okay the Acoustics in the room are such that we all need to be very quiet except for one person who's talking or El it's going to be very hard to hear but thank you for coming out tonight to hear about the plan of conservation development and it's a it's certainly a pleasure to be here with the new community Senior Center to give the presentation was working hard yesterday trying to get it all working and it is least it appears to be so far it's it's in John's hands now but we'll go from there we've got some water and cookies please eat eat lots of cookies because otherwise I'll take them home finish them and I'll do
even more laps without the L restrooms over here if you don't know it and that's we've got plenty of exits in the event of some kind of an emergency to go out but again thank you I I wanted to give an update to the community on all the surveys you know we had like 200 and some people fill out a survey and give us input and I thought it was kind to let people know what was going on with that there was a couple other things that I didn't want to wait until we're done with the plan to get get feedback from so this is this is a session for you we can ask questions I don't want to be here all night I don't think we will but certainly we're interested in your feedback make sure that there's something that you think we're not hitting on right and with that I'll turn
that over to our town planner John Kowski and and he'll take you through the presentation hi everybody so for folks I haven't met in person I'm John gusowski Tom working with the town for about a year now and for the folks on Planning and Zoning it it this is me in actual three dimensions rather than just on on a zoom screen so I do I do exist in in real life so we're here as as Jed said to talk a little bit about the planet conservation and development we're at about I don't know around the halfway point of of our plan it's by no means a done deal it's it's still evolving we're still writing it and so this is just a point to check in with the public let you know sort of how we got to where we are and and what's ahead first a little bit about what a plan of conservation development is this is a document that is mandated by the state of Connecticut Connecticut General statutes that basically requires every municipality in the state at least every 10 years to basically update a master plan and it is a task that's assigned specifically to the Planning Commission in this case endover like many towns has a joint Planning and Zoning commission but it's actually a separate function so the the plan is charged to the Planning Commission to basically come up with a master plan for the development and the conservation of
all manner of things in town and there's a list here of certain things that have to be considered things like Recreation utilities Public Safety affordable housing energy conservation open space all of these things are required by the state statute from a practical standpoint obviously there's a mandate that the town has to do it and if the town does not it is at risk of losing discretionary State funds so grants of the type that help us buy open space or help us build Trails or help us extend sidewalk networks all of those things are basically tied to the town completion and update of its plan so it it absolutely removes the town to complete it beyond that there's a couple of ways that a plan of conservation and development is used by municipalities every time the town makes a significant investment Municipal Improvement whether that's building a new road extending a water line building a school doing renovations to a school buying a piece of open space selling land for tax purposes all of those MP simple transactions if you will are
statutory required to be referred to the Planning Commission and asked the question does this move does this acquisition does this sale does this Improvement meet the goals of the plan of conservation and development and the Planning Commission basically has to you know look through their plan and say yep we're interested in buying this piece of open space we definitely support it if the Planning Commission finds that that Municipal investment does not meet the plan of ation and development it essentially gets a veto over that over that Municipal investment or Municipal Improvement that would then require a town like andov which has which is a town meeting Town yeah to basically override that veto by a two3 majority so plan of conservation development in many ways is sort of a a a check against you know misallocating Municipal funds or or misdirecting Investments but on the positive side it can also be used to forward goals so if the town expresses a specific goal we want to preserve this this area of town or we want to develop Community Center here if it's in the plan of conservation development it can then be used and really strengthen a Grant application a request for state federal nonprofit Foundation funds because it clearly expresses the town's goal in support of that that project in addition sort of more of a m bus thing the town's zoning rules the zoning regulations are explicitly meant to deliver upon the goals of the plan of conservation and development so for instance if the town Expresses in the plan that we wish to expand housing opportunities through accessory dwelling units through accessory apartments or or you know Granny flat or something like that the zoning regulations are meant to
reflect that and so every time the planning zoning commission sort of opens up the zoning regulations for Amendment or for revision they also must check against the plan of conservation development to make sure that we're delivering upon the goals that are expressed in that document and I should also yeah there's plenty of SE and also you know obviously the Acoustics are bad but please feel free to interrupt with with questions this is not a super formal process at all and then and then finally just philosophically the the plan conservation development is meant to be a state a vision document that basically says this is where we are this is where we want to go over the next 10 years and this is how we're going to get there and
ideally it should it should really influence a lot of town decision making at an administrative level at a regulatory level at an investment level and it is sort of ideally the road map for the town's next 10 years despite the fact that the state mandates this plan that has you know all kind of all kinds of elements in it there actually is no mandated process for how you get to your plan of conservation and development and every town is free and and very frequently takes advantage of that freedom to take their own path in developing the plan in the course in the case of Andover it was decided again because it is a creature of the Planning and Zoning commission the Planning Commission the the writing and the and the guidance of this of this plan development is being managed essentially in the plan in
the Planning and Zoning commission itself with guidance from Eric as Town manager and myself as Town planner to help shape this document on behalf of the commission we have the current plan which is a 2015 plan it expires I think I don't know mid year next year mid 2025 and so we are basically taking that as our basis of operations and sort of our basis of of philos and sort of building from there sort of taking a look at the goals we established almost 10 years ago saying you know how have we accomplished you know how we met these goals how have we achieved some of these things what things have dropped away and you think back 10 years ago it's it's hard to
think back more than four years ago because Co seemed to have changed everything changed everything about you know how we live how we work how we you know interrelate how we communicate how you know towns picture themselves and and so a lot has a lot has changed even in the last half decade so it's it's very much worth revisiting so we take a look at where we've been over the last 10 years again not only how we've done in delivering on the goals of the last plan but how we changed how is our demographic profile changed how is our development makeup you know where have we built where have we preserved what things have been improved what things have been eliminated we are also checking against the state the state has a plan a and development it's referred to as the state conservation and development policies plan they've established six responsible growth principles which are are basically smart growth principles as as you know the the jargon was maybe 20 years ago but it's basically you know Focus development on areas where you've got infrastructure where you have major transportation corridors where you have sewer water population centers those should be the places that grow first most our natural areas should be preserved particularly environmentally sensitive areas and we should try to
grow in a way that that respects Equity the environment as well as Economic Opportunity so the state establishes those principles and when we write our plan and we we sort of develop our approach it should ideally reflect those State principles as well in addition to local priorities in determining what the local priorities are we've done a couple of we did a community survey that Jed responded to and we had actually a very good turn up I I don't remember the the number of responses exactly we'll take a look in a second but for a for a town of and over size it was it was a very good representation and again this and I'm sure many of you took the survey so you know what we were asking we asked about basically priorities what are your conservation priorities what are your development priorities what are things you're looking forward to over the next 10 years what are things you're concerned about and and basically to try to help the Planning and Zoning commission identify where the priority areas are as well as looking at existing town plans there was a town Capital Improvements plan A couple of years ago that we we were basically using and building off of and then
the part that we are just about to really ramp up is to have individualized conversations with stakeholder groups about specific things and I know the members of the conservation commissioner here we're going to have a detailed cons conversation about conservation priorities areas of Tom we want to preserve things that we've already preserve that we need to do a better job of maintaining that sort of thing and then we're going to do the same with the economic development commission and other other stakeholder groups in town and have these individualized conversations again over the next you know 6 to n months or so so that's where we are in the process I'll go a little bit about the demographics again you are all residents and involved citizens here so none of this should be terribly surprising to people who have lived in Ando for for
any length of time most of our data comes from the 2020 census which was the most recent desal census we have some data from the American Community survey which is a a 5year sort of sliding window of statistical analysis but the 100% count data comes from is already a couple of years old so not ly hand over is vast majority non-hispanic white Caucasian almost 90% with with small groups of of different minority groups our population Trends have been slightly trending down the top show the top graph shows us population estimates over the last well the 10 over the last 10 years that ended in 20 so you see from 2010 to 2020 there was a slight decline it you know it it looks more precipitous than it actually is if you look at the chart at the top we're only talking about a couple hundred people or what the top 3350 and so we're really only talking a couple of dozen people that that you know have have moved in or out over the last couple of over the last decade
or so the bottom chart shows you the population projections this is by no means written in Stone It Is by no means our our immutable fate but again it is based on you know State statistical analysis and sees in and over like a lot of similar rural communities in Connecticut a slight drop off of population over the next 15 years or so so according to the state again we're looking like our our recent population seems to have peaked at around 3500 and we're going to be declining you know possibly below 3,00 over the next 15 years but again this is not written in stone these projections were done before Co and again A lot has changed and and we've seen you know Andover is not the same as say
Boise Idaho which saw a crazy boom because of Co people escaping you know other other bigger cities and and finding sort of a a CO you know work from home type payment you know a lot of the smaller towns in Connecticut saw that s of Mo as well so the these projections are a little bit but before you leave that SL the last 3 years the population in Andover has been about the same might be going up a little bit might be down a little bit but it has certainly leveled off because when I started looking at the declining projections I said W this is bad news for us and it's it's not necessarily that way and it could be you know there's there's even people thinking that due to climate change migration of the population from the Sou is going to start moving back and forth again and that sort of thing so in this slide you know the the offal projections I think they'll be updated at some point to say show a different picture than what we got there but I was happy to see that our population is not declining and we're holding our own which I thought was good news and again the the the raw numbers are the differences are extremely small you know It's a Small Town the difference of a couple of dozen people here and there really makes a significant difference so we won we won't get too hung up on the on the numbers age distribution again not a
particular surprise necessarily to anyone who has lived in Anover for a while the age the age group distributions on the bottom chart the the light blue is back in 2000 the dark blue is in 2020 so you see the the bars that get taller get darker our age group so you can see that Andover is is Shifting in terms of its age that it's the population over 45 over 55 over 65 is creeping up as a percentage of the population again not a star ktic is aging Small Town Connecticut is aging however there are you know some some positives if you look between 2010 and 2020 our you know our baby population to five population ticked up a little bit so you know families aren't abandoning end over in drills but we are aging in our in our household demographics reflect that specifically we have a number of small households the the chart over on the left shows you household by size and so if you combine one person household and two person households we're looking at over 60% of the town is either one or two person households relatively small for a town that has such a that is so dependent on you know relatively large lot relatively large house single family housing and that you know we have we have relatively big houses and you can see that the I'm sorry that you know we have relatively sizable houses three and four bedroom units I think that might be on
our next slide but our household sizes again there's there's sort of a disconnect there our household size is surprisingly stable it's both both larger than Connecticut and and T County in general and T County household sizes are actually getting a little bit smaller and over been relatively stable and again the top chart shows you basically our household type or I'm sorry our housing type where we basically have the the long line single family detach again not a surprise I would be I would be shocked if anyone here lived in a 20 apartment building somewhere in hand I don't know if there are but we you know we live in single family houses but we have increasingly small household sizes a little bit of our employment and income end over is relatively well to do compared to T County and certainly compared to the state of Connecticut where a median income for a household is just about $100,000 get that's a I believe that's a 2020
statistic our unemployment rate is is quite low particularly relative to T County and the state but most of the people who are employed most and over residents who are employed are employed elsewhere so the the map shows you people coming into and over the dark green is people coming into and over to work the light GRE is people leaving and over to work so vast majority of people are working elsewh so it's you know again reflective of of a veteran Community and really only about 70 people Eric and 69 of his closest friends both live and work in and so we conducted a survey as we said we put this ad in the deliveries and in local newsletters and Publications hopefully people got a chance to see this hopefully you clicked on the on the link the QR code again to get to get feedback so we had over 230 people fill this out which again with an adult population and and over you know somewhere under 3,000 people it's it's a decent you know survey sample again so we asked some basic questions you live a working Handover basically as we saw with that with that with that job migration map most of the people responded were either living in and over working in another town or retired not that many people again living and working in Andover so we then we asked and you're not going to get
to see all of the all of the responses here but we basically asked people when it came to Economic Development priorities where would we like to see where would we welcome Economic Development some of the choices were no major changes to Business Development more retail on on Route Six including things like groceries and more service Professional Medical along Route six more restaurants along Route 6 more small businesses and homebased businesses scattered around town where the where the homes are more visitor based businesses to sort of take advantage of the the Hot River Trail and and some of the the linear resources or to focus on growing small businesses and we ask people to rank so you know your top priority is a one your bottom priority is a seven the way that this gets inverted so so it makes a little bit more sense on the map or on on the graph is the longest Bars were the most popular the longest Bars were the ones that people ranked the
highest and so you know nothing was was Far Away the the favorite but you know people preferred retail options and more restaurant options those were the two popular ones along the St with you know sort of mixed support for the other options and if if you look back at previous plans of conservation and development that question has been asked in that basic form at least four times in the last 40 years in this year is exactly what's been said each time is that what people are looking for you know in terms of commercial development is the things they use they want to see the grocery stores and they want to see the stores and the things they actually want to use not necessarily business for the sake of business in the tax Bas but business because they want to luse them so this is the results you know as you survey people seem to be the same for the last 30 40 years then we ask people about housing and if we thought if you thought that more housing options were needed what types of people are are in need of this additional housing options again the longest Bars were the most popular responses this was check all that appli so you know you could you could check all the options if you wanted so so the difference is stand out so young families were young families and then seniors were easily the most popular and Then followed by Young professionals teachers firefighters other sort of essential in town workers people that can't work outside of town because of
the nature of the job and then there was a a small group again about 25% that said yeah we're okay for housing but this this again I think reflects what we see in in a number of small towns like Handover that seniors young families are are are critically in need of of more housing options then we ask okay given that what kind of housing would be appropriate for the people that need it but would make sense in and over for andover's condition and again check all that appli so so people could in theory choose a whole bunch of them unsurprisingly single family residences that's what's in Andover that's what feels like Andover that's been our development
pattern and for the most part that's what people thought should be continued however there was still support for single family residences with accessory Apartments which is something that is allowed in the zoning that we hope that people will start to take more and more advantage of with some support for two families and duplexes and then town houses the other options three four family and multif family didn't quite have the same sort of support but so again you know most of us in Andover are home owners single family detached houses we love it here we're comfortable here we like to see that sort of development and so unsurprisingly to sort of see a path forward and and over that sort of would be would be a preferred option then we asked about Community resilience and sustainability looking at some potentially environmental factors that may encounter and over over the next 10 years and how should we how should we rank these again this was ranked top priority low priority the longest Bars were the largest responses the the most popular response in this was upgrading our roads our bridges our CTS to basically respond to increasing storm frequency and intensity more flooding events more environmental damage to our our road instructure was was something that was truly very very important upgrading our power data infrastructure and then making sure handovers Road network was friendly to bicycle and pedestrian travel that's the yellow one we're also relatively relatively popular stood up a little bit among sort of the the noise of the others which included Alternative Energy infrastructure things like solar Community Gardens discouraging new construction in flood plane areas or flood prone areas and investing in creating access so all of those were kind of
mixed results but definitely people saw roads Bridges culs and things like that as as something that the town should be spending it's money on we looked at Natural Resources again asking the same questions rank the priorities longest bars are the are the the most popular the most popular being focus on our Trails connecting our Trail systems both in the town and to other Town Trail systems so we have a real Network some of the other popular ones we're focusing on and over Lake water quality issues investing in stewardship and care of the lands that we already have there are a lot of open space there a lot of of of preserved Forest land in town making sure that that gets taken care of is is something that frequently gets sort of Left Behind even after a property is is preserved and then looking at things like investing in active Recreation and passive Recreation also had had some support but definitely this is a this is a trail to and we may thank Eric for loting on that one probably 40 or 50 times so so again we look at the long range plan that was that was done a couple of years ago we basically put this question back out there these were the priorities that were identified in the long range plan and we want to see where people fell out on that and think this was a basically a 1 through
five do you agree strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree and of the of the five priorities of the long range planning study the one that r easily the highest the weighted average was that the town should actively Market available and undeveloped commercial land along Route Six which again you know sort of fits with the the fact that people seem to recognize you know obviously so that route 6 is sort of the best opportunity for economic development of the type that would be suitable for Handover and and people want more of it particularly the retail service type uses that was as the as the most most the strongest agreement on the long range planet and then we asked a little bit about town government itself the services that are provided by the town the schools the transfer station General
government Senior Services Public Works and and which people supported what's what's interesting so this was available online obviously Survey Monkey hopefully most of you filled it out there we also had many many hard copies available at the Town Hall at the library for people to fill out a hard copy who didn't want to you know use the computer the majority of people who filled out the survey online were had strong support for everyone had pretty strong support for public works but there was a much stronger support for Andover public school system on the online survey in the hard copy survey there was more strength support for Services for Seniors so we we got a little bit of a demographic microcosm based on based on the method of filling up the survey but overall schools are seen as are seen as very very important public works again roads Bridges culs things like that and then Services for Seniors General government services things like you know Tax Collectors the
clerk the hunting and Zoning are all seen as as particularly important as well we asked a little bit about concerns things we should be worried about a little bit or or thinking about relative to end overs future we asked a number of things things like climate change changing demographics loss of sense of character aging infrastructure overdevelopment of our natural resources housing pattern slow economic growth crime affability all of those things again a very concerned to not at all concern basically a 1 through five we gave a weighted average and the two highest ranking concerns are aging infrastructure again so we saw that with roads Bridges cirs as well as affordability of living in Andover which is I think I don't know it's it's it's impressive and it's thoughtful particularly because Andover is a town of home ownership and everyone living here most everyone who filled out the survey owns their own house and is in a you know in a relatively stable hopefully housing condition but still recognizes that housing is a challenge housing is getting more affordable it is an increasing challenge particularly for empty nesters who are maybe taking care of a bigger house with with a lot of taxes with we a lot of utilities would like an opportunity to downsize but are but also stay in town we see
a lot of that reflected in in concerns about affordability of public living we then as a couple of open-ended questions the first question was what is something you hope will happen in and over the next 10 years and people were all across the board all a variety of things and and thanks to the the thoughtful and diligent sorting through Jed went through every open-ended response and categorized them about you know some people might say you know you know expense of government services some people might say taxes those are kind of the same thing and Jed took some of these divers responses and and categorize them and so among our top I don't know this is top eight or nine hopes are growth of appropriate businesses varieties of housing particularly affordable housing a growth in our population particularly young roads and Bridge improvements safe rural community lower taxes Town Center light enforcement several people called out the plaza complete streets and then more Town activities in par creation these are these are hopes and so these were you know again we had over 230 responses most people did fill out the sort of open-ended responses and so these did stand out as as common respones on that before you go the you we talk before about people wanting to see Economic Development growth in and over and it came through there number one item here on on your hope what do you hope for we're hoping for more economic development of the things that was tied into that that was that an awful lot of the people said we want Economic Development so that it lowers the lowers our taxes and
we can afford to stay here and one of the things that that I learned from going through the Dollar General and thinking that that was going to provide the taxes that would make everything great is that the economic development is not going to solve that problem and I don't know the answer is but the Dollar General didn't produce wasn't responsible for lowering the tax rate in town that you might have thought it was going to so if you if you think a little economic growth by having rest office whatever it want is going to solve all our problems and I mean so to certain extent I we hope that that's understood and and somewhat reflected in in responses that again you know relatively small you know a Dollar General is 5,000 ft it's you know it's a building it's a commercial building it doesn't generate kids but it's it's not you know Microsoft World Headquarters it's not a billion building it's not going to really move the needle
necessarily on on the grand list but it does provide immediate service and again people in the survey clearly stated that they want those Services they want those vences stores phes doctor's offices things like that really I think more about more about convenience and lifestyle than it is about about taxes I have a question yeah if there were an average five more businesses to come into a pharmacy another restaurant and three others would that have a big impact on the taxes in our town overall if they were that popular to bring in funding to lower our taxes I I may defer this to to air up a little bit I mean a lot depends on exactly how big and expensive these buildings are because essentially I mean a grand list is basically the value of taxable property and and so if your if your house is worth you know $300,000 a Dollar General might be worth $800,000 so it's basically the equivalent and I'm making these numbers up but it's basically equivalent of 2 and a half houses so it doesn't NE that much it would help but I don't think it's a game
changer it would you know it would take something like $50 generals to to move the bill rate down a point or two you know so again kind of making up the numbers but but that's the order of magn talking about yeah so the Dollar General brings in roughly 40,000 a year in taxes so one of the things we did a while when I was still on the planning Z is we did a quick study with the old Town planner guy that was helping us out Bill Warner like what if scenarios and so the first one we posed is what does it take the businesses that we have and those types of businesses to generate a noticeable difference in the mill rate say 10% and it worked out somewhere around we'd have to have about 35 endover plazas to make a 10% difference and we took about 40 of the gas
stations and that's the range of things that would make a noticeable difference you know I mean unfortunately the types of businesses that would generate lots of revenue for a town like Handover tend to be very undesirable businesses like the infusion station which everybody was beamly opposed a trash energy plant those are things that you know would make a significant difference in the mill rate in taxation but also have enormous negatives is that because Anover is just a small demographic size that to expect to have 15 or 20 kind of drown out what really is to bring I'm not sure we have the commercial real estate to even putot on that many more businesses but I mean I look at it and say something that's going to make a mo a noticeable difference in your tax dollars is going to look something like the burlin turnback not like rout six as it is today if that's what everybody wants then you know that's what the town pursues but that's that's never been really what people want and and in a lot of ways that's precisely what this exercise is about is is to determine what that balance is because again we call this the plan of conservation and development and so you know what in town is important for for preservation and one of those things that's important for preservation is the sense of andle and what kind of town
this feels like and the reason that you have all chosen to live here or or stay here if you have never been born here those things that make up hand over are the things that we want to protect that said we are also concerned about Rising prices and and convenience and things like that and so where where do we fit along that line what how much do we develop before it stops feeling like hand over and that's that's the purpose of this plan so when we ask people the same question yes go ahead I'm just wondering if you allow apartments and low cost housing and more housing is that going to have an effect on utilities of the water and I the answer as with most things is it depends I mean where you know Andover is dependent on private Wells private SE system and there are for any development whether it's a single family residence whether it's an apartment has to go through a fairly rigorous review process to the Department of Public Health possibly even D to make sure that it's not compromising public health and safety in in the surrounding area so it it you know a septic septic systems are frankly overdesigned in Connecticut we are extremely conservative in the way we design our septic system so properly designed properly installed a septic system even even an apartment even a large apartment should not affect environmental conditions and if you have a large scale public water supply a community water system that would serve a department that needs to go through
Department of Public Health also to basically do all kinds of field testing groundwater groundwater testing before anyone can get a a community water system license they basically to monitor groundwater levels over the course of a year or more to make sure that the the the water draw for the new use does not negatively affect the the the neighbors and within the the oper with the area it's not to say that nothing ever changes and no one is ever affected but we have a lot of environmental safeguards in place to make sure that we only build what the what the ground because we rely on the ground ground for ground water ground for waste renovation only what the ground can can tolerate we hope but yeah there are systems in place it should be protected
but I I can't say that it never ever ever happens and again you know we're in a time of a changing climate are we're we're wetter and more intense at times we are drier at times we have droughts and so there's there's complicating factors so sometimes you know apartment building could get approved and built when we just happen to be in a threeyear drop cycle and people's you know Wells are not yelding what they used to it's very easy to to point your finger at the at the apartments and say they Qui water but the fact is we're just in a drought so it's it's a complicated answer but but we have safeguards in place that it shouldn't it should we maybe can add that to one of our concerns which was the question we asked and again thanks to J for were summarizing a lot of these again talk about High Cost of Living and taxes were probably the most comment crime was mentioned frequently despite the fact that if I'm going to go back just a couple crime and end over one of the concerns we asked about was actually quite low most people didn't have like very high concern but it did show up in the open-ended responses people were didn't mention crime and a lot of that I think there was a lot of like speeding like that also you know so Public Public Safety sort of broadly defined losing our residents again people moving out particularly the young people people are concerned about growth as well as as the small town
character loss that that may go along with that school spending conversely we had a lot number of people worryed about too much growth unsurprisingly we had more people we had other people concerned about not enough growth so that that may indicate that kind of headed in the right track if if people on both sides of the of the growth curve are are equally upset more affordable housing and then and then speeding and road safety several people particularly the handri responses all know had some concerns about about the threat of roundabouts in town so kind before you go on there you know when when everybody's concerned about the high cost of living in Handover you there were there were certainly a lot of seniors said you know High Cost of Living in Andover is difficult for us there were a bunch of folks you know who talked about Andover being a fairly wealthy town if you will you know the the median salary is up there
pretty good for the household income there's a lot of people that were saying we're willing to pay more taxes we want to pay more taxes to help it down so you know and it's certainly not a planning Z the thing that the senior organization can do is look at how do we give a little tax break to the seniors to allow those folks that to pay more taxes build up you for for funding the school you know we we saw that that chart that shows the zero to 5y old kids is starting to grow a little bit that's great news the downside is you know each one of those kids that goes to school you know raises raises the cost of Education it's great news but it makes the number one problem worse in that it's getting more so all of it's kind of on both sides of the issue which which kind of led me to the conclusion that maybe we were doing things okay we had the question about you know is we are we going to have too many too many houses that tax our water and sewer the septic and that kind of thing I'm happy if we could get a few more houses you know especially to beat the
affordable housing rules but but the population projections were dropping off you know you don't want that I don't think it's going to turn around and we're going to be the thriving Metropolis but we ought to be holding our own and that's going to C that that will require us to build more housing more affordable housing not low income housing but affordable for the you know the average worker or the retire we to go be able to go record to SP then just a little bit of demographics and and unfortunately we did not ask people's names we didn't ask for people's emails which is unfortunate because if if Jed is saying more people
were willing to to pay more we could have match those people up and give the name to we just ask again demographic questions how what's what's your age and what's interesting again about 230 or so people filled this out but the the mix was pretty good it was pretty reflective of what actually is in Ando we had most people were between 45 and 69 big chunks with with significant population from 30 to 45 and then over 70 but and again if you remember sort of the the the demographic curve it pretty much reflects the adult population in handle so I think we
had we had a pretty good representative sample again do you own or rent your home not surprisingly we are a home ownership community and then household income again reflecting most people were above the the 75,000 you know significant numbers above 100,000 150 reflecting and overs demographics that we see okay all of that is is prologue and I'll continue to buzz on I want to take people whole evening here but taking all of that we had a conversation in the Planning and Zoning commission about the kind of Handover that we wanted to see going forward and we spent a couple of months working on this and basically came up with the vision statement that will guide the whole plan of conservation and development and with your Indulgence I'm going to read it because it's important to to hear I think out loud and hear the kind of and over we want to see the town Andor Planning Commission and developing this update to the 2015 plan of conservation and development is Guided by a deep commitment to conserving and enhancing the historic rural atmosphere of Andover and by the intent to promote actions and policies that will encourage a safe connected and sustainable Community
where wider opportunities are available to all a fundamentally rural agricultural Nature has defined the community of endover for centuries and a continues to be a critical component of the town's self-identity as it faces the next decade making investments in conservation of forests Farms Trail systems and Open Spaces will help reinforce reinforce this rural Tradition at the same time certain elements of change must be acknowledged and used to guide appropriate growth an aging population limited housing and Commercial diversity continued needs for infrastructure and investment and a changing climate also demand proactive Clans and active responses we envision in Andover that provides housing educational recreational and Civic opportunities that maintain the communities excellent quality of life we envision an Handover that strives to create more affordable housing to welcome a wider variety of new residents and households and ensures opportunities for residents to thrive throughout their life stages we envision an Handover that safeguards the Integrity of our natural agricultural resources through sustainable conservation we envision economic development that takes advantage of major transportation and Trail corridors that serves the economic needs of the community and is scaled to fit within the spirit and pace of Andover we envision a safe and vibrant Andover that connects the community through a network of complete streets and enhances the town's Civic campus on
both sides of Route 6 at its heart we envision Civic investment in infrastructure that acknowledges and takes measures to address climate change over the next decade and over will continue to integrate thoughtful development throughout Town balance with conservation of natural or cultural natural resources that are essential to the realization of this Vision so this is the The Guiding statement that will that will form the backbone of the plan of conservation development as we write it now you'll know we have six we envision statements those we envision statements are basically form six themes six major topic areas and what we have done to start our next phase of the plan of conservation and development is we have broken out each of those six we envision statements and will start to establish goals and policies and actions that are in each of those categories so we start
with the we envision statement about housing educational recreational and Civic opportunities and we'll be beginning to talk about elements that make that out including our housing our school system parks on W government and that sort of thing and and so on we'll we'll do this with the the affordable housing one looking at seniors and downsizers new residents similarly about natural resources and cultural resources looking at Farm viability open space acquisition stewardship historic preservation and other conservation efforts with economic development targeting businesses location regulatory adjustments to encourage these things and then the last two safe and vibrant Handover that looks at complete streets again building on our complete streets plan focusing on bike and pedestrian connections and making sure that roads are safe for all users and and highlighting our Trail connections within and Beyond and then looking at the the infrastructure the Civic campus investment that this fa facility are roads Bridges culs and things like that building on the sustainable Connecticut public water infrastructure all of those things so this is sort of yet to come we have established the vision we have sort of split this up
into workable pieces for topical discussion and for identification of goals and this is where we're going next the next 6 to n months is going to being spent in these six topic areas starting to flesh out those individual goals and actions a couple of quick takeaways and and Jed and Eric talked a little bit about some of these already from our survey from our discussions you know Andor continues to be a great place to live to go to school and to to to thrive throughout all life stages we're doing great things with complete streets with a recreation field
improvements and are continued to working on those things people are concerned about cost of living about loss of of character that may come with the economic growth that is necessary to address some of those cost of living concerns we have a clear lack of housing not only for new residents but also a growing concern from existing residents young families downsizers and the range of housing opportunities and again while the the trends are looking either stagnant maybe shrinking a little bit there is some hope or thought that our our population is stabilizing and that there is opportunity to continue to to grow as we go forward that's where we are right now again this is a work in progress there's been a lot of work to this point thanks to the work of planning the zoning thanks to all of you participa in the survey and in conversations like this and we will absolutely look towards continued conversation again over the next six to n months as we start digging into some of those very specific goals when we start talking about what are we going to do for housing what are we going to do for roads what are we going to do for complete streets what are we going to do for business growth all those topics will be fleshed out over the next over the next year or so so that's it for me questions comments yeah so great presentation by the way lot of the
process with the Conservation Commission we've been working very closely on you know National resource inventory and looking at the open space and I think one of the greatest challenges looking at you know some of the responses in some of the areas to focus on is along that L six quarter that is obviously a major transportation quarter identified as a major area of economic growth but that's also where the Hot River courp system is which is a very unique natural resource for for both natural resources for wildlife and for weapons and various habitats but also for recreational use obviously the trails and it's actually a tail of sort of two sides of Route Six the north side is where the flood plane is and where a lot of the resources are concentrated which is very different from the South Side where it's more forested more upet it's a different sort of ecosystem so I see that as one of the challenges of looking how to balance
projected growth along that Corridor with preservation of the natural resources the agricultural areas along that that system especially on that South Side and I think as as you go forward with the process one of the things I think that will be important as we look at because we tend to look at these things for example in the Conservation Commission we've been looking very narrowly focused on the natural resources and conservation others maybe looking at Recreation or Economic Development or various you know like that is where do we see mandates cross purposes I'll use the terms where we're recommending that this is an area for preservation while so in Economic Development recommend that is an area for commercial growth or so we have to look at that often times the solutions to that is really the where and how those develop but I think that making sure that we just don't put all the pieces together without doing a little bit of an analysis of where those poten poal conflict areas are so that we can have some healthy discussions about how to resolve those any other questions or comments from anybody I'd really like to thank the zoning commission and John for getting us up to this point I think you know they're going through a great process to really kind of understand to do as so I it's important that you're all here it's fantastic creation on a you know random random Thursday night from pa that we have some many people here so thank you for your time thank you for your interest and hopefully thank you in advance for your continued participation in these conversations and
I know minus five points on my part because I didn't introduce myself right off the bat don't know me I'm Jed but I really appreciate you all coming out tonight I would appreciate you all taking some more cookies I get home later up so thank you very much for attending and can you also please sign in there is a sign