I think one of the things I was referencing is if we preload that means we're sort of saying this I know he's chair of the planning board but it wasn't even planning board
comments. It was an individual person's comments and we're saying oh we're going to preload those in but have we preloaded any other individual person's comments into a document before we've even talked about it? But I think that was more of my concern is uh trying to
treat every comment sort of the same way almost um versus treating a board and committee comment differently, right? We preload the the planning board comments in because there are board and committee that actually will vote on whether to
recommend a specific document that they've preloaded comments into in a sense. But versus one person, you know, what if what if we also receive individual comments from another member of the planning board and they disagree with Doug's? >> Do we preload both? How do we preload
both of them in? Sort of the same conversation we just had regarding design stards. How do you choose? So I I think the better case is for the committee members to come in knowing which ones sort of pre-marking their own document from say
Doug's comments or someone else and saying good good good and and here highlighting the ones that they themselves want to talk about and say this one I've got problems with or I think we need to talk about this one because that's what really allows us to go through quicker is if if we all know
which ones we can just say that's good That's good. That's good. Um versus we got to talk about this one more than getting it in the document itself because just because it's there doesn't mean we're not going to talk about it. >> So, and it it occurred to me that that
even if it was put in as a you know, here is a a Doug Marshall note that we still had the opportunity to to say yes or no, we don't want it um or we're not going to incorporate it. So, it didn't I wasn't trying to bias by by including
it, but I don't know if anyone else has received specific written comment from anyone else uh that we could even consider incorporating or preloading. So, um, Andy, >> yeah, I just I just feel like the
scrimmers ones, you know, it's like, oh, maybe maybe it's too hard to figure out what's scribners and what's, you know, sub substantive. But, you know, for each of us to go through and do do that work rather than looking at at it marked up and saying, "Oh,
yeah, there's a difference." And and um I don't know, you know, if it's just like you wrote this word twice, whatever. I mean, I I just would love to short shorten the time that it takes to go through this, but whatever whatever
you think. >> I would say Andy, just highlight the ones you want to talk about and the other ones are really short for you then because there are I agree. So that goes to that goes to having them in the document where we could go through and
just say accepted or you know and then just knock them off one by one until we get to the one that Andy says well I'd like to talk about a little more and then it's there. Um I think I'm going to I think I'm going
to go through and do it and then it will be in our packet. If that helps people actually see the comment in context, that may be helpful. >> It's almost receiving an annotated comment from Doug. It's basically just showing what his comments would do.
>> Right. Right. Mandy. >> Yeah. I mean, I just worry that if in the meantime we get comments from someone else, do we do the same thing for that one, too? versus he provided a nice document. Um, every single committee member can say
can go down that document and say yes yes yes no yes no yes no already there so that when we go through it as a committee it's there the but if Pam you're going to do it um many times you actually physically highlight in red and
physically do that and that it makes it really hard to actually change and accept and all I would request that it actually be a true track change because the last one that we were dealing with last time that I was dealing with a lot of them weren't actually track changes. They were just colored and
>> Yes. >> done. So, which doesn't save a lot of time for the person that's actually then formatting it instead of just being able to accept. >> Yep. >> So, noted. Yes.
>> Yeah. And and then I think you'll also have to be careful if you are doing it to not change things back necessarily that we changed because he was working off of a different version than we're staring at now. >> You know, I don't know how much of that because I haven't gone back specifically
one to the other um to to see >> Yeah. >> if some of his comments I know some of his comments have actually been dealt with because I caught them last time in terms of some of those scriber ones. >> Yeah. That's true. But but some of the other sort of a little more substantive that
might have been dealt with when we went from 8 to 9, too. I I don't know. >> Right. Right. >> That careful. >> Um so you've convinced me that I shouldn't do this work ahead of time. I'm okay with that. Um, if you are
willing to do all the work that it takes to insert a note and it just is it's laborious and tedious during a meeting, I would like to get through this so we can actually discuss the elements that need discussing rather than, you know,
spending time watching you edit. >> Yeah. And and so the other thing about it is the document can be edited after the meeting very quickly if this is why I say go through Doug's comments and highlight the ones you want to talk talk
about of maybe not accept because the committee can very quickly say okay we've got eight pages of Doug's comments which ones don't people want to incorporate and those are the ones we pull out to talk about and then everything else gets
inorated. ated after the meeting type thing. If everyone's identified the ones they want to talk about, the ones that aren't talked about are assumed to be incorporated and we'll just do it after the meeting. >> Okay. Before or after? To me, it doesn't make a huge
>> Well, but you can't do it before without knowing who wants to incorporate what. That's the thing. >> But once you've talked about it, someone can go back and do it. It would be Pam's personal, you know, I would put everything in and then we
simply accept or talk accordingly. So anyway, um I think I'm still going to do it. I'm going to make it available for people if they want it and if not they can ignore it and we can go through it in the meeting um as is. It'll be my own
exercise in considering his notes. Okay. Okay. It is it is uh 3:08. Um announcements. Next CRC meeting is April 23rd. We know exactly what we're going
to be talking about and that is that is the clean energy bylaw and the timing. Um and oh also one thing uh Andy attended the meeting with the um discussion about joint meetings for
planning board hear public hearings planning board and CRC and the the interest and intent is to have a joint meeting on May 20 which is a planning board night
um at their regular time there were two additional joint meeting dates. It is for the other zoning articles that they are bringing forward. Is that correct Andy? >> Yes.
>> This is May 20th. May 20 and um I think June 17 and July 15 I believe are the dates.
It's in it's in um it's in the it's right down at the bottom of the um of our meeting notes. >> June 17th and July 15th. Yep. >> Yep. So, I'm going to I'm going to write specifically to the CRC and just say
please hold these evenings available. Too many so many hands. Andy, >> just to note that we got through all of the planning board and ZBA um application processes except for the ZBA question. So, we should put that on the
next agenda, too. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that's not that's not too imminent. So, we've got we could put it off to the next meeting after that, but it need it definitely needs to get done. Thank you. Uh, Jennifer, then
Mandy. >> Yeah, I was just thinking if we um want to have the ZBA interviews and the planning board interviews during our regularly scheduled meetings, maybe at the next meeting we could pinpoint when that would be. So Andy, as you get the calves in, you can ask people to put
them on their calendars sooner than later so that maybe there'll be a better chance that everyone can make our regularly scheduled meetings so we don't have to schedule a separate time because that gets really hard to do with a lot of people. >> Totally support that.
>> Yeah. So So May 28 might be a good one to target as at least the first the first round. Um, Mandy, >> yeah, a couple of questions regarding joint hearings. Um, presumably clean energy won't be done in one day. And so,
are they going to continue being joint until they're done? And if so, are they going to be a month apart like those dates you gave me, or are they going to be at every planning board meeting until then? Did you did you talk about that? And what are those dates if they're
there? um number one. And if we're doing those, are we also still going to have Thursday one to three meetings in the middle of all of that or are these joint hearings going to take the place of our sort of regular
meeting most of the time? Just two questions on those logistics. Andy. >> Um I think the the thought was that the planning board in particular would generally continue the hearing to the
next meeting and >> to their to their next meeting. Um, no to the the like the May 20th would be the first clean the the clean energy hearing and then they would continue it to June 17th and they would
have discussion in between I believe at their own meetings. So they would be hearing it but they would keep the the hearing open is is my understanding. I just I I would say I worry that if that we're not going to make our
vote out to go deadline if we're only holding the hearings once a month given that I'm not sure clean energy can do it in you know you're then looking at mid July. Um and we can't close our hearing till they close theirs and actually vote
a recommendation. I'm just I I don't think once a month is good enough for clean energy to get it done in time to get to the council. >> There is another meeting tomorrow to to continue planning the CRC and planning
board at 10 o'clock. Right, Pam? >> Uh yes, that's right. >> So, we can take we can get further clarification on that. Unfortunately, I might not be able to make that meeting because I have a memorial service to go to. But
>> that's that seems to be our that seems to be our conflict. >> Take turns. >> Okay. Um I'm going to go to Athena, but I but I will note that in the in the timeline that I put together, it looked like July 15 planning board was the last
date to close the public hearing and vote and then immediately report to town council and CRC. Um that would give two meetings to re to review if if the
CRC then closed a hearing on um July 23. >> Yeah. >> I think their their hope was to close on June 17th. They would they would have two meetings, two hearing meet nights for that. But >> yeah. Yep. Okay.
>> I'm curious what Athena was gonna say. She was probably going to say her her time frame is up and she needs to go. >> No, no. I I was just going to jump in and say that we are having a conversation. I'm speaking with Jeff Bag about it tomorrow morning and then we'll
meet with the larger group. Pam and um Andy, I'm sorry you can't make it, but Doug and Nate and Dave will be there to talk through some of the dates. And I am aware of the um the deadlines to close hearings and so on. I think the intent when we spoke previously
for the joint hearings was to open the hearings um together CRC and planning board and then do separate deliberations and and continue hearings on separate dates. That was that was my understanding. Um so that because because it sounded like
planning board and CRC both wanted to have an opportunity to have those deliberations in separate spaces. Um, but we'll, like I said, we'll be talking through that more tomorrow. And, um, if any members have questions about dates or questions about the process and so
on, it would be great to send those questions or input into me and Pam and Andy so we can raise those at our meeting tomorrow and um, we'll follow up with recap afterwards. >> Thank you. And >> and that is for 4 o'clock. Is that
correct? No. >> No, it was moved up to 10. It was moved up to 10 or down to 10. >> 10 10 a.m. >> 10 a.m. tomorrow morning.
>> Um I thought it was I thought I saw >> Yeah, originally >> 4 p.m. Well, I have a conflict at at 10:30, so I could be there for half an hour. This this I didn't see that. Okay, we'll do the best we can with the
time we have and we'll follow up and and keep the lines of communication open. This is I think I think it's a I think you know it's difficult to get everybody in the room at the same time with everyone's schedules and so on. Um but I think starting a practice of kind of coordinating between these two bodies is
going to be really useful while we have all this um zoning uh changes coming up. So, I don't I don't see this as, you know, the one and only conversation to have about this collaboration. And I'm hoping that, you know, this is the start of more ongoing
communication between these bodies and whether we need to, you know, get together in a room or just have uh more email communication, I think that would be great. >> Okay. I will try to move my 10:30 meeting back a little bit. >> Good to know. I'm really glad I didn't,
you know, show up at four o'clock and on a Friday. Yeah, >> on a Friday. Right. Which I Okay, let's let's not beat around the bush here. Uh I move we close the meeting. >> Second. >> Second.
>> Jennifer, >> yes. >> Andy, >> yes. >> Mandy, >> I. >> And Pam is an I, one absent. I don't think she would oppose. Thank you everybody. Thanks. This was
longer longer than expected. Really appreciate everybody's time. >> Take care. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you, Athena. >> Thanks,