You got it. You got it. We are recording. 704 will call the regular meeting of the planning and zoning commission to order. First up is we'll call the seating of alternates and Scott Pan is not going to be able to join us tonight and so Andreas you are filling in. Thank you. next up is additions or changes to the agenda. What happened? It's fine. I can see I can see you guys. The owl the owl is just moving with the with the sound. Oh, okay. Well, we can't see you anymore, I guess. Yeah, I was putting the agenda up. Okay, the agenda up there. Not necessary. No. Okay, there we're there. We're good. Okay, so next up is additions or changes to the agenda. And Wayne, do you know if Mike is going to be here tonight for the home business? No, I he I have no information. Okay. what I what I would like to do is in an effort to get through Ryan's stuff quick so he doesn't have to sit around and listen to all the boring stuff we do later. move items A, B, and C ahead of old item, old
business items B, C, and D. So, are there any other changes proposed to the agenda? If not, I make a motion to move the new business items A, B, and C above old business B, C, and D. Second, second that. Thank you, Ann. Any discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Ann Leanne, you're looks like you're muted at the end. Leanne. We'll come back here in a minute. Andreas. Patrick. Hi. Can I vote? I Leanne, we got with you yet. Leanne, have not put your vote in the chat. Okay, Leanne, if you can hear us, if you turn your your video on, you can just raise your hand for a yes vote or raise your hand when we say no. I don't think she has a camera on her computer. That's why she has the phone. Okay. Leanne indicated in the chat that she she seems that she seems to be unmuted. I'm not sure what the issue is, but but she can see us and I think hear us. Hello, it's Jim. Is there something we can do to help you get the coms or else I can just put you on the speaker phone here if we can hear you? Okay. Well, we are hearing you here. I'm going to put you on speaker
phone so we can get we can get your vote on the approval of the change to the agenda and then we're going to go. About raising my hand. I don't know how I'm going to speak later if you can't hear me. I can hear and see you. Other than what you said about the speaker thought if that would work. Other than that, I don't think this has happened before. So, I don't know what else to do on my end. Nope. This is a this is a new challenge, something different, but we've got your phone and we can hear you. it is. It's You still hear us? I can. Yes. okay. Well, nope. I muted Leanne on the phone and that didn't fix it. Anyhow, I'm going on to the next item, which is public speak. And anybody from the public want to talk about something that's not on the agenda
at this point? Okay. hearing none. We're going to go to old business. And the first up is a certificate of appreciation for Jim. So, Jim, come on up here and join me. The do we move the new business up in front of the old Yes. Go ahead. But you want to do that first? Yeah. there in front of BC and D. Oh, okay. So, we tried to do this last month. All we have is cake basically. So, we'll we'll do it again here. And so, this is this is from the town of Andover Proclamation wishing Jim Hely a well-deserved and happy retirement. Whereas Jim Hy has been a longtime resident of the town of Andover at Merit Valley Road. And whereas Jim
Hales has served the town for many years as the town zoning enforcement officer. And whereas Jim Haly had served the town when needed is the inland wetland and water course. And whereas Jim Allison had dedicated numerous hours assisting the citizens of the town of Andover in developing applications to the planning and zoning commission and the zoning board of appeals, resulting in improved quality of life for the citizens of Andor. Whereas Jim Hy routinely goes above and beyond the call of duty in serving each of the above mentioned commissions and citizens of Andor. Now therefore, be it resolved that the board of selectman congratulate Jim Hy for a job well done in serving the town and its citizens for those many years. Be it further resolved that the board of selectman and the residents of Andover wish Jim Haly a well-deserved and happy retirement to pursue those other interests he may so desire. In the witness whereof, we have appeared to set our hand and caused the seal of the town of Vandover to be a fixed. This was back on the 15th day of April, 2025. So thank you very much all you folks and I as a resident I appreciate all the volunteer time that you put in or staff over and above time that you put in. Thanks again. Thank you Jim. Take care. Thanks very much. Thanks J. Okay, next up is going to be receive application and set public hearing date for special permit 251 71 Bizola Road Michael Heckler home occupation with site improvements in the Andover Lake zone. So, we have we have received the application and I would make a motion that we set the public hearing to take place
just before our next regularly scheduled meeting which will be on June 17th. So, the public hearing will start at 700 p.m. Looking for a second to that. Patrick second. Thank you. Any discussion? Hearing none. We'll call for vote. Ann I. Leanne. Hi. I think you were coming through the L that time, not my phone. I'm going to try and hang up. See how it goes. I I said I Is that better? Yep. No, that worked out great. I I hung up on my cell phone. So, you're coming through well now. Andreas, I am okay. Yes, Patrick. I And I vote I as well. The motion passes to schedule a public hearing on June 17th. And Wayne, you'll
have to get with Mike to make sure all the details that I was going to go over tonight on that will go. Next up is to receive application and set public hearing date, special permit 252, 11 Buckry Hill Road, Fitch Family Farm, Farmers Market, and various other events. I'm going to discuss item C at the same time for now, which is receive pit family farm application for a text amendment change to the zoning regulation concerning events such as farmers market and related. So, haven't given some thought on the best way to do this. if we do your special permit application. Now, we can't do that because we don't have any regulations to base the special permit
on. So, what what I think we will do, we've got we've got 65 days to start the public hearing. Then, once the public hearing starts, we've got 35 days to close it. And that normally encompasses two meetings. And after that, we have to make a decision within 65 days of closing the public hearing. I don't know that it's going to take quite that long, but but the point is we can't give you answers to all your questions tonight. And so, it's going to take a little bit. And what I would like to do is schedule a public hearing on the text amendment to take place just prior to our June 17th meeting and then set the public hearing for your special permits to take place at the meeting following on July 15th. So that's within the 65 days. And that hopefully we would have a good idea of what the text amendment that you're asking for is going to look like and then we can apply special permit to the proposed change and and act on there. So with that in mind, I'll make a motion to conduct a public hearing on the text amendment for the agro tourism regulations prior to the start of our 17 June regular meeting and a public hearing for the special permit applications for the agro tourism business to take place. on July 15th before the start of our regular meeting. Then looking for a second and seconds. Okay, thank you. Any discussion on that plan? Okay. And so the way it'll work, we're not going to
talk about the application tonight. We we've got to do that in the public hearing forum. So on June 17th, we'll have a discussion on the agro tourism rigs. And I know Baron, that's why you're here tonight is you're you've got an interest in that. We'll we'll see how far we get on that. and whether or not we can close it at that meeting. Irregardless of whether we close it at that meeting, I still think we'll be in a position where we can open the special permanent public hearing the following meeting and get that going. I just want to try to get the text amendment closed out before we're deliberating on the the special permits that are based on the text amendment that we have to have in our books. So Eric's wisdom of trying to get the text amendments done prior to even putting in the special permits for all those other things started bringing through loud and clear as I was trying to figure out the best way to do this and keep the card on the right side of the horse. But that's that's where I think we're at. So Baron, you probably got an interest in both the the June and July meetings and and we'll get to hear, you know, your thoughts on on how things are going at that point. And I think that is probably Did we vote and seconded? Okay, very good. That whole that was discussion. Okay. Yeah. Very good. Thank you. Now we'll vote.
Ann I Leanne Amit I. Thank you. Andreas I Patrick I. And I vote I as well. The motion passes 500. So no reason for you guys to stick around. We're we're done on that and we'll see you next month. Okay. Thank you. Thank Oh, and so Barrett, you know what you know where to find the information on what the you've got a copy of the text amendment the application for tourism rigs? I don't. Okay. So, if you go to the planning and zoning website, and if you have any if you have trouble getting there, you know, Wayne can help you out. But if you go under applications pending, there'll be a bunch of stuff on the left hand side there as you scroll down says applications archived. Second one down is applications pending. And I can't remember well probably Ryan's second because he's 25. Okay. But you'll you'll see it there. and it's got the text amendment that you probably want to read through and all any other stuff that we get posted as we go along the way. That's where it'll hang out. So, if you can't find it, let Wayne know and he'll help you get there. Thank you. I appreciate it. Any questions, Brian? You're good. Just other than the per the special permit is needed even if we're changing the language. Yes, they work hand in hand. It does. So, we're going to put some regulations into effect that will set some guidelines for how to do an agro tourism event and then you're going to come to
us with the specifics on how you're going to do the events in your place that comply with those regulations. Perfect. Okay, that's it for that. All right, thank you guys. Next up, getting back to old business is going to be the plan of conservation and development, economic development commission. And so, John, I'm going to turn the discussion over to you. Elaine is here to provide maybe some feedback if she I think she was laying on a beach someplace reading reading your draft. I don't know. And then Patrick can chime in as well from the economic development perspective. Okay. I'll be I'll try to be relatively brief. Hopefully everyone got a chance to look at this. but this is largely a chapter that's drafted based on the outline and focus areas presented by economic development at last month's meeting. I'll I'll just briefly very briefly go through the the the structure of the outline and then I'll open it up to comments. so you know a basic basic PC type chapter. this is economic development based on that guiding principle. a little bit of background, you know, focusing on on Andover as a a relatively small rural community with obviously Route Six and the Hop River at the core. and and sort of setting up that ongoing challenge of, you know, focused development versus focused conservation along that corridor. a little bit of the sort of nuts and bolts, economic activity, large current industries,
employers, and and a little bit of overview of of the commuting in and out of Andover. Obviously, the vast majority of folks are commuting out of Andover. and no, you know, no major particular concentration, a lot of small employers. talks a little bit about the the grand list and some potential development opportunities. we do there was a a focus or a revisited focus on the potential redevelopment of the town garage at the core of the community. as a as a as an opportunity and moving the town garage you know more towards the transfer station site. A little bit more on existing conditions. We talk about zoning. again, you know, the relatively limited development corridor focused principally around Route 6. looking at expanding potential uses and and encouraging, you know, broader uptake of the developable land along that corridor. and then we get into some of the challenges again relatively relatively limited market potential. looking to encourage more flexibility and sort of growing in place. again, you know, some of these maybe multi-tenant buildings, incubator type situations. as well as looking at the potential of a village district, which is, you know, more mixed use and provides some flexibility while maintaining some design control. and again, you know, looking at growing carefully along the route six corridor because it is the hot river corridor. and then we get into the three core aims and objectives and again this is directly from the economic development discussion. the first aim is growing Andover's grand list from within by providing additional development opportunities. And here we do talk about growing in place. It's it's much easier to encourage the development and growth of existing businesses than it is to recruit any outside businesses. So
finding a way from cottage industry and homebased business to you know small incubator to you know permanent larger scale is really the focus there. promoting tourism, making Endover a destination. And here we we noted the the potential for the Roshambo leveraging the Roshambo Trail and the the World Rock Paper Scissors Association. and then looking at housing and then obviously you know promoting a destination as for for natural resources as well. and then promoting housing as economic development because it is a very attractive community to to live in and and you know housing is also grand list. Housing is also growth and and you know
leveraging that and and leaning into Andover's reputation as a very positive place to live and and raise a family you know can be a key point of economic growth. And then we detail I believe it's 19 action items that basically draw from those three core principles. and I I won't leave those all. I won't read them all, but I I'll I'll leave that up on the screen for a moment. so we can look, but I hopefully everyone again got a chance. And I would invite the, you know, Elaine and then and the EDC folks first first crack at this. Sure. I'll I'll pipe in. I absolutely loved it. I mean, it's the first time that all of our discussions seem to have made it on the list. Thank you, John. You did an excellent job. I I I I don't know about being like putting in the POC specifics like about the rock paper scissors thing in Rosh and Bo, you know, more put in as public activities or something like that. to tie in our history with Roshimbo. because I people get stuck on stuff like that. They're going, "What what are they talking about?" you know, when it comes to public hearings and people approving things, I just, you know, thought maybe genericize it a little bit more, but it gets into the aggra tourism and trying to tie in our history. which is great. I love it. And actually, I I
wasn't on a a beach. Jed, we did seven national parks in seven days with Nevada and Utah and Colorado. And I just we just flew in. We got to Bradley at 9:00 this morning, so I'm running on fumes. But I definitely wanted to say I I read through all of these and I I think they're great. Thanks. Thank Patrick. I second that. Okay. Yeah. And I have one minor correction to the businesses. The the MTM business had some a description after it in the the current local businesses and it's fixtures and machine tools where Okay. So MT Oh, right here. Yep. Providing MTM. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually networking that it's like that's that that's what network does. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I think you have that in there, too. I mean, probably a cut and paste thing. Yeah. And Okay. And so network does the services for intellectual disabilities and providing connections to healthcare. Yeah. Yes. Okay. All right. So, let's let's move that. Yeah, I was surprised. I said, "Really? That's what they do?" And I'm like,
"No." And and I'm sorry. So, so what what do we what how should we describe MTM would be the best? they their their business signage reads precision fixtures and tooling. It's a machine shop. Okay. Tool and die. Yep. Great. Okay. Okay. I would actually call that precision machining. Sure. Because I think most people don't really understand what fixtures and tooling is and they understand what machining is. Perfect. Yeah. So, if it's not bathroom fixtures, I'm lost. We're you have a commission in do you have any thoughts on it? I thought this was great especially the thing here showing how the Connecticut general statutes have I think regulations about allow the zoning commissions to adopt regulations to create the village districts. And this stuff I thought was just fantastic as well as all of the action items. Really, really good. Okay, we'll show them all to you. Hi, can you hear me now? Yep. Okay. I just have a question for clarification about the term developable
land and having a possibly starting a separate fund for it. So that's yes. Okay. Would that be something that would this be something a fund that the town would would purchase and develop for any one of the uses? You know, I'm not picking one now, but any one of the uses that's cited here, whether it's mixed use or housing or I mean, how would that work? Yeah. So the idea would be you know similar to where the town's setting aside funds to acquire and maintain open space a number of communities have developed their own business parks where the town is essentially the developer. They would you know do a subdivision or put in a little culde-sac with you know a a few buildings that could be developed that could sell as pad sites. but it's it's you know that's that's an option or or the town could you know if the town wanted to to you know if on a single parcel build you know a potential multi-tenant building and be essentially a landlord. that's an option too. I mean some of those things are can be complex administratively. and so a number of communities basically just develop a business park and and sell off, you know, the pad sites, but you know, because they control the land, it's it's easier to, you know, put in the the type and scale of development that you're you're looking for. but yeah, no, I mean, it's it's essentially,
you know, opportunities for the town to be a a developer to facilitate development. And I don't know, Elaine, if if you know, you Yeah. Yeah. if I can pipe in a little bit. I know when the Yukon landscaping course came in and did all of their plans for development of u of different areas in town for recreational use and multif family use and smaller community use and community center use, things like that. they were supposed to concentrate on town owned land. And it was kind of interesting because one of them concentrated on that I don't know if it's the bulk property over above the river, you know, over the over the river from the church as developable, but it's not townowned. and they came up with a lovely a great plan for development for, you know, that we really liked, but the reality was, well, we don't own it. It's not our land, but wouldn't it be nice if somehow we could control what goes on that property? And so that gets into the discussion of maybe as things become available, we can go ahead and take control of some of that property and actually put some of these really neat plans in in process. you know, we wouldn't be spending the money to do any of the work. We'd have to get somebody to do it. But just you know whether our own town owned land is sufficient enough to handle the development that we need is is another question but just leaving it open for
the next 10 years to look at to consider. So I mean that's we we got to look at the POC as for the next 10 years this is something we should be looking into. That's it. Thank you. Yeah. Did you have something else? No. Okay. And and again, you know, Elaine, you're probably aware, you know, we we tried putting a little money, a token amount in the budget for you know, open space funding putting aside for that. And you know, so we were looking at 50,000 board of select and cut it in half. Board of Finance, you know, cut the rest of it. I guess they went back after we moaned on that and you know, I think what was it? 10,000 was the final number. Correct. Yeah. So, I love the thought, but
no, I know. I watched all those meetings, Jed, and saw things were getting cut. Andreas, you have any comments on on it? My my only, you know, thought processes around the the ends, the hotels that you guys thinking about bringing in, which I don't think it's hotels. Yeah. I mean, have have we looked at some of the surrounding motel, I would say performance or vacancy or the type of people that maybe even live in there. have you? Yeah, like the Talon. It's one of the highest end places you could stay in Connecticut. Yeah. Talon in town. Yeah. Okay. But I mean, you know, this like we're not talking about Route Six motel. We're talking about, you know, high-end tourism kind of not not a motel, but an actual in like, you know, given the opportunity, you know, obviously we can put that in the zoning. So, just to put it out there, there's no official place to stay other than somebody's house or an Airbnb. Airbnb. Yeah. So, you know, if we're going to try and attract tourism to our town and get, you know, tourist money, then be nice to have somewhere for them to stay. And you know like we could probably be pulling in people that would have to stay near Yukon.
Yeah. Right. So that's that's because it goes hand in hand with it you know well we're going to say hey come to Andover because it's great to walk our trail but where are they is there a campground or is there you know not not yet. there is provision for campgrounds in our current rags but it's very small. So that's a long process basically. Gotcha. It's not something just let's just put a a hotel inside the Route 6. Not like putting in a road Hampton in something small, right? Or even even a small one. I It reminds me of one in Colombia. If you drive there, it's just like it's nobody there, you know. I never seen, you know, but it's not that far from here, you know. So there's there definitely just Yeah. No, that's that's good questions. You know, like I know there's a lot of ARMs on Columbia Lake. I mean, I I see him that expensive, you know. for sure, but I don't know what would the track is, you know? I mean, yeah, we have the Agent Orange, we have the trails, but is that it's like a day trip kind of thing, isn't it? Or do do you guys see any or get any feedback as to people like, hey, I really want to stay a week or a weekend in Andover, or is this just something that they stop by and Well, people used to a long time ago and
that's what, you know, we revisited the cottage industries. We revisit the homebased businesses, the stuff that worked here in the past, right? So, I mean, I'm also campgrounds like I I I always like KOAS and all that stuff. I think they're great. You know, this would be like it's nice, but you need usually it's by a lake or something or some kind of water. Yeah. the lake association here. So, so I wouldn't totally discount [Music] using the trail to drive tourism. because I've seen a bunch of examples where that can work really well. you know and drive really big numbers like the CNO trail coming out of Washington DC is an example. National Park Service says now that 100,000 people a year bike the whole length of the CNO trail which is about 190 miles and the average person spends five days doing it. So, and the majority of them are bed and breakfasting it and moteling it, not staying in the campgrounds alongside the trails. So, and having seen the Hop River Trail and the extension, the airline trail as part of the East Coast Greenway, we have an awesome asset. We're just not really We're using it for local recreation, but you're not seeing a ton
of through recreation. And to get through recreation, you need to establish places for people to stay and then enough trailside amenities that they can get water and stuff like that. and I think that would be going forward that's something the town's going to have to look at whether that's in the next 10 years or the next 20 years. certainly as East Coast Greenway gets completed, I mean many you know I've talked to probably four through you know through cyclists on the trail in the last month. one big event this past weekend. Yeah. Saturday I think it was. Yep. Okay. one Bill Penn local resident just finished I think he's finishing in Maine today or tomorrow. He just through road from Key West to Maine. and I talked to four three other people that I just randomly saw on the trail that were doing the whole length of the majority of it. So, it is coming. It's coming slowly, I think, but it will be there. and areas like Pennsylvania with a trail called the Great Alagany Passage, you know, the Virginia Creeper Trail, the Greenbryer Trail. A lot of
communities that have embraced have done well with it. So, I think long term that's something the town should consider and I like I appreciate the emphasis in economic development related to trailside development. That's good. I tend to think the the idea of a gin or something more than just an Airbnb would be useful just for us. I mean, I've got family that want to come and visit, but we don't have room anymore. And it's like, where do we put them? Well, you drive 10 miles that way to Well, you drive 10 miles that way to Manchester to get a place to stay. So, I think
something locally would really be good for even the local residents. Then I think the B&B would work better than probably a hotel hotel in the area. So that's a good small scale line. So we do we do have that that so we we noted in number seven if you can see that I make it bigger that so we you know working on the regulations to allow for ins and larger beds and breakfasts. I don't know if we we want to have a discussion of Airbnbs at this point, but you know, certainly something a little bit larger than an Airbnb, smaller than a hotel, you know, is really the f is kind of the butters on there. That's right. Right. And I had also mentioned in the past, we've got a unique situation where we've got the Agent Orange memorial and there aren't that many of them. So for veterans and their families who want to come just pay their respects, you know, just to see it, it would be nice if there was a
little place that they could stay in the area. Okay. Well, I had I got quite a few comments actually. I liked, you know, I liked a lot of what's there, but I I guess the the thought that I had is I read through this with the action items and and so I'm almost reluctant to talk tonight because I got my feelings hurt when I read through all this stuff about the zoning rigs. And Eric's probably got his feelings have been hurt because he came up with a wall. I didn't. I just here but I thought most of the things that we were suggesting changes to we probably had covered in a couple of different
places in our ranks. And so it it didn't surprise me that economic development folks would look at it and say zoning's the issue. I'm sitting here to look at no zoning is not the issue. We got that covered. We need to get the people in here. We got you property for sale right now and nobody's coming in to develop it. So somewhere in the middle of all that is probably the truth and and there was a discussion about working together and that would make you know action item number 20 is maybe we should and I think quarterly might have been too often there for a while we were getting together and you know Eric the economic development commission and me just talking about things and and it seemed like a lot of the things we were talking about there, our regulations covered it. It just takes a while before you get familiar enough with it to understand them to say, "Oh, yeah, that's what that's all about." And we'll we'll get into some of that a little bit here. But I thought those meetings were pretty good and helpful. and we should probably do it again. Maybe not certainly not monthly, but at some periodicity we we ought to do that. But going right back up to the start in the background, I was s I was surprised that something in the background paragraph did not talk about the lack of
infrastructure. And you know, we got we've got two action items. one was on high-speed internet or something and and I thought, you know, my internet at home was you blazing fast. So, I don't know if we've got that one done or not, but we've got another action to consider sewers and and again, I'm looking ahead to the 824 referral and I'm looking for something in here. It says economic development's being hindered because we don't have sewers. And I don't know how true that is, but it would at least give us something to say consistent with the POC if we ever were lucky enough to go that way. So I'm sorry. So Jed, is your your position that the town should be open to that concept? I think I think it should. I know economic development thinks it should. I I've heard that there was some discussion about that with the board of selectmen. I think the cost is too high. But if the state said or the federal government said, "We're going to pay to put sewers in so you guys can build some affordable housing." Okay, I'm good with that. I don't think, you know, it's kind of it's kind of up there with putting aside money for the town [Music] to have developable land. You know, I think the survey we did, the town people weren't all keen on that, and I keep seeing evidence of that with the open space funding stuff in that, too. money's tight, but but I wouldn't be opposed to it. And, okay, if if that would help. I don't know if it would or not, but I think that was the conclusion
that the economic development folks were coming up with. And if that is, then it should be in there. so that we can reference it. So do so we do have action item number four is looking at small package and alternative wastewater systems. Do we want to be a little bit more broad about that and and you know investigating further down on your list there and number six. Number six oh yeah there I just want to be able to tie that back to something in the discussion and says we need it. So we're putting an action to do it. Okay, got it. The in the next paragraph down on economic activity, I was pleasantly surprised to to read that there are a total of 228 businesses registered in Andover. I thought that was a very high cover. pleased to see 28 new businesses coming in 2024. I went to the website to take a look at the listing that of of businesses in the town there that encompass most you know a lot of home businesses and some of the bigger ones too. I don't recall that I saw a Dollar General on there. I know there's a couple of So one of the action items is update that update that listing. but where are the other, you know, there was 82 things on on the list on the EDC website? Where's the other 200? Yeah. No, you're you're right, Jed. And we are working on it actively. We do have a new one that we're we're going to
be putting out very shortly that encompasses a lot more. we're also breaking out the fat, you know, just the people selling eggs, just the people with the little farm stands, the people with farms with the horses, things like that. you know, which don't normally show up on like a business directory. So, you know, but we are definitely working on that. We know it needs work. I didn't know where John got the 228 number. That was I know that's a that's great news. I mean that's almost I think that's that's a secretary of state number you know the number of so it's you know so anyone that sets up an LLC I think you know counts towards a business okay in town so yeah but and so we're going to add a note in there that you know many of these businesses are very very small you know homebased or or what have you or small you know single person LLC's or what have you but we'll just as a note yeah I mean it's c certainly nothing you would put on a business directory or or go ahead and put on Map Quest, you know, because it's
nothing that people would be visiting going to, but there is an awful lot of stuff going on in town that just isn't going to show up on a business directory. Okay. No, that's that's great. One of the things that I am trying to set the stage for and you talked about it in here is the lack of incubator lack of facilities for when the home businesses get a little bit too big for being at home and they need to go to the business parks and that kind of stuff. And and so I said, "Well, if we got 228 home businesses here, we need to get those on our list because each one has to give us 50 bucks a year, then
that we're we're missing some money. But I do like the thought of having the ability for when these businesses grow to to have someplace to grow in and and there are there are properties available that could be used for that. So I didn't necessarily agree with the fact that we needed to identify more properties. I thought we needed to get somebody to come in and develop the ones we have and and that would be a good use, you know, and I also like the thought that that housing is its own economic development, you know, and we didn't specifically mentioned the senior housing, which we have a specific section in our regulations to allow the the more dense housing there. But I
think, you know, people wanting to stay in Andover with you know, downsizing to the smaller houses, smaller lots is a great opportunity. And John, I've got all these in the comments here. I just didn't want to send them out because I wanted to hear what everybody else thought before I open my big mouth there. Okay. Going back to the economy, the top industries chart you had there. Are all those jobs? Yep. Are all those jobs in the endover? No, they're back on page one. Oh, okay. That chart. Those were all jobs that are located in Andover. I believe that's right. Because, you know, I was again I I guess I was shocked to see 304 government jobs in Andover. We certainly don't have it
working here at the town hall. yeah, I didn't know if that was like teachers, fire department. I didn't know what all that was, but 55% of them are state government. And I thought that the rest of the the items on that chart were probably all located in town here. But when over half the jobs are government jobs and half of those are state government, that didn't make any sense to me. chair there's Yeah. The and and my my colleague Jeremy put these numbers together and and he explained to me what that what that means or total jobs. Yeah. Total jobs within Andover. So that that 50 the share of industry column has a different explanation that I I need to get from Jeremy that we we we discussed but I I can't remember how to explain it. so like at the bottom there where it says accommodation and
food service and then it said food service and drinking places are 97% of the 32 there. Okay. I I thought that was probably, you know, handover pizza and donuts and that kind of stuff here in town where 97% were almost all of them are food. Not so much accommodation because I don't know that we got too many bed and breakfast. Right. Exactly. There. But anyhow, that government number just kind of Yeah. So yeah, unless there's Yeah. Unless it's associated with gay city or or some state, you know, state resource. Yeah. And I think I think John, these aren't necessarily these are the jobs that residents hold. They don't necessarily do Right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. So, yeah. No, if you look at the because the the number of jobs all these people, 1582 people leaving town to go work someplace. Exactly. Right. So there's Yeah. There's only there's there's you know there's less than 400 jobs in Andover itself. Yeah. So yeah there are there are so there are a number of people that working working for the state in living in town. So yeah, it's probably it. No, I mean because that's that I would think I I my my suspicion is that most of the people making their money in agriculture in Andover, that's not their primary employment. that you know they they they have other other sources of income that you know the number of people that Yeah. Especially if we're counting the guy putting the egg stand out in front of the house, right? Or you know I imagine even if and Fitch you know Fitch probably has a number of seasonal employees but the number of actual
full-time employees working on their their their tree farms is pretty limited. I would imagine one of the things when we were talking about you know the need Well, we'll get there I guess. I didn't have any any comments on page two. I guess you know on page three where we got job counts by places and it's got cities, CDPs, etc. I didn't know what a CDP was. A census designated place. Say again. Census designated place. Okay. If you want, we could we could, you know, add that, too. But at least give me a hint. I'm on looking it up. I couldn't find anything when I was trying to figure out what a CDP was. It's like New Britain is a city. Middletown is a city where Glastonbury center that is qualified as a city. It's a It's like like Rockville is a census designated place within the municipality of Vernon. Okay. [Music] so we we say right below that, Jar, currently the commercial share of the grant list is just 3% leaving residential property owners contributing majority of the town revenue. Certainly true statement. No, no thought there. you know, I thought we had had some pretty good discussions by Eric of how small the contribution to the town is by, you know, something like Dollar General and and so I don't know that it's ever we can ever expect the development that we want in
town to significantly offset the the grant list for what the residents are doing. In my mind, the answer is, and I don't even want a lot of this for the town, but the answer is more residential construction. That's that's our economic development. and we don't want to get, you know, we don't want to get clustered or constrained or any of that kind of stuff. But from what from what I heard about the the revenue that Dollar General was bringing in, I just don't see where we're going to do that with development. You know, I remember when the Millstone Power Plant got built down in Waterford. Wow. They couldn't spend the revenue fast enough that they were bringing it from that day. But, you know, we're not going to bring Milstone up here. We tried with the gas infiltration plant and that didn't go. they shut down Milstone. They promised low electric Yeah. bills and it ended up backfiring because they're shutting down just you know had all kinds of issues. So you know it wasn't even operational at one point. Well it is now for it. Yeah. But and but yeah, so I don't I'm not convinced that we've got the ability to grow the brand list with the with businesses in that. I guess I feel like businesses aren't necessarily develop the grand list, but there are services for the people of the town. So when we get more people here or we look at the seniors in town, you know, seniors growing population, what are the the little shops that we can put in to do that? I was just amazed when we
moved to town 20 years ago and there wasn't a bank. Well, there was a bank. Well, that was before my time, right? Yeah. There was a hairdresser and it failed. There were some breakfast places and they failed. I think just never supported it successfully. Everybody wants it. They don't show up to keep their business going. You got remember Route Six is a is a artery. It's Yeah. People drive through it. You know, you got that little plaza on the side. It's How many businesses have failed? The doughnut shop was great. I loved it. Failed or something else failed. You know, it's not very appealing. I wouldn't really pull in there. Yeah. You know, go to Andover Pizza. That's about it. Not the best pizza either. I want you to liquor store. The liquor store liquor store looks great. Yeah. I think the pizza is pretty good decent, too. But things like over Andover, that is a great little place. Yep. And it's got its own little niche, you know, it's different from all the other stuff. And I think that kind of thing is what's great. If we could get
more little things in town like that. Well, I like, you know, in in to have the the Christmas tree farm scaling down. You know, I I love that Christmas tree farm out on Route 6. And I always had this vision of some Hallmark festival going on out there or something. And we'll see we'll see where we go on this agro tourism thing. But but I didn't see a chart in here and I think it's in the last POC that would that talked about what are the businesses that contribute the most to the town revenue. And if I recall on the chart on the last POC, there were a couple of private properties that were, you know, in the top five or whatever. And I I would just I thought it would be helpful. Nowhere nowhere in this report does it talk about the self- storage thing which I think is probably a thriving little business. I don't know what it adds to us. doesn't have a lot of employees but okay but I was looking for a chart on who who is providing the most so that we have some rationale for making a decision about how beneficial economic development would be there. Yeah. So the the old the old town profiles produced by what was used to be CIRC and is now Advanced CT used to have the top five grand list contributors taxpayers. their their municipal profiles no longer have that. So I mean we could we could do a little digging on it. I mean we could just ask the assessor. I think that would be I think when we talk economic development,
that's what you need to know. What do we want to go get so that it brings the biggest bang for the buck into the down? There's got to be something that you know the down will support too. But that'd be that. Well, that's that's always the rub is that the buildings or the businesses that are likely to make significant increases in the grandest are not necessarily businesses people want in their town. Exactly. I mean, you could put a trash energy plant, you know, in town. and it would bring in all kinds of revenue, you know, but the residents would be quite unhappy with you. Yep. yeah. So, from my perspective, I've always thought things like lawyers, doctor's offices, stuff like that would would fit nicely. Yep. I the one thing I would say about residential development I would actually check the numbers to see whether the tax taxes
from new res from res resident res residential development is sufficient to pay for increase attendance at our schools. Well, that's why I like the senior the senior housing because I would say it doesn't contribute to that and it brings back in my old job, we used to try to run statistics that that would say town makes more money off open space than it does a residents. The town benefits more. Now, that's my old job was department of agriculture. So, we maybe save things like that, but yeah. Yeah. there they're cost of community services studies sort of talk about that services a resident takes I'm writing for page four I think yeah right bel right right below the the zoming thing that paragraph there you know it it talks about business zones allow certain uses typically those thought to be less intense by site plan review, others more intense, special permit. No residential uses are currently allowed in the business zone. And it goes on, the current regulations include a maximum floor area of 15,000 square ft for individual buildings and a maximum 50,000 square feet for shopping centers in the Bzone. For reference, a typical modern supermarket is approximately 40,000 square feet. And so, you know, I remember when the Dollar General site plan review came to town and there was nobody who was saying, "Oh, yes, we want a bigger Dollar General with no oversight." You know, every comment that came in was, "How dare you guys allow this store to come into town and not have a special permit?" That was that was my takeaway from that
experience. And and when we look at 50,000 square feet, like that's not big enough, that's $5 generals sitting next to each other in a row. And you know, when we talk about these little doctor's offices and that kind of thing, I I'm not I'm hardressed to come up with what a better number than a maximum of 50,000 square feet would be. I think it's I think it's pretty reasonable number. I kind of like the regulation that we've got and I think it strikes a fairly good balance. So, yeah, I don't think I don't think we're casting I don't think we're we're we're making a judgment call on that one. We're just just noting it. Say again, John. I don't I don't think this this paragraph was was, you know, passing judgment on the maximum square footage. I think it just noted it. Well, it's it
certainly to me read we need to allow bigger development and that was a theme throughout here, bigger development. And I don't know that that's what the people want. And and as I say you know I don't know how much development in the 15 years I've lived in Andover the only two I recall are Dollar General and the gas infusion plant and nobody wanted either of them. You know Dollar General came in because our our regulations allowed it but people were thinking that you guys screwed up the regulation there. That's that should have been way smaller than 10,000 square ft or 15,000 ft to allow these to come in with site plan. So that's that's from the zoning perspective pushing back. I know economic development wants to economic development, but I think you know I think the numbers we got there are okay. That's just my perspective. I guess we can talk about that more. But that's what I thought reading through there. Same thing with the you the industrial zone. you don't mention you do you mention the mixed use? Oh, no. We'll get there. We'll get there. So, okay. the the last paragraph on that page, the commission should review types of businesses allowed. And I asked myself, what commission is that? The economic development commission or is that the planning and zoning commission? Oh, no. No, I think yeah, I think planning and zoning. I think yeah, that's Oh, see, I thought it should be economic development. They should become tell us what kind of businesses we want and we'll take a look at it, you know, and and certainly we can work together on that. But again, as I read through our regulations, I think they're pretty good. You know, I'm not that we might
need to tweak it a little bit. kind of like adding the agro tourism piece there. But I quick question. Have we looked at the personal experience? Right. I have to drive 15 20 minutes to get that to a grocery store. Dollar General does help. It's cleaned. I tell them all the time, you guys do a great job with that. Some interesting characters that stop there. besides that, another thing is going to pediatrics. And we we we got lucky in Heurn that we got a pediatric there but before that I was driving a plane film. So I really like that whole idea of professional development here for lawyers, pediatricians because if you want to grow families here, you want to have pediatricians coming coming in here or you know visiting nurses association. I know there's one down there maybe if you want to develop 55 and over. I think it's going to be a hard cell getting those guys to come here because the population base here doesn't support them like it does in Manchester, Glaster Deberry, Will Manic, whatever. I think parts of Heburn would support it, you know, trickling down instead of because we go to Hein now. Yeah. But if it can
kind of develop it here somehow and and keep maybe, you know, certainly certainly that is the kind of development the people of the town want here. Yes. Whether or not we support it enough to keep them in business, that's a different thing. You know, we all we all want the small mom and pop hardware store. But the shoppers all go out to Home Depot and they drive 15 miles and they go five miles to Heinard store. Okay. Anyhow, that's it. that is true. And the other reality is today with the ability to buy from Amazon and have things delivered in a day and a half. same day small retail is getting harder is is getting harder. yeah, that's one of the professional things in there. Well, we brought over and over and those nichy things, antique, stuff like that. But there again, it's it's how do you how do you get them to I'm surprised there's no breakfast places here. I mean, that Bill's that little used to be in Andover Plaza. Yeah, have fun. But yeah, Tom's he'd grown and he's good. Yeah. And he's got a nice car, so he's he's probably doing good. But he has good food. You have When you develop something that's going to be a village kind of like atmosphere and putting a little diner in there. I think that would attract people towards them,
especially locals. breakfast place has always done good, but it's the location, right? If it wasn't a rundown plaza. Yeah, that was my problem with that with that that place that was in the plaza. I went there once or twice. It was like, "Oh, this place is run down. It was cold and it it just didn't have a nice layout or vibe. So, that turned Well, the parking lot was full of potholes and you know, you don't want to go in there. So, when you develop something like that, you got to make sure that you got nice shrubbery and nice, you know, this we can walk around. It was good on Thursday. It's Friday night." Yeah. I mean the the the problem is that the economics of small strip malls are super tough. I mean that's why you see so many of them closing everywhere. You know it's it's a and I don't think they're you know they're barely hanging on. I mean their anchor tenant really is the pizza parlor and the liquor store. And the liquor store used to be where the grocery store was, but you know, people buy a lot more liquor than they buy food from the local vendors. So, we'll see if the full place will survive. Definitely, you know, they do pretty good there, but I don't in this town. Not sure. Interested to to see a year from now.
Are they still there? Because, you know, again, that's what that's what the people of the town want, but you got to go support it if you if you really want it. saying what you want, doing doing two different things. But another observation, the dance school right there, I've seen a lot of cars, you know. So that's I mean there's an appetite for that small families with kids, something like that, right? Maybe a gymnast area to develop or swimming, you know, on that one. No, you can't. And Amazon too was getting a bad record just right off the road two miles from here. There was a guy who delivered his Amazon stuff. Took a picture of it and stole it right was right on camera. So that's starting to hit locally. Wow. So people going to get turned off soon. the Amazon driver the driver three miles from here. But in in terms of the size of buildings, I think I'm probably the only person here that was on the zoning commission when those limits were established. And that was specifically to prevent, you know, intrusion of big box stores into town. Not that I thought it was likely that we were going to do it, but clearly the residents didn't really want that. so that's what that was. those limits were established to kind of prevent anything bigger than say a Highland Park
market. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know how many square foot Highland Park market is, but you know that that is a nice kind of story. I think it's about equivalent to the size of Dollar General. Maybe a little bit bigger than that. If you look at South Glenburg, there's a little grocery store there that does really well. it own my respective family and it's inside park there at the corner high south that's a different name yeah different name but very small I used to live there so at 17 yeah it's similar to this town and it's a little bit richer but oh I know what you're talking about that's right from the coffee place coffee place yeah right there something like that okay well I'm going to Move down to the top of page five and it's got the commission again should consider levels of review required for each zone and I think that's probably planning and zoning commission. the very yeah the very first word there is commission and should be PCC. Let's see. We talked about you know in that same paragraph likewise there may be uses more suited to site plan approval with certain provisions which may be easier to obtain for some applicants. again the feedback from the Dollar General experience was the people at town are happy to have a voice. I guess you that's consistent with you know we tried doing some charter changes to take that that were perceived to take
away some of the voice of the town people and and they didn't like that they were they want to have their say and I think they want that with these stores that coming in too. next paragraph down, the opportunity for the town to capitalize in need of small incubator spaces as well as need for contractor storage main warehousing through the adoption of regulations allowing for mixed use commercial industrial buildings and working with established developers market. The town could see grant lift list growth while allowing new businesses to establish themselves others to grow in place. I think our regulations allow that now. I I don't know why that would be what the hindrance is to that. And yeah, in fact, do we've got the mixed use thing that would allow us to put housing on top of some of those offices and that kind of stuff, which you know,
we we have there too. So, I think the zoning rates are if they need a tweak, I'm not aware what it is yet. the people who care. Yeah, I think that's right. I and I think Yeah, I think this is and and Jeremy had gone through of those. I think maybe some of those was a interpretation about a certain particular type of development, but I'll we'll we'll go back and review that and make sure that they that they they they fit what we were looking at. Yeah. And I I also want to pipe in on that because the dance hub was mentioned and I know the dance hub they they don't have enough space there at Andover Plaza. to to do their business. And Stephanie wants to expand. but if you have more of a, you know, I'm calling it a warehouse or an open space kind of building for a dance hall. That's the kind of stuff, you know, as opposed to just incubator space, but just an an a space that will allow a dance studio with space to go ahead and
do that because I hate to say it, but I think Stephanie's going to have to leave town to expand her business. And that would, you know, I know the town of Ander would be very sad to see that happen. So, this is a lot of why we're bringing up, wouldn't it be nice if we had this kind of space for something like that to move into. That's all. And we got a couple of those properties on the market now. We just can't get a developer in to build those things. And and I think the you know small business park models, you know, to
allow these home businesses that are growing kind of like the dance studio there. we've got a market for them. We just can't I I think we have a market for it. Yes. We convinced any developer to take the risk on putting something in place to do it. But the properties available It's too bad we don't have like a big mill. Yeah. Well, put in to make apartments out of all that kind of stuff. We have nothing. Breweries were coming. Yeah. we talked about feedback the Dollar General wanting wanting less sight plan approval. yeah, there is an old brewery in this Willy Brewchester. Well, yeah. Willie Brewer, there's a couple other ones that are popping up. It's very popular. Farm breweries are so plant some hops and call it a farm and put a brewery in there. Next paragraph down, we talked about you know, the economic development business directory and listing of businesses, which I think is great. I just think, you know, it needs an update and maybe there could be an action to, do yeah, coming down, and I think we've already got the action item here. The planning zoning commission should continue to have active dialogue with EDC in an effort to continue to make improvements to the regulatory environment to encourage the growth of business in Andover. And that was that EDC BCC town manager little meeting that we had there. But again, I I'm not I'm not aware of anything that's not coming to town because our regulations wouldn't do it and the people wouldn't want
it. So again, I thought the regulations weren't the problem. I don't know what the problem is for sure, but our regulations support doing pretty much what we want to do. So if a developer wants to if we can present them, hey these businesses are looking for expanded space like the dance school and maybe a brewery wants to come in into a a big bigger building, right? Present that to the developer and say these businesses are ready to sign up to you know for bigger space. So you know here it is. If we can put something like that together y and present it to the developer I think that would be that would go well. And and so two, for instance, is there, you know, when we when Ryan Fitch first put the Christmas tree on this side of Route Six for sale, you know, we got together with him and we talked about mixeduse development and all this kind of stuff that would be perfect in there. I don't know you that
it ever went any further than that. The the other example is over at Lyn Home Corners. There's a bunch of property right on Route 6 that we paid great for mixed use development. The guy you know came talking to us a couple of times and when it finally you know we said okay you know yes let's pursue this and go out do it never heard from the guy again and so the property is there we just we need something else but I don't think it's changing the zoning rigs. I think the zoning rigs are pretty okay now. Maybe, you know, and I worry about me being too can't see the forest or the trees because I've been in the in the trees so long there now, but I really think that you and it took me a while to figure out how to use these things like the excuse floating zone, but I think I think our regulations have a lot of flexibility that we're not taking advantage of. What I look at the map here of the business and the industrial zones and it's just all around along Route Six. Yet, we've talked about having like the village zone thing that would be more like maybe Center Street or
something down 316 and that the zoning there doesn't apply for that. Doesn't allow for it. We have village zone identified already next to library. Oh, next to library. That's not on that map. No, it's not. so I'm wondering whether we need to do something with the zoning regs. Well, the except for the firehouse property, the rest of the property in on it's on center street there in all 16 is already houses. Yeah. So, they'd have to be converted, which he did address. But you know that when I first was on economic development 10 years ago, we were we wanted to find an area of town where we'd have a business park that doesn't need commercial signage and it's not retail businesses, you know, like like the stuff we've been talking about a lot of this night. It doesn't have to be on Route Six. No. And
so that's why it's we're just putting it in there like we've recommended, hey, we we want to find a spot where we can have these things where it doesn't have to be on Route Six because that's prime real estate for bigger and better things or nicer houses or or whatever, you know, like but I think the corridor, you know, coming down Long Hill Road across Route Six and down 316 right in that across circle around that spot, you know, and but we need to do something about the zoning because that doesn't leave six otherwise. So, and that, you know, that gets back into this project that we're Wayne and I and Eric worked on quite a bit with John. Okay. I don't know who else is in that mix. Roberta, I guess. Yeah, she's got a big piece of that pie is we're trying to one get the map accurate. Then two, we're going to look at where does it make sense to, you know, change the zone
so that we can do this. And if there's not an action, if there's not an action to update that map, you know, that's one of the big actions that that should come out of here is is to reook at making sure that we've got the town zone the way we want it to to execute that plan. Right. So So what's the plan on if you are going to move the town garage if up to the you know recycle station? What what are you going to do with that area right there? Well, so I'll let Eric answer that because that's a certainly land at 50,000 feet. It looks like a great plan. I know money is an issue in anything else you want to say about that, Eric, other than flood plates and remediation. Yeah, I get that. I mean, you got to do environmental remediation. You got all those businesses that exist now in stuck along Route Six that you're going to have to take by imminent domain if you want to carve that whole area out and
make it some sort of village district. So you're going to throw out Duba, you're going to throw out the post office. I assume you'll keep the transit station where it's at. and you're going to throw out those other two houses there. Take them all by imminent domain if you if you're really serious about that. You got to relocate the public works garage. That's a $6 million$8 million hit to the town. I don't know how you're planning on getting people to agree to that. I think that's about zero chance. which was my objection when LAA proposed that plan in the first place now 15 years ago. is it all doable? Yeah, there's nothing physically that you couldn't do. probably you'd end up doing brownfield remediation for public works. Probably more likely for the garage that's there cuz I know when that was Marty's service station, he dumped all his waste oil down the back hill behind the facility. So, I'm sure that's that whole thing is contaminated. you know, could it be done? Yeah. But most of that's in the 100redyear flood plane. So, what kind of things are you going to put in there? number one. Two, it's a fairly ecologically sensitive area. because you do have a threatened turtle species, you have a
threatened snake species, and you have a threatened bat species all coated located right there. So, it's possible, but there's an enormous number environmental constraints. and then obviously huge financial constraints. So, so my I guess my question is if and I don't know if you guys are planning on moving that garage somewhere else. If you're not, that's great. But if you are, I'm more for restoring it to its natural like kind of like more like a park kind of environment versus developing and taking people's property. So, I mean that that's I I thought that there were some plans moving. a lot of things. You could build you could build some kind of you know dense housing as dense as we can do over there that's you know really nice location by the Hob River and all that close to close to the church the library and all that easy trip across the street to come down to to this area here. I'm certain a small professional thing something in there would make sense but I mean even even you know developing into like a park the river's right there would be nice if money was no issue that'd be a great plan but you know more and more I see money is a big issue and I just I don't see I don't see us ever getting there the I the plan of conservation development is a is a decent place for for big ideas whether or not they're immediately realistic. I won't say we
shouldn't put it there. That is a big idea and it's a good idea. Is it an achievable idea? Yeah, it's I don't know about that one. But you could talk about the B the former B property on the north side of Yep. the north side of river that connects Long Hill and Booker Hill and then call that Stoker Brock since he's the guy that owned those days. But yeah, you can dream at least seem like this kind of a plan here is place where you put some of your dreams and then eventually maybe you'll get somebody that can do it. I remember in West Harvard when I was living there, there was two car dealerships that had were in this big area below Main Street and it was just don't be looking and there wasn't much of anything going on. Developer came in and built a whole blue back square area with all the apartments and the offices and the restaurants and all sorts of things. And you wouldn't believe they could have put something like that in there, but they did. So if you get the right person someday, that's why I didn't make the comment that we should strike that one. You know, I I think, you know, it's it's a a grand vision. I don't know if it's an achievable goal. May not be achievable now, but maybe someday keeping handle beautiful is also important. Yeah, it is. Restoring that area. It's a it's a it's an eyesore to me driving by there.
I know the town, but you know, it's expensive to get it. Yeah, it is. Makes sense what Eric said. Have you ever seen a public works garage that looked pretty? Yeah, man. This is an old one. I get it. It's just going to be Glassberry probably has a nice looking challenges and opportunities. There need There is a need to pursue options for maintaining business in town rather than make them needing to relocate due to this lack of sufficient space. I strongly agree with that and I think our zoning rigs would allow that to happen. Says the desire points to real need to create additional industrial and commercial land. Limitation of building sizes within the Bzone could be a hindrance to growing industries forcing them to look for space outside town. I I disagree. I think I think we do have space. I think we have it zoned. I think we can change zoning if we need to, but I think there's there's property available right now. Problem is nobody's coming in to develop them. Who who talks to these developers by the way? Tony or there are two prime prime pieces right on those six. Yeah, that would be sitting there. That would be an Elaine question. then and I know there's a goal to do that whether or not we you know we haven't got there yet. Again, you got to have there's a lot of stuff going on that I'm not that I'm not the person to talk to about. Okay. Elaine, you got anything you want to add to that at this point? certainly, it's funny because I'm sitting here going, "Oh my god, I'm in
an EDC meeting tonight." You know, because I'm just listening to the conversations that you guys are having. and all these ideas being and that and that is what our meetings are like you know that's what we discuss we do have biatamsky is a a realtor I also am a realtor she has discussions regularly with developers so all we've been for you know looking forward to is having the POC to support are continuing to discuss with developers things that we need and to go ahead and show that you see our next 10-year plan basically is supporting this kind of idea. Okay. So, this is what we like. So, that's you know so it all goes hand in hand. you know but that is the thing that we are constantly
looking at. We we definitely would like those particular spots to have similar things that we've been talking about. The incubator, the the you know the the little larger space buildings so that our dance studio can just move across the street over there. things like that. so we you know we're we're constantly doing that. But if we have an idea of what the PL how town would like to see then that's when we can show the developers this is what the town is really interested in seeing happen you know over over the next 10 years. So that's you know it all goes hand in hand. yeah, it it it does get frustrating talking about this stuff because we're talking pie in the sky all the time, but at the same time trying to figure out where we can get the rubber to meet the road and actually have something happening to these properties that we don't own as town, right? Yeah. I mean, first thing comes to mind is you guys should just have a a small little fair for the residents and have some posters made and stuff like that like, hey, we're thinking about this. What do you guys think? Give us some feedback. And then we can take that to the developers, invite them to a little charade, you know, and say, "Look what we can offer you guys. If you come
in here, this is what the residents wants. We have a nice these all the members presented that way." Yeah. And that is something that happened 15 years ago with the LAA plan that came out and it talked about the village node, which is why we're all talking about the village node because it came out of that whole study. and this vision of, you know, moving the public works garage out of that area so we can go ahead and develop along the river there, and have mixeduse things going on in that little area. are all stemmed from that idea. and I know when they, you know, I was on that commission, it was, you know, we were working with Bolton in Coventry and, Andover and Colombia, the four towns together along the Route 6 corridor, and that information is still out there. but every once in a while, we see that, you know what, that was a pretty good plan. Let's keep a a vision of that that whole village node idea that if we had all the money in the world, this is what we would like to see. And that's and that's why and that and it still peppers our conversations today. and we don't want to lose sight of them. So, we definitely want to continue on with the conversations because eventually ideas
turn into something, right? Okay, I'm ready to go to page six. please page six. I've mine's probably talked a little bit, but right down below that 8-2 chart, there's a paragraph and it talks about even if the commission is not interested in a village district, it should consider creating a mixeduse zone for the area around Long Hill intersection and perhaps other areas. mixeduse development could spur the creation of groundf flooror commercial space while allowing building owners to create rental units on upper floors helping to stabilize buildings profitability. I couldn't agree more and our our regulations allow it. And so, and again, maybe I'm looking at it from a tainted lens on the other side of the object from EDC, but it looks like you're looking for the planning and zoning commission to maybe change the regulations. And I
think the regulations are in place, ready to go. we just need somebody to come in and work with us about doing something. Yeah, I I I agree, Jed. Yeah, we'll we'll I'm shifting a lot of this this language to to be more about promoting and and and applying the mixed use rags rather than rather than creation, obviously. Whoops, I accidentally muted you. Sorry, I I meant to mute myself. I I muted you guys. Thank you. Sorry about that. Yeah, I got you. Sorry about that. I think the one thing you could consider and it's something we considered back when we did the original mixed use floating zone was to say, "Okay, it's not going to be a floating zone anymore. We're going to apply it right from the beginning for this area and this area and this area and just set it in
stone and make that zone change." Now, the problem is is that that changes the things that people can do now in that zone to something new. Yeah. So, you're going to make some people really unhappy with that. Whereas now with it as a floating zone, any applicant that comes to you with a piece of property that is within the area encompassed potentially by the floating zone can say, "Hey, reszone me to a mixeduse zone. Here's the site plan. Here's here's the site master plan." Boom. Commission says, "Yeah, that looks great. Now it's zoned." So, and and maybe maybe the action here is We need to work with the Economic Development Commission to explain what that how that mixed zone works. You know, I've listened to Eric talk about it for five years now and the light bulb is finally starting to come on just a little bit. And so it doesn't surprise me that when people, you know, aren't using the regs all the time that it doesn't make a lot of sense on how that's supposed to go. But I think the regulations are there. We just need to the regulations are there and the way I understand it is that the the floating mix zones really just apply for six. Is am I mistaken on that area? I mean that go it could be anywhere in town technically. No, no, it was originally designed to sit over pretty much the entire route. Then when I came back to planning and
zoning now and and and started going back to EDC, what what we realized quickly is that those areas are shrinking because of the 100red-year flood planes increasing number one. Number two, we have higher standards for environmental awareness and trying to keep the areas clean. So like we're we're looking to pull in, you know, developers, but where they can do what we have proposed is going to be great in our town. Those areas have shrunk, number one. Number two, they're shrinking faster and faster. So that's why the the the it's not pressure, but the the directive that we kind of focused on this time is we need to really nail it down. Not like you can only do it here, but these are really the best spots so that the developers
know as the properties come up for sale or if the town someday buys properties, etc. or uses their own property that we can say, "All right, yeah, yeah, yeah. These are the best spots because we don't want to put something way on the edge of town that's going to be we want it to be linked to the sound center and all the the walkable trail, you know, we but we don't want to be, you know, so it's it's a it's a weird balance in my opinion. And it's hard to explain to developers. Oh, well, yeah, this is what we want, but we don't know where you put it. You know, it's right, we should have that. That's Yeah, we got to really I can't correct it. I even have it highlighted designated business or industrial. Yeah, at this particular moment, but we're just proposing it like, hey, maybe we can look into this like find the best spots and go and and that's again part of that action to take a look at the map. Where do we want right to have business zone so that we can do that better? Right. Right. I don't know. Maybe you could put on the map some sort of reference to mixeduse zone is possible in business and industrial zones. How much how much outreach is done to I don't know organizations or you know professional organizations that do this sort of stuff build these things create these senior housing developments. Do they even know that? Hey, we're sitting right here. We're we're 30 minutes from Hartford probably don't know. No, I mean to do that you have to do what Coventry did years ago,
which is hire an economic development person, you know, and have them go out and pound the pavement trying to bring business into town, right? and we've never, you know, we as a town have always liked the idea of economic development. Yeah. But think about it. Our economic development commission budget, what is it up to now? $1,000 a year for economic development. 13 what? Well, yeah, it's we have $1,000, but we did get a kick to go ahead and pay for the second welcome to Andover sign this year. Oh, yeah. That's that's just that was a single allocation for a son, right? you know, it's something that the town has always wanted to pay lip service to, but the town has never wanted to fund. And that's okay. so the grand vision out there at least where I thought you know probably two years ago Elaine and I went to board of selectmen and made the pitch
for a combined town planner economic development coordinator and didn't get rate reviews. We didn't get tomatoes thrown at us, but finances were not all that great, but we did through the plan of conservation of development action get a town planner. Yeah. Now, wouldn't it be great if when the plan of conservation of development gets done, we can expand John's role to focus more on economic development and still keep him here. I think that would be a wonderful achievement of what we set out to do a couple years ago, and we might be able to actually bring that to fruition without anybody even know it happened. That would be great. Wouldn't that be great? Yep. Yep. So, that's what I think our plan that's what we kind of need to get, you know, heading towards as long as John would be amenable to
to that. But that that's always been kind of my dream to to expand that way and once we got done with PCD to expanded to doing more of the economic development kind of stuff with us. Yeah. Yeah. Once we've written that once we've written the plan, it's time to implement it. Yeah. No. So, I could always try and lean on our state representative, a state senator to slip something into the budget implement. That's how things get done in Hartford. Okay. Y not smart enough to do that. Not smart enough to know about that. I do know that it takes more outreach and I do know that Elaine is already way overextended and so that's not a doable new, you know, to to criticize the fact that that hasn't actually come to fruition yet. You know, that's not the intention here. but I do think that with John's help, maybe you know, next year we could start dabbling in some of that stuff and maybe get somebody to bring something here. Yeah, that would be good. And I don't care. Well, I think the mixed use would be great with the, you know, the places for the industrial park and office building to help low and housing up on
top. there in the aims and objectives for grand list, supporting cottage industries by allowing types of development that they require is important. And again, I I left asking what what support do they need? I I think from a zoning perspective, I don't know what we would need to do there. You know, cottage industries are allowed, home businesses are allowed, and we don't have places for them to grow into yet. We need to somehow get those here. But I don't think there's a a planning and zoning piece of that that I'm aware of. Then the you know the next paragraph down there town should consider you J squeaking on it now the creation of larger mixeduse buildings to encourage creation of equate airspace all that including contract I I don't know who has the action to do that but I think our regulations support getting that And my last comment is on the action items. We need to identify who's got the lead for each of those things. Otherwise, when we we come to the next 10 years, we'll go back and look at that list and we'll say, "Oh, I thought you were doing that." And so we need to make sure we know who Sorry, J. Yeah. No, that so at the at the end of this at the end of this process, we will we will have an implementation matrix that will will add those details to each of the implementation items, each of the action items. So that that that is that is that
is planned. We will have that. So again, you know, my comments are not to say that the write up was bad. It's very good. You know, as Elaine and Patrick both said, you know, we finally got all these things written down on paper, which I think is great. I was trying to look at it and it seemed like it was thinking that planning and zoning may have a big part of why these things aren't happening. I'm not sure that that's true, but if there's if there are things where we need something different and and maybe, you know, placing the flip mixeduse floating zone so it's not floating anymore to plunk some place, maybe that's something we need to to do. your comment about the shrinking thing because of the the flood planes growing. Yeah, good one. I I hadn't considered that. but I do think it's very important and but I did think that you know I pushed back on a couple of things and that's probably to be expected because I'm looking at it from the other side that economic development is looking at it from. So, not to be critical, trying to be collaborative, trying to provide some good constructive feedback to get a good product there. And that was the end of my comments. That was That's great. So, I will send you the the draft that I wrote up with all my little comments in it, John, just so you can kind of and and and I'm certainly willing to accept push back on in any of
those comments. I just wanted to provide what I thought as I was reading through the the thing here. Yeah, that's that's fantastic. That's why we do this. and so I guess that what's what's the next step here? Are you going to do another tweak on it just based on what you heard tonight and Yep. so yeah, that's exactly right. We'll we'll in the we'll make these edits over the next couple weeks. So if someone had some comments that they didn't get to or your your thoughts Jed prompted someone else to to have some considerations, if you could forward those to me ideally in the next week or so we'll make edits and and distribute it again. but what we will propose to do is we we've done a bunch of discussion about housing over the last couple of years and have an existing affordable housing plan. So we will use those to draft up a housing chapter for the next for for in advance of the next planning and zoning meeting in addition to making edits as as discussed to this chapter. Okay. John, do you have any feelings based on the study that finally came out on each municipality share quote unquote of affordable housing whether that's actually going to get through the legislature? yeah, it's interesting. So, the final fair share report, which is certainly not anywhere close to being a law, was released, I believe, yesterday. And I I I haven't gone through it yet. I'll be honest. I do think that the fair the fair share requirement that that potentially converting the affordable housing plan that towns already have to do into
something like a fair share plan has a puncher's chance this year. I I have it on decent authority that the majority leader has is putting together sort of an omnibus housing bill that I think fair share will be included in. I do think that that that provision will probably get the most objection and and be the subject of the most horse trading and debate on the the legislative floor. But I I think it's got a puncher's chance. which would which would create a whole a whole new series of targets for every town to incorporate into their into their affordable housing plan. So just so that everybody knows the their targets depending on which formula
you use to generate them for Andover is the addition of somewhere between 226 and 72 new affordable housing units in the town of Andover. and considering we only have 1,200 housing units now, I don't think that's a reasonably attainable goal. That's right. After we move the parking arage, right? And again, so what the what the what but to be clear, what the legislation states, the draft legislation, is that the only thing that the town actually needs to do is create the the regulatory environment and conditions that would enable it. It, you know, it doesn't require the town to build anything. so it's it's it's more about removing obstacles and as as Jed said, the town has already, you know, done a fair bit of of regulatory changes that that would enable a variety of development to happen. so you know, it the market you know the town can only do so much. The market needs to do most of it. so you know that's that is you know again it's it's it's it's not about necessarily building things. It's about about sort of preparing the regulatory environment to allow for building things. but yeah it's it's I think some of the numbers are a little bit unrealistic given given market conditions. Yeah. I think 700 new affordable housing units in the town of Andover would be problematic. Yeah. Probably put my house up for sale and move. Anything else? Eric, we didn't call on you specifically. You've been chiming in a little bit along the way here.
Anything else you want to share on the EDC chapter there? No, I I I think you've hit on most of the parts. I mean, the only thing I want to keep is that I always think of economic development as the primary goal is to get the businesses and services that Andover residents want that are that you can do at a smaller scale which the population can support in New Andover. You know, in I think of economic development as much for convenience and for driving community as I do for reducing the mill rate. Because when you really look at the quantity and size of businesses it would take to make a measurable dis rate. [Music] you would really alter the character of Andover and not necessarily in a good way. So, I don't think that that's
an attainable goal. I mean, it sounds great. I mean, I'd love to pay less taxes, too. I mean, I'm sure all of us do, but I think it's more important for to be able to have the services that you want locally. and that should really be kind of the driving goal. At least that's my opinion. Okay, thanks Eric. John, did you have anything on the conservation chapter update? no. I we we've been getting feedback from the conservation commission and I have sort of a markup version that we're discussing back and forth. So, we should have a sort of a a agreed draft shortly. Okay. I'm going to spend just a couple of
minutes. The next item is discussion of bylaws changes and and there is some I'm I'm gonna check out guys. Thanks. Yes. Thank you so much. Thanks for Thanks for coming. Okay. Bye. Bye. Let me be perfectly honest. I'm going to check out of that discussion. Okay. Yeah. You don't care if watch the question. No. Thanks for coming here. Cheers. Thanks for all your hard work everyone. John, hopefully you can display the bylaws with Mark Branch's comments. And page one looks pretty easy. two. And so Mark Franc's comments don't show up there. He had you know when we're talking about what to do with vacancies, he said, "Is this per the ordinance? If not, we have to follow the ordinance." and it was sort of by the ordinance, but I did change it. I took the words directly out of the ordinance. Well, not the ordinance. It's out of the charter. There was nothing in the ordinance there. So, that I updated the words to make it reflect exactly what's in the town charter with as far as replacing people with vacancies there. Okay. Can Can you see the full markup now, Jed? Yeah, we can. Yeah, it's small enough that probably
nobody can read it, but that's okay. It reminds me to talk about what I want to say and not drag it out all night there. the next comment that Mark had was you know, about the chairperson and the vice chairperson being a commission member. Then, I left it I left it the way it was. I thought it was clear enough. Obviously, an alternate shouldn't be the commission chair because he's not going to be seated all the time and you got to be seated all the time to be the chair and so that makes it you know a regular member there. Well, I guess looking at your screen and I did include the word regular just to remove any doubt there. So, yep, you did. I've got maybe I don't have the most recent thing or what I checked on, but anyhow, we'll we'll press on and they're all pretty easy comments here. The the next comment that Mark Grant had was at the bottom of the last page.
It talked about the board clerk being an employee of the town and he said it doesn't have to be. And so, you know, we so that was a that was an original one. It's going to be the land use clerk doesn't have to be an employee of the town. So, we we crossed out the board clerk has to be a salaried employee of the town because she is not. And and that's that. So, on to the next one. Land use department administrative assistant. Mark asked. Well, you know, the board clerk's not a employee of the down outsourced thing. How about the land use administrative system? Could be not necessarily so necessly the best idea, but does not have to be an employee of the town. So, I just eliminated those words there. A couple of change mark, you know, cross that acceptment process in there. I don't think he had anything for shattering on any of the next things there. Section three, the zoning enforcement officer. Again, you know, Mark's comment was he doesn't have to be an employee of the town. He could be a you know, John provides CEO responsibility for a couple of towns. So, we could be doing that if we wanted. I like having Wayne an employee of the town, but not required. And so, we we chose to make it so that it didn't have to be that way. Okay. Yep. And Mark's comment was that we should be consistent about saying commission. Sometimes we were using PZC in there. Just be consistent and say commission throughout. Think anything else there? moving down to fficers. he was said, you try to make it a little more clear whether or
not you're talking entire membership or just the regular commission members. And so I added the word entire in there. now. Section four, we tweaked that just a little bit to be you know to talk about when you can deliberate following a public hearing and that sort of thing. the section five, you know, we used to say if you missed missed meetings for reasons other than illness, we were going to do away we changed it to say unexcused absence. There could be a lot of personal family reasons that somebody would be unable to make the meetings and so that makes that just a little bit clearer. section 10 he he said that were Robert's rules orders never designed for government agencies and contain provisions that are flatly illegal. You can be guided by them but don't ever want to be governed by them. And so we put Robert's rules of words shall be used as a the minutes. Oh, so section six. how you know we I forget what we used to have in there but we talked about updating the minutes you know and they would be made on the copy that's filed with the town clerk and initial by the secretary and a bunch of stuff that we don't do. what we do do is when we approve the minutes it's the the changes
to the minutes are noted in the following months. So when you look at minutes, you look for when they're approved to see if there are any changes to it. And that's the process that the town uses. And that's what I tried to reflect in there. I think so Mark added a new section article new article 19 conflict with applicable law. He put some new boiler plate in there that you know say that our bylaws can't change the state statute. State statutes supersede anything that we do here. And then on the amendments, the changes, just to make it clear that the entire voting membership, everybody votes on changes to the bylaws. And I think I think that's it. That's changed from the last time we went through here. I would make a motion
to approve the bylaws as amended. with the second and seconds. Any discussion on the bylaws? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. And hi, Leanne. I Andreas I. Patrick I. And I vote I as well. So the motion passes five 0 but the majority of the entire commission is five members. So, we got just enough members to pass the changes. Thank you. You said we're not getting anything done. correspondence. Wayne, anything you want to talk about there? Nope. Okay. Administrative reports, anything you want to talk about there? zoning agent. Just real quick, I approved a well I haven't approved. I asked for more information. Mobile station is going to well wants to upgrade the fascia sign over on the canopy. So mobile station or is the one down at 316? Yeah. Okay. You should carefully look at the sign rags because I have now I've passed along the sign rags to the to the people who want to go because it just you know some back and forth going on because every window is completely signed over as you drive by there understood that of the building and this is for the facade itself I got for the you know if they're going to change what they're doing they ought comply with the with the rent. I'm not sure that the company that I I am sure the company that's asked for this change is not the company that controls the rest of the or is having has anything to do with it. It's just the company that's going to fix the can or work on the canopy. Okay. All I can tell you is I think they got they
have exceeded the maximum number of signs by Well, are we talking the Shell gas station or the mobile? Mobile mobile. Oh, I Oh, that one. Okay, I'm in the wrong one. I shell 316. Okay. Yeah, I think extra shell and I didn't hear extraart. So, okay. Yeah, they're not they're not the big offenders. Actually, they tried to comply. They put a bunch of these feather signs up one year and they took them down because they said, "Okay, yeah, it's the Shell station. I'm not happy with their signs." minor thing, a deck on Shotty Mill Road that that that was approved. there was no issues with that. today I I denied an application to construct a addition with an a garage underneath that was proposed for a 325 Lake Road. It did not meet the sideyard requirements. Okay. So, okay. What What is going on with Long Hail? That construction house. I think it's across from Bear Swan. Across Oh, Stone House. Yeah. What's going on over there? They don't have a a Do they need a certification of occupancy there? Somebody's living there. I know for sure. that would be a building inspector question. that
that has been building inspector knows of that situation. So yeah, this does this people live in there. The answer is from the building inspector is that they're living in the house that the house was never condemned or was never deemed u unfit for occupation and you can live in a house while you were while you are renovating it. Okay. Yeah, because they are there consistently. I know they cleaned up today, but I have garbage everywhere. I don't want to speak for the building inspector. I'm just relaying the information that I I'm not speaking for the building inspector. Okay. But as far as the the cleanup
and that you've been involved in that? I haven't. Jim has, but I drive I drive by. Yeah. Both Bill and I both were complaining because they the cleanup and the mess comes and it goes all over the place, the garbage. And they have dumpster out there. No, they don't. They've I mean, it comes and goes from my perspective. I don't have a dumpster. They're supposed to have a dumpster. I don't have a dumpster. No, they don't have no There used to be dumpster there. Actually, there were several dumpsters in and out time. No more. but as of right now, I I don't see a huge issue with it right now. They they've been cleaning up little by little, but it's just it's the clean up then it's a mess and it's just Yeah, it goes huge up and down garbage bags collect and then I was fixing the guard rail there damaged by the trees. That's that's something public works is doing public works are doing well they cut the trees down. public works was there doing that and and I know that we we had our budget cut on construction but Skinner road is absolute mess like paving it or that's not us or
that's that's more you missed your chance to ask the right guy. I know I know we got some money back from the state but no that would be that would be an Eric question. So pave and mo is not part of our works, but I think that it's on a list to get some work done this year if I remember right. We've always got a list of road disaster disaster. But last meeting they he gave a list quickly of all the different roads that are up to work this summer and I think that was on they're supposed to be working on this summer. Great. They did
a great job. That's my report. Okay. Inland wetlands the inland wetlands meeting was again cancelled. So I got no report there. Town planner John. I don't have anything further. I was going to mention the the the potential legislation for fair share, but that's Yeah, that's it's still pending. Yeah, fair share doesn't sound very fair. I guess we'll see what comes out. I probably should have added that all last week I was at Casio training. And I've yet to find out whether I passed the test. Okay. Y Oh, and yeah. So, CASIO is a Connecticut Association of Zoning Enforcement Officials. It's required training for people in my position. I I passed the CLA. I took your I send send you a copy. Okay. Yeah, I was going to mention that, but most of the people I haven't heard from are not here tonight. So, we won't talk about the required by annual training there. Public speak. who did Katherine Hutchinson finally drop off when it was time for her? I guess I don't see her here anymore. Maybe we've got no more public now. Okay, moving on to approval of the minutes. Yes. Did Did we cover the new business items? We did. Yep. They were quick. All we did was we scheduled Well, I gave Jim his certificate. Oops. New business. We set we set the public hearing for the home occupation for next month prior to the meeting. We're going to do the text amendment change public hearing next month prior to the meeting. And then the special permits to actually do things
out at Fitch Farm will be the month after that in July. So that's what we did on the new business. Okay. I didn't I thought I could hear all of what you were doing before and I thought what you were doing was moving the agenda items around. So maybe I just misunderstood when we were trying to make sure that we could all hear each other because I thought I could hear you the whole time. But okay. and I do business pretty quickly, but yeah, the next up is approval of the minutes from April 15th. And I will make a motion to approve the minutes from the April 15th planning and zoning meeting. Second and second. Thank you. any discussion on those other than Andreas's last name spelled H A L I D I S for the record. That was the only That was the only item I saw reading through the minutes. H A L H A L I D I S H A L H A I D is David I S ascent. So hearing hearing no other comments on the minutes. I make a motion to approve the minutes as amended to put the correct spelling of Hletus. a lettuce lettuce in into the minutes and that's it. I'll second. Okay. Thank you, Leanne. any further discussion hearing? None. Call for vote.
Ann I. Leanne. I. Andreas. I. Patrick. I. And I vote I as well. That motion passes 500. next meeting June 17th that'll start out with two public hearings and we'll go into regular meeting which will have some more POC stuff and again we'll head on down the road on on all that but we're not too bad. We'll get out here by 9:30 tonight. Any other discussion? Going, going, gone. I make a motion to adjourn at 9:19 p.m. and seconds. Thank you. All in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Any abstain? Motion passes by J 0. Thank you everybody for attending.