Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Public Hearing & Regular Meeting
December 20, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay, well, have got 07:00, so I will open the public hearing. And at this point, I don't see Leanne here, is one of our permanent members. During the public hearing, all the Commission members and alternates can participate and ask questions. I don't expect Susan England or Kevin to be with us tonight so that once we get to the meeting, if Leanne isn't here, we'll have Anne seated in her place, but we don't do that for the public hearing. So, this point, the Andover Planning and Zoning Commission is holding a virtual public hearing to solicit comment and entertain questions on application known as 580 Lake Road. The applicant is seeking a two lot subdivision in an industrial zone in accordance with the Andover subdivision
regulations. So at this point, I will open the meeting up to the applicant or his representative to run us through what we've got, what's changed since the last time we met, and we'll go from there. So, I think, Matt, are you addressing the application tonight?
Yes, Mr. Chairman. I'll be doing the majority of the presentation. And I am joined by the developer, Matt Ucolito, and his project attorney, Robin Pearson, also on the line.
Okay. Well, that's a good portion of the people that I didn't know then. So welcome and go ahead, Matt.
Okay. Great. Again, for the record, my name is Matthew Bruton. I'm an engineer from DL Companies. We're headquartered at 355 Research Parkway. Mister chairman and and members, if you guys are okay with me sharing my screen, I think it'll aid the conversation, if that's okay? Yep. Go ahead. Alright. Let me see if I can do this right. Can everybody everybody see the the plans here? Yep.
Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna switch for the moment to, Google. Wait. Did everybody So
as everybody can remember, the last time, I was here, we're, discussing 580 Lake Road, and Google Earth is up on the screen here. So, the 580 Lake Road encompasses, this entire block. So, Route 6, obviously, where my mouse is hovering now, and, Lake Road on the side. There is an existing industrial, I believe, plumbing contractor occupying this building right here. What my client and the and the applicant is looking to do is to subdivide a portion of this land off. The majority of that land that you can see from this aerial is this grass field that I'm kind of circling with my mouse here that is currently undeveloped and and just mowed and maintained as a lawn. I'll just give you a quick reminder what that looks like if I spin myself around here. So this is obviously a a view from Route 6. You can see, Lake, Lake Road in the, the background there with the white van, And this is the current field. In general, everything slopes from the existing building down to Route 6,
and there's very, very little improvements on the property besides a sign. And I believe that was a discussion, last time, Mr Chairman, that that sign would need to be removed if the subdivision were to move forward. So what I have on the screen now is just, an existing conditions. This is a survey of the property. I'm obviously showing, what I just showed you there before. You see the sign, the billboard sign right here. Overall topography flowing, downhill to Route 6, and there is, a small drainage culvert under Route 6. In regards to the proposed condition, what we're looking to do is to, as I said, subdivide this property off for future development. This is the existing plumbing business up here roughly in yellow, and the applicant is proposing to, subdivide this portion off here roughly in yellow. Excuse my shaky hand, in the front. Per our, I think, discussion last time, we've, revised this plan to show, the two, the two dimensions requirements of your zoning regulations. So this is industrialized zone. So we are showing that Lot 2 A, which is the existing plumbing business, and then Lot 2 B, which we are calling this new lot, would comply with your regulations in terms of, lot area with frontage. Obviously, at the moment, there's no setbacks to adhere to on Lot 2 B, but Lot 2 A would still be in compliance if this lot were to be subdivided.
In addition to that, we have done septic testing for with the local health department, and they did provide a letter, detailing, the adequacy of the subdivision for, and the the ability to split the slot and have a septic system on Lot 2 B. They did request, if anyone read the letter, a couple of conditions as we move forward in the process, in regards to, the design of any future development here. I think one of those specifically was to install a standpipe in the test pits so we can do a little bit longer, long term monitoring of some groundwater levels. And they also did mention that a a well would be needed for this project, and that is true. You guys do not have any municipal water services, to connect to. So any future building here, would need to, apply for a well permit with the state. We are aware of that, and we would do that, obviously, concurrently if this were to move forward. In general, just as a reminder, right, we're obviously at this point just trying to subdivide,
the parcel, to create a second lot for future development. I did show you before, and I'll show you again. We do have an idea of what we want to do here, but we would be coming back to you if the subdivision was approved to submit a full land development set in terms of what we are planning to do on the property. You know, that would include, obviously, a site plan, grading and drainage, utilities, landscaping, lighting, architecture, things of that nature. But at this time, we are obviously just seeking approval of the subdivision. If you remember, there is a wetland across the street roughly where, I'm drawn in yellow over here and we did show the revised, upload review area roughly with this dark thick black line I traced in yellow. And if you remember as well, we did go to the Inland Wetland Commission, a month or two ago to show them, that this parcel does fall in that area. There's no wetlands on the parcel, but, the Upland Review area does fall into it. Again, if this is approved for a subdivision, we would be going back to them as well to show them the improvements we are making on the property that would fall in this area. So, in general, again, just looking to subdivide and we come back, but I'm happy to answer any questions, Mr. Chairman, you or your commission may have, in regards to this subdivision proposal.
Okay. Thank you, Matt. At this point, I'd like to turn to Agent Halsey. Do you have any comments on the subdivision application at this point?
Very few. Jim Halsey's owning agent. Just for full disclosure, I I live approximately 200 feet from this this site. I just wanna point that out. I've been dealing with Matt and his associates for for a number of months, and it seemed it seemed to have worked out a few details. There was. The water supply is, as I believe Matt indicated, it falls under state jurisdiction. The approval of that is a, I believe it's a three step process. So I'm not quite sure what the commission would like to see at this point. Just bringing it up. Also, I mean, was pointed out to me that this, I I want to distinguish between. So I'm not trying to confuse the subdivision with with a site plan approval. But it was pointed out to me that the our plan of development calls for some
improvements, connectivity improvements in the form of sidewalk along along Lake Road, which would be addressed at later point. And just for the Commission, I mean, is an industrial zone. There are certain uses that are allowed by special permit, and there are others that are allowed by site plan approval. With that, that's all I have to offer at this point.
Mr. Chairman, I can explain the well a little bit further in regards to Mr. Halsey's comments if you'd like. Sure, go ahead,
Okay. Yep. So obviously, as I said, there's, you know, you don't have any municipal water service available on Route 6 or or Lake Road. So the property would need a well to support, to support its development. We are proposing, obviously not as part of this application, but as a future application for this to be a retail space. So, if that is to stick, this would be a transient noncommunity well that would be, need to be permitted through the, the state of Connecticut. As Jim mentioned, it is a multi step process. It begins with requesting an application from those guys from the state of Connecticut, and then it goes all the way through construction until the well is drilled,
the water is tested, and then the water services is turned on. So we don't have a full approval from the state until all of those conditions are met. We would obviously do that concurrently with the development plans as part of a site plan application with the town. We are very well aware that it is it is required. And, if a well wasn't permitted, or the water quality, would need to be treated, we would have to do whatever the state requires to make sure this is a potable, safe drinking source for any future development.
Okay. I guess the other thing that I'm not exactly clear on, and again, this is late breaking information, at least to me as of today, was I saw the additional letter from Eastern Highlands Health District dated December 17. And I know, Matt, you made the comment that the septic plan was approved. And yesterday I thought that was true. I'm not sure if that's true today or not based on the revisions required my thinking is that we need to have the testing done on the February 1 before can determine whether or not the lot is applicable to be subdivided for our regulations.
So so mister chair, understand your question completely. I I pulled up the the letter, here that was, provided by Eastern Highlands Health District. So if you read it here, obviously, you can see, you know, the plan is approved with the following conditions and, you know, some of those are already stated. And also it also says here there are suitable locations for water well supplies and wastewater system for each of the proposed lots, which I believe is what your question leaving the last meeting was, prior to me discussing this tonight. So, as part of, any future design and permitting with Eastern Highland Health District, that will be another step we have to take with when we actually have a development plan. But, to my knowledge, with with, what we're doing here tonight, just the subdivision creating two lots,
This this letter says that that that is permissible. It does go on to qualify, obviously, here that that this is not approval to build a septic system. That would be another step in the process. But, to my knowledge, your regulations are looking for whether there are suitable locations to provide utilities to to service a second lot, and I believe this letter does so. And what's the date on that letter? December 17. That is the seventeenth.
Because I'm looking at a different letter dated December 17.
And Let me let me see. Hold on. That's the letter I have, but let me let me let me check. Chad, can you share your your letter?
I might be able to. I gonna have to go back.
Mr. Chairman, this is the letter that is on your website as part of the application. This appears to be the same letter. Okay.
Referring to a letter from the state as well as another letter with the same date from Eastern Highlands perhaps.
No, Jim, I sent you back, you know, when you sent me, when you sent this December 17 letter out to the commission today, I asked that we could get that posted on the website so that it could be part of the record. I am going to go to a different search engine. Hopefully I won't go away and I'll see if I can find that document and call it up. I'll be back in just a minute. Okay, I'm back sooner. I cannot get there because I am logged in from an email. And so I don't know how to get logged out from the email to get to a different email call up that particular revision. I will read the document. And it says, Dear Kimberly Masik, the above referenced project has been reviewed for compliance with the Connecticut Public Health Code and technical standards. Additional information is required. Additional site plan information required. And then for revised plan 12 dash 10 dash 21, the highest daily average water use provided is February, March, April for the Torrington store for nine forty one gallons per eighty nine days.
Mr. Chairman, I know the letter you're referring to now. Yeah. It I says if you'd like. Yeah. Okay. Yep. All right. Yep. So as that letter that you are referring to is the letter that the health department produced in terms of reviewing the proposed site plan application. That's an application that you guys have not seen yet. So that is the referring to the retail development that we're going to pursue after the subdivision application. And there are several technical comments with that one related to the second approval that we need. So that is ongoing right now. That's why the health department provided this other letter saying that this site was suitable for a subdivision and nothing else. We need another letter from them saying that our design of our building and our parking lot is adequate, and that would be related to the site plan application that we're pursuing with, you guys next.
Agent L. T. Is that clear? Not as clear as I'd like it to be.
Yeah, I'm fairly confused. There were a lot of letters being exchanged. And I would not have posted that if I had noted that, quite honestly. Would have held off We're not posted with the subdivision application. Yeah. So what do you say in agent LSE?
From what I'm gathering, information is relevant to the site plan special permit application, not the subdivision. It is inherently confusing the way Department of Public Health works, in my opinion. They give approvals, conditional approvals, Although, when the zoning Commission does as well.
I agree with you, Mr. Halsey that yeah it's these projects are are multi step, multi phase, and, yes. So the the two letters we have, one is regarding the subdivision. They they were aware that we were coming to you guys tonight, and they wanted something for the record or you guys wanted something for the record that the lot was adequate to be subdivided into two parcels. We will still need an approval from them that once we come into you with a proposed retail development application that the septic system we have designed is adequate for the, the retail building we're proposing. At this time, though, we aren't proposing any buildings on the property. We're just proposing to create two lots. And their letter is stating, yes. There are suitable areas on this parcel to support a well and septic system based on the testing we have done in the field. I I apologize if it's not
as as clear cut as, as you would like.
I just don't want to be in a position where we subdivide a lot and then we can't build well, and I'm sure you want to make sure you're not in a position where we have somebody purchase a lot and not be able to develop it then. Adrian Halsey, your understanding is that as far as subdivision of the lot, we can proceed. It would be an issue with the site plan where we'd have to wait for the February testing to determine the adequacy of the septic field? Absolutely, Chairman. And I can Okay.
I am less clear on the water supply issue. That's a different story. I'm just not entirely clear where the commission, where they should stand with respect to that. Perhaps I could get some clarification.
I mean, normally when we go, well, I guess this is the first application we've had that has been for a subdivision of a lot without a site plan with it. So it's a little different. But as I look at the regulations, it tells me, you know, all land to be subdivided or re subdivided shall be of such character that can be used for building public building purposes without danger to public health, safety, welfare. Land that is inadequate means of on-site sanitary, sewage disposal, and water supply shall not be subdivided or re subdivided. Then it says for residential purposes. So that confuses me a little bit more. This is not residential purposes.
As I say, on Friday, when I went through all this stuff, I was very happy with the letter that said, you know, the plan was approved and then this new letter comes out today and I couldn't tell. So did you have any conversation today, Jim, with the Eastern Highlands Health District on this letter to understand why it came out after the other letter dated the same date? I mean, I guess, you know, my assumption was the previous letter was dated prior to the December 17 because I think it was, I reviewed it online last Friday, but I don't know. I just don't want us to get into a bind where we are going against the guidance offered to us by the Eastern Island Health District.
Mr. Chairman, can provide a little more clarification if you want to, Jim. So Mr Chairman and Commission members, question you're asking yourselves tonight is this property, does it meet the standards of your regulation to split from one lot into two? And as part of that, you wanna make sure the second lot is adequate. It it has the availability to do septic, and a well. That letter from Eastern Highland District letter says that. Now as part of the next process, when we come in and say, hey, we have a new lot that we wanna build something on, your zoning regulations would allow, a variety of things on this property. And I'm gonna just take a few few examples. Single family house, retail building, a warehouse distribution center, a school, those four different uses. Those four different uses, generate dramatically different septic requirements, and that is what has been unresolved. That is what that second letter is referring to. So you can comfortably subdivide this parcel tonight and know that it is an adequate parcel that can support well and septic. The second thing that we need to satisfy with Eastern Health District is our individual, plan for this, which is gonna be from us a a retail building. They need to review that for the specifics of that proposed development. The the approval that we have in our hands now is just that you can subdivide. Mister chairman, may I add something? Yes. Go ahead.
Hi. My name is Robin Pearson. I'm counsel for the applicant, And I would concur with what Mr. Bruton has said. When you have a subdivision and it is not clear what the end use is going to be, it is not unusual to put a note on the subdivision plan that's been approved that says site cannot be developed until such time as the health district has signed off on the adequacy of a proposed water and sewer system based on the ultimate use proposed for the site. So because you have different types of uses that could go on this, my client could actually not proceed to the next step. If that's the case, it's not what we're proposing to do, but if that's the case, another use may be made of that lot. But that doesn't preclude the lot from being able to be subdivided. You could even in the subdivision plan that you record, you could even attach include the letter from the health district on those subdivision plans.
Okay. I understand what you're providing there, what you're saying. So I guess at this point, I think about that for a moment, I will ask the other commission members if they have any questions or comments on the application.
I noticed that the drainage area, I can't remember what the elevations were there, the lowest elevation I think, I think they're around two ninety, two ninety three or four, the drainage area was like at two ninety two or something. And then I noticed that there was a pipe going across the across the highway and then on the next set of friends when you overlaid the building and the driveway going in on Route 60 and the one that was going in on Lake Road that that area or most of it was gonna be filled.
Yes. This person, is Matt Bruton from BL again. Yes. So, you're correct. I have the survey showing up on the screen here now if you can see. In general, you're correct. Right? Kind of the high side of this parcel would be around Elevation 298, and the low side would be 292. And you're correct. There is a flared end section and a pipe, that, captures this water, and it flows, roughly in this direction. That is all true. As part of our I'm gonna just stop so I don't, give you guys any any heart attacks or dizziness while I switch screens here. As part of the next application, we would be providing a full drainage and stormwater analysis that would include provisions to make sure that any stormwater that is captured and detained in that kind of current depression and piped under the piped under the building or under the road is is taken care of. So this is not a plan that you guys have seen yet. I'm trying not to confuse you with subdivision and site plan approval. But in general, we are we would be providing
a stormwater management system and connection to this pipe that goes under the road. But again, that is not part of this application. We are we are purely trying to subdivide the parcel. If we're successful here and coming back, we would show you more details on that stormwater management system, as part of the proposed retail development.
That pipe has to be well I guess it has doesn't have to be but is that pipe going to be left in a working state?
Yes. That that pipe, collects water currently from this property, and by this property, I mean the the undeveloped field and the plumbing business. So that needs to stay in place. We are not proposing to get rid of that, cut it off or do anything of that sort.
Okay. That would it be correct? I would assume that the state would have to approve the increase drainage.
That yes, Mr. Halsey caused by the site. Any work as anything that we do in the right of way adjacent to Route 6. So the proposed driveway, drainage connections, utility connections, anything of that sort would require an encroachment permit from the state of Connecticut. Right now, we're obviously just trying to create two lots, but this plan set that you guys would review as a site plan approval would also go to the state of Connecticut for them to review the traffic and drainage aspects of the project as well.
Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from the commission? Any questions or comments from anybody else who's in attendance this evening?
Hello there, I'm I'm I'm Chris Bernard. I'm at the property right next to Jim and directly behind this property and in general I don't have any problem with the subdivision. My concerns is, and I think we've touched on them already. Certainly traffic is a concern and and how that flow is going to work. You know, on Route 6 we do frequently see lots of traffic there at that light. People turning against traffic into the gas station can create backups, and and certainly that's the concern I have if we're going to add another driveway there, but state can look at that. Certainly I think the other concern I would have is from a lighting perspective, you know. So those of you who may not be over in this area may not know that Ben Franklin has been vandalized a couple times, and so you know we we want to make sure we're deterring any criminal element from finding something else to break into in the area. So just one thing that I would like to to make sure to point out. But other than that, you know nothing really too concerning from a subdivision perspective in my mind.
Okay, thank you for your input, Chris. Anybody else? Okay, so we get back to, you know, Agent Alzi, I'm trying to determine the way ahead here. Normally, would close the public hearing and then deliberate on the application in the regularly scheduled meeting. One of the thoughts I had when I saw the letter come in tonight, today, you know, asking for more information on the septic system was that we would extend or continue the public hearing until February when we had that testing done. Everybody's saying that that is not necessary here. But Agent Halsey, you know, will go back. Having this, you know, kind of wrench thrown in the works from you know, Eastern Highlands today. The discussion tonight is different than what I expected it to be. You know, I thought the right answer was okay, we'll just continue till February, get all the stuff done, then, you know, deliberate and vote on the application at that point.
When I had my conversation Thad Kick from Eastern Highlands, we really failed to differentiate between the two application processes. Realizing that more as the meeting goes on. I'm fairly comfortable with the sanitary end of things here. I'm less clear on the well. Okay. I mean, this is called a, I mean, it falls under the definition of public water supply, which is just kind of odd. I mean, it's just merely public health code language. It meets certain criteria, the use and the the amount water, of water that she anticipated. That entirely looked clear to me at what point the Commission should be acting. So
Matt, I would ask you, how long do you think it would take to go through that process with the state to
Yep. Can I can explain that a little bit more to give you to give you guys a sense of comfort on on how the process works? So it's three step process, as I mentioned, I think, Jim, you heard that from, Eastern Highland Health Districts as well. The first the first first process is, we submit plans to the state showing, what we're proposing for the property and where that where that well would be located. The state comes out to the property to get a sense of what's there currently, any adjacent wells, getting getting familiar with the neighborhood. So that's step one. Step two is the well is actually drilled. So during construction, a well is drilled, per the specifications, you know, of the public health code and installed on the property. Typically, this developer would be installing this well, alongside with other improvements to the property. The building would be being constructed. The, the pavement would be going in, drainage structures, other utilities.
Step three of the process is once the, the well is drilled and connected to the proposed facility, then the water is tested. And depending on the results of that water, the water quality results, there may need to be some adjustments. So, historically, projects that I've been involved with, you get a clean result. There's nothing that needs to be done. The the health department will review the final paperwork and sign off. And, when the developer requests a certificate of occupancy, the building can be occupied and the water can be used. If during that testing, and this has happened before, there are some, elements, naturally occurring or maybe not naturally occurring that are found in the water supply, whether it be lead or arsenic or whatever it is, depending on what's found and at what concentration, the state may ask for a treatment system. And if that is required because of the water quality testing, then the developer would have to add a treatment system to the building so that when the water comes out the tap, for any customers or patrons to use, that it is safe to drink.
That would need to be installed, retested, and to the satisfaction of the of the states. Once the state is satisfied, then, again, the developer could request a certificate of occupancy and the building could be occupied. So this is not a, I I can I won't be able to get you an approval prior to subdivision or prior to site plan approval? It's a very iterative ongoing process that can start as soon as we submit a site plan application, but literally will not end until things are constructed, well is connected to a sink and a sink is tested. So it's a very long process that spans the entire development of the property. But, what you guys should know and take a sense of comfort in is if, a well cannot be constructed or is not safe, then other agencies are involved and, nothing would open or be open to the public or used, business wouldn't be started until all of those criteria are met. It's a little bit more complicated, this process than for a single family residential home. That's why it goes to The States, and there's a lot of checks and balances along the way. That's kind of the the the process in a nutshell. I'm happy to answer any questions if that didn't answer questions and created more questions, but,
it's very straightforward process. It just it just step by step.
And it was that December 17 letter that you had put up earlier that I know it granted approval for septic. I I didn't I I don't recall what it said about the well.
Yep. Let me find it here. Here you go, mister chairman. You can see in yellow here. It says there are suitable locations for water supply wells and wastewater systems on the proposed lot for the existing and proposed uses. Okay. So it includes both.
So I go back to agent Halsey, you know, is that make sense and you're confident enough that we could proceed at this point or should, you know, we hold the public hearing open until the January meeting so that we can do some backup to make sure that the town is protected and not doing something that we shouldn't be doing by authorizing the subdivision?
I do feel confident at this point. Okay. I didn't go into the meeting, do now. Okay, very good.
As far as the septic goes also Jed, you know, I read all the test fit data and there was no modeling at all in any of the test pits and there was only water in one pit I believe and it was down over 10 feet. And you know we had the wettest summer ever when those things were dug. I've never seen a test bit with no modeling. Okay, no, that's good to know and got it. Like a perfect sight.
At this point, I guess, do any commission members have any concerns about closing the public hearing tonight? I see Leanne, I can't see your head shaking on the phone. And so, I guess I ask you to say yes or no. No, I don't have any concerns. Okay, thanks, Leanne.
Very good. So, at 07:42, I will close the public hearing. And at this point, I will call to order 07:42, the regular meeting. With roll call and seating of alternates, I see all the regular commission members present this evening. No alternates will be seated. We'll look at item three on the agenda, is additions or changes to the agenda. What I would like to do is I would like to move old business items Charlie and Echo, which are the cannabis regulations and sign regulations, until after the new business where we let there's somebody here, I don't know the name, that wants to talk to us about the Rosewood Estate subdivision. And I would like to free up all the members of the public who have got their business to do with us before we get into our administrative review of various regulations
that we're looking at. Does anybody else have any changes to the agenda?
Good. I know I pointed out to you that Chris Bell representing the gravel pit folks will not be available. I don't know whether you could plan to still discuss the matter or not.
Was going to leave that on the agenda just in case Ms. Kathleen Hutchinson
wanted to comment on that. Okay, actually did. After I got a call from Chris Bell, I did contact her and left a message. I don't know whether that he would not be here. And I didn't know whether you'd be discussing it.
I don't think Give me the information I have. I don't think she's on the call tonight, so I will leave it on there just in case anything comes up. When we get there, we'll probably find out we won't be talking about that. Okay, then that completes the additions or changes to the agenda. At this point, any public comment on anything other than what's on the agenda for tonight? Hearing none, I'll move on to item five, old business, and that's the application for the two slot subdivision at 580 Lake Road. To start off the discussion, I'll make a motion that we approve the subdivision at 580 Lake Road. Looking for a second. I'll second that. That was you, Steve?
I think Scott and I both seconded, so pick Okay, whichever one you
well, your box lit up for me there, Steve, so I think you must have got the Jeopardy buzzer first.
Jed, if you'd like, I add the information. If you'd like to refer to the specific plan that's before you, I have that in front of me. Okay. It's very often a part of the motion for specificity. Your call. So yes, go ahead and add that
to the motion. I'm just going to say what I wrote was application of Gary Yukolito property 580 Lake Road, Andover, CT. As depicted on a plan entitled Lake Road Subdivision, Lake Road LLC, 580 Lake Road, Andover, Connecticut as prepared by BL companies dated 10/18/2021, revised through twelvefourteentwenty one. And for Abby's purpose, I mean, I'm taking it right off the plan, obviously. You needn't get it at this time for recording purposes.
Okay, so moved to Steve your second still. Yes. Okay. Any discussion on the application? And is was discussed during the public hearing. We had the sign that after subdivision would not be authorized at that location anyhow, might be authorized someplace else. We'll deal with that outside of the subdivision request. Agent Halsey mentioned the issue of the sidewalk that would be in accordance with our plan of conservation and development. We will handle that during the sidewalk. The only other question that I had for Matt I forgot to ask during the public hearing was I was surprised that there were no monuments at the that I saw on your drawing from the new subdivision line across dividing the lot in two.
Oh, you mean monumentation to delineate the new proposed property line? Yes. And Yeah. We can certainly delineate that however you wish. I know some towns require concrete monumentation or metal pins or or something of that sort. We can we can certainly, you know, make sure that's more definitive in the field.
Okay. Yep. And our regulations discuss both. I don't have the regulation open in front of me, but it's section 7.12. I would just recommend that as a condition of approval that we require the appropriate monumentation per our subdivision regs be included on the subdivision plan?
Commissioner Larson, two things. One is I just want to correct the revision date would be through twelvesix. I believe I said twelvefourteen. I was trying to read the revisions are vertical as opposed to horizontal. If you're talking conditions of approval, I know that attorney Pearson suggested the possibility of noting the health code note on the plan, as well as, you're talking about my invitation per subdivision regulations as well. Just if you want a few conditions.
Yep, I'm gonna go through and start addressing those. So that would be, the first condition of approval would be the proper monumentation per our subdivision regs. The second one would be as attorney Persen mentioned with, and maybe she could help me with the proper wording for that so that we have that correct on the aptly, the subdivision plan.
You could just have a note on there that says no construction shall be allowed on the lot to be until such time as the, what are they called, Eastern Highlands Health District. And using their language, Will has approved the construction of a sewage disposal system.
Okay, thank you. Agent Halsey, any other conditions of approval that we should be addressing? No. Any other commission members have any conditions of approval that we should be discussing? Okay. No. Good. So we've got a motion to approve the application with two conditions of approval, one discussing monumentation and the other discussing no construction before approval by Eastern Highlands Health District of the septic system. Any other discussion before we vote? Okay, using a roll call vote to Anne. Aye. Scott. Aye. Steve. Aye. Leanne. Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes 500. Thank you very much.
You very much for your time, everybody. That had a Thank Have a good night. Good night.
I'm looking back for my agenda here, and and while I'm So the next item on our agenda is the affordable housing plan. And our consultant, Bill Warner, has joined us tonight and he really wanted to get into working the plan next year. I asked that he give us just a little brief on what we're going to be doing next year so we know where it is that we're trying to go. Abby, if you can let Bill share his screen. He's got some stuff for us.
Hey, hello Bill. Hello, how are you this evening? Well,
several emails and a couple of phone conversations, actually get to see you almost into Maybe someday we'll shake hands. Yeah welcome so take it away. Well
thanks for having me can hear me right? Yes. Thanks for having me Andover isn't in any situation different than every other 169 towns in Connecticut that you are required to have an affordable housing plan by the end of June. What I'd first like to talk about when I share my screen is is what is causing this to happen why 169 affordable housing plans have to be prepared and why the state is now giving out these grants to do this and so you would think there'd be this extensive all encompassing statute that would tell you what needs to be done. If I can make this work. Yep, we see it, Bill. You see it? Yep.
Okay, we use GoToMeeting down here, so we don't use Zoom very often. So the statute is section eight dash 30 j which is part of the eight dash the famous eight dash 30 gs affordable housing statutes. The statute that was added in 2017 is a dash 30 J eight dash 30 J entitled affordable housing plan hearing and adoption and amendments. What is causing all of this, all of these issues throughout Connecticut with consultants in towns wrangling trying to prepare affordable housing plans. And so what it really says is that at least once every five years each municipality shall prepare amend and adopt an affordable housing plan for the municipality. Such plans shall specify how the municipality intends to increase the number of affordable housing developments in the municipality. And that is it. You have no other guidance than that. That's the only thing. Those two sentences is what has caused all of this situation. They could have just added it to a part of a plan of conservation and development and then next, when you do your plan of conservation development, that part of it is an affordable housing, but they felt it was so important that they wanted to put it into a public act. And they put those two sentences in. So those two sentences are causing every town in Connecticut to have to work on preparing an affordable housing plan, whether it's Union Connecticut, Andover Connecticut or Bridgeport Connecticut. We're
all in the same boat, which causes a lot of problems in Connecticut because we are so diverse and whether you know it's Greenwich or Bridgeport both have to look at affordable housing and how to address the issue. So there's a lot of concerns I think that we'll get into and how it affects Andover, but that is the only guidance that we have. So really we can look at it as well, there's no guidance on how we're supposed to do this, or we can look at it and say well okay and now the state has given us money to do this, this opens up an opportunity to do some good stuff, some good investigation into
Andover really needs. As you know, I've been working with Andover for I was working with them for about ten years. And off five years as a as a as your planner and five years as a consultant And we did different things and we have various sections of affordable housing that we talked about. We did an incentive housing plan, we have that so we have some some good information certainly from the incentive housing plan which will certainly be used That was only five years ago and not a lot has changed in Annover so that will be used. We're not totally reinventing the wheel. But back to the statute, the municipality may hold a public informational meeting or other activities to inform residents about the process in May. So you are not even required to have a public hearing to adopt this affordable housing plan. So you don't have to have a public hearing, you can adopt it. It doesn't have to be the Planning and Zoning Commission that is doing it. It could be in a lot of towns it's the Board of Selectmen that are overseeing it and are adopting it. That's what's happening here in Middlefield where I live is the Board of Selectmen have almost exclusively
run the show same in Durham and Haddam where I work. The Planning and Zoning Commission will be doing it, which I think is the right way to do it and so I agree with what you're doing. But again, no real guidance. If you want to change your zoning to add some little section, you have to have a whole public hearing. Here, you don't have to have a public hearing. The statute goes on to say you must review the plan and amend it every five years. So this is so you'll be back looking at this in five years from June 30, so in 2027, you'll be looking at it again saying we have to update the affordable housing plan. One of the big problems in Connecticut is there's no teeth to these things so just like the planet conservation and development The only real teeth and the plan of conservation development has a little more teeth now about discretionary funding and holding money back. The real only penalty for not having an affordable housing plan if you don't do this is that you have to send a letter to the state saying to State Department of Housing that we did not adopt an affordable housing plan and this is why.
That's the only thing you have to do. The one thing there's a grant out right now that they're getting a little more serious about it that you have to fill out a form to say that you are not in compliance with updating your plan of conservation and development and your affordable housing plan. Have to submit that form So that is there's some you know a suggestion that you may not get these discretionary grants if you're not up to date with your plans or you may be lower on the rung to get a grant if you're not up to date with the plan but that is the only teeth and they don't do anything else. So just in summary, not a lot of guidance in what we're done what we need to do here, which I think is a positive thing. So when you're going into preparing a plan, ask yourself what is it, what is it, what are we trying to, what are we planning for and why are we planning for it, what is the current situation, so we need to address that, what is the current situation, what do we need to achieve with this plan, Who do we need to serve? Which is important when you're talking about affordable housing. Who are we trying to serve? Are we trying to serve the whole state, the whole region? You're in the East Hartford region.
Are you trying to serve people from Hartford or Willamantic? So who are you trying to serve and how do we achieve that goal? What is the implementation of achieving that goal? So how do you go about doing this? I just trying to think of this, I came up with this this afternoon, just kind of think of what we're trying to accomplish with a plan. And so then as Jed and I had discussed in the contract is what are the deliverables? And I think and just brainstorming correct me if you are changing it however we want to do this but I think as deliverables I'm thinking one week prior to each of your meetings I'll send you essentially reading material a draft of a section of a presentation so you'll be prepared for the meeting and then at the meeting we'll have a PowerPoint presentation and discuss it. Hopefully everything can be posted on the web for any public comment. Hopefully in this situation, you would allow public comment on this so that every time we have a meeting, there's your public component that you're having, can have a public hearing at the end, which I would recommend, but at least this way we'd have
four or five open public meetings where people can comment if they so choose and you have that building up on your website so it's not a big oh my god we didn't know about this or no one ever told us about this. You can respond that it's been on the website and been adding to it. So that's the way I think the process should follow and go forward. So the next meeting in January, think what we would have is a review of the state statutes. What are the state statutes that require us to look at affordable housing? There was a big public act in 2021. They tried to accomplish a huge amount. They didn't accomplish very much but they did some things did pass. What did that do? The whole push of that was to try and create more affordable housing, so review that. Regulations review, look at your regulations to see what are you doing or allowing that is encouraging affordable housing and what are you doing that is discouraging affordable housing. Really, again for Andover and for lots of towns like Andover,
it comes down to this presence of water and sewer because as we saw in the public act, that group of experts that were coming up with that public act called desegregated Connecticut was all about density. That if you create higher density, just naturally create more affordability because you're creating more units on less land. It's about density and adding density goes into septic and well suitability. That's something that you have to look at. I know we have the mixed use zone that we did and a couple other zones that we did along Route 6 that do allow the multi family. So that is positive. So you allow it. Whether it happens or not, we don't know because we have to look at that and figure out what is the market and why aren't things happening. We did the incentive housing zone study. We created a zone, think I don't think you adopted the zone, I think you adopted it into the plan of conservation and development. Don't think you went forward with the zone. But lots of towns did go forward with the zone and nothing really happened. And I think, again, that's an indication of the market and why you don't see eight dash 30 gs affordable housing applications
in Central Connecticut and Eastern Connecticut because of the market. We'll talk about that further down. So that is where I think we would be at in January and then we'll go back to work for the February and so on the February meeting, you have to review where we are now. So in February, we would review your current situation. What your population is? Are you growing? Are shrinking? What's going on with small Connecticut and Andover specifically? What is your housing situation? How many houses are being built? Housing value? Sales? I got great data from your assessor about the sales that have been occurring. Always very interesting, particularly when you factor in a global pandemic and what the sales were, so that's interesting stuff which we can look at and say, okay, so what are houses really selling for? How many buildings are being built? How many building permits are being issued? Real eye opening about small town Connecticut. So that would be February. So then we'd have a good idea of
what we need to accomplish and why, which would be the statutes that's telling us what we have to do, what we currently have, and then in March we would start to really, really roll up our sleeves and talk about what is affordable housing. So affordable housing, there's lots of myths about affordable housing. I run into it in every town that I've been working in and that I've been involved in. Right now it's Durham, Middlefield and Haddam. The impression is the first thing they say is Section eight, we don't want more Section eight. That term is probably the one of the most confused and misunderstood terms that I've run into in Connecticut in my thirty two years. Everybody thinks everything is Section eight and it's not Section eight housing. Maximum income for ownership, so how much can people make and live in affordable housing? Again, real eye opening, you really start to see you have a median household income of 100 of about 108 I believe it is. So 80% of that and you start to back out all the utilities and everything and you realize that this affordable housing is really, it's not low income housing by any means it's really moderate housing moderate income housing which is great for a college graduate, a private school teacher, different types of people that would qualify for that. So that would be a real eye opener for particularly the residents of Andover so they can understand what you're talking about that it may very well be themselves or their own kids that we're trying to provide some housing for.
Then into April talk about eight thirty gs, what the need is, the state thinks every town in Connecticut whether you're Bridgeport or Andover or Greenwich, you should have 10% of your housing stock as affordable. Why that is not realistic in Andover, which we will talk about based on how you're growing and how you've historically grown and what is 10% of your housing stock. And then really you look at it and you start to say is there affordable housing problem? Is there affordable housing need in Andover? And this is the big question. Mean, because I said, as we went back to the statute, you see in the statute that there is no real guidance. So the question is, is there a need for affordable housing? And I think that's the first thing that you reveal the thing that we really need to address. So based on the other things that I left out in March, we'll talk about naturally occurring affordable housing. Naturally occurring affordable housing is the the small 1960s ranch that's still selling for under $200,000 That's affordable housing. So do you have enough of those where there is places for college graduates to live in Andover and people to live in Andover. And why doesn't that qualify? That's got a lot of people worked up about that because the reality is everybody looks around and says yeah, that's affordable, that's affordable, but it doesn't qualify under Section eight-thirty gs or the state of Connecticut. Federal Fair Housing Act, what that really says and why the state is pushing affordable housing throughout the state is because of the Federal Fair Housing Act and what that says. And who do you want to serve in Andover? So we start to look at that, you look at your demographics and your population and you say, okay,
wouldn't it be nice, Andover we have all the single family zones, over 90% of the town, wouldn't it be nice if some of the people here and I'm sure there's if you did a market study, the market study would say there's a certain segment of empty nesters that would like to downsize but don't want to leave Andover. So is there a certain segment in that population that we want to service? Is there a certain segment of kids that went to college, came back and want to stay in Andover, stay in their hometown? Do we want to service that? And that really shows up when you look at incomes and what people are paying for rent and the population. You start to look at that to start understanding what percentage. I'd really like to get to the point where we say based on everything that's going on we want to provide a certain percentage of affordable units or a certain number of affordable units a year for the next five years and set a realistic goal. Lots of towns and I've reviewed several affordable housing plans that have already been adopted and approved and they have very unrealistic goals and they're just saying they're just throwing in everything. Well we want to build you know 100 units in the next five years even though there's only been 25 units in the whole town built in the last five years. So how do we create something that is realistic and gets implemented? That's really the final part of it is implementation. So what are our goals and recommendations and strategies to increase that supply
of affordable housing and state defined affordable housing and a lot of that goes back to keeping it alive and how do you keep it alive and so that it just doesn't get forgotten. I know you guys are good and Eric prior to Jed was very good at looking at the plan of development. Okay, what's recommended? Let's follow through and let's get that done. Should really be the same thing with this affordable housing plan. It's separate from the plan of conservation and development, I absolutely recommend in May you have a public hearing and you would amend it and make it a part of your plan of conservation and development. So it is an official part of that plan of conservation and development that you're working to implement and then by June you're ready to submit it to the State Department of Housing and say we have satisfied our requirements. That's my plan.
Thank you, Bill. So we're going to have a little bit more on our plates then for the next six months going forward as we work through this. And we do have a couple of other things like the sign regulations and that sort of thing that we're trying to get wrapped up. It may be a fairly busy and hopefully productive start to next year. Guess we can't go traveling and do anything so we might as well work on Sony.
Yeah, I just yesterday canceled my trip to Savannah. I was leaving on December 26 to go to Savannah but watching the news it was just like it's not going to be any fun there. You know going around on tours and stuff so I canceled that so you're right probably not going to be doing traveling for at least a month.
So Bill, I know I mentioned to you the little write up I saw in the Hebron section of the River East last Friday that talked about they were doing a survey of the town people for what they thought the needs were for housing going forward so that it could be built into this plan. Do you have any thoughts on whether or not a survey of the population is needed and what we can do to make sure that when we get to the end here, everybody doesn't say, oh, we didn't know this was going on.
Yeah, we could incorporate a survey into it. It's a good thing. A statistically valid survey is extremely expensive, but I'm sure what River Rees is doing or what all these towns are doing, just like the ones that I've experienced, Use the SurveyMonkey, which puts together a survey. You post a link on your website, you advertise it in the newspaper so everyone can go to it, they click on it, and they take the survey. It makes it very easy to do. Not statistically valid, but it does give you a good reflection. It gives you to say, well, did you do the survey? I think the responses in Andover probably won't. Middlefield did one. I don't think it'll be much different, but I think it probably does have a lot of validity to do it, particularly if you want to try and get people following the process and understanding the process. And like I said, the most important thing and the thing you're going to get is this reaction.
They will remember some, and I saw it in Durham, Middlefield and Haddam. They will remember driving through New Haven and seeing a housing project on the side of the highway and thinking that's what you want to have in this town. What's wrong with you? So again, it's that March meeting where we start to really show the incomes and show what it means to be affordable housing in Andover. The SurveyMonkey, drawback to that, a drawback, I know you probably have some extra funds, to get a subscription to SurveyMonkey to do a full survey. You can do a free one with like five questions, which doesn't accomplish anything. But to do a full survey, I think the membership is close to 500 or $600 think As you want during the year, but to do the I
think it's important that we do do that. When I was talking to Eric about the last plan of conservation and development, I think he said that there was not a survey done in conjunction with that one because, you know, the thought was that everybody was thinking the same thing that they were thinking five years earlier. So it's been ten years since we've really done a survey and I think it's probably going to come out the same, but it'd be nice to validate that with all the discussions about housing affordability and all that kind of stuff that are going Right, on these
the last survey was a traditional mail survey. It's amazing how far technology has come. Yep,
yeah and I know Hebron did the SurveyMonkey thing and I haven't gone on to see if I can get to the survey yet to even see what they're asking, but I thought that was a pretty good idea.
Yeah, I can look into that and get you the information.
Any other commissioners have any other questions or comments for Bill while we've got him here tonight? Okay, well thank you very much Bill for joining us this evening. Have a great holiday season. Sorry you're not going down to Savannah, but it doesn't seem to be the right thing to do right this minute. And we look forward to getting started on this in our January meeting.
Yeah, I'll be in touch and happy holidays to all of you. Thank you, Bill. Good night. Thanks, Bill.
Okay. So the next next item of business would be the remediation plan for the gravel pit 517 Route 6. And as Jim mentioned earlier, Chris Bell is not here tonight. He's a little under the weather and we're trying to negotiate. One of the things that we said he would have for this meeting was a plan just showing the restoration of the site. As I studied the one that he was trying to show us last time, I wasn't convinced that that was easy for me to get through and understand what the finished product was going to look like. So Chris asked for a couple of reasons that he not get together with us until February. I'm okay with that. And so that's what I know about that. I did keep this item on the agenda as we were going through because I heard from
Agent Halsey that Ms. Catherine Hutchinson might have some comments. And so as part of the public speak, I would ask her to speak at this point on the gravel pit application if she would like to. And you are on mute, Katherine. You weren't before, but you are now.
Okay. Am I on Yep. I hear you now. Yep.
Fine that it's been deferred to February, and I will be in touch with Jim Halsey prior to that to see if he has the plan that's filed so I can redo it ahead of time and perhaps have my, experts look at it ahead of time and be ready to address it when it comes up in February.
Okay. Very good. And thank you for joining us this evening. Okay. Thank you. Mhmm. The next, I'm going to move down to new business, and this is the request for informal discussion regarding proposed vineyard sales and event venue at the site of previously approved Rosewood Estate subdivision. And so I see Sal is here. Are you
here to discuss that, Sal? Yes, to answer any basic questions. I'm looking to purchase the property. Just want to do so without having you guys having some kind of approval or being okay with what I want to do with it.
And do you have I know I saw this afternoon a couple of slides. Do you have those available to you that if we allowed you to share your screen, you'd be able to put those up for us? I don't, to be honest with you.
Okay. I'm sorry, do you mean the memo and the
map? Have those. Yeah, the map would be great, Abby, if you've got that. Yep. Okay. It's kind of cut off. I'm not sure if this is the one you're about. But that's it. That's what I was looking for. Okay. Yeah, go ahead, Sal.
Basically, what I'm looking to do is to purchase the property to clear it, put up a vineyard, something sort of like Priam has in Colchester and so forth. People could come down and have a bottle of wine, sit outside of a pizza and food trucks and so forth. My long term goal is to put up a venue for weddings, receptions, you know, entertainment down that way. Now I I I spoke to Jim and he had said that the use as far as the vineyard part wouldn't wouldn't be an issue as a allowed use in that on that property. See where you guys would stand as far as what what my ideas I mean, I don't I know this isn't an approval. Anything would have to have a a building approval site plans over them, but I just wanna buy the property and, you know, come come down the road. Guys say, yeah, we're we're not into don't wanna allow that to happen. So I'm trying to get a feel for things before I purchase it.
Okay, yep. And just to orient us on the map that you've got there, in the Andover line is surprising me a little bit. Abby, can you and this might be hard for you, but can you show us Route 6 that starts at the upper left hand corner, the red line, it comes down? And I'm just trying to and I know, Okay, yeah, that's looking better. So there's a little triangle on that map there, Sal. Know what you're looking at is a fairly good sized piece of property that abuts Route 6, I think, and Route 87. And I don't know how far down it goes. The line that said Andover Lake Road, I thought it said Andover property Andover town line. And so that's what I was confused on. I know you're all in Andover here, but you're getting pretty close to Columbia. That's right there. Okay,
I see the Columbia line on there now. And your property is entirely in Andover?
Correct. It's actually where the piece that says site is right there. That's the whole big lot right there. Oh, got you. Okay. Yeah.
So you're on the right side looking North of Route 87. Yes. I thought you were on the other side. Okay. That's good to know. I'm enlightened already.
So Go ahead, Jim. Yeah, just for folks who are familiar with property, it was approved as a 10 lot subdivision back a number of years ago, but has never been developed. So the red lines you're looking at are what the overall map is. It was the location map off the subdivision plan because it's all I had. I mean, Sal was just looking at this. He hasn't done any. He doesn't have any plans prepared. This is what we have other than detailed subdivision plans which just didn't lend themselves to this presentation. So of the original subdivision, I believe there were eight residential lots and two commercial lots. And yeah, the property line appears to follow the Columbia town line down over to the right. I honestly don't know what these triangles are. There's two triangles I see. They have a clue what they are. Those are a standard on a topo map. Topo dude just from the top. Okay, because there's three. Yeah, so they're Okay. That's right. Okay, got it. Their benchmark.
And so I know some of the, you said some of the lots were in the business zone and some of the lots are residential. The ones off Route 6 were all business. Yeah.
And so, Sal, you said Jim had some concerns about the ability to do what you wanted based on our regulations. Did I hear that correct?
He said that the vineyard use was approved will be is a allowed use of the property. Okay. Got it. So yeah.
Much of the property it's a use of right yes.
And then you were looking to have some kind of place to sell wine and that sort of thing that would be in the business. So with the vineyards being the residential and any commercial sites in the business, is that what you were looking at? The whole property would be used
for the vineyards, for a venue down the road, so forth. The whole property itself would be used for that reason. Okay.
So Jim, would we need to do a zoning change to to support that? Do you know?
Would say yes. I mean, I'm assuming that the I mean the venue he's talking about. I mean I I I don't have a lot of particulars on this venue, but assume it would be. Off. Probably be in the the ARD zone. But I could be mistaken. I mean, it could be it could be located in existing business zone. That was all that was all business in here.
Right off the top of my head, I'm certainly not opposed to having a vineyard and that sort of thing here. They seem to be quite popular. I know there's one down in Columbia now as well and I think the one in Colchester is for sale right now. Yep, 3,500,000.
Yeah, they seem to be a nice kind of thing. Any commission members have any thoughts or questions that they'd like to ask at this point? I know we're very preliminary, if you think that's not the right thing to do, we could at least entertain those thoughts. Right.
Have a The vineyard would be all under farming so it's all as of right and all the clearing would be for farming also so he could it would be all as of right. Yep. The buildings he would be putting on the business section. Yeah. Sounds like a good idea. Sloping land. Ahead, Anne. Well drained soils.
And looking at the the map, that site map as well as I look at the Google map, there are some houses inside that triangle along Route 87, Route 6. So the property isn't that entire area then, is it? Or
No. Nope. There's some there's there's a I don't know how I'm not technology You can see the red lines. There there's two houses on 6 that that are bought that property. And there's there's a couple houses on 87 going up
towards Columbia. Yes. Okay. And there's a house or two off of Lindholm Corners as well. Okay. But but the red line goes around those houses.
I see. Okay. Now I think it's a great idea to put a vineyard there. I really think it's a good idea and I'd like to see it. Yeah, sounds like a great thing for the town.
Perfect. What about, sorry, a question regarding, I'm not familiar with the farming regulations, but I know with the residential sites adjacent to that, are there any concerns about the farming aspect in terms of the use of chemicals for the vineyard or the, you mentioned apple trees, are there any regulations that protect the wells in the area regarding use of chemicals?
That would fall under DEP, not zoning regulations. And there are in fact. I assume there were.
Is your intent to mainly use it as a site for a tasting room and the vineyard would be more ornamental or you're going to have a major farming operation? Have you ever visited Priam in Colchester? No, I I visited the one in Columbia.
I haven't been there. Pretty much I'm looking at the Korean atmosphere. People who come, you sit down, have a bottle of wine, get a pizza cheese plate, enjoy yourself. An attraction, you know, somewhere to go outside, especially with, you know, and as you said prior, you know, people are cancelled. No one's going very far. It it it would be a huge attraction I would think to to to Andover.
Yeah, I I would think for the amount of wine you generate, you would have to import a lot of the grapes or grape juice. Majority of the wineries in the area purchase from somebody else. Right. Okay, thanks.
Jim, does that provide any problems for us if he's bringing in wine, grapes to make wine in addition to what he's growing there? I know that's what other places do. I just don't know if we've got, Maybe that's what the Commission goes off into science.
Based on my recollection of the regulations. If that was done in a business zone, that would be fine. The sale of grapes in the ARD zone would sell farm products basically require that the bulk of them be produced on-site. Now that's for the ARD zone, business zone. Would be no issue as far as I know. Okay, yep.
So, I think that's what we've got for you for input. Okay. It sounds like we all think it's kind of a good thing for Andover. Perfect. Glad to hear it. I don't recall the liquor regs offhand and whether the proximity
to the town line would be an issue or not. Well, in fact, we're gonna, that's the next thing we're gonna talk about when we get into the cannabis things is we might wanna change our alcohol rigs a little bit because I don't know why anybody would care that we're doing this within 500 feet. And again, maybe where the actual venue would be within, you know, 500 feet of the downline, only the vineyard would. But we'll talk about that because I'm not sure that that makes a lot of sense anyhow. Appreciate it. But
you should be aware that right now it does talk about you can't sell alcohol within 500 feet of the downline.
Okay. I'll make sure I take it out when I put a building up. Yep, very good. All right, thank you. I appreciate your time. Yep, good night. Good night.
Okay, I guess next I spend just a little bit going through the recreational cannabis regulations. And Abby, if you can let me share my screen there.
You should be able to, but let me Yeah. Know if you're Okay. It looks like we're going there. So,
basically, you know, my thought was that we had a regulation that talked about alcohol establishments and they would probably be pretty similar to a store that sold cannabis. And so I just went in and said alcohol slash cannabis package slash cannabis stores and I said that should be all that it takes. But I thought it would be a good time to, you know, talk about maybe some of the other stuff isn't exactly what we want because it talks about, no bar, nightclub, or tavern within 500 feet of a package store. And I said, gee whiz, isn't it interesting that in Andover we've got one tavern in one package store and they're essentially right next to each other? I said, how did that happen? And I started asking myself, well, does it matter? And I figured, well, we'll talk about that and get some thoughts from the Commission tonight
and maybe we'll change that. I don't know how we got to the situation there now, but the only example we got is way out of compliance with what our regulations are. So something's wrong there. I guess we're not going to go move Andover Pizza or the package store, but we might want to I don't know, if somebody has a thought that those shouldn't be where they are, you know, now is a good time to chime in on it. You know, my thought is we just eliminate that item B on seventeen point zero and seventeen point one.
Does anybody know the history of why it was put in there? Very expensive brand. For the for the bar. Can you say again, Jim? Going
back further than that, don't I couldn't tell you how the the actual pizza place got a liquor license now. So Hello?
Maybe Leanne or Scott, you guys have been around for a while. You got any recollection on Did that happen on your watch or any knowledge on that? Like it was not, it was just approved. Okay, so like, yeah, go ahead Leanne.
It's my recollection that the Univer Pizza did not used to have this license. And I don't remember offhand, I'd have to stop and think about it whether or not it went to ZBA or whether, I mean, I think it started with us. They have a beer and wine license. I'm not sure if they well, now they must have a license to sell the alcohol in the bar. Basically, it was approved at the time that's why they're able to do it. It's kind of the definition of a self imposed hardship. In other words, the package store has been there for quite a while. The pizza place has been there for quite a while also, but they didn't used to have the license to sell any alcohol is my recollection. So it really was the definition of a self imposed hardship as far as applying for something when you're so close to another establishment that was selling it. Yep. Years ago, however many years ago that actually was, Yanover Pizza didn't sell liquor. And they did again, I'm not sure of the process. It's been a while now, but they did have to apply and it was as you can see approved. I would have to give it some more thought as to
I see it looks like you have here in the margins, it looks like some of the same language that was in maybe the sign regulations, either that or I'm running them together with the signing regulations that Mark made so many comments on. I mean, I'm just wondering if there's something to the idea of not having these establishments so close to each other. There's also some language about being so many feet from a residence. Yeah. And we
will talk about that in just a minute. I just wanted to see if we thought, is it a problem that Andover Pizza, and you go to their website and the picture that you get is of the nice leased stock bar. So, you know, it's not like they're trying to not advertise the fact that they sell liquor in the pizza place. I think it makes sense that it happened just like you said, Leanne, where, we had a pizza parlor and we had a package store and they wanted to put a bar in and probably quit the CBA, got a variance and got it approved. But my thought would be that we just eliminate that. And in fact, you know, if somebody were to put a cannabis store up in the same plaza, you know, could I see that happening? Yeah. I don't know that I got a problem with that. Not necessarily,
you know, on my list of things that I go out and try and recruit, but, you know, the Board of Selectmen did say that we should be, I guess I don't know that we're encouraging that, but we're not discouraging either. So anyhow, my thought was that I would get rid of Line B on both of these things and go from there. Then I started thinking, you know, I I didn't really think about the boundary line. I thought maybe that if it was within 500 feet of the boundary line, you know, and somebody lived right over the town line, would they be upset? Maybe that's why we have public hearings and all that kind of stuff. And if something is within 500 feet of a property line down line, we let the town know so they can let their people know and do all that. Church, school, library, park, playground, or a lot having frontage on a residential district.
Good, I think it would be interesting to take a look at a zoning map and see how much property that precludes, thinking 500 feet from any residential district. So we're talking about, basically we're talking about business industrial zone along Route 6. And once you once you take away any portion of that within 500 feet, see what's left. Hey, there's nothing left. Just a thought. Yep. No, that's a good question. I question whether the term package storage is maybe a little outdated. I mean, I know what it but it seems like perhaps a clearer definition might be in order.
Just copy your hand. What do they call package stores these days?
I've heard package stores. Sounds industry standard to me. Okay.
I think probably everybody gets the idea there. I do think that having a lot frontage within 500 feet of the residential district just about knocks you out of business too. So I will go back and take a look at that a little bit. Does everybody think we kind of ought to not have one in the vicinity of the church school library park playground? And then, of course, the thing that comes up is, what is a school? I know at one point, I don't know if it's still there or not, we had a dance studio out in Andover, Blazi. Is that a school? No. I would say no. It
certainly wasn't what I thought of until I was discussing this with somebody, and they asked me that question. I think school is or elementary school that we're talking about there. But you couldn't build a bar or shop within 500 feet of that, I don't think. I'd have to do what. Okay, well anyhow, to modify our regulations to reflect cannabis. I think you can see the three places I added cannabis and that would be it. My thought is right now that I'll get rid of the restriction of having a package store nearby. I'll look to see what a little bit more whether or not there's any of these things within 500 feet of the church, library, park, playground, or school, what the effect of 500 feet from the ARD would do. But I think, as Jim said, we'd probably preclude you from heaven than anywhere in town. And I don't think we're going to get a lot more. I do think there's a chance that a cannabis store might show up, but who knows? Okay, well, that's what I was looking to get out of everybody the cannabis regulation. Yep.
Yeah, this is Leanne. I have another question about the first paragraph where it says 17 o, it references the liquor control act. Is that something that we can change if it's mentioned here? In other words, that we can remove something? This is a definition that's defined by the in the Liquor Control Act. But do we have the ability to remove one of these conditions? Like, you're proposing to eliminate b?
I don't know the answer to that. I'll go check, Leanne. That's good feedback. And I will start off with the easy way of checking. I'll look at somebody else's regulations and see how closely they mirror what we have here. I have not done that yet.
Okay, so maybe what we could do tonight is insert the word cannabis like you have it, and then maybe not completely act on this tonight, finish discussing it. Yep, sounds good. Maybe look into it some more for next month. Okay, very good. Yep, I agree.
And the goal tonight was just to get a little feedback on these things and see if anybody had any thunderbolt revelations that would direct it one way or the other. Okay, enough of that. I'm going to stop sharing there. And now I'm going to try and share that thing that Lee was talking about that had all kinds of comments in that. And so I'm not going to go through all those. What I'm going to try and do is just, oh, I know what I want to do. So, when I was out discovering I always like pictures of signs and kind of like how did we get to where we are with the Andover Pizza bar being right next to the package store when it says 500 feet apart
is I looked at the commercial, you know, what we've got for sign regulations. And maybe, you know, I think this is probably the worst example of signs. If these things stuck on the windows or this thing here, I don't even think that's a window. I think that's a posted sign on the outside, you know, in golly, we talk about having 50 square foot of signage maximum. This place just goes crazy with signs. And so maybe we need to keep the sign regulations the way we are. And if we choose to want to enforce window signs or regulate window signs, this place would have a lot to be desired. And that's not all the signs. We've got these big ones. And this is the same as on the this is the gas station at 316 in Route 6. Then we've got the other one at Lake Road in Route 6. And it's got these big signs all over the place too that way exceed what
we've got in our current regulations. But then I thought, you know, in most of the signs I see around town are very nice looking and they kind of do comply with our regs. This is the outlier here, this gas station. Then I went up to Andover Plaza, you know, and we talked last month about 32 square feet and Attorney Branch had some, you know, my thought was just the size of the sign is 32 square feet. He had some words about draw a rectangle around all the letters and numbers and that is the size of the sign. And we talked about the downside of that. I asked attorney branch why he thought that way. And he said there's a lot of times where people put a sign on the side of a building, and so the entire building is the piece of material that the sign is on. And so you've got to outline, outline the letters to come up with the size to wrestle with that. And we could put that specific caveat in our regulations if we wanted. Here is the package store at Andover Plaza. And I was looking on here trying to figure out, you know, where's the door to get in here? And maybe, you know, package store maybe used to be all this. I was telling Jim that I went over there to take these pictures and there's this big overhead garage door that's right in the front of the plaza now. It looks like there's a brewery in there or something. I don't know if that's part of the package store or what's going on there. Certainly our regulations talk about these kind of signs being for each place and
then you got the Andover Plaza. So, you're looking for Andover Pizza, you find that it's Andover Plaza, you go down the road till you see Andover Plaza, you pull in the parking lot, and then you look on top of Andover Pizza and you see the sign and that's where it's at. Attorney Branch said what he doesn't want or he doesn't think we should do is have all the little tenants down here so that the people are getting in accidents driving down the road trying to read the fine print, seeing what's there. They just want our advertising to say it's in Andover Plaza and then you pull in the parking lot and you find out where it's at if you didn't know what was there. So that was a little feedback from Attorney Branch on why he recommended doing that. The last picture I had for tonight, this was, you know, everybody but Steve's probably seen this one before. Residential
we could regulate are what kind of sign should we allow for a home based business. And this sign here happens to be between three square feet and four square feet in size. I think it's a very nice sign. And that's typical of what I see for actually businesses, home based businesses and that sort of thing. And so I was going to recommend to the Commission that we have a size limit for a home based business sign in the residential districts of four square feet. I think that prevents us from getting out of hand. So after showing some signs, then I thought we would just go through the business
regulations and wrap those up and that would be maybe all that we would do for today. So I'll go there. Now I'll go back to that Different thing. And so I wasn't signs permitted in the business district, 15.7. And again, we start off with lots containing more than one business occupancy. That would be like Andover Plaster. And so we got the temporary construction sign if they're building there, the identification sign where we talked about not larger than 32 square feet, that's consistent all the way through, nothing bigger than that so that the political sign can't be any bigger than that. Height, 10 feet from the ground. Illumination external only, no flashing things there. Other requirements, C section 15.4. I don't know that this needs to be there. That's general sign regs. You would think that you have to go there for that anyhow, but it doesn't hurt anything. And then the one that confused me initially was a permit from the zoning enforcement officer is required. And then the dirty brands add it unless the development receives special permit or site plan approval pursuant to Section 23 of these regs, in which case the approval of the Commission shall be required. And I like that for these businesses because that would hopefully help, well, and I don't think Jim would allow anything going into what looks like, you know, the Shell gas station down there. But
the only concern I've heard about signs since I've been on the commission was the feather signs at the other gas station. And we went over and talked to them, they significantly reduced the number of that. But I think that if there's a business, one of the things that it talks about on that list of things that has to be part of the site plan is the signs. And so I kind of like the fact that we got to look at the signs for any business and do our best to keep them looking dignified and consistent with character that we want to have for the town. Yeah.
So that's the identification sign there. I like that. The signs for whoop, comment
on that, Steve. Yeah, on the freestanding, the height of the freestanding signs not to exceed 10 feet from your pictures, you know, the shell sign obviously was above 10 feet.
Yep. In both gas stations are in excess of 10 feet. And I gave up on trying to convince myself that what exists today should be in compliance with our regulations. You know, I'm not sure how they got there. And maybe, you know, we do have, well, I don't know, I had the same concern as you did, Steve, But since the 10 foot rule was in there already, I kind of thought I don't want to make it any worse than it already is, given what we ended up with. And I wasn't going to I didn't think we should recommend making it any higher. Okay. So that's why that still says 10 feet. And if we ended up with something that was 20 feet, I don't know how we got there, but maybe we could do a better job of preventing that from happening in the future.
A lot of signage around town looks very good. There's just a couple of places that, and they both happen to be the gas stations that I don't think We will see that gas stations have a section all their own coming up. So the signs identifying an individual business in the multi occupancy development, then that would be like Andover Pizza. One flat projecting roof sign, we saw that on Andover Pizza, about 32 square feet. I didn't measure it, couldn't get up there on top of the building, but it looks like, you know, it's not four feet high, but it's longer than eight feet long, so we're probably in the ballpark of 32 square feet. And the illumination's external. Some people have expressed concern about the way that it doesn't shine facing the sign. It shines facing the parking lot and the sidewalks down going in there. And I can see why they would want to have that for safety concerns too. And then it's got this thing, other requirements, C, section 15.4, which are general sign requirements. And then the same words about a permit from the zoning enforcement officer unless the Commission decides what the signage will be by our special permit thing. And I can't think what wouldn't be in there, but maybe if something changed in the Andover Plaza, they got a new tenant that did something different. Would that come back before the Commission or not? I don't know. I haven't experienced that situation, so I don't know. But one way or another,
formal approval, whether it's through the zoning enforcement officer or the Commission, is required for any of that signage. So I thought that all made some pretty good sense there. And then there were single occupancy properties, and that would be maybe like Ben Franklin, maybe whatever goes in in this lot we subdivided there. What kind of signage would we expect there? And it talks about on premise commercial and service establishment shall not exceed the following. Two signs, one freestanding, one flat projecting roof, no sign exceeding 32 square feet combined not to exceed 50 square feet. Mark Branch has gone to me in a couple of occasions and said, why so much? Why so much? And my comeback was I'd be happy if we limited it to 50 square feet based on what I see in a couple of these spots. We haven't been able to do that for whatever reason. So I'm happy with 50 square feet. And the thing that I had not talked to Mark about yet was would that mean we could limit the number of political signs to 50 square feet of coverage? And when you look at the little two by one and a half foot things that comes out to about three square feet, That gives you a lot of signage, but at least it puts some kind of upper limit on it to keep it from just going absolutely
crazy in there. That gives you about 15 political signs in your front yard if you want all the little ones. If you want a great big one, that'll cut that down a little bit. But I liked 50 square feet. I thought that was okay. Mark may provide us some more info on that and convince us why it's not the right answer, but I'm happy with 50 right now. Again, no higher than 10 feet from the ground, external illumination only, not flashing, all the same other things. And that's why it's important to me on these things that we don't, until we get to a site plan on the lot that we just subdivided tonight, we don't talk about signs because, while the Ben Franklin guy might want his Ben Franklin sign out there on Route 6, maybe the guy who bought the lot wants his sign out there instead of the Ben Franklin sign, and he doesn't want to be restricted on that. And I still think these regulations are pretty good. Jim Helzey mentioned to me when we were discussing this a little bit that maybe we could treat that like a little industrial park.
Maybe we could. And what I have not done is I know there's a little industrial park down on Bunker Hill Road where the Christmas tree farm is down there, and I was going go back and get a picture of that one and just check that out to see, you know, as far as I know, I liked it. Is that in compliance with our regs or not? Is that something we should do? But right this minute, for single occupancy properties, I thought these regulations were pretty reasonable, I wouldn't change them any more than that. Anybody on the Commission got any thoughts that differ significantly on that? Okay, I'm going to move down to gas stations and car repair facilities. And I think we've got a car repair facility down there. I forget the name of it. And we've got two gas stations. The car repair facility, I think, has very good signage, probably complies with everything. There's two gas stations. Question how we got there. But they allow three signs, one freestanding, not to exceed 32 square feet. And maybe the gas stations don't consider the prices to be part of the signs. I don't know.
Two combination flat roof or canopy signs, you know, we see the gas stations all have some kind of, if they don't have words, they've got their logo up there, but not exceeding 32 square feet per sign. And combined here, we say all three signs shall not exceed 80 square feet. Mark says that's a lot. So I would probably agree just for consistency to go down to 50 square feet there. And again, that limits the number of square footage of political signs to 50 square feet, which I think is more than plenty. And that would be that. So, that's what I'm kind of proposing for the gas stations. And again, it's very consistent. I think illumination, it says external.
I think those signs up there are internal illuminated, and I got no problem with that. I think that's good. Maybe we could put internal and external there as well. But that's it. Anybody got any questions for signs in the business district or comments? Okay, well, industrials, kind of the same kind of thing. Not a lot of change, we just actually no change at all, except for the fact that we said the Commission could approve signage as part of our site plan, which that's what we do. If somebody wants to change the site plan that we approve, then they have to come back to the Commission with that. So any questions on the Industrial District signs? Permit process, know, said we didn't need to give two hard copies to
Jim because, you know, in this day and age, I don't know if he gets any hard copies. We get digital via email, seems to work pretty good and that's what we're all sharing. You know, for the site plans in that, I do think that I still want a hard copy because I want to be able to spread it out and take a look at it and read all the fine print and all that kind of stuff. But for this, now if they send Jim one copy so he could see blown up, you know, with the size that it says down here, that's fine. And it just essentially it provides all the detailed information for the sign to the zoning agent. He goes out and checks it out and makes a decision on it. And Jim, you got any concerns about the permit process that we got listed here?
I do. And I want to go back and look at the regulations. Excuse me, right now they fall under a special permit, which might be a little onerous if you really want to bring people into compliance just based on cost, public special permit, public hearing, etc. Mean, Commission might want to think about simplifying that.
Well, we'll have to think about that process a little bit. Certainly, they are not in compliance with our regulations now. And I would hope that, you know, I know nothing was ever done over at the other gas station with all the feather signs except for John Valeni went over and talked to the guy, which I think is how that happened, but to get somebody back in compliance with I don't know. Guess I'd be interested, Jim, do we have a special permit? Who do we have on file for those two gas stations? I'd be interested to see what we got there, especially with respect to signage.
I don't know offhand. I mean, I'm guessing that the newer one that was part of the original or it should have been part of the original approval process. That's not to say they haven't grown. Know that there hasn't been other signs installed. The other gas stations have been there quite a while. Hard pressed to guess on that one.
Well, I'm sure they just got a new sign. They went out and banged it in the ground. That was as much thinking as they did on that. So I guess going back to the discussion because the window sign was in the definitions and we added that because I was thinking about putting the scrolling marquee kind of signs in there that, you know, and I got no problem with that. And then I looked at these places with what they've got in the windows already and I said, wow, we're way out of bounds in that one gas station at Andover Plaza. Commission, have any feeling one way or another that we do or do not want to regulate window signs or just that's so far away from the road that if they want to be tacky, so be it. Let them put what they want in their window.
Okay, yep. And I don't like to regulate any more than we have to to protect, you know, town itself. If somebody wants to have well, after I thought about it and went out and looked, I am having second thoughts on do we really want to regulate what somebody puts up in their window? There may be a point in time where we do if somebody puts something obscene in there or something. But I don't think from the way that those things have been handled, various cases where they pop up, I think they're always handled by the zoning agent going out and having a conversation and hopefully convincing the person to take the sign down because I think if we get into legal action with, you know, the free speech stuff going on, you know, we're not going to win. So we've got to try and let Jim be the smooth talker that he is and go out and convince him that if that sign ever popped up, that's not what we are looking for here in Andover.
Okay, yeah, unless somebody objects, I think I will go get rid of that window sign thing and we will just leave well enough alone on that. And there. Okay. And so, yeah, Jim, think about that a little bit more. I would like to make it easy for somebody to come into compliance. But first thing would be we'd have to show that they're out of compliance. And then to come back into what is actually on their special permit or their site plan, shoot, that should take no public hearing or nothing. That just gets them back to where they should have been all along. So that's my thinking on that. Fees, we don't put fees in here, and it talks about what Jim does to issue his permit. And that's it. So that's really, that gets us through the rest of the signage things. When we got done talking at the last meeting, I didn't think I wasn't sure that
all the discussion and the little feedback from you guys did very much for me. But then I started working my way through the regs and I think you guys helped me out a lot. I was able to change a lot of stuff, make them a little bit better. Maybe it's just because I was talking it out loud with you guys. But I will try and come up with some new less busy markups. You know, we got so many different comments and everything in there that you get lost. I think I need to give you a clean copy all the way through and we start looking again, building on this. But I think I ought to be able to come up with something that most of you guys will agree with, not have anything that you don't agree with, and if we fine tune it a little bit, that'll be that.
And so if there's no objections, that's what I'll do to wrap up sign stuff.
Jed, I do have one question. Under definitions, I see under mechanical, you clarified and added a definition for electronic message sign. Yes. Yep. Which I think is great, but
after it says see electronic message sign, then in parentheses it says prohibited. Are you saying the mechanical is prohibited or?
Okay, so what number are you in there, Steve? 15.2.4. 152.4 mechanical. See the last sentence there? Oh, yeah.
So, the mechanical things are prohibited, then you'll see the electronic message sign, and that is not prohibited. Right. Got it. Okay. But we figured, at least I was hoping that keeping with the rural character that we wanted in town, we weren't going to have any of the Las Vegas type guys out there with the Lariat, whack cracking the whip and all that kind of stuff going on So Route we would do that. And again, I'm not sure, as we think about, when we were talking electronic messaging sign, I was really thinking about putting those in the windows. And if we go back to not regulating window signs, maybe I don't need to have the electronic message sign in there either. We'll just stay silent on that because people are already, you know, they've got
the open flashing signs in their windows and I'm okay with that. Know, that's not a distraction to drivers driving down road and that kind of thing. Anything was a distraction, we already say you can't have anything that's going to distract the drivers. I've
to work on that a little bit, but that's why we got there and I'm not done tweaking on that yet. That's why we're not going through that anymore because I still got a little more work. I wanted to get through the rest of the rigs tonight with you guys finish
them up and give you a clean copy to take a look at over Christmas when you're sitting around not being able to do anything else, you can work on zoning stuff.
Okay. I was thinking on the electronic message signs, could have a case like a bank, You know, for example, in Hebron, you have a freestanding sign where they show the time and the temperature. Yep. Good point. Okay. That would, you know, that's not really offensive and it it would fall under the definition of electronic message sign. It would. And,
you know, and we talked about, is the price of gas at the gas station fall into that category? And I guess it could. And so, yeah, maybe that's a good reason to leave it in. Leave it in there and just get rid of the window stuff. It does provide us that flexibility. Okay, thanks. Okay, that completes what I wanted to go through here. I'm going to stop sharing.
Yes? This is Leanne. I have a couple of questions. What is WU
on here? Is that you? It is. And so that means Windows user. And I was not able to figure out how to get my initials to show up in there yet. So, yes, that is is me.
Okay. And I think I would benefit. I think you said you were going to give us a clean copy because it's a little confusing to me to, I guess we picked up tonight where we left off before. Right. There's so many little tiny lines that it's getting hard to see what goes where. Yes. And also with all of these changes, just reading it to me, it's not clear. Some of it isn't clear. Some of it is, but some of it isn't clear what's actually prohibited. Because we kind of start out with definitions and then there's so many comments now about what's recommended that we change or it might be okay or it might not or it's not constitutional or something.
So I think it's getting to be too much right now to follow without having something cleaned up. I agree. I will I appreciate that we are going to get that because I have a couple of questions, but I am not sure from looking at this anymore whether or not they are addressed or not. So I will try to, for the next meeting,
get a clean copy of the regs that all of our discussion, and then you can have at it with, okay, this is what we're looking at, what don't you like? But I think we'll be very close to a final product at that point. Okay, next, yep, anything else, Leigh Ann?
For just an example, I was looking at fifteen point one point two billboard. It says a sign which directs attention to a business commodity service or entertainment conducted sold or offered elsewhere than upon the premises where the sign is located or to which it is affixed. And then in the highlighted part it says semicolon or any sign having a sign face in excess of 32 square feet. So, it looks like the last part about exceeding 32 square feet is the part that's supposed to be deleted. The earlier part is that we say, we're we're not saying that we want that now. We're just taking out the last sentence. I mean, the last part of the sentence rather. Can you give me a paragraph number there, Leanne? 15.1.2 billboard.
Yeah, okay. And one of the things we talked about last time is if we're not allowing a sign facing excess of 32 square feet, which would be a billboard anywhere in here, why do we even need to put this billboard thing in here because nobody can have a sign bigger than 32 square feet. And I forget exactly what the feedback was I got from Mark, but he wanted to make sure that we did not have billboards in Andover. He thought that's not what we were looking for on Route 6 of any size. And this also gets us into the inability the Ben Franklin sign right now is about 32 square feet, I think, from looking at it as I walk by, drive by. And the key on billboard is it's a sign off the premises of your business. And so when we subdivide that lot tonight, and the Ben Franklin sign is out there not on the property of Ben Franklin now, it is a billboard, even though it's only 32 square feet. So that's what gets us matter of fact, it's even labeled as a billboard on the subdivision plan. And so that's what precludes having that sign out there. I think it's good that we don't have the Ben Franklin sign out on Route 6. Am concerned when we get into the site plan of, you know, I'm concerned about the traffic coming out of the gas station on the other side of the road,
and then we're going to have traffic coming in and out of Route 6 on this side of the road. Route 6 isn't the safest road to drive already. You know, a lot of accidents out there. So, as a commission, we're going have to look pretty hard at what we allow the applicant to do at that point. And then, at some point, there's going to be hopefully, something goes into the gravel pit thing across the road there. So that whole traffic thing can be kind of, we gotta work hard on making sure that that stays as safe as it can be. But having a bunch of signs out there on Route 6, nah, I'm not thinking that's what we need. And so that's why I concluded that I wasn't going to take this thing out of here that was on the billboard. I'd leave it in there just so we could prohibit it. So, I don't know if I answered your question, Leigh Ann, but I sure danced around it an awful lot.
I think you answered part of it. I think we're talking about, there's really two different things here. One is what constitutes a billboard and the other one is whether or not something advertises something that's not on the premises. Yep. So that's two different things in one in 15.1.2.
Yep. They can be like Ben Franklin on the lot that's out there now, not under business, but not bigger than 32 square feet, or a sign bigger than 32 square feet. And my recommendation to the Commission is I don't think we want either one of those until we call them a billboard. And we prohibit it.
And what about the part about well, we can talk about this when you clean this whole thing up. But my other point was what about the part where something is advertising something that's off-site? We don't allow that.
Okay, I just wanted to be clear about that. Because again, goes kind of goes back to what I said about making sure that what's clear, what's prohibited and what isn't in the cleaned up version. Yep, and
and the reason the prohibited is crossed out here is because this is just a definition. You get into the general sign things and it talks about billboards are prohibited. So anything that meets this definition here, which has got pieces of it, one is size and one is business someplace else, neither one of them are allowed in Andover. Okay, thanks.
Okay, so we're moving on to approval of the minutes.
Good. I see the date on the agenda is wrong. 11/15/2020. Should be 2021. The agenda for the November meeting? Approval of minutes. The date is wrong. Oh.
Yep, okay, I got you. Yep, the date is wrong. We're going to do meeting minutes from November 2021. Yes.
Okay, yep. And so, I make a motion that we approve the minutes from our 11/15/2021 meeting. I second. Okay,
Anne, I got you seconding that. Any comments on the minutes? And I did have a couple this time, Abby. In line one, Chair Jay Larson called the meeting to order at 7PM, not the public hearing. Because as I recall, we didn't do a public hearing at the last meeting. And then on page two, the last paragraph in A before we get to be there, Jay Larson moved to schedule a public hearing for PZZ application, not special meeting. And then my third item is down under B, the third paragraph down, the second line, it says M. Marshall. And I think the fellow's name is Marshall Martin so that should be M. Martin there. That would be consistent with the paragraph above it. And those were my only comments on the meeting minutes. Anybody else have anything there? Okay. So, given that, I will say the motion is approved by unanimous consent. Anybody in opposition raise your hand or say no at this point? And Leanne, I need no from you because I can't see you. I need a yes. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So the motion carries five-zero-zero. Next thing on the agenda is correspondence, Jim. Done.
Okay, moving right along. Item nine, administrative reports enforcement actions.
Okay, follow-up on zone change at 329 Route 6. This came up at a previous meeting. There was some confusion as to what the zone was for the property. This is the property, the house located next to the commuter lot. And after some research, was determined that a zone change application had been submitted, but the zoning map was never filed, hence it was never effective. And Jed and I met met met with Mark Brantz, discussed that, at at length, actually. So it remains a residential zone for the time being. Enforcement actions, I am working
But before we leave, Alan, Jim, so is there anything new? Attorney Brandt said his recommendation was that the people file a new zoning change application. And they have not.
They're not Okay. Disagreeing with that. They just haven't done anything yet. Correct. Okay, got it. Action on the Commission's part.
Enforcement I have a number sort of in the background just due to time constraints. I'm not spending a lot of time on that. Up to date on the blight ordinance. I have sent out a few letters just making people aware of the blight ordinance, but we do not as yet have a hearing officer to the best of my knowledge. Hence, I cannot issue citations because they require it would require a hearing officer be in place. So I'll follow-up and see what the status of that is. That's all I have. Any questions? Be happy to answer.
Well, I wonder if you should issue a citation. And then when somebody wants to challenge citation, that would provide the motivation to get a hearing officer.
Okay, the only problem is the way, I mean, I have not, I actually have asked the town attorney for a copy of a sample citation, and I haven't gotten one. So I think I'm just gonna put one together and send send him one and say, how's this? But it's going to say, I know from past experiences, you know, it's going to give anybody who gets a citation X number of days to file a public hearing to file a complaint. Go to the hearing officer. Yeah. To file a whatever it is. I'm sorry. We don't have a citation, a hearing officer at that time, they're gonna escape. Yep.
Okay. I mean, that's my thought process. Assume that's the way it happens.
Yep, we'd have to get a hearing officer in place within thirty days or else they filed their thing. We didn't do anything with it and they're good That to would make sense to me. Yep, okay, nope, I understand now. Makes some sense. Okay, very good.
Jim, could I ask a question about what kind of zoning change did we want to change on that 329 Route 6?
A zoning an application had gone back, I believe in the 80s from residential to business. And there in fact was an assumption that it had transpired because a number of applications had been approved On that basis. But trying to make heads or tails of the the actual zoning map. There was one never filed. I mean, it's there's not one in the land records.
There was a there was a there was a foundation there. They started a business and then they made them take the whole thing down.
Because There was a restaurant. I know there was a restaurant approved. There was an artist's space there, an art space, a gallery. But But I think they were all based on the fact that it was business zone when it wasn't. I mean, it wasn't because of, because the map was never filed. Right. They
never gave them permission to do that, so they had to take the Yeah, whole thing
don't know why, what happened with the foundation for the, that's,
I have some vague, I wasn't here at the time, but I do have some vague. So somebody wants to buy the place and see what they could do with the property, is that what they're?
I believe the owner, the current owner was trying to split off a lot and sell a portion of it for business purposes. And it would, I mean, there's certain logic to it. It would just be an extension of the existing property, the business zone along Route 6. I mean, it's not a spot zoning by any means. It's very consistent with our plan of conservation development with common zoning practice, just wasn't done. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.
Okay, moving on. Commission discussion and miscellaneous. Anybody got anything that we should be talking about tonight?
Well, I I I wanted to talk to Jim about the what what did you say about the blight ordinance?
What's going on? Just to my knowledge, no public hearing officer has been
Oh, so you can't you can't can't give any enforcement action. No.
Because there's an appeal period, and And that's my understanding of it. Don't have the actual, I don't have a notice approved, but whenever I've seen these elsewhere, there's a period of, you know, if you want to appeal this, that was the way it was represented at the town meeting. You know, if you want to appeal a citation, you go to the public hearing officer within a timeframe. If there is no hearing officer, then it seems to me that the citation becomes null and void. And I don't want to guess as to whether you could issue that citation again. I mean, that's you know, more of a legal question. But I just I don't wanna put myself or the town in that position. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.
Any other miscellaneous topics? Any public comment? Hearing none, the next meeting is January 24, Monday, 2022. That's the fourth Monday of the month, not the third Monday because of Martin Luther King Day. And with that, before we adjourn, I guess I'll throw in the miscellaneous comment that I continue to appreciate the participation by each of you here tonight. We've got two people missing tonight, which is a high number. They both let me know they weren't going to be here. Both had pretty decent reasons for not being in attendance. But, you know, I really appreciate everybody showing up, participating, asking the questions, being prepared, and all that stuff. I wish a very happy holiday season to everybody here. You know, I was going to say, let's look forward to a better 2022, but I am not sure that it is going start out that way. I think it is going get worse before it gets better, but better days will ultimately prevail at some point here. So, I am still wishing you all a happy New Year, a healthy New Year, and all that goes with that as well. With that, thank you very much for participating in the Commission. I guess we'll see everybody. If I don't see you before, we'll see you January 24 when we get for our new January 24 when we have our next meeting here. So, happy holidays, everybody. I make a motion that we adjourn. Almost went before we had that.
Second.
Okay, thanks, Steve. By unanimous consent, again, if anybody's opposed, speak now. Otherwise, the motion passes five zero zero. Again, thanks for everybody. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. See you around. Merry Christmas. Holidays, kids. To all of Bye, everyone. Good night. Good night.