Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen Regular Meeting and Budget Workshop
March 13, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
And, let's, start with the pledge of start with the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance. The flag of America and to the republic which stands one nation nation under god of liberty visible liberty and justice for all. Okay. And mister McGuire has just joined us, Adrian.
Oh, okay. Adrian, thank you for that. Sorry, everybody. I was a Ram Fall sports meeting. Now I'm home. So we did item one. Let's move on to item two, public speak. Let's in the community center, who is, in the community center? You gotta unmute.
Jeff Ballard, Grace Gastonian, and Amy Marsh. Alright. I'm gonna let's hand over community garden.
K. They're on the agenda later for the community garden. Nothing you can't, you know, so desire. Can I speak for a moment please? Sure, go ahead. Hi, is
Grace Kostanian. Good evening everybody. And the last time I was speaking with everybody, with the board, we had asked about our pickleball program and I just want to say a quick thank you to everybody on the board and to Eric for supporting our adult pickleball program. I think we've been playing for about six weeks now. We're playing on Tuesdays and Fridays from five to seven, and it's been very well attended. So, thank you so much.
Alright. Thank you very much. I'm sure Paul and Scott are representing the board incredibly well. Bill, would you like to speak?
Bill will be on in just a sec. This is Bill Warner. Sorry. I'm just going through the names. Joanne Ebert. I'm all set. Thank you. Okay. Mark Brinker. Nothing for me, Jeff. Thanks. You got it.
I'm assuming the last two phone numbers are Adrian and Dennis? I can't see, but I'll assume yes. Okay. Yes. Oh, Kathy, Mike Clauzy. I'm so sorry. Oh, I know you would never forget us, Jeff. I I try not to.
We have been seen this evening. Thank you. Alright. And Jed?
Hello? I'm just here in support of and interest of the discussion on the down planner.
Okay. All right. Item three, additions and deletions to the agenda. Any members have anything they want to add or take away?
Jeff, can I weigh in on this? Sure. What I would like to do is add under number 4B, budget workshop address items I through III. Item I would be a report by Bill Warner on the role of a town planner. I I would be a report by Jay Tuttle on roadwork planning. And I I I would be discussion of public works related to sprinkler systems. And then also number five, community garden presentation. And six a appointments, appoint Christina Harkley as the accounting associate for the finance department. So I'd like to add those items, and I would ask that you move item number four b, budget workshop, up to the top of the agenda since Bill Warner has graciously, given us his time.
In a in a point yeah. Was gonna say in the point of interest, the presentation for the community garden is on what exactly?
I think they're again asking you whether you will finance in this budget season a request so they can get started building the beds for the new gardens. Okay. Okay. Eric, do Do we need a presentation?
Well, we'll we'll we'll sit there and and and allow them, Adrian. Let's just move that through. Eric, do you have an email on those? You want me to send that to you in an email? Yeah, so I could have all the items that you want added. Sure. Alright. Anybody else have any? Anybody want to take away all the items that Eric asked to enter?
Well, we can't. Okay. No. I I I no. My I guess my my my point simply is that, you know, we shouldn't be we already have a full schedule tonight. We shouldn't be adding this much all at all at once, and, you know, that's my frustration. That's all. Just point of reference. Understood.
I don't even see where his number says he may. Did
you send that to me, Eric? I did? Okay. Okay. Eric had asked to add under item four, item four b, a report by Will Bill Warner on the role of the town planner, a report by Jay Tuttle on roadwork planning and discussions of public works related to the sprinkler systems. And he asked to add item five under item five a, community gardens committee presentation. And he asked to add 6a, appoint Christina Harkala as the accounting associate for the finance department. Okay?
That goes under six a. Alright. I'll make a motion that we add those. Anybody want to second that? I'll second it, Joe. Okay. Further discussion on that?
I realize Adrian Shoulda had shoulda had these earlier, perhaps we Yeah. Had
Understood. Anybody else? No. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. Okay.
Let's Four move on to and did we ask to move Eric asked to move a 4BI to the beginning, so Bill Warner kind of the role of the town planner. I'd like to
Can we move Bill? If we're gonna do that, let's let's move Bill and Jay to the front. So Jay is not stuck on here either. No. He's be dealing with storm stuff. So
I I I'm accepting of that. So, Bill, since you graciously are attending this meeting, we're gonna let you go first and and give us an understanding your understanding from all your years as a town planner and the value that Andover will receive.
Bill or Eric? Waiting waiting for my kids to finish the ice machine. Quiet down down there.
Understood. So first of all, I'd like to introduce Bill Warner. Bill Warner has provided the town of Andover with some awesome planning advice over the years, as well as wrote the last two plans of conservation and development. He's been a planner all his life, and he brings a wealth of knowledge to the position. He was awarded ASKME a while back to supply you more information on the proposal by Jed Larson and myself to hire a town planner. And I asked Bill to come here to answer any questions you have, so you're not getting it filtered through me, but you're hearing it directly from somebody who's a good planner. So with that, I introduce Bill Warner.
Okay, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. My background, I was the director of planning and development in Middletown for twenty five years. I was the town planner in Farmington for five years after that. And now I've been the town planner in Haddam, Connecticut for the last four years, which is pretty similar to Andover. Farmington and Middletown, obviously not so much. Eric indicated, I was the town planner in Andover part time from 2000 to 2005. In that role, I wrote the 2005 Plan of Conservation and Development, and then I was called back to write the 2015 Plan of Conservation and Development. I did your incentive housing plan, I think in 2017, which was based on a state grant that we got. I think it was $20,000 And most recently working with Jed, I wrote your affordable housing plan again using a state grant that Jed got from the state of Connecticut. So thirty four years of experience, I have a lot of experience in this role. So just quickly, I tried to think today about what Town Planner could bring to your town and what I brought to the town in 02/2005. I know when I left in 2005, people were upset that I was and my son was just born, so I just I didn't need another part time job. So I left, and I know people were upset that I was leaving.
That's the only reason I left. I was enjoying it in Andover while I also worked in Middletown. So I think there's four points that are important to bring up for a town planner, which could really benefit the town of Andover. The first is probably the hardest to explain, And it's about consistency. It's about establishing a vision for the town of what you want to accomplish in the town. And then having the person, the point person there that is constantly moving in that direction. Whether it's a development that comes in and trying to get an improvement from that development, which will support your other plans, or whether it's applying for grants to implement some of the plans, it's really important that you show that there's a consistent person in your land use department that is pursuing that. Because in Andover land use is, I'm sure a big issue. Land use tying things together, sidewalks, the Hop River Trail, you know, new development, trying to bring in development to service people of Andover. It's all a big deal. And I think that Andover, just like pretty much all small towns, one of the things you're really going to have to deal with is the aging population. So we know that the AARP has said that the aging population, people, baby boomers are very interested in aging in place. 80% of them want to just age in place. They just want to grow old in Andover.
You also know that college kids are leaving and not coming back record paces in Andover and all small towns. And so how do you deal with that really interesting dynamic, which we've been saying in your plans of development for years that the aging of the baby boom population is going to be a big issue. So how do you service that population? How do you make it comfortable for those people? And we addressed a lot of that in the affordable housing plan and how to do that. And I think from looking at the picture, a lot of us are baby boomers, and a lot of us can think about, okay, how are we going to downsize? You know, do we need do we would we need a ramp in the future? Do we have two level house where we'd really like to live on one level? Is the washer and dryer in the basement? So all of those things have to be addressed, and all of its things should be addressed. A planner is the one that would bring the ideas to start to establish that stuff, again, that I outlined in the affordable housing plan. So it's creating that consistent vision of what Andover should be, and sticking by it, and going for the long run. I know Jed said it's a marathon, not a sprint. And that is so very true. I learned that in Middletown
for twenty five years, the revitalization of Downtown Middletown literally took twenty five years. It was a very, very long process from pretty much the bottom to now one of the most vital downtowns in Connecticut, for sure. But it took us close twenty five years. So it's a long, slow process. So that's the consistency in vision. In Andover, some examples next to you that you know of is Hebron, Connecticut. Hebron, Connecticut, if you think of Route 66, improvement. I've seen great improvement on Route 66 in terms of the facades and the sidewalks, connecting things together. And that is a plan that Mike O'Leary came up with many, many years ago, and he was in the town of Hebron for at least twenty five years
that I think. And having him there constantly, every time a development came in and said, this is what we want to do. We want to build a sidewalk here to connect to this one. We want to have this kind of signage. We want to have do these kinds of things. So that was putting forward the vision of what Hebron and Route 66 should look like. And that really wouldn't have happened if Mike O'Leary wasn't there pushing that and that every time. The other one is Marlborough. Marlboro, Peter Hughes has been there for over twenty years and has just done a great job with the infrastructure and the sewers and the development that has occurred there. And Peter Hughes is a critical employee in Marlboro, he's constantly pushing for the good of Marlborough. Certainly I know Eric does great work there, but there's a lot to do when you're the town administrator. There's more than enough work for a town administrator and a town planner. So that first one is communicating, convincing the public, getting buy in for what you're trying to accomplish, and moving forward with that consistency, and the vision of what you're trying to accomplish. So that's the first one. The second one is plan review.
More nuts and bolts, but I know you just had an example with Dollar General. The Dollar General is the developer of Dollar General, and the development team classically comes in with the bare minimum and to see what they can get. Just after you finished your Dollar General, I started at Dollar General with the same developer and the same engineers in Haddon. And what we did in Haddon is we fought Dollar General. We didn't go to court. It would end up being unanimously approved, but kept pushing back to get more and more and more. So what we ended up with is a Dollar General, is a very well done Dollar General. I think it's the best Dollar General I could find. So it's a, it has a barn style look, a full roof. It has a 12 over 12 pitch. It has dormers. It has very heavy landscaping, very nice signage, very nice lighting, and it is going to be a very, very attractive Dollar General. And that wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a planner pushing for that. If it was just the Commission, the Commission doesn't have the level of experience, the knowledge to push for things. Those aren't things that were required in your zoning regulations. How it happens is you start early on working with the developer. They come in before it ever gets to planning and zoning and have discussions with the planner. So you start early on talking to the developer. We really like a barn type style. So that was on Route 81 in Haddon. And we went up and down 81, and we counted eight red bars
with 12 over 12 pitched roofs and a very distinctive look. And they came in with a flat roof Dollar General in a very non commercial area, but it was a commercial zone historically. So we worked with them and we got, I think, very nice plan that was controversial because there was a group of people that did not want a Dollar General in their neighborhood. We had about fifty, sixty people there. But pretty much the consensus of the people is we don't want Dollar General. Sure, it's a nice looking building, but we don't want Dollar General. So that is very important. Think of the impact that Dollar General is going to have on Route 6 in your quarter, and what it's going to say about your town when they go by town of Andover, and then your Dollar General. I have no idea what your Dollar General looks like, or what was, how it turned out. I just know you had to deal with one too. So the planner is very important for plan review, making sure it meets all the requirements, making sure all the different agencies have reviewed it and seen it, making sure it meets all the legal requirements. But also important is making sure it meets the architectural detail that is consistent with your town. And you will get that if you push for that, because delaying it and going to court is time and money, and the developer doesn't want to deal with time and money any more than the town of Andover does. So you can get a lot out of developers to make it fit well into your town. So that's very important for planners.
The third one is writing plans. As I indicated, I wrote your incentive housing plan, I wrote your affordable housing plan, and I wrote two plans of conservation and development. The plans of conservation and development are required. You have to update them every ten years. So in 2025, you're going to have to update your plan of conservation and development. You're a small town. If you brought in one of these larger consulting firms to do your plan of conservation and development, I guarantee you, you'd have to budget for at least $50,000 and probably more if you want to do a full blown plan of conservation and development. There's no reason, and I've written two plans of conservation, and it's not just small town. I wrote two plans of conservation and development in Middletown. Both were unanimously approved. I wrote the Farmington Plan of Conservation and Development. It was unanimously
approved. And those three plans saved tremendous amounts of money because I wrote them in house. I spent maybe 10,000 or $15,000 having mapping done and copying and whatnot, but the staff person can write the plan of conservation and development. And I have advocated throughout my career that it should be the staff person. You shouldn't go hire out of town consultants who 've never been in Andover to come to Andover and write a vision for your town. It really is up to the planner, the one that's learning your town, that understands your town, and the Planning and Zoning Commission to really say, this is what we want in the town. There's no reason you need to bring in big money and big guns to write expensive plans of conservation and development. Affordable housing plans aren't required. You're required to have an affordable housing plan. You're required to update it in five years. So even sooner that you're going to have to do that. So those are probably going to end up being in the same category as the plan of conservation and development. Plan of conservation and development, if it's not up to date, the stick that they have, the state uses, is you can't get grants from the state if your plan is not up to date. I would imagine in the next year or two, they're going to change the statute to require you to have an affordable housing plan. And if you don't have one, you're going to have to, and you're not going to be eligible for state grants. So that's another one that you're going to need somebody to write these plans for you. And
person your is more than capable of doing it and certainly could do that. So that alone would be a big cost saving. So the first one is really creating vision for the town. The second one is really making sure that private development reflects the image of the town that you want to reflect. As I said in Haddam, the image was a rural community, had the barn look, and it came out really nice. And then writing the plan saves you a lot of money, rather than hiring consulting firms to do that. The fourth one is, I was watching on your website the UConn presentation of the landscape architecture students doing different ideas of what ideas they had for the town of Andover. Really great work. A lot of the stuff was stuff that we have talked about previously in plans of conservation and development, on pieces of land that the town owns, and what could be done with them. And really, you know, that's great. And we come up with all these ideas, and ideas are great. But the rubber hits the road when you need implementation, and you really have to come up with funding. So the funding is how you implement these things. So let's say you had a piece of land in town that you decided you wanted to develop. You wanted to go on to RFP and develop it. That's something a planner would do. A planner would put together the RFP, advertise the RFP, come up with the elements of the RFP, what they wanted, and how this land could be used, and then shop it out to the development community. So that's something that a planner would also do to bring in new development to your town, which could have significant
fiscal impacts on your town and be very positive for your town. So all of those ideas that the UConn students came up with, there might be one there that's a real gem that you might want to pursue. You would need the town planner to really put it together and really start pursuing it and deciding what has to be done, addressing the nuts and bolts of it, the well, the septic, the details that need to be addressed before you put out the RFP and start dealing with developers. So that's very important. The final one is the one that small towns always look to is grants. How can we get other people's money to do this stuff? And I think I provided you with what I've done in Haddam. And in Hadam, in four years, I brought in four, almost, I think it was over $4,000,000 in grants. We're using those grants to build sidewalks, to clean up contaminated properties, and to do all kinds of different things, even to build a community septic system, because we have a real challenge with community septic systems in our downtown.
So that's getting the grants for what you want to accomplish. So you create the consistent vision of this is what we want to accomplish. And then you go out and you take that and you advertise that to find developers and to find money for it. How you find money is you tell the state agencies that you have a plan that everybody's on board with and you need money to implement it. It is not hard at all to get state money if you have any experience in writing these grants. Right now, available now, you could be filling out applications now for a community connectivity grant. That's through the DOT that's connecting areas together, building sidewalks, building bike paths, some other connections to the Hop River Trail that you want to make. That's a community connectivity grant. They love giving these grants to communities that haven't taken advantage of them. So that's a good grant for you. That's up to $500,000 All you have to do is the design, the engineering design. You do not have to build it, pay for any of the construction. Construction is fully covered. Another one is the Connecticut Community Challenge Grant, which is a minimum of a million dollar
grant. More challenging. They look for developers and jobs, but if you had a developer that was interested in doing something, you could apply for a community challenge grant. I am applying for a community challenge grant to build a senior center. I know you're working on one to build a senior center in a school that we acquired from the regional school district, put in a school, a generator, connect the school to the downtown for the seniors. So I'm working on that for a community challenge grant of a million dollars. Another one that's out right now are Brownfield grants. You don't have a lot of Brownfield grants in your town, but I know down near where the public works garage was, I think there's some history of contamination there. That's an opportunity right there for you to get $225,000 of assessment grants to look around and see if you have any of these issues that you need to deal with, that you want to deal with, that open development opportunities. So you could do you could get one, and you could do a study on that with your $225,000 assessment grant, and come up with a whole plan of how you want to redevelop this, how you want the public works garage to look, how you want access for this, how you want to move maybe something away from the Hop River, how you want to work with that, all under that Brownfield Assessment Study. Those are due in June, I believe. So those are out there right now, too. The final one is the TRIP grant Eric might know about. This is the Transportation Rural Improvement
Program, brand new grant program through the DOT. I think Prague has maybe 50 towns in it, in their region. You're in the Capital Region Council Governments. I think you have 50 or 60 towns. You are one of eight towns that are eligible for this grant, from the trip grant. So only you and seven other towns are eligible for this. This is, again, a great grant for rural communities, of which you are one. We know that DOT likes to give a grant to each council of government. So your chances of getting one are probably pretty good. It depends on what your other rural towns, the other real small towns in Andover are doing, and how you put that together. But that's another great opportunity for you to do some road improvements, or any type of transportation improvement, including sidewalks. In Haddam, we're applying for $795,000 to actually on Route 154 Sabre Road, we have very old sidewalks that the DOT never maintained, that the town never maintained either because they were the DOTs. So they're falling apart. So we're going to rip all those up almost a mile and a half and replace them. Now, we just finished a section, 3,000 feet of it, with a connectivity grant.
So we just finished that, and now we're going go into with the trip grant to complete the whole core row of sidewalks there. So those are grants that are out available right now that your planner could be applying for and putting together arguments for, and talk to state agencies and get. Like I said, they love towns that haven't taken advantage of them. They like giving money new towns that have new projects. So that's another opportunity. So there's a lot of opportunities that a planner could bring to the town that could be cost saving, that could bring money to the town, but also could deal with all the nuts and bolts stuff that planning and zoning has to deal with. The state is there's another big legislative push for affordable housing. And each time this push, mandate things on the towns. You must change this. You must change that. And those are all changes that you have to do and that you have to keep up with. And you really can't just ask volunteers to be doing all this stuff. So I would strongly encourage you to think long and hard about creating some funding for a planning position. And that's all I have. Thank you, Bill. Sure.
That's quite a bit more than we had to start with, so thank you. Do,
any of the members of the board have any questions for Bill?
No. I mean, I will say that, I personally was not aware of how involved the planner would be in the grant process, so that's an interesting take. And I think it certainly makes it easier to go to the public and ask them to fund this, you know, if they can see that they're getting value back for their dollar, you know, whether it's in grants or what have you. So, I think that, you know, Jed's point though, that it's a long term thing is extremely valid. I mean, I've seen it in Wyndham where I came from, you know, they're thirty, thirty five plus years, same thing. And, but if you drive down through Wyndham now,
and I can tell you as a taxpayer in Wyndham also, my taxes went down, you know, not not because of a reevaluation, but because they literally have brought in so much revenue from businesses. It's bring slowly bringing down the taxes. So it's been pretty amazing, you know.
Bill, from your standpoint, from the size of our town and actually having some experience with us, how many hours do you think a planner would need to invest in our town?
Well, what I was doing when I was there from 2000, 2005 is not a lot of hours. I was going there on I believe Monday afternoons. I would leave Middletown with their permission at two So I would get there around 02:30 or three And then I would stay till seven I think then you were open until seven or Mondays or Thursdays or something like that. And you were open until late. And I would stay there and, you know, sign off on the applications and do the things that needed to be done, prepare for the different meetings that I attended. I attended Planning and Zoning, Zoning Board of Appeals, and then the others that I was asked to attend. And then on Saturdays, I would go in for a half a day. So I would go in and get around there at 09:00 and stay till noon. Do any you know, the whole other thing was zoning enforcement. At that time, I was doing zoning enforcement as well. So that was dealing with the guy that had a kennel, who the other the neighbor was screaming about. All these other different types of things, the junk cars, and things like that. So those are all things that planners certainly can do too. You know, we're trying to do that stuff and write cease and desist letters and whatnot. So those are things that could be done too. So I would say ten to twenty hours probably is
more than enough. One full day is probably enough. And you know, I mean, nowadays, nowadays, if you get a good person, the person is working far more than what you're paying them for. Really, the way it works is you're doing a grant, you get into the grant, and you're writing it, you're writing it, you're writing it, you're, you find out, you just find yourself, at least I do, find myself staying up all night finishing the grant, getting it done. So, you know, I think ten to twenty hours is a good start. And if the planner is doing what they're supposed to be doing, they're going to be creating more and more hours for themselves, cause you're going to want it. So when do you want to start Bill?
I, I I I'm not available. In a year I am going to be walking the Appalachian Trail, so.
You're doing the you're doing the AT end to end?
Yes. April 1. That's really neat. April 1. I just told I just told him. We will be rooting for you. It's quite a show. Thank you. All right, maybe back in a month. Who knows? Good luck. Only 25% of the people make it, so.
Okay. Do you the one thing I see as some of it as a challenge to us with a planner, There's always been this sort of divide because of the rail trail almost cuts in in Route 6 between the two. They almost cut the town in half, you know? And I think merging that is is something that I think we struggle with, how to bring that, you know, cohesiveness together, you know?
Yeah, I mean, think the DOT, there are actually statutes and laws that say the DOT should be encouraging how to slow traffic down. I one of the landscape architects students proposed the rotary. There are definitely ways to narrow, narrow the roads in certain areas, right, right near the library and the church. I think that is just a logical place to create a connection, a safe pedestrian crossing there. And it really comes down to more activity on the street. It's going to slow down traffic. Right now, if there's not