Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting
December 19, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
I'd call the public hearing to order. And first off, I'd like like to welcome Anne Marie to the Commission and for joining us. And the first section will be a public hearing. And any of the Commission members are able to ask questions as we go through the topics during the public hearing. Once we actually get to the regular meeting and start deliberation, only those commission members that are actually seated, the five commission members, will be able to deliberate on the different articles. So feel free to ask away as we're going through this. Most of the articles that we're talking about we've been working on for quite a while, so I know you're at a little bit of a disadvantage there. But we'll try and explain what they're about as we go through. I'm looking to see if we had anybody from the public join us tonight. And so far, I don't see anybody from the public there. So I guess the exciting questions on lighting of the athletic fields, that was last meeting we went through and that will no interest tonight. But at this point, Marina, if you can allow me to share my screen, I'll call up the other regulation changes and we'll work our way through those. And I think they'll be a little quicker than what we had in the past. Okay. Can everybody see the section five for the ARD? Yes.
Okay, very good. So Eric asked for a couple of changes on behalf of the town, and I put in a couple of changes just to make them consistent with what we've done a couple of changes in the past. But I'm going to go through what's different on section five here now. And so the first change, we talked about accessory apartments. And I added the word subject to affordable housing restrictions because by right, we're going to have accessory apartments if they're deemed affordable. And so I put that in the list here. Going down to home occupations, I specified as of right, those not requiring a special permit, and referred you back to the home occupation section. And then the change that Eric is asking for is really a change that's provided to us by the state. They say everybody's going to go do this. And that's to have as of right in the
residential areas the ability to establish a family day care home or a group child care home, which is really small daycare centers. So I think if memory serves me correctly, a family daycare center is six kids or fewer, and that includes any kids that the daycare center operator has, then the group childcare center goes up to 12. But the state told us to put those changes in, and so that's why those are here. So, at this point, I'll ask if there are any questions on the changes to as of right in the ARD area. Okay. The next section includes what we had for special permit uses. And I added the word kennels down here. So I thought if anybody was going to put a kennel in a residential area, we would want that to come before the Commission and have a public hearing associated with it to get input from the neighbors. So I added kennels. If you remember back when we
had the discussion on Scott Beebe's kennel application, we didn't hold a public hearing because there's a couple of places where it's not clear whether a public hearing was needed or not for Class A kennel. We processed that application because he had a huge field that he was working in. But going forward, said, I think anybody who is going to be a neighbor to a kennel might want to have a say on that. So I added the word kennel there. The other thing we did is I left child care centers in here. And again, when we put the definition in the definition section, so a child care center for a special permit is a child care center that has more than 12 kids. So it's larger child care center. And we thought if we were going to be more than what the state was telling us, had to allow as of right, that would be by special permit. And so I left that in there as opposed to eliminating it where that would be the case where we'd only allow the small child care centers. Then at the end here, I added
by special permit accessory apartments not subject to affordable housing restrictions and also added home occupations requiring a special permit in reference back to the article on those. So those are the changes in Section five. Any questions on the special permit? Things.
Chad, if you have an accessory apartment but you don't want it to fall under affordable housing, you would have to apply through a special permit. Right? That's correct. Okay.
Yep. And I don't know if that means everybody's going to be just doing the special permit or not, but at least we're building the regulations to support affordable housing if we can properly incentivize people to go there. I don't know that we've got that incentive starting out, but our regulations will support it if and when we get there. Okay, I am going to move on to Section 7, which is the Lake District. Similar to what we did in Section 5 back last January when we were talking about the municipal buildings, we put house of worships and cemeteries is as of right categories. I don't think anybody's going to be building a cemetery in the Lake District As I'm thinking about the House of Worship, I'm trying to recall. I think we did change it. No, we've got house of worship or cemeteries special permit. So that would be a change. I would like to put the house of worship and a cemetery into the special permit category, take it out of there. So that's a mistake on my part. If people feel strongly that it should be there, we can leave it there.
It dawned on me that I think we're asking a couple of houses of worship to put in special permits for some properties that are being used as churches and temples. So we should be consistent with that here. So I'll take care of that unless somebody on the commission feels strongly that we should be including that there. I put in the family daycare home, group daycare home, just like we did in section five. That was based on, again, the state told us that's what they wanted for residential areas. I added just to be consistent with Section five, and I think it was a good idea that we list all the as of right things and all the special permit uses.
So I added home occupations not requiring special permits and accessory apartments subject to affordable housing restrictions. And also here, I put C section 4.111 Charlie, which talks about the minimum lot size in Lake District to have an accessory apartment is, I think, 2.75 acres. So that restriction remains in effect even though it's not spelled out right here. If you go back and look in this section, that's what it tells you. So any question on the as of rate uses in the Lake District? Okay, moving down to the special permit. Added municipal land uses similar to what we did in Section five back in January. I just didn't want to do any more changes than was necessary to get that changed through back then. Added public parks, playgrounds, athletic fields, and beaches, similar to what we did in Section five. And added the home occupations requiring special permits and accessory apartments not subject to affordable housing restrictions. Again, I will add the houses of worship and cemeteries in the special permit section. So any questions on the special permit? Thanks. Okay, very good. I thought that was kind of straightforward. Next, we're going to talk about Chapter 15 signs. Again, these are changes that were requested by the town.
The first was a change to the definition well, not the definition of a billboard, but right this minute, billboards are prohibited. Towns ask that we allow billboards where specifically authorized by the Board of Selectmen on town owned property. I'm not completely sold on this idea yet. My concern goes back to what we saw during the pandemic with all the signs along the road that Sometimes you like signs, sometimes you don't. I'm not sure that the Board of Selectmen can specifically choose to authorize signs. I think when we went through the change that we did most recently, if somebody wants to put up a sign and you're allowed to put up a sign for one thing, you have to be able to put up a sign for anything. We are not allowed to regulate the content. And so that caused me a little bit of concern there. In addition, I didn't understand exactly how the process was going to work as far as when somebody wants a sign, who's going to make the sign, what's going to standard be, who decides what kind of sign is appropriate for putting around the park. If the Commission thinks that this is something that we should do, and I'm going to be relying heavily on input from Scott and Ann because
you two are on the board of Selectman, the body that was asking for this change. We might be able to do something that specifically limits the signs to the fence around the soccer field or something if that's where it was planned to go. You know, I don't think we would want to put the regulation in effect that somebody could put a billboard sign up on the town property on the corner of Lake Road and Route 6, for instance.
Just to clarify, Jed, the signs that we're talking about here were signs down at the soccer field along defense line, where the selectmen thought that it would be good to have, to be able to have the people that are involved with the, the usage of that field to be able to put their, their signs up. They were told previously that there was no regulation for them to put their signs up. So we're trying to make it so that they could put their signs up on field, on the field fence during the season.
Okay. And and we could we could restrict the wording on that when we get to deliberation to, you know, further restrict it there. Again, my concern is that if we're selling sign space, there might be some folks putting up signs that we're not keen to have posted. And I don't know that we could stop them from doing that. I don't know that we could stop the Board of Selectmen from not authorizing them. So we'll deliberate that. But that was my concern, and I wanted to make sure that was on the record so that when we vote eventually on the record, that concern can be taken into consideration. The other change that the town was looking for in we wanted to add public interest signs that were erected as approved by the Board of Selectmen. A quantity right now, if you read our regulations, the quantity would be understood to be one. You know, we talked about banners over at the school where there's a significantly larger quantity. I think that's the right answer. I think the Board of Selectmen can do that within their purview and not be in any freedom of speech issues or whatever. That's that. The height, again, my sense is that the banners over at the school are at an appropriate height. And right now, that's higher than 12 feet, which I think our regulation limits it to either 10 feet or 12 feet, something like that. The town was also asking to increase the size
from 16 square feet to 32 square feet. I think that's reasonable. There was some concern that the sign that we had approved for putting on the senior center was a little too small at 16 square feet. I don't know that it needs to be 32 square feet, but that gives the Board of Selectmen the latitude to go up to that make that call. We got a little feedback from our attorney on, I think, the original words in here with the concurrence or something of the Board of Education, we weren't going to put any signs at the elementary school without the concurrence of the Board of Education. And Attorney Branch's concern there was we were advocating our responsibility as a zoning commission to another entity, and we shouldn't do that. Certainly, we would be working closely with the Board of Education. We're not going to put signs up over there that they don't want. But we changed it to prior notification of the Board of Education or their designee, which could be the principal if they so choose.
Hey, Jed. Yes, Steve. Question. On this section, it says the town of Andover may elect public interest signs, you know, up to 32 square feet. So wouldn't that cover what they need at the soccer fields? Each individual So sign could be four by
I don't think an advertising sign is a public interest sign. All right. Fair enough. And so it is covered that way. And again, the definition of a billboard talks about any time you're advertising something off the premises of the thing, like advertising Andover Pizza at the soccer field, it calls that a billboard. And right now, billboards are prohibited. Got it. Okay. So they're putting that change in there to get around that. Thank you.
Any other questions on the sign thing here? Okay, we talked about the parking modifications last time. The last thing on the list is definitions. Architectural plans, that was a definition that I'm pretty sure I got from Attorney Branch. I had a definition of architectural plans. And he said, no, those are really floor plans. Architectural plans are more detailed. And so we changed in the section on accessory apartments to require floor plans. And I think that has the detail that we're looking for in that. So architectural plans are discussed a couple of other places, and we have the more detailed requirements for that. Floor plans is what we were looking for for the accessory apartments. Child care center each of the definitions here on child care center, family day care home, group day care home are essentially exactly the same. And so one of my concerns was they didn't tell us what we needed to know. The limit of six, the limit of 12, or greater than 12. Attorney Branch's concern was that
if we put specific numbers in there and we don't reference back to the Connecticut general statute and they change the general statute, then our definitions are out of whack with the Connecticut general statutes. I could live with that because I thought that in that rare occasion that we might get a application for a child care center of some description there, we could ask Jim to look it up and he would tell us what the numbers are now. Or I could look it up. Any of us could look it up. So I went with what our attorney recommended with respect to those. The last definition is
lot frontage. We've been trying to get this in our definition sections for a while. It's very slightly different from what we had talked about months ago when Eric Jim and I and Mark Branch got together to go through the changes to make sure that I understood what we were talking about before we had the public hearing. We tweaked down the words just a little bit here. The distance along a public street that either exists concurrently as proposed as part of subdivision, that's the same as before. We tweaked down the words frontage may include distance along the street on sides of the lot that are adjacent to each other. And we don't that's a minor change from what we had before, but we thought that ended up being a little bit clearer. So anyhow,
yes, you have I have a concern about that definition. Okay. It doesn't speak to the fact that it has to be a straight line or contiguous. I mean, peep people make horseshoe lots or have. Yep. And they they could use the frontage on on both sides, two different lengths of frontage. And quite frankly, the regulations just aren't set up to accommodate that elsewhere.
Thought that the second sentence included that, you know, and again, I'm not
Yeah. Well, I'd like to talk about that also, Jed. Go ahead, Scott. Yep. I'm not sure that I understand even what that says. Say, what if it's on a corner and it's, the a street and B Street, if there's a 100 feet on either street, then it's
That is what regulation? Yep. That's what that says. That's what that's intended to mean. What I didn't want to have happened, if there was a lot with a, and I think the term is through lot, but a lot that has a street on the front boundary and a street on the back boundary and 100 feet on each, I didn't want to call that 200 feet of frontage, but if a guy had a corner lot, I thought that 200 feet of frontage, if it was a 100 to a 100 would be okay.
Maybe you could say, I. E, two different streets or some clarify it in some way. I didn't know what that meant while we talked It about
isn't clear to me either, quite honestly. I'm sure I read it before. Didn't mention it, but now that I'm looking at it, it's not clear.
Okay. Well, we'll hold that thought till we deliberate on it. You understand what we're trying to do. Yep. And And if we need to make those words clear, we can certainly do that. Somebody mentioned, I can't tell if it's a straight line or what. And I intentionally went with distance along the public street. And if you remember back on the Pine Ridge subdivision that we did, Those guys did not have 50 foot straight line across. But if we measured the distance along the street, they had the 50 feet. And so we did that there, and I wanted to make our definition consistent with what we did there. That's what they used for their frontage?
They did. They used distance along the street. And we had talked about that at the time and thought that was a reasonable approach to take. So, any other questions on the lot frontage definition? That definition has been three years in the making. Has been. We can get it over the finish line this time. And certainly, I'm not married to any of the words. If there's a better way to say it, or if we don't want to include the adjacent the corner lot scenario, I could put in such as is seen in the corner lot or something. But hopefully everybody understands what it is that the words are trying to say here.
If we want to change the words, we can. If we want to make them you know, clearer, we can do that.
Well, that sentence that sentence could be, if if you add what you just said as in a corner lot, so clarify exactly what you're saying, because you're, you're, you're talking about something very specific there. So as in a corner lot, but then if you have, which front had gone two roads, you know, one's the front and one's the back, I don't think that that's right frontage.
Okay. Yes. I think that's why you said adjacent, right? Yes.
That's the reason for adjacent. And I can put, I'll just, I can add the words in there as in a corner lot.
I have a question about that, too. I'm not muted. We had that situation on Hendee where you said there wasn't enough frontage because there was a town owned drip of land there. Now that's not considered public street because it's the town owned land. Is that
That is correct. That's correct. Yeah, that is correct. They did not have frontage because the town owned the frontage. The town had frontage, the property owner did not in that particular case. Now, he could have gone back and tried to buy that piece of property or he had frontage on the other side of the house, but he didn't want to consider it that way. He wanted to break off that lot to the one side of the house that he didn't have frontage on. And so, we could not allow in that particular case taking a lot that met the regulations
and transforming it into a lot that didn't meet the regulations.
I I still have a problem with the town owned that strip. It seems like the town owns the street, so the town owns the land and it seems like the same thing. They had the frontage along that town owned strip of land, it would be the same as the street. Yep,
I understand. But they also had adequate frontage the way the lot was currently configured, and they wanted to change it. So, you know, I don't want to go That was not the easiest decision that we had to work our way through. And that's why I was trying to come up with a definition of frontage to put in here because we didn't have one then. And
That messes why we have this right now. Yep. Mhmm. So.
Okay. I think from a public hearing perspective, that concludes all the changes that we were looking to make. Did we cover the lighting?
We did cover the lighting. We did that last meeting. Oh, okay, last meeting. Yep, and
we will be able to deliberate that. We covered that extensively last time. I do expect there to be quite a bit of discussion as we work our way through that this time. But Okay. Yep. So, I think we're done. Eric, have we satisfied your desire to cover all the things that we were talking about changing?
So from my perspective, yes, I don't have any more commentary other than, the town, I think, would be willing to drop the changes to section four as they relate to lighting and only go with the our request our lighting requests, specific to lighting if that makes sense.
Okay, yep. So and again, here's the section four. And these were all the things that were all the things that you talked about low levels of lighting on the adjacent properties and dark sky compliant and not being able to see the actual light and that sort of thing. And I think that I appreciate the town wanting to pull that request. Then we won't talk about that one anymore. We'll just talk we'll spend our time on the other. Any other information that anybody has or wants to make sure are included in the public record before we close the public hearing? What exactly, Eric, are you pulling?
The request for the modification that's in yellow. Yeah, this here, this line. Oh, okay.
So what that would require the town do if they want to put lighting there is they would have to dark sky compatible, make sure that it's a shielded light source not seen from the adjacent properties and not a hazard to the drivers. And lighting at the property line shall not exceed 0.2 lumens per square foot. Those things were that the town was asking exemption for. And I think Eric's concluded that they would be able to comply with those requirements. Very good.
Okay. So if there are no further questions or comments, I will close the public hearing at 07:30 Deb, can you hear me? Yes. Is that Leanne? Yes. Okay. Yep.
I I tried once again to sign in to the meeting on time with the agenda posted that I see on the town website, and it was the incorrect one. When did you get that information? Today? This evening? Yes.
Okay. I mean, I came in through the calendar. Yeah. And it was fine. And it should be the same instructions are on the agenda.
No. I I think, Ann Marie's right. I tried it through the agenda also, but then I noticed that there was a supplemental email that had the correct information. So I use that.
But the supplemental email said that was gonna be corrected on the website on the town website, which I would assume would include the agenda itself, which is how I went in, not through the calendar.
I was told I mean, I had asked for that that change to be made, and I I was led to believe it had been. I I did not check the agenda. I did verify that the calendar worked.
Yeah. I've got the agenda here. It's got the correct one. Printed this tonight.
You print that off from the website, or did you print that off from the email that got sent out with an updated agenda? I got printed from the email. Yeah. Okay. That's why it's correct. Yes. Leanne is undoubtedly correct in her statement that on the website, if you go to the agenda, it still has the wrong information. And when I said we were somebody had commented how smoothly we getting on tonight. I said it wasn't because we weren't working on it yesterday to try and make it that way. And that was one that slipped through the cracks. Apologize, Leanne. We got it fixed a couple of different ways, but the way you tried was not fixed.
Okay. Well, again, it specifically says it's going to appear on the town website. It doesn't direct anyone to the agenda or the calendar or one but not the other. So if this happens again next month I'll have to try even earlier and try to remember to go into the calendar in case this happens for the third month in a row. Since I wasn't on the beginning of the meeting, can you tell me quickly what was done about accessory apartments?
We did not discuss accessory apartments today. We covered that last month in the public hearing, and we will cover it again in deliberation when we go through it. So we did not discuss the accessory apartments tonight. Okay, fine.
Okay. So, going back, I closed the public hearing. I think if I recall, it was 07:34. Is that correct, Marina? And Marina, you're muted. We've got it on the tape what time I closed it. I'll open the regular meeting at 07:38. I'll call the regular planning and zoning meeting to order. First up on the agenda is roll call and seating of alternates. I see that the entire commission is present, Anne Cremay, Scott Prasan, Leigh Ann Hutchinson, Steve Nelson, and myself. So Susan and Anne Marie, you will not be seated as alternates tonight. Additions or changes to the agenda? I have none. Does anybody have any additions or changes that they would like to propose? Okay. Hearing none, we'll move on. Any public comment? And I hope that there's not a lot of folks that found themselves in a situation similar to Leanne. I do know that the public that attended the last meeting all got on through the calendar. And so when they wanted to make it there, they did. So moving on to new business, there is none. We'll go to old business, discussing the application of the town of Andover for various text amendments. I do plan to go just a little bit out of order here. I want to get to section five and section seven first
because those are sections that Eric's got a commitment to the state to answer about our regulations supporting what they've asked to do. I will go back to Section five And I will make a motion to approve Section five as it is shown here. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on that particular section of our regulations? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. LeeAnne? Leanne, you're on mute, I think. Oh, yes. Sorry. Yes, aye.
Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion to amend section five passes five-zero-zero. Moving on to Section seven, I will make a motion to approve these regulations as presented with the exception of moving the houses of worship in cemeteries from a permitted use to a special permit use. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye. Steve? Aye.
And I vote aye as well. The proposed changes to Section seven is amended by moving the House of Worship and Cemetery Special Permit are approved. Okay, next up is Chapter 15, Signs. I will make a motion to approve the changes as shown. Second doesn't mean we won't have discussion on it after we have the motion to approve it. So I'm looking for a second. I second that, Jim. Okay. Thanks, Scott. Any discussion on the changes as listed here?
The billboard section, I thought we were going to look at alternatives to that for the Board of Selectmen.
Well, I didn't want to look at that in the public hearing part. I wanted do that in the deliberation section. I expressed my concern about it in the public hearing part, just to be on the record there. I've kind of said what I think. I'm interested in what the Commission thinks, especially Anne and Scott, who are on the Board of Selectmen as well. What do we think about putting up signs, billboard signs along the fence at the soccer field? Is that something that we think we should be doing? Is that something that we don't think we should be doing? And if we do think we should be doing it, should we put more restrictions in place that would limit it specifically to the soccer field?
I tend to think we need to limit it to the fence on the soccer field. I mean, I'm okay with that because that's a pretty common thing to have signs along the edge of a field or a hockey rink or that kind of thing. So I'm fine with the sign that is that we need to specify that it's there, not just town owned property. Would
we be happy with political signs going up at the soccer field? No.
And do we think that we can prevent political signs from going up at the soccer field?
Jed, I thought that was expressly prohibited, political signage on municipal property.
That certainly can't be true because that's where all the signs end up being. If you if you go if you go to the transfer station
Yeah. They're there. No no doubt about it. Yep. I
thought at the transfer station, people were out on the road, though.
Well, that's town property too. And That's fair. It I'm I'm trying to look in my
I'm not suggesting it's in our regulations. I thought it was elsewhere statutes such.
Political signs fall under the definition of billboard signs or billboard signs Well,
so it does under political position signs, it says no political position signs should be allowed on publicly owned property. So that was a quick call on that. I don't know that we often comply with that one very well because we put them up at the town hall, put them up at the transfer station.
I remember years ago, was an issue when when the fire department used their signage, their signboard for political for an election. Yep. And they moved the sign across the street is what they did.
I don't know. I'm just not sold on the benefit. I think it was Scott or Anne who talked about Scott, I think it was you that was talking about we wanted to allow the teams that play there the ability to put up their signs. Right. Yeah.
So, were we not looking to advertise for places like Andover Pizza and stuff like that to put up a sign there?
I would say that in addition to the team signs, that type of signage would we were also looking to have up there.
So we were looking for advertising signs. Well, you know There's
a way to generate revenue. It's expensive to operate that field down there.
I think it's fine to put the signs there. I just think we should specify in the wording that it's for the, you know, the the town fields, the athletic fields. Yeah.
And we're expecting what what kind of revenue, you know, do we expect to to get from putting up signs for a season? We gotten that far yet, Jed. Yep.
I mean, if you go to Tolland, all the athletic fields in Tolland have the same type of signage or advertising.
You know, it's Everywhere you go, they're Yeah. Fields are covered. Yeah. Signage. I don't see a problem with it.
Okay. So if we said signs except when specifically authorized by the board of selectmen on the fence around the soccer field.
Yeah, but does it even have to be specified by the Board of Selectmen? Can we just say billboard signs are permitted along the fence at the athletic fields?
Billboard signs are by definition greater than 32 square feet. Oh, greater? There's two caveats to what a billboard sign is. It advertises a facility off its property and it's greater than 32 square feet.
Can we can we just say limited to 32 square feet per sign? Because that gives them a four by eight. That's a sheet of plywood. You can get plenty of advertising on that along the fence.
So let me just read the definition. I looked it up here. Billboard, a sign which directs attention to a business, commodity, service, or entertainment conducted, sold, or offered elsewhere than upon the premises where such sign is located or to which it is affixed, or any sign having a sign face in excess of 32 square feet. So it's an or. It's in either of those things. It doesn't have to be both. And a banner is how many square feet, Jed? Banner is not I don't think there's
We don't define banner. We don't address banner. Yeah, we don't address the size.
It's been limited by the sign size requirement for the given usage. So, home occupation signs are, I think, four square feet. A common sign is 16 square feet. We allow in a couple of cases up to 32 square feet. And in this case, below here, we're authorizing the Board of Selectment to go up to 32 square feet. So they could certainly and again, advertising is not a public interest sign, but we could change the wording up here to require it to be authorized by the Board of Selectmen on the fence at the soccer field not to exceed 32 square feet. That sounds good. Yeah, I'd be good with that. Let me write that down before I forget it. Okay, so again, I'm going to change change for billboards to say signs except when specifically authorized by the Board of Selectmen on the fence at the soccer field and no more than 32 square feet.
Do we even have to say authorized by the Board of Selectmen?
Could be the Board of Selectmen or her representative. What No, I'm just saying want to make sure. Billboard
signs are permitted along the fence at the soccer field if they're limited to 32 square feet.
This gets into the issue of I don't know how the process is going to work yet. We haven't kind of gone through that. But I would think the Board of Selectmen, maybe they're going to Eric, do you have a sense on how this might work if it were approved?
I I don't really understand. The Board of Selectmen hadn't really fleshed it out. They clearly were interested in being able to sell space along the fence for advertising to support the maintenance costs of the field. But I don't believe they'd really fleshed it out completely because I told them under the current zoning regulations, it was illegal anyway, and they couldn't do it. So their ask to me was to ask the commission to change that, which I've done so. So Okay. So the 32 square feet should be plenty.
Yep. My sense is it's okay to leave as authorized by the board of selectmen or we could even put or his representative, which is going to be Eric. But if somebody wants to put up a sign there, I don't want them just going out and hanging up a sign. There's got to be a way for the town to get the funding for it. And so the Board of Selectmen is not going to authorize that sign to go up unless they paid their fee. That's a pretty go or no go kind of thing. But it's got to be authorized by somebody, and we could put the word Board of Selectmen or their designated representative, which is going to put it down most likely, at least to start, is going to go to Eric.
May have that go to, you know, his admin assistant or something like that. But it's whoever they designate, that gives them a vehicle for the Board of Selectmen not approving it, but we've got the process to get the funding coming into the town. Maybe it needs to go to a finance person or the tax collector or something, I don't know. But if we put her there designated representative, that would allow that process to work.
Yeah. I I agree with that. And and add what you said before, Jed, about the not to exceed 32 square feet. Yep. Okay. So did you already make the motion on signs yet?
I did, and we're discussing it now. We've made a motion. We've seconded the motion. Now we are discussing the motion.
Chairman Larson, I'm looking for some clarification. Is the commission interested in having the content of these signs monitored? That's what I heard before, meaning approved. I mean, I know that, I mean, this is town property. They have the town has the ability to say what goes up and what doesn't. Now it's unlike a, you know, a private property where freedom of speech issues arise, I believe. John, are you on line here?
Yeah, I am. I think that the zoning regulations should not be in the business of regulating zoning or signage content. But obviously if this is exclusively for town property, these would be, you know, leased and approved by the town. So, you know, you could put that authority to, you know, approve or deny any particular sign on the Board of Selectmen or the Board of Education or whomever. But I don't think the regulation should be in the business of regulating content.
The Board of Selectmen should be not in the business of regulating content. Correct. Thank you, John.
Well, we do have the regulation in there that says no political signs on town property. So that eliminates a whole host of things. I'm might be a question, if somebody wants to put up their sign advertising beer, wine, liquor, cannabis, is that what we want out there? And I think with the regulation as specified, we would have to allow that.
Well, couldn't the Board of Selectmen? Because it says when specifically authorized Board of Selectmen, couldn't they regulate that? They can try. They might get sued. Yeah.
But if we didn't like the way that the signage was working out, we could always change the regulation back to what it is now, and that would be the end of that experiment. So I'm okay with letting it go and seeing if I don't like the result if the Commission doesn't like the result, we can ultimately change it again. And we didn't have the controls in there that we thought were appropriate. Maybe that won't come to pass. I don't know. I don't know that we should be advertising cannabis or alcohol down there. But I don't know that would withstand the legal challenge if somebody were to want to put that there. Might not ever become an issue. I don't know. But that was my concern from First Amendment concern when I was talking about, do the Board of Selectmen, can they specifically authorize or specifically not authorize content? And I don't think they can.
Think, Jen, if I might. Yep, go ahead, John. I think, again, these are two sort of separate issues, the the zoning regulation relative to content. I think that we probably, I don't know if the political prohibition, the political sign prohibition is just within that 75 foot perimeter of polling areas or on any town property? Well,
it's clearly in our regulations, it says no political position
signs on town's property. Yeah. I mean, that could be a larger discussion we don't need to get into tonight. But, you know, if someone put up a sign that said, you know, Johnny Walker for president, you know, is that political? It's, you know, satirical. You know, you kind of get into these, like, numerous gray areas. Yep. But, yeah, and why to a certain extent, content, the Supreme Court has sort of, you know, put, you know, it's a cold water on, you know, zoning regulations ability to regulate content. But as far as, you know, if someone is leasing space essentially from the town to put up a sign that the town in, through its board of selectmen could have a policy about what sorts of signs are allowed or not, you know, sort of independent of the zoning thing, because this is, it's a business transaction. It's not a first amendment thing really.
Okay. Yep. I hear all that, and I don't know the answer to that one. Now, can pass on voting on signs tonight until we do some more research, but I'm not sure that more research is going to get us anything. You know, there's nothing harder in the zoning reg world than signs. And if you've attended the Connecticut Bar Association training for land use stuff, they have a section on ridiculous sign challenges in how they come out and all that kind of stuff. And there's no winners. Once you allow a sign, pretty much anything goes is what I see. And I was concerned about how we would regulate that. And my thought was, at this point in time, I wasn't ready to go there. But that's a call for the commission to make, and we can see how it goes. It's pretty specific. Yeah.
It is. I don't know that it's constitutional, but it's very specific. Well, anyhow.
Ted, can you read back the wording as you have it now for that? Yep.
I got billboard signs except where specifically authorized by the Board of Selectmen or their designated representative on the fence at the soccer field in no more than 32 square feet. Sounds good to me. Okay.
We'll go with that. There was one other aspect of the change for the public interest signs that I wanted to discuss and that was the issue of does Jim as the zoning agent know what the Board of Selectmen have approved with respect to a public interest sign. Let's say the Board of Selectmen were to approve putting up the banners at Andover Elementary School. We did get a letter from Eric saying that the Board of Selectmen approved hanging the banners there. And I guess going forward, it would be nice to have a little more granularity on that. And I don't know that we need to put it in the regulation.
We can get it from Eric that how many signs, how big are the signs, how high are the signs, and that sort of thing. And that would have to almost come in as a request. I was considering how to make the process work with a signed application. And that got too hard. The Board of Selectmen can do what they want. But in the case of the school, the school had to go to the Board of Selectmen and say, this is what we'd like to do. And then the Board of Selectmen approves it. But there ought to be enough detail in there that we put that in the record and we can tell that the person who is hanging the sign actually did what was approved. And I think Eric would probably be willing to give us that. I just didn't know if we needed to put some specific words in here that would require it. Or the commission members think that we should put those words in there?
Well, it would be in the meeting minutes, wouldn't it?
It might be. I'm thinking back to the banners at the school, and none of that detail was provided in the minutes. None of that detail was provided to anybody, I think. We all knew what was going to happen, but we didn't know how high it was going to go. And we didn't know well, we knew the size. Saw the banner. We didn't know how high it was going to go. If somebody wants to do something like that, I think they ought to have it spelled out. The sign at the senior center, it would be part of the plan that would be approved when we approve the senior center. So, now we can make a change to that, and we'll be talking about a change to a site plan later on tonight when we talk about the propane tank. But better not specify what it is that we want to do so that the zoning enforcement officer can enforce it if he chooses. Yeah. And I'm willing to work with Eric, if Eric's willing to work with us, to figure that out. I know the two cases where we put up public interest signs, one's at the elementary school, one's over at the
public works with the snowplow out there, we got a letter from Eric saying that it was approved. I just think it should have a little bit more detail to it. Okay, so I'll work with Eric and we'll do that. If it doesn't work, we can add more definition to the requirements, but we'll figure out what we want and work to do that. So, I make a motion to amend the proposed changes to Chapter 15 signs. As we discussed changing the billboard to say billboards of signs except when specifically authorized by the Board of Selectmen or their designated representative on the fence. I will add the word, the Andover Veterans Memorial Park soccer field Soccer field, yeah. At no more than 32 square feet. Second.
Okay, thanks, Steve. So, at this point, I think any other discussion on anything with the signs? Hearing none, I will call for a vote on the amendment. And then after that, we will call for a vote on the change to Chapter 15. So first up is to approve the amendment, Anne? Aye.
Scott? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye. Steve? Aye. Can I vote aye as well? The amendment passes five-zero-zero. And now back to the vote on the change to Section 15 as amended. I will call for a vote on that. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Lee Ann? Aye.
Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The changes as amended to Chapter 15 signs are approved. Thank you, everybody. Okay, I guess I'm going to stop sharing this. Okay, we're going to deliberate on Section 4.11, the accessory apartments. And this is what we discussed last time. Somewhere in here where there's the inconsistency, deed restricted for ten years and up here, deed restricted for forty years. So, we need to make it consistent there one way or the other. And I took out architectural plans and put floor plans. And that is it. Now, We'll start I will make a motion to approve the changes to Section 4.11 accessory apartments. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on the regulations as specified here? And I guess I will start out by saying my recommendation is that we go consistently with forty years. That's based on the recommendation of attorney branch. If somebody doesn't want forty years, they've got the ability to go for a special permit where they don't have to do affordable housing at all. I would hope that somewhere down the road we have a housing committee or some group that's working on affordable housing that we put into place a process that makes this easy to be more conducive to go the affordable housing route. It's not there yet. But that doesn't mean that our regulations shouldn't go to to where we want to go, not necessarily where we are today. Any other discussion on the affordable housing thing?
I have a question. Yeah, go ahead, Anne. I know that a lot of this is based on the state statute or state recommendation. Did they have a number of years in theirs? Was it ten? Was it forty? Was it twenty? Did they say anything?
What they said is for an accessory department, it only needed to be deed restricted for ten years. That's why when I initially wrote up the change, I put ten years there. And Mark said, I really think you should go at forty years. Why? I was concerned, well, because at the end of ten years, the affordable accessory apartment no longer counts as an affordable apartment. And we have made so little progress on the state goal of increasing our affordable housing that counts that he thought we needed to do something that might head us that direction. We did talk about the concern that if we make it so hard with no incentive,
that nobody's going to go that way and they're all going to go special permit. I don't think the Commission will be bogged down by special permits for accessory apartments. We're seeing maybe one a year. And so my suspicion is that every application will come in wanting to go the special permit route because there's no reason not to. I'm Okay with that. And if at some point we come up with something that will incentivize going with the deed restriction so that we get serious about solving the affordable housing thing, then we can do that too. My real desire is to have more affordable housing. Whether it counts or not, it would be nice if it counted. But we need to have things that people can afford to live in. And so I'm okay with making that forty years. And I understand that maybe a lot of people will choose the route of going to a public hearing because it's not all that much more difficult than just putting in an application when you get right down to it.
When we say forty year restriction, does that mean that the amount that the owner gets for that apartment can't go up for forty years or does it have to just stay within the 30%, which could be going up. The dollar amount could be going up because their income goes up. Well, and I think the number is 80% of the median income.
There's also a desire that somebody not spend more than 30% of their income on housing. But the number is 80% of median income. With median income, I can't remember if it's $100,000 or $120,000 somewhere in that ballpark. So we're talking about $80,000 to $90,000 max for an accessory apartment. Think that's all you're going get anyhow. Plus the income then. Yeah. Jed, if Yeah, go I might
ahead, John. You can take 30% of that. Right. And it's a number that gets determined by HUD each year. And so it does increase with inflation and with, as income go up. And so there's basically an annual reporting requirement of the property owner to the town to verify what the income limits are, what the rental limits are, and that their tenant qualifies under that level.
Yeah. And I guess it would be fair to say starting out that if somebody did want to have a deed restricted accessory apartment, it's probably going to go to John no, not John, Jim Jim. To set up in the land use office down there a little tracking system, kind of like we're trying to track home occupations and that sort of thing. And again, I think it's going to be years before we see anything that would be any kind of significant burden. And I think that Lynn in the land use office with little oversight by Jim would be able to handle that very easily at the park we are. Nothing would make me happier than if we had to go to the Board of Selectmen and say we need to hire more staff because we've got 150 accessory apartments to manage for affordable housing, then we would never be under the gun for affordable housing again. I don't think we're going get there anytime soon.
Just for the record, I want to make it clear that the income requirements apply for initial occupancy. This regulation doesn't make you evict somebody because they're over income. But it's still counted as an affordable unit. It's still a deed restricted unit. But I just wanted to make that clear. Okay.
That Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I guess somebody's income could go up faster. Again, the reason I wanted to have the exemption to go special permit is if you had family members where your parents, you know, they had a significant income, and now we'd be saying you couldn't go into an accessory apartment. I don't think that's right. But right this minute, I think that will get used more often than not. But we'd have to see. Have a Go few other ahead, Leigh Ann.
Yes, if you're done. I think this was part of what I missed trying to sign into last month's meeting. So you covered one of the things I was going to ask because it's it's I'm I'm looking at last month's minutes. It says deed restrictions ten years versus four years, which you just covered. I had a couple of questions. One is, were there any new points brought out that aren't listed in the minutes? And I can read that for everybody who doesn't have it pulled up. Any just taking things, for example, to do with size or detached versus attached or anything like that. We've covered that in the past. Was any of that brought up last month for change, or is it limited to these things that are listed here, which which does say you discussed rental charges, deed restrictions dash are there different lengths of time options available affording full housing points, and how to incentivize affordable housing?
Those were the only changes to what we had previously talked about. Again, the key points there are we aligned the size restrictions for the accessory apartments with what the state recommended. And then we also had a requirement in here. We made it a requirement, and this goes into some discussion with various other towns that have worked their way through. We have said that the owner shall reside in either the principal dwelling or the apartment. Didn't want that to be a rental thing where you're renting out both things, which essentially makes it a duplex. And then we changed architectural plans to floor plans and put both the definition for floor plans and architectural
plans in our definition section.
So, okay. So I remember the part about the owner occupied and one or the other aspects. Can you refresh my memory? What if people want to make an appeal? Maybe appeal isn't it it's not an actual appeal, but but I guess it would be an appeal for a change in size or but the other thing you mentioned about, architectural definitions and things like that, are they free to come to the commission and make points about that? Do they have to go to ZBA, or would they start with us and explain why they wanted some sort of variation if they wanted something like that?
I think, you know, they can certainly come to us when they're making their bid for a site plan, but we would not have the authority to allow exception to the regulations that we draft. That would have to go to the Zoning Board of Appeals. And again, I think we're allowing an accessory apartment up to 1,000 square feet now. That's an increase of a couple 100 square feet over what our current regulation allows. And I don't think we want too much bigger than that. I can't imagine somebody coming up with a hardship to go before zoning board of appeals on why they need something greater than 1,000 square feet or something. So,
yeah, I think, you know, what we put is what you get. If you can't live with that, maybe you're not really in the market for an accessory apartment. Maybe you're looking for a subdivision or something. I don't know.
Okay, well, think you answered my question, and I'm not thinking of anything else to compare it to specifically. It's just in some of our regulations about any given thing, sometimes there are sometimes there isn't, sometimes there isn't room for, you know, some I don't know what a good word is, but, you know, just some leeway. Yep. So I was just asking again because I think I missed part of this discussion last month. But I think you answered my question about what people would do, because you had mentioned taking a lot of it from the state regulations, what people would do if they had a a reason they could demonstrate if they did want a variation from it. And I'm not using variation in the sense of a variance, just a variation, anything they might come up with. So but I think you've answered that as far as it probably wouldn't happen unless they went to ZBA. Yep. Now,
one other thing that we had talked about one time, and I saw this happen on a lot over in Columbia. There was a small house on a piece of property, and they turned that small house into a carriage house and essentially made it the accessory apartment by building a 3,000 square foot house next to it. So it still met the 33% floor area, but no larger than the house. So you could do that if you wanted. You could build a big house to make the little house the accessory apartment as long as it met our requirements here. Nothing prohibits you from doing that. We're trying Okay, and I guess
yep. No, we're trying to make things that are affordable. When you start to get these huge things that are not any longer affordable at that point.
Right. That makes sense. I guess I was just thinking, again, without any specifics, was just thinking, since we are trying to encourage the affordable housing, and this is one aspect of it, you know, without and and we may not get many, if any, of these inquiries at all. I guess I was just thinking of, you know, because every property is different, that we may get some people looking for some sort of variation on this. And I was wondering if we've had any more discussion last month, but I think you've answered my question.
Okay. Any other Thank you. Any other discussion or questions about the the regulation change?
Yeah. Jim Ellis. I I do have a concern, and this has come up before, and I I thought it was addressed. It doesn't appear to be. In part b refers to the net floor area of the single family dwelling. I think we're talking about the primary dwelling. Right. Because if
we're talking about taking a 2,000 square foot house and carving out an apartment out of that existing 2,000 square feet, you're talking about six sixty square feet or thereabouts. Yep, I think that's okay. Okay.
Number or what letter are you talking about? This is section b right here. It says net floor area of the apartment will be no larger than a thousand square feet and shall be no larger than 33% of the net floor area of the single family dwelling. Okay. Is that 33% of the entire
of the combined, or is it 30 okay. Yeah. Is it is it of the combined, or is it of what is left of that house? If you took the 2,000 square foot, you took 600 square feet out, it's 1,400. Yep.
So then you go and get 33% of the 1,400. I'm not sure that that is what was intended. I think pretty small units.
Well, so let's say you had a 2,000 square foot house. Yep. You made an accessory apartment that was six sixty six square feet. Okay.
That's onethree. But we're not differentiating between whether that six sixty square feet is new construction or retrofitting the original home. Right. If somebody
and I figured we would allow that latitude to try and get more accessory apartments. But if somebody wanted to split a 2,000 square foot house into a six sixty six foot accessory apartment and a thirteen thirty four foot primary dwelling, I was okay with that. That's 50 percent, though.
Well, 50% of what you're left with, that 50% of the sorry. And that's what Jim's I think that's Jim's question. That's that is Jim's question.
I had that situation when we built our house. We put an accessory apartment on it before you had the regulations here. And our main house is about 2,400 square feet and a few odd feet above that. We were told that we could build the apartment 33% of the size of our house, so we could go up to almost 800 square feet for the apartment. We still had to have 2,400 square feet in our house. So we have a total of like 3,200 between the two. We couldn't take it out of our house. We had to add on to it.
And that sounds like it would meet this regulation, I mean, 2400 is a pretty big house. And then you're adding Yeah. 800 to that. You know? Now you're over 3,000 square feet. Yeah. You know, I'm not sure that the commission is looking to do that. From a practical standpoint, a lot of accessory apartments get built over garages. And to some extent, that dictates the size, although I'm not sure that the regulations need to accommodate
I was as well. I was trying to keep it sort of simple. I recognize that there were two different ways you can interpret that. My thought was that I looked at it both ways. And if a guy wants to split his house up to take the 2,000 square foot and he comes to us with a plan that says, my plan is to make it, let's say for ease of number 600 square feet and 1,400 square feet, I'm okay with that plan. You can build a case that it doesn't work, but a 600 square foot place and a 1,400 square foot place, those are reasonable places in my mind. Wasn't that we were making it a fiftyfifty duplex. You know, it isn't we're still maintaining the accessory apartment, and I wanted to give the homeowner as much latitude as he can. So, I want to get accessory apartments. I don't want to make it harder.
Jed, if I'm right. This is making it easier. Go ahead, John. So yeah, no, I think, I mean, doesn't necessarily, I mean, obviously there is some interpretation question and that ultimately falls to the zoning officer. And I think as long as he can interpret it fairly and consistently, I think that's totally reasonable. The number of the town of Brown Zoning Officer, and we have a regulation like this, it would basically take it as what is the starting condition of the single family residence? And if the starting condition is 1,800 square feet, you get up to 33% of that. And so that can be an, you know, within the existing structure, as Jed said, it can, you can take a third of that 600 of that 1,800, turn it into an accessory apartment, or you can build up to an additional 600 square feet in a cottage or whatever. But your starting number is 1,800. Your accessory apartment can be no bigger than 600, whether it's inside or outside, it's still,
you know, the calculation is based on a third of the pre existing
single family condition. And that's the way that I interpret it also, not the other way. I'm interpreting it as 33 under, 33% of the 2,000 square feet. Of the original dwelling, right? Original dwelling. Okay. Can't be over, that's what, how, how I interpret it. And I'm glad that Jim brought that up, because it seems like that is a I guess
from a practical standpoint, I mean, people build an additional accessory apartment, they may be adding on to their home at the same time. Right. So I guess this regulation, the language would accommodate that as well. I'm just trying to think it through. It would.
Yep. A guy with a 2,000 square foot home could add on a 600 square foot accessory apartment.
Right. But he couldn't build a 600 square foot in that 2,000 square feet. No, but I mean, in theory, someone
could build an addition that's not an accessory apartment to go from 2,000 to 3,000 square feet of their principal dwelling. And then the next month turn around and want to build an accessory apartment now that they've got more principal square footage and go up to a thousand. But that's why you have the hard cap of a thousand. So if someone can't build an addition to give themselves 6,000 square feet and then do, you know, 30% of that, like, so, you know, it's both and, you know, it's 33% and a hard cap with a thousand. And I think that meets the intent.
So I'm okay with the words, is there written there? Does somebody want to make a proposal to modify them in any way?
Jed, I think I kind of read it or think that it would be a good idea to do it the way that you're explaining it. So there is some more flexibility. And, you know, we never know. Every case is different, but I I don't see too many people coming forward with very large houses looking to make what would then be a sizable accessory apartment more than what we're talking about now with the possibly more anyway with a thousand square feet.
And and, yeah, I don't have any problem with interpret it the way you or interpreting the way you are. I'm just saying that I'm interpreting differently than you Well,
and we would have a discussion when somebody, you know, I can't envision all the different things, but what I do want to do is give the commission flexibility to help expand the number of affordable units, whether they count or not. We need more affordable housing, and I think this is a good way to get some of that. And if a guy comes in and wants to reduce the square footage of his primary thing to make it, I'm okay with that. If we find that somewhere along the way it doesn't work, we'll change it.
Thank you. I'm comfortable enforcing that. Just wanted to be clear, and it is. Thank you.
Just to be clear, this is Leanne. We're going to leave it that it can either be carved out of an existing house of x number of square feet, or it can be in addition to it it can be another Yep.
Another ex you know what I mean? I hope like, maybe not, but another figure of x number of square feet for the accessory apartment that's not necessarily carved out of the original residence.
Yep. And there could even be a case where somebody wants to add on 300 square feet and take 300 from the existing place to make a sick whatever the guy wants to do. If he wants to come in and tell us and it makes sense, we have the latitude to approve it, and I am happy with that. Interesting. Okay. Any other discussion on the accessory apartments?
Are we going to go over the architecture and floor plan?
We can. We can do that now maybe. You still see the signs thing? No. No. Okay. I stopped sharing, and it's on my screen. We're going to do that. So, here is So in the proposed accessory dwelling unit regulation, it talks about floor plans. Right. I recent
think it doesn't say you you know, it just says, etcetera. But I would think that the floor plan would include everything that's on the floor or every you see what I mean? It says- Okay, yep. Like, like, you know, it does, etcetera. I would assume that it should have everything that's gonna be on, or on the building, you know, not pictures and that, but
On the building, I don't disagree with that. You know, if you put a propane tank out there, it should be on there. If you got, an external heat pump, it should be listed on there. What I did not want to get into with the floor plan was we sometimes talked about how much insulation is going to be in the walls and that sort of thing. And I thought that needed to be on building plans or architectural plans, but wasn't really what we were looking at. Those were things that the building official should be making sure are up to code. That wasn't anything that I was particularly interested in hearing about. I assume that it's going to be built to code.
But if there's something that's going to stick out external to the house, that should be on there. There something else that you'd specifically like included there instead of the etc?
No. I I know, that's why I brought it up. I Yeah. You know, maybe Okay. No. You know, external if they're gonna be using gas as fuel, if there's they're gonna be tanks.
Yep. I think we have the right to ask for that. I just didn't want us to get into the weeds of I know. I know. Building codes. Okay. Any other questions on what we're listing as a floor plan here? And again, I think the definition that we have for floor plan is what in the previous draft of the regulations was listed as an architectural plan. I just crossed off architectural and put floor plan there, and then I added an architectural plan definition that Mark Grants provided. And I thought that looked reasonable, too. But at this point, we're talking about the accessory dwelling unit regulation. Any more changes or discussion on that? Hearing none, I make a motion to amend the changes to specify
forty years instead of ten years on that Section 4.11.2 where it was listed as ten years inconsistent with the earlier. Second that. Thanks,
Anne. Any further discussion on that? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. LeeAnne? Aye.
Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion to amend the regulation passes five-zero-zero. And now the vote on the regulation as proposed and amended. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye.
Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five-zero-zero. Okay. I think we're we're down to lighting. Signs. Okay, so the current regulation would limit us to a height of 35 feet and no greater than 12 lumens per square foot. The modification wants to have a lighting study, which would be done regardless. Even with these restrictions in place, a lighting study would have to be conducted. But a lighting study shall be required to determine the maximum recommended lighting fixture height and maximum lumens per square foot based on the type of intensity of sport or use in the size of area illuminated. I will make a motion to approve the modification to the site and parking lot lighting regulation? Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on that? And I know at the last time we were talking about specifying a maximum lumens per square foot based on the I forget the name the sport lighting recommendation thing. Eric, do recall what that was or John? I do not. Okay. I can go back and look at the last discussion. I think we saw what the recommendations were in there, it was significantly greater than 12 lumens. Like 30 or 35?
Yeah. Think it was 30 for the pickleball and maybe something a little less than that for the soccer field or something, but in that. Now, one of the things that, you know, I guess so we've got an upper bounds on the illumination. The regulation is specified here does not have an upper bound on height except upper bounded by checkbook because the higher the poles go, the more expensive it is. And a possible change would be we could limit it to 60 foot. I think the initial research that Eric did had suggested it might be about 60 feet. Or the other thought I had was we could make it no higher than the treetops,
so you didn't have these things sticking out like the cell phone towers high above the treetops there. But I'm looking for some thought from the Commission on do we want to put an upper bound on that or do we want to just the only place I see this lighting thing being coming into play, well, guess it could go with the ball fields over there at some point, but certainly for right now, you know, we're only talking about the soccer field. Right. Do we want to include something like not to exceed 60 feet?
Well, I guess it is like what is necessary to do a good job providing lighting until we know how tall you need to have them with how much light and what produces so much light. It's hard to say a maximum height. I think we should go with what worked instead of just arbitrarily coming up with a height.
Yep. Yep. Right. The, the trees over there are, a little over 70 feet tall, the tallest trees. Yep. So the, the, so the poles, if they're 60 feet, would be less. So you wouldn't see them if you Yeah. Look towards the trees. It's, they'll be inside the tree line in there. That's obviously not a permanent condition.
No, but there's not a lot of variation that I saw looking at the tree heights over there. Scott tried to point out to me an oak tree that he measured at about 72 foot high. And I went over there trying to find an oak tree that stuck out like a sore thumb higher than the rest of them. And there wasn't a significant amount of variation with any of the trees out there.
There wasn't, but that was the biggest one there. And
I think that the other thing to consider with what Ann was just talking about, I think the important thing is to stay within the requirements for not intruding on adjacent properties. And so it's going to be a trade off. The better we do on eliminating the shine on the neighbor's property is going to be a function of how high we make the pole. And I'd be willing to have the pole go a little bit higher to protect the neighbor's property from being goofed up. Now, the other thing it talks about in here, and I don't think that we're changing it at all, is the plan that needs to come to us for a special permit needs to talk about how late the lights would be on before they are turned down to their normal security setting. If the neighbor had showed up tonight, I was going to ask her how late she thought it would be appropriate to have the lights on to support play. But she's not here, so
we'll just recognize that any special permit that comes to us has to address Has to address lights would be on. And that gives the neighbors an opportunity to provide comment and input on that. So we're not letting the town out of any of those requirements to specify how late the the lights will be on and that sort of thing.
Right. That would be the con some of the conditions. Yep.
Right. But adding the 60 60 feet, height would probably be a good idea, Jed. It wouldn't be a good idea if if, the
the we determined that it had to be Had to be sixty five. Yeah. Yeah. Then we
but, again, if if you know? But Eric is saying that, you know, he said, you know, the upper, you know, 57 or, as I remember, up to 60 or 55 to 60, I think he might have said.
Eric, you got any thoughts on, living with the 60 foot height restriction? Or,
So not sure I'm supposed to be talking at this point, but if I was talking, I would say I don't have a problem with a 60 foot height restriction.
K? Not sure we're supposed to be listening at this point, but if we were
Couldn't we just leave it the way it is? Because it's requiring a special permit with a lighting study that specifies the height that they want.
It is. But there's you know, they could come in with the the words the way it is. What if they came in with a 100 foot? Right. But we don't have to approve that. Like, what would your grounds for disapproval be? Well, aesthetically, we don't
like it. You could go that way. Yep. You could do that. And so
I just think leaving it the way we've got it worded gives us that flexibility.
Okay. So any other comments? Anybody else got thoughts? No. I will make a motion to amend the proposed changes to put an upper limit on the illumination based on the appropriate athletic field lighting standard. And I'll get the right name for that. And I will recognize so, boom, that's the end of the modification. As a side note to that, I will recognize that that standard does not include pickleball courts. And I would think that the Commission, if somebody came in with a plan to light the pickleball courts, and they said there was not a standard for that in the athletic field illumination guidelines. But they found a similar limit, which we know the number is 30. For the pickleball court guidelines, we would say that just like when we talk about parking, we've got a bunch of examples for requirements. And if the thing that you're doing isn't quite in there, you find one that fits close, and we could go with that. There's not going be a perfect answer. Or I could put the pickleball guidelines in there. But I think that if we specify the athletic field illumination guidelines, that's good enough. Can work with that. Yeah. So anyhow, that's my discussion on the proposed amendment. Any other discussion on that? Okay, I'll call for a vote on the amendment. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye.
Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. So the amendment to the proposed regulation passes five-zero-zero. And now we'll vote on the section modification. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye.
Leigh Ann? Aye. Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. That motion passes five-zero-zero. Last up is definitions. And we've got one, two, three, four, five, six definitions here. I will make a motion to approve the change to the definition section. I'll second that. Okay. Thanks, Scott. Any discussion on the definitions? I would like to make one modification to this proposed change, and that is to eliminate from the definition section the definition of a billboard. When we changed section 15, we changed the definition of a billboard in that, and it was no longer consistent with what's in section 24. The standard we have chosen for where to put definitions is that if a definition exists only in one chapter, the definition will be in that chapter. If the definition is used in more than one chapter or section, then it should reside in Section 24. The only place we talk about billboards is in Section 15 on the signs. And so I don't think it's appropriate to be in two different places and have two different definitions. I would make the amendment to eliminate the definition of billboard from Section 24. Any other discussion on the definitions?
Are we gonna change the lot frontage thing? Frontage? Are we gonna leave it because it's adjacent?
Good point, Scott. And So I will change my proposed modification to delete the billboard definition and add the words as in a corner lot after adjacent to each other. Okay.
And it's specific. Right? Yep. Thank you, Scott. Any other comments on the definitions? Okay. Hearing none, I will call for a vote on the amendment to the proposed changes. Anne? Anne? Did I? Oh, am I muted?
Nope. I got you this time. Yep. Didn't hear you before. Scott? Aye. Leanne? Aye.
Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. That motion passes five-zero-zero. And now to vote on the modified changes to the definitions as amended. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye. Steve?
Aye. And I vote aye as well. That motion passes five-zero-zero. And by not discussing Section 4.21 because the town has pulled their request for that, I think we are done. Thank you. Those have been a long time coming. Next up on the old business is the application of the town of Andover improvements to the public safety complex. Eric, I'll let you take that one.
Okay. Thank you, Commission. Can I share my screen right now? No, I can't. So, you make it so that I can share my screen, please? Okay. While Marina is hopefully working on that, I will just talk you through. The town is asking for a site plan modification to allow the town to put in two additional 1,000 gallon propane tanks on a pad adjacent to two existing 1,000 gallon propane tanks located behind the fire safety complex and next to kinda kiddie corner to the town office building and community center. Yep. There we go. So let me see whether I got the right one here. Okay, you should be looking at a basic site plan and I just cannedrew the location in of the proposed tank. I also submitted the engineering drawings for that, but I did not put the engineering drawings and the proposed site map on the same location. So, this has been approved by the Inland Wetlands Commission, it has been approved by Eastern Highlands Health District, and it has been signed off on by the Fire Marshal, so which should be prerequisites to your approving it. So that's basically it. I mean, the ultimate goal of this is to allow two things. It allows us to transition to a propane backup generator that will cover the fire safety complex, the town hall, the community center. That means one generator will be able to run what will be the emergency shelter, the town emergency operations center, as well as the fire department.
And we'll reuse the old diesel generator at public works because although this generator is 30 years old, the one at public works is 56 years old. So it will still be a positive change for them. So in a nutshell, that is what we're doing. Does the commission have any questions?
Okay. I don't hear any there, Eric. Jim, have you I know you were working on the checklist for this, and Eric listed three things that were crucial to its approval. What is your take on the application?
Yeah, walked through the checklist and everything seems to be in order. The wetland permit is posted. The Eastern Highlands district approval is posted, as is the fire marshal's comment. I have no issues with the application.
Okay. So there are essentially two ways that we could go with this as a commission. If we considered it a minor change like we did with the ad in the gazebo over at I think it was Network or something, is that the name of the building? Route 6. We told we authorized the zoning agent Jim to go handle that change. The other thing we can do is we can vote on it as a commission. And I think that in my sense, the change is relatively minor. If it's got wetlands approval and the fire marshal approval, I'm not sure what the sanitarian did, but I was interested in those two approvals. I think it might be just quicker and easier if we voted on it as the Commission. And with that in mind, I will make a motion to approve the application for the addition of the propane tanks behind the firehouse. I'll second that, Jeff. Okay. Thanks, Scott.
Any discussion on that at all by anybody present? Hearing none, I will call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye.
Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five-zero-zero. Next up on the agenda is the update of the plan of conservation and development. And John, I think your plan was to show us the survey that you were working on?
Yeah, if it's possible. And Marina, could I share screen also? So we sort of went through last month the questions that were let me share this one there. So does this look like a SurveyMonkey dashboard? Yes. Okay. So we went on through some of the long range planning study questions from last time, as well as looking at some of the general priorities when it comes to development issues, economic development, housing development, as well as conservation, municipal services, municipal resources. So based on that conversation and that history, as well as some other plan of conservation and development surveys I've done, I basically put together a draft, which I'm gonna run through briefly. But what I would propose to do is this survey is actually live right now. Nobody has formally responded to it because nobody knows the address, but
it is live and people can review it at their leisure. So I'll run through it and then we'll share the link and encourage people to sort of take a look before we kind of start advertising it to the public.
Before you start there, John, one of the things that surprised me on the last survey that we did, which was on the POCD actions, once you submit the survey, I was not able to get back to the survey again. So if I wanted to go back and see what the questions were and that sort of thing, I couldn't get there. Yeah, you have to go a library or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
So get one shot at Be careful. Don't submit it until you're done with it thinking you'll go back and what else should we be talking about? Once you submit it, you're done.
So, I mean, we can reset this or move it to a different address or whatever if we need to do that sort of thing. So a brief introduction here and hopefully people are able to see, again, noting that this is a ten year plan, encouraging people's thoughtful responses and adding my email if anyone has questions. Simple question, live or work in Andover with, you know, opportunities for both employees in town, people who live in town or both, as well as people who are retired or basically have a vacation home, try to cover, you know, as many of those ownership or work bases as possible. Then we went to a couple of, and so this again, being surveyed, you know, there's, you could do multiple choice. You could do check all of the above. I chose to use Akira, a couple of ranking things to essentially force choices, because obviously you could say, which of these things are important? You know, in many cases, all of them are important, but in order to help set priorities, we wanted to force some rankings.
So looking at economic development priorities, we set up seven choices. And basically what this will do is it allows people to drag choices up or down, one through seven, one being the most important and seven being the least. No major, like, and again, this is economic development, so we are okay. No major development.
You demonstrate that, John? Because it took me a little time to figure out how that was working there.
Yeah, let me go to preview. So, yeah, okay. So this would be,
let's say, can you see this right here, the choices? Yeah. Just like you want to take the second one and make it the first priority. Basically,
could either click the up arrow over here and it would go to the top. Or if you want to say, let's take more restaurants along six, you can click it and just drag it up to the top. And so this is, it's dynamic. You can reorder these things however you want. And then you'll note the numbers are changing on the right, on the left rather. So visitor based businesses, so we want to move that to number two, then everything else moves below it. So there's a couple of ways of reorganizing, of reordering. And so the choices here, more restaurants along 6, visitor based businesses to leverage Hopper Trail, etcetera. No major changes. More service, professional medical offices along 6, focus on growing existing small businesses, more small businesses and home based businesses throughout town, not just six, and then more retail along Route 6,
mainly grocery, pharmacy, convenience. And what I'd like the commission to do is think about, is there something else that should be on that list that we haven't thought of so that we can make sure that we're getting the right kind of inputs? And I'm not saying there is, but the goal of going through this tonight is so that you guys can all think about this and we provide some input to John next time we get together.
Or in the interim. Certainly, it's very easy to edit these things, to change words or to add questions. So I'll go through, if you have some immediate thoughts, and again, please don't feel on the spot to judge these things. I just wanna run through and then you can review this more at your leisure. Then we get into a couple of questions about housing. If you think more housing options are needed in Andover, for whom are they most needed? And this would be select all, this is not a ranking. So the answer could very well be all of the above, seniors and downsizers, young professionals, teachers, young families, second homes or vacation homes. And then again, one of the options is, I don't think we need more housing options. So again, try to cover the range. But again, and this will, it's not a ranking, so it could be sort of an all of the above option. And then aside from who or for whom the housing is for, what type, and this is a suggestion that Jed added earlier today, which is, you know, single family. And again, this could be an all of the above, single family residences, single family with accessory, two family or duplex, three or four family, townhouse or multifamily, and then other. How about How about yurts? We should allow yurts, definitely.
You you say that you you have you know, you don't appreciate how easy it is to add yurts to these things. You wanna add yurts, we can add yurts. Think it will move there.
All right. And then we go into community resilience and sustainability, and this is another ranking, ranking the areas of focus or investment from the town. So we include alternative energy infrastructure, which would be solar or EV charging stations, upgraded power data infrastructure, making sure Andover's road network is friendlier to pedestrians and bicycles, community gardens and expanding local agriculture, discouraging new construction and public investment in flood prone or environmentally sensitive areas, or investing in creating access and infrastructure to recreational resources. So this is sort of thinking about sustainability, so thinking about where Andover should be putting its sort of governmental focus on some of these elements. And there could very well be more of these. I would caution, however, with rankings, if you get more than six or seven things, it gets very difficult to sort of keep all those things in your head to properly rank them.
And it kind of loses some of its value.
John, can I ask a quick question? When, so say we get 100 people, you're just basically summing up for each category what its respective rank is and coming up with the average numerical order. Is that Exactly.
So in this case, you know, one being the top priority, but the lowest average number would be the collective top priority. Understood. Thank you.
So we ask a similar question about open space and natural resource priorities. Well, like again, trying to force a choice because there are limited funds and limited resources for the town to invest in certain natural resources. So weighing these things against each other is important. So again, focusing efforts on Andover Lake, water quality and public access, trails, stewardship and management of existing open space, as opposed to investing in new purchase. Active recreation facilities, such as playgrounds, athletic fields. More passive open space, forests and habitat. And then the option that we have sufficient open space resources as it stands.
Question, how does that fit in if you're ranking them and you say we have, oh, okay, nevermind. I see, yeah, There are enough other things in that category. Makes sense. Nevermind.
And then, so these long range planning topics, again, these were taken from the survey that was done a few years ago. And again, sort of judging people's agreement with them, which is more or less how it was asked in the long range planning topics. Although I think in a lot of those, it was basically a binary, you know, do you support this? Do you not support this? So I wanted to add a little bit more range of response. So focusing efforts on developing a town center. And so this is a five category from strongly agree to strongly disagree to sort of get some nuanced opinion on this. Are we establishing a main street to actively market available and undeveloped commercial land on Route 6, improvements to be made to Route 316 for bike and ped, and then focusing less on acquiring open space and more on maintenance and stewardship of current lands. So a lot of these, again, were taken more or less verbatim from the Oblong planning study, but we wanna kinda get people's temperature on this again. Because, you know, and long range planning study, obviously recent, but it was pre COVID and a lot of things have changed about how we see our relationship to our community. Then we go to the following services, which I had a discussion about today with a colleague and it's, I decided not to do which of these are important services for the town to provide, because clearly the would
be all of the above, you know, roads are important, schools are important, course, open space is important, but I'm curious to get a sense of how people see what the town does for them being the most important. What is the, you know, if Again, this is the classic sort of guns or butter. You know, we have a limited budget, what we should be focusing our money on. So included the public schools, senior services, general government services, parks and rec, public works, including road maintenance and then transportation, which I think, you know, I could have missed some major category of government service, but I think this covers most of it. And a lot of these categories were taken from the long range planning study. And this was the one I'm actually most curious about seeing the results of. And then we added a couple of sort of forward looking questions about Andover's future, you know, not only as a community, but in, you know, in the world as it stands. So we asked about climate change
and again, a five level questionnaire of very concerned to not concerned at all, changing demographics in the aging world population, aging infrastructure, loss of sense of place or character, which again is sort of a catchall for a number of different things, but it's something that we hear a lot in communities like Andover. Overdevelopment or loss of natural resources, pandemic and public health, slow economic growth, changing housing patterns and affordability. So we kind of wanna get a sense of where people stand on some of these forward looking ideas, as well as adding a comment option. And then we asked a couple of open ended questions, which again, looking at the next ten years for the plan. What's a hope and what's a concern? So open ended responses there.
And then we asked a couple of basic communications questions. What's the best way to get information to people? And we're not asking for emails, but rather just how do they get information and what's the best way to get information out there? Emails, newspaper, card copy questionnaires, website, direct mail, that sort of thing. And then a couple of demographic questions, age, rent or own a property, and then household income, as well as final hopes or concerns, about the, you know, open ended response. So you can see on the right, SurveyMonkey has these tools. There are no technical problems that they found in the survey in terms of logic, which is good. It is a little long, you know, 16 questions, estimating a completion rate of 70%. If we made it shorter, we could get a higher completion rate, but that's not terrible. And about a ten or eleven minute timeframe. So, you know, if you can do a survey in about ten minutes, I think, you know, we could get some decent response and then it you know, so the two the two next things that I would like to get over the next month or so is, again, more robust response from you guys. Obviously, you're just seeing this for the first time. And I'll I'll I'll share the link. And then following that, what's the best way once we've got sort of final wording,
what's the best way to start spreading the word and getting this out there? And I think, you know, multiple venues and multiple notifications is the way to go. But I'll stop talking and see if anyone has questions or comments at this point.
John, in terms of getting the word out there, we would definitely use the town's social media. We would use our push notification system. We would put it in the newspaper, and we would probably commit to sending a flyer to every household, with the the link information.
Yeah. And we can we can embed a QR code also if you wanted to do that.
Yeah, now the other question that I would have is that a certain fraction, if you're trying to get a fair degree of response from seniors, you probably have a significant fraction of them that don't have internet access or enough savvy to use a SurveyMonkey platform. Is there an alternative method having them do the survey?
Yes. So we do printed, we can do a more user friendly printed version that they can return. And then on the back end of SurveyMonkey, I can physically enter dozens or hundreds of hard copy responses, you know, just by filling them out online.
So we could do something like say, in a newspaper article, if you want a hard copy to send back in, you'll call or email well, call this number at town hall, and we'll send you out a copy as opposed to just send, using the postage to send it out to everybody.
Yeah, or we could leave a stack at the library, leave a stack at town hall, leave a stack at, you know, post office, whatever. Yep, okay.
But I think what we wanna do is we wanna request people to do it online, to make our lives easier. And then only if they're unwilling to do it online or incapable of doing it online, do we offer the secondary member or secondary method. John, I think it's great overall. I think that it's an interesting I haven't seen that elaborate one in SurveyMonkey. So it's good to see the possibilities.
And, you know, then there's also, you know, on back end, there there'd be also opportunities for crosstabbing these things, you know, assuming we get, I'll think very positively, and let's say we'll get 10%, 15% of the town. So we get, you know, four or 500 that, you know, we can do crosstabs. So, you know, people that own their house believe that, you know, roads are most important or people that rent believe the schools are most important or people over the age of 65 believe that senior services are most important. And we can kind of do some of those crosstabs as well.
Yeah, when I went through it, John, my first comment was it wasn't long enough. But your point about getting people actually take ten minutes of their time to fill out a survey is very good. And I couldn't come up with a bunch of things other I thought for the 16 questions you had there, it sort of covered everything. So the homework for the commission is to poke holes at it next meeting and see what else we need to do. But I think it's an excellent starting point, John.
Yeah, thank you. So yeah, Jed, I will, the link that I sent you and Eric today is the same. So if you want to forward that link out to the commission, we can have people review.
Okay. So I didn't know that I got a link from you today. I thought it was know, I got the one a day or two ago that I Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Right. Okay. That's the one. Okay. Yeah. I'll send that out to everybody here. So thanks, John. Thank you. Thank you.
That's it for old business. We're going to move on to item seven, approval of the minutes from the regular meeting on November 21. Anybody have any comments on the meeting minutes? And I had only one on page two of three under new business section seven license day. The A is missing from care. And that was the only change that I have for that, Marina. Anybody else have any comments on the minutes? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote on the minutes as amended by the one typo. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Leanne? Leanne, you might be on mute. Going to go on to Steve at this point? Aye. And I vote aye as well, Leanne? I'll I'll count that as an abstention. So the motion passes four zero one with Leanne abstaining.
He put up her hand up. Oh, she did? Yeah. I can't even see her. She normally
Look on her picture. You got a picture, Leanne? No. No. No. But she put a hand up where Oh, okay. I gotcha.
But then we'll take that as an I then. It's an I. So, yeah, the minutes are approved five-zero-zero. Thank you, Scott. Next up on the agenda is the administrative report. Jim?
Yes. Gravel pit has been referred to Mark France, delegated the matter to attorney Alan Curto, who has been in contact with me, said he's working on year end issues, and we'll get to it hopefully very soon. Other than that, I have nothing to add. Okay. Number of enforcement issues, 117 Long Hill Road, 92 Merritt Valley Road, and 225 Route 6, various debris. I have some letters letters have gone out and trying to work with owners on that. Do have a commitment from a gentleman in Merritt Valley. 480 Lake Road, I did notify the owner of Ben Franklin, concerned about site plan issues. And let me go back and revisit. He's gonna take a look at his lighting and hopefully get his camper off that property.
I have that calendar for thirty days thirty days out. 357 Lake Road, a situation with a garage built without a permit and owner living in the house without a CFO. And that has been referred to the town attorney, not not not attorney branch, but Dennis O'Brien because it involves the building inspector who who does not currently cover is not covered under Mark Brantz's purview. 664 Route 6. The owner is, that's Steve Barnett property. A lot of debris, junk. He's been working on it steadily. Looks a lot better, thoughtfully in compliance. He did appeal his citation, and a hearing will be set up. We we do have a hearing officer. And, again, attorney O'Brien is working with that hearing officer to address that. This would be the first blight citation complaint that was appealed.
Has he done anything, Jim, on the zoning change that he was asking about? Dennis? Burnett?
No. He has not. Okay. He's been made aware of the situation, and I will try and I mean, more specifically, what that is is the property he had gone to the Planning and Zoning Commission a number of years ago and effectively had had the zone change, but never filed a map. So there is no map as far as I know, and he's gonna have to come up with one. So,
Jim, not to interrupt you, but what is he appealing?
It's a good question, Scott. It was he's appealing the just the notification. The he's appealing the citation that he is cleaning it up. It doesn't make any sense to me, quite honestly. We'll see how that plays out. I understand your question, and I I can appreciate. He doesn't really have a a real solid appeal, in my opinion.
Well, the only thing he could appeal is that he does not have a blight condition.
Or he can appeal yes. And he can appeal the the apparently, he can appeal the amount of of the fine, but the days of the fine. That's about it. Yeah. He he can say that that his property is not in in in violation, and I don't see him going anywhere with that. There's substantial documentation in form of pictures over time. That's all I have.
Jim, one of the things that would be helpful is to have a listing, if you will, that gets tacked onto the agenda of all the different things you're working. Because when you talk about whatever on Merritt Valley Road, it took me a while to remember. We're talking about the couple of trucks that are parked out in front of the property, I think, and trying to get those eliminated.
Well, what happened was those trucks were removed, but the contents of the truck were placed on the front yard.
So But anyhow, the point is it would be helpful for us to we forget what
issues are. In fact, I have a matrix of light and zoning violations that I maintain and I provide to Eric on an occasional basis, which I can certainly make available. I can send out
with the agenda. Because the other thing just to keep in mind is there are a few zoning deficiencies out there, like the church and the temple that need to come in and get special permit and all those. And we would forget about them if Right. They are on my list. Yep. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Far as the inland wetlands and water course liaison, I have nothing to report to the commission on that. The last thing we talked about was the propane tanks and we approved that application there. Item nine on the agenda is Commission discussion. Anybody have anything they would like to discuss? Okay. Hearing that, item 10 is miscellaneous. And that probably, if anybody has anything under miscellaneous, now is a good time to talk about that.
I have something, Jed, if people Go ahead, John, yep. Because this will be before I see you all next time. If people are fans of the TV show Jeopardy! I just wanted to let people know I will be back on Jeopardy! As part of the Second Chance Tournament on January 11 is the air date. That's a Thursday night. So any trivia fans out there can see me on TV.
Good luck, John. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck. And, well That's cool. You're the first guy I ever knew that made it to Jeopardy.
Wow. I just wanna say now that I knew you before you became famous. We have proof. This meeting is recorded.
I guess the other thing under miscellaneous, again, I'd like to welcome Anne Marie to the Commission. And sometimes we take a little time during the meeting to talk about what the expectations are and that sort of thing. And this meeting is running a little long, so we won't do that tonight. Maybe after the start of the new year, we'll set up a meeting with Jim and I and kind of go through what to do to get you up to speed the best we can and answer questions that you might have and that sort of thing. So welcome, and we'll figure out how we can help get you into the commission as well. And you're on mute if you were trying to say something. Nope, okay. Enough for miscellaneous. Moving on to public comments. Nobody from the public is here. Date of the next regular scheduled meeting is January 16. I think I checked that on my calendar and that was correct with the Tuesday. Yep. And Jim, as I recall, you mentioned you will not be available for the next meeting. Is that That's correct. Okay. I thought about trying to move it, thought about trying to change it, thought about canceling it. And I came to the conclusion that we'll do it. And the thing that we should be focused on for the next meeting, because I'm not aware of any applications coming our way for that one, will be to spend the time discussing the survey that we went through tonight. So we'll do that. And if that doesn't take very long, we'll start the new year off with a short meeting. But Jed
Jed, can I interject one thing? I think you can probably assume that the commission will see some eight twenty four statutory referrals for the next meet, And they will likely be for the parking area for a proposed trail between the town of Andover and Joshua's Trust, number one, and then likely a referral for a boundary line adjustment between the town and a resident for the property that is on off of Burnett Brook Road and also potentially one for a boundary line agreement between the town and an abutter directly behind the Andover Elementary School to correct a minor, very minor deficiency that was determined when we had it surveyed by BSC. So you will probably see all three of those at your next meeting. Okay,
very good. And we'll tackle them when we get them. Anne Marie, I saw your note saying you are back with us now. I just wanted to welcome you to the Commission. And after the start of the year, we'll try and set up a time at your convenience to get together with Jim and I, and we'll go through, things for you to look at. This is a good time for you to be joining the Commission. We're working on the next ten year plan with the Plan of Conservation and Development. So spend some time looking through that and figuring out what you think we need to change to make Andover better. That sounds great. Thank you. That's I look the forward to going forward there. Thanks very much. So
we talked about the next date, January 16. Jim won't be here. The last comment before we make a motion to adjourn is that I'd like to wish everybody, Yohan, your continued support. I very much appreciate that. We got a lot of stuff, a lot of business done tonight. And
I wish everybody a very happy, healthy, and safe holiday season. And we will hit it again next year. So enjoy the Thank time you. With your Yep. And all that being said, I will make a motion to adjourn at 09:40. Second.
Thank you. That was Leigh Ann? Yes. Yep. Okay. Good enough. All in favor, raise your hand. One, two, three. Okay. I'm raising my hand. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Lee Ann. Motion passes five-zero-zero. Happy holidays, everybody. Enjoy the next couple of weeks. Thank you. And good night. Happy holidays. Bye. Good night, everyone. Good night. Bye.