Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Public Hearing and Regular Meeting
January 25, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
At least Linda Derrick would be joining us, but I did get a letter from her. Hope that looks like Leanne's phone number showing up there. Is that you Leanne? Yes.
Okay. Good evening Leanne. Now are you watching us online Leanne so that you can see what we put up on the screen? Yes.
Okay, very good. So it's 701, and I would like to call the public hearing to order. The purpose of the public hearing tonight And Mindy, are you recording this? Yes, I am. Okay, thank you. Just wanted to make sure before we started. I figured you probably were. This is for the application of the Andover Planning and Zoning Commission to amend section two point one and two point two to establish new overlay districts in the Andover Lake area and add section 7.6, 7.7, and 7.8 so as to establish criteria for mitigating the potentially detrimental effects of construction in the defined areas. This includes the adoption of map depicting four separate overlay zones. The intent of this amendment is to mitigate the detrimental effects of stormwater runoff into Andover Lake, thereby preserving its water quality. So with that in mind, again, I'd like to remind everybody that the session is being recorded. We'll do the discussion of the map
and then the requirements. And I would like to have all of the discussion pertaining to the map and the regulations done during the public hearing portion Because once we go into the regular session, the alternates, if they are not seated, and it looks like they probably will not be tonight because we got the full Commission here, Won't be allowed to ask questions as we go in to deliberate after we're done with the public hearing. So that's what we got about where we're going tonight. And with that, Mindy, could I ask you to call up the map? We'll go through that first. Okay, so if you could scroll down that so we can get most of the Lake District in, that's good right there. So again, we've set we've got the area outlined in blue being the Lake District, the area outlined in red being the watershed area. And then working our way out from the lake itself, we've got the yellow areas identifying those in zone A where we would put the most restrictive regulations into effect because that's got the most effect on the lake. We'll move outward to the light blue, which is Zone B. A little bit less restrictive there. Moving out to the purple, which is Zone C. Those are the remaining lots in the Lake District. The B zone are the ones right across the street essentially from the ones on the lake itself. And then those in the tan color are outside of the Lake District but still within in the waters yet. So with that in mind, I would ask if there's any questions on the map per se. And I don't expect too many because we've talked about it amongst ourselves quite a bit.
Jed, is this the map that we reviewed last meeting? It is, Yep. Okay. So no changes to it. Good. Well, the red line.
Yep. The watershed. And again, there may be Susan a slight difference between this and the last map we got Jim got two copies of the map from whoever printed them up and we couldn't tell the difference. So Jim called up and asked what the difference was. And one of them had the property outlines a little bit darker. And so I don't know if I showed the lighter outline or the darker outline, but they're identical with the exception, this one's easier to see the delineation of the different pieces of property. That we had two maps and so that would be the only reason that I showed a different one last time is maybe I called up the one that wasn't quite as dark. But I could not tell any difference between them. Any other questions on
the map? Okay, with that in mind, that was easy. Pull that down. I'm losing.
Mindy. And I am going to if you can allow me to share my screen, Mindy. All right. You should be able to now.
Okay, so can everybody see the copy of the draft regs that I'm thinking I'm putting up? Yep. Okay, and so the reason that I'm putting mine up as opposed to the ones that are on the website is because if we have any minor changes as we go through tonight, I can make those and then I can send them into Mindy and Jim and they can use those for whatever happens next to make these official. But if we go, so we'll start out with sections two point one and two point two, which essentially added the Andover Lake Watershed Protection overlay zones A, B, C and D, And then talks about the map. We've got a little spot here that we'll put in a map date. I think Jim, you were recommending the date of February 25 for these being approved? That they've given everybody a month to to comment on it that might want to do so? Jim? You're on mute, Jim. I can't hear you.
Okay. No, I'm saying, though, that the amended date, adopted date would be tonight. Okay. The effective date would be a month from tonight. That's what I'm suggesting. Okay.
So just so I understand the area that's in yellow would then be tonight's date. And this is why? Yes. Okay.
So the draft motion or the motion should coincide with what's plugged in there.
Okay. And so that's why I wanted to do that. So we got the date in the regulations. And Jim, I forgot to check and look, is the scale on the map that we've got, do you know if it's the one inch equals 500 feet? Oh, I don't
know. Okay. I'll let you check that. That was the one detail in there that I thought might have been problematic if we had the wrong scale, not that anybody would know. And that said, this map is included as Appendix two. So I think that finishes up the section two of the establishing of the districts here, unless there are any other questions on that. Okay, we'll move on down to our section 7.6. And I'll start out with the intent. And that I think was pretty straightforward. We're intending to make the water a little bit cleaner, reduce the runoff and that sort of thing. So if anybody has any questions on that section, speak up. Otherwise, I'll go to 7.6.2. Looks good, Jed. Okay,
moving down 7.6.2. I had no comments on what's written here. I'd be happy to answer any questions on that. Okay, moving on to the requirements and I did have a recommendation on this and Mindy, I have these typed up so that you don't have to worry about getting them down. I'll go to you there, send them to you as soon as we're done here. But when we get into the requirements, it starts off by saying for all applicable land use activities within the Andover Lake Watershed Protection Overlay Zone, a completed nutrient allocation worksheet shall be used. And one, know that's not true because we're not going to use the worksheet in Zone D. And it says it shall be used to calculate whether the proposed change would increase the amount of phosphorus nitrogen leaving the site. And that's not true either because we're expecting to have a reduction. We go through, you know, the reduction in Zone A is 10%, Zone B 7.5%, and Zone C 5%. So I thought those first couple of lines there weren't what we were looking for. And so I was going to replace, I recommend that we replace it with these here, and I'll just read it.
For all applicable land use activities within the Andover Lake Watershed Protection Overlay Zones Alpha through Charlie, the completed nutrient allocation worksheet shall be used to calculate amount of phosphorus leaving the site prior to the planned activity. I took out nitrogen because our worksheet only deals with phosphorus, although if you reduce one, you reduce the other. The nutrient loading will be used to determine the reduced post activity nutrient loading requirements by these regulations. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to figure out what we got initially and what the final answer should be after we take our reduction. The amount of nutrient reduction is based upon the respective zones with zone A closest to the lake requiring the most reduction. Best management practices to increase the infiltration and or reduce stormwater runoff will have to be implemented to achieve these required reduction, to achieve the required reduction. So anyhow, it's, you know, we worked a lot on the worksheet and on the different zones and all that and I think we missed in this opening paragraph where it talks requirements and I thought we ought to have that being as reflective as we can. So, comments on that change? Okay, so. I knew that would happen. Okay, well I'll go through and fiddle with how to make the margins right after we get there. Oh, I guess another comment before we go any further. One of the comments we had at the last meeting was it would be nice if we put all the definitions up in the front. And I looked at doing that and started working on the definitions.
And I chose to leave them where they were because my ability to get all the different renumbering after I renumbered the different sections and get all the different things going back to the right one would be probably couldn't get there. And some of the definitions we have there really need to go into section 2.2. And so the lesson learned for me is, you know, we got to start with the definitions right up front going forward to build the new regulations. But I didn't stand a chance of getting this right if I started fiddling with the definitions and renumbering all the paragraphs. So I chose to leave it where it is. So that's why I didn't do anything with that one. Okay, Millennial, that's it on the requirements. I guess we'll go down to nutrient allocation worksheet to determine compliance. And here, you know, one of the things that I wanted to point out, you know, we talked a bit about what should we do with an undeveloped lot on the lake. And there were, you know, three or four different options that we had looked at. And what I chose to put in here and what I think we all agreed was as good a plan as any for the couple of undeveloped lots we have is that, as you see in the last
sentence here, in this case, at a minimum, the property owner will mitigate stormwater runoff by capturing all roof and driveway runoff in stormwater storage capacity. So that's what we're going to do if it's an undeveloped lot and you can't make the improvements in there. I think with probably, you know, dry wells and all that, you could get an improvement, but it'd be very hard. And this just makes it very clear what we're expecting Jim to expect of the property owners when they go out and develop those properties. Right. So anyhow, that's that and that's the change here.
Can I ask a quick question, Jed? You bet, Anne. Did you remove nitrogen from the 7.6.3 paragraph? Because should we take nitrogen out of the title for 7.6.4?
I chose not to do that because we are reducing both of them. The worksheet when we get there only addresses the phosphorus, but we're really using that as a means of reducing both of them. We want to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus, so I felt comfortable leaving both of those in the title there. Okay. I'm going to go down it and now we're going to start with Zone A. And there were no changes to this since we had last talked about it. So, oh, guess, yeah, so we had talked about this a little bit earlier today, Jim. And I just wanted to make sure on paragraph two, it says a zoning permit. And that is the correct terminology and it shouldn't be a building permit. Are you happy with the terminology zoning permit, Jim? I think he disappeared and then came back.
Hi, it's Jim. I you there Jim, okay. Okay, I might for some reason I'm on my phone now. No internet on my computer. I lost you about five minutes ago so. Okay well we're down so
you probably we talked about the runoff for the undeveloped lot. Were you listening when we talked about that being to mitigate the roof and the driveway runoff? Yes. No, I was not. Okay.
But again, for an undeveloped lot, we expect, you know, because we can't get to the, you can't improve on a perfection, which is, you know, the wooded lot there, the easiest thing to do is tell the developers, the property owners that they should capture all the stormwater ring runoff from the roof and the driveway. And that will probably not make all the people developing new lots happy but one of the things I found out as we were going through there trying to understand these is the people who have to do something aren't as happy with them as all the other people on the lake. And know Alma and Alcoa would prefer that we have more restrictive measures in place. So I think we've got a good balance there.
Should I say something about impervious surface? Well, know that roof and driveway are impervious, but what if they add some additional impervious surface?
I think I don't know. Put those words there because that's what you recommended. And I think that is when we went through various examples, mitigating the roof and the driveway was a pretty significant contribution there. It is. And so I was happy capturing that on those one or two new lots. And one of the goals here is to keep it simple, keep it effective, and didn't want to get too much harder than that. With the one new lot, you know, we're getting pushed back. The people didn't want to mitigate that. They were giving us all kinds of rationale for, you know, running down towards the road, not to the lake. And as I look there, you know, it it the torturous path that it does take before it gets to the lake does allow a lot of time for runoff. Okay. That's fine then. Yeah, I think there's only two or three lots that this will apply to. And my goal is to get the regulations into effect before the people with that lot there might come to Jim with his building permit request. So anyhow, that's why that's there. But now, Jim, my question to you is, paragraph two on the overlay here, is the right word a zoning permit or a building permit here for not be issued unless a nutrient allocation worksheet is submitted? How about can we just use zoning compliance? Zoning compliance?
Yes, stay away from the word permit. Can we say, I've lost the screen here.
Do you have a copy of the regs with you? I don't.
Says the zoning permit shall not be issued unless a nutrient allocation worksheet is submitted and approved for the site surface area. That's
fine, that's fine. Zone permit is part and parcel to the building permit. Okay, very good.
Any other questions on where we're discussing Zone A? Okay, moving down to Zone B. Again, nothing's changed from before. Instead of 100 square feet, now we're worried about 200 square feet, a little further away from the lake, a little less restrictive, and we're going down to 7.5% reduction as opposed to 10%. Okay, then I'll go to zone C. And here we've changed, you know, instead of 100 or 200, we go to 300. In the amount of reduction, we're looking at a 5% less. And that's it. Going on to Zone D, no nutrient allocation worksheet required. We do expect to infiltrate a two inch flush from whatever the increased impervious area is and that's it for Zone D. Nothing's changed there since we talked about that before. Okay, 7.6.9 just talks about not every runoff coefficient in the world is listed on our worksheet. If they have some basis for some different thing than what we've got there, Jim's willing to entertain that. Moving on to 7.6.10, this is the one time small surface change which is if we're doing an area less than 100 for A, 200 for B, 300 for C, Jim can do a little rain garden or a trench filled with stone and you know, it talks about the dimensions there and just mitigate it that way. Okay, 7.6.11 is best management practices. No changes there from what we had talked about before. Was your question? Nope? Okay. Modification of lake watershed by special permit. So if somebody thinks that they can't comply with our nutrient allocation worksheet requirements, And I think that's a pretty tough sell that they wouldn't be able to do that. They may not want to be able to do that, but that's a different matter.
They can come to the Commission with a special permit. And this has the requirements that we would expect to be satisfied before we grant that special permit. And again, that's not an awful lot of reduction in what they would be doing by the nutrient alloy worksheet. Happy there. Next section is if the property is not within the Andover Lake watershed, you know, can come talk to Jim. He can check the map, check them with them and if he agrees that it's not in the watershed, they don't have to comply by these requirements And does, since that's a determination that would have to be put in the paper so everybody can see it so that if somebody doesn't like that decision, they can go back and appeal it. Okay, so that is everything to do with stormwater runoff. There was one thing that I hoped I was planning to call up and it either slipped my mind or I didn't see it and I'll just see if I can come up with it. Somewhere here in the undeveloped lot, I thought I put in some words to allow Jim to give a guy credit things that he had done previous to putting in his new plan. Don't see him right this minute, but I certainly think that we want to encourage all the property owners to take action to
improve, mitigate the runoff. And if they were to do that and then wanted to make some improvements, Jim would consider that okay. I don't see it in there, but I think it's probably. Okay, yep. Here it is up here under the intent. And you know, one, property owners are encouraged to implement additional stormwater mitigation. If they're out there building a house, that's the ideal time to, you know, put in dry wells and that sort of thing, why they're doing it, and we would encourage them to do those kind of extra actions. And then the last paragraph here talks about actions taken by property owners may be considered in fulfilling future measures required by further future development so that that allows the good citizens to get a little bit of credit for any good work they did. So that covers all the points that I wanted to about stormwater runoff. We're ready to move into septic changes here. And I got a little bit of feedback from our town's sanitarian fad king today. So when we get there, I'll talk about what he suggests. I think it's pretty easy. But the intent and purpose talks into our small lots, old septic systems. It says the majority of septic systems were installed prior to 1980. And I was always curious what the magic date of 1980 was. Maybe septic tanks wear out after forty years, I don't know. But it turns out that around 1980, maybe 1982, is when the state's septic tank public health codes were put into effect. And so when I was talking with Thad King about the goals for our regulations
here, He was just wanting to make sure that we weren't going to get everybody a new septic system overnight. He said that either in his health district or the entire state, I can't remember, are 20,000 septic tanks right now, and probably only 10,000 of those do they have any documentation of to know whether or not they're in compliance with the rules that have come into effect. So they've been working on that since 1980, and they're about halfway there now. I thought it was interesting, you know, we can make requirements that are more significant than the public health code if we want. He mentioned, you know, the state of Massachusetts, if somebody sells a piece of property up there and the septic system doesn't meet the existing code,
that has to be remediated for the sale of the house. And Connecticut doesn't require that, but there you go. Okay. So now we get in and was there? I know sometimes with email system I'm using, I'll try to forward something out and it's not the original thing coming in and I don't get the attachment sent out to everybody. Did anybody get the letter I got from Thad King today? Yes. Who said yes? Leanne.
All right, Leanne. Okay, so at least it went out. Whether or not it was late in the day that I sent that out. Miracle of miracles. So here's the letter I got. I think it implements pretty easily. I'll read it out loud because that gives me time to think you guys can read and listen at the same time. So the section 7.7.2, which is Andover Lake A Zone, states that a principal structure shall be required to install septic system approved by Eastern Highlands Health District complying with Connecticut state code. You can see your ebook. It lists the conditions.
And then the next paragraph he says, the local director of health may require expansion of the existing sewage disposal system or installation of new sewage disposal system at the time of the change in use of those properties whenever the proposed change in use results in more than 50% increase in design flow. And design flow seems to be the buzzword that he was looking for. And it talks about design flow means the anticipated daily discharge from a building is determined in accordance with some other tech standards. And it goes on to discuss what the design flow is for various bedrooms of houses there. So I think what he's telling me is to take the paragraph that we had there and just add the words when the project design flow exceeds 50% and these four items down here, and then this one, you know, number five replaces the seven items that we had that were in there. And so based on his recommendation,
I was just going to add when the project design flow exceeds 50% to the title, conditions requiring a new appropriate upgraded septic system when the project design flow exceeds 50%. And then take out our seven things and put his four in there or five rather.
Okay, I have a question. How were our seven developed? Did we do those or were those John Valentes?
They were John Valentes And again, we borrowed the regulations heavily from Columbia's, but Columbia did not have any septic system regulations in their lake racks. And so I don't know if he made these up or came through, you know, he got them from someplace else, I've got no idea. I do know that we talked about it a lot and the goal is to get all these outdated, not compliant septic systems to meet state code today.
Okay. Thad or someone from his agency would be the person who would be permitting the septic tank? Yes. Okay. That being the case, that makes a lot of sense, what you're saying. Yep.
And again, as we develop these, we spent some time talking about is the right height above the water table 12 inches or 18 inches. We started out with 12. We increased that to 18 inches above the water table to be more restrictive, but also consistent with the Connecticut Health Code. Why don't we we're around the lake. Why don't we expect a septic system to be full compliance with code? And so we changed that. We stuck with the 50% size thing because that's consistent with the health code. So essentially, we're just saying we want it to meet the health code. And if you think it meets the health code, you get your professional engineer out there and do some testing and certify to us that it is. Now, as I wrestled with myself over, okay, so the guy, somebody put in a new septic system approved by public health a year ago, and we have all the documentation we need over in the town hall. Do we need to go out and get the professional engineer to recheck that? And I think we probably don't, and I think Jim can probably
determine, you know, when he needs to do that. He's certainly, you know, way more knowledgeable on the septic system repairs and regulations than I am and working with that king, they'll come up with the right answer. So I was happy with that. If Jim's got any questions, can make the guy go out and get the professional engineer in there. But to take that cost, if we have all the documentation we need and it was just put in recently, I think that's more than we could hope for. We really want to get the outdated non compliant septic systems fixed. And so, you know, his second paragraph of the letter, same recommendations apply to section 7.7.3. So I guess what I didn't do because I got there late is if we had seven and he's got five, what did he get rid of?
Because he still has And I guess we're getting rid of when the net floor area of a principal building increases by 20%. And I'm okay with that because really, you know, the thing that allows more people to live there is more bedrooms and that sort of thing. And even then, Thad left in when one or more bedrooms are added, which would require the B100 approval from Connecticut Public Health anyhow. So two is already kind of a duplicate of one, and he left that one in there. So I guess we're good to go. Okay. I'm going to so we're back to the septic system words. Here's for zone B. Those are the only two that it has. We've got some voluntary actions beneficial to the lake that aren't part of the requirement, but when somebody's putting in a new septic system, the inland wetlands folks could ask a couple of these things and that might be nice. Then 7.8 has got definitions that we had talked about last time. So that is all that I have to say about the lake regs. I would point out for the public record, if anybody didn't see it, we did get I got a letter emailed to me from Andover Lake Management Association Board that's supportive. I'm not going to go through
and read the whole thing. It does talk about the fact that we have, you know, had our limnologist going out there sampling and it looks like the algae growth in the lake is headed the wrong direction, not as bad as it was some twenty years ago after we had fixed up some septic systems. Since then it went down, but it's coming back and they appreciate the efforts that were taken to do that. So the two other things I wanted to make sure were in the record were the letter we got from Alma saying the Alma and Alcoa board concur with the regulations and the changes suggested by Thad King that I will put in before I send these back to Jim and Mindy. Any other comments on the late Gregs? Going once, going twice. I have a question. Yep.
When does CROG come back to us about the regulations?
So we I don't know if they will. Jim, did you ever get a hold of anybody there today on that? I know Jim was trying to get a hold of somebody over at Crogg. Didn't. We have given him the requisite amount of time. Jim did get ahold of the people over in and Hebron, which are the two towns that are in the watershed, just so they were aware of what we were doing. And they did not have any comments on it. And so by virtue of the fact that those two towns who are not even affected by it but might be interested in what we're doing didn't have any comments and we didn't hear anything back from Crogg and we met the time requirement, I thought we were good to go. That's fine. I just wanted to make sure for the record that we knew that. Yep. Okay. Very good. I appreciate the backup. Okay. I'm going to stop sharing. And at that point, Jim, are you still with us? Okay, I see your microphone flashing on and off there, Jim. Can you hear me now? I can hear you now Jim, yep.
Oh, it says done speaking. Okay. Yes, I'm up. I'm
here. Okay, so my question, I see no reason to not close the public hearing at this point. Can you think of any? No, I cannot. Okay, So given that, I would request a motion that we close the public hearing. I'll motion to close the public hearing. Thank you, I have a second. Thank you, Susan. I have a second. Yep. Got you, Susan. Any discussion? Okay. With that, I'm going to do a roll call just because I'm not sure of the process for doing a unanimous one here. But I'll start with Anne. Aye.
Scott. Aye. Susan. Aye. Leanne. Aye. And I vote aye as well. Motion carries five-zero-zero and public hearing is closed. And we will go find my agenda here to Okay, so the public hearing was closed at 07:46. It is now 07:47. I'll call the regular planning and zoning meeting to order. Roll call, I see that we have Anne Cremay, Scott Bersand, Susan England, Leanne Hutchinson and myself all present. So those are the five regular commission members. We also have present Kevin Arneson and Anne Blanchard, our alternates, and they will not be seated tonight. The next item is the public participation. And I see nobody from the public here. So we'll move on to additions and or changes to the agenda. Hearing none, we'll go on to old business. And the first item of old business is the zoning regulation amendment. And at this point, I'm looking for a motion that the regulations
be approved. Jed, would you like to hear my draft motion?
Certainly. I'm just going wait till we get into discussion, but we can do that now.
Okay. All right, I'm gonna throw it out there. Move that the application of the town of Andover acting through its planning and zoning commission, proposing amendments to the Andover zoning regulations be adopted more specifically, the changes to section two one, two two, two three, seven six, seven seven, and seven eight of the end of our zoning regulations and the adoption of the map entitled. I'll make a correction here. I have on my draft Andover Lake, but if you go to the definitions in the draft reg, they refer to the map as the Andover Watershed Protection. No, the Andover Lake Watershed Protection Map is what they refer to it in seven, second definition. So, you know, for the sake of consistency, the adoption of the map entitled the Inover Lake Watershed Protection Map, hereby dated 01/25/2021. Copy of the amendment is attached to this motion. The effective date of the change shall be 02/25/2021. Basis for approval, Post amendment will provide the town an additional tool to preserve the quality, the water quality of the Andover Lake, which is the goal of the town's plan of conservation and development.
And just for information, there's no magic date about February 25. It's a month for tonight. It gives time to advertise the action and appeal, the appeal period. It's not exactly a month, it's less than a month, but just I've generally done that as a matter of course, just to, for consistency, just to keep it easy.
Okay, on your draft Jim, it said it referred to section 2.3. Yeah. I don't think there is any 2.3. Really? Okay. I don't think there is either. You're right. Okay. So, it should only refer to section 2.1, 2.2. Okay.
Okay, with that in mind, in the draft motion, I'm looking for a motion to approve consistent with the draft motion that Jim just read with the changes that we discussed.
A motion to approve the changes that Jim Hallisey stated. Okay. Thank you, Scott. Need a second? I'll second. Leanne. Okay, Leanne, thank you. Any discussion on
regs at this point? Yeah, this is Jim House. I just want to check and make sure Mindy has this for recording purposes. It's recording. No, I sent her a copy. Yep, I got it. The draft.
I got it. Okay, all right. Just, I wanted to make sure that you could, you were able to use She removes that 2.3. Yep. Yep.
And you put in the overlay zones? Yes. Yep, okay. Thanks, Mindy. Yep. So any other discussion?
I would just like to thank you Jed for all the work you have done. This has been a long time coming, even back when I was on the Commission before we talked about it. Is wonderful to see it come to fruition.
Well, it was funny because I went back, I was trying to do a little research on a different issue, but I went back to the very first minutes that are archived online, you know, over three years ago, and they were talking about the Lake Regs then. So it has been a long time coming.
I would really I really appreciate what you did also this is a huge step for the Planning and Zoning Commission to get these lake regulations enacted finally. I was worried that they weren't going to be done after John was gone and I'm glad that they're all done and I really commend the commission and you and Ted and Jim Halsey and John getting together and getting these done.
We're not done yet. We need to vote. Big deal. So
with that in mind, we've got the motion. We've got second. Well, I guess Yes. Any last discussion before we call the vote there? Okay. Hearing none, Anne? Aye.
Scott? Aye. Susan? Aye. Leanne? Aye. And I vote aye as well. Motion passes, five-zero-zero. Now they're done, everybody. And that was one of our key goals for this year was to get the lake regs in effect. And so I think there's a couple of renovations in that coming up in the near future and hopefully these will be effective before those applications come into town hall to get it done. Well done everybody. Okay, moving on to the next item of the old business. And it's use of town owned rights of way. Discussion possible action. Jim, And did you have anything you wanted to explain on that one, Air Force?
I'd be happy to. I mean, the reason it came to the commission initially is there's a parcel on Wheeling Road, which you may recall was basically, it was left, well, it was created with the intent of using, intended as the realigned Wheeling Road, which was part of the proposed Route 6 bypass. We all know that didn't happen. Wheeling Road was not realigned. So there's a triangle of land in front of this parcel. Meaning that in order to get to it, you'd have to cross this land, which is now owned by the town. Was given by the state of Connecticut Department of Transportation back to the town. It raised this issue of whether they have a right to cross it or not. And as a zoning agent, I don't believe I have the right to grant permission in front to the commission for comment. And that's where I am. Now, having said that, there's an additional issue, which is that it appears that the land that was given, land in question, the triangle is now owned by the town, that is between Wheeling Road and the parcel in question, seems to have a caveat on the map where it's to be used for open space. So that throws another glitch into the whole conversation. So that's all I have to offer. Believe I'd be happy to meet. If I'm missing anything.
Nope, that's good, Jim. And I would only add to that. So I think the way ahead in the action for the commission will be first, we will have to seek the advice of town council. And I don't know which exact lawyer that would be yet. But given that it's open space, is that something that we would be able to grant
Right. Crossing with the driveway? And I did get input from Mark Brantz. And he didn't have a problem with it, but I don't believe he had information that land was supposed to be open space. It's interesting. It's not in the warranty deed, but it's on the map that is referenced. I was kind of looking for a conservation easement of sorts, some sort of and there was no such document that I could find. So that's all
I have. Okay. And I am not opposed to making something easy. We don't have to necessarily make it hard. And if our attorney says that we can treat it like the right of way alongside the road, that's a way out. We do need to verify that it's consistent with the open space rule. And if it is not allowed because it's open space, we get that answer, and then the Commission can vote on whether or not we think it should be allowed to be treated as a right of way for that. And at that point, because the lot owned by the town surprised me how big it was. It's actually a one and a half acre piece of property out there, which is not we got a lot of lots around the lake here that are a quarter acre or less. So an acre and a half is a pretty big hunk of property to be running across. We can make the determination as to whether or not we think that's the right thing to do. But I want to get a readout from our attorney.
And I guess, Jim, the last piece of that pie is that we should go back and figure out who wants the answer to the question because they should be paying the attorney fees that we use to go out and get an answer to help them out. That shouldn't be a cost that comes to the town. So I know over in Inland Wetlands, we were going to go out and do a sidewalk on something preliminary to an application coming in. And we said no application, no sidewalk. We're not going to go out and look at it. We encourage in planning and zoning people to come to us with questions and we can help them get set out in the right direction.
But I don't know who is actually coming to us that wants that answer. But I do think that they should pay the legal fees to help us work our way through the issue to try and help them out. And I'm not opposed to helping them out. We just need to make sure we do it correctly and not in violation of any of our regulations.
And Jim, when you let Mark, Branch, or whoever you're going to let work on this, they have to be given the restrictions that the state has given to the town also.
Whatever the state provide a copy of that map, which I may or may not have. But there's
got to be more than just a copy of the map. There's got to be the restrictions that the state will allow for the usage of that property. Okay.
And again, come through that. It may be, you know, we'll ask if anybody's interested in doing a site visit out there to just lay eyes on the property because I do think this will be, you know, somewhat of a precedent setting move. There's not going to be a lot of these issues where we've got a little bit of town property along a road that presents a guy from getting frontage on the road, but we want to make sure that we're comfortable with what we're doing because that'll be used as precedent for somebody else, I'm sure. So that was all that I wanted to cover about the town owned rights of way. Next item of old business is filling of vacancies. And I think is everybody is aware the town has elections coming up in May. And we've got some vacancies both on the commission and the one commission well, I'll take that back. Two commission openings expire the end of June. So there'll be two regular commission vacancies on the ballot. And then as of right now, there's a third alternate position that will also be on the ballot. I have talked with Leanne. She is signed up to run again in the election this May. And I've talked to Susan who is for a couple of different reasons choosing to not run again as a regular commission member. And so that opens up a spot where we're short somebody to go there. So
the question I would ask Kevin and Anne Blanchard to consider is if you would have any interest in running for the regular spot. I know you've only been an alternate for a very brief period of time, haven't been seated on the commission, but I consider the role of alternates as being is instrumental in helping us discuss the issues as everybody else. It's just if you're not seated, you can't vote. But hopefully you will have had your seat by that point. But anyhow, if you're interested, I would encourage you, and I do not know yet what political party, if any, either of you are affiliated with, but we have Carol Barton is the person who's in charge of the Republican Town Committee. And can somebody help me out with who's in charge of the Democrats for the town of Andover? That's your Magalde Lewis.
Who is that, Anne? Catherine Magalde Lewis. Okay, yep. So was recognizing that I didn't know how to get ahold of her. Two weeks ago in the River East there was a nice article in the paper that talked about if you want to run for these that it had the contact information. I tried to get it out of the paper last Friday and that article wasn't in there. So I'm a little bit at a loss there, but I'm sure if you called over to the town clerk, they would be able to give you the contact information if you're a Democrat and would like to run. And again, I think both Kevin and Anne would make wonderful additions to the commission. And we'll go from there. And Susan has said that she would like to continue on the commission as an alternate but wasn't sure that she could make that commitment to go four more years if she were elected to that. That sounds reasonable. I really appreciate Susan's got a lot of the history experience on the zoning commission and that and to have her input. I really appreciate. So I appreciate her willingness to continue on as an alternate there. Any questions on all that that I just said, especially from Kevin and Anne's perspective? I don't have any questions at this time. Okay.
I don't either. I did just want to mention though on Andover Connecticut's website, everybody's term expires currently in June 2023. So you might want to have them update that so they're aware that there will be people coming up for the election.
Okay, I will check that. I was working on that just last week, and I thought we had it updated correctly. So I'm not sure what happened, but I'll go back and take a look and see if we can get the right information on there. We have spent some time trying to get better information on the website, the bad information off, and we'll do that. But I do know that well, actually, what I read in the River East there we go, another alternate in the making. But what we read in the River East had the right information with what we were looking for as far as openings on the Commission and for the alternates. Okay, that's it on old business then. New business, I got none. Item seven is the approval of the minutes from 12/21/2020. And I'm looking for a motion to approve the minutes. I motion to approve the minutes from 12/21/2020.
Okay, Scott and Anne, you going to second that? I'll second it. Okay, thank you, Anne. Any discussion on the minutes And I had none. I thought Mindy you did an excellent job there. I'm not the best proofreader in the world so if somebody else has some comments, I'd be happy to entertain them. But I thought they looked excellent. Hearing no discussion, we'll call for a vote. Scott? Aye. Ann? Aye. Susan? Aye. Leanne? Aye. I vote aye as well. The minutes are approved, five-zero-zero. Next item is correspondence. And Jim, we're still at none on that? Correct. Okay, great. We're coming up on the administrative report. Jim, go ahead.
Okay. Active zoning violations, 44 Wales Road. Somebody's living in a camper. Sees and desist have gone out approximately thirty five days ago. Time expired. I am now working with Mark Brantz on the next step. Also, I was asked to contact the health department, the fire marshal, and the building official. And I've started that process to see if they have any ability to act faster. But basically the next step is, is Mark's, Mark's move, and he's prepared to do that. 300 And Shotty Mill Road, and I'm coming up with the number here. So
on the violation, I'm torn here a little bit with swift justice but a recognition that we got people living in a camper in January and So I guess it doesn't have to be you don't have to hurry it along real fast. I don't I am sensitive to the fact that people in dire conditions in that, but we do want to get the violation. It'd be nice if there was a good solution to the violation other than these guys setting up in a tent.
Okay. Yeah. The road gentleman put up a utility building without a permit. He was notified by both the building official and myself. He agreed to take it down. I gave him thirty days. It it's a steel building. It was intended for a an RV, went up right on the really right on the property line. We use very amenable to taking it down.
Didn't see a lot of options. How many how many square feet was it?
Well, was for an RV. So I didn't go measure it, but it was in excess of about 800 square feet, I think. So it'd been well, it wouldn't have been 800 would have been 500 square feet roughly. So it did trigger a building permit as well as a zoning permit. Right, yeah. Jim, you said the zoning official and you agreed? Building official. Okay, very good.
Building official sent out a formal cease and desist. Okay. Moving on, I wanted to make folks aware of upcoming workshop put on by the Connecticut Bar Association. And I will send out particulars put out by the land use division of the bar association. And I've been a couple of times in years gone by, and it's really excellent. The cost is $40 and I did check with Eric and he indicated that he would cover any costs that we don't have, meaning we have a certain amount of money in our budget, anything above and beyond that, it would cover out of this budget. That gonna be online, Jim? It is. It's a webinar. And when is it gonna be?
Okay. Thought that was March 6 is the date I saw on that. Yes, March 6. It's 09:00.
And you do get a manual for reference. And really some of the best land use attorneys in the state are involved. I will send out the notice and people can review it. But I will say that I think you have to turn around registration pretty quick. Yeah, I'm sorry, March 6, 09:00. What I got in the agenda is here, it goes right from nine to four. There's, you know, there's a whole host of topics that you can see when you receive. But if, if when you get it, get back to me. Actually, they're asking for please register by February 15, it says on the on the registration notice. So if people get back to me, I will I will sign them up and and can participate.
This is Leanne. I went several years ago, and you're right. I agree. It's excellent.
Yeah. The thing about it is, no matter how much experience, how much time you'd spent on the board, you just learned something. Because pick up on things that maybe aren't done right. You'd understand some things that you didn't understand if you went when you first came on. That's just the way we learn. Anyway, moving on. What's coming up is, we should see a subdivision on property, conservation subdivision, open space subdivision, and situated between Old Farms Road and Pine Ridge Drive. It's currently before wetlands, It is not yet approved. I just wanna point out that this is, they're coming in under the open space provision in our regulations. And I would expect an application at the next meeting, but possibly not, okay? Other than that, I'm still waiting for an application for an accessory apartment at 129 Gabon Road, which was approved by Wetlands. They're a meeting back, I believe in November. Dealing with a number of people on free cuts, determining whether lots are legitimate building lots, seems to be a rush on that. A lot of activity in the spring, coming up on the spring. And that's about it. Any questions I'd be happy to entertain.
Okay, thank you Jim. Moving on to item 10 is miscellaneous. I think the next thing that I'm going to try and have us as a commission tackle will be the sign regulations and that's chapter 15 of our zoning regs. The basis for the change will be again our current regulations put special requirements out there where they treat political signs as a special category and really all signs are signs. And so I thought, yeah, I'd gotten a copy of another town's zoning regs that were fairly recently modified. And I was thinking about doing just a cut and a paste there.
But one of the things that I particularly like about our sign regulations is they are fairly concise. And with the exception of these little temporary signs that you would put up during election season or for other various reasons, I think I don't know when the last time a sign application or permit has come in, but it's certainly, I think our sign regulations are working pretty well with the exception of that one little thing. And so rather than re go to someplace, somebody else's regulations that are maybe a little more cumbersome, we'll stick with what we got and we will change, we'll put a category in there for temporary signs and talk about that. But if each of you could, when you have that leisure time, a little late reading to put you to sleep at night, go through our sign regulations, I'm sure that will help you get right back to sleep. But that's the next project I see coming up. And if we can get a start on them before all these applications that Jim's talking about come here, that would be great too.
Jed, this is Leanne. I have a question. I haven't looked at that lately, but our political signs are completely different category. I know there was more activity last fall with the pandemic and the early voting and things like that. And I guess the governor authorized signs because they went up very early last fall. And we used to have some wording that included things like people giving away kittens and advertising tag sales and things that were included under the it was thirty days. You weren't supposed to put something up for longer than thirty days. Are you looking to address something like that or are you just looking to make a provision or switch the content of the political sign language around?
So your analogy with the the kitten signs is is right on a kitten sign and a political sign. And any other little sign that tag sale sign would have you. They're all the same and we can put whatever restrictions we want on the political signs as long as it's consistent with all those other little signs. And so we need to come up with what we think the right answer is. One of the inconsistencies right now between what we have done and what our regulations say is that our current regulations specify that no signs can go up in the right of ways you know, on down on property. And we are not in compliance with that. Before last year's election, specifically said that we could, which was a violation of our zoning regs. And so I'm looking, I don't know that we'll be able to get these regulations into effect before May with the upcoming election. I don't know that there'll be a lot of signs with the upcoming election because we don't have money to make a lot of those signs anyhow. But I do I think for an election sign, sixty days is about the right amount of time to have it up. And that would specify that all these other a builder puts a sign up out front when he's done a job. Sixty days is plenty long for that. But that's the kind of thing that we, as a commission, need to talk through, come up with what we think the best approach is. And
since the Board of Selectmen has a say in what happens on town property, we probably need to go somehow get the Board of Selectmen involved in that too. I don't know exactly how to do that yet. But step one is for us to figure out what we think the right answer is. Okay.
So that's where we'll be heading next. Anybody else have anything for the miscellaneous topic? Are we going to talk about frontage?
I'm not going to talk about frontage tonight. I did think we were going to go a little longer. I I will wait until a specific example comes up that requires that discussion just to set the stage for that a little bit. So let's say that this lot on Wheeling Road that has the town property between that property and the road, so the property doesn't have any frontage along the road. Is that a problem? And if you look in our zoning regulations, we don't use the word frontage very often. We do in real life. If you look in the subdivision regulations, we do talk more about frontage. Haven't gone over there to see how much more, but you would not build a subdivision that relied on crossing a piece of town property to get to to the road. Right. And so that issue will come up. Is where Wheeling Road is going to be somewhat of a precedent setter because there's another piece of property that may come to us that's got a similar but different situation all that. But on Wheeling Road, the story is that the state took the frontage away to change the road, Then they decided not to change the road. And so we're left with a piece of property with no frontage on the road.
And that's what we're going to have to make a determination on at some point about can we cross that with the right of way being that it was given to the town for open space? What
I'm saying, Jed, is I'd like to go through the regulations to address why it isn't addressed. Why it's complicated, why it's not addressed in our regulations.
Okay, and I don't want to do that tonight because Right, okay, no, I don't got No,
for our next month's agenda we can talk about it, can't we? Yep, we can,
we'll get a little, I'll draw a picture. I'll dazzle you with my PowerPoint artwork. I can't wait. Any other miscellaneous comments?
Yeah, this is Jim Halsey. I just wanna touch base. I mentioned the conservation subdivision, what I failed to say was there's language in both the subdivision and zoning regulations that speak to that, which might not be what you'd expect. I believe section five of the zoning regulations allow the open space subdivision by either writers or special permit, Both, I mean depending on the size of the lot. Just wanted to make it clear that there's language in both sets of regulations.
Yeah, the good news is we've done it once before. The bad news is it wasn't straightforward. Again, if you look at the little lead in article to what's on the planning and zoning website, it tells us and I learned a lot from looking at that little paragraph there. We have the authority to write regulations. And once they're written, we have the obligation to follow those regulations. Not what we wish they said, but what they actually And so one of the exercises in a prior life that we used to do was if you think writing procedures and regulations is easy, just try writing a procedure for something as easy as making peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And you'll figure out that there's a lot that goes into that, and until you get into it, covering all the bases and actually having what you want done done is difficult. But that's where we as a commission get to decide. As long as we're not conflicted with our regulations, we can decide on implementation of these different things. So that's what makes us kind of good. Any other miscellaneous comments? Well, I want to thank everybody again for bearing with us all through the long process of the Lake Regs. That's a good thing being brought conclusion. And we'll see if we can do just as good a job coming up with a non controversial answer to the signs that nobody shows up when we take it to public hearing to ask us any questions. Would anybody care to make a motion to adjourn? I'll move to adjourn at 08:26. Leanne.
Thank you, Leanne. I'll second it. Thank you, Scott. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Think that was pretty easy. I wasn't worried about any hard spot there. So thank you all for attending tonight. Appreciate your help. Study those sign regs and we'll who's got a calendar for when the next meeting is? I think we're no, next month has got another holiday in it, so we're the following week. February 22, I think, will be the right date. Okay, very good. I think we move to adjourn. Everybody have a great evening.
Thank you, Jim. Thanks again for all your help. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Jim. Jim. Thanks, everyone. Good night. Good night.