Meeting transcript
PZC Regular Meeting
November 21, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay, you got it.
And it's seven 07. I'll call the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting to order. First up on the agenda is roll call and seating of alternates. I see Anne Cremay in attendance, Steve Nelson, Leanne Hutchinson, myself, Scott Persson is absent. And so next up on well, we also have alternates Susan England and Anne Blanchard present. Next up in the rotation to be seated is Susan England. So Susan, you'll be seated as a commission member for tonight's meeting. I can't see it. Okay. Jim, can you put yourself on mute while you're talking there? Okay.
Eric, do you have the power to mute him until he gets done talking there? Okay.
That works. Okay. Next up are additions or changes to the agenda. And I have none. Does anybody else have any additions or changes to the agenda to discuss? I hear none. So, we'll move on to item four on the agenda, public speak. And anybody from the public have any comments that they would like to make before we start this evening? Okay, hearing none, we'll move down to old business. And the first item up on the agenda is the restoration of the permitted gravel pit on Route 6. And at this point, we have nobody here to address that issue with us. And so I'm going to defer that item for the moment. I have nothing to update item five beyond Rosewood Acres. And so we'll go on to item five see the response to the letter from Jerry Gourmet. And Eric, if you could allow me to share my screen. Okay, you should be able to.
At the last meeting, we discussed the letter from the Board of Education Chairman, Jerry Cremay, about some concerns that the board had with respect to the proposed senior community center project. I think I sent this letter out to all the commission members. Steve, did you get that? Yes, I did. Okay. So, think it certainly doesn't say much other than the fact that, you know, the chairman of the Community Senior Center Building Committee forwarded the concerns to the engineer who is managing the project for the town of Andover. We don't have an application at this point, and so we thought that was the appropriate action to take.
But at this point, I'll make a motion to approve the draft letter to the Board of Education from the zoning enforcement officer and the Planning and Zoning Commission. Second.
Okay, thank you, Steve. Any comments on the letter? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote on the motion. Anne? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye.
Susan? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five-zero-zero.
Mr. Chairman, for the record Mark Brantz, Commission Counsel, just one thing for Mr. Hallisey. Do not publish a legal notice of that vote. It it is not an appealable decision, and and I don't wanna open an appeal option for it. That that the vote the vote you just took is is in the way of guidance of for concerning communication and does not need a legal notice.
Okay, thank you Attorney Branch. Certainly. Next we're going to move down to new business
Jed, it looks like Jim is back. Do you want to check on the gravel pit situation?
Jim, what did you and you're on mute, Jim. Jim, you're still on mute.
Okay, I spoke to Chris Bell. Yep. He didn't seem to recall the meeting, but he will be on in a few minutes. So I told him we would, when he gets on, we would bring up his item as soon as possible. Okay.
Now, so we are into new business at this point, and I would like to start with item 6C, the request for filing extension. Eric, if you can just run us through what the purpose of your request is just so that all the Commission members understand what we're trying to do.
Yeah, So back at the August meeting, I presented modifications to what was a subdivision plan and a special permit application because Eversource was requiring. Was forcing me to move utilities to the other side of the property that that had a much greater impact. Then the original plan, So what they required of me was to in order to have their engineer approve the plan. The original utilities plan was to actually have a driveway come from the other side of our property. That matter, the Commission was kind enough to to vote on that matter. At that meeting and and approved with, you know, the conditions, including filing of mylars and and easements. It has been, I believe it's gonna be ninety days if it hasn't already passed within the last day or two. But I submitted a letter requesting an extension just because I've been, no matter how much I seem to try to email or leave voicemails with the Eversource engineer,
I haven't gotten contact from them, which has caused delays. And then my engineer has also required more time than I was thinking he would to get the the plans modified and the information that my attorney needs to draft up easements and communicate with Eversource. I am at the point where I have my LARS. Right here in fact, and my attorney is in possession of the information that he needs. What's outstanding, think it's just my attorney, by the way, Stan Falkenstein. He has a little he has a little more work drafting agreements and then and then I believe he still needs to get in touch with his his person at his counterpart at Eversource to get to get the ball rolling there. But I think the the big logjam for me is kind of broken and I'm hoping that in the next two weeks to three weeks, I'll have all that sorted out and I could
file everything With the clerk.
So would there need to be any changes made to the mylars that you have now once the easement gets approved, or is that all the easement approval will put it in compliance with the mylars that you currently have in hand?
That's correct. Yeah, I I won't need new mylars. These these are final. It's just some it's just a matter of getting. Driveway easement updated with the new a new area that was that. You know that that my property actually rather my neighbor's property is going to require us to like go through. So I wouldn't need any changes to the MYLARs. Think they're final copies.
Okay. Agent Halsey, I know you and I had talked about the possibility of making a motion to change the previous conditions of approval to support filing the mylars without
Yes. I thought as an alternative to the extension of the filing request, just simply change the conditions to require that the easements be filed prior prior to the issuance of a build building permits. I would think No. Yeah.
You don't? Yeah, for the record Mark Brantz, we can't do that. Once that MYLAR is filed on the land records, whatever easements it depicts, it shows is it. That's very risky. I've seen that happen before and it leads to bad things. The extension of time is perfectly reasonable request, routinely granted, Mr. And I won't try to pronounce your last name but has certainly provided a good explanation for why he may not meet the ninety day filing requirement. But when we have all the ducks together, and by the way does not require a commission meeting to endorse those that mylar, the chairman can do that any old time, So if he gets Eversource squared away in a week or two weeks or whatever, he does not have to wait for the next commission meeting. The Mylar's can be endorsed at any time.
Thank you.
Okay, so with that in mind, I'll make a motion to approve a ninety day extension for filing of the mylars on the Pine Ridge Subdivision. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on that motion? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye. Susan?
Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion to extend the filing deadline for ninety days is approved. I think that's
all you wanted from us tonight, Eric? Yes. That is it. I do see the note in the chat, is that from from Eric about the Eversource rep?
Yes. That is. So if you do have problems with it and you can't get it through, let me know, and I'll rattle our source rep to to work on it. Okay, thank you.
Attorney Fullerkenstein knows me well. So when he has his documents for my review, we can work that out. He knows where to find me. Okay. Thank you very much, Paul.
Okay, at this point, I'm going to work back to item 6B, receive application and set public hearing for various amendments to section five Andover Rules of Design and section 24 definitions of the Andover zoning regulations. So it's allowed municipal land uses in the ARD subject to special permit. I think I still got share screen permission, is that correct, Eric? Okay, so before I jump over to the proposed changes, I sent out, as I recall, sent out and I sent out a lot of things to the Commission within the last month this time, but I think you saw the, I forget what it's called the petition to change the regulations I think it is so as we were working through the issues of the community center We discovered that our regulations as currently existing
tried the same way. If you go to the calendar Thank you, Eric. The current regulations didn't support putting in a community senior center. And so we thought that maybe we should adjust the regulations to allow that. Okay, so this is my proposed change to Section five. And going back, Eric with Attorney Branch made several recommendations for changes both in Section five, the ARD, Section seven, the Lake District, Section eight, I think it was either the business district in section 24. I was a little concerned with all the things going on about doing all those changes right now, but I certainly wanted to amend the regulations as soon as we possibly could to facilitate having the ability to put a community center in the ARD, which is where the town hall is located, if we so chose to do that. And so this is the sections that Attorney Branch recommended that we change. We deleted public parks, playgrounds, athletic fields from here. One of the things that Attorney Branch recommended, and I think it has a lot of merit to it, was we should be very careful in what are the items that we have that you can do in a district without a special permit. You know, there was a bunch of surprise that came up with a lot of people when the Dollar General came to town that we didn't need to hold a public hearing for that and do the special
permit with that, that all they had to do was comply with our regulations and a site plan review. And so one of the lessons, well, that recommendation that Attorney Branch made plus the experience of Dollar General. And I guess the other one that comes to mind is that when we were looking at Scott Beebe's kennel application, you know, that we were able to put through because you could read the regs that a special permit and a public hearing were not required. When I get around to changing that regulation, I will make it so that for any kennel, a public hearing and a special permit is required because I think that's the right thing to do. So anyhow, that's the basis of what we've got here. So up in the permitted uses, we eliminated public parks, playgrounds and athletic fields. Down in the special permit, we crossed out schools and put in municipal land uses. We changed 5A02 to include houses of worship and cemeteries, houses of worship in the place of churches and libraries because that would be included in the municipal land use item.
And then down here at the bottom, we took out private recreational areas and we put in the public parks, playgrounds, and athletic fields. And I know, Eric, you asked me a question at one time about why did we eliminate the private recreational areas? Wouldn't we like to have those? And the answer comes back is the way that we define public parks, playgrounds, and athletic fields would encompass any of the items that would be open to the public, so private recreation areas would probably not be required there. So anyhow, those are the changes to Section five that were recommended by Attorney Branch and requested by Eric Anderson for the Planning and Zoning Commission. Any questions or comments on any of those changes? Okay, and I do think they were fairly straightforward at that point. So, we can't approve those yet. Changes will have to go to a public hearing before we can approve them and agent Halsey needs to send those out for some other local municipality review. And I think, I forget how many days that review
we're required to give, but it ends up being that the first time that we can have a public hearing to vote on the changes would be in our January meeting, I think is January 21 or January 23. It's a week later than normal due to the Martin Luther King holiday. So I'll make a motion that we set a public hearing for January 23 to discuss the proposed changes to Section five ARD. Second the motion.
Thank you, Steve. Eric, did you have a comment? Saw that one moving forward.
I was just remembering your in your legal notice that the these amendments affect more than just section five. I Miller we added a definition so there are other sections are involved. We'll get to section 24 specifically. Okay. All right. Yeah, no problem.
I have no comment other than I just want this expedited to the extent that we can. But I understand we need to notify surrounding municipalities and notify the COG, so it's not going to be overnight. Okay. Any other discussion?
Chad, in addition to Section 24, you also mentioned changes to Section seven and eight at a later date. Will that be prior to the public hearing?
That will not be. So my goal for the public hearing, and we're going to talk about it a little bit here tonight, is I would like to make these changes which allow the community center the changes to definitions which support, I think it was municipal land uses and public something or other, we'll get there in a minute. And then the third item that I was going to try and squeeze in there, if we get through that without too much discussion tonight, is the accessory dwelling units. And so, you know, we have opted out of accessory dwelling units in entirety from what was in the public act, but the portion that we specifically wanted to opt out of was for the Lake District. I've got some things to discuss that we might want to change with our other regulations and just make sure we're where we want to be on that because I think that's an important issue for the affordable housing discussion and we'll go with that. But anyhow, back to the motion. Well, other
discussion? Good. I have one comment and I may have missed it. I apologize. I was on the phone with Chris Bell trying to get up to the meeting. But I'm treating this as any zone change amendment, amendment to the text, and there's an application. So what I had what I had put on the agenda was to receive the application and set public hearing. So I'm suggesting that you act to receive the application prior to the public hearing. Okay.
So I will modify the motion to include accepting the application and setting the public hearing date for January 23. Second.
Thank you, Steve. First, we'll vote on the modification to the motion. Any other discussion on the modification? And I would put that up, but I'm afraid I ran out of space on my computer to put things down. And if I go back to the website here at this point, that might or might not work. And it was pretty straightforward. Eric asked us to take a look at changing these couple of things it's online if you care to look at that. But hearing no other discussion, the motion is to modify the initial motion. And I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leanne? Aye.
Susan? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The modification of the motion passes five-zero-zero. And now we go back to the entire motion as modified, which is to receive the application to change the regulations in section five and set a public hearing date for January 23. Any other last minute discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leanne? Aye.
Susan? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five zero zero. Thank you, commission members, for considering this.
Oh you're welcome. Do you see Chris Bellum? I do see Chris Bell. I just, since we're in the middle of six 6b, I'm going to call up the changes to the definitions and go through those couple of changes and then we'll get on to the gravel. Okay. So we added, here we added a municipal land uses. And I think I sent these out to everybody. Is that Yeah. Okay. One of the many things I sent you out, so I won't read that. And then we put public buildings, structures, uses which are open to the public owned by under the exclusive control of nonprofits, social, compared to municipal land uses. So if it isn't a municipal land uses, it's a public. If it isn't a public, it goes back to being a municipal land use.
Mr. Chairman, for the record, Mark Brains, let me just also point out that this I know that for years we've needed to do a comprehensive revision of Andover but you also have a definition of something called private recreation areas private recreational areas. Yep. And that's there but that's defined to be an accessory use so that's why we're adding this pump new definition because that could be a principal use.
Okay And just so, while we're talking about the definition section here, in a later presentation, I have come up with the definition for the word frontage. We've wrestled with that before. And I was going to include that in this update and I forgot. And so, I still intend to include that. We'll go through discussion, and if we can get agreement on what the definition of frontage is later tonight, I will include that in here before Jim sends it off for the municipality review, and that would be included in our public hearing on January 23 as well. So, with all that in mind, I'll make a motion to receive the application and set a public hearing for Section 24 of the definitions with the public hearing to be held on January 23. Second the motion. Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on the definitions? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leigh Ann?
Aye. Susan? Aye. And I vote aye as well. So, we've received the public we've received the application and set the public hearing for January 23. Thank you, everybody. At this point, I'd like to go back to old business item 5A, respirations permitted gravel pit at 517 Route 6. And Chris, I will turn it over to you at this point. Let
us know where we stand. Okay, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners, I'm sorry. I forgotten that Jim told me you want me at the meeting. I guess I forgot a lot of lot of things when I was in the hospital. I have to tell you about every fifteen seconds. The audio cuts out on me. I can't hear what you're saying for about fifteen seconds, then it comes up. I can tell when you're talking because your lips are moving, but I hear nothing. All I can do is if I notice that you're talking and I can't hear you, I'm gonna have to say, I can't hear you, the audio cut out. I keep getting warnings that my internet connection is unstable,
for Anyway, some let me try to be quick about this then. We can hear you fine, Chris. Yeah. I know I think you're gonna hear me, but you may be cutting out on me. Okay. So, I talked to the contractor and the owner today, And I did talk to them also, last week. And for some reason, they stopped the grading. They said they had other stuff to do when they weren't sure if they're going to be able to finish it right away but they're going to start again tomorrow I told them to take the high point out and make the low point because that's basically what they have to do that conform to the plan. And the low point material can be easily spread to the back towards the the sloped area, and that needs to be filled a little bit and then filled towards towards the access road which you know they still need to fill in a little bit more there and stop at the floodplain line as, as we had on the proposed plan. They should be able to do that within a few days. I don't think that's going to take very long. And I think we can get an inspection on the rough grading as you know, we agreed to do it. Think I can do a video inspection because I know the grade stakes are out there. He can take some laser shots while I'm on the on a video with him. And then once I'm happy with the grades, we can call Jim Helicy to come out and we can do a video conference.
And I'm sure the grades will be correct by the time we get out there. At that point, I think it's way too late in the season to try to do topsoil and then seed because I know the seed is not going to take, it'll provide some erosion protection to hay, but I think we should wait for the spring, the topsoil and seeds, and then we'd be very successful and get a good crop of grass. I mean, when the grading is done, there's virtually, you know, all the water is going be going towards the center for, you know, a good 75% of the site. And the only thing will be left is what's along the floodplain along the access road, which, you know, always went towards the right anyway. And we'll have to just keep and maintain those silk fences that, you know, there is a little bit of a low point in the access road that, you know, it keeps breaking through. And we'll just have to keep monitoring that over the winter to make sure that we don't get too much silt material going past the silt fence. Again, it's just sand. But I would like to finish the grading. I mean, do the topsoil in the spring. I think the the contractor agrees that it would be much more successful. Again, all the drainage is going to go towards the center. So when it's finally completed, and so we'll stay on that to make sure that's finished. After that, I guess if you've got any other comments or thoughts, let's
talk.
Can hear My first comment is I was disappointed that we didn't get done by the November 17 after you asked for and we gave you two months to do the restoration?
Well, was disappointed too. I, you know, I wanted them to stay on it and they just just didn't. And I I didn't have any control over that. You know, I thought they were gonna finish up and call for an inspection and and they didn't. When I found out they never finished, I wasn't too happy about that and they just never got back out there. And I I I don't know what to say. I I don't you know I can only pound my fist so much. The owner was the same way he was trying to get them out there, but they had other jobs to finish. And I wasn't happy about that at all.
Okay. No,
I understand that. The other concern I had was, and it sounds like you had little control over this probably as well, but we agreed when we agreed to the restoration plan that you and Agent Halsey and the person doing the excavation were going to get together forty eight hours prior to actually starting the excavation so that we could make sure that what was going to be done was
done in accordance with the plan. Yeah, and we did have an inspection and everything was, you know, all the hills were taken down except they had a high point in the middle and we we did have an inspection with that and and with Jim and I thought they were going to proceed. But right after that time it was only a week later that I had my accident, and basically I was not really available to stay on top of it. I only you know I took Jim's calls I tried to get things going but apparently I don't know their thoughts where they said, well, I'm not there, how are they going to get an inspection anyway and I guess they just left, which I was not very happy with at all.
And they never, even though I tried to get them before the seventeenth to get out there. It just didn't happen. I don't know what else to say about it, you know, did the best I could but I couldn't control them at all. And either could the owner he was trying to get them out there too. And so we're kind of stuck with, it's almost done but you know they can, they can finish it, you know, in the next few days and get, get the low point in and that's about it, I guess, now.
Chris, do you know if if the erosion and sediment control measures had been restored?
Yeah, it was restored last week, actually. That's what the the older told me had somebody go out there the day after Jim sent his notice. And I was told they were finished in a, I think they're going to have to just, you know, try to triple that up because, you know, we know where the weak point is, and I think they're just going to have to reinforce it some more to last for the winter. I mean, that's, it's only, it's only coming through basically one point. And, you know, that's where, well there's more drainage going there now because we have a high point once we take the high point out of there, know, than two thirds of that drainage is going to go towards the new low point. It's going to be reduced quite a bit. And,
go ahead. So what is different this time where we have a promise to be done within the next couple of days that's different than the last year?
Well, they weren't intending to get back to do the granting until the end of September, which they did start then. And they were on it for quite a bit for a while. And unfortunately they just stopped short of the finish line. I'm sure nobody's happy about. I think I had a lot to do that I just was not able to stay on top of it for the couple weeks I was in bad part of the hospital. I just wasn't there to get going on it to keep it up. I understand that. Unfortunately, I'm the only one that seems to be pushing on it. The owner does, but he can't get the contract to go out there as, you know, as much as he would like to. We're still kind of a victim to a contractor schedule, so.
Yep, and I think, you know, we have seen, I've seen people working on excavation over there probably two days out of the last two months, maybe I missed one or two, but it certainly hasn't been very much. In the contrast with that to what happened to the Dollar General across the street that went to open for business in about two months after they started is incredible. So I don't know if the owners got the wrong excavator doing that or whatever. To
be all fair, Mr. Chairman, building a building and starting a business is a money making operation. This whole operation was a money losing operation for the owner. He lost a lot of money just getting this done. So, unfortunately, you know, everything, everything was going very fine until it just stopped. Mean, they were, they were really close to finishing it. Then I was actually surprised they never put the low point in after I got back to it after my surgery and I wasn't too happy about it. I thought they were going to finish that up with no problem, but they never went back. And then now they're on-site ready to finish it. It's just, I mean, I can't make excuses for the contractor. He just didn't show up. You know, they they go on to other priorities and they show up when they want to. Unfortunately, it's for a job like this. It's it wasn't it's not a money making job for him either. He just made a deal with Bill to finish it. You know, he got very little material out of it. He was pretty much as a break even. So unfortunately, it's still got to get finished.
And I told him today that, you know, be really, it's really important to get that low point in just just to get the whole situation stable. And Bill's got to monitor that weak point in the sill fence. That's where all the water goes. Not right now, which is kind of where the level spreader was.
Okay. And Chris, you saw the copy of the letter that Mr. Genovese received from Agent Halsey? Yes, I did. I saw that. Okay.
So that's the reason we invited Attorney Branch here tonight is because last time, you know, we got into a similar situation here and unfortunately it took the threat of legal action to get the project back on track when we had the first extension authorized and we looked at what we had done and what we said we were going to do and they were significantly different. Attorney Branch, I would like the way ahead to be that we give the applicant, for which we have no application currently, I guess, we give the applicant until the end of the month to have the grading properly
restored. I guess we recall the primary grading. Yeah, the grading done and Oh, the audio is kicked out. I can't hear anything. Say again, Chris. You said the audio can't Okay, hear well,
you may want to turn his video off, it might help with the feed.
That's probably a good idea. Chris, if you turn your video off, that might help your bandwidth. All right, that's something I would know. Stop video?
Yep. Yeah. Okay, so let us know if you can't
anything. Now the video is frozen. We can't. Everybody's frozen.
Okay, then I will have agent Hallasteek brief you tomorrow on what we agreed to tonight. But Attorney Branch, my desire for the way ahead would be to have the site graded in accordance with the restoration plan by the end of this month. That recognizes we've got Thanksgiving coming up at the end of this month here. And at our next meeting in December, we have an updated restoration plan that includes action to put in the topsoil, finish grading and seeding at some point next spring and whatever further actions it takes to bring it into full compliance with the restoration plan that we were unable to achieve by November 17.
For the record, Mark Brantz, sounds like a reasonable, very reasonable goal to set, but here's the problem we have: the permit has expired, the applicant has not filed an application
to renew the permit or to obtain a new one. And I can tell you why, Attorney Brantz, we're not excavating and taking material off-site. It's when we no longer have a gravel pit permit to remove material.
It it it makes Basically, we're no difference with the materials being removed or not. There is still grading activity occurring. And pursuant to the per the permit was to be was to be the the permit required restoration. The commission gave sixty more days to do the restoration. It hasn't been done. And I understand why, mister Bella. You've you've explained that. I I understand your your your situation. But, we're in the predicament now where there is no permit. The audio And the extension has been Excuse me, mister Bell. Mister Bell. We are now in a situation where there is no permit. The permit has expired, where the restoration period has expired, and the Commission has no request before it or application before it to do anything further. There is a way to solve this and the way to do that, my recommendation would be that the zoning enforcement officer issue an order that incorporates what you've just said Mr. Chairman, that incorporates end of the month to bring the grading into compliance, whatever period in the springtime for looming, seating, and so on, immediate repair of E and S, which appears to have already occurred, at least Mr. Bell believes it's occurred. That order would then authorize the applicant to proceed without a permit because it's it's basically re it's a remediation order. That order would be filed in the land records, which I think make sure that some innocent buyer does not acquire this property without knowing that there is an outstanding violation, which there is, and there will be an outstanding violation until spring at the rate we're going because you can't see, as Mr. Bell says, can't see it anymore.
It won't take. And I think part of that order should be, the posting of a new bond, in the amount of the loaming and seating to be to be sure that that when when when we inspected that and I was on the site Mr. Bell, when we inspected that site it was questionable as to whether the required two inches of loam was even on the site. Part of that order should be the posting of a new bond to assure the grading, loaming, seeding, mulching as required by the regulations. What that will do is that order, like I said, first of all, it will give authority for the owners to do what it is they're supposed to be doing. It will also assure that we don't get an innocent buyer unaware of the situation. Lastly, if this does not happen, if our contractor decides to, pursue greener pastures once more, then, the violation of that order will by itself trigger a $2,500 civil penalty, against the owner, and lay the groundwork for a civil suit against the owner for injunctive relief. And certainly understand the problem with contractors. They're all busy, but the Commission has to have some response to this. This seems to be the fairest and the most efficient way to handle it.
Any comments from the commission on what we just heard from attorney branch? Jed? Yes Leanne.
Yes I like the idea of going to but not beyond the end of the month because I think we need to bear in mind as has been said that this is the end of the extension. It's not the beginning of it's not a request for an extension. It's the end of an extension that was granted and not much has been done. And it doesn't seem like the owner is very active. And I don't think that having the contractor not be making much money doing this that could go on indefinitely. It has gone on for quite a while and not much has been done since the last meeting. So I think it's a good time frame to give them time to do something more, but also not have this go all winter. Can I ask a question of Jim? Mr. Bell I think said that the erosion and sedimentation control measures were fixed. I think he said, I hope he can hear me with his cutting in and out, the day after this letter was dated. So Jim, have you been able to go out there and check on the silt fences?
I was out there today, and I thought that the silk fence in the far corner was was not supported properly, but I'm gonna I'm gonna go back out. Other than that, it was it looked good. Yes. It it sometimes has kind of blown out from the back, and it's it's gotten to the point where it's hard to to maintain. So I will take a closer look at that, and it it may involve moving it forward or replacing it with with hay bales or something of that nature. It's just it seems to have been a struggle to maintain throughout that throughout the course of work.
Mr. Allisworth again for the record Mark Brantz in fashioning your order after you do that inspection we can fine tune that so if there are things that need to be done with the E and S that can be part of your order as well with its own separate deadline.
Okay just for the record I will coordinate the springtime seating with Hank Kruener who has been very active on this project with respect to turtles. Turtles on-site I believe that's a June issue, so I don't think it's a problem. I just want to double check.
And Leanne, just to add on to your concern there or mitigate it hopefully. Dirty Branch's recommendation to include a copy of the order in the file for the property. As I understand, Mr. Genovese is anxious to market the property soon and having that order, if it's not complied with in the file, hinder anybody's desire to go out and purchase that property at that point. So I think that provides good motivation too.
Okay, well that's I mean I think that's helpful although he doesn't seem to have been too incentivized so far but hopefully that will help and if it comes to, you know, with this short timeframe, again, is at the end of an extension that's already been granted, he may just need to come up with somebody else who's more ready to do the work that we need done and it's been outlined very well. Exactly. Okay.
Attorney Branch, I'm Mr. Chairman, may I make a comment? Is that Chris? Mr. Chairman, may I make a comment? Yes. I have no audio right now. Hello?
You might try doing, Chris, is calling into the phone number.
Well I I can hear him, I can hear I can hear Mr. Bell. Yeah you can hear me but that whole after I stopped speaking I heard probably about 10% of the conversation. I I really don't, I mean I heard that you want a new bond,
I heard a few words. I haven't heard most of the conversation. No. Jim Helichy will will get a hold of you tomorrow, Chris, and and go through everything.
I apologize for I don't know what I'm doing with this, but I just like to say there is, I mean, any erosion that's occurring is basically on his land, and the amount of water that's going to the right is basically less than it was before the site was done. I mean there's no harm doing to anybody except himself, by not getting the project finished. He's not hurting his neighbor. It probably is nice to be if it was all done. I agree. But, you know, at this point, the owner is gonna know, you know, what is what is the problem. You know, it's my site, I'm trying to finish it, and he doesn't understand why the town is so concerned about finishing it when the only harm that's coming to him is just an untopsoiled site with no grass on. And I just wanted to let you know what his feeling was. He would like to get it done as soon as possible because then he could, you know, get someone to rent it or buy it. So it's it's not not because he doesn't want it to happen. He does. But he's having a hard time getting it done. And
that's all I all that, Chris. And and I do think there is some detriment to having the water run down to the east the way it is. I'm not sure that it's great to have all that water running down into the wetlands there. And if we had graded the property as the restoration plan specified, we would have significantly minimized that runoff, minimized that erosion, and minimized the water going into the wetlands. Think those are all things Well, it is wetland. And that does not mean that we want all the water to be running down there. In fact, that would be rationale for not having the water run down there because it's not soaking into the ground.
Well, it is a type A soil. Most of the water goes into the ground and doesn't doesn't run off, but there is runoff II agree. There's no doubt about it. And II think he at least controls the the silt fences and keeps the sand from going beyond the silt fence. And, you know, we shouldn't be able to control that over the winter. I'll, I'll note your comments that I did hear and tell him he's gotta get this thing done ASAP.
Thank you. And Jim, you'll be able to provide the order to Mr. Genovese, route that through Attorney Branch before you send it to him just so we can get his cut on what you're sending out? Yes, I will. Okay. And I'll be in the office all day tomorrow. Mr. Chairman? Yes, Ms. Hutchinson.
This is Catherine Hutchinson. I respectfully request permission to be heard. Go ahead.
I agree with you. I am, of course, particularly concerned with that runoff and Mr. Bell's comment that when the work is done that he's anticipating be done, two thirds of the water will be redirected. The restoration plan called for a 100% of it to be redirected,
not No, just two thirds of that's not true. That's not true. Well, the water that's in the floodplain, I can't stop Chris, Stop. I can't Okay. Do
The way you briefed us on the restoration plan was that the elevation on the east side of the property was going to be higher than the high point elevation on the west side of the property. So, if the detention basin filled up, the excess was going to flow down towards the Extremart and back towards the Hop River. That was the discussion we had. And so understanding that, I conclude that Ms. Hutchinson's comment is correct. We did agree that the runoff was going to run down the west side of the property. There's no audio.
Okay, well, I think we have the input we need from Mr. Bell to decide the course of action. And I don't think at this point there's any further action for the Commission until we have Agent Halsey send out the order. And next month, we'll look forward to seeing the updated restoration plan, And we will vote on that at that point. Any other comments? Have no audio.
Again, this is Catherine Hutchinson. Continue to have have no no permission to speak. I appreciate it.
Oh, you're welcome. So any other comments on on the gravel pit?
I only have one to make 100% of the water flow towards the middle. I'd have to fill the access road in the floodplain I can't do that. Understand that and
and that's not what we're talking about. Okay. I just thought I thought you were talking about.
Mister chairman, for the re Mark Branch, what we're talking about is compliance with the the approved grading plan. Correct. Whatever it shows, that's what it shows. Yep. Correct. Maybe it's two thirds. Maybe it's 90%. Maybe whatever whatever it is, that's what it is. Correct. Correct. Okay. So, that completes item 5A.
Thank you, Commissioner. Can't hear you anymore, but thank you. Thanks, Chris.
Next item of business, an attorney branch, you're welcome to stay. I think that you have concluded. We appreciate your help and support on coming up with the way ahead and you're certainly welcome to stick around.
If you don't need me, will sign off and I'm going to shoot an email to Jim just with sort of summarizing what is my understanding of the order. Okay. Before you sign off,
Mark, I'll just mention to the Commission to put the date March 11, I think it is. Yes. Your calendars, that is going to be the next session. I think March 11 is a Saturday. Correct. Probably the better part of a Saturday is the Connecticut Bar Association training that I attended two years ago. I thought it was excellent. Attorney Branch has a big role to play in getting that to us, but we as a commission do have requirements going forward that we receive training. This might not make all those wickets, but it will certainly help you understand the roles, responsibilities, and all those things associated with the Planning and Zoning Commission. So I highly recommend if you can take the time to attend that.
And it will be as two years ago it will be virtual. It used to be held in Wesleyan and we had to cap it at 02:50 because even with an overflow room that was all the room we had. Two years ago we had six fifty signed up for it and we responded to over 150 questions during that session. So, it's a packed day covering public hearing procedures, non conforming uses, zoning regulation adoption, plan of development. Every topic you've ever faced or ever will, and the book is a few 100 pages, and as usual the Bar Association subsidizes this. Basically, I forget the fee is probably going to be about 25 or $30 like last time, and that's just the printing cost of the book. The printing and mailing of the book is it. Everything else we cover. So definitely March eleventh, Saturday, put on your calendar. Thank you for mentioning that, Mr. Chairman. Yep. And we have money in the budget to support
paying for the training so it'll be no cost to any of the Commission members that attend that. All right, have a happy Thanksgiving all. Same to you, Dirty Branch.
By the way, I put January 23 on my calendar just in case if need be. Reserved that for you. You. Alrighty. Take care all. Bye bye. Thanks, Mark.
Next item up is the request for proposals for the upcoming plan of conservation and development. And that is this document here that I put up. I've sent that out to everybody. At this point, you know, I was looking for feedback on So, area down here, public input is desired to understand what type of housing people Andover are looking for, whether the town should be encouraging growth, what type of growth the town desires, and what the taxpayers are willing to pay a little more taxes to achieve, among other things. Those were some questions that I think the long term planning committee asked back in 2018. This will be about five years later, but I think that it would be good to get some input from the folks from the town of Andover. And so, this point, you know, my question for the Commission is, are there any other specific items that we should include in this request for proposal for soliciting help to put that document together?
I don't have any suggestions at this time but I did notice in the first or second paragraph there when you talk about bids due by Wednesday you The date is missing. I think it's January 18. Oh,
idea. And I had to work the timeline out on this to work it backwards. My goal is to get this out by don't know what that was. Didn't know was ready.
That was the goal. Mid December so that we can have, I think I put a
I think it says January 18 at the bottom. January 18, yeah. So
publication date twelveone. Thanks for pointing that out to me, Steve. I'll put an appropriate date back in there where I think we can actually get it out. But one of the early weeks in December is what I'm shooting for, assuming that I can work with Eric to get this out and get a reasonable turnaround where, you know, it's, I think it's a pretty considerable job, might take a little prep work on somebody's part to put in a bid for that. So thanks for the hint that I need to fill in that blank. Okay, if there's no other discussion, I think that wraps up the plan of conservation and development. Next item up was the accessory apartments. And so I had a couple of questions for the Commission to discuss. And we'll talk about the first item more in just a minute. I went through the definitions. Should we use net or gross floor area? Our current regulations use gross floor area. The state recommendation had net floor area. And we'll talk about that a little more in just a minute. My assumption is whatever we pick, probably what would happen is, at least when I've experienced these, I go to the assessor's cards that have both a net floor area and gross floor area listed. I don't know if those are based on our definitions or not, quite honestly,
but I think that that would be the most likely source of information that, you know, it's coming from the town and we would probably, if the card says X number of square feet, we probably ought to go with that. That's the easiest, most consistent thing that we can do there. Our current regulations talk about an accessory apartment of between at least two fifty square feet up to 800 square feet. And I think the feedback I've gotten from Attorney Branch is that it is no longer legal for us to specify the minimum size of a house. And so with that in mind, I figured we should not have a minimum size for an accessory apartment. The accessory apartment meets the requirements that it has a kitchen area, facilities, living space, and you can do that in 100 square feet, more power to you. You know, you're going to be deciding, you know, does anybody want to come in and rent that or whatever. Right now, we should determine a maximum size. Our regulations are 800 square feet. I'm okay with that. State recommended 1,000. We'll talk about that a little bit more going through. I think these numbers rarely come into play because both the state and our current regulations talk about either 30% or 33% of the floor space of the house. And so if you have a thousand square foot house, that would give you a maximum
accessory apartment size of three thirty square feet. So you never get close to that. You would have to have a 3,000 square foot house to come up with the 1,000 square foot accessory apartment. And then the last question I had is, we care about the minimum lot size outside of the Lake District? You know, when we opted out, we opted out because we were concerned about the quality of the water quality of the lake with the small lots and the septic and all that. I have recently discovered after some discussions with Jim on 12th Center Street, and I went looking back at the lots there, there are some very small lots in the Town Center area. In fact, there's a house on a lot, at least according to our town records,
where the lot is point zero eight acres in size. Do we want to put further restrictions on an accessory apartment in that area or do we want to allow the health district, you know, if it complies with the health requirements, so be it. And so those are some things to consider as we have a little conversation about that now. This just compares a little bit our regulations between two fifty and eight hundred square feet or less than 33% of the gross floor area of the single family dwelling. The state said not less than 30% of the net floor area or 1,000 square feet, whichever is smaller, whichever is less. I think most accessory apartments would be less than 800 square feet. I think that know for an accessory apartment 800 square feet if you had that that would be. A pretty good sized apartment you anybody on the Commission got any thoughts on that one way or the other.
My thought is that 800 square feet is like a one bedroom apartment. If you're going go out and look for apartments in an apartment building, that's not a very big thing. Would think that you'd want to allow the 800 and figure it's gonna be at least that size. Okay.
Our in law apartment on our house is 800 square feet and it's not real big.
Do you know what your square footage is on your house, Anne?
The rest of the house, it's about between two thousand four hundred and two thousand six hundred.
Okay, so if we took one third of the 2,400, that would give you the 800. Yeah. So that, even if we went with the thousand square feet, if you took the third of yours, and yours is a good sized house, that would limit you right now to about 800 square feet. Then I think We went to the max. Yep, and most people do. And that's okay. We just have to make sure that we're happy with it. But my sense would be we could copy the state things in there Certainly can't nobody's gonna nobody can fault us for using the words that the state provided.
Yeah, like that approach and that gives you the flexibility to go to a thousand square feet. Yep, it does if you had a
3,000 square foot house. Right. Our next little bullet point here says it must contain kitchen, sanitary facilities, and living quarters. And on the state recommendation, it has cooking facilities. I like what we have now better. Yeah. Because I don't know about you, but I had cooking facilities in my college dorm room. Yeah. We didn't have microwaves back there, we had hot pots. And so I was cooking hot dogs and cooking soup. And I think what we really want is a small kitchen. And so my recommendation would be to
leave the words that we got there. How do we define that though? Does it have to have a sink and a cooktop or how do we define kitchen?
I could certainly add some words in there that further define it, that it has a kitchen sink and refrigerator, stove. I don't know. What does everybody think about that? I think the public health code might address that. Yeah, check into that.
Can you check-in for me, Jim? I have a hard time working my way through the public health stuff there. Jed, can I make a comment? Yes.
Okay. So two things. One, you asked initially whether the assessor's card lists net or gross floor area. The assessor's card lists essentially for area derived by outside dimensions, that is gross floor area. So that's one piece of information, the second thing is kind of one of the biggest. If your goal in this is to provide affordable housing, the first thing you can do to make it affordable is to make it relatively small. Houses scale and cost with size. So, but when they get super small, they get expensive again, which is why the original regulations had that size limit, because two fifty square feet is about the smallest size you could build without going to specialty,
you know, super narrow kitchen stoves and things of that nature. So, was why you as a commission may choose to change that, but that's, that was the rationale for and that's all I got. Okay thank you Eric.
I think Eric you know just hit on a good point we've got you know everybody sees on TV now these tiny houses If you built something like that, would that qualify as an accessory dwelling?
So interesting that, well, there's a line in our affordable housing plan and it talks about housing facilities for care providers. And it's talking about the little trailers that you can bring in. And while I didn't know it, I bet we because we didn't opt out of that, we fit under that category that somebody can bring a little trailer in if it's for, you know, a caregiver. I haven't heard about that. I think the tiny house would be an appropriate accessory dwelling unit. Nobody says it has to be on top of a garage or any of that kind of thing. That's absolutely essential, or essential to, and consistent with the goal of increasing affordable housing for the young folks. My son, when he first started working, lived in an accessory dwelling unit. Probably wasn't called that. It was called a modified garage at that point in time. And if you think back, Yofanzi on Happy Days lived in an accessory apartment, you know, and it probably was a room over a garage or something. But no, I think the tiny house thing, if somebody wanted to build that,
that would be a great use of that. And so good point. Then the $250 is that, should we lower that number?
I think we should just, think, I'll check with Attorney Branch. I didn't want to hold him around for this discussion here. I think he would tell us that putting a minimum square footage in this is illegal. You know, our regulations right now, for the reasons that Eric mentioned earlier, specify a minimum square footage for a house of 500 square feet. We've been told that that is no longer legal. I don't know if it was legal when we put it in there or not, but it's not legal now. And so my thought is if you can't have a minimum size for a house, you probably can't have a minimum size for an accessory apartment. So I'm going to go continue on down to the next one here. Our regulations say site plan for an internal accessory apartment special permit for detached. The state is going, they want to make this easy. It's as of right site plan approval. And I'm okay with that for these things. I think, you know, when you talk about the room over the garage or the tiny house or any of that, I'm okay with doing that and making that easy, which the state is trying to force us to. We're not doing a very good job of getting that affordable housing in town. We need more of it and this would help us do that. Anybody else have thoughts on that?
No, I agree with you, Jed. That makes a lot of sense. Okay.
I talked about parking spots. We say one additional parking space for a total of three with a common driveway. Jim had mentioned to me, well, what about if you're already on a common driveway, you put the accessory dwelling unit? I think with an accessory apartment, my understanding of a common driveway is not a shared driveway, it's common. Whoever's in the accessory apartment parks next to your garage just like you do, and you don't necessarily have anything else going there. The state talks about one additional parking space for the accessory apartment, kind of same as us. The state talks about authorized for any lot that contains a single family dwelling. Right now, size is 60,000 square feet. And this size is really the thing that got me wanting to make the change because we did turn down
an apartment on a guy who was a 40,000 square foot lot. I was going to go down, I thought it was easy to say, okay, go down to a 40,000 square foot, and then Jim mentioned somebody might be putting in an application for a lot that's a little less than an acre. And that's when I started looking at what is over in the town center area. And there's some smaller ones here. But in an effort to increase the affordable housing, I'm sort of okay with any lot that can get the health code to pass. You know, if you've got a little lot and you want to fill it up with something else and you meet the setback requirements and you meet the percentage of the lot that you covered, okay, you know, if you meet all those other wickets, I can live without a size requirement. So. I
have a question to do with, we opted out of the part of this because of the lot sizes down at the lake being small, but those lots probably wouldn't meet the requirements of the setback and the space on the lot for that. So, we really need to do that opting out? You know, it seems like the other requirements wouldn't have been met, so.
My desire to opt out in the Lake District was I don't think the Health District has the oomph in their regulations to protect the lake. They do pretty much a paperwork review of a septic system and don't get into whether it's functioning or any of that kind of stuff. Because I couldn't convince myself that the health code would protect the lake, chose to opt out. That was, know, Attorney Branch, you know, said that we should opt out for a number of reasons. Okay. Being only one of them, and so we did. I did not know about these little lots over in the town center until within the last month or so.
Right. And so I thought, the smallest lot we had outside Lake District was probably an acre. No, it's probably smaller than some other places too. Yep, and if there are, I'm not aware of it, but I only stumbled into these because I was looking after I heard that 12 Center Street was not an acre lot. But anyhow,
Somebody somebody else when you were going through this list, The town sanitarian certified, is that septic? Or what is that for?
That is the Eastern Highlands Health District has to certify the septic plan. For building accessory apartment, they're not going to put in another septic system. They're just going to tap in, whether it's internal to the house or external, they'll just tap into the existing septic system, is adding an extra bedroom capability in all that. Okay, thank you.
Okay, So, Eric, I'm going to go out of sequence here. This is from the assessor's card for my house. And I think, you know, I've got not a huge house. And, you know, for living space, it lists that I've got about 1,800 square feet. And that's probably pretty close. So I think this is what equates to net area. If I look at the gross area, which they have it listed as gross area here, I got over 6,000 square feet. And that's because I've got an unfinished basement. I've got my attic. I don't think any of it's got more than the seven foot ceiling up there that's required to make it count as living space. So I got some attic, I got some basement, I got some you know, porch and I got a bunch of decking and that so it makes a difference whether we're talking net or gross. Wow.
Then in Section 24 of our regs, we've got a definition of gross floor area and it says floor area shall include basements, you know, some restrictions there, attic space more than seven and a half feet, Roof, porches, breezeways, mezzanines, it's got garages in here. So anyhow, that's how you and that's what that's what comes up with that big number that I've got on my card. In section 11, which discusses sizes of lots and setbacks and all that stuff, it has this line in here, in computing gross floor area, customary rooms such as hallways, stairways, closets shall be included. The following shall not be included. And here's a bunch of stuff that were included on that definition from Section 24. So, there's a little inconsistency in our regulations there. And then if you look in Section 24 about the net floor area, it's very consistent with what's in Section 11 for the gross floor area. And so, while I'm not looking to change section 11 at this point, if we changed in the regulation on accessory apartments to net floor area, which is the words that the state uses, that gets rid of all these things like garages, you know, and stuff that shouldn't be included there. So, anyhow, that would be my recommendation to go back to the net floor area where if we use the net floor area that our definitions say works and it's consistent with Section 11 of our regulations. So I've been wrestling with that a little bit there. One more thing that Jim and I have kicked around a little bit just to be
I can see it coming up where it says the gross floor area of accessory units shall be between 800 square feet between two fifty and eight hundred and shall be less than 33% of the gross floor area of the single family dwelling. And so the next question I have would be, let's say that the single is the single family dwelling this box here or is it this whole box here? And so if the whole thing is 1,000 square feet, you take a third of it, that gives you three thirty three square feet here, six sixty six square feet there, and that would be that. Or if you looked at one third of the six sixty six, now you're down to a really tiny, tiny room. And I think leaving the latitude to make that as big as possible
makes sense. So anyhow, don't know, I just, Jim and I are, you know, there's always going to be things that the regulations don't cover, and that's why we have the Commission. Can take a look. Does it comply with our regulations? More or less, yes, no, and makes sense and all that kind of stuff. But that was one of the other gotchas I got. So anyhow, from my assessor's guard, if we took one third of the 6,000 square feet, could have a 2,000 square foot accessory apartment. Or if I took one third of the 1,800, that's five forty. A little on the small side, but my house isn't a huge one either. Jim and I talked about, so a guy puts in a three car garage and the three car garage built over it has, you know, lots of square footage. How's he going to get his accessory apartment in there? Maybe if he wants an accessory apartment, he doesn't get to have a three car garage. He only gets a two car garage if he wants to use the whole upstairs. Or if he has the roof slope down and takes it off, can do that. But we're going to come through a bunch of issues that we can't foresee, can't put them into regulations, and we'll deal with those at the time comes. So after listening to any of that, do folks think I'm on the right track, off the right track? Did I send I bet you I didn't even send changes to this section out to anybody. I sent you a lot of stuff to read, but probably not this one.
Okay, we'll hold that thought for a minute. I'm going show you one more thing before we close this out. That's a definition of lot frontage, as we had talked about. And in section five point five point seven point six, I forget what this is, It's in the open space and development densities. Frontage means frontage on a public street that either exists currently or is proposed as part of the subdivision. And I was originally, you know, back when we were talking about frontage, was just going to include that in the definition section and make that our definitions. As I looked online, Googling definitions of frontage, there was, you know, one little caveat that I thought was worth putting in, and it talked about if you got a corner lot, your frontage can include that distance on both roads. I guess there could be a lot.
There could be a lot where you have a road on the front and you have a road on the back. And then maybe you only got half the desired frontage if we were to do that. Not sure. Anybody got any thoughts on the frontage definition?
Good. I'm a little unclear. Are we suggesting that for any fee measured at the street line and do we have a definition of street line? Is it the edge of the property measured?
We do not. So I went back to Pine Ridge. Yep. And on that particular lot, we had to go the distance along the street to get the required frontage for the rear lots because it added a little curvature. And at the time we were discussing it, we said that was okay. So if we were to have taken the distance perpendicular to the driveway sides and measured across, he would not have had the required frontage. So that's why we put distance along the public street, which is consistent with on a public street here. That doesn't mean necessarily back where the right of way is because I did not want to get into where is the right of way. We have a hard time figuring out how wide is the right of way on a bunch of streets. I figured I'd make it easy. You measure it along the street and if you got the required frontage, you're good to go. We can make it. We can make it different than that, but that was my thought. Does that clear it up at all, Jim?
I'm thinking it through. Mean, the only. There's only a difference if there's a radius in the road. Yep. Okay.
Yeah, I think it's clear. Okay, and maybe down here we should specify frontage on a corner lot may contain distance along the street on multiple sides of the lot. I'm not sure we want to allow that guy who right now, you know, there is a lot or two on Lake Road and Lakeside Drive that have frontage on both. We probably don't want to have half the frontage. We probably want all the frontage on one street. Or we can cross out the corner too. You either got it on the front of your lot or you don't. I can go either way. I just reviewed other definitions of frontage and saw that was included in it.
I like your proposed definition as is.
Okay, anybody else have thought? Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to include this definition in that section 24 that we're going to take to public hearing on January 23. Jim, I'll put that into the chain so you can send it out to everybody else soon to get the municipality review. And then nothing means that we can't, you know, we can change these definitions at the meeting where we go to approve them at, which is going to be on hopefully the twenty third. And that'd be that. Okay. January 23, I'm talking. Yep.
Jed, once again, can I bite Ben? You can. Okay. Two things. One, since we have changed our regulations from R40 to the air deed design. One of the options you could have is set the minimum side lot size to loud accessory dwelling unit as that that's allowed under the conservation subdivision regulations, which would be a 30,000 square foot lot. So that would be one option that gets you beyond the problem you have of the existing lots not qualified yet still putting some kind of minimum on it. The second thing is I put in the chat box, a picture of one of the accessory dwelling units that's put out by Lindahl, Cedar Homes, so you can see kind of the style and what you can do in a really small accessory dwelling unit. That's it. Just information. And I'll shut up again. Okay.
No. I appreciate it. It's good to have you here, Eric, and and I appreciate all of that. So, bear with me, I'm getting to the end here. So, anyhow, this you have not seen. I will send it out soon. I thought I already sent out too much stuff for this one. But as we go down, it's really pretty easy. I crossed out the words to provide for the needs of the elderly. When we started out, that's what we were looking at for accessory apartments. I think, know, now it's just as much for the new kids starting out as it is for the elderly. And so I just to fulfill an increasing need for smaller affordable housing units.
So, I thought that was pretty easy to get through. Down here, we put site plan review and standards. You know, right now it's for units located within the principal dwelling or detached from the principal dwelling. Either way, that's consistent with the state. I sometimes ask myself if the accessory dwelling unit is going to be internal to a dwelling, why does it even need to come to the Commission? And I don't have a good answer for that. I just wasn't willing to have it not come to the Commission for site plan review yet. Maybe at some point in time we get there, but it seemed consistent with the state that it would come to the Commission for site plan review and that would be that. I put the setback requirement to section 11.2, space requirements are satisfied for the accessory apartment. I did that because that eliminated the discussion of that minimum lot size in there being 60,000 square feet and having to wrestle with that if we put the setback requirements now that that's no longer applicable. Although we can, know, just like we have for the Lake District, it says 120,000 square feet, as Eric was mentioning, we could specify a lot of at least 30,000 square feet right there in the introductory section. I changed gross to net. I thought that was consistent with what we were looking. No larger than 800 square feet and shall be no larger than 33 of the net floor area. So I think we had talked maybe about making that a thousand.
I can change that. I think that was the intention of the commission there is to go up to a thousand if you had a big enough house to allow that. And I'll make that change. In addition, the accessory apartment shall not alter the basic character of the dwelling as a single family residence consistent with the character of the surrounding buildings. It does not distract from the rural characteristics of the area. I have a hard time figuring out what would distract from the rural characteristics of the area, but certainly, you know, if somebody had the Fred Flintstone house or something that I've seen out in Los Angeles, that might not be in keeping with the rural characteristics of the town. That's fairly standard verbiage there, but it makes the accessory apartment should blend in with the neighborhood not not be. Something. I don't know I guess we'll we'll recognize it when we see it. And that's why the Commission, this is about the only thing that the Commission really gets to decide
is whether or not it's consistent with the character, the rural characteristic of the town. Then they got rid of all the special permit stuff. So what I'd like to do, Jim, did we goof up by me not having an application for this one here? Yes.
There you go. So how do we get out of that so that we can meet a, and if we can't, that's fine. I was just hoping to include this with the public hearing on January 23 as well. But if we can't do it, we'll just do another public hearing sometime after that when we do everything. I can't think of way off yet. Okay.
So, I will not so I will send this out to everybody to take a look at after I make a couple of changes to it. But I will not plan on doing that at the January 23 meeting. I'll figure out there's more changes that we can make and it'll make for another public hearing later on down the road. I want to make sure that we go just as fast as possible to get, you know, Eric's changes in there to support the community center. So that will be that. That's all I wanted to talk about for accessory apartments. Jed, I have a couple questions. Yep, go ahead, Leanne.
I guess I'm still unclear about how much we can actually change from what the state said and what we're saying about minimum size of these apartments. It's been mentioned anywhere from two fifty square feet to 800 square feet. And I guess I'm not clear as to what we can do and what we're saying we might want to do.
Okay. So when we opted out, the state gave us lots of guidance that they hoped would turn into regulations on accessory apartments. There was one small portion of that that we didn't like, But when we chose to opt out because of those small lots in Lake District, the process opted us out from all the state guidance. So we do not need to comply with any of the state recommendations. Okay. I was not satisfied with the fact that currently, at least I and the Commission, at least at one point, determined that somebody on a one acre lot couldn't put in an accessory apartment. I was hoping to change our regulations so that that issue was not in there. If the state has some recommendations that are better than what we have that we like better, gives us an opportunity to change it.
If we wanted to have a minimum square foot size for an accessory apartment, which we currently have two fifty square feet, I would have to get feedback from Attorney Branch on my thought is that is no longer legal, but I could get his cut on that if we wanted to do that. You mean any minimum is no longer legal? Correct. Okay. So, are we putting a percent
or a figure in here or are we just not doing anything with it right now? We are going to do both. We will use either 800 or 1,000 and I thought the consensus from the commission was a thousand. As a minimum? That would be a maximum. Max, okay.
And the other size thing is 33% of one third of the net principal dwelling square footage. And so again, this gets us if you had a 2,000 square foot house, 33% would be six sixty six square foot accessory apartment, which is smaller than 1,000 so your maximum size would be six sixty six square feet. It would be the smaller those two things.
We're saying that as a percent and we're also saying that 1,000 square feet is the maximum?
Yes. So you've got a maximum of 33 of your existing square footage or 1,000 feet, whichever is smaller. Okay. Any other questions?
Can you do the reverse? So I have a thousand square foot house. If we're talking net dimensions, I have basically a thousand square foot house. Can I build a 3,000 square foot house on it and just claim my house as the accessory dwelling unit?
I'm sure you could. Yep, that'd be great news for the town. I got no problem with that.
I had another question. It sounds like what Eric is saying about a number four. It starts out with the words require setback. Sorry, Eric, were you through? Yep.
Okay. It says require setback lot size and building frontage less than or equal to that which is required for principal dwelling, comma, and require lot coverage greater than or equal to that which is required for the principal dwelling. So does require lot coverage mean that you could build an accessory dwelling larger than your principal dwelling? No. That's not what we just said, but
What Eric was saying is he would rebuild to make the principal dwelling 3,000 square feet. They're making his current house, which is 1,000 square feet, the accessory apartment. Okay. So he was building out, which sort of makes sense to me. Fact, I've seen that done on Columbia Lake. Was a lot as I drive up Erdoni Road and it had the initial house they turned into, well initially it was an apartment over a three car garage. And I thought that was a plenty big house and they built this huge house on there. Now I haven't looked at Columbia's accessory apartment regulations, but they did exactly what Eric was just suggesting. Any other questions on the accessory apartments? And again, we won't tackle those on this next go around. We'll hold those in advance. But that's I want to start putting those in the
pile to do on the non urgent basis there going forward. And we'll do it right. I'll get the application in there so that we can follow the rules. Okay. I am going to try. Everybody see the town website now? Okay. Everybody see the minutes from September 19 meeting? Yes.
Okay, these were revised from what we had initially posted on our website. But I will make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of September 19 as presented. Second. Any
discussion on these minutes? And I probably didn't send those out to you either, so I don't know if everybody found them online. We are not all that new. But anyhow, does anybody have any comments on the meeting minutes? And I have got three. So Carol Ann, the comments are under the alternates. In addition to Ann Blanchard, Kevin Arneson attended that meeting. Under Item five was really new business, Item six was old business. And down here where it says Jed Larson stated it is mixed use. I actually stated it was zoned R60. Now, R60 isn't really what the zone is. The zone is actually the ARD, but when I looked at the video because I knew I didn't say it was mixed use, I said it was R60, so that's what the minutes should reflect. And that was all the comments I had on that. Anybody else have any comments?
Hearing none? I have a question. I wasn't there, but it appears that you must have seated an alternate that day.
I did seat an alternate that day. And the alternate, I think was Ann Blanchard. Is that correct, Ann? Yes, it was. Yep. So
thank you, Susan. We should also include that Ann Blanchard was seated. Okay, any other discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leigh Ann? I abstain. I was absent.
And Susan was absent. Right. But I vote aye. So the motion passes three zero two with Lee Ann Hutchinson and Susan England abstaining. And then, just for your information, Carol Ann, normally we have seen at the end of the meeting minutes, it says submitted by and then your name, so we know who's on there. Since a little since we didn't have that, I'm not going to put somebody else's name in there saying that it's signed by them when they're not here. That's just for your information going forward. I'd like to have the minutes acknowledging that they're by you. Okay, thank you.
That gets us up to the most recent meeting, which was Monday, October 17, and I will make a motion to accept the meeting minutes from the planning and zoning meeting on Monday, October 17, as presented. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any comments on these minutes? And up in the under members present, we should have alternates present. And Anne Blanchard, I think you were in attendance at that meeting, were you not? Yes, I was, but I was not seated.
Right. So you were there but not seated because we had the full commission, but we should still acknowledge your presence at the meeting. Then one typo here on page two, Jed Larson presented the letter, not latter. And that was all I had. Any other members have any other comments on the meeting minutes?
Jed, under the public speak, should we mention that Jerry submitted a letter as well? Oh, it does say that for taking on the Board of Education's letter. Okay, I got it. Okay.
Any other comments? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye. Susan?
I abstain because that was not there. And I vote aye as well. Motion passes four-zero-one with Susan England abstaining. Next up, Jim, is correspondence. None. None. Okay. Administrative reports.
Enforcement action. I am working with Mr. Barnett on Route 6 to both clean up this property, which is an ongoing activity, well as an order was issued to vacate a trailer on the property where there was a number of occupants and working with the health department on that to get those folks out of there in a timely fashion. Other than that, have. I do need to work with Dennis O'Brien, the town attorney on on a follow-up on a citation that was issued a few months back with an ongoing. Fines other than that, it's about all I have right now. Hopefully I I do have some other enforcement actions to take. Hopefully I'll have more time in the next month or two.
Okay. Now, is the action you're taking on the gravel pit, that's an enforcement action, is it not? It is. Okay.
And as I looked on the website, I did not find your letter to Mr. Genovese under the enforcement actions. I did see your letter to Mr. Barnett. Okay, I can get that on there. Yep. Anything else under your administrative report, Jim? No. Okay. Jim, can I ask a question? Absolutely.
Jim, on the Center Street property, I noticed that there's a big drop off into the foundation area now since they removed So the I'm wondering, do we have any requirements that they put fencing around there or at least tape mark off the area? So I'm worried that kids could fall into there or somebody can get hurt.
I'm. Pretty certain it's a it's a building code issue. I will bring it to the attention of the building enforcement officer. I can ask him. I I should. I have been trying to take keep an eye on that. I haven't been there in awhile. You know it's not great. I did expect him to move forward with an application to build their home, but he hasn't as of yet. I I will take a look at that. That should That shouldn't be a problem to take care of. Thank you. Good
point, Steve. Thanks for bringing that up. The Inland Wetlands liaison, we did not have a meeting last month, so therefore there is nothing to report. Moving on to Item 10, public speak. Hearing none, I'll go to the next regularly scheduled meeting is Monday, December 19.
Sorry, I'm late. Can I just poke in one thing again? You bet. You know, we, you keep talking about there's no lower limit on the building size. Yep. There is a limit, but it's only the limit applied by the health code, which I think works out to somewhere around 150 square feet, like that. Okay. That's what the state says is the minimum.
And that's pretty minimal. And I think as we were struggling to get the recording going at the start, I had the very first thing on my note list to welcome Carol Ann as our new board clerk. And I think in our enthusiasm to get the recording going, I missed right over that. But it's nice to have you with us, Carol Ann. Thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. You know, look at the last meeting minutes as a good example of the kind of things to put in the meeting. You know, it's not going to be a regurgitation of everything we do. The clerks have pretty much done a good job of getting, you know, what's
important and putting it in there. You mean I can't refer
we go along, ask Jim or me, we'll be happy to
help make you as successful as we can. Thank you. I I can't refer to the Fonz apartment The
minutes, but you can. I thought that was pretty clever. Fonzie was ahead of his time. That's right. So many things.
Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you very much. Caroline, I will work with you on filing them this. The filing this chatter minutes is a little different because you're replacing and we'll do whatever the town clerk wants. Quite honestly. Okay, we'll talk on that. Thank you. How that would be handled.
I will defer to her. Thank you. Okay, So the last order of business is for everybody to have a wonderful Thanksgiving. And we'll see you next month just before Christmas. So thank you all for attending and participating and giving feedback and all that. And I'll make a motion to adjourn. Come on, Steve, don't break your record. Second. You, happy Thanksgiving.
Yep. Motion passes five-zero-zero. Thank you everybody and good night. Good night. Good night.