Town Council Defeats Proposals to Promote Housing for Non-Student Residents

Report on the Meeting of the Amherst Town Council, December 8, 2025

This was a hybrid meeting held in Town Hall and was recorded.

Present
Lynn Griesemer (President, District 2), Andy Steinberg, Mandi Jo Hanneke, and Ellisha Walker (at large), Cathy Schoen and Freke Ette (District 1), Pat DeAngelis (District 2), George Ryan and Hala Lord (District 3), Jennifer Taub and Pam Rooney (District 4), and Ana Devlin Gauthier and Bob Hegner (District 5).

Staff: Paul Bockelman (Town Manager) and Athena O’Keeffe (Council Clerk)

In the second last meeting of this Town Council’s term, councilors defeated amendments to the Housing Production Plan and permanently tabled the residents’ petitions for zoning bylaws that prioritized housing for year-round residents. The council then spent much of the meeting discussing the 30 items on a list of proposed Town Manager goals for 2026. The meeting ended with an executive session to determine the Town Manager’s salary for the next two years.

Housing Production Plan Approved Without Changes
Councilor Pam Rooney requested a postponement of the discussion of Barrett Consulting Group’s 140-page draft of an updated Housing Production Plan (HPP) at the December 1 Town Council meeting, because there were elements of the draft that she felt misrepresented the conditions in town. At this meeting, she proposed three minor amendments: to remove the comment bubbles from pages 5, 31, and 39 because she felt that they did not accurately represent the data presented. Page 5 states, “1/3 of non-students may leave in five years.” Page 31 says, “25% of college students want to stay and age in Amherst.” And on page 39, “25% of families say they are likely to move out of Amherst in 5 years.” 

Rooney also proposed adding the phrase, “including on the UMass campus,” to the suggestion that Amherst needs to build more student housing; and finally, to move to the first paragraph of the Executive Summary the paragraph from page 6 that states, “Amherst has emerged as a model for progressive housing policy in the region. The town has actively worked to diversify its housing stock and increase affordability through zoning reform, building capacity, and targeted development initiative. The town has also embraced partnerships with regional planning bodies, academic institutions, and nonprofit developers to create affordable housing, particularly for low and moderate-income households.”

Rooney stated that these changes did not change the intent of the HPP, which she said has a wealth of data and many suggestions for implementation, but better reflect housing conditions in Amherst and the views of many residents. She said that accepting these changes would “leave her with a way to move forward” in voting for the policy. 

An updated HPP filed with the state allows Amherst to be eligible for various grants. The previous version was written in 2013. The Planning Board approved the current draft document in October, but the council must also pass it before it can be filed with the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC).

Rooney’s suggestions received pushback from other councilors and ultimately were narrowly defeated by a 6-7 vote (Rooney, Jennifer Taub, Cathy Schoen, Hala Lord, Bob Hegner, and Ellisha Walker voted for them). 

Andy Steinberg was concerned that if the amendments were accepted, the policy would need to go back to the Planning Board for approval, and the delay could disqualify Amherst from some available grants. Also, he said that building housing on campus was a decision of the University, not the town. 

Mandi Jo Hanneke said the comment bubbles accurately represented a survey of over 300 residents, but Taub noted that actually the number of respondents for each of the individual topics was fairly small, and that many of the residents who said they might move out of Amherst in the near future said so because of the lack of housing that families could afford.

George Ryan complained that it was hard to deal with a complex document when hearing it for the first time in a meeting. Council President Lynn Griesemer explained that a motion cannot be put in the meeting packet until it is made. She also had some criticisms of the draft HPP as to the interpretation of some of the data and that the “Executive Summary was not one of the best ones I’ve ever seen,” but she thinks that any changes should have been suggested and made during development of the document, not at the time of final acceptance.

The unamended HPP was approved by a 10-3 vote (Taub, Schoen, and Rooney voting no). It will now be submitted to the state EOHLC for acceptance.

Residents’ Zoning Amendments Protecting Neighborhoods Fail
When two proposed zoning amendments were brought to the council by residents in October, the council declined to refer them to the Community Resources Committee (CRC) which typically reviews new zoning amendments for the council, but sent them directly to the Planning Board for a public hearing. 

The first proposal was for a one-year moratorium on building multi-family buildings with more than four units in the downtown area, until the town completes its design standards. The second offered ways to limit conversion of family houses to student housing, by: specifying a minimum distance between student homes, instituting rent stabilization, and concentrating large buildings housing students along arterial streets. Because the council had not held a hearing on the proposed amendments, they could not accept or deny them. Instead, they voted to table them indefinitely.

At the Planning Board’s public hearing on November 19, board members voted 6-1 on both amendments not to recommend them to Town Council. Planning Board Chair Doug Marshall said that the moratorium was defeated because there were no known planned projects in the pipeline that would be covered, and some board members felt the moratorium was counter to the board’s mission to create more housing. Also, Marshall said that he expected that the town’s downtown design standards would be completed soon, and thus that requirement of the amendment would be satisfied. 

The Planning Board felt the language of the second amendment, which was meant to discourage the purchase of homes of year-round residents for conversion to student rentals, was not definitive. He added that the Planning Board has already been talking about many of the issues that the proposed amendments were aimed at solving. The board suggested that the sponsors of the amendments attend the meetings of the Housing and Zoning subcommittee to promote further discussion of the issues. The sponsors did attend the last meeting and have taken on some of the subcommittee’s research.

Kitty Axelson-Berry, one of the resident sponsors, addressed the councilors about the proposals. She said:

“The issue is that Amherst is a college town, but it’s an unusual college town, and there are indications it might even be unique, as we have the distinction of being a verysmall host community to a verylarge university. Not a small town with a small college, not a big city that can absorb a big university. And we have a disturbing imbalance between our “permanent” population and our “student” population.”

“With a population (according to the Housing Production Plan data) that’s down to only 13,000 year-round residents, it’s no wonder Town Manager Paul Bockelman has so much trouble getting together a sufficient pool of candidates for the town’s many committees, boards, commissions. And is it no wonder that the town defers maintenance, with so few residents paying for roads, DPW, fire department, libraries, and schools, as well as initiatives like CRESS and a resident oversight board? These services are mostly important for our small number of permanent residents. We’re suggesting that you, the outgoing Town Council, think objectively about the need to alleviate the pressures on housing for young, middle-aged, senior, and old year-round people. We’re suggesting that you think objectively about housing construction for all, and the need to acknowledge and support it vigorously. Focusing more on non-student housing might not be what the university wants, but it’s in the best interests of the town and the people who live here.”

In moving to table the amendments indefinitely, Hanneke stated that she was not saying that the Council doesn’t want to talk about the issues, but that there were too many problems with the proposals for the CRC to craft into a viable zoning bylaw.

Freke Ette was more dismissive. He stated, “We have as citizens an opportunity to petition the town, but we should not mistake the fact that that means the petitioners speak for the town. I think the best thing we could do, since the petitioners are not experts, is to find a way to bring in the experts, which in this case would be the Planning Board, or the legislative experts, which would be the council, and not find some workaround to have some proposal that isn’t baked enough and wouldn’t pass muster.”

Rooney said, “It’s called citizen participation, a citizen petition, which is allowed by our charter. Clearly, the people in town felt that not enough was being done to address this issue.” 

Taub agreed. She noted that as she went door to door during the recent campaign, this [the loss of family housing to student rentals] was “the most consistent concern I heard from every resident, no matter where they lived—the concern that families were competing with investors for single-family homes, that all building is priced for residents that share expenses. If we reject this, it is not being responsive to many of our constituents.”

Although Steinberg opposed the amendments, he said he appreciated the spirit with which they were brought forward. Hala Lord also expressed appreciation for the efforts of the petitioners. 

Clerk of Council Athena O’Keeffe suggested that the next council might charge the CRC with crafting a zoning bylaw that achieves some of the aims of the residents’ proposals. Ana Devlin Gauthier agreed that the council should learn from these proposals and work to craft a better zoning bylaw.

The council voted to table the residents’’ proposed zoning amendment indefinitely by a vote of 9-4 (with Lord, Walker, Rooney, and Taub voting no).

Zoning Change on Main Street Approved. Old VFW Site Declared Surplus Property
With little discussion, councilors voted unanimously to rezone three properties from 229 to 285 Main Street from General Residence (RG) to Neighborhood Business (BN). The change will allow the Amherst Inn at 257 Main Street to be able to rent all of its eight rooms for overnight guests and therefore to be able to affotd the safety upgrades required by the Fire Department.

The council also unanimously approved declaring the former VFW site at 454 Main Street as surplus property. The town purchased the property with ARPA money and demolished the existing building. By declaring it surplus, the Town Manager can dispose of it by issuing a Request for Information (RFI) and then a Request for Proposals (RFP) in order to find a developer to build a year-round shelter and transitional housing and services for unhoused residents. It has not been determined whether the town will sell the property to a developer or issue a long-term lease, as was done with the Olympia Oaks affordable housing.

Whatever is developed on the property must meet ARPA guidelines of providing affordable or mixed-income housing. Ryan thanked Town Manager Paul Bockelman continuing to work on creating a permanent year-round shelter, which has been one of Bockelman’s goals for several years.

Council Creates Traffic and Parking Commission and Adopts New Policy for the Public Way
The council approved the charge for a new Traffic and Parking Commission (TPC) that will create a single entity for the public to approach with concerns with traffic, parking, sidewalks, and bicycling. The TPC will have nine members, including two town councilors, a designee of the Police Chief, a designee of the Superintendent of the DPW, the Director of Planning and Economic Development or a designee, a member of the Commission for Persons with Disabilities, and three residents with interests or backgrounds related to transportation design, safety and equity, public transit, pedestrian and bicycle transportation, parking, streetlighting, or other relevant areas.

The creation of the TPC required the adoption of a new public ways policy to delegate which issues will remain with the Town Council and which will be handled by the TPC. Hanneke wanted to remove the responsibilities for deciding about streetlights from the TPC until there is a clear policy. The proposal for a new streetlight policy was referred to the Superintendent of Public Works and Town Manager over two years ago. Rooney thought it should remain with the TPC because streetlights are a safety issue, but Hanneke replied that “my family and many people on my street have requested streetlights be turned off because they harm people’s sleep, and that is not necessarily the safety issue you’re talking about.”

The councilors unanimously agreed to remove streetlight decisions from the TPC’s purview and then approved the new public ways policy unanimously. 

2025 Town Manager Evaluation and 2026 Town Manager Goals Accepted
Griesemer rewrote the 2025 Town Manager evaluation after Hanneke asserted at the December 1 meeting that her earlier draft did not reflect the input received. Griesemer incorporated suggestions from Hanneke and Ryan. The document rates Bockelman on 57 performance items. Ryan thanked Griesemer for her efforts and suggested that, in the future, the evaluation should not fall on one person. The report passed unanimously.

The councilors then spent more than 90 minutes discussing and amending the draft 2026 Town Manager Goals. There were 30 action items on the draft documents divided into six categories: Administration and Leadership; Climate Action; Community Health, Safety, and Social Justice; Housing and Economic Development; Infrastructure Management, Maintenance, and Land Stewardship; and Town Council, Community, and Strategic Relationships. 

Devlin Gauthier led the point-by-point discussion (beginning 2 hours 40 minutes into the meeting). Eventually, the document was passed unanimously.

The Council then entered executive session to discuss the Town Manager’s salary for the coming year.