Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission- Regular Meeting
October 17, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
So it's 07:06 and we'll call the planning and zoning meeting to order. And next up on the agenda is roll call and seating of alternates. I see Anne is there. Scott, Steve, Leanne, And myself. Then we got Anne Blanchard is an alternate. It looks like she will not need to be seated at this point. Under additions or changes to the agenda, I did have a couple on the, I'd like to eliminate old business item 5F, the bike path, and item five gs, sale of agricultural products. These will both be covered under new business items and were kind of duplicates. And then like to add new item six F letter from the Board of Education concerning the community center to new business. And delete item seven approval of the meeting minutes from September 19. Does anybody and I'm. So I make a motion to make those changes. Seconded. Okay, thank you, Steve. Are there any other additions or changes to the agenda? Hearing none, all in favor of the changes as proposed, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion to change the agenda is approved, 500. Next item up is public speak.
I see there you want to speak at this point or you want to speak when we get to the new item?
I can give you a preface. Okay, I want to first thank your planning and zoning commission for taking on that letter at a seemingly late time for this meeting. But I want to just first say that nobody wants to see this community center succeed and be built more than I do. I'm in total support of it, and I want to see it fly. And I want to see it fly without interruption. And as a result, Valerie the superintendent of schools came to me with concerns that she had about the process of the construction. And I told her to write it, I asked her to write them down, which she did, and she explained them in a letter that I gave to Jim. Today, and I gave it to Eric Anderson. And we sent to other people in the town, including Adrian, Ed seriously, and Jeff Maguire. And I can't think of anyone else. I would have sent you one Scott, but I knew you would get it through this. Venue here through the planning and zoning.
So I want to have these addressed ahead of time, so that nothing gets in the way of the construction cycle of the community center. So that's what I why I gave that letter out. I didn't want it to come at an inopportune moment. I figured we might as well put it out in the open, be honest, and these were the concerns that Valerie had had. So I put them in the letters that I sent out to you, and that's why you received the letter. Hopefully, you'll be able to handle some of the items that are inherent. It won't be an issue.
Okay. Yeah, and we'll save that discussion for the new business portion of the meeting. But Sure. Certainly, we're all in favor of addressing the items early on. Thank you.
Any other public speak? Hearing none, we'll move into the old business, and the first item is the update on the gravel pit. And agent Halsey, if you can give us an update on that.
Yes, this is in progress. It's going slow, but it is moving forward. I've been in constant contact with Chris Bell, and I've been on-site numerous times. At this time the dirt's moving, the gentleman that's pushing it around does have a plan, copy of the plan. I tried to push it as hard as I can. I realized the time of year is a factor here. I mean they were out there, gentleman was out there today working. I believe there's only one guy. And I will continue to try and reach out to the owner and stay on his back. But other than that,
that's all I got. Are you getting the support? Does it seem like Chris Bell is able to get ahold of the owner?
Chris is yeah he just. He hasn't been able to make him move any quicker either. I hope it's a matter of. Just a few days. I'm looking at the dirt out there and trying to fill and trying to figure out what it's going to take time wise and I don't have a good handle on it. Okay.
My thought is, and I'm going on recollection a little bit at this point, but we approved the Most recent extension to expire on I think it was September 17. With two months to. Restore the site, following the expiration of that. And maybe we should have done that a month earlier if we wanted to get the grass seed planted in a more timely basis and that sort of thing. But I would think that when we get together for our next meeting, as we're putting together the agenda for that, if it's not done to what you think is satisfactory in accordance with the plan, we should ask the owner and Chris Bell to attend and have our lawyer here. I think, you know, I'm almost concerned that we didn't head down the path of getting our attorney here tonight, because you've been getting the runaround on who you're trying to deal with, and you've gone out of your way to get ahold of these guys, and you know, have missed the best weather for getting grass seed planted and that sort of thing. So at that point, I'd be happy to hear any other commission members' thoughts on this particular item.
I would say that we need to tell them that you have a week to get the grass seed done. Completed in the grass seed on. We probably should have done it last time. But that's just my opinion, Jed. It probably could take two hours for that guy to knock that pile down with that loader and the dozer. He hasn't worked in two weeks, Jed, and he knocked down, you know, a fifth of that pile in two hours that he worked this morning because he only works a couple hours, but he hasn't worked in two weeks.
I understand that. Unfortunately, I think we allowed Genovese two months. You know, that our motion. And so I don't know how we can expect, how we can demand anything better than that as long as he's done, you know, within the two month window, which is by the middle of next month. It would certainly be nice to get the grass seed down, and Jim, you can share that with Chris to share with the owner. But I think the point to get across to him is that we're disappointed with the lack of progress. We're disappointed with not being able to get the grass seed down. And if we don't have a better story by next meeting, it is going to be time for us to start legal action.
Look what they did across the street, Jed. I understand completely. You know, is
the example of how, you know, in this labor shortage, things can get done in a hurry.
Every step of the way that gravel operation has not met our expectations. Yep.
We're gonna struggle the whole thing and it was supposed to be done in three or four months when they started. I agree with you Scott.
I would definitely recommend documenting any correspondence we have with them between now and the next meeting so that way we can show a paper trail that, you know, Jim's been pushing this with them and ask for a timeline for completion.
Good ideas. Jim, can you write up a letter to send to them? Know, Certainly. Contact them immediately, tell them what's coming, but we're going to start documenting it because we're not satisfied with the progress that they're making over there? Certainly.
Is the guy you saw moving the dirt around today the same guy that was there when you and I were over there a month ago? Yes, Larry Johnson. Okay, so yeah. He hasn't worked since that day that he was there yet. Has not worked. Okay,
no, agree. I have become totally frustrated with with this particular project, and it would have been so easy to have it go and just be done. And I guess the other question that I had, and I can't remember, Jim, is since it is going so slow, do we have the hay bales, is an erosion control measure, out in place at this point?
Yes. Okay. So I saw the silt fence. Somebody working on the silt fence very recently. I thought it was over the like last Friday, but I could be mistaken about that.
Okay, so Jim, so if you could contact Chris Bell, discuss this with him, follow-up within a week by letter with him, asking him for his schedule. And send, you know, the letter out to the Commission so we know, you know, when it's gone and can stand by to follow-up for the next meeting. Our expectation is that, and you can back me up on my date if I am incorrect there, by November 17, four days prior to our meeting, he is required to be done. And we were very generous in giving him the two month window in his request to do that. I have a couple of questions. Yeah, go ahead, Leanne. Are you finished? I yes.
Your timetable? Just to so basically, Jim, you you used the term pushing dirt around. And did you say that Chris Bell isn't having any more luck compelling this guy to do more work than he has? Are you saying Chris has been in direct contact with him and the guy is not seeing any more responses?
Correct. I mean, he's constantly changed contractors. I think we have the same one that's been in place for a number of months. Yeah, I mean, Chris has been in contact with Bill, Bill Genovese, the owner. And then what happened?
Well, I've tried to have them basically redistribute resources, meaning put somebody full time on there. And that hasn't happened as of yet, but I'll continue to try. I'll deal correctly with Bill I think. Give that a shot. Chris has been very cooperative. It's just. I
don't agree with that statement, Jim. He may have sounded cooperative, but he's not done anything he said he was going to do.
Yeah, I mean the problem is the contractor's not working for Chris.
He works for Genevieve. Yeah. And he only works two hours a day, Chad told me, he's only worked two hours in the last month. Nope, I
gotcha. And I guess the other thing that Jim, you and I should do is we should, you know, set up a meeting here with Mark Branch so that we have our ducks in a row. I'm not real clear on this bonding issue and how that works, but that money is supposed to be put there somewhere and if the owner of the property can't get the restoration plan done, we should tell him that we're going to do it. And if it runs more than the bond that he set aside, he's going to pay for it because he has chosen not to comply with the plan that he agreed to.
So it's the restoration portion that's supposed to have been underway since last month and the ex the excavation, the leveling out or whatever we wanna call it for this know, for tonight, that's what's only been worked on at at the rate of two hours a day intermittently, if that it's not funny. So that's what you're saying has only been done a couple of hours and they're supposed to be into the seeding restoration phase and they haven't even finished the first phase, correct?
Yes, and you know, there's, you see the big mounds over there, there's, you know, piles of tree stumps and tires and that kind of thing over there, and that just needs to get removed and not buried. It's been horrible, just like the initial excavation was. Yes.
So Leanne actually he's worked four hours in the last month maybe five maybe five.
That's That doesn't get any more minimal than that. Exactly. He's not trying at all.
Okay. So we're gonna go with the things that Jed outlined between now and next month as far as the attorney and the bond and directing them that way? Yes. Okay, thank you.
Any other comments on the gravel pit? Okay, I think we covered that. Next, under old business is an update on Rosewood Acres. And I didn't have anything update on that, Jim. I don't know if you did or not.
Well, did contact Grimaldi and he indicated he would be in touch with me to set up a meeting to come in and discuss. He had some personal issues going on that has not done so. I'll follow-up with another phone call, but he's well aware of it. And he's motivated to do this. He just has some other things going on and seemingly hasn't been able to come in.
Are the other members of the commission aware of a Yukon brief this Wednesday at 01:30? Okay, so I see Anne shaking her head, Steve shaking her head. So anyhow, the UConn students are supposed to be helping us out with some economic development kind of stuff. And, you know, I've been trying to, you know, push them towards taking a look at the Rosewood Acres subdivision in light of the fact that Mr. Grimaldi's interested in developing it, maybe they could help with that. I sent out a, you know, I emailed Katherine Lewis, who's kind of the ringleader of of this, you know, asking if she knew whether or not the pitch on Wednesday was going to include anything on Rosewood Acres, and she did not know. If it did, I was going to invite Mr. Brumaldi. I see that the presentation is going to be recorded, and so if there's anything there and it's pretty short notice, Keith Grimaldi will be able to take a look at it on tape, I would hope that the students could work with the town and Mr. Grimaldi to make something happen over there.
Good, can you tell me the particulars of that? Missed that whole.
It's Wednesday at what time and where? At 01:30 in the Community Room. Community Room. And who is doing the presentation?
The UConn students that are working with Andover as their project for the year. Okay, thank you. At the request of Catherine Lewis, it's an economic development kind of project. So, if any of the Commission members or Agent Halsey are available and can attend that, I'm sure that they would appreciate the support of having somebody show up. I plan to go, but I don't know much about what we're going to see.
I'm sorry, you said somebody would be taping that? Do you know? Elaine Buchert is going to it. Elaine's going tape it, okay.
I think it's useful if it's going to be taped. I saw a letter from Adrian that maybe it went to a number of other people too asking Katherine if the presentation could be moved to the evening and I didn't see any response after that. So, if it is still held in the middle of the day, I think it's going to be quite beneficial for people to be able to view it later.
I did see a response on that question, and the response was that a lot of the students have jobs in the evening, and so they weren't available then. And so that's what led I to the didn't cross that letter yet if I got one. Okay. Okay, any other questions or comments on Rosewood Acres, also known as Lindholm Corner? Okay, we're going to move on to 5. Charlie, the update from Planning and Zoning Commission letter to Board of Selectmen regarding speed limit on Route 6. And Leigh Ann drafted up a very nice letter for me. We sent it to the Board of Selectmen. I briefed the Board of Selectmen at last Tuesday's meeting. They were all favorably responsive and agreed to provide a letter to the state reducing the speed limit in that particular area. So I thought that was going well. Then there was, you know, the subject came up, guess Adrian mentioned that I don't know if he saw or the reports of trucks from Route 6 backing into the Dollar General, which was not at all what we were briefed on. And so I think that there have been some questions raised and that sort of thing. So, I think while everybody remains in agreement that we should lower the speed limit, there might be more to it than that. And I don't know where that stands right now. I know somebody, whether it's Adrian or Eric, has contacted, you know, somebody from the Dollar General and talked to him about that. And it was reported to me that the little design, the design of the parking lot over there, and I didn't think it was radiated area, I thought it was just painted crosshatch on the pavement,
but it precluded the ability, the way it was designed to allow a truck that pulled off a Route 6 into the parking lot to make the turn to get around to the loading dock. I personally think that if that's true, you know, they just need to go modify the parking lot so that, you know, to me it's unacceptable To have.
The trucks backing in there from Route 6 and everybody here at the meeting was told that they're going to back in from Link Road. Yep and traffic the traffic consultants
did that report. And yes, Eric did contact Gary, the developer, and discussed the matter. He said that's clearly a driver error and warrants ticket. I mean, it's a traffic offense. And yes, great. The traffic doesn't work, mean, they submitted a plan by their engineer, guaranteeing that this would work. Our engineer reviewed it. I think it's a matter of execution of that turn personally, but nonetheless, I mean, it's gonna be followed up through enforcement.
That whole island that they put in there, Jim, has to be removed. Yeah. There's no way you could, you couldn't even back the landscape trailer around that corner.
Ted, you know, if that's a raised island or is it just marked off on the? It's just a raised island. Take look. I go by it looked like it was flat, but it's raised. Checking the center of this Route 6 curb cut. No, the island that comes off of Lake Road. Rina, can you allow me to share my screen?
I thought you were talking about off of Route 6, the entry. I've got a picture here if I can hopefully pull it up.
Yep, let me see if I can do this. Alright, I think I have to make you a host. Okay, try now, Jed.
Okay, so hopefully you can all see the picture from their site plan for us. And they briefed out the truck would be coming down the road, pull in, go over here, and then back up. And you can see the backup path. Here's the little island that everybody's talking about that raised up a couple of inches. I see. Okay. You can see it. It almost looks like it was planned to back across that in there. Now that, you know, I've gone back to relook at that after we had the problem. And then I interpreted it as based on the brief that they gave us. The truck was coming out and pulls on down the road. I am hoping they don't come back now and say, oh, no. It was always our intention to have the truck back in right like the picture shows. And clearly, that is not
what they briefed to us. Luckily, we do have that recorded. But this is the island and, you know, to expect that the truck is going to back up here and make that sharp turn, it just isn't going to work. And I kind of was, you know, I thought they had traffic engineers and engineers that do trucking turn radiuses and all that kind of stuff, it must have been able to work somehow, now it comes in that it didn't. So anyhow, that's where we're at. The traffic concern is bigger than it was when we were just looking
at going down, down the speed limit. The yes? Last
My recollection is that I don't remember any discussion or that anybody would have agreed with them backing in from anywhere. I thought that's why they wanted the curb cut on Route 6 so that trucks could come and go from there. I don't remember any discussion because I brought it up and I think it was because there was kind of an unusual public hearing. Mark Brandt's telling me that it was too late to discuss that. But I had asked at some point could they not come in from Lake Road and pull in front of the building and go around the other end of the building to the loading dock and was told no, there wasn't enough room. So I don't think any of us thought at any point that there was going to be any backing in from anywhere that I thought they were going to come in from the Route 6 curb cut, pull straight in, do what they needed to do with the loading dock and have enough room to come back out Route 6, I guess, because they, you know, they didn't want to talk too much about Lake Road.
No, your recollection is correct. And in fact, you know, I had a question on the permeability of the materials there. Jim cleared that up for me today. But this area over in here is made of a different material. This section of the parking lot is specifically designed to support the weight of the heavy trucks coming in. Area over here is all permeable material, and I don't think we stand the weight of the trucks coming in there.
Yeah, Jed, I think I even recall, and if we check the video recording, he took his highlighter and drew He did. How they were going to pull in and then back up. Absolutely,
absolutely. There's no doubt in any of our minds what they briefed us to do. Now sometimes, and this is where we need to make sure that we get what we want in writing because, you know, they can brief you one thing and have something different in the plans, and we're going to be held liable to what's in the plans. But in this case, I think the plans show very clearly how they intended to pull the truck in, bag it up here, and we do have that on video. Now the last traffic piece I'll share with the Commission happened today when I was sitting here working on my computer getting ready for the meeting and I saw a car parked out in front of my house for several minutes. I said, I wonder what's up with that. And I stood up, looked over the bushes, and there was a huge Dollar General semi. It looks like it came down Erdoni Road trying to make a right hand turn onto Lake Road. And I think he was struggling and had traffic tied up here for a while. But I don't know what the story was on that, but we were clearly briefed that the delivery trucks were going to come down Route 6 and in here. And the thing that makes me feel the worst about all these traffic issues
is this was probably the number one comment to the public, is concerned about traffic. And if it ends up not being good, I guess, you know, we kind of failed the public with regards to that, although, you know, I thought we had done a very good job of trying to make sure that we understood everything there. But we would certainly be ripe for some criticism if things don't change from what's currently going on. So, but anyhow, that's, that was the result of the lowering of the speed limit discussion. Everybody liked that. I just think there's more to it than that right now and we got to get our hands around that. So that's what I know about our letter to the Board of Selectmen. It was a good letter, good presentation to the Board of Selectmen. They were all supportive of it, and then it got worse. The next thing on the agenda is lessons learned from the Dollar General application. And so, a couple of weeks back, Eric asked me why we didn't install the sprinkler system in the Dollar General. Because it was required by our subdivision regulations. And I said, well, that was the reason that the applicant came in to subdivide the property first and the site plan second is so that they, you know, one of the reasons could have been, you know, they just wanted to deal with dividing the property first. It could have been that they didn't want to, you know, deal with all the subdivision regulations. I don't know. But again, having done our due diligence, we had the fire marshal and the town engineer at the time take a look at the application, and they both thought it was satisfactory,
And in fact, it supports the Connecticut Safety Code. But I went back and talked to Mark Grants about that. He pointed me out to this section in our regulations and I wanted to share that with everybody because it was kind of eye opening to me tonight. I probably should have color coded it here. So when we're looking at compliance with regulations, you know, it says it's going to conform in all respects with these regulations, less variance, blah, blah, blah. Further, the application shall conform to the Andover subdivision regulations. So even though the applicant in this case came in with a site plan, we can still require and should require compliance with the Andover subdivision regulations, which state that a commercial building will have a sprinkler system in it. You would think that the applicant would have wanted to put a sprinkler system in there for his own protection. But I figured that was his problem. But, you know, the lesson learned for me is we're allowed to enforce our subdivision regulations, even though we're only doing a site plan review. And so I wanted to share that with all you guys. And I think that gives us a little bit of latitude on
how to get a better product going forward. So anyhow, I'm not citing you guys at fault, I'm citing myself at fault. And I'm learning. I just wanted to share that opportunity with all you guys.
I should have picked up on that and did not.
I'm still surprised the property owner didn't do it because I would guess his
insurance would be lower with the sprinkler system as well. You know, but I didn't really care. It was his problem, you know, and I thought I was clearly, I had been trained up by a previous town engineer that once the property is subdivided, subdivision regulations don't apply any longer. And so I took it, okay, that's it. Attorney Brandt who says he had his finger in the pie on writing this knew right where to go and pointed it out to me.
There's Steve, you know, apparently Dollar General keeps their stores under the threshold that the National Fire Protection threshold that would kick in the fire sprinkler requirement for that reason. And they're making a financial decision. I understand what you're saying. I agree. It just apparently it doesn't save that much money compared to the cost of this sprinkler
from what I understand. So any other comments on what we learned from the Dollar General? They had a bunch of smart folks in here every meeting they came, and I guess that's why they were paying those folks that money. Next item up is Pine Ridge Subdivision and this is kind of my inland wetlands liaison. We'll see if at the last inland wetlands meeting, we talking about the, you know, we sent, when they came back and wanted to change the driveway, we sent it over to wetlands because they were routing the utilities through there separately from the crossing and that sort of thing. And Agent Wagner over there had taken several pictures of the crossing throughout the summer, and I thought I would share those with you because it's not easy for us to see from the road what's going on down there. So this is the earliest picture taken back in early July. And you remember we were in quite a drought at the time, so this shows the wetlands path going through where the driveway was going to be put.
We're not seeing a picture. Jed, you need to change the screen.
Okay. That's a bummer. Okay. Let's see. So that happened to me when I was giving my affordable housing presentation too. Popped up and I was happy. I'm going to save that for next month rather than take the time to manipulate the system to get it out of planning and zoning on the website and all that kind of stuff. So I'm going stop sharing while I may add. That was gonna be the good news story for tonight. We'll save that for next month here. Well, did it show, Jed?
It showed a massive structure that they had put in place and it looked really good as far as diverting any intermittent water courses under the driveway. I was impressed, everybody on the Inland Wetlands Commission was impressed with the magnitude of the driveway construction and how it was going to more than adequately handle the flow that might be going through there. I thought it was a good piece of engineering and in my mind, they did a good job and the finished product looked very nice over there. There. So, moving on, the next item on the agenda is the update of the open space funding for the Ladano property. And we were not able to conclude a successful negotiation on that purchase. The property owner came back with a counteroffer. We met the counteroffer and still got outbid. And at that point, you know, because we only had so much money in open space funds that we were exceeding the threshold of what the state was allowing to be put in for that, and we couldn't raise our bid anymore. So, thought that would have been a very nice addition for a lot of different ways, but
that one didn't get there. Did we ever find out what the sale price was?
I did not. I figured I could wait and read it in the newspaper when it shows up there. And I think that, you know, probably whoever is buying it is going to come before the Commission at some point wanting to do something with it and we'll be able to get that there. Any other questions on the Ladano property? Okay. Now we're going to move into new business, and the first item up is the annual report. And so, I sent everybody out based on Steve's comment at the last meeting. I put a little paragraph in here about Walda Grant for the multi use path long route 316 wasn't approved. We should continue to
try and build on the momentum from what we had recently done and make another run at doing that. The people that were in attendance at the little ribbon cutting Saturday morning, know I was impressed with how that brought a lot of pieces of the town together. And I'm sure we haven't seen the end of that, but I thought that was a great thing for the town. And I think making safe this ability to navigate that small portion of Route 316 would be important to that project as well and to keep that going. So that's the only thing I added. Steve also pointed out to me, I had a little typo up here. I had R instead of area. Steve, I did not have time this afternoon to run over to see. I know where the picnic table was supposed to go. Whether it's there or not yet, I don't know. But I know the plan is to put a little picnic table on the other side of the brook there so that people can have a little picnic that are moving along the trail.
Great. No, haven't had time to check it out either. Does anybody know if the picnic table has been put there?
No? Okay, so we'll take that as a lookup. But at this point, I'd like to make a motion for the commission to approve the report as modified here. Second.
Thank you, Steve. And any further discussion on the annual report? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye.
Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five zero zero. I sent everybody out some proposed meeting dates for the coming year. And when the meeting fell on a holiday, we shifted to the following Monday. I was just trying to keep all the town meetings we were doing on Mondays because I got other meetings that I do on Tuesdays. And the one change that I made due to my personal schedule is, you know, from mid May, I think it's the fifteenth, moved it out a week to May 22 due to my personal schedule. Certainly, you know, don't have to do that, but I think if it's convenient to do so, I prefer to run the meeting myself. I think Anne is fully capable of doing that, but I just like to maintain the continuity of doing that if I can, as long as we've got time to plan for it that way. If I couldn't get logged in tonight, Ann, you'd have been stuck trying to do it, but I will not intentionally try and put that on you. So I'll try to keep that to myself here. So those are the proposed dates. I know I didn't get any negative feedback on any of them. But anybody have any comments on the schedule for next year? I guess at this point in time, you know,
I started wrestling with myself. Should we be meeting in person yet or not? And I thought with the potential for the fallwinter surge and the fact that it's getting dark out and winter months coming, I would stay with virtual meetings until spring, and then we can look at getting back together at that point.
Good. What I would do as a matter of course is send a copy of the schedule to the town clerk who would calendar them the meetings. She would also at that time reserve the community room if we were to use it. Yes. If you'd like, I can schedule the community room commencing in June. I mean, we don't use it, we don't use it.
Just a thought. I would, I would. Yeah, and we'll talk about it as a commission as we get close, but I would think that if we were going to be able to go to in person meetings, it may start May or even as early as April once we get past.
Okay, then why don't I do it for April? There's a change, then we simply will take it, we'll unreserve the room. Make it available to others.
Okay, sounds good. And so you're going to take care of that, Jim? Yes. Okay, thank you. I did get a form in the mail from Carol asking for that input. But if you get that to her, that would be great. Next item up on the agenda is a discussion of the upcoming plan of conservation and development. Not due until 2025. I was reading, you know, in my approval of the River East, I saw legal notice from the Hebron Planning and Zoning Commission. And their plan is due in 2024 and they are already holding public meetings about various chapters of their plan of conservation development. So, you know, it was on our goal to put out a solicitation for
bids. Last year we didn't get to it, but I think now that, you know, we've got a few of the big ticket items finished up, I did talk to Eric recently about, you know, asking for his help on putting out the bids for people to assist us with putting that plan together. He asked me to discuss with the Commission the philosophy behind the next plan of conservation development. You know, one is, does he, do we want to leave it the way it is and just update it? Do we want to start from a fresh piece of paper? I told him I wanted to get good input from the town people. I didn't think we had gotten any input recently in light of the affordable housing plan and that. I think we needed some input from the citizens of Andover with respect to housing and, you know, what they want the zoning to be. He asked me if we should, if we want the plan to be more practical or more idealistic.
And I didn't know what he was trying to get at there. And I remember as we were looking to make the 08/24 referral for the garage over on Center Street, as we read through the chapter on the town center in the plan of conservation and development, you could build a case that a parking garage wasn't the best use for that property. But the picture that that presented in that particular chapter was maybe too idealistic as opposed to practical. And so I think that's what he was looking at. I don't know that that's got anything to do with putting out the solicitation for bids. That may have to do with something that we think about and the questions we ask of the different groups that we might evaluate as far as who we choose to go there. So I shared that thought with you and think we almost got ourselves into a box where we couldn't put a parking garage over in the center because it didn't comply with the lofty idealistic thought that it had there. But Eric did a good job of walking us through all the places where the plant did support putting a garage over there, so that's that. Any questions on plant and conservation and development? But getting that rolling is my next big project where I'm at with everybody. At the last Board of Selectment meeting, next item is opting out of the accessory dwelling unit requirements. I briefed the Board of Selectment on that. They ratified our decision. You know, it required a twothree majority. We only had four members present, and all four of them voted in favor to ratify the thing. So, that gave us 80%, and that's a done deal. We are now opted out.
Next item on new business is the sale of agricultural products grown on premises. And Jim, did you want to talk about that for a minute? Sure. I had a woman
approached me about selling, well, about a potential business opportunity at the end of Hutchinson Road. And it was just she's just looking at it trying to set up sort of a business plan. And it just came to light how restrictive our regulations are for just some of these small tiny venues. I mean, literal read of the regulations would tell me that if you have a cooler at the end of the driveway with a sign that says eggs, then you need a site plan. When in reality, I certainly haven't called anybody on that. But then these things grow. Her particular property happens to be in a business zone, which changes it a little bit. But right now you need a site plan at a cost of about $310 And that would be a very rudimentary hand drawn sketch, the $2.50 for the site plan application, 60 for a state fee. And I'm not looking for the commission to interpret it. I just bring it to their attention. Swamin, I don't know at what scale, I was trying to get a handle on what scale she would need
to come to the commission. Quite frankly, the rate is if she does anything, anything where somebody comes to the house and I'm just, I was just, I don't know whether this individual is on the zoom tonight or not. They certainly knew about the meeting.
Well, hey, I've got a note here, Marina, that's up on top of my screen that looks like the school superintendent has entered the waiting room, wants to be admitted. Do you see that?
Let me see. I might have to remake me the host. Oh, yes, reclaimed host. Okay. Let me add Valen.
Okay. Yep. I don't know how long she was waiting there, but all sudden I recognize you made me the host and I was probably the only guy seeing that thing. Good evening. We got you here just in time. We're just finishing up the sale of agricultural products and then we'll be on to the new business, your concerns, Valerie. Anything else on that, Jim?
No, was just looking for any feedback if there was any. We wanted to bring the matter to the Commission's attention. I don't know if there's any ability to loosen up on that, revisit that regulation or not.
Certainly not in the near term. And I would think the Commission might like to see a rudimentary site plan that shows, you know, she what kind of stand she'd want to put, what kind of facility she has to allow cars to come in, you know, what she thinks for parking. And again, if it's on Hutchinson Road, that's I'm surprised that there would be much business over that way. No, But it's not an idea. It's
a lot of drive by traffic. It's the end of a cul de sac. Okay, yep. Okay, that's fine. We should have a last minute inquiry and I threw it on there. I didn't really flesh it out before it went on the agenda. Yeah. And just
so the Commission knows, so I think this person reached out to, I think it was Elaine Bouchardt, head of the Economic Development Commission, who, you know, forwarded her idea to me. I wrote back a bunch of stuff about farming on lots that are bigger than three acres and that, you know, how we would approach this. I didn't know where she lived. Turns out she lives in a lot that's in the business district. Agriculture is one of the allowed things there by site plan. So, I think it's very easy to do. I regret that it'll cost her $240 to come talk to us, but I do think we owe it to ourselves. Maybe Jim can do that, but we need to know what it is that she really plans to do. And sometimes until you come talk to a group of people, you don't have it as clear in your head as you think it might be.
I think she's going to structure her business plan accordingly.
Okay. So, more to follow on that. Nothing for us tonight. Marina, if you can allow me to share my screen again, I want to pull up the letter that we got from Jerry here so that we can have that. Should be good now.
Okay, and so probably, I don't know that everybody had a chance to read through this letter that that I think came in to Jim this afternoon, sometime today. But, you know, separately, you know, a discussion that I had with Ann, we were talking about parking a little bit. And so, I know that Jerry was wanting to get the concerns out and might not have known exactly how to go about that, but I certainly applaud the being proactive, taking the initiative, and getting them out on the table early so that we can deal with them. I thought reading through the letter, I haven't studied it much, but I did read through it today, all those things were certainly great questions. My thought is that, you know, I think, Jerry, were you and Anne at the public information meeting we had back in April or whatever it was?
Yes, I was there.
Yeah, thought you were. Certainly, we as a commission have not seen anything coming our way yet, and we will, you know, we're going to have to make a determination whether or not the plan is supported by the plan of conservation and development is consistent with the town plan and that sort of thing. Having said that, if you went to that meeting, you're aware that there is a community center building commission who has been meeting and working hard on that for a long time. And I was thinking, you know, and I think the lead in to this said you had sent this to Ed Sariski.
He is the lead on that. That's probably an even better place. Certainly coming through the Commission, you will get a chance to have your questions answered before the plan is approved. I don't know where we stand on developing the site plan right now. But my thought would be the best way to approach it, it would be through the Community center building committee and interact with them to try to get these things considered in finalizing that plan before it ever comes here. And then if it doesn't get considered, you know, we have the opportunity to act on that here as well. But having said that, I know you gave a couple of comments early on in public speak. Would you or the school superintendent, you'd like to make make any comments on on the letters at this point?
Valerie came up with these concerns that she had. And I told her, I said, I think that we should make them public and let people look at them and come up with solutions if there was a problem. I didn't want anything to get in the way of this community center. People in Andover been waiting for it for a long time. Many people are looking forward to it as I am too. But I just wanted to be upfront, if she's if Valerie has concerns. I wanted to share those and have them shared with the people who are involved. So, if Valerie would like to speak to the specifics of some of them just to give you an idea, maybe some background and where she where her thinking is coming from. I would invite her to do that if it's okay with you. Oh, that'd be great.
Thank you. Thanks, Jed. Thanks, everybody. Yep. Their concerns and, of course, like Jerry said, I know that this is a great project, and it absolutely does need to be seen through to fruition. It's just with the school, I know that we have so many other guidelines that normal building projects wouldn't necessarily have to consider going into such a thing. We have so many mandates that are associated with the fact that we have a preschool program and that we are funded through school readiness and through smart start, and that goes through the office of early childhood education.
So there are probably a fair number of concerns that wouldn't normally come up. It just does for us because of our association with the state and our funding with OEC. So when Jerry and I started to talk about these things, I kind of pulled a few of the things directly from the OEC handbook. There may be others, but I would love to be able to collaborate with the committee, the building committee. I know they're gonna wind up putting an RFP together, and these may be some of the areas if we don't have somebody at the town level that has expertise in this type of building that we we may, you know, need a little heads up on. I do know that we'll need timelines on things so that we can work together to make sure that we don't violate any of the things that we need for compliance in fear losing funding there. So I think it could be done. It's just gonna probably take a little bit of collaboration between now and the end of the process to make sure that, you know, we check the boxes and say, yep, we got this. And so I look forward to that. I would, you know, just say along the way, if anybody does need any assistance with some of these guidelines, some of the things that we have concerns about, please let me know. I'd be glad to provide that.
Okay, thank you. And again, I think you've probably been made aware, well, know you have heard at the public meetings we had, there has been some friction in the past between the seniors and the school. And I'm hoping that we are making headway on that and certainly don't want to derail any of those efforts that seem to be having us head in the right direction. But I do think that the proactive approach is the right way to go. And so thank you, thank you for the letter. Scott, are you, you're on the, that committee, are you not? I am, yes. I looked online just trying to get a feel for it appeared to me that there has not been a meeting of that committee since probably March or April. Is that correct? Correct. Working on the RFP.
Yeah. So this is a great time for the letter to come in. Jerry, I would encourage you to get in touch with Ed, who's the chair of that committee, and see if, you know, he might want to have a meeting to get together to discuss the letter or that sort of thing. Because really it would be nice to have that hashed out before it gets presented to us as a final plan and would save money too. So, it'd be easier and cheaper. Ted, could you scroll down to three, please? Yep.
I had a question on three. Is three relative to the overall as built plan or relative to the drinking water conditions during construction?
Steve, I think it would be both. Because I know anytime, like, we report a project that's within proximity, they will ask for certain OEC will ask for certain testing to be done along the way. And then when a project's completed, they will request, like, a final. For example, whenever we move a room, cool uses. Cool has restrictions and requirements as well. We moved the cool program from the gym to a room upstairs, and we had to by mandate repeat radon testing and repeat lead testing because they just require felt really bad because cool had to pay for it twice. But so I think it's both honestly to answer your question, it would be both, we'd be asked to produce documentation that it's safe during and after.
I would, I would think the end after is in the final product should be controlled by the building codes etc it's just the during construction where could get tricky, and that I think number two addresses that as well.
Steve, I think Eastern Highlands Health District actually does the after part. They check to make sure everything's good because we do have to have an annual report from them. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that they require. That's why I got a little nervous because I was like, this is so doable and so but we just have to make sure that we we could do it along the way because they give you timelines to get this stuff to them before they give us our money. We're
talking about conditions that would be added to the bid documents that would provide would address your concerns here, it would seem. I mean, that's a function of the engineer preparing the documents for the most part.
I think so. And I think they're all pretty reasonable questions. I think, you know, in hindsight, maybe it would have been great to have somebody from the school board on the committee working because they are the big stakeholder in very close proximity. But I certainly appreciate, you know, again, the proactive nature of getting the items addressed and we as a commission can be looking to make sure that those items are addressed when the site plan eventually does come to us.
See the RFP is posted on the town website. So I'm amazed how detailed that is. It's a lot of stuff involved, and maybe some of these things are in there. I can't tell at first glance, but I think it's really important to have these things listed out ahead of time.
I do, too, and I think that a lot of the questions are probably not questions that we would have raised as the Commission. It's certainly not in our regulations to take all those. Although we can ask those questions in our hearing earlier is better for them to be working on that.
Jen, I want say thank you and the Commission and Jim for accepting this onto your agenda this evening. I appreciate your commission members for the work you're doing, and you for the work you do, and Jim, especially your help this afternoon when you looked at this and got it out so quickly. So I just wanna say thank you to all of you. You're welcome.
Any other questions for us while you're here? You or Valerie?
No, thanks, Jed. And again, I echo what Jerry said. But if there are any documents or things that you guys need from us where we could help you providing, you know, the school side and the State Department stuff, please let me know. I'll be glad to get together whatever you need. Okay, so thank you very much.
And with that, that concludes the new business. Next up is correspondence item eight. Jim, we have anything on that? Nothing else. That letter was it.
Okay. The letter from the Board of Ed. Item nine, administrative reports.
Ongoing enforcement. We have Center Street is pretty much cleaned up. I do expect an application from them. I believe that the owner will be looking to put an accessory apartment on that site. There will be an opportunity to further clean it up, but that will require a site plan approval, I believe. Route 6, the Barnett property. Is the size of that live gym? It's less than. It's.
I don't know offhand. I think it's little over I think it's the biggest lot down there, isn't it? Little over half an acre maybe, Jud.
Yep. So it's that small, and again, I have no idea. It looks, I know those lots over there are small. Right now, our regulations require 60,000 square feet, about an acre and a half. So he might need to go and get a variance on that before he comes to us. Hang on. I'm gonna look it up right now.
Good. I I understood Mark Francis. Response on my inquiry to say that that wouldn't be the case, but I will go back and take a look at that.
Now, if we hadn't opted out of, you know, the public act regulations that would have given everybody the opportunity to build an accessory apartment as of right, we just opted out of them. And we opted out of all of them. And that doesn't mean we can't change, but right now our regulation says 60,000 square feet and we had a guy, I think it was out on Wheeling Road that we, with a one acre lot, we didn't allow him to build an accessory dwelling unit. It's point eight The information
that I have from Mark Brantz on that. Okay, well we'll
take a look at it. Most of them getting a variance, know what the regulation says. 0.86,
good. Okay, yep. We'll have to come through that issue. There's already a house on it.
It's The a house there is fine. It's yeah. The There isn't any more. Yeah. But he can rebuild whatever he had, right? Exactly right?
And he he does have variance on some of the setbacks. Okay, yeah.
But that's it. The side yard and the front yard. Route 6, Steve Barnett property. I meet with him on a biweekly basis to just monitor progress. He does seem to be throwing things out and hiding things better. The Wheeling Road property, generally bought the older greenhouse right on the road that's been vacant for years and years, There hasn't been any progress on that. It was very responsive when I initially pointed out to him the need for a dumpster and take care of the site. And I did send a citation to him, and that time period that he was allowed to clean it up has expired. So I'm going to have to initiate the next step, and I don't know what that is offhand. I'm going to have to work with the town attorney and figure out where to go with that. What property are you talking about? Yeah, Long Hill. I said Wheeling again. Long Hill. Long Hill. The the greenhouse on the corner, right? Green. I thought you're okay.
I said I think I said Wheeling again. I'm sorry. I don't know why. And so he won't get a dumpster?
Well. I haven't responded initially. Did did have a dumpster on-site filled it and it was gone. And now I mean my biggest concern is that the garage doors are open. I mean, not only could somebody get in there, but I it's just visually visually unattractive and there's all over the net trash, but there's wood wood products and you know it would be one thing if there was progress going on, but there's not. I haven't seen any haven't seen anybody there. I haven't seen any sign of activity there. The next Was
it little bit bigger of a job than just changing the roof?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I I thought, you know, I spent a fair amount of time with the gentleman that bought it, bought it with his son, and he seemed to have a good handle on the scope of work. I mean, it wasn't his first first acquisition. I'm also trying to work with the owner of the property adjacent to the library to fix the fence. It's in disrepair. And that's slow going. I haven't seen any progress on that. Other than that, there's been a fair amount of activity in town. A couple of houses are approaching completion. One on Gilead. The house on Webster Lane. Number of large additions. That's about it. Any questions?
And I won't ask Jim the question because I don't think he's done that yet and it was me late getting to him, but I have now sent into Jim the revised regulations with our chapters fifteen and seventeen, and those should be posted anytime now, now that we've got an admin assistant over at the town hall to work on those things. And I understand we've got an applicant for a board clerk.
We do. So, we'll be interviewing that individual. I don't know who it is offhand. Okay.
Anything else, Jim? No. Okay. And I don't have anything else on the Inland Wetlands Water Corners Commission. I'll figure out how better to get those photos so that you can take a look at them for the next meeting. I was gonna copy and paste them into my little handout and they said, I'll just be slick and put the link there. Can you send that to us?
Yeah, I can. Yes, I'll send everybody out the link. It's on, that's easy to do. Okay. Number 10, public speak. We got nobody from the public left. At this point, any Commission members have any questions or comments on anything at all that you want to share with the Commission?
I want to just say that the only reason I didn't say anything about the community center was I believe that that letter should be brought up with the appropriate board so we can address those things first.
I agree, and I got the impression he didn't really know what the process was or how to approach it. And he was coming over to Jim to get a little help there, and I think we were able to do that. Would have And been nice to have that information even earlier in the process, but Right. We think it got
to us. Somebody brought that up about six or eight months ago, I think, some of that information, Talking to the school about what was going on over there, I don't know. Okay, yep. I
know. Well, I've tried looking online for the committee meetings and such, and there was nothing there for like last four So months or I wasn't sure who was doing what at this time, but we did send that letter to Adrian, Ed Serizli, and Eric, and also to Jeff Maguire, so that we tried to cover all the possible areas that would be involved with it. Anne, can you send it to me also, please?
Okay. I think you got it in the email today from Jim. I didn't see it.
I know I got it. Yeah. I got it as well. Everybody.
Believe I Send it to you when we get done, Scott. Alright. Any other Commission member comments? Okay. Hearing none, next item is next regular scheduled meeting, November 21. I checked the date this time. We got it right? All right. And
if there's nothing else, I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second. Anybody opposed? Hearing none, the motion passes five-zero-zero. Thank you all for your participation and attendance tonight, and I appreciate all the support. Thank you. Good night. Thank you.