Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting
November 21, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
All right. All set.
Well done, Marina. The purpose of the public hearing tonight is to discuss and get input on proposed changes to the handover zoning regulations, specifically Section 4.11 accessory apartments, 4.21 lighting, section five licensed daycare, section seven licensed daycare, section 15 signs, section 23 lighting height and intensity, and section 24 definitions. Mark Branch, have you joined us yet? Okay, I particularly wanted Mark here for the accessory apartment discussion, that means we'll go down to lighting, which we do have a couple of people that are looking to hear on that. Marina, if you can allow me to share my screen. Sure. Okay, go ahead.
Okay, so on this, Eric representing the town of Andover asked to have a paragraph on Section 4.21 lighting added that said modifications to Section 4.21 may be permitted by the Commission by special permit where it can be demonstrated to the Commission that compliance is not practical for a public recreational facility. So, Eric, I will ask you, is it so I think it's the town's intention that these preliminary caveats 4.21.1 through 0.6 would not apply for the public recreational facility?
So the goal was for the commission to protect its rights by making any modifications be done via special permit, but that this just acknowledges the fact essentially that if you're going to light an athletic field, the lighting requirements are generally higher than that for a parking lot, which is what our current regulations are essentially designed for. And that in some cases, it is difficult to meet all the requirements of the lighting regulations in the zoning districts, know, for an athletic field. So that if the town is going to pursue that, then making that, you know,
using There's a problem for some reason. If you use the login information on the calendar Dave, mute yourself, Jim. We can hear you. You're trying to I think you're trying to get on the town's calendar. And the town's calendar. Yeah. I mean, I put the agenda together, and that was
I think the administrator can mute. Marina, if go to the calendar, you should Yep.
Yeah. I was just gonna see if I can do Let me give you the hold on a second. Yeah. Okay. That's better. Okay. So yep.
So the the goal is just to allow a special permit application to relax the lighting rules specifically for an athletic field. But only after you do a lighting study, you say, what can you comply with and what can't you comply with? That was the intention of it. Okay.
And, you know, I know I'm thinking out loud. I know we're not allowed to deliberate at this point, but each of the items here, well, one, I think the section might be totally redundant with Section 23 because I see all these same things in Section 23. But the fact that we should be shielding the light source and be dark sky compliant and lighting at the property lines not to exceed 0.2 lumens, my thought is that it's even more important for a bright light than it is a dim light. And I don't know if it's possible or not, but I think it's probably possible. Well, I know possible. It's just a question of does it make a situation even worse than it is? The pamphlet that John shared with us the other day on light intrusion talked about putting up fences along the property line to prevent light from going across and all that kind of stuff. I don't think I'd be inclined to think that would be keeping our sense of Andover. But anyhow, I still have some concerns at this point about, do we want to maintain these requirements
or not? We'll get there in the deliberation. I've said my piece on that. Do any other commission members at this point have any questions or comments on this particular section here?
Well, I feel the same way you do, judge. The regulation should still apply or or a lot of them. Should I I understand you wanna get a study, but this the light certainly can't go off of the property. A lighting plan welcome, Mark. Hi, how are doing? Sorry about that.
Just to bring you up, we did have a couple of people from the public, especially the neighbor across from the soccer field that were able to get online. I decided we could continue and hold a public hearing. We might need to continue it based on your recommendation when we get done.
No problem, that's fine. It was duly advertised and people are ready to get in, that's fine. Yep, so
anyhow, okay, I heard Scott say that he thought these were good ideas. Do any other commission member have any comments at this point? I do like the paragraph adding the special permit option for special situations. And but I I do also agree that the regulations need to contain the light for the specific application. So I think we can accomplish both and consider special circumstances for things like the athletic field under the special permit. My concern with well, I'm not a fan of saying we can do a special permit, which would be required anyhow. Even if he was going to comply with the regulations today, it would be by special permit. Even if he was to comply with the regulations today, it would take a light study and a light plan. So, we're really not saying anything that we wouldn't be required with if we were to comply with the regulations today. Okay, so we wouldn't need to add that Well, we maybe, maybe not, and this is to, you know, get the feel for where we're going. One of the very first meetings that I came into the Commission as an alternate was for a home business for a fella out on
Riverview Drive. Essentially, I was told that because it's a special permit, there are no requirements. And I didn't like that. I was a brand new guy and didn't make as much of a fuss as I probably should have at the time. But I do think we need to have something in that's going to be if these limits in 21.1 through six aren't the limits, what are the limits and what they're based on? We we say in section 23, we're gonna no higher than 35 feet, no brighter in any circumstances than 12 lumens, and and we'll get to that in a minute. But I like these restrictions that we have. They protect the dark sky, they protect the neighbors, and that sort of thing. And at this point, we're just trying to make sure we understand what the regulation change does for us. To me, the concern is that we don't have an upper bounds once we get in here. If they were to say that the best we can do is 500 lumens on the neighbor's yard, I don't think that's
not good and we wouldn't approve that, but there ought to be something, I think, in there to limit it. Any other commission members?
Yeah, I have a question. The part that you have highlighted in yellow there,
That's paragraph that the town would like to have added.
Okay. And that applies only to these things that we see in red right now, or does it apply to all of the lighting regulations?
This only pertains to what you see right here. There's another a similar paragraph when we get into section 23. And we're going to go to section 23 lighting requirements next. But this would tell you that it's not necessary to comply with those upper six things.
Yeah. Those look good at this point to me, but I'd have to think about it a bit more to make my final decision. Okay. Got it. Well,
your public hearing is still open so you're not supposed to make any final decisions yet. Right, I know. Just as Ed indicated in my email to you Mr. Chairman of November 2, There are are legal problems with that yellow highlighted, in that the Commission is not allowed to grant waivers. I'd given you some alternative language that I don't if the Commission has that or not or if that's come up yet.
I did not see the alternative language to this I could go back and hunt for that we didn't talk about it the other day when we were meeting and that's probably it's.
Well, thought we did. It just didn't mean problem with the McKenzie, with the waiver No,
I remember we discussed it. I just didn't remember that we had some other language that we could put in here. I know we talked about this intrusive lighting standard, not to exceed or you're required to comply with the intrusive lighting standard.
And Yeah. It's just the the the commissions aren't allowed to to waive their own regulations. You are allowed to to specify conditions under which they would not apply so actually you know something, actually you did you did change this, you did change this I'm sorry you changed this since I well I think when I did. Active recreation facilities require remember we've talked about the requirement of a higher mounting height? Yep, we'll get there. That's 23. Okay, all right. Okay,
anybody else from the Commission? Anybody from the public have a comment on this?
Good evening, everyone. This is Eve Chiquelo. We are at the corner of Long Hill And Riverside Drive directly across from the soccer field. And the temporary lighting from the two additional light towers at the soccer field created a great deal of light pollution toward our farm this fall. Unfortunately, the lighting shined into our house and created a considerable glare in our living spaces until about, it was typically after 8PM. The kids would leave at eight, the lights would start to get shut off, and it was eventually all off by 08:20 or so. My intent for joining tonight is to understand what the timeline goal is for the permanent lighting that's been discussed and the plan for directing the lights away from our property. Had the temporary lighting been faced towards the river, the glare wouldn't have been as intrusive. And we're just looking to discuss, you know, further options. Are those lights on tonight, Eve?
No, the lights are not on tonight. The permanent lights are on and those are fine. It's just the portable light towers and those two out of the three were hauled away last week. Okay. I think we're at the end of soccer season. Sure are. That happens So,
knew that would be a temporary solution for you that would make those go away, but clearly those lights were absolutely not in compliance with our lighting regulations. You know, certainly weren't shielded so the light source cannot be seen from adjacent properties. They were shied in right in your windows. So insensitive to that was not the proper solution here. And for the public hearing tonight, all the town is looking for is a lighting regulation for a generic athletic field. Now, just like when we were talking about the senior center, we all had a pretty good idea where that senior center, the town wanted to put that when we talked about that regulation change to allow it. But the town would have to come back with a special permit for specifically where they would like to light. So, you know that the town would like to light up that soccer field, that's not what tonight's discussion is about. Should we modify the regulations to allow more lighting for athletic purposes on any field? There just don't happen to be a lot of them in town. Understood.
Okay. Shannon, did you have any comments at this point? No, thank you for asking, Jed. Okay. Jim? John? Nothing for me.
Mark, anything else at this point? I'm going to scroll down to that section 23, which is the other And I'm struggling a little bit myself with I got a different computer, I've got old, old Word software on it. And so, my cutting and pasting is not too good. But here, under 23.5B3A are the modifications that essentially are currently existing in the change that the town would make. So if you looked in our regulations now, said modifications to this section, including lighting for all these things. It also had recreational facilities up here. So, this is where may be permitted by special permit, but in no event shall lighting fixture be higher than 35 feet nor lumens greater than 12 per square foot? The town's perspective is that neither of those would be appropriate for lighting a soccer field. We would need to go higher so that we can shine the lights more directly down and eliminate the glare going out on the road and in the neighbor's property. And then if you look at what are the levels required for, you know, recreational fields, I think that when I looked up what lighting do you need to have for a soccer field, The range spanned orders of magnitude. I saw a number that was less than 12 lumens per square feet up to 1,000 lumens per square feet. So, you could get just about any number in there. There is a standard, if you will, for lighting of athletic fields, and I think that had 20 or 30, which would allow us to light the soccer field appropriately. That's 20 to 30 lumens per square foot. So, a little bit more than
what we allow now, which might have been based on a parking lot. The thing that is I went back and looked at and I'm going to stop sharing for a minute and see if I can call up something different. Does everybody see regulations now? Sometimes when I click on something, it doesn't change on the display you see. Yes, we see it. Yes. Yes. Okay. Sorry about this, but all your pictures are covering up my scroll spot so I can't scroll rapidly down. We're getting really close here. Okay, so here we go. And this is what I wanted to when I read that paragraph, I thought that paragraph talked about allowing a pool height higher than 35 feet and allowing an intensity greater than 12 lumens. It wasn't clear to me that we weren't trying to step around each of these regulations here, which you have they're really pretty good as far as what's required with the lighting plan. It talks about, you know, here's all the duplicated stuff from that earlier section that talks about this dark sky compliance, all this stuff. And now we get down to this modifications thing, which is here where we broke that out. And I just wanted to, at least in my mind, I wanted to make sure that we were going to continue to be able to enforce with a plan that had greater illumination than 12 lumens and greater pole height than 35 feet, all these things that say what we expect on the lighting plan. And again, that gets back,
you know, so it would get to the point, you know, we can easily make those words require this, you know, that exception is only to allow greater intensity, greater height, but you still got to do the dark sky compliance. You still got to shield the light source so it doesn't shine across the road. And you still got to make sure the light in the neighbor's yard is less than 0.2 limits. I'm not exactly sure if that was what Eric and the town were thinking of when we put that little paragraph in there. But I jumped to the conclusion myself that it was all about more than 35 feet, more than 12 lumens, and it could be construed that, no, I get out of all these things. I'll give you a lighting plan that shows it's the best that it can be in that sort of thing. So, that's what I wanted to bring to the Commission
tonight for when we do deliberate on it, we can talk about do we want to maintain those or do we think something different is there. Now, John did provide a list of, John provided a pamphlet on intrusive lighting and it was, you know, a fairly extensive pamphlet. It might have been 10 pages, but you factor that down and you break land into a bunch of different areas, which ours was rural, and it gave a couple of light levels in there. And so my sense on the intrusive light pamphlet was it was very close to the specifications that we have in here now. So we could go and put a different thing in there, but it would give us 10 pages of stuff to sort through as opposed to a half a page that's pretty concise for our little town of Andover. So at this point, Eric, am I misspeaking at all from what you were thinking?
No, so I think that what I would say is that we realized that if you were going to light a soccer field and not get have intrusive glare off of the property, the only way to do that because of the width of the soccer field, because typically what you want is you want a certain minimum angle of the light relative to the ground. And you know or in to do that you're going to have to have lights in the order of 50 to 60 feet tall if you're going to do a reasonable job of lighting a soccer field. Obviously you can see from the attempt by the soccer association to use lower diesel powered lights how bad that was. The problem with that is exactly what we're trying to avoid by having taller lights. To be able to have a sufficient down angle to illuminate the field properly, but still not, you know,
just to be able to do it. As far as the total number of lumens, I mean, you're right. There are all over the map in terms of what is required or what is recommended. And if you look at the requirements of the NCAA versus a lot of the, you know, high school athletics versus recreational athletics. They all come up with different numbers, but the majority of them come up with new numbers that are, you know, definitely bigger than 12 lumens per square feet. So I think requiring that to be higher, you know, based on on some certification standard would be appropriate or allowing it to be higher.
But again, that's a that's a commission's call. Okay. As far as pickleball lighting, pickleball lighting can be accomplished with 35 foot dopples. So it would fit within the existing special permit, but you would probably want to exceed the lumens per square foot that's in the current regulations.
That's it. And just as a point of note, you know, that lighting intensities for athletic purposes, whatever that pamphlet is, it doesn't have pickleball in it. So I'm not sure exactly where the pickleball reference, Eric and I sent on to all of you guys, I think the recommendation is 30 lumens for pickleball. That was not in the standard lighting levels, if you will. So that's something to keep in mind too, that if we say go with this standard, it doesn't have any standard for pickleball. We've got to make sure that it includes that. Any of the Commission members have any comments at this point?
Mr. Chairman? Yes, sir. For the record, Mark Brantz, a little I was a little confused by some of your opening comments. As I read the proposed 4.21.7, it would allow the Commission to modify section 4.21. It would not authorize any modification of 23.5 B. That that's that's how you, I mean that's fine but it's perfectly legal I just want to make sure that's the intent that the applicant the town was was seeking that that that 23.5 b would continue to apply because there's no there's no modification thing in there, at least not not for recreational facilities anyway. Was that was that the intent? Is it is the problem for the town just just 4.21
and and not 23.5 B?
No. So, you should see on your screen now the modification to 23.5 B. Okay, all right. They broke out the second section that does not put the 12 or the 35 limitation on for recreational fields. So that's new language then? This here is,
you know, in the existing right now. Okay. It has all this stuff and it has the recreational fields up here. So our regulations today do include recreational fields. Okay. I
see. So that's in the rig now. That's alright. I understand. So we broke that out to put a separate one that didn't have that 12 or 35 limit in it. Okay. Alright. Thank you.
Now, Eric, you were the chair when we, we crafted the the first set. Do you know why the 35 foot pole height was chosen?
I think actually that was chosen because we had some existing pole mounted lights that were about that high. Okay. I was trying We didn't to want to make our own stuff non compliant.
Yep. I didn't know if that had anything to do with, you know, 35 feet is about to, that is within the treetops, so you don't see it poking up above the treetop landscape like the cell tower in keeping our nice pastoral views there. Any other commission members comment at this point?
Yes, this is Anne. I remember, I can't find it now, but I remember you had sent us an email in the last few weeks with pictures of the light poles, I think, from our soccer field and then from the Manchester High School field showing the difference in the height. Yep. And was that to show us how a taller pole would work?
Let me see if I can Okay, so top picture here is our soccer field. I certainly think that's a beautiful pastoral view, if you will. I went over to Hebron to look at their lights. They don't have any. I went over to Manchester. And certainly in that light intrusion pamphlet, talked about the regulations are different from a rural area to a suburban area to a urban area. They allow more light in the urban areas there. And these lights are shining away from these homes here, so maybe that's not a problem for them. Here's another picture of our soccer field. And again, you can see those are the temporary poles here. At this point, they only had them on the one side, which was probably not in compliance with our regulations, but better. Came up with a couple more, put them on this side of the field shining over on the neighbor's property. And Chad, those are 18 feet.
Yep. And you told me what that height was. I think it was 20 something. The poles on Riverside are 27. Okay. Yep. The portables are 18.
So that's what we've got there. This is just another picture of the Manchester, light showing, and I have no idea if that's what, you know, we would have in our field or not, but that feels very big, and it would take a lot of light to evenly light it across. So the question for the Commission is, you know, is that the look that we want to allow for whatever benefit might be obtained by putting them in? Well, back to those poles, Jed, please. Back to the poles? So
let's assume that's a four foot fence, which it looks like it is. There's a dugout box there. Yeah. Probably three feet. Four foot. Is a four or five foot fence?
I think it's probably four footer. It's about a four foot. I've That's been about what it is.
And if we go up to this one, I used as a guide looking at the houses, and of course the angle puts it, but these lamps are taller than a house, which could be 25 feet or so. So I thought these were probably 60 foot poles, and that's what some of the research suggests might be required for a soccer field.
I would say that those are around 40. That's a four foot fence, that's a four foot fence. Yep. That's not 10 times, Jed. And I would say no.
You know? Well, I'm not gonna get my, my ruler out and start measuring on here. You know? Right. Yeah. But this is the topic that I wanted to spend the majority of the time on tonight going through is this stuff.
See them right away. Your eye goes to those holes.
Yep. And I was hoping that somebody would be here that one of the things that we will need, and so we got to keep the public hearing open for this, is I was hoping that somebody would be here, and maybe it's Shannon, that's going to tell us the benefit of spending all the money to put these lights in. But I don't know that there's anybody here to address that topic. Any other Commission Member comments on what we've looked at so far here? Okay. At this point, John or Jim, any comments? Nothing further from me.
Hi, this is Leanne. Can you hear me? Oh, I can hear you. Yes, Leanne. Yes. First of all, it took me at least twenty five minutes to get into the meeting. I know you I read your email that the passcode was different and I and you referenced the calendar, but I tried to use the. Government and then planning and zoning and then minutes and agenda section of the town website, which does not agree with the calendar. I had to call Jim who told me to use the whole calendar because the link is different in addition to the passcode. So if anybody else tried to get in that way or anybody from the public, there's definitely a discrepancy and that's what held me up.
Nope, understand. It's I was just thankful that we got a link that worked.
Yes, it was the inconvenience to have to sign in so late. Can somebody just quickly tell me what happened to the accessory apartment discussion because that was the very first item?
We did not cover that one yet. I was waiting for Attorney Branch to join us here because he's certainly the expert on those things. So, I knew we had a couple members of the public that were interested in the lighting discussion, so I just moved down and started there.
Okay, so accessory apartments hasn't even been done yet? No, that's correct. No. Okay, thank you. Yep.
Any other Okay, Commissioner members of the public. Eve or Chad? Yep.
Jed, I do have a comment if you'll Say again, Eric. I said the only thing I wanted to you you asked the question before where the standard came for the 30 or greater for light levels for pickleball courts. That was directly from The USA pickleball recommendation was average illuminance of 30 lumens per square foot, uniformity ratio of 0.7 or better, color temperature between 4,005 for an age appropriate playing surface. Okay. From their regulations. Yep. Thank you. Eve or Shannon, any comments?
Shannon just texted me and said she has to rejoin by phone in a few minutes. Okay, yeah.
Nothing further from me. I think we covered good ground. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Thank you.
So I mean, the the one thing I would say is that if you are going to illuminate a soccer field and your goal is to prevent glare from bothering the neighbors, you can't restrict the height to 35 feet. Those two things seem to be mutually exclusive. Yep. Because then the angle from the horizontal is too great and you do get a significant glare off the property. So from my perspective, the lumens and the pole height, it's simply a yes, no question. If the commission doesn't feel, and that's perfectly okay, that because of the character of the neighborhood that they don't wanna see lighting that exceeds that, then that just simply means that that's not an appropriate thing and the town will not put forward a plan to light the field. It's really, you know, that's kind of the option we're facing from my perspective.
I understand. Well, a tough it can be a tough decision to make, but I think, you know, we need to have somebody talk to the Commission about what the benefit of putting those big poles in. I know it's so that kids can play soccer, but I don't know how late they would be going. It sounds like they're on at this time of year until 08:00 and all that kind of stuff. Could we we do have we need we need to hear what the benefit to the town is. To Is that a different part of our meeting, Jed? Yeah, and that's going to well, there's nobody here to talk to it tonight unless somebody's here that I don't know of is ready to discuss that. But that's the part if it was massive utilization, then the cost and the detriment of the look and all that might be worth it. If it's for a handful of kids a couple nights in the fall before it gets dark, I don't know that that does. But that's information I think the Commission needs to make the right decision in this case.
Can I ask one clarifying question from what about what Mr? Anderson just said for the record Mark Brantz the amendments that are before the commission now would would they allow the lighting that the athletic fields would need Mr. Anderson? Yes they would. Okay. Yes.
I was getting lost on that okay so these amendments would work and the question is whether the Commission wants to adopt them or not I'm with you now.
Correct. And I'm fully cognizant that there are some definite minuses to this and you know it is the zoning Commission's right to decide whether that's appropriate or not And I certainly have no hard feelings either way, but we, you know, we have the ability probably to do this if the town desires it.
Well, you know, Jed, the the removal of the lights on the poles would be advantageous to the town. They're they're hideous. And to have it lit properly would be nice, but my question is can we lay it with more fixtures and less height? More fixtures and less height. No.
I I I was told that you have if you wanna lower the height, all you have to do is add fixtures.
That would be true if we wanted to add the fixtures in the center of the field. Least that's how I took that. We need to get it high so they can aim down and go across the field, but sort of no further. And if we lower them, that's going to increase the glare. Do think that what I've seen, would take a pull higher than 35 feet. How high? Don't know. One of the things, if we were to have a special permit for this, I would expect a plan to show what can we do with 35 feet? But again, there's not anything magic in my mind about 35 feet at this point.
So are those facts, though, that 60 feet is the minimum to shine to to illuminate the whole field? That's that's it. 60 feet. Just it can't be any Well, is not a fact, you know, and it's all
a compromise. Lower the pole, more glare, and that sort of thing. So somebody's gonna, one of the things that makes it hard to have the discussion on this without having a study done already. I understand Eric doesn't want to do a study if, you know, because that's going to cost money or something maybe. And I would rather say that for the deliberation. Again, my mind's not made up. Maybe, you know, is 60 feet altogether worse than 35? I think they both kind of degrade the visual appeal of the field out there.
Height of those temporary lights that they were using? Do you know what the height of the temporary generator powered lights that they had this fall were? 18 feet in. 18, okay. And Ann, those lights were horrible. Yeah,
I went out to look at them, so did Scott. They were shining directly across the road into the neighbor's windows. So it needs to be much more than that. One of the things we could do, well, if we, don't have an application, it's just do we want to allow something greater than 35 feet if that's what's needed? And I think I just wanted to point out to the Commission that I do think that we can achieve the right lighting levels with an increase in intensity, increase in height, and not exceed those dark sky compliance, shine across the road, and lumens in the neighbor's yard issues. Don't know that for a fact. I could find out we're wrong. And if I did find out I was wrong and we as a commission wanted to change the regulations again, so be it. You know, we can go off and do that. As I heard at the Board of Ed, Board of Finance, Board of Selectmen meeting, the town moves as fast as a glacier, and I may not be fast, but I can change regulations faster than that glacier can move.
So, you know, it's, you never really find the weaknesses in the regulations you proposed until you try to you actually have an application to put it in. And if we have to change it again, so be it. But I think, and what I read in my research is that we can meet dark sky compliant. We can eliminate glare and we can eliminate light levels across the road, on the road.
Can I ask a question, Jed? Yep. When you say dark sky compliant, the only way you prove you're dark sky compliant is have the American Dark Sky Society verify your setup. Is that what your intention is? Because that's an extensive proposition.
No. And so if you looked at our regulations today, I'm going from memory here, but I think it talks about the light source not being higher than 90 degrees, which is higher than would be allowed with the intrusive light study, which I think goes up to 80 or 85 degrees or something. But, you know, I think we can do a pretty good job. Well, I think our regulations cover it the way they're written today. They're covering what I would like to see. Now maybe that's not good enough. I don't know. But I do think we can comply with what our regulation has there.
Let me just, for the record, Mark Brits, maybe John comment on this but in my experience at least, dark sky compliance is the fixture the fixture you use is certified dark sky compliant. I haven't I at least I haven't run into a certification by the dark sky whatever it was that you said Eric
I haven't seen anybody requiring a certification I've just I've just seen the fixture is dark sky I know John if that's what you've seen? Yeah. That's that's exactly right. And it's it's more more or less used as that as a as a standard for the the fixture itself and, you know, to basically to describe generally, you know, cutoffs that are downward lighting that is downward directed and full cutoff so that there's not any lateral light spread and certainly nothing upward. But it sort of reflects the principles. To a certain extent, if it can be shown to have used that guide, then along with photometric plan should be sufficient to satisfy the Commission's desire to avoid light scatter.
I found it here in the regulation 4.21.4, and it probably mimicked in section 23 there somewhere. Outdoor lighting shall be dark sky compatible, full cutoff type fixtures defined as a luminaire or a light fixture that by design of the housing does not allow any light dispersion or direct layer to shine above a 90 degree horizontal plane from the base of the light fixture.
Okay. And I'm that I am absolutely fine with. Just not fine with requiring dark sky certification
because that's an expensive process. Yep. Nope. I gotcha. And and that's why after, I went back and looked at all this stuff and I said, I think the regulations that we have there can be achieved. There might be a little bit of extra cost, but I think that cost is insignificant in comparison to what it would take to put those fixtures up on those big poles. So, okay. How do we get, well, I guess if nobody wants to come tell us what the benefit is, we can act on it that way.
But Eric or Scott? I told you some of the benefits. You got rid of the lights that are there.
Oh. Put up real lighting for the field. I'm I'm looking for number of kids, number of hours per year, season, or something, you know, that that benefit from putting those lights in there.
There's there's three hours a day, five days a week times two and a half months usage, Jed. How many kids? 200 kids.
200 kids out there? The night I went out there, I was lucky to see 10. Not
at any one time. Not at any one time. There's 200 kids in the program. Okay.
So Jed, what they do is they basically because they don't have enough field to practice all the kids at once and enough coaches, they basically practice in one and a half hour blocks. And early in the year when they have lots of light, they do, I think three or four blocks in an evening. And then as the year goes on, they shrink that up as they have less light available for the kids. So they drop down the number of training sessions per evening. Okay. A lot of hourly usage, Ted.
Yep. So let me ask the commission. Are there any other things that we would want before we would deliberate on this topic at the next meeting?
You know, any other Yeah. This is Shannon. Say again? Yeah. This is Shannon. Yeah. I just wanted to add that you're only you're only talking about kids here, and there's a much broader audience with regard to allowing for adult soccer. So adult soccer, I'm heading there right now to an indoor facility. Adult soccer often doesn't start until seven or 08:00 at night, depending on the availability of the fields and whatnot. And lighting certainly would allow the town not only to have, the two and a half month period that that Scott referenced, which is certainly applicable to fall soccer, but I know people, my my child included, who pay year round.
So, yes, we need to take a look at what benefits the children and certainly the children of Andover and certainly doesn't affect the across the street neighbors. But there's a a much broader audience in the sports world that that could be benefited by having the lighting and benefiting the town of Andover if we decided to rent out the facility, which a number of towns do and make quite a bit of money from doing so. And just before I forget, I would be amazed if we needed 60 foot light poles. I am no expert whatsoever, but given the current height of our light poles, which I think Scott said were 27 feet, think that maybe 40 to 45 feet, but that's only if we're going to have lighting, which sounds like it's what is planned or what was thought of from one side of the field. I don't know if there's any ability to come from the other side of the field, and certainly that is what affected the across the street neighbors in the.
So that's just my input for right now. But let's not just deal with talking about two and a half months for children. You've got a whole broad community of adults who will pay to play on our fields.
Plus, we're we're entertaining at this time football tournaments for the Ram soccer Ram football. Okay. Anybody else have any other comments on lighting?
There's been a little bit of mention of the pickleball courts. I guess they'd be off on the side, not right on the soccer field, but the lighting for that would be also an important thing, because I'm sure people would use that in the evening too.
Yes. So we're looking at Eric said he was confident that they could come up with a plan that did not exceed thirty five foot in height. Yeah. But we would want to exceed 12 lumens on the court. Yeah. Up to 30 when you Yeah.
Up to 30. And so that that comes into play too. Yep. But but, again, we we don't have an application for an actual field or anything right now. We're just trying to come through. Would we entertain that? Okay. I would like to hold this section of the public hearing open until the next meeting. Make sure that nobody else comes in. I think this is the one that people in the public might most want to hear about. And so, that's what I'd like to do is continue this public hearing to the next meeting. Okay, Eve and Shannon, is there any other particular section there of the regulations that you would like to hear about while you're here tonight?
No. While Mark's here now, we can go back to accessory apartments, can we? Well,
we can. I I don't know that we're gonna make it through all the changes tonight. But I'd like to get I'd like to hear from what the public would like to hear about and take advantage of that too along with having Mark here.
Thank you very much, Jed. This is Shannon. Nothing else right now. I'll just listen because there were other regulation changes that you're considering that caught my attention and that I might have an interest in in having input. But I think this was the extent right now of the lighting and dealing with the potential for the field. So thank you very much for allowing me to speak. Okay. Thank you, Shannon. Eve?
This is Eve. I just want to say thank you for your time, and we covered everything I was interested in covering. Okay, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I
enjoy and need to hear the public's opinion and we don't get enough of it. So thank you. It's my pleasure. So at this point, we will go back up to the Accessory Apartment 1. And we as the Commission have talked about this quite a bit over the last year. Maybe a glacier does go faster than we've been able to get this one put to bed. Since we looked at it as a group last time, a couple of different facts came to my attention, but Attorney Branch put in deed restriction words. I kind of envisioned that being a different boilerplate thing outside of this, but no, it makes sense that it's actually in the regulations as to what's going on. And this talks about the renters income and the rent and all that kind of stuff. The other thing that when I saw this surprised me a little bit was Mark is recommending that we have the deed restriction for a minimum period of forty years. And as we look back at Public Act 2,129, it talked about accessory apartments could be ten years. What I don't remember if we talked about with the Commission or not is that at the end of that ten years, then if it's no longer deed restricted, it no longer accounts for affordable housing, and ten years goes by awful quick.
And so Mark's recommendation was to make that forty years. And I think that's just standard wording for other folks, other towns. I think the oh, so I've got an inconsistency here that this talks about ten years. We as a commission need to decide if ten years or forty years is the right number. The other thing that we the only other change that I think since we've talked about it is we had a definition of architectural plans. And that we reduced that in scope a little bit to highlight what it was we were looking for with an accessory apartment. Journey Brands recommended we change that to call those floor plans because they weren't really architectural plans. Architectural plans had more stuff. And so I did that. And I also changed in the definition section what we had to floor plans there.
I think that that was good that you did that, yeah, there was nothing.
Yeah, there was nothing and now we have two, we have a definition for architectural plans and one for floor plans. And floor plans, right, yeah. So that is all that I've got to brief on what the proposed change is. Again, after we close the public hearing, we can deliberate that. I'm not sure we'll get there tonight. I don't want to keep us here too late. I know this is holiday week and all that and everybody's busy. But any questions from the Commission at this point on the change?
I have a question. Go ahead, Leigh Ann. Leigh Ann, is the ten year or forty year right now is it either or for us to decide or are there towns that are you know anywhere in between seeing there's such a gap. I don't have an opinion on it tonight. I'm asking for next time if there's towns that are in between there because there is such a time period in between ten years and forty years. Mr. Chairman? Go ahead, Mark. The
eight thirty gs is forty years, eight thirteen O, which is the incentive housing, is thirty years. Some towns, when it's their own they can't do this under eight thirty gs, but if it's their own problem or make like for housing authority type things, they're making it perpetual. So there's really no that that the 40 is eight thirty gs, the 30 is eight thirteen oh, and it it can be any number you pick. It's just that you only get the points, the affordable housing points for the period of the of the restriction. Okay, thanks. Any other questions or comments on the accessory apartments?
That's something that we need to remember, that you only get the points once it's Yes.
And and one of the things, and I don't know that I will express it as well as John did when we were reviewing these the other day a little bit, but it's a policy matter. An attorney branch is, we can either, you know, there's a choice. We can either try to maximize affordable housing that doesn't count, make it as easy as possible, or we can try to enforce affordable housing that does count because we know the state is continuing to tighten up the reins there, or we can split the difference. My sense is that we are going to do something here. I really don't care what it is. And we're going to figure out how it goes. And then we're going to end up changing it to influence the outcome more of where we want it. But when Attorney Branch says, I strongly encourage you to make it forty years, and if anybody challenges this, I'm the guy that has to go to court and defend you, and I would like to defend you by showing that the Planning and Zoning Commission is at least trying as hard as they can to make affordable housing that counts, he's got a better leg to stand on to defend us there. That's it exactly. My intent would be I always like to go with what the attorney recommends.
But it is a matter of policy though so I'm only saying that because what what I what I what I've indicated is, you know, someday, maybe someday soon, you're getting eight and it get an eight thirty g application that you really, really don't like, and and you're gonna wanna deny it. And you're gonna want me to help you win in court when you deny it and basically the higher your percentage is at that moment in time the more the more units you've got at whenever that happens the stronger a case I can make it's that's all there is to it. I
have a question with this regulation about the forty years does this influence just like the in law apartment kind of thing? My home, when we built it seventeen years ago, I guess it didn't have this accessory apartment stuff at that time in zoning. We built a small apartment on for my in laws. And I don't know how this regulation of this forty year thing would have influenced or affected our ability to build that. I know in our neighborhood there are at least three of us that have in law apartments, and I know of others in other parts of town. I'm just concerned about is this limiting
what we can do for our family like this? And the answer to that, Ann, is that I don't think it's limiting it. In fact, so we say that you can build an affordable accessory apartment per all these requirements as of right. You don't have to go to a public hearing. You don't have to go with the special permit. But if you don't want it to be affordable, then you have to go to public hearing and special permit. Okay. I'm not sure that's my concern is that everybody's going to go the special permit route because they don't want the burden of making it affordable. And if we find that that's how that goes, then we may want tweak on the regulation a little bit. What would be nice, and Steve mentioned this before, he'd rather see carrots as opposed to sticks.
The way we did it, my in laws paid us a big chunk of money, which we figured was about the percentage of the total house, their percentage for how much it cost to build. So they weren't paying us rent later on. Nope, I got you. I don't know if that affects something like this, the rules for A
little bit, but you could do it by special permit. What I was trying to say about the carrots is some towns provide a tax incentive to the people who make an affordable housing thing. I see.
I'm not ready to tackle that right this minute. But certainly one of the things that we as a Commission have on our side now is I've got half the Board of Selectmen on the Planning and Zoning Commission. And so you would think that what we really need to make this affordable housing stuff take off is a housing commission. I don't want to go back to the Board of Selectmen at this point. I just got done spending two years trying to get a town planner. And they're going to say, it hasn't even been a year, and now you're back here asking for the next guy. But it's housing group that needs to figure out how do we incentivize people to want to make affordable housing. We can't do that through planning and zoning, at least I can.
We're going to have elections later tonight or somebody thinks they can, now's your chance. But that's my concern.
Well, let me just add, Shem, as far as the zone, there are options for zoning alone. You can for example give density bonuses for affordable including affordable housing you can require the inclusion of affordable housing in subdivisions or other developments the statutes authorize it the problem for Andover is let's suppose you picked 20%, you wanted 20% affordable units in a development, you don't get that many subdivisions with 20 lots, Right? And so you you would have or 10 lots even. If you say 20%, it's got to be at least that's two out of 10. And you just, I mean, larger towns with larger subdivisions have had some success with this, but I think it's difficult for you because most of your subdivisions are smaller than that
but it is enough the power is there the authority exists.
Jed if I might Go ahead. So, yeah, for the record, John Dyskowski. Yeah, ultimately it policy is choice and you have to sort of ask yourself, what are you trying to do? And I think Mark's suggestion about a forty year restriction absolutely answers the question correctly if the question is we want to, you know, be, sort of visibly proactive in providing in in ensuring that accessory units are affordable. I I do think there is, you know, a trade off as you as you say, Jed, that if the commission's real goal is to encourage proliferation of these units, you know, a forty year restriction is a disincentive, and and people would not necessarily be inclined to do it without some other offsetting incentive. As you said, Jed, possibly with a tax incentive, possibly with administrative assistance just to help do income verification or something like that so the paperwork is not such a burden. So it is a trade off, but again, I think generally speaking, the volume of development activity in generation of new housing units is relatively slow in Andover, such that, you know, if we are hearing that people are disincentivized from it or a year goes by and we don't get a single application, you know, then you can look to sort of turn those dials a little bit in a different direction. But again, if, you know, the concern that the state is going to be coming down somewhat harder on communities to demonstrate their forward progress in providing affordable housing,
You know, a regulation like this is demonstration that the town is is trying something. And the market may tell you it is not working in Andover, but but it is a a worthy attempt.
And I do think, you know, from the news reports that you read, what you hear coming out of the state, it is gonna get, you know, affordable housing is a huge issue in Connecticut, and it's only gonna get bigger in the state legislature has said they are going to be focusing on housing in the next session. So I think it will come that way. But anyhow, Leigh Ann, you were interested in this one? Did we cover everything you wanted to hear?
Yes, yes. I think some new terminology was brought up and some ideas that attorney Brantz gave us about density, and there were two or three more. So, I mean, I'll listen to it again when it comes up on the town YouTube channel. But, yes, but basically, I think we covered a lot now that we're on this topic.
Okay. And being that it is 08:33, I am thinking now would be we've gone through the two topics that I think will take the most discussion. I think the rest of them are fairly quick, but I don't want to rush through them. And I do want to you know, we've got some other stuff to talk about on the agenda tonight. So, there would be great disappointment if we continued the public hearing to the next meeting wrapped up the last couple of things then and then did the deliberation on it?
Hearing As long as we can do that procedurally even though we haven't discussed them tonight?
If if you keep the public hearing open you can bring up new issues ask new questions any any person who wasn't who couldn't get into the zoom meeting for technical reasons will be able to raise questions anew the commission is not allowed to make any decisions until the hearing closes so it is it is still a completely open process as long as the public hearing is open you you will need to announce the the date and the time and the method of the next meeting that is to say whether it will be virtual or live. Okay should we do that now? So
I think your question, Leigh Ann, is we do not have to cover everything that we set the public hearing for tonight to be legal.
Correct. That was my question. This doesn't usually happen, so I was just double checking.
Nope, We're getting a late start. It's already past 08:30. And we've got a couple other things that I want to make sure we get a chance to talk about a little bit tonight. So at this point, at 08:35, we will continue the public hearing at our next meeting on December 19. And at 08:36, I will call the regular meeting.
And Mr. Chairman will that be also virtual or live on the nineteenth? I am planning on it being virtual at this point.
We just have to say for the for for and that we unless we're gonna re advertise it okay but if you to avoid the cost of another legal ad as long as we say say now it'll be the nineteenth at seven p. M. Virtually with the connection being on on you know on the printed on the agenda that should be fine now I may not be able to be there the nineteenth it appears that I can't I'll put it on the calendar and I'll see what happens. Okay yep and
I think you have guided us in a lot of good areas here, Mark, and so we'll do the best we can if you're not able to make it. Okay, alrighty. We'll we'll be shooting you emails on any questions that come up. Okay. I am going to hunt for my agenda here. Okay, we've called the meeting to order at 08:36. Roll call seating of alternates. I see Anne Cremay is here, Steve Nelson, Scott Persson, Leigh Ann Hutchinson, myself. So Susan, no need to be seated tonight. Just a note on the election, I don't know if everybody heard, but, you know, we had two Democrats running and with Susan being a Democrat, we can't have three Democratic alternates. And so there's only going to be one of the people that were up for on the ballot joining us, and I have not heard who that is yet.
So, more to follow on there. But for the time being, Susan, you're our only alternate. So thank you for coming.
Jed, do you want to stop sharing your screen so we can see for Good the idea. Thank you.
And I always appreciate the forceful backup to help me do the right thing.
Mr. Chairman, do you want me to remain? Are there other items you'll need me for?
I am looking, and the only item I have for you, Mark, that you need to stick around for is I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you and the same to all of you as well. Yeah and and you did see my comment on the the schedule for the meetings we avoided. Yes I did that were that were okay. I just didn't know yeah we've we've had a couple we had this this this year Rosh Hashanah created some real problems in in a couple of our towns so I when I as people are setting meetings I'm trying to alert them so that I'm glad to hear that. Well yes happy Thanksgiving to all and
we'll see you Bye good bye. Good night. Thanks Mark. Next up is additions or changes to the agenda and I have none. Anybody else want to add anything? Probably not. I think we got enough. Okay. We're going to move on. Public comment. Shannon, are you still with us? We got off. Oh, okay. Yep. Catherine Hutchinson. Can you hear me? I can hear you, Catherine. Yep. Yes.
I had, a a question. Okay. At the November meeting under old business five b update on the 517 Route 6 gravel pit, and I'm going read you from the minutes, Jim Halsey provided update, reached out to the land use attorney, spoke with another attorney at the firm reviewing information regarding gravel pit. Leanne Hutchinson weighed in on property dash look at potential courses of action, calling bond. Jim will follow-up with an update for the next meeting. So my question is, will that be done tonight, the follow-up by Jim, be done tonight under Section 8A, or will that be deferred to the December meeting?
It's probably going to be both. I think he will provide an update tonight. Jim, do you want to address that issue right now? Jim, you're muted. Yeah.
Okay. I'm gonna take it that Jim does not wanna address that right now. We'll we'll get to it, but we will we will Can not you hear me now? Oh, yeah. Go ahead, Jim. I'm sorry. I I didn't realize I didn't hear you. I
did finally speak to Alan Corto, who who is an attorney with Mark at Halloran and Sage. Actually, I I left a message. I didn't speak to him. I left a message. I have not heard back from him, so I really have very little to offer. He he's working on it. He indicated he was working on it, but that's all the information I have. I can't move forward till I hear from him, and I have not other than just a brief message.
Catherine, I know that Jim tried to lasso Mark Branch and Mark did not take the bait.
All right. Well, thank you. So is is I appreciate Jim doing his report now so that otherwise I would remain until the portion of the agenda. He normally also reports on other matters. So everybody have a great Thanksgiving, and we'll see everybody next month. Thank you. I appreciate Thank you, Katherine. I appreciate your I appreciate your taking my question and responding and getting it resolved for tonight. Thank you. And, again, everybody have a great Thank you. Can
I ask may I ask a question in pursuant to that? Yep. Go ahead. Since Mark is handling other matters, obviously, tonight, for example, for us. But Jim is now dealing with another attorney in Mark's firm about the gravel pit. Is this second attorney just going to be assigned to the gravel pit topic from now on? Or is there some kind of a transition? Or is this just Mark has moved this particular topic to this other attorney? Is it temporary? Do we know?
We probably don't know for sure. Mark did not stick around after we got done discussing regulation changes the other day because the weather was nice and his boat was calling. And so, when Jim thought he was going to be able to bend Mark's ear for a little bit, That did not come to pass. But I did hear Mark say that this other fellow is doing the regulatory, the enforcement actions for Halloran and Sage now. So Okay. That's where that stands.
Jed, maybe I can shed a little bit of info on that if you'll allow me to speak. I did have that conversation with Mark, myself, about three weeks ago. It wasn't specifically related to this, but he basically said, yeah, he's very much staying involved in doing zoning matters, but he's trying to step away from the areas that there are people in the company that are better served, you know, are better at it. He's done this before. I mean, he's referred us to other attorneys within Halloran and Sage. There's another Halloran and Sage attorney that is working on a a specific matter with the town. You know, again, it's one I would have given to Mark, but Mark just flat out said, you know, if that's what you're looking for, you know, I'm not the guy to do that. So I think that's the case with this also. Okay. Thanks, Eric.
Thank you. Yep. That does help. Thank you. And I think
that I I don't see any other public members here, so we're going to move on to new business. We will not discuss the proposed amendment changes. Next item in new business is nomination of officers, chairperson and vice chairperson, election following meeting per the bylaws. So after we have an election, which we have had, we've got the regular commission members that we had before still on the commission, so it is time to choose the chairman and the vice chair for the next two years. And I am willing to be Chairman or Vice Chairman, only one, for the next two years. But if somebody else wants to do that, I will not be offended. So that's where I'll go on that. I did ask Anne if she was willing to be vice chair again, and she said that she was. But I'm not going to nominate I'll
nominate you, Jed. I nominate Jed Larson as Planning and Zoning Chairman. I'd like to second that.
Waiting for Susan, did you second? Yes, I did. And I think we allow the entire membership to vote, so that is okay, even though you're not seated. Any other nominations for chairman? Again, I'm going to be offended. Okay. Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any
opposed? Any abstain? So, the motion passes six-zero-zero. I will nominate Anne Cremaet as Vice Chair. Thank you, Steve. Any other nominations for Vice Chair? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstaining? Motion passes six-zero-zero. Thank you, Anne. You're welcome.
Moving on to old business. John, you had a little bit for us on planet conservation development, I think.
Well, it can be as short or as long as we want. That would be sensitive to the time. The thing that I was working on next after we had kind of reviewed the the the goals from the 2015 plan was I was looking to put together a public survey on on priorities and preferences and started with the the long term plan survey, is online. And if Marina, if you would let me share my screen. Mister Sherr, as she's doing that, I'll just ask tell how much how much time or how quickly do you want me to to to wrap up this section?
Okay, John. You should be good to share whenever. Thank you. Fifteen or twenty minutes. Okay, I'll try
to make the best use of that. I went through, hopefully people can see this. Is a summary of the long term plan survey that was done in 2019. And a number of the things, again, was because this was largely about town facilities and town improvements and use of town resources. So I wanted to focus on those elements that sort of overlap cleanly with things we would wanna know for our plan of conservation and development. And the things that we might want to reask in a survey would include, the ones that I boxed in red, which is, do you support the development of a town center, which was interesting, basically an even split of those surveyed. Do you support NVIA establishing a Main Street in Andover actually had, a significantly negative response? Only only a little over a third were in favor. There were there were several questions about how often do people use specific services, or do you do you support bikeable and walkable things? Do use the Hop River Trail? I wasn't necessarily interested in those for a plan of conservation and development, but did like asking the questions such as, what types of businesses would you like to see in town,
and should the town be actively marketing undeveloped commercial properties in town? And those that was generally supported. About two thirds did support that. There were questions about the farmer's market and the way that town government functioned and got information out. That, again, is not necessarily a POCV scope, but, also thought it would be worth taking, what services are not available in Andover that you would like to see, as as sort of an open ended, and then asking some of the demographics questions. So my first thought was taking some of those and building a survey around it, and my thoughts about survey topics.
Before you go on, John Of course. So all those things we're kind of towards the top about the seniors in that. I thought some of that would be if we had a chapter in the POCD like we do now on preparing for an aging population. I thought a few of those would probably be worth continuing. We need to address that area somehow. And certainly, you support a walkable, bikeable, a safer Route 316?
Yeah, what's interesting is that was fairly evenly split as well. Yep, yep.
So I wasn't ready to cross all those topics off yet. No, and I agree that I don't think the topics
as a whole should be crossed off. I didn't necessarily think that they needed to be asked that same way. And this is a very rough outline and some initial thoughts, would be to ask questions in a few categories that sort of tracked the themes of the previous POCD, which is asking some questions in the theme of residential development, asking people about their opinions about affordable housing and type of housing, senior housing, and in part to rank or rate on a scale, not just agree, disagree, but sort of gauging strength of opinion on some of these things. Similarly, with commercial development and the town's role in that, asking a few questions about open space and natural resources, as well as transportation, community connections, and getting into some of those community services like schools, like Parks and Rec, and particularly for senior services, asking a question about the development of the center or programming that they would like to see involved there, as well as transportation as a separate category. And then to some open ended questions about people's hopes or dreams or concerns looking forward for the next ten years. And then finally, sort of getting the baseline. Are you a property owner, a property renter? Are you you know, what's your age demographic? And if people are willing to share, you know, general income, limits in an anonymous sort of way. So I I think keeping some of those things in, but but rephrasing them and recategorizing them in the categories of the theme of the of the POCD, would be something that I would sort of recommend structuring it. And then I also had, you know, some example of, a survey that we did in the town of Old Sabreck that I shared with Jed and Eric
that I won't I won't get into this evening, but wanted to sort of get some feedback about if if people are what I would suggest, again, because of time constraints, is to propose if if people sort of agreed with the concept of taking some stuff from long term plan, but reframing them in sort of the POCD themes, I'd be happy to put together a draft survey for review and discussion at the next meeting.
So I think that sounds great. For the Commission, I would ask each Commission member to think about what kind of questions you want to make sure get in there so that you're ready to discuss it. And then one of the things that Eric did with the Commission back when he was just starting on the long term plan that I thought was very good was he said, what is that thing or a couple of things that you would like to see in Andover ten years from now that we need to be heading towards? And so, at least at the top of my list before was the senior center, so now I have to go think up something new. But what is it that we want the town to be? And I think for myself, it's probably the affordable housing senior, it can be single family homes or little multifamily things, but we need some affordable mixed with non affordable or market priced, we need new housing development for the seniors to live in to continue to be able to stay in Andover. It is, I guess, now at the top of my list on that. But I really need the input from you folks on, you know, what do you think Andover needs? I do think that Eric and the town have done a great job of continuing to work on the list that we've had before, but it's time to take a look at that. I guess the other thing
I would ask John is we make sure that, you know, one of the questions that you might have added in there is do you support open space, purchasing land for open space? I may not be ready to go to the Board of Selectmen and ask for money for a housing authority, but I do think it's time that we start putting at least a small chunk away on a routine basis to build up the pot that we have in case a nice piece of property becomes available for open space and we want to go buy it.
Open space is definitely a category that we would want to explore. And I think in a case like that, have sort of ranked choice, not just sort of yes or no, do you support open space? But if we were targeting open space, would we wanna build on a state forest, for instance, would we want recreation land, would we want municipal facilities, and kind of rank some of those things in terms of priority.
And in the long term study plan, I don't know how they worded the question, but one of the takeaways was that people were willing to pay increased taxes to support the school, open space, and conservation. Those were the three things that people were willing to pay a little bit more for. I'd like to validate that that's still true Because we haven't added any, well, we've added a little bit of open space, but not much to that deficit that we have that we're trying to create.
So I would, you know, I'd be happy to sort of circulate my outline, but it may just be as easy to respond to a draft survey itself and then identify areas where we aren't asking enough questions or asking the right questions so we can, you know, identify what's missing.
I'd be happy to have you take a crack at a draft, then we can add to it, to comment on it. Might not be the next meeting. That's right before Christmas, and we do have a fair amount of the public hearing But deliberation to at least we're ahead of the problem with where we want to go. Might not get it all done at the next meeting, but at least we're not sitting here wondering what's next. Okay.
Any other commission members have any thoughts on that? Okay. And I think you only used up ten minutes, John, so well done on that. The next up is discussion and action of the application down of Andover site plan review of proposed development at the Public Safety Complex. Eric, I did not, I looked online today and I did not see a site plan online.
It may not have been online, but it was submitted with the application. So the application does include a site plan. For general purposes, if you, and I apologize because I'm not at my desk at work or else I would pull it up from there, but the location is directly behind fire department, directly adjacent to the two existing propane tanks. There is you couldn't take action on this tonight anyway because the wetlands commission has not made a ruling on it. So, but that is the location. The goal here is simply to add two additional propane tanks, one of which will feed the Andover town hall, which will be converted to both bucket list split systems, as well as a propane boiler and propane furnace for the community room. And then what I'm doing is I'm setting the town up for a grant, a FEMA grant application for a new generator that will be, will cover the municipal complex.
In other words, it will cover the fire department, the new community center, as well as the town hall to replace the 30 some odd year old existing diesel generator that's there with a propane one. That's what we're looking to do basically with this application.
Okay, and yeah, it's probably not worth me going. I know that that site plan exists under the Inland Wetlands website because we looked at it there at that last meeting, but we'll show that next month then when we get to that. I think that's pretty easy to take care of.
There was a checklist prepared for this application, and there was a couple of, unchecked boxes. One was wetlands, as you mentioned. The other was Eastern Highlands, and I don't know whether that has been reviewed. They've reviewed it It yet or
been submitted, but it has not been. I do not have a definitive response back from eHHD. Although I did discuss it with that and told him the original plans, and he said, yeah, you don't get it, but you still got to submit the application, which I did. Okay. I'll make sure the checklist and the plan are on the website for the next meeting. Any
questions for Eric on the propane tank plan? Okay. Next item up is approval of Commission meeting dates for calendar year 2024. When we were coming up with the agenda, I had not reviewed the minutes yet and I didn't think that we had actually made a motion and approved those dates. We did and those dates are right on through the third Tuesday of every month. I've got a list of them. I'll send those into Carol that'll be that. So, no further action on the commission dates for next calendar year. There is a typo in that line when we get to approve in the minutes and we'll fix that up, but the information in there is correct. So next up is the approval of the minutes. And I will make a motion to approve the minutes from our regular meeting on October 17. And I thought you said there was a typo. Well, we will. We'll discuss that after we we get a second there. Second. Second. Okay. Thanks, Steve. The only correction I had was where it talks about the minutes. It says setting regular meeting dates for the 2022, 2023 fiscal year, and it's actually for the 2024 calendar year. And that was the only change that I had to the minutes. Anybody else have anything?
Hearing none, I'll call for a vote to approve the minutes as amended. And Anne? Anne, you're muted. I thought I was out. Okay. Aye.
Aye. Scott? Aye. Leanne? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion to approve the minutes as amended passes five-zero-zero. Next item up is administrative reports. And Jim, you're up first.
Okay. Well, covered, I believe, 517 Route 6 gravel pit. It appears to be relatively stable despite the lack of topsoil, and I hope to to have a conversation with attorney Corto and see what how to proceed. 664 Route 6, ongoing blight issue. Is that Steve Burnett? Steve Burnett. Yes. Yep. Okay. Working with with attorney O'Brien on that, a few other light complaints. I I did resolve one on at 92 Merritt Valley Road, but another involved removal of two two vehicles. Apparently, the the material that was in all the vehicle, one was a truck, a box truck, has subsequently been is now piled on the on the front yard. So I have another another violation. I have a a drug violation on Long Hill Road that I'm I'm in the middle of pursuing, a few others. A lot of, well, a modest amount of of additions coming in this time of year. I do have a an issue that I'm just gonna to raise,
just bring it up, back to 664 Route 6. The current the property owners is trying to sell the property and became aware of the fact that it appears to be zoned residential. And his recollection was that that it was changed to commercial. And a few other people had the same same same recollection. So I went back through the minutes, and apparently, there was, in fact, a zone change application submitted back, I wanna say, 2016 or 2013. I'm not I'm not positive offhand. The application was approved, but a plan, a zoning map was never filed. There was a document filed in the land records. It was labeled a special permit alluding to the zone change. So at this point, I'm trying to work work through this. I have no no actual plan at all. There was no plan that was was in the in a file. There was no plan filed. There was no plan in the file that can't seem to come in with with the application or at least it was not apparent.
I'm trying to work through this, but I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do. There is there is a plan of the property, no, Mylar, and I I don't know where that plan came from, but I'm I'm working on it. The applicant was not apparently aware that it was his responsibility to to file the plan and obviously didn't. So I just bring it up bring this up because it will probably come back before you in some shape or form, if not at the next meeting some time following that. Other than that, have nothing. Any questions for Jim?
Do you know why he was changing it to commercial, Jim?
Yes. I mean, he had a plan to to develop that. You know, I vaguely remember hearing some some plans to develop in commercial capacity. But I I mean, was before my time, but I do remember it coming up. I mean, I think I think he thinks it would increase the property value and give me an opportunity to sell. It's about a four acre parcel. And as you know, it's it's it's open in front. It's it there's been some cleanup going on, but it still it still has a lot of junk on it. But but he's I mean, he he assumes that he'll he'll able to get rid of it. He'll be able to sell it and sell it at a fair price if it's commercially zoned. I mean, are other commercially
zoned properties in that area, as you probably know. I mean, it is on Route 6. It's not an unreasonable request.
But it would be in, you know, adjacent to residential on both sides, or is it
commercial? Yes. Across the street, it's commercial, but but either side would be residential. Yes.
Okay. That might be a good thing for us as a commission to think about is what should the commercial zone look like ten years from now?
You know, if you if happen anybody remembers back when Rosewood Acres was approved, and I don't know when that was, but roughly ten years ago, there were a number of commercial lots in that subdivision.
Yeah. Yep. Right along Route 6. There still are. Yep.
But that's quite a distance from, you know, the Burnett property. But anyhow, we'll let you work on that one for a little bit. And my concern was that he wanted to come and ask the commission what we were gonna do to fix his problem and wasn't ready to go there yet because didn't know anything about it. So Jim's off working that one for us. Inlet, wetlands and watercourse liaison, as Eric said, we will be first week of December when we have that meeting, we'll be working on approval of the wetlands permit to support the propane tank thing. That's all I've got to report from Inland Wetlands. Any commission discussion miscellaneous topics for tonight?
I have a question. Yep, go ahead. There's an available real estate sign at the Andover Plaza, and there are now two vacant businesses because unfortunately, in addition to Oriental Walk closing, the Mini Mart guy went out of business. And a lot of times when you see these signs, it'll say space available if there's one or more spaces available. Does anyone know if the whole plaza is up for sale or if they're advertising that there's one or more vacant storefronts, but not the whole place. I can answer that if you want. Get greater.
The owner is advertising for the vacancy. He is not advertising for selling the plaza at this point. Okay, thank you. Yep.
Any other miscellaneous topics? Okay. I don't think there's anybody from the public left for a public comment. Next regularly scheduled meeting is December 19, and that will be virtual as well. I hope that it's raining out now so that I can say, aren't you thankful that we're meeting virtually? It wasn't raining when we started, but the weatherman promised that by now it would be. And I just want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving and you appreciate all the support. Kind of had a goal of getting done by 09:30 tonight, which wasn't too awful bad. We're going early, so that's all good. But I really appreciate the discussion, the input in trying to keep me honest. So thank you very much for all the support on that. Other than happy Thanksgiving, I guess that brings us to adjournment. 09:15, I make a motion to adjourn. Second that.
All in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstaining? Thank you very much, everybody, and have a great Thanksgiving, and we'll see you in December. You too. Thank you.