Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Special Meeting
March 28, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Well, it is I've got 07:01, so at this point I will call the meeting to order. With the roll call and seating of alternates, I see Anne Cremay is with us. I've got Kevin and Ann Blanchard. And the beauty of the Zoom meeting is those folks that aren't here tonight will be able to watch the recording and get caught up. As I say, I was expecting a couple of more people to show up, but at this point, Bill, I would like to turn the meeting well, I guess before we do that, so anyhow, that's the roll call, myself, Anne Cremay, Kevin, and Anne Blanchard. That's what we've got for attendees here. Next on the agenda is public speak. And so, Katherine Hutchinson, do you have anything for us this evening?
No, thank you. I'm here to hear what Mr. Warner has to say. Okay, I'm very interested.
Yep, good enough. And hopefully before we get too far down the road, we'll have a chance to do a little public presentation and hopefully some other folks are interested as well. That gets us to item four, the affordable housing plan, Bill Warner. So please take it away.
Okay, thank you very much. Good evening. If I can share the screen,
am I allowed to do that now, Abby? You should be able to. I just need you a co host. Can everybody see that? Not yet. Oh, wait a It's it's thinking about it now. You see it now? Yes. Yep. We do. Okay.
Okay, so I just thought I'd start by summarizing or giving you an idea of where we are and where we stand as Jed indicated in previous email that we're heading into the home stretch. Statute, as you'll recall, the reason why we're doing this, the reason why we're here is Section eight-30J of the Connecticut General Statutes. And this was this was kind of a in 2017 kind of an afterthought where they were trying to amend Section eight dash 30 gs. They so so they didn't amend it. So they just I think the legislature tried to to just pacify some people and threw in this paragraph that said at least once every five years each municipality shall prepare or amend and adopt an affordable housing plan for the municipality.
So that became law in 2017. What that meant is that every single town in Connecticut now has to have an affordable plan. They went through a lot of back and forth with it and concluded that the affordable housing plan is due June 30. They offered a grant program, which Andover applied for, to pay for understood it was an unfunded mandate. But the reality is that is the statute. There's some stuff about the approval process, but otherwise this is the statute. At least once every five years each municipality should prepare, amend, or adopt an affordable housing plan. So in the next month or so, you will have in front of you a final draft and affordable housing plan. If you adopt that, it doesn't even say what the municipality means, whether it's the town meeting, whether it's the Board of Selectmen, whether it's planning and zoning. It just says the municipality shall prepare and adopt. Some towns are doing it through planning and zoning. Other towns are doing it through the Board of Selectmen.
So it's just not clear. So I would argue that if you approved it and sent it up to the state and said, we have an affordable housing plan and we're going to put it in our plan and development, your job would be done. The town would have satisfied the statute and doesn't have to do any more. But really the difficult work begins once a plan is done. You'll have a plan done and then you move to implementation. So how do you do what you've set out in the plan? How do you accomplish those things? And that's absolutely the difficult part, especially when you're dealing with something as potentially controversial and difficult economically and financially as creating affordable housing.
So at a previous meeting, talked about who should we target for new affordable housing and how many units should we create in the next ten years? We went through a lot of different things, what eight-thirty gs thinks we should have, how many people are housing burdened, how many are paying over 30% of their gross income for housing. And we concluded, and then we looked at the market and said, let's bring this to reality and see in the market reality how many houses have been built in the last twelve years. What is happening? What can we really expect? And we came down to a conclusion that I think everybody was okay with. Andover's market based affordable housing goal based on the market and based on the way we're growing create five to 15 affordable units in the next ten years. And the target ages were the 10 19 year old age cohort, those coming back from college. And we've put said 10 19 because this is a ideally we're talking about the next ten years. So those are those are the kids that are getting out of college and maybe would want to stay in Andover and currently really don't have any choice of where they can live except with their parents. And then we talked about the baby boomers and helping them
not only find affordable housing but age in place. First and foremost, age in place because we talked about the AARP and 80% of the people want to age in place and stay in the town that they spent their life. So how can they age in place, but also how can we start working to provide some affordable housing for those seniors that are on fixed incomes, for instance, simply on social security or a small pension. They would qualify as low to moderate income and probably are having trouble paying even if their house is paid off, maybe even paying the taxes on the house may be very difficult for them. This is the final chapters that we're working on implementation and it's all about build awareness. In my experience, in where I live and where I've worked, small towns are fairly isolated from the problems that exist in the cities of the very low income and the poverty and the crime and whatnot that exist in the cities. We don't have that problem here, and I think that's very prevalent. I think to build awareness we have to teach the people of Andover that it's a local problem. It's your neighbors. It's people right here in Andover. Make it personal. I'm sure every one of you on the board knows some people in town
that are having trouble paying their bills every day, tough decisions to get by. And that's really the important part about it because whenever small towns I always point this out whenever there's a fire in a small town, the small town raises up to help that family. And again, so now if we can convince the small towns that this is a real serious problem right there in your town, there in Andover, I'm convinced that small towns will rise up to try and help those people that are in need. And a little farther on, we'll talk about how many people are in need in your town, and significant. I'm not going to go through every one of these. I'm really preaching to the choir. You've all seen this, so you've read it. The United Way created this ALICE program. They say ALICE is asset limited income constrained and employee employed. These are the people that are working but not making enough to really pay the bills. They're above the federal poverty level, they're not getting food stamps, they're not getting any other type of assistance, but not enough to afford bare bones household budget. And this goes through all the things that they have to deal with. They struggle to keep their households in from financial ruin, can't always pay the bills, they struggle to manage even their most basic needs of housing, food, transportation, childcare, everyday choices, childcare or paying the rent, filling a prescription or fixing the car, healthy food or even getting gas nowadays, healthy food or less healthy food, less expensive food. Even I was shocked
grocery shopping yesterday. Even pork chops are expensive now. Pork chops used to be a nice cheap meat to buy, but even pork chops are expensive now. And if you look at that and you say, Okay, well, we can't afford pork chops, so let's just have spaghetti again. That whole thing of high carb, inexpensive food just creates a whole another spiral of obesity and all the other problems that exist with poverty. Is certainly a problem here in Andover. And one an unexpected car repair. You blow out a tire and you have two couple and they're all bald so you need new tires or a medical bill can push these financially strapped families over the edge into financial ruin. That is something that is very real. Until you really start thinking about this, even myself, you don't really appreciate it until you really start thinking about it. I think this video Did everybody watch this video or you want to play it? It's only two minutes long.
Bill, I'm not sure if anybody watched the video. Know you sent it to me separately, and I watched it, but I don't think anybody else has had the opportunity.
So Okay, it's only a couple of minutes. Let's play Again, this talks about the people that in Andover that you know work at the gas station that work at the market work at Dunkin Donuts work at the gas and all these other places that are making these these have these incomes that are essential service sector employees but the incomes don't are probably not enough to pay their bills. So hopefully this works.
That is what happened when I tried to watch it Bill and and it's been working for me.
I have it open here if you want me to screen share my screen. Can do that. Okay. Yep. Go ahead, Abby. Alright, let me just restart it. Hold on. Alright, you're gonna stop screen sharing for a second then. Okay. Alright.
We all know Alice. We all rely on Alice. This past year has underscored that message like never before. We all know Alice. Alice worked with quite a game. Oh, we've got it going double that message like never before.
Yeah. So everyone, make sure that you're muted. I'll make sure I'm muted too. Yep, we don't hear the volume now. Right.
Okay, I guess I can't mute myself. So I'm gonna stay on muted, but everyone make sure that you're muted. I wanna make sure I'm not giving feedback as well though. All right, let me try again.
If in our grocery stores would be empty, without Alice, our medications would not be delivered to our doors. There are more than 865,000 Alice households in New Jersey and a total of 35,000,000 across this country. These are our neighbors, family members, and friends. And despite getting up each morning to show up for work, regardless of the pandemic, these households do not earn enough to afford the basics. It is not due to a lack of hard work. We've seen the number of struggling households rise because Alice's wages simply have not kept up with the high cost of essentials. Having been priced out of survival, Alice could not afford both safe housing and quality childcare, or fresh food and costly medications, or a car repair and the heating bill. This sets Alice up to weigh impossible choices that are not choices at all. When nearly 40% of New Jersey's households could not afford the basics for survival, even before the pandemic, The job we face is clear. Going back to normal is not good enough. We cannot create a strong and growing New Jersey economy by aiming to go back to a normal in which nearly four out of every 10 households in the state and more than half of Black and Hispanic households were already unable to make ends meet. We can do better for Alice and all of us.
I can turn anyone into a beach bum. Okay, Bill, you're still muted.
Okay, so that was from New Jersey, but the same problem exists in Connecticut of all these service people. You know, hear talk of paying $15 an hour, twenty seven or seventeen dollars an hour, but that's nowhere near close enough to support a family and a household. So if I start to share the screen again. We see the presentation.
Yeah, okay. Yep. Good. So what I did just to try and make the point a little more is a typical family budget for a family of four. So this family was making $62,400 which is which is a good a good income whether it's one one person or two. So $5,200 a month gross. Take away, they had a good health care program at work. They had their withholdings, their social security, Medicare, deductions. So they have a take home of $3,341 You see they are not saving for retirement and they're not saving for doing any college savings. They said $3,300 in take home. No student loan debt, which we could have factored into, but we did not even put that in there. So then you look at the expense side, if you look at their mortgage, the mortgage again the housing is more is your mortgage taxes and insurance. So $15.60 dollars or rent of a thousand dollars and I just went through and said cable internet phone heating oil clm p auto insurance. No life insurance no retirement or college gasoline daycare, car loans, groceries, and clothes. If you put in all those bills compared to their total take home of $3,341 they're in a deficit if they are in their own house, they're in a deficit of $1,300 and if they're renting an apartment for a thousand dollars a month, they're in a deficit of $665 So that's where the choices start to come in. Where do they cut? And it's always easiest to cut out obviously healthy food. Can you cut out some other types of things in here? Already cut out all the retirement, any kind of savings. Then there's the tragic ones. So they cut out the heating oil because they can't buy heating oil. So now all of a sudden they're using electric heater in their house or something like that, a space heater.
So those are all the problems. It definitely is an issue and it definitely and then so now the question is, is it in Andover? Are these families in Andover? So what the ALIS study through the United Way did is they took every state and they identified how many families in every state using census data are considered ALICE families, where they're spending over 30% of their income on housing. So as you can see in Connecticut, there's total households at the poverty level, they're 11%. Those are the ones where it's not ideal, but there's a lot of services for them. They have food stamps, they have different types of assistance, whereas the Alice families don't have the assistance. 27% of the households in Connecticut as a whole are in that area. So that's a problem. But if we look at the same issue and we look at Andover on affordability,
we see that 22 of the homes in Andover, the households are spending over 30% of their gross income on housing, which is their biggest bill. And as you can see, the hourly wage needed to afford a two bedroom apartment is $23.65 and you think about the jobs that we talked about, none of them are probably paying that much. So if we take that 22% and apply that to Andover, in Andover you have thirteen twenty four households. 22% of that are paying over 30% of their own housing and that is two ninety one households in Andover. And applying the household size, it's almost six seventy people in Andover, children and adults, that are these households that are having trouble paying their bills every day. So that's a significant number of people in Andover for a town your size. That's a significant number of people and it is right here in your town. So then it becomes what do we do? So what should the path forward be? How do we start to implement the plan that we have?
Before we jump into the plan ahead, one of the things that I was wrestling with, Bill, it seems to me that nobody building a single family home in Andover would have that be an affordable home because they would never put the forty year deed restriction on it. Is that a true thought or am I off base there?
You mean an individual building a home? Right. No, of course not.
If we're gonna do it, and this is what you get into, it's gotta be some kind of, you know, the town working with a developer nonprofit or something like that. Yeah. So if we wait for our one a year, it's never gonna be one, it's going to be a group of something because it's going to be a whole development if we're going to do anything.
Yeah, I mean, unless you do, I mean, you could build some by, which I'm going to talk about, about, you know making people aware of CHFA and the different programs or the USDA mortgages which count and making sure people know that those exist and they're competitive. But also accessory apartments. Accessory apartments, you can a accessory apartment is only a ten year deed restriction. So that's much more reasonable. And you're probably not charging that much for accessory apartments. All of it is incentivizing and giving people a reason to do it. People just on their own aren't going to do it. Just because if you can potentially rent it for a large amount of money, you're going want to. You're not going to want to automatically eliminate your possibilities. Okay.
So a path forward. So we start with really governance and a lot of this isn't the Planning and Zoning Commission. You're the one doing the planning and saying this is how we should do it as a town and you're directing other agencies to do this. As I indicated to Jed today, I said I really want to take all these recommendations group them in a way that says, okay, this is the responsible agency. For instance, this is Board of Selectmen. You need to do these things. You need to take these issues probably to the town meeting to create this formally. Board of Finance, you need to do this. Planning and zoning, you need to do this and and to really designate this is how it should be done and create a, you know, maybe a table like a step by step table
that says these are the things that should be done. This is the responsible agency. This is the priority, what should be done first, second, and third, and something like that. So it's a very clear implementation table. So it's not just a long laundry list of things to do. So I'm going to try to organize them more. But just in general, so governance is the first one. You really need a champion. So finding a champion, designate an existing committee or a group or create a new one to lead the implementation whether it's through the government whether it's some group of church organizations or civic clubs or some something somebody that's going to champion this that we need affordable housing that's going to highlight the problem and really go forward with it. This is I've read several, several affordable housing plans all over the state, and pretty much every consultant, every town that's created them has agreed that there has to be a champion. There has to be some agency or group that is going to champion this in the town. In my experience, all of these groups and committees that we create, the most successful ones have staffing. So they have a staff person that works day to day on this project, doesn't have to be a full time staff person. But what I'm saying is assign and compensate to an existing staff member who has a passion and an interest in the subject to be that staff person. When somebody walks in the door at 02:00 and walks into town hall looking for information on
X, Y and Z program, there's somebody there rather than, you got to go talk to that committee on this third Thursday of the month. So it has to be somebody there, so I think that's a good recommendation. And again, then it becomes education. Educate public officials, church groups, civics club residents, and everybody about the problem that exists and start to really, you know using the information in the Alice program, the videos, and to say this is a big problem. Create a housing fund. There's always so once you have a committee when we're talking about affordable housing it really a lot of it comes down to money. The statute allows the creation of a housing trust fund and that's essentially a town putting away money in a fund that doesn't lapse every year like the general fund and sits there and is used to to fund affordable housing initiatives
that is allowed by statute and it is a creative way to do it. I say a lot because like all towns in Connecticut, and I'm sure Hanover has the same situation, you received a significant number of COVID relief funds that could could be used some of it could be used to initially fund a housing trust fund. End of the year surplus funds could be one could be channeled into a housing trust fund annually. You could budget money into the housing trust fund as part of the budget process to create a fund of money, a significant fund of money to create a revolving loan fund where money is loaned out, when houses sell the money comes back to do different types of affordable housing initiatives. And then of course you should apply for small cities. Jim Halsey has a lot of experience with this. The CBD fund, the CBDG funding small cities that's available to smaller towns, a housing trust fund, residential rehab is very, very much qualifies under CDBG
for low to moderate income people. And what do those letters stand for Bill?
Community development block grants. Thank you. That's that's federal money so there's a handful of cities that get money their entitlement cities they get automatically when I was in Middletown we got around 600,000 every year from HUD in CDBG money guaranteed. Then there's another pot of money that goes to the state and the state distributes it to the smaller cities and towns so that's the fund that you'd be applying to and again every year there's applications that are out for it. Good may I ask a question? Yeah go ahead Leanne.
Hi, I had trouble signing in so I have this on I have and I had already looked at Bill's presentation and it's very interesting. So, I'm following along with that, but I can't see everybody like I usually can. But anyway, my question is, Bill, what about duplexes? Are they in a different category as far as this discussion from either a single family home? I know they're not a single family home, but they're also not like an accessory apartment. Are they in their own category or are they considered for this discussion more closely related to either an accessory apartment or a single family home?
Yeah, essentially that those would be that so they wouldn't have size restrictions so they wouldn't be just an accessory apartment they would be a two family home. So each unit would be its own home. And I'm going talk about that under planning and zoning regulations because currently your regulations do not allow duplexes or triplexes or anything like that in residential zones. So I'm going to talk about those under planning and zoning. Okay, thanks. Yep.
So once the affordable housing committee is established, other things that they would do would because you're small, because you have you know a couple 100 families that that have this issue. Could each your the committee or the staff could actually reach out to these people that are struggling and you know under you probably could find something under freedom of information to keep it under executive session about their finances and whatnot and have private conversations with them and to talk about what their needs are to talk about what their struggles are. I don't know how you work with social services or your food bank or anything like that, but I'm sure in Hadam, I worked with our social services director and she gave me some really, really troubling stories about families that are that are barely surviving, you know, going to the food bank every week to get their food and all the problems that one family had to move out of town and move to Middletown because there was nowhere affordable for him to go and all kinds of stories like that. I'm sure they have could identify the people pretty quickly or the seniors that are struggling and whatnot.
Actually working and identifying the people that are in need. Once you identify people, it becomes much easier to start to think about how can we help these people. Educate again, build awareness of the problem, apply for grants. There's going to be more and more grants for this type of stuff. Create and administer housing rehab program to aid in aging in place. Again, going to be a big problem is aging in place and I have a whole section on that. Creating affordable housing accessory units also. So how do you make affordable ones? You allow accessory ones, how can you make them deed restricted affordable accessory units? Work with REALTORS to educate qualified buyers about USDA CHFA mortgages. Those are pro mortgage programs that automatically once somebody buys a house with one of those mortgage programs and they're competitive and they're more competitive rates, particularly since mortgage rates are now up to 5%. Those are good good alternatives and as soon as you buy a house under that program it becomes an addition to your affordable inventory.
That's an important thing and also down payment assistance I know CHFA has a very good down payment assistance program that would help a lot of people too.
Before we move on here bill on the for the accessory units in I thought you and I had talked a little bit some time ago about not being able to make the accessory units an affordable housing component.
That's true. It says it says you you can't require them to be affordable, so you can't have a regulation say you can. We allow accessory apartments, but they must be affordable. I gotcha. You can't force it but you can you can incentivize it to make it happen. And I'm going to get into that. Okay. So a path forward aging in place again in ten years, the majority of your town is going to are going to be senior citizens. That's what the demographics say as the baby boomers age they're all going to be in their 60s. Your town is getting older and older, your population is projected to decline and your population is projected projected to age significantly. So that is an issue that you're going to have to deal with. Considering Andover's demographics helping seniors comfortably age in place will be a huge issue to avoid social isolation and so so having a house that you can afford is one thing but if you're there and you can't really get around and there's nothing to do in the town or you can't can't get your meals and whatnot
these are all going to be big problems in the town of Andover and particularly for those seniors that are low to moderate income. So it's going to be essential for the town and they need to recognize this that you need a properly sized and staffed senior center, you need Meals on Wheels, Dial A Ride, visiting nurse program, handyman services. One person in Andover brought up a great point that he wanted to hang a TV on the wall and he's 72 years old. He can't do it but there's nobody else. How do you find somebody to do something like that? Enhanced tax abatement programs as allowed by the state statutes. State statutes allow all kinds of tax abatement programs and whatnot tax deferral programs that could be used to lessen the burden on people that are trying to age in place and not trying and trying to stay in their homes. That's going to be a huge issue in Andover. It's going to be a huge issue in most small towns. So the affordable housing committee needs to use the housing trust fund to create an aging in place fund to assist with ramps, accessible bathrooms, kitchens, laundry facilities, creation of affordable accessory units for relative health care providers, additional rental income. An accessory unit could mean a lot of things to to a senior that's that's in a big house. They it could it could be for their health care provider. It could be some extra income. It could be for social. You know they could have somebody live in there that's just they just know that's there someone that they could talk to once a day. So that's going to be important. Again the big thing about affordable accessory
it's only a 10 deed restriction. So that's pretty reasonable. So in ten years you know the scene the senior may not be there anymore and the deed restriction could be disappearing and then you have a free non deed restricted unit that could be rented out. One thing that I say in the program in the program that's created you want to recapture that money so it revolves back into the fund so you could have it recaptured at the sale of the home and reprogrammed back into the fund so it's a simple something filed on the deed that says you know you file the just like a mortgage it's filed on the land records so when there's a closing out we got to pay this back to the town so that that money keeps recycling back into the into the revolving loan fund.
Then temporary Does the accessory apartment is is that independently deeded? I thought the accessory apartment in the main home would be all on one deed.
Yeah, I'd say it would be a clause that you could put into the deed or you could sign it file it separately from the deed you could just file it separately in the land records and reference the deed. There's ways to do that it doesn't necessarily the deed is more about the land than the building. And then temporary healthcare structures. This is something that went in. I don't think Andover opted out of it. I would be surprised if you did. Temporary healthcare structures are essentially structures that you would bring in if you need somebody to serve some health care. Towns have to allow them in single family zones. If you're having a real problem with your parent or something, you could bring in a trailer type facility and put it in some type of facility and attach it to the house or put it behind the house for a healthcare worker to live to support your parent or you could or if you had a child that was having trouble and needed health care and needed supervision but wanted independence
you could put that in the back of your yard and that that is required you have to allow that So that's something that seniors should be aware of that if they needed somebody and there wasn't any room to really expand the house or something, that's another under the statute that is available for seniors that the affordable housing committee should be aware of and say, okay, here's an option for you. We want you to be able to stay in town and afford to stay in town. So now new construction. You do have the 24 units that I put Riverside Drive, I don't know what exactly they're called, the
senior housing down near the Hop River. You have 24 units there I didn't get the numbers yet but I'm sure management will report that there is a long waiting list and it will take many years to to for a unit to become available. And this is right at the time that there's a there's going to be a lack of senior housing units and it's going to get worse over time and it's exactly at the time when more and more seniors are realizing they need need low cost housing and don't want to leave their hometowns. So what I'm saying and I looked at it, looked at the obviously floodplain was the first thing I looked at and wetlands on the GIS and it looks reasonably doable to expand senior housing at that location. Towns should work with management at Riverside Drive the housing to evaluate the feasibility of an expansion. There are state and federal funds to assist with such expansion. That is money because you would be doing 100% affordable a low to moderate income group. There's definitely money that could be made available to work on that project to really create some more senior housing at that location. So that's definitely a project that you should look into. New construction again through the incentive housing
zone. There's the private sector pieces that we talked about in the incentive housing study, but then there's the one that we talked about right behind town hall between town hall and the firehouse. Identified that as a location for potential affordable housing or potential housing with some affordable component to it and that really comes down to the affordable housing committee. If planning and zoning rezones that area, affordable housing committee advocating with the town seriously considering open discussions for a for profit or not for profit housing developer who might be interested in the development of a neighborhood on the town property adjacent to the town hall and firehouse including senior and affordable units. I mean from for as long as I was there I always thought that was an attractive option with the school right there, the town hall, complex there, some housing in there could be a very attractive option I always thought. So that's discussed in the incentive housing zone and I talk about it a little more here in the planning and zoning regulations. So again your job is planning and zoning so your planning job is to create this affordable housing plan so we're near done with your planning job, your planning role, but you also have zoning and zoning is used to control the use and density throughout the town so this is something so you have a very significant role in this you could zone everything single family and change everything to 10 acre lots and you'll never have any affordable housing. Or you could make a lot of changes as recommended in here to at least open the door for the possibility
of the private sector to start providing some affordable housing. The final step in the planning section is that you adopt this the affordable housing plan into your plan of development as an addendum to your plan of conservation and development, which is important because it's official town policy then. It's not just a plan that you had to do. It becomes official town policy in your plan of conservation and development. So when you look to the plan of conservation and development you see that and you justify the recommendations that you're making to change things. The first one gets a little into the weeds about it's a little complicated. Public Act 20 one-twenty nine said towns must provide accessory apartments and we talked about this and Jed and I talked about this and and the problem is just like right where I am right now at Lake Besik in Middlefield, providing accessory apartments here where there's a high density of housing already creates creates potential groundwater issues and lake issues and all kinds of different issues where it's already very dense. So again, I would first recommend that the Commission and the Planning and the Board of Selectmen opt out of Public Act 20 one-twenty nine so you are not forced to provide and allow accessory apartments in the Andover Lake District because you wouldn't want to allow
conceivably by right every other house along Andover Lake becoming a house and accessory apartment if the septic system could support it. So I recommend that you opt out and that's pretty detailed but I'm just that's one of the recommendations. But then after opting out in the Andover Rural Design District, I definitely think you should comply with the recommendations of the Public Act and increase from 800 to a thousand square feet remove the special permit requirements for detached units to give the message to the state that yes Andover is understands and is making the right strides. This next one is what you're talking we're talking about Leanne is the duplexes amend the ARD zone to allow as of right two to four two three or four unit structures on larger lots including design guidelines to protect the rural single family residential character. So small towns get a real bad rap because they have 90% of their town is zoned single family residential and that's all they allow on a two acre lot. For Andover, I believe it's our 60,000 square foot lot. So that's all you allow is a single family home. A 60,000 square foot lot even with Well and Septic could support a duplex or a three family or four family. Those are things that you might want to consider. For instance on a two or three plus acre lot you can allow a two family or three family because the whole idea is it becomes much more economical and more affordable if you have more units on one lot.
So that's a recommendation that you should really look into and think about doing. But of course keeping design guidelines so it looks like just a big old farmhouse or something not a typical urban two family or three family. Traditionally in towns mobile homes were always considered the low income housing for rural communities. Small towns have prohibited mobile homes. Andover is no different. You prohibit them but the latest public act 20 one-twenty nine has said that you have to treat mobile home and manufactured homes meeting the safe definition they have to be 24 feet wide or something like that. You have to treat them just like a single family home so no more can you prohibit mobile homes. So if somebody wants to put a mobile home on a lot because it's the most affordable way to do it You have to allow it just like you allow any other single family home so you need to eliminate that prohibited use section. We have one section that I believe we put in when I was there section 14.14 prd for older persons this is the 55 and older housing which are very popular in a lot of towns around you for people of 55 and older you allow it by special permit you might want to consider because this is exactly the market that's you're going to be faced with 55 and older you might want to consider adding a density bonus in exchange for a certain percentage of affordable
units you might want to consider eliminating the special permit. Not a lot it's not a lot different than a single family subdivision a little more dense but you might want but the special permit probably isn't necessary I don't think but and but then again you might want to say and you can have I think right now you allow six bedrooms per acre so that's three three units per acre that's a low density you might want to go up to you know 10 units per acre if you provide a certain number of affordable units in there too. So that's again you're heading right into the 55 and older market with the baby boomers aging and that's one that you might want to definitely consider.
You have an mixed use floating zone which was created which I wrote to incorporate an optional affordable component in exchange for higher density and a more more straightforward less risky approval process this zone is on the books already the Andover mixed use floating zone it floats over properties that that front on Route 6 so it's just along Route 6 and I think if you got some a developer that was interested in doing something more creative you should loosen up the requirements of getting this so that if they provide some affordable it's not such a complicated approval process. Right now it's a floating zone you have to go through a zone change process to apply it to the piece of land. Then you go through the special permit process to develop it. The zone change process costs a lot of money. You have to come up with a conceptual plan and whatnot. It's just a risky and difficult approval process. If you provide an affordable unit, it becomes a much easier process for those properties fronting on Room 6. We created an incentive housing zone, which was an affordable housing zone. I believe you incorporated into your plan of conservation and development. Didn't didn't adopt it into your zoning regulations so there is one on the books that that I wrote. So it's incentive housing zone which has all the criteria about satisfying the deed restrictions and whatnot and the percentages just to qualify
as an affordable development under state department of housing regulations. You might want to consider because what happened since then, since we worked on that in 2017, the limit on density was 5,000 gallons of sewage into a septic system per day. So the state Department of Health increased that to 7,500 which added to the density that was possible. So those are things that that would really help the incentive housing zone where you could get more density on those pieces that we looked at or any other piece in town that that you would want to apply that zone to. But right now again even if you adopted that zone it doesn't land anywhere. It's not on any piece of land.
So a developer would have to come in identify the piece of land and I'm working on this in the report about what a developer has to go through to get a project going and done and how much money they have to spend. That'll be in the report. But a developer would have to identify the land and then he would have to apply to planning and zoning, have a public hearing for a zone change, notify all the neighbors and say a certain percentage is going to be affordable housing and I want to apply it to this piece of land, that becomes a very risky proposition for a developer. And they're most likely not going to do that because planning and zoning can deny it for any reason. A zone change, really you have widened liberal discretion. You could deny it for just about anything.
We don't think it fits there would be would be would uphold be upheld in court because it's a legislative decision. So so what I'm saying is we should proactively rezone at least those three incentive housing zone locations using an overlay zone. So an overlay zone is a zone that floats over the piece of land. The existing zoning remains in effect so you're not taking away anybody's rights. They still have that single family zoning. But if a developer comes that that zone is already there for them to take advantage of it. So that's a way of making it as of right that they have the right to do that if they meet the requirements in the zone which are pretty lengthy. So those are the the planning and zoning recommendations. Certainly open to discussing any answering any questions you have. Like I said, the report is coming along. The report actually shows all those three locations from the incentive housing zone talks about a section in economics and finances about how difficult it is and why developers probably aren't going to come to Andover the way it is now because they need these zone changes and special permits and all these hoops that they have to go through where it's just too complicated and too risky to do anything. So if you have any questions, I'm open to them. So if you could back up one slide,
Bill. Yeah, that one. So as we look at the actions for the planning and zoning Commission, I think, you know, the first three there, certainly, you know, I was planning on doing, and I think I know how to do those. Okay.
Now the further we go down, the less I understand how to go about doing it. I, you know, amend the ARD to allow as of right two to four unit structures. I think that's a good deal on larger lots. We as a commission can probably wrestle with that. You talked about that going in on a 60,000 square foot lot probably meeting the public health codes. But I think, you know, if we were to look at somebody else's plan, maybe it was one that you wrote, Bill, it was talking about possibly reducing the size of Allot back down to 40,000 square feet. We increased it a bunch of years ago, and maybe this is even a different town, I can't remember. But they were, it was in Marlborough, I went to their brief. Okay, so they increased the size of a lot back in the 80s when expansion was going on and they were trying to limit that. Now they're looking at knocking it back down to a one acre lot, which I thought was a reasonable idea. And then maybe you have two acres or five acres or larger that you put in a two to a four unit structure or something like that. So I think I could probably get that one.
Yeah, Andover went through that same process. Andover. Andover used to have R40 and R80. 80. Yeah. We went we went to R60. With and then we allowed the cluster provision to that to cluster to smaller lots to encourage the cluster. So yeah, and that was all about density. So we were looking at how dense the R40 was allowing and what the target population was. That was all in the plan of development.
Now, when we were talking about this PRD for older persons, I thought, you know, I looked through that today, that's the first time I probably ever looked at that section in our regs. It was a very good section. I thought when it talked about six bedrooms per acre, I think it was, I thought that was a lot. I mean, most senior housing is probably one or two bedrooms, especially if you're trying to make it affordable. And I thought that was plenty generous compared to, you know, having a one house on a one and a half acre line.
No, not really, because these are much smaller units, know. Mean, these are it they're usually two bedroom that I mean the smallest septic can do is two bedroom anyways, but they're usually two the 55 and older's are usually two bedroom, but they're smaller units or you know that most 12 to 1,500 square feet per per unit. So now you're talking about two bed, you know you're talking about three units per acre. And when you think of these, don't know if you ever been to one of these 55 and older, it's much higher density. Everything is clustered together and
so it's much, much higher density than three units per acre. Yep. No, I just thought we'd have septic tank problems. Now, when a duplex goes on a lot, is that a single septic single well thing or does each unit because they're sold individually have its own septic and well.
Yeah, no, they can the septic as long as it's all one building. All units can go to one septic the one septic what you what you figure is 150 gallons per bedroom that's how you would size your septic tank so there there's plenty of room for that most septic tanks they the minimum is usually a thousand gallon septic tank. You could easily go to 1,500 gallons. Could all be in one septic system. Then the well can be a private well as long as it doesn't service more than 25 people. You could go up to even a four unit building and have one well and one septic. That's my point. If somebody had a five acre lot, right now, you only allow them to have a single family home. If they had a five acre lot with 200 feet of frontage, you can't divide it, even, well, maybe a rear lot. All you say is you can have a single family home. They could easily fit a four unit building on that and it's big enough it would probably just blend right in.
So that's my point there. Okay, and just to go back on a couple of points that we were talking about before we got onto this slide, before I forget them, You might not be aware, but the town is moving forward fairly rapidly with putting a senior center in over right behind the town hall next to the school. And I think that you would marry up very nicely with your idea of putting some senior housing over in that area.
Yeah, that would be great. That's good to hear. Good to hear. On the
staffing thing, I don't know if it's gonna make it through the budget negotiations, but I think in the budget right now is still funding for, I think it's labeled as a town planner on a very modest level of maybe four hours per week. So that's about 16 a month and that's consistent with what our long term planning group recommended a couple years ago. So I thought that was a pretty positive development towards doing this too. Definitely.
So for the record, the Board of Selectmen denied that. They did put in a single $5,000 allotment for a contract planner services. Okay. Hey, Bill. It's Eric Anderson.
Hey, Eric. Yep. I'm just listening in in the background. Good.
Got a lot of work for you guys to do. Yes, you do.
Okay. If you can go to the next slide there, Bill. And those are those are the ones in in I won't try to get smart on each of these tonight, but those all sound good, but I don't have the vision on how to go out and do them. Mixed use floating zone still a little that amorphous blob out there in the clouds that I don't really have a good understanding of. We haven't had to wrestle with it yet. And I like the thought about the incentive housing zones, how to change it, is your suggestion? Don't know, that all sounds good too. I kinda, you'll like all those, but my goodness, that's
a lot there. Well, one that I was in listening to your other presentations about the next to the. And I was extra smart when I was there that the gravel pit there. You know whenever you hear gravel you think a great septic systems so there's one on Route 6 next to shopping, which you're going to have shopping across the street if you approve that they'll ask me and I don't know. Next to on a major on a major road in town and you have a gravel, you have a gravel operation, which means you probably could get much higher density. So there's an opportunity that one could be the mixed use floating zone or incentive housing zone again, then then there was the valve
gravel pit up in the back there. I think that's off a lake road. That was always one that I looked at for 55 and older that I thought would work very well. Mean off a long Hill,
Long Hill yeah. It's off Long Hill and Bunker. Bunker, yeah. You go past the old Christmas tree farm. That's one that, know, again, when hear gravel, you think, okay, we can have more density. We can make it work. Obviously, wells are going to be no problem that close to the Hop River. So there are definitely areas that were identified in the plan of development for future development. A 55 and older is, again, it's a great thing because you're going right into that market now. 55 and older started, you know, ten, fifteen years ago and they were too soon. And so now they're starting to pick up again because the baby boomers are really starting to take off now. The nice thing about them is their private roads, They're they're very tax they're fully taxable. There's no kids. There's no cost of the town. So it's it's a little bit of economic development as well. So if you did, know, fifty fifty and you and you said at least, you know, 20% of them have to be affordable, you'd have 30,
I'm losing my math, but you'd have 40 market rate and 10 affordable units which goes a long way to achieving your 10 units in ten years goal. Okay.
Any of the other commission members have, you know, questions for Bill on the presentation here? Bill? Yep.
Hi, it's Leanne. You talked earlier about having a group to champion this whole topic And since we've covered a few things about we don't have a town planner, we used to have somebody full time in the building department, like you said, if someone came in in the middle of the afternoon and wanted information so they didn't get put off elsewhere. What would you recommend for a town this size, given those constraints that we have right now? Was it something that we could do by committee to champion this? In other words, maybe have one or two people from this commission, somebody from the Board of Selectmen, this contract person that I think Eric just referred to, would something like that be effective? And I think you also mentioned there has to be some level of confidentiality.
Yeah, I mean, you definitely could cover it under freedom information for confidential if you're talking about people's budgets and whatnot. So it's yeah I mean that that's that's always a challenge because it like I said it's it's it's so much easier to do your plan and then forget about it. So how do you make it keep it alive and that's why I make the recommendation of somebody some staff person that all of a sudden decides they really want to work hard on this and go to the committee meetings and definitely you create a committee maybe as you said selecting from different groups or you know I mean the churches are always very active and these kind of activities I don't know what you have for social services
and doing it that way and seeing where you can go with it.
Yeah, we have pretty limited social services, I used to be more active in church than I am now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was quite a bit of interest there this in kind of a project. Right. Do you have a food bank and and whatnot? Yeah. We have a food pantry. Pantry. Yeah.
And then we have a Eric, what's her what's Roberta's title? Roberta and then, of course, Kathy. She's basically the senior services
person. She's got a couple different titles to meet statutory requirements, but but she deals with everything senior related that Kathy Palazzi doesn't do. Okay.
But I thought that person, what she does lined up with one of the slides that Bill had in here for the meals on wheels, doctor's appointments, all that kind of stuff. I think she does the super job of doing that kind of stuff for us. Sure.
And again, like I said that it really when you really start looking at the demographics and thinking how it's what it's going to be like when even younger people are choosing not to have kids. So they're not having kids and the demographic is getting older and older. What are small towns going to be like in ten or fifteen years? It's a little scary. It really is. And that's why you need to focus on also trying to find some housing to bring some, keep some younger people in town so that they are there to buy up the houses that go on the market.
Any other questions for Bill? And then, you know, once we get through that, I'd like to, with Bill's help, look about the path forward that culminates in the end of June, sending the plan in so Eric doesn't have write the governor and say why we didn't do what he asked us to do there.
Well, I'd appreciate that. Bill, I had one quick question. You know, you're talking about opting out of the provisions in the current legislation that kind of automatically allow multifamily in residential areas. Can you opt out only for certain districts or do you have to opt out town wide and then add that back in? Because I mean, the only area we would really opt out would be the lake zone.
Yeah. I I think it's probably safest to opt out everything and then just go back. You know, if you opt out of everything, doesn't stop you from doing everything else. So I think it's probably we're going through that in the middle field right now and I think we have the same law firm, Heller and Sage and and they're recommending just opt out of all of it and then go back and change the change. What is palatable to you to you?
Okay, so your kind of recommendations on that would be to basically, you know, in the ARD zone overall, allow duplex, you know, and triplexes. Okay.
The the opting out is only, you're only opting out of the mandatory accessory units.
Oh, right, right, right. And since we already have for accessory units, we already allow it as of right as it's attached. And then you would suggest getting rid of the special permit for the detached. Detached.
Get rid of the special permit and you have to allow up to a thousand square feet. You only allow up to 800 right now.
Now, why would you suggest going up to a thousand?
The statute requires that you go up to a thousand.
For your so we're we have to allow up to a thousand for?
You don't opt out, you have to allow up to a thousand. If you opt out, then it's optional. Could stick with 800. But if change it as much as you can to what the public acts that it just looks like you're working in the spirit of the thing. Sure. Okay.
Okay, so if we look at, you know, one of the, I like Steve Covey books, he's retired now, but his seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the habits was begin with the end in mind by the end of June we have the plan sent in. Bill, I'm looking for help. If we were to hold a public hearing on our plan the third week in June, I'm thinking that there's going to be nothing significant come out of that public hearing that would upset the apple cart, but is that too risky to wait until the third week of June for a public hearing or am I better off doing that at the May meeting?
I think you would do it at the May just to be safe. Mean, if you definitely want to meet the deadline. You know, if you don't meet the deadline, there is no penalty. You don't meet the deadline, if you do it by August 15, the penalty is that if you apply for a grant before then, you have to send a letter in with the grant that and we are not in compliance with eight-30J. Okay. There's no real penalty.
Yep. So our next meeting is probably three weeks from now, think it's April 18. So you would expect to have the whole plan out for our review and what would we be doing under your guidance at the April meeting?
I will get you the whole final draft done with the final implementation table. And really
falls back to you guys to have your public outreach. Okay. And so my thought is, and this is for Eric and Scott, the three, I'm thinking that we should do two public meetings, one maybe one night in the evening and one on maybe Saturday morning for the public. In addition to, you know, one thought I had was, you know, invite the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance to attend those public meetings and we would do that sometime in late April, early May or do we You know, I'm looking at, I would have to take the three presentations that Bill has crafted up, meld those into one presentation that would probably take about an hour, maybe an hour and a half with questions and discussion and present that to the public, the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance. I'm concerned, it looks to me as I look through the budget stuff that the Board of Selectmen are kind of in a lull right this minute. But it will take me a couple of weeks to get a presentation ready to go before I'd be ready to get there. But Scott, do you think the Board of Selectmen could stomach listening and spending an hour to an hour and a half on this? I know their schedule,
they've been working pretty hard.
It sounds like something that we have to do, Jed. So Okay. Get this done in a timely manner. So Yep. I I
don't see that there's any way other than doing it, Jed. Okay.
And then same thing with the Board of Finance. I looked at, you know, getting ready for the budget and they are, you know, really in the thick of it all through the month of April. We could schedule something, it may be early in May. Does everybody think this needs to go to the Board of Finance? I know it's a Board of Selectment thing, I know it's a public thing. And really when we talk to the public, that's why I'm hoping to get to somebody who's interested enough and wants to be the chairperson of the housing, the affordable housing committee that we've been talking about, somebody who's got that passion. But do I need to go to the Board of Finance with this presentation?
I would say no, but I would invite them at the same time you invite the Board of Selectmen.
Okay, yep. Okay, sounds good. So anyhow, is the reason that I wanted to get everybody together and listen to Bill's third presentation tonight is because I need to start working unless Bill says, oh, I'd really like to put that together for you. But I'm the guy who, you know, I want to talk about it because it's planning a zoning plan. Bill did all the work and he's certainly much smarter than I am on that, and I would expect that he might be willing to attend and bail me out if I got into some deep water there. But, you know, I gotta be able to talk to this thing comfortably. And a lot of it I can, a couple of these actions are still a little fuzzy for me, but it's going to take me a good three weeks to get ready to put that on for somebody, I think.
I think, Ed, one of my key takeaways, and it hasn't changed since I was chair planning and zoning, is that planning and zoning has a role to play in the sense that you have the ability to craft regulations that can make things possible. Yep. In terms of proactively going out and seeking developers for affordable housing and stuff like that, that's probably out of the role of planning and zoning, you know, certainly an all volunteer organization with a very part time CEO, you know? Yep.
Yep, I see that along with you there and that's why, you know, one of my thoughts is, okay, so we go give this presentation and nobody signs up to have any passion to go off and do this housing thing. I guess we have a pretty plan that sits on the shelf for the next five years, do we have to update it? And that would be my concern is that nobody wants to take it on. There's certainly enough in this presentation tonight for planning and zoning to do that. I'm confident that I will be well employed. I got job security for the next couple of years. I'm not worried about that. But I agree with you, Eric, that it's going to have to be somebody else that goes out and works with getting the, you're finding out what it would take for the developer to be interested in coming in so that they can work with planning and zoning so that we can make the regulation support what it is that the town wants them to do and the developer wants to do.
But there's also a lot of recommendations that aren't planning and zoning that are important. And that's why I keep talking about the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance being involved. Know, I mean, it's for instance, you could apply for Community Development Block Grant program to start a housing rehabilitation program. And this one rings true to me because of my parents. They had a two story Cape Cod and they lived upstairs and one full bath upstairs and they had to redo everything and create a full bath downstairs, bring the laundry up from the basement and turn the den into a living into a bedroom all on so they could live on one floor. And that's going to happen more and more in these towns. I think there's programs out there and there's money readily available all the time under the Community Development Block Grant every year that you could establish a residential rehab program, which could go a long way to helping your low and moderate income seniors. So there is definitely more to it. Yes, planning and zoning can do other things and wait for developers, but the reality is there's
low hanging fruit that could also be achieved. And that's why I keep talking about some other committee
to really focus on this. Right. I mean, my problem, you know, from the town management perspective is I just don't have bodies to throw at these problems. I mean, I don't have staff that could take on something like that realistically, you know, which is part of the problem we have writing grants. You know, we just, we don't really have the people to do it. Not that I don't think it doesn't need to be done, you know, I agree that it does. It's just a question of how do we get the resources, you know, cause to it's not just writing a grant, it's writing a grant and then administering a program to actually do it, you know, and that's, from my perspective, that's the bigger hurdle.
Well, I keep going back to the COVID money and I hate to spend other people's money, but what do you have for COVID money?
We have right about a million bucks. However, the board of selection has basically opted to end that whole thing developing the community center. Oh, okay. And use that as development money to get the community center built. Okay. Again, important. You will need a good senior center. Yep. Yep.
Okay. So anyhow, great presentation, Bill. Didn't enjoy this one as much as the first two because the first two were interesting, informative. I learned a lot and I didn't have to do anything. This one here, you know, I read through this where I said, wow, there's some stuff that needs to be done.
Jed, any help you need, just let me know. I'm here. Yep. Okay. Very So
Jed, one of the things you could do is you could, since we're under the cap with this contract with Bill for what we've, what we could potentially get back from the state, from the small grant, you could consider hiring Bill if you wanted to carve off a couple pieces of that and, you know, write a second little contract to just carve out a couple items there and use him as the planner to help you get through that, if that helps.
Yep, I was thinking that, but I didn't want to put Bill on spot here without finding out. Graciously, you know, offered to help us out with this thing and I really appreciate that. So heard the warning shot. You
can about that a little bit, Bill. Whatever you need. And the nice thing about these small grants, Paula at the Department of Housing, I'm dealing with her and had them, and they're very easygoing. This doesn't meet a certain threshold. So they're they're very easygoing about these things. They even send you. I don't whether you got the money. They send you the money before you even spend it.
No. No. We, when you bill us, we bill them.
Yeah, but she's what she sent me the money and had them before I billed anybody before I even hired anybody. So it wasn't even reimbursable. So,
okay, it's great. Definitely was not that very easy going about it. Yeah. All right.
I have a thought. I really think that if we can increase the size that you can build the accessory apartments and to reduce the size of the required lot in order to build an accessory apartment. Those two things would make a big difference in the number of people that can build them and can make them practical. I know the neighborhood I'm in, we have three houses with accessory apartments currently. And I know that like on Wheeling Road, there was somebody who wanted to build an accessory apartment and the lot wasn't big enough for our current regulations. And if we just had allowed something like that, there'd be another accessory apartment right there. And I felt limited when we built our house that we only could do the 800 square feet for the accessory apartment. It would have been good if we could have done up to a thousand. And we built that sixteen years ago, right, I'm in laws. And now we're at the point of thinking in a few years, we may move into that accessory apartment
and have our daughter in the main house. And it would be nice to be able to have it bigger, be able to expand it. But if you wanted the thousand square feet, we could do that, add another room. It would be Yeah, a
think those are all good comments, and in fact, we're hopefully trying to wrap up a couple of things here. One is this housing plan. Two are the sign regs and three are all those other cats and dogs. And so I'm hoping to have all those done by July. Okay. And then the
opting out of the accessory apartment stuff has to be done by the end of this year. So that would be our fall project is working on the accessory apartment regulations and the opt out process. I think that's very doable too. So that'll be the next piece of that that we would put on the plate and start tackling. And like you're saying, I think, you know, there's a lot of different options here, whether it's reducing to one acre, making duplexes and add on two acres or more or something. You know, there's things we can do to make it better. Don't know that we would make it perfect, but we can make it more to incentivize people to do some of these things. But I also want to get the feeling from the town. Okay.
Have one quick question for Bill. Bill, did I hear correctly that the state has essentially prohibited towns from putting a lower limit on dwelling size?
A lower limit on dwelling size? No. Yeah. No? Okay. No. There's, you know, housing codes and things like building code, basic building code, but no. It can go real low.
Okay. Well, I wasn't wondering that. I was wondering whether, because we had dropped our minimum dwelling size in Andover down, you know, considerably. Right. I was wondering whether that's still legal. I thought that was actually it was actually illegal to set a house size now.
It's illegal to set a yeah, you you can't have a regulation that says every house in the Andover must be at least 3,000 square feet. That went to the Supreme Court. That's illegal. But you can do that just the opposite. You can say a house can't be under 500 square feet or something like that. All right.
Or there is no minimum. Yeah, there is no minimum size.
So you can't like our current regulations, we require all dwellings to be at least 500 square feet. Is that no longer legal to have that in the regs?
I think I think it it's it it falls under more under the building code and and state the state building code. Okay, 500. I don't think it's a zone. It's it's not a zoning regulation, but it the only time it was eliminated when a lot of towns had had minimum sizes of like a couple thousand square feet that were keeping. Small houses out, Right.
So that that's what was the big question. K. No. 500 square feet is fine.
Anything else? Anybody else? Well, I certainly appreciate everybody showing up for the special meeting one week after we had a fairly lengthy meeting and helping to get through this. But I do think that we have to go out and get feedback on the plan from a couple of different groups before we go to public hearing with what the plan is. So I'll start working on a presentation. When we have the public meetings, you know, went to the one in Marlborough and I don't know who gave the presentation, but it wasn't anybody from the Planning and Zoning Commission. But they did have a couple of people from the Planning and Zoning Commission sitting in there to comment, provide backup and that sort of thing. So when I go on maybe a Thursday night or a Saturday morning to do this, It would be nice to have some other support guys with me there that were interested in hearing from the public on what the public concerns are so that we as a commission, when it comes down to finalizing the thing, it's not just me being the middleman, I'm trying to express what it is that we all heard from the public that you all heard it right from those folks. So that's that little thought on that, I guess. So you all get an invite whenever it is that I go do that. I think that wraps up item number four, which was the discussion, the main event here. Item five is miscellaneous.
Anybody have anything on that? Bill, if you can stop sharing your screen so I can see all the smiling faces that are with us tonight, even though most of them are all blacked out here. I can see Anne and you. Yep, there we go. Okay, so any miscellaneous discussion?
Oh, I had a question, Jed. Did you end up approving in front of Benjamin Franklin or not? We continued
that on to the next meeting. We got an awful lot of the information on the afternoon of the meeting and I wanted to have a chance to digest all that before we acted on it. Good. So that'll be the big thing the April 18 meeting. So I'll work with you to figure out how to, no sleep studies at night for you Bill. We'll put you to sleep all on our own. No, no sleep study. The public speak. Catherine Hutchinson, do you have any comments for us? And you are muted if you are trying to say anything. Go
ahead, Jim. I have one issue. Really, it was under miscellaneous. The minutes to the last meeting, there were a lot of last names omitted because they weren't provided. If anybody can, as they read them, if they know who how to fill in the blank, you might want to just send a note off to Abby and and or or bring it to the next meeting, I guess. It's just there were a number of people that spoke who did not identify themselves fully. Any help that the Commission could offer would be appreciated. Okay, good point. That's it.
Okay, the next regularly scheduled meeting is April 18. That will be on Zoom as well. And I'll make a motion that we adjourn. Second it. Thank you, Anne. And all in favor, raise your hand. Well, I guess. I'm raising my hand. Yeah, okay. Anne Blanchard, Leanne. Aye.
Aye. Okay, that makes it unanimous. Five, zero, zero. I guess didn't formalize who was seated and who was not. Abby, for the record, you see Leanne joined us shortly after 07:00 as did Scott. So I guess that's it for tonight. We'll see everybody on the eighteenth. I'll be in touch between now and then with Bill. I guess he's dropped off the line. He's had enough there. And thank you all for joining us. Good night everybody.