Amherst citizens are trying to manage out-of-control partying and heavy usage of town emergency resources with a new tactic.

Rather than increasing fines as done in the past, they are looking to take on local landlords and zoning laws with four recent petitions.

The petitions, signed by 150 Amherst residents, were turned in to Town Hall on Wednesday by a newly formed group called the Coalition of Amherst Neighborhoods, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported.

The coalition’s aim is to amend the town bylaws in order to make it more difficult to change single family houses to multi-family houses, which are traditionally rented to college students.

They hope that these petitions get the issue discussed at the town meeting this fall.

John Fox, a Fearing Street resident and member of the coalition, said that it is important to act on this issue now because the party-related problems are no longer just contained to the neighborhoods surrounding campus, in a statement referenced in the Gazette.

“We’ve drafted these petitions because we believe it is crucial that the fall Town Meeting address them and not wait until next spring,” he said in the statement.

The petition argues for four major changes.

A key change would be that in housing not currently rented to college students, the prospective landlord would have to live on the property in order to hear and deal with neighborhood complaints once the dwelling is changed from a single family house to a multi-family house.

Another would be that landlords, property owners and rental companies would be fined the cost of police and emergency response service after the third offence.

Furthermore, Town Manager John Musante’s office would be required to notify landlords, property owners and rental companies when any of their tenants are arrested or cited by the police.

The fourth would require owners who wanted to subdivide their property to get a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals, where the board could set regulations on how the house was subdivided in order to “maintain the historic and residential character of the neighborhoods,” the Gazette wrote, in an effort to lessen demolition of currently-standing houses.

The coalition acknowledged that there is a shortage of housing for University of Massachusetts students, but said that that is even more of a reason for these bylaw changes, so as to not let opportunistic property owners buy up, rent out and change residential neighborhoods.

Another major reason behind the petitions is that alcohol-related injuries have engaged all five Amherst ambulances on recent weekends, including once when a one-week-old baby required medical attention and could not get it, because all of the town’s ambulances were busy transporting heavily intoxicated students, the Gazette reported Thursday.

The coalition said that these suggested bylaw changes are to aid Amherst Fire and Police department’s needs.

Sam Hayes can be reached at [email protected].