Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting
May 17, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Is that you dialed in on the phone there, Leigh Ann? Yes.
Okay. I thought I recognized that phone number. And I show 7 so I'd like to call the public hearing to order. So the public hearing is to solicit comment on the application of 50 seven Hendy Road LLC to deposit, fill and construct a single family home in a flood zone in accordance with section ten point four point nine of the town's zoning regulations. The public hearing was continued until today at the request of the applicant to consider alternatives and options brought up during the public hearing. The hearing is not about being able to build in a flood prone zone that has already been asked and answered by the zoning board of appeals. The session is being video recorded as the conversations from this hearing will become part of the public record. I'll start by asking the applicants or their engineer or attorney to discuss the application in particular determination
of width as it pertains to the Andover zoning regulations. Then
I'll ask agent Halsey to provide input on the applications and in particular compliance with Andover's zoning regulations. Then
the commission members will have the opportunity to ask questions During the public hearing, all Commission members will have the opportunity to ask questions and provide input. During deliberations following the hearing, only seated members of the Commission will be able to provide input. And during that, I do expect to see Kevin in place of Susan England who let me know she would not be here tonight. Any members of the public will have the opportunity to provide comments or questions. I'd ask members of the public to state their name for the record to assist in preparing the minutes from the hearing.
Good evening, folks. My name is Alan Parkington. I live at 56 Hendy Road directly across the street from the proposed lot.
Okay. Yep, we're not ready to start taking input yet. We'll get there. The pending application section has the town's website that has several documents associated with the application. We can call up any of those that we need to. And but we won't necessarily display all the documents that make up the public record unless desired. So any questions before we begin this evening? Hearing none, I offer the applicants the opportunity to share with the Commission what they have decided on as far as the various options we discussed at the last public hearing and go from there. Chairperson, can you hear us? I can hear you. Yep. Okay. Thank you.
So we wanted to thank you guys again for continuing this proceeding and allowing us additional time to consider our application. There were a few options, as Jed mentioned, that were ways to proceed and better meet the zoning regulations for the town. Our engineer Andrew has taken into consideration the general information provided by attorney brands at the last meeting. We now understand the regulations for the building setback line to mean at least 50 feet from the center of the traveled way. As you can see on the revised plan we provided, we show the 50 foot line for a point of reference and the new setback line at 93 feet. This actually worked out really well to be in compliance on all areas of the regulations, even with the unusual shape of this lot. We were able to obtain the 200 foot lot width required touching but in front of the building line and keeping it parallel to Hendy Road as requested.
We sincerely appreciate the time and consideration from all who generously offered suggestions at the last meeting, and we're hopeful that we're showing we're doing everything we can to meet or exceed every regulation in a pursuit of building a home for my family. Our engineer Andrew Bushnell is available to answer any questions you might have. And again, we thank you guys for some more of your time tonight.
Okay, thank you. And agent Halsey, would you like to comment on the application?
I have really no further comments. I mean, the only outstanding issue, as far as I recall was the interpretation of the lot with definition. And there seems to be perhaps, it's been suggested that it means exactly 50 or a minimum 50. In my understanding, that was think Attorney Brantz, I don't know whether he's on the call or not. MR. He is. I would refer to him on his interpretation of that.
MR. Well, as I recall from the discussion, and I did go back and look at the record, attorney branch made the comment that some towns have their ordinance specify at least 50 feet. If we look at our regulation, it doesn't say at least 50 feet. It says 50 feet. And so I guess that is still the rub. And in fact, if you look at there's some further words after that that say if you don't have the 200 feet of width at the building line, what you do have is a rear lot. And if you look at the definition in our regulations of a rear lot, that's exactly what we're looking at, where you don't have the 200 foot width at the 50 foot from the center line of the road. So while some towns that might meet the definition if their wording said at least 50 feet, we can call up our definition again here, but it does in fact say 50 feet. So from my conclusion, what we have is a rear lot and not a lot that complies with 200 foot width for a lot other than a rear lot. And so I know we did provide several other options at the last meeting. And those ranged anywhere from leaving the lot lines as they currently exist to buying the town property, to requesting a variance, or to treat the lot as you would like to make it as a rear lot. Or you could possibly put in an easement. And since all the property is owned by a single owner, it should be fairly easy to, in my mind, comply with a few of those other options considering that we don't meet and we can take it to a vote. I'm only one vote.
But the way I read the regulations would be that we don't meet the 50 feet there. Attorney branch would you care to provide anything.
In addition to that. Yes Mr. Chairman, for the record Mark Brantz. I saw the email to Mr. Hallisey from Mr. Bushnell quoting me as saying at the last meeting that the commission that the language was at least 50 feet. I was pretty confident I did not say that. I went back I watched the meeting again. I know Jim Halsey did also I believe you did also Mr. Chairman that is not what I said I guess I'm feeling irritated because this is the second time in the course of this application where I've been quoted to the commission without my knowledge without being cc'd and incorrectly. I said that sometimes say at least 50 feet that I thought the commission could construe it that way if they wish to but I did not say that that was my recommendation or that that was how it should be read I felt the Commission had flexibility here I still think you have some flexibility here but I think that the concern that I have is that if you can set the lot the setback anywhere you want it and if you can measure lot width wherever you want it you're going to get some pretty strange gerrymandered lots I saw an email from you indicating that your feeling that at least based on your experience was that it means exactly 50 feet, not at least 50 feet, but 50 feet.
And I can certainly understand that. I'm just looking for something here to see if I have it on screen which I may not. No, I'm sorry I thought I had something I could share with you. Did a sketch for jim in which I just drew now here it is can I share a screen for one mr chairman yes go ahead let's see if it'll let me do that share screen okay let's see if we can get to the one I want yes can see I wasn't good at artwork but road road 50 foot setback? This a little smaller so you can see the whole thing. And 50 foot setback if it says at least 50 so there's a lot with 200 feet measured more than 50 there's another one with the lot width measured at more than 50 then there's one at 50, then another one more than 50, then another one more than at 50, then another more than 50.
If we say that the measurement of lot width is at least at the building line at least 50 feet, then you could create the light layout that I am showing you here. And that would be all those lots would meet minimum lot width and none of them would be would be rear lots. I wasn't I was I did feel the last meeting the commission had some discretion I still do still do but this is my concern. This is why I said if this is why I did not give you a definitive answer on whether or not it was at least versus at the 50 foot building line but this is my concern if it's read that way. I'll stop sharing at that point. So I think the threshold decision for the Commission is when it says measured at the building line in this case 50 feet does that mean at, does it mean at least? I think you have discretion as I've said several times but I don't want to be quoted as telling you that it says at least because it doesn't say that it's not what it says you may choose to read it that way but it doesn't say that and it is within your discretion to decide
and Jim I know you sent me an email with some concerns about that or if you have anything to add But I guess that's the decision of the commission's. How do you measure a lot with?
Okay. Thank you, Attorney Branch. And I'd just like to read the definition of a rear lot from our zoning reg, Section 4.9.2, a lot in one of the foresight zones with less than the required lot width on the accepted town road or a new road depicted on an approved subdivision. And so if you look at the definition of the building lot line, it also after it talks about the 200 foot width, anything that doesn't have that at the building lot line would be a rear lot. And so going both ways, my assessment there is that what we really have or what we are trying to create is a rear lot. As I said, if we left the lot lines exactly as they are now, we could continue on and most likely agree with your plan for building in the flood prone zone. It's only because that was a special permit and came to the Commission with the site plan that we're having to render a decision on the appropriateness of the lot design as well. So I guess, do any other commission members have any comments at that point? Okay. I know Mr. Parkington earlier was trying to make a comment. Do you have anything you'd like to add at this point, Mr. Parkington?
I'm just a little confused that the Phillips are being given so much trouble to not to I get the impression that they're being held up and refused an application to build a home where they want to build it. And I believe that a lot of the problem is relative to this little wedge that bounds the front of what is considered the frontage of their property, but is not frontage because it's town property that's between them and Hendy Road. Am I correct in assuming that? You are correct. Yes. Well, if they own
For the record, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Parking is correct that the issue is measurement of lot width. Mr. Parking is not correct that the Commission has held this up. This did not comply with flood zone, it did not comply with use zone. There's been a variance issued. There have been issues with this from the very beginning and I think the Commission has all the town agencies have moved quite expeditiously. Plans that have been submitted to us have been changed repeatedly. The initial plan submitted didn't show a lot with at all, the information provided here has been inadequate from day one and I think the Commission and its staff have gone out of their way to try to help the Phillips to find a way through this
with very little information from the outbreak. So that I have to correct. You. Thank you very I apologize.
I apologize. I probably used the wrong words and or terminology. But it just seems unfortunate to me that it's taken them as long as it has to try to accomplish what they've been trying to accomplish when it appears to me that they've they've done everything that they need to to try to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish.
Mr. Parkington, my only feedback on that is we probably could have concluded this issue a month ago if the Phillips had decided to leave the lot lines as they currently exist. Okay.
By choosing to redraw the lot lines that we're getting ourselves into a bit of a dilemma.
Okay. Also my understanding was during the last meeting, I was under the impression that what was going to be addressed last month was the issue of the flood zone and what the regulations governed on what could or could not be done in a flood plain. And it seemed to me that none of that was addressed at all last month.
I feel that we addressed all of those issues to my satisfaction last month. The Phillips has had a very good documentation of what the requirements were out of our zoning regs and their ability to comply with those requirements. So I was satisfied without a lot of time taken on that issue that they did meet the requirements there. It's only because they are trying to create a lot different from what currently exists in that different lot does not comply, in my mind, with our zoning regulations that we got ourselves into the dilemma.
Okay. So we're just the biggest problem then for the Phillips then is just lot lines. The floodplain is not an issue. That's already been agreed on that they can develop there as long as the lot lines are acceptable to town regulation?
It has not been agreed upon. They made their case. Once we complete the public hearing, then the commission would deliberate on the application that was presented to us. And since we had no questions on that, my suspicion is that the Commission would vote favorably on it. I cannot speak for the other Commission members on how they would vote in that case. I can only say that we did not, at the request of the applicant, close the public hearing and take a vote. Okay. I would just like I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead.
I would just like to make a statement in regard to the application regarding their special permit to construct a single family home in the flood zone. If the way I feel if the Phillips want to build and if they're willing to assume the responsibility for and I use the word very loosely. They assumed the responsibility for possible flood damage. I support their plans and the request. I believe in the that the bridge that exists now for the past thirty seven years has pretty much controlled any kind of a possible flood problem. And my understanding is what they propose to build, which I understand does not involve a basement, they're just planning on building on a slab. I don't foresee any flood problem. The volume of water that the existing bridge carries doesn't act as a dam as the old one did to potentially flood this whole area, which is something that I used to deal with thirty seven years ago. I used to have water in my basement. Ever since that bridge was put in, I no longer have a problem. And I feel the Phillips are going to have no problem as well. And one more statement that I would like to make that the Phillips not only acquired that piece of property that they're planning to build on, they also acquired the property directly across the road from me. And what I have seen them do with that particular home in the last couple of years, I am very pleased. I am very impressed with. And if I can expect the same thing to happen with anything they propose next door to that existing house, they have all of my support because I like what I see. They do nice work.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Parkington, for providing that statement on the record. And I don't disagree with anything that you have said there. And so is there anybody else from the public that would like to provide a comment? And I don't know that I see anybody else that might be interested in making the statement at that point. Hearing none, I would go back to the applicants to if there's anything else that you want to provide to the Commission on the record before we move to close the public hearing? Hearing none, I would accept a motion from the Commission Member to
close the public hearing.
I can hear you here. Unmuted. Tom was trying to get everybody's attention. I think he wanted to say something quickly. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I didn't see. Go ahead, Tom. He's coming over to my seat.
I just think we're having some technical difficulties on one of the computers here. I was just asking for one second, Mr. Chairperson, if we can mute for a second and just speak and come right back on. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, thanks.
Okay, we have no further comments. Thank you for waiting for us. Okay.
And before I get the motion to close the public hearing, I would like to say that in particular to the Phillips that I agree with Mr. Parkinson's comment on all the good work that's been done on that property over there. And I view the dilemma that I'm in is not one where it can be based at all in what I'd like to do. I and each of the commission members have a sworn obligation to comply with our zoning regulations. And so it's not what I'd like to do. It's what, in this case, I feel that I have to do. And so just like to make that clear. I'll go back to looking for a motion to close the public hearing. I'll move to close the public hearing. Thank you, Commissioner Prasad. I second it.
Thank you, Vice Chairman Cremay. Any discussion? Okay, a call for a roll call vote. Vice Chairman Cremay? Aye. Commissioner Prasad? Aye. Commissioner Arneson? Aye. Commissioner Hutchinson. Aye.
And I vote aye as well. Motion carries five zero zero. The public hearing is closed at 07:28. And at this point, I will open the regular planning and zoning meeting. Roll call seating of alternates. I see Vice Chairman Cremay, Commissioner Hutchinson, Commissioner Persson, myself and I will seek alternate Commissioner Arneson for Commissioner Englund. Next is the additions or changes to the agenda. And I would like to move up the application under old business to 57 Hendy Road to be the first order of the old business. And that is the only change I would like to make. Anybody else have any other changes they would like to make to the agenda? Hearing none, I would like anybody who is opposed to the change I just made to the agenda to let me know. Otherwise, I will consider that you have voted in favor for it. Are there any opposed? Any abstain? And the agenda is changed by a vote of five-zero-zero. Any additional public comment before we proceed on to old business? Hearing none I'll move on to old business. And the first item we'll take is the application of 57 Hendy Road. And again, at this point, only those seated commissioners can participate in the deliberation that we have on the application. Do any of the commissioners have any comments to make on the application presented? On Hearing none. I'm looking for a motion comments to approve the application
I'll move to approve the application for 57 Hendy Road.
Thank you, Vice Chairman for me looking for a second And again, the reason for making the motion to approve the application, even if you have concerns about that, is because we always want a motion in a positive sense in the event that it were to be disapproved, then we would clearly have the action taken on the motion. If we made a motion to the negative and the motion didn't pass, then we're not exactly sure where we are. So that's why I'm looking for the positive motion before we have any discussion to approve the application 57 Hendy Road. And I'm looking for a second at that point. And I'll second.
Thank you, Commissioner Arneson. Any discussion on the application? Okay. Hearing none, I'll call for a roll call vote. Vice Chairman Cremay. I vote aye. Commissioner Persson. No. Commissioner Hutchinson. Aye. Commissioner Arneson? Vote no.
And I vote no as well. The motion fails, three opposed. The opposition is myself, Commissioner Persson, and Commissioner Arneson. My recommendation to the Phelps again, there were a lot of ways to proceed since you own all the property. My recommendation is that you leave the lot lines as they are get approval to build the house. Because we went to a vote as opposed to withdrawing the motion, well, I guess it would take it's going to take a new special permit no matter how you look at it because the existing special permit was for something that was just approved. So unfortunately, this is what's going to make the process take a little bit longer and it's proceeding as expeditiously as possible by the Commission. So with that, that completes the first item of business. Move on to the next item of business is the application of Joseph Mott, 142 Wales Road. And at this point I would ask Mr. Mott if you want to I see you added a new site plan to our listing on the website. If you'd like to walk us through that, that would be great.
Yeah. So basically the addition was we had talked about the driveway didn't include the driveway to the rear garage, which was added and the SNE plan was included on the plot plan, just showing the silt fence line and storage of materials, which was asked for.
I am going to try and share my screen and pull up the drawing that Mr. Mahd is referring to. Okay, go ahead Mr. Mike.
As you can see the self fence and the storage of materials have been added to the plan as well as the driveway to the rear garage. The only other comment that we had last week was about the square footage, which I believe we were incorrect in stating that it did not meet the square footage. The inside dimensions of the apartment do fall under 800 square feet. Okay.
Anything else you want to tell us about your application tonight? At this time. No, not at this time. Okay.
Agent Halsey, do you have any comments on the application?
Sure. Joe had the ENS plan as you indicated in the driveway. As far as the dimensions of the apartment, I had utilized the exterior dimensions. Od. Regulations are silent on the on the matter. So, recalculating using the interior, it does come in just under 800 square feet. Again, there's no there's no the regulations are not are not specific one way or the other. Am I still on? Yes,
I'm done. You caught me by surprise. And so I was just checking my regulations. I thought our regulation said 800 square feet gross floor area, which would be measured external. But as you just indicated, Agent Halsey, it says between two fifty and eight hundred square feet. And less than 33% of the gross floor area, the single family dwelling. So did you confirm on that, HN
calculation comes into under 800 square feet? I believe it comes under seven ninety six or seven ninety four, seven ninety six, yes, I did. Okay. Using the inside dimensions.
Very good. I thought it was a small area outside dimensions but but as you say the the regulation doesn't specify one way or the other. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman. Mr. Branch. Yeah for the record Mark Branch I'm just I'm a little confused here I have the regulation in front of me I see I believe doesn't it say gross floor area?
Well I was just looking at that and as I
Oh. See 8B, the gross floor area of the accessory unit shall be between two fifty and eight hundred square feet.
You are correct, Attorney Branson. And that's why I don't like to make decisions on the fly during these meetings because even when I did my homework, I was questioning myself there. It does say gross floor area. And you Which is an external measurement.
And the gross floor area is defined in section 24 as being the exterior walls.
That is correct. You're right. My mistake. I apologize. So
it does now it also mentioned under that definition of gross floor area that you didn't have to count the stairwell. And that's why I was going to ask Mr. Mott for how he arrived at his calculation there. But if you do the 800 or you do the I'm trying to read there the dimensions on it. 26 by 38, I think that came out to well in excess of 900 square feet. And so I do agree with Attorney Branch that we should be measuring that externally to the addition that you want to put on and that needs to be jimmy:
Below the 800 square feet.
Now I have a question and a solution for that. The question is part of the gross area of the garage, the addition that I'd be putting on is going to be a closet for the existing house. That would be subtracted from the gross apartment, I'm assuming. I did not read it that way. Because that will not be accessible from the apartment.
But it is, well, I understand. But gross square footage is measured externally on the addition that you're trying to put on there. So by virtue of the fact that you're building the closet in there, I was not able to convince myself that that met the intent of the gross square footage calculation.
Well, one question Mr. Chairman, that closet, did I hear the applicant say that it would not be accessible from the accessory apartment. That's correct. Correct. That's That's
It does not include it doesn't exclude correct. Closets. However, I'm measure the exterior faces of the walls or from the center line of party or common walls separating two buildings dwellings or distinct and separate not well it's not residential areas so if that closet has a common wall with the new apartment that is accessible only from the existing house I think it measured the center line of that common wall and I think you could deduct the closet from the accessory apartment and if that gives you compliance and you 're, only have two screens, I can't view the reg and the diagram. But I think that if the closet is part of the main house, is it mean, even though it's part of the addition, if it's only accessible to the main house, I don't think you should count it for the accessory apartment and maybe that gets them where it needs to be.
Yeah it doesn't bring them below it doesn't bring it into compliance no. Still doesn't?
Anyway I would still be about 60 feet outside I believe.
I thought one of the options you were looking at last month when we got together Mr. Mott was taking two feet off the length of the garage.
Yes, it was. However, when I was just by measuring the inside dimension got me within the 800, therefore I didn't pursue it further. But now knowing that it's the outside dimensions of the exterior walls, I will have to bump the front wall of the 2nd Floor in to the maximum
size I'm allowed. This Jim House, just for clarity, Jed, you had said shorten the garage. He's not in fact shortening the garage, he's shortening the 2nd Floor of the garage. So the apartment area. I just want to make sure that that's clear. The footprint of the garage would remain the same. The footprint could,
it might be more difficult to make it not all one continuous wall. Certainly, I think my guess is that the size of the garage was chosen to maximize the space in the apartment, not because you needed to squeeze two cars into something that's 38 feet long. I'm just guessing on that, but the question for the applicant is to show a apartment that is less than 800 gross square feet.
So currently it would measure eight fifty six. I was correct in assuming that the stairs are not included or they are included? The stairway
portion is not included. Okay, so yeah, we're at 856. Would minus there's a void space behind the toilet that it's six square feet. I would like to bump the front wall of only the apartment, only the 2nd Floor into the addition two feet to accomplish the 800 square foot maximum. The garage will remain the same size.
Okay. What I'd like to do is find out what other questions the commission has and we can circle back to the square footage of the apartment. If we need to, we can vote on the application with the condition that you have to show and get agreement with agent Halsey that there's less than 800 square feet in that. Is that agreeable to you Mr. Mai?
I just want to know that I did have this conversation with Joe regarding bumping back the 2nd Floor and he's thought out the framing detail as to how that would be accomplished. So it's not something that is just redesigning on the fly. There was some fourth thought that went into it. He's conscious of the fact, how it would be framed. That's what I'm saying. So that's all. Okay.
So I'm not sure I captured whatever the point was you were trying to make on that, Agent Allison.
Well, I just wanted you to know it wasn't a decision they made on the fly. It's something that he had given some forethought to and understands how the construction is going to occur. Hi. Something that can happen. I initially thought that it would be, you know, he talked about a beam and the beam appeared to me to be in the middle of a stairway. And in fact, the beam of which he speaks is really an integral part of the floor framing and it's not an issue.
So are you saying we would be better served to have the applicant come back in a month with a more clear depiction of the 800 square foot? No, I'm comfortable with
that amount of seating. I just wanted to be clear that it was thought out. The alternative plan was not conceived this evening. Was thought out and the framing detail was discussed. Okay, I got you. I understand.
Are there any other commission members have any comments about the application? Alternate Commissioner Blanchard, since we are done with the deliberations on the public hearing, is an alternate, at this point you're able to ask questions on the application as well if you had any. Hearing no other questions, I would like to just ask the applicant, and I know Agent Halsey last month mentioned that the addition of the accessory apartment shall not alter the basic character of the dwelling as a single family residence. And I was just interested in if Mr. Mike you had any comments on how to keep character of the house that you currently have. My only concern with that is I have seen where we have added on to a couple of houses in one of the cases The house went from what I thought was a very nice small home to what looked like a big warehouse. Jimmy: And I was hoping that that would not be the case,
although the size of this garage that you're looking to put right next to your house there is probably as big as the house itself. And so it does have, if it's not thought of a little bit, it does have the potential to
look out of place in the neighborhood, if you will. Absolutely. When I was thinking about building a garage, I kind of had two options. One was to add on to the existing house and the other was to put up a detached garage in the rear, basically where the only other feasible spot would be. And originally I had wanted to do a steel building and I really felt like that would detract from the rest of the neighborhood. So to keep this looking like a single family style house, it's going to match all the windows are going to match the house, which is drawn on the plan to show that the same size as what is a traditional single family home. The overhang is going to be the exact same as the house. The siding is going to be the same as the house. The garage doors are going to match the house. Everything down to the trim from the outside is going to be matching the house as well as the inside. The garage is going to be the same design from the inside as the existing garage and the apartment is going to be the same design as the rest of the house. So inside and out, it's the same as the existing house. It is large. It's definitely not as large as the existing house is now. The existing house is eight feet longer and at least a foot wider, but it is going to add a substantial amount of space onto the house.
Okay, thank you. And Agent Halsey, I just have one last question for you. The accessory apartment in the one we're talking now is probably the first of many that we're gonna see. I know when we crafted the regulations we had two concepts in mind. One was the detached accessory apartment and we talked about it's a house not a shed and it should be treated as such. And then I think we had in mind setting off a portion of the existing house is an accessory apartment within the existing structure. We didn't really, at least I didn't foresee that we were going to craft something right adjacent to it to make it part of the primary dwelling. Although there's no reason that we shouldn't think that. I just don't think that we did when we came up with that. So my question is, is the nature of the drawings that the applicant provided for this something that would be consistent with what would be presented to the building official for building a house? Yes. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we were building a house and not a shed when we put it right next door there. He provided pretty details. He did.
Thought it was quite thorough and I saw all the things I was looking for in there. And that will be a standard that we shoot for in follow on applications. Okay, so anyhow, I think that's all the questions that I had. Is there somebody that would like to make a motion a motion that, concerning
the application at 141 Wales Road? I just have one question for you Jed. Yep, go ahead.
Did we go over the percentage of the house versus the accessory apartment square footage? And what's the regulation? Is it 33?
We did not, as part of the hearing here, the requirement is it can be no more than 33% of the gross square footage of the primary. Notes up another question. So what I did is I went to the record card for the house. It had something of maybe 1,500 square feet of net floor area. And then I read the regulation again and it said gross floor area and that said 2,000 something. And so the calculation based on 2,000 was well within that amount. Okay, that's good. What I did not do is by the addition that we're putting on, we have changed both the net square footage of the primary dwelling and the gross square footage of the primary dwelling. Dwelling. I didn't add those two together to see if 800 was more than one third of that. But since the square footage went up,
I guess it can't. It just doesn't work that way. So I did check that the 33% limit was not exceeded in this case.
Right, another question I have Jed is, was there anything when we did the regulation, was it relative to the number of occupants versus the amount of parking spaces?
Our regulation says that we need to have two parking spots for primary residence and one for the accessory apartment, which he has. And how about an as built or the foundation?
I looked at his drawings and it had a fair amount of detail on the foundation. I did not see anything in the as built and because it's an attached accessory apartment, we didn't get into the special permitting which would have required the as built drawing. So I think we're okay with respect to that. Because it wasn't a special permit, based my review, you're pretty much on the requirements specified in section 4.11, our regulations. Because it's attached?
Yes. And that was the purpose of my question. Do these drawings, are they similar to what we would expect for somebody coming in and building And a I did think that Mr. Mott, when I was looking down through the foundation details, the whole bit, there was a significant amount of detail in there and I thought he had it covered. Any other questions, Scott? No. Okay,
so we're back to looking for a motion to approve the application at 141 Wales Road.
I would like to make a motion to approve the application for an accessory apartment on 142 Wales Road. As long as everything goes through Jim as far as the square footage requirement.
Mr. Chairman. Yes, attorney branch. May I just share my screen for a moment. Yes.
Okay see if that fills the bill for you. Left out a T. Mr. Mahat, is your address 142 or 141? 142. Okay,
because on the That's what was on the agenda. That's what I used. Yep, on the application oh,
was agent Halsey's comments there. Think he was okay. Remember that. Okay. And I think you said which wall but I didn't catch which one it was. I just put one wall. Maybe it doesn't matter which wall. And by the way, remember the stairwell only be one wall. And the stairwell does not count for growth gross floor area. Correct. Okay. Sounds good. Okay, did we have a second? Does this mover want to use this?
Can, can you put identify that as something and they can just identify it as your, put a number or something on there Mark, and I can just instead of reading the whole thing
how do you mean I mean I can I was gonna put
a put a title on it put a title on it hang on Look okay? Yeah. Thank you. Attorney branch.
I will do all the motions but I thought this was complicated enough you want but you might want some help. No, I appreciate that. Okay. I'll second the motion.
Thank you, Vice Chairman Cremay. Any other discussion on the application? Hearing none, a call for a vote. Vice Chairman Cremay? Aye. Commissioner Persaud? Aye. Commissioner Hutchinson?
Hi I just have a quick question if that's okay at this point. Go ahead. It's just about the motion it's not about the application itself. Oh go ahead Leanne. Ask your question.
Are you there? Yes. Okay. Do we we don't need to read the motion as presented by attorney Branson to the record? Scott moved to approve it it was seconded but is that sufficient since since now we have a draft motion?
Then I'm certainly happy to read it if you have any any doubts.
Oh, no, no, not, not since you're here I was just wondering. It's normally something we would do but you're not normally here so if we don't need.
Yes, I think because the motion is up on the screen that suffices and if we can get Attorney Grants to email that motion to Commissioner Hallisey and our board clerk so that we can get it properly into our minutes also to Jed anybody else you want to add?
I'll give it to Mindy. All right. Need some board clerk I'm sorry. All right. So it is in your box now. Okay.
Okay, thank you. I think we left it. So moving on to our vote, Vice Chairman Crevay. Aye. Commissioner Persson. Aye. Commissioner Hutchinson. Aye. Commissioner Arneson. Aye.
And I vote aye as well. Motion passes five, zero, zero. So Mr. Mott, once you get your agreement with Commissioner Halsey on the 800 square feet and you see the approval of the motion in the online or in the River East, you have to wait fifteen days for somebody to come in and appeal the motion before you can actually start building. Okay. And that completes that one. Thank you.
Next on the agenda is the application of George Korea and Eric Melissa Lodiceka, Wolf Farms Road Pine Ridge Drive. I apologize for the mispronunciations on your names there. I know
that we still do not have the inland wetlands approval for your application. One of the things that, well I guess, you know, we'll do any commission members have any questions of the applicants at this point? And I've got just a couple of comments here. Did not see in, you submitted a very thorough application all under application, it just goes on and on and on with all kinds of good stuff. Commissioner Halsey, I did not see our special permit checklist with all of the stuff that was online today. I honestly thought that was on
there. So there's two. The application looks like it's got a listing of things to be submitted. I think that's outdated. I think if you look in Section 23, it tells you to submit the zoning checklist which is the 67
item review or something. I believe Eric and I had gone over the 57. It's 57 items. 57, Heinz. So we had gone over, yes, we had gone over it. Okay. I have not had a chance to review it in its entirety as yet. Okay. I was assuming that I was hoping that the commission could set a public hearing on it.
Well, we very well may. I just want to make sure that when we get together at the next meeting that we have the checklist that's reviewed by you and you're consistent, you agree with it and we have it a week ahead of time so that we can do our due diligence review of the checklist. And then spend a lot of The time going through
only thing that was not provided was it's actually a deed restriction for the conservation subdivision. When Eric and I had initially gone over the checklist, I had indicated that was not applicable. I didn't think of that particular easement. Then we had a subsequent conversation and I brought it to his attention. He did submit, they discussed using one that's already been in use by the town and modifying it just for the sake of ease. And he did provide that without, and he hasn't had a chance to modify it as yet. No less is aware of the fact that one is required.
Okay. And as I recall back to an earlier application that you and I worked on where we didn't have that done ahead of time, that got to be problematic at some point. So it is important that we have that complete before we approve the application. The other comment I saw is that on rear lots, you need to have the fire marshal review and approve your driveway turnaround so they can bring in an emergency vehicle. And I did not see on your drawings a comment that it didn't look to me like there was a turnaround at the end of your driveways to support bringing a fire truck in or something and having it be able to turn around to get back out. So agent Halsey can work with you to get the fire marshal to review what your proposal is, but I think it's important that you have that. And then agent Halsey mentioned the possibility, the potential of a sidewalk. And I think that's a good idea. Any of the other commission members got any thoughts on that?
I think it sounds like a good idea. Yeah, I agree.
So does that mean that you're going to make a motion that we have a sidewalk? A motion that we have a sidewalk. What day?
Well, we'll have a discussion after we get the motion on the floor.
All right. And I motion to have a site law.
Is there a second to that motion? I'll second. Okay, thank you. And that was Commissioner Persson made the motion. Commissioner Arneson seconded the motion. Discussion at this point, we normally do the site visits on a Saturday morning. Doesn't mean it has to be that way. But that's worked out pretty well for us. I have a little bit of a conflict this Saturday morning where if we were to do it, I would like to do it earlier rather than later. Or I don't know how everybody feels about doing it on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend or we could even push it off until Saturday, June 5. Our next meeting isn't until the '20 So
we've got five weeks of time between now and then. We've got plenty of time. But I would prefer to do it either the twenty ninth through June 5. Anybody else have one of those days that's not convenient for you?
Can't do May 29. I could do June 5. Okay. Is are the applicants okay with June 5 June 5 would work for me
so if you were to say it for me yes June 5, well, and I remember we did actually do a site visit via Zoom on the last one. Attorney Brandt, I would like you to stay on for the rest of the meeting tonight. We've got a couple issues coming up and we'll deal with that. Let I can't remember which one it is, but I know there's something else out there that's coming. So I would propose that we amend the motion to have the sidewalk on June 5 at 09:00. That sounds good.
Okay, so Commissioner Persson has amended the motion to make it June 5 nine a. M. A second to that? Commissioner Artisan, are you ready to second that one again? Yeah, I'll second that. Okay, so there's the motion on the floor that we do a sidewalk June 5 at 09:00. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Commissioner Cremay? Aye.
Commissioner Persson? Aye. Commissioner Hutchinson? Aye. Commissioner Arneson? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion to conduct the sidewalk carries five zero zero. So where about will we meet?
We will meet on Pine Ridge. And you go down to the cul de sac at the end and there's plenty of parking alongside the road. That's where we met for the Inland Wetlands sidewalk. That worked out well. This time for the applicants, with the Inland Wetlands walkthrough sidewalk, we focus primarily on the driveway. I would like to go up and walk the entire property so that we can take a look at you're planning to build each of the houses, show us where you're looking for the open space easements to be. And the other comment I had on your site plan, I did not see an extent of clearing for the trees indicated on that. And we've had a couple of issues where what's been on the drawing and what's been cleared have been different. And so I'd like to at least have a starting point on how much of the property you'd like to clear tree wise so we can get that on the drawing and all agree on that. Are that one still flagged up there, Jed?
I don't know. I'd have to ask the applicants. I assume they are. They were the last time I was there. Yes, they're flagged.
And will the will the house be flagged or the location of the proposed building? It will not. But we have the general area.
Is it possible between now and June 5 that you could put a couple of stakes in the ground where where the houses would be going? Yes. Okay. And the septic system? Okay.
Clearing lines, how about the, is there something in there about trees over 10 inches? There is on the checklist. Is the idea.
What is that What is it with the 10 inches trees?
The intention is to not be cutting trees greater than 10 inches in diameter. Now, if there was one that, if there's I don't recall the trees being that big up on your lot there. We don't want to lose all the big trees. You obviously can't have them where your house is going to go and that's the purpose of the flagging of septic in the house and that sort of thing is so we can just review that.
Well, I can say that our intention is to cut the least amount of trees that are required in order for us to get the house and to get the septic system in the driveway in place. Want to maintain as much of the natural wooded area as possible. Yep, understand. Okay, no worries. Yep.
There have been occasions where we've heard that before and that's not what happened.
Yeah, I feel like when I built my house, they took down a lot more trees than we'd expected. Yep. Beyond where the septic was, beyond where the house was. These guys start cutting trees, they just cut them.
I have seen that on essentially every application to build a house since I've been on the commission. And so that's why yeah, nice to have that discussion ahead of time. Be nice if we could get it right. Yep, we'll keep working at it. Yeah, I mean, as far as those,
you know, we're just going to clear as much so that we don't have roots coming in and destroying the septic system in the future. And also, you any large trees that are gonna be near the potential where the houses are gonna be, we'll probably wanna cut those down so that we don't have a case of a windstorm in the future, we don't have trees falling on the house.
Understand. Yep. And that makes sense. We would all agree that that is a reasonable approach. Do the applicants have any other questions for the commission at this point? I do not.
Okay. We will see you at 09:00 on June 5. Moving on to the next item, the application
Just make sure to post that, Jim, as a meeting of the commission in the clerk's office.
Yes, absolutely. But no public hearing has been set as of yet.
Oh, good point. I do want to schedule the public hearing. Thank you. So on that, and again, we've got, we currently have ninety days extension of timeframes because of the COVID, but I don't want to use that in the next, our next meeting because we're five weeks out here at this point comes sixty three days after you submitted your application. And so would entertain a motion that we schedule the public hearing for the next meeting which is June 21. And if per chance, my thinking is that the inland wetlands decision hopefully will be made tomorrow night, will come through that. And so if we weren't able to hold a public hearing, we'd cross that when we get there.
But at this point, I would think it prudent to assume that we will be able to go to public hearing and if something changes, we'll just not do a public hearing. That'd be easy enough. So I would like to have a motion that we hold public hearing at the next zoning meeting on June 21. So moved.
Thank you, Leigh Ann. Is there a second? I'll second that. Thank you, Scott. Any discussion on holding the public hearing? Hearing none, call for a vote. Vice Chairman Cremay? You're muted. I can see your lips. I. Thank you. Commissioner Persson? I. Commissioner Arneson. Sorry, guilty by the same offense. Aye. Commissioner
Hutchinson. Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five-zero-zero. Okay. That completes the business that I wanted to get done on that one tonight. And thank you for helping me get that scheduled. The next item is the application of Chris Bell for the gravel operation located at 517 Route 6. And at this point, Mr. Bell, do you have your drawing that you can share screen or do you need me to call up the drawing so that you can walk us through that? Let me see. Can everybody hear me? Yes.
Okay. Let me see if I can get it up on my screen. Can everybody see that? Yes. Okay. Very good. I'm surprised I was able to do that so easy. Okay, my name is Chris Bell. I'm a professional engineer from Higginham representing the applicant William Genovese. What you see here is a colored up site plan, the former site plan S2, which shows the stations, 100 foot stations coming from basically the street line, the station zero all the way to the back of the property. I went out there about two weeks ago this Friday and took some site pictures and also took some measurements to the different status of sand and gravel operations that are there right now. The gravel pit operation was basically started between Station 250 and 350, and has proceeded and proceeded going west until it got to the other side of the property as it goes towards the parts building. And during this operation, they have made a pile here you see in red, that is a sifted sand location, and that is moving right now. They actually have taken a third of that, that's about a thousand cubic yards, they've taken about 300 cubic yards out of that in the last week.
These numbers here that you see in the white area, this is the area that has been disturbed in the property. This was brought down to an Elevation 294 to construct the detention basin, and then the access road comes back here and circles around here. These elevations are approximate to the nearest half a foot or so, Elevation 295, 295, 295. The goal is to get the elevation two ninety four and a half, the, or two ninety four, and then bring in four to six inches of topsoil on top of that to get above the floodplain. The floodplain in this area is about just under two ninety four. The Hop River is back in this area along the north western side of the property. The area I show here in brown are the areas of topsoil, as was designated on the plan to be stored in this area. There's about 1,300 cubic yards here. There's a small portion of topsoil here, about two twenty yards, and a small portion of ungraded sand gravel. Now these two piles here were going to be spread across this area for final grading. Once this area in yellow is taken down to two ninety five, it's going to be spread here to degrade the property and do any other grading back here from our meeting that we're going to have with Hank Gruner and the same members that were out a couple weeks ago with Jim Halsey. Right now we are, we've realized that the contractor has put tree stumps in this back area and stored them back there, which was not part of the deal. It was not supposed to put them there. We're in the process of taking those out right now.
We've got about 25 to 30% of them out as of today. We have an agreement with a person to be taking them out and taking them off-site within the next two weeks. Right now, we couldn't get that 20 five-thirty percent off-site, so we've taken them and moved them out to the front area so they can be transported out much quicker. We just want to get them out of this area, and as I said, well, the goal is to get them out in the next two weeks. There's about, in total about four tractor trailer loads of stumps that are back there, and we'll immediately restore that site as soon as the stumps are out. The goal after that is to finish the, during the next two weeks, is to remove this area of grade so we can final grade the back area and have the meeting with, again, with Jim Halsey and Hank Rooner to go over exactly how they want to restore this site as far as plantings, moguls, and the like for the back area. Once that is completed and graded and restored, we will then continue to go to the next site, which is up here, and remove this original grade. As part of this application, sent in, I wanted to wait till today to submit a schedule, which I gave to Jim Halsey this afternoon, which is as close as I can get to what the schedule should be if the Commission does approve the extension for the next six months. If you'd like, I could put that schedule on
the board right now, unless I have some other questions about the site here.
I'd like to continue the discussion on the overall plan at this point before we bring that letter up.
All right, again, well, goal here is to hold this topsoil area and use that for restoration for the phases as we head towards the front, as was required by the approval to start from the back and head towards the front. So this topsoil will get smaller and smaller as we get closer to the front, and then this will all get restored along with the end phase down here that's around the detention pond. And once all the grading is complete and topsoil is spread with seed and mulch, we will restore the detention basin to a more permanent status. It was recommended that we keep the detention basin there for the future use of the property since it's all going to grade towards that area. We'll grade this out with a more permanent topsoil and plantings. Again, we'll discuss what we'll do at the time, but basically, you know, just topsoil and seed it and add in any extra plantings around there as the Commission requires. That would be towards the end of the six months. I think the scheduling, as I'll go over, is quite conservative. We're currently removing, we can remove about 800 cubic yards per week because we're getting to the summer months of construction. It's starting to move quite well. We're getting, you know, around eight to 10 truckloads get removed a day. We have a current problem that we had thought we had fixed last Thursday. The entrance gate located just beyond the apron keeps getting knocked down. Last Thursday we put it back up and secured it, and it got knocked down again today. We will be addressing that problem by not leaving it up to the truckers to open and close the gate. We will have one of the attendees
as part of the garage, who runs the, the manager that runs the garage during the day will open the gate in the morning and then close it before he leaves in the afternoon. That's basically one of the security problems that we're going to be addressing immediately. As far as the site plan goes, think the areas are distinctive of where we are at this point, and what we have to do. In this area there's probably about approximately 10,000 cubic yards left. There are a couple of spotty areas of storage materials on-site, so we're approximately, I can't say, I don't think they're going to get as much material out of this as originally planned. We might be closer to being halfway done with some of the removal and relocation of materials, and we'll be probably close to two thirds removal as we finish up all these phases, and we get to the last phase. We haven't been able to complete a whole phase, a whole rectangle, because of the way of the shape of the site and the way the traffic has to go in order to get a turnaround for the trucks as they back in to get loaded. We kept a circular motion here, we would find it a little bit difficult to complete an entire phase rectangle
and restore it. It was always the goal to complete the last phase, the one and a half phase, like from Station 4 all the way to 565, which is like a phase and a half. We want to complete that first with restoration before we move any further on the site. And basically, that's my presentation on the site. I would be glad to entertain any questions.
Okay, thank you. Any commission members have any questions at this point?
What? Yeah, I just do. How far are you done now? How far completed are you done?
I would say that the actual removal is about one third. We've tried to keep the disturbance of the phases down to less than two as required by the approval. And so there's parts of some phase being graded and removed and some parts of the phases are not. So, I mean, realistically, we're about a third the way through. And we've, most of the work has been, you know, getting the site prepped as far as a lot of the getting rid of the debris that was on the site, getting the topsoil all together into one spot, and then getting the grading operation going. And we really got killed on last year on the COVID virus that really put everything to a halt. We had everything ready to go at the end of twenty nineteen in December, and then all the contracts that we had going for the spring all got canceled and nothing really happened until the fall of last year. We had some removal but there really wasn't very much last year at all. Are you done taking out material at the elevation at 295?
Mostly yes. There'll be a final grading to make sure we are draining properly towards the front right now. It's pretty much dead flat. And we did that to just have a drainage go along the side of the access road and go through what's a stone revetment that we have here. So we wouldn't put too much strain on the silt fences. So it pretty much goes evenly across, there are a couple spaces that the drainage does get concentrated and we're trying to maintain that so it doesn't go through the silt fence. But most of it does get back towards the basin and to the wetlands. Because of the type A soil,
most of the water just goes straight down. It only seems to get drainage capability when the ground gets wet and then it freezes during January, February, and then which increases the runoff, but as soon as it thaws it goes right back into the ground again. We haven't been having any drainage problems out there.
Chris, I see the area that's marked 302, so it's seven feet over. That's correct. In that area over, what, I'm gonna carry it out. The other two areas I see are stockpiles, there's one that's great, there's one that's graded sand that you gotta take out of there. So I see that it to me it looks like there's a whole lot more than a third done. You get stockpiles across most of it and you know the stump pile and you said got seven feet throughout you know maybe an eighth or a tenth of the site. Then the rest of it is back to the original grade, so it seems like there's a lot more. And another question I have is did the operators put the stumps in the wetlands?
No, they're just before the wetlands. If you're out there, you can see the flags are on the other side of the silt fence, all the flags are on the other side, so they're not in the wetlands, they are in the buffer though. And that's what I told them when I was out there to get these out of here immediately. Was not supposed to be any work.
I'm sorry? As I recall, there was not supposed to be any work in the buffer. No, there was not, sir. No, there was not. I mean, were surprised when we got out there. Mean, I am an out And I also recall,
I also recall, Chris, not to cut you off, but I recall that the retention basin was supposed to be moved as you phased through this work. Well, we had talked about,
you know, keeping it there and moving it. I never, nobody talked, the Commission never talked about that. Just when it was approved in 06/03/2019.
I distinctly recalled this whole thing, the retention basin was supposed to be moved.
Did you want me to respond to that? Yeah, you can. Yeah, oh yeah, it was to be moved and we also talked about when it was being built, John Falente, which is known over here, he said, you know, if you can keep it at that location, if you can provide that the drainage goes towards there and keep it there as a permanent location rather than keep moving it, and you know, we did do that. You know, moving it was not a very good option at this time, the way we're operating this, and keeping it there, it just seems to be a better idea for now and in the future, because the water does get there as it goes down the access road, and you know, we'd probably like to keep it there, I think it was a good suggestion to keep it there. I don't see the advantage of moving it, and it would be a disadvantage as far as the truck routes as they circle through here, and trying to avoid it would be rather difficult. Right. Then we'd have to get reroute the outlet, and rerouting the outlet we'd have to probably go back to wetlands to reroute it up into this area as we started getting up there. We wouldn't be able to get it all the way back to this location for the level spreader. Right. Thought it was idea to keep it where it was. Am I correct in the
assumptions, am I reading that incorrectly, the whole plan, with the amount of material that you still have to remove, I mean to me it looks like there's seven feet in one area, the rest of it's stockpiles are stumps. To me it would be two thirds done as soon as you remove all that stuff and knock down all the topsoil.
As we get all this done and remove all of the stockpiles, it'll get close to be, I think just over between a half and two thirds. I think you're correct with that. Believe there's about 10,000, because this is all original grade here, this is This pretty hasn't been removed at all. It's all original grade, which is, you know, probably about 20, it's an elevation three fourteen, which is pretty high above here. That's another 20 feet above the existing grade. So there is a lot of material here. I would think by the time this is complete and the stockpile is removed.
The grade towards the highway was, is probably only 10 feet over the grade. Over here. Which is which is what it is you said it's three fourteen and it's two ninety four so 10 feet. The rest of it was up was up by I think it was up to three thirty or three thirty five at one spot the top of that hill. So, think that there's a lot more than what you're saying, hey, I'm out of there, it doesn't matter to me, just saying it doesn't, doesn't seem like what you're saying is very accurate. Well,
know the locations are accurate, the volumes are not exact. I tried to estimate as best I could with the, I moved these areas onto AutoCAD and I got areas and then the approximate heights to get some kind of a volume. I did not get a volume of this area, I don't think there's that much there over the course of five feet. There's probably around another, maybe 2,000 yards here, maybe less. Not allowed. No, that's not allowed. This area is almost, like I said, it's already one third gone already, and we have to concentrate on finishing, you know, completely finishing this back area before we get anywhere near this area at all. This one is not going be touched until this gets finished. Okay. Any other questions? Yes. Go ahead, Deanne.
Hi. Yes. I have several questions. Just for clarification on one of Scott's first questions about the percent that's completed. Were there three or four phases originally presented? Right.
Four phases, Leanne, I think. Well, were there or Scott or someone, was it three phases, was it four phases originally, Four phases, two years I believe. So Mr. DeParle, no, there's five.
There's five plus partly. The last phase is mostly regrading into existing. This phase back here is mostly regrading into the existing, But there's five here. One, two, three, four, five. Five phases? Yes. Is that correct? Yes. Five phases.
Okay. So your answer that you're about a third done includes all five phases. It means you're not completely done with But we're not saying third partially done with each one? A third to a half. I'm I'm talking about volume,
I guess. Had to disturb most of the first two phases just to get the detention pond in and to get access to the back to get it to the point where they could drive in, because this is all a hill. So this whole area had to get brought down in order just to get the operation going. So, you know, we've already disturbed the phase, which was okay, that was part of it. But then we started this, working in this area, which was about halfway through the second phase and halfway into the third phase, and we did this entire phase
and we finally broke through the daylight through here so we could, you know, had a passageway for any vehicles that needed to come in from this side. And then they started working back here and started removing this. And because we were asked to work towards the back and get to the back phase so we can bring the operation final from this phase, you know, going in this direction towards the front. So we can't get to the back phase until we, you know, we complete through here. Okay. And which phase is the back
considered? This is the back phase from from Station 5 to 65. That's the end of the project is at 565 at the top of the slope of the last hill. And that all this grading and that's where all the material is stored up there and now the topsoil and the remaining subsoil material that's going to be spread along this whole slope to finish and any moguls that want to get built for the animals as suggested by Hank Brunner.
So we've started What might be built? I'm sorry? What did you say? Any what that might be built for the animals? Moggles.
You know, small hills and valleys for the animals in the back here. Which there there's no he said he's gonna direct us in person at the time of the field milling. I mean, he hasn't given us any detail of what that's gonna be, but whatever, you know, they suggest we will build.
Okay. And I just missed, I didn't pick up on your cursor right away when you were talking about back at the near the beginning of your remarks. The section in the middle, what was your main comment about that right where your cursor is now? I didn't find it when you were first talking about that. Can you just quickly repeat what you said about that area of the Yes.
This area here is a pile, a stockpile of graded sand which is different than the bank run sand. Most of it's been removed. The bank run has gravel in it and it gets sold as structural material. The bank run sand, it's used for another use and you know that's why it's all sifted. Again, this has had a has about a thousand cubic yards in it as of last week. It's now got about a third of that removed, it's around seven to 800 yards that are currently there now. And I would say probably by the end of a couple of weeks, this will probably be gone and this area will be graded and ready for restoration. And we can restore this entire area, and once this is gone we can restore up to any area close to the topsoil. We got to keep this open because that's going be the topsoil that's going to go on to the entire area. So we can restore most of the phase and then have an operation just here only. So all the operations will be in here and all the restored areas will be back here as we proceed towards the front. And that's noted in the schedule I
will get to when you'd like to see it. When is that schedule? I have it in the Leanne
as soon as we get done talking about the drawing that's up here now.
Okay so it's part of tonight's presentation? Yes. Yep. And then just another question for Mr. Bell and then one maybe for Jim or Jed. You talked about a meeting coming up with Jim Halsey and Hank Gruner. Has that been scheduled?
No. As I say in the schedule, as soon as this gets to a close to final grade, as we noted in the approval a couple years ago, we're going to have a meeting with Jim Hallisey, Hank Bruner, and I believe it's the chairman of Wetlands, Jim, was it? I'm not sure. No, I believe the Wetlands Agent. Wetlands Agent, yes, I'm sorry. And we're going to discuss and conclude the way the town would like this thing finished off as far as you know grading, moguls, plantings and the like in the back phase.
Okay, thank you. And then my question for maybe Jim or Jed was just on the Town website where we were directed to, I think, by Jed's e mail to look at applications that are submitted or pending. I didn't see this there, but I saw the other items that were on the agenda tonight. Is that just an oversight if someone were to start out by looking there? You know, like somebody from the public? Or is that just is this in a different category of applications that are Let me address that, Leigh Ann.
And maybe I goofed up. I tried to send out an email to all the Commission members and I may have missed you, that all of this information is posted under the archived application. Okay. So if I didn't send that to you, I apologize. I can't remember going through, know, thing normally pops up recommended names to send stuff to. Then maybe yours didn't pop up or something. I don't know. No. I I did see that. I did see it under it's all under the
archive section. Archived. Yep. And I did look at that, and I did see this information from the past about this application. I just didn't see it under the more current, I guess, applications.
Right. It was not there. It's only under the archive section. Even the new stuff is under the archive section.
Okay. I see. Okay. Thank you both. That's And we and that can that be put in there, Jed? So But it probably can. I Not dated. If That's a good word, Scott.
I have a copy of the application you gave in. We
have all the information. Jim, if you could just have Amanda put it in the pending section. Guess it could certainly be done.
Was everyone able to see all the photographs through like that.
Yes, that we're viewing right now that should be put in
also, Jed. I think it is. I think that is in the archive section down. All the photos in this printer at the bottom of that section. But going back, I think Commissioner Persson was alluding to the fact that there are some things being done differently than we thought they were going to be done, such as all the stumps. I was surprised when I saw the photo of all the tree stumps there because I just assumed all that stuff was cleared out of there early on. And now tonight, looking at this picture, I see that it was put into the wetlands there. Not the wetlands, but certainly the buffer area. Definitely the We buffer didn't think it was going to be.
Those were supposed to be removed. Yes. A long time ago, Chad. I was not happy with that at all.
So my question is, if I go back to look at the regulation, it says the permit renewal application. The Commission shall not renew or extend any permit unless the operator is able to show through the report of a registered engineer that the excavation already completed conforms with the plan of operations approved. And whether it's the tree stumps I went over a look today and I shared Scott's perspective that there looks like there's a lot of stuff going out that really doesn't make much difference to me one way or another. But what did surprise me was that when I went back to look at the special requirements for the approval of the special permit, and I did see this on one of the drawings in there somewhere, the excavation shall proceed sequentially one section at a time commencing with Section zero proceeding to Section five. Excavation shall be permitted to involve two sections at a time. However, at no time shall a third section be disturbed until at least one prior section is fully restored,
stabilized, and approved by the CEO. In no time shall more than two sections be open, and at no time shall sections three, four, five, or six be disturbed without prior authorization from the town. The owners engineer shall adequately mark each section to the satisfaction of the town. And then it you know there's another one in here the engineers to inspect the site and provide a report to the town at the completion of each phase. And so as I went over and looked today, you know, and I know we've got this huge excavator open working over on the east side of the site there. And I was looking for where the refueling takes place because it's all supposed to take place over by the gas station. And maybe we're taking that over there every time we want to put fuel in it. I don't know. But I was looking for a spill kit where there was a different piece of equipment over there staged. Nobody was using it. I don't know if that was the refueling section or not. But my question is, you know, it does not appear that the owner, the operator, or anybody has been discussing where we stand and how we're doing with the zoning agent or the commission the way we expected it to have been done.
The tree stump pile is within 20 feet of the vernal pools. I mean, that in itself is, that there's you know, he said four tractor trailer loads of tree stumps, but right next, must be, you might as well say right next to the vernal pools.
They are protected by the silt fence and I was not happy when I found those in our field walk. I had no idea those were there and I've been Those were supposed to be taken out a year ago.
That they were. You're right. But seems like this is, you know, we're coming up for renewal of the application. And this is the first time we've, you know, had a serious look at how the project is going from an oversight piece, if you will. And that bothers me a little bit. Now, I'm enthused about trying to get those deficiencies fixed. But from what I could tell, there were no zones that have been stabilized and replanted at this point. Is that correct?
That's correct. As of late fall, this was the only area that was open besides the detention pond. You couldn't see past the hill that was here. This was just a grading operation and they were going back and forth in here. This whole removal happened probably since January. But that's three different sections. I
realize that. And that's specifically what we said we weren't going to do. Yeah.
I mean they should have stayed within this bounds here and just finished this area, and then they could have restored this area. I don't know why they put the tree stumps back there. They had plenty of room to put them somewhere else if they could have put them over here. If they had trouble getting rid of them, they could have brought them any place except there, that's the worst place they could have stored them.
Yeah, that's just, I don't see any oversight or someone that, somebody that's involved over there that cares about the actual application and what was written as Jed stated. None of it and I would say that everything should be restored before we ran anybody another. Far as I'm concerned it's nobody followed any of the rules, mean that swale that was supposed to be in there within the original plan, it was never put there where it was supposed to be, that retention basin was supposed to be moved, John Valenti ok'd it and you know I never got nobody talked to me about not changing the location of their retention basins.
So I am interested in getting the project complete as soon as we can. But I am also more interested in getting the site to where if we're not going to do what we said in the plan, to hear what the and maybe that's what your schedule is, Chris, going forward. But I share Scott's disappointment that we find all these deficiencies in your draft letter that you gave to us last month that it just seemed like that was the first time in two years that we've been out to this site to see what's actually going on. And we see that a lot of things are happening that weren't in accordance with the plan that we spent an awful lot of time trying to craft so that we did a good job on it. I would agree,
Mr. Chairman. I had been out here a couple of times since the plan was approved. Again, nothing really happened very much. All the operation was over here after they completed the basin. This was, when we were out there a couple of weeks ago was the first time since the fall, all this had occurred in that short period of time. And I wasn't aware of exactly the distances until I went out there and actually put each station in so I could make this sketch, and I was very upset with how much had been disturbed and also this area in the back. My schedule reflects basically finishing this area and restoring it before we do anything else, because it's the first area that's supposed to get restored as far as going from the back to the front. You know, if we do any restoration in here, it's already going to get disturbed as we, if we did this first,
it's all going to get disturbed if we go back and finish this. There's not much material left here to finish it, probably the best way to go is restore this, then restore this, restore this before we even touch this. This is supposed to be last. My schedule shows that we're going to be restoring all this before we move on to any area back up here, because I recognize what has happened here and I don't think they should be going anywhere near here or removing any other material until we restore orderly all the way through here. I agree. I'm not So again, going back to
our regulations that say the Commission shall not renew or extend any permit unless the operator is able to show through the report of registered engineer the excavation already completed conforms with the plan of operations approved. And so, I do not think where we currently are, as much as I want to get this thing done so we can seed and remediate the whole site, our focus for probably the next month has to be making sure that we're in compliance. And if we're not going to be in compliance with the plan that we all agreed to, you know, the Commission understands what the plan is.
Right. First and foremost, they do anything, the stump pile should be removed and somebody should be down there from either the town or Mr. Bell to oversee that. I don't think a stump pile within 20 feet of a vernal pool is a very environmentally sound thing that should be going on. Yeah. Really soon. So,
will proceed to your schedule letter here in just a minute, Chris, but when do you expect, I know you mentioned we were going to bring those stumps out of the back so that we got them out of the buffer zone to the wetlands anyhow, even though you couldn't get them hauled off. I would have expected that to have been done by the time we got together tonight. I'm surprised that that's already
done. It was supposed to have been, and I guess there's delays with the person that's supposed to be moving them. In this schedule, I have the stumps to be removed within the next two weeks. And the idea after that is to get the prep done for the back part of the project so we can have the meeting for restoration. And the restoration really should continue until we get the whole site restored, you know, before the extension is approved at this point, or at least have it so there's no more than, you know, one phase that is under disturbance. And we should be able to restore most of this before we get to those front sections. I'm told that they can do it as far as schedule goes, but so far that's not being proven as far as getting those stumps out. I'm very disappointed with that. This is the schedule that we're looking at and it's basically to get everything restored before we get into the front. I wasn't going to get anywhere near the front to the end of June, which is really basically after the next meeting. In other words, all this stuff should be done before the next meeting, and that includes all the restoration.
In your letter that you gave us at the last meeting, you said we anticipate the stumps will be completely removed within three weeks, which is a week ago, I think. I know. The back phase will be graded and ready for the aforementioned restoration meeting a week after stump removal.
So They didn't make it, no. Okay. I was told and I put some extra time in that and I thought it would be enough time but it didn't get done at all. They just started moving those I think it was Friday and today.
So from a zoning enforcement point of view, Agent Halsey, what's the correct way for us to proceed here? And I'm thinking we can cease and desist gravel removal tonight until it's all fixed. We can say his permit doesn't expire until the end of June and it's got to be done at the next meeting or we won't approve the permit. I'm looking for a suggestion on how you think the best way to proceed is. Well, Mr. Chairman, if I may,
if we're not allowed to take any material out and then we can't restore the areas that have been disturbed, I mean, if we have this amount of time until the next meeting, know, at least we can get the material that's in the way to have the area ready to be restored. And I was told that, you know, spread the topsoil and do the seeding is not going to take very long at all. But if we get a cease and desist then we can't do anything.
Well, that's not true. If I may, for the record Mark Brantz, that's not correct Mr. Bell. Well, would you There could be
an order can be issued that no more materials to be removed from the site. And the order can also state that the disturbed areas in whatever phase number is appropriate shall be restored immediately. You said that restoration can't occur until the material is removed. Why is that? Why can't the materials only be spread, long seeded, no more material coming out?
Well, I only say that it would be, you're absolutely right. I didn't, I shouldn't have said it that way. I meant to say it would be more advantageous for us to get the material out that's in the way of the restoration.
I mean, we'd have to bring So that it would be more advantageous to Genovese so that they get to sell more material, but they're in violation of their permit. It sounds like they're in pretty considerable violation. It sounds like they're in violation in a number of respects. That motion for approval, by the way, I couldn't find that on the website. You see only the letter of approval. I don't see the motion. That motion sounds really familiar. Does anyone remember who drafted that motion? I think it was John Valeni who drafted it.
Okay. Because I remember that motion pretty clearly. Yeah, well, it's I think I may have worked with him on it. Why don't you send it to Mark? Yeah. The way it's expressed sounds mighty like me. Pretty clear. Yeah, there's 26 items. Yeah, that's me.
This is ringing a bell with me, no pun intended, but I think that your client Mr. Bell is not fully appreciating the situation that he's in And it is of course, it's really not even the Commission's call, it's the CEO's call. The CEO may decide to order not one more shovel full of material removed from this site until certain things are done. Stumps and logs removed, a certain phase restored, if they want to stockpile the material, stockpile it, but you know, the time for saying we need more time to get the material out of there, that ship may have sailed quite some time ago in fact, and it may be that the applicants are going to lose the use of material because of some sounds like some pretty substantial violations of a very detailed approval motion.
Am I missing something? Attorney Branson, if I may say something that you remarked earlier, this is not a matter of money, he's not trying to make money on this. I mean, I'm seeing the prices he's getting from material, he's almost giving it away. He's trying to get the site down to an elevation that he can get, make it more attractive to sell. I mean, with all this material on the site, he can't develop the site, okay, and it's No not a matter one's gonna buy it, no one's gonna It's buy not a matter of money. You're saying he wants to sell, it's not a matter of money. If he could move this material, he's got to move it back to where it was in order to restore, you know, the back area first, because if we don't restore the back area first and start moving towards the front the way it is now, we're restoring the middle and then we have to drive over it in order to finish, you know, the remainder part. It's not a matter of money, it's a matter of just amount of time to get rid of it. I mean, he could have gotten rid of it all and done the phases properly, I'm sure he would have tried to, but he's not, he's having trouble getting rid of the material.
And so he opened up the entire site, all five phases at once, because he was having trouble getting rid of the material.
He was having trouble with different people on-site contracted to remove the material. He finds the person he has now is the person that put the stumps back there, and that's the person I'm having the problem with. He's getting rid of the material, but he's moving to areas he shouldn't be in. And we didn't know this until the time we came back after the winter and saw how much material has been removed. I would like the time to just restore what's there now, obviously take out the stumps, we've got to get that out immediately, and to restore that back area, and that shouldn't take that much time. If we restore the back area and get the piles that are out in front of it, those are all, those all should be gone within two weeks, and we should be able to get this thing restored by the end of June.
By that I would guarantee, Chris Bell, that there's no permit to store those stumps 20 feet away from those vernal pools. No, there is not, I know that. And so, and I know that there was trucks moving material in and out of there today, I saw it, so if I was the owner of this property and I knew I didn't have a permit to drop those stumps or loads of stumps next to the wetlands, I certainly would be working on that prior to a grain of sand going out of there.
I've been after the owner every day since the first day I saw those. Oh, you see our frustration. Frustration. I I do, do, I I do. Do. And I've been after the owner every day to get those stumps out of there. So it's a wetland violation also. Yep.
Just for starters. Yes. All the things that weren't done on this site, I mean, bulldozed swale is written right on the print that we approved, that hasn't been completed. The movement of the retention basins was on the print, that we approved all these things and now you want us to let them still truck this material out of Doesn't seem fair to the town to allow this to happen. So, it's a wetlands violation, think the wetlands commission probably could give them a cease and desist also, alongside of Planning and Zoning Commission.
Well, at this point, what would he be allowed to do from this point until the next meeting? He would, he's got to get this restored. Well we didn't make this problem. I know. Yeah
I think, I think Mr. Bell you're asking, you're asking the question that you need to be answering for the Commission.
You're saying what should we do? They're asking you, they're asking you what should we Are you going to allow us to restore the site between now and the next meeting? The question is where material can be removed.
I want to get the stumps out of that back end of the lot. And if you can't get them off the site, move them up front where you were talking about. That's what they're doing But I'm surprised that this meeting that you had back in mid April with Agent Halsey, Agent Wagner and Hank Gruner weren't, you know, guess I was surprised that I heard no feedback about the wetlands violation concern. But my thought is, this may be Agent Halsey's ball and not ours as a commission, is that I would like to have those stumps out of there and why it is that we didn't follow the plan discussed at the next meeting. Because if you don't come in here to convince the Commission that you are following the plan at that point, which we had approved, we have no choice but to not approve the extension.
That's understood, sir. Okay, so moving forward, I think everyone agrees that Stumps have to get out of there as soon as possible, right? Is that fair to say?
Joe Wagner probably should be paying a visit on there. It does sound like there's a wetlands violation. It's too bad we're sort of beating up on the messenger here. I feel sorry for Mr. Bell. But wetlands may need to act here. Their fines are a thousand dollars day and wetlands, it's a pretty clear wetlands violation right now, so maybe a thousand dollars a day will get their Right, there's certainly have to bring to bring suit on that, we may have to bring suit under zoning as well at $2.50 per day. So there's a total $12.50 per day. There's a breakdown in
between the town and that site, it's very obvious. There's no talking, but when we approve the application to let them do that, now whoever owns that site has not read that application and the conditions that were put in the approval.
Yep, this is Leanne. I concur with everything that's been said by the various parties since I asked my questions earlier. Mr. Bell, it sounds like you're on the site infrequently. Do you have anybody's name that you are able to give us? It doesn't sound like there's been anybody checking on the stump removal, checking on much of any of this, checking on phase one and phase two and, you know, all the things that that have been brought up. Is there anybody else's name that you want to bring to our attention?
Well, Bill Genovese is the owner of the site. He normally works in, in New Britain, that is a main site, but he does go to Andover, you know, occasionally, usually only if there's a problem with his business. But I've been after him quite a bit about these stumps, you know, since the first day I saw them and I put them in the letter that they, you know, have to be removed since I was at the meeting. I, The person on-site that manages the site is a fellow called Pat, I'm sorry, I don't know his last name, but he's the one that took care of all the other problems that we have with the silt fence, he got that done in a day, and did a good job fixing those. And if I tell him there's a problem with with anything out there, he gets it done very quickly.
And he's the person that's the manager on on the site. He's there every day, Monday through Friday. His name's Pat? His name is Pat. Yes.
But you don't know his last name, and he works directly from a I'm sorry. I don't. He does work for
A Wright Auto out there. He run he runs the site. So does he run Andover Auto Parts also?
A Wright Auto Parts. That's what he he's the manager of the site, he's he's on-site all the time. So he does both? He's he's Oh, mean, yes. This project and he also works in auto parts full time. Yeah. I mean, they they see him when the truck driver comes in. They they wanna get loaded. He has the loader driver go out there and load them up and and come back.
So as far as you know, he's he's supposed to be doing both jobs every day, including this project that we're concerned with. Yeah. I mean, I remember he wasn't doing much on the gravel pit for quite a while because nothing was happening there. Now
there's there's about like eight to 10 trucks do come per day, not every day, but that's what they're coming on an average.
Do you know if this Pat fella has even cited the documents with all these requirements on it, or is he just out there trying to move material?
He has a set of plans and I've told him of the requirements. Again, like I said, when I first came out the site with Jim, was surprised at how much material had been moved. There wasn't that much moved the last time I was out there in the fall. Not much has happened. A lot has happened in the last few months.
Okay, well I guess, Agent Halsey, my thinking is that this is in the short term, this is an issue for you and Agent Wagner to get together with Mr. Bell and figure out how to remediate the violations that are currently in place.
Marty, kind of things would you first say should be done? I mean I think that this is way past the zoning people. I think that they haven't listened Jed one bit right from the get go. I think Mark needs to come up with some kind of plan first and I hate to put you on the spot Mark, but it's not the zoning thing didn't work Jed, sorry. Didn't work.
Here's my suggestion first of all by the way I did find a draft of that motion on my computer from 2019 dated May 30. That's why it sounds so familiar to me it sounded like something I drafted I did. I don't know that's exactly the way it was adopted when I have, because I guess the approval was in June. My latest draft was May 30. So at some point I would like to see the motion as it was actually approved. Or may have been changes from my system. I do recall it though that the commission wall was very specific about what we expected to happen both on the plans and the motion. That final motion should also be given to Mr. Bell he can give it to whoever is in charge of this thing. But I think the very first thing is for Jim and Joe to meet out there with Mr. Bell as soon as possible. Decide what you think needs to happen first, and then we should craft orders for that both zoning and wetlands orders as to what we expect to happen As to whether more materials can be removed while this is pending, I guess I have to defer to the experts on that. We might want to bring the town engineer into this, I think that's going be desirable. My instinct certainly is to say whether it's money or not that they can't remove another shovel full of material until other things are in order and whether he's selling it or giving it away I really don't care.
This is obviously completely out of control completely out of compliance with the plan out of control of the design engineer who designed the plan and it's got to be stopped And I think the way to do that is we start with orders. We start with orders of what is to be happening when I know you have a Mr. Bell has a schedule. Joe and Jim can review that and see if they find it acceptable. If not, we can shorten it up, but I think there's got to be some really tight timelines here exactly, but I say orders, orders as to what will happen when exactly what will happen and when it will happen. If those, and by the way for excavation, we do not have to allow ten days for a cease and desist order, it can take effect immediately upon receipt. That's an exception in the statute. You don't have to allow ten days for compliance, You can require immediate compliance for excavation violations and we should. That way the fines will begin to accrue. The thousand a day and the $2.50 a day will begin to accrue from once those orders are issued. Whether we collect them will depend on how whether we take an action to collect them will depend on how cooperative
the owner applicant is. But we can collect attorney's fees under both zoning and wetlands. We can shut it down as far as making it developable for future uses. I wouldn't hold my breath on that. Whether this will be approved for anything ever sounds very questionable right now. And so the owner clearly is not paying attention. He better start and at $12.50 a day, I think he will. That's the first thing is to is to get this into enforcement mode. Then the commission by but your June meeting then you see what's what reactions you've got if you've got none, we're good if it's continued a month from now, like what you're seeing right tonight, then we simply go to court. He goes straight to court on this
and bring an injunction and shut it down. Attorney Brantz I think if you stop him from taking material out you'll get his attention. I think that's a 100% chance of that. I think they'll be able to concentrate on restoring the site if the material is stopped from leaving.
That would be my thought. He's the net then he knows who to sit. If he violates that, if he violates that, we may refer this to the state's attorney.
Don't think he'll I don't think he'll violate that. I don't I don't believe he'll do that. I hope you're right. If I may ask just one more item and also Mark. I'm sorry.
I heard someone start to speak. I think you were talking and you froze, your computer froze.
Working within 20 feet of a vernal pool to remove stumps seems like you need some approval from somewhere, you can't just have the guy go tell him that get his excavator in there and move the stumps. Mean it's two vernal pools that are back there, stumps are within 20 feet of it, you can't just have them go back. I mean there's going to have to be a plan in place for that even. Correct. Just for starters,
as far as I can see. There is silt fence back there right now, it's in place. Yeah. I just want to let you know it's there sturdy, it's you know it's not like it's not there, but there was one item I wanted to talk to Commissioner Person about, please. You mentioned about the detention pond. I know that's an important issue to you and it's an important issue to me. I really feel confident that we should keep the pond where it is as long as we have the water going towards it, which it does flow towards that direction. And I would like to resolve that issue with yourself. Know you have a lot of concern for that. Thought that was okay, the way it was. Chris, I'm
not saying it for myself, I'm saying it for the town of Andover. Saying it because it would be great if we could finally get a project that went the way we're supposed to and it's not, it's not Chris. I agree. This one was bad from the start And Mark drew up the conditions of approval, 26 conditions, and I think that they didn't even, you couldn't even get them to put the erosion control in, so.
They, that's the third page of the plans that they have on-site. Yeah. So they do have them and
And there's nobody here that wants that thing to be finished more than me. I would like to see it done and over with.
But tonight Chris, I don't want to go over and belabor the schedule anymore. Think that needs to be revised with Agent Halsey and Agent Wagner to find out. Don't know what the wetlands rules are for getting those stumps out of there at this point, but that's why the meeting with you, Halsey and Wagner tomorrow is probably a good place to start. Yeah, there's nothing
should happen though Jed until somebody else reviews what's going on. Shouldn't be some sort of restoration plan. There has to be a plan, nobody should be touching three, four truckloads of stumps next to Vernal Pools, they shouldn't be touching them. Nobody should be under I doing
like to mention the owner told me just before the meeting, when they started removing the stumps, he said he believes they started from the back of the stump pile. That's what he told me. Whether that happened or not, I don't know because I'm not there. He said he'd already taken the truck load out, tractor trailer truck load out. So it may not be 20 feet from the wetland, the vernal pools anymore. But I'll have to see when I get out there.
Okay, but I think, it reasonable that tomorrow we get Agent Halsey, Agent Wagner and Engineer Bell over there to look and craft out what the immediate actions are and then what the follow on actions are at the next meeting we get briefed on the actions that you've taken and
we'll go from there. I can be there tomorrow. Jim just has to give me a time. Why don't we ask to coordinate that with Wagner?
Well, I do know that Joe has a meeting tomorrow night. So presumably he'll be in town in the afternoon. I'll email it tonight and see what I can set up, Chris. Okay, call me anytime. All right.
Me just mention one other thing. If Wetlands is meeting tomorrow night, Joe may want to issue some order tomorrow afternoon so the show cause hearing can be tomorrow night. It can be continued. Of course, are but remember show cause hearings have to be within ten days of orders issued. So, a a preliminary order might be appropriate for Joe tomorrow afternoon. Does
it matter if it's a special meeting? Is there any agenda issue? Yes,
there is. It's a special meeting. Special meeting. I can't do it then. Never mind. Okay. Can't be added to the agenda now. It's too late. Yeah.
Okay, I think that concludes the discussion for this evening on the gravel pit. Okay, thank you everyone.
Attorney Branch, that was the extra thing that I was hoping that you would be here to assist with. I appreciate you sticking around. Quite all right. I'm glad I stayed too. I do remember that one quite well. And I just I did find the motion for approval on my computer system. Just emailed it to you and Jim. It may not be the final one but that's why I remember it so well and this definitely needs to be raining so glad to be of help. Thank you.
Do you want me to stay further? I don't think there's anything else
that we need your assistance with tonight. Right. You don't get a question further out there. Thank you. All right, thank you. Take care all. Thank you, Mark.
Okay. Next item on the agenda. And we're going to start moving fairly fast here. I normally like to be done by 09:30. Proposed revision of the signed regs, that was on there as a placeholder just for me to tell you that I've done nothing on that. The update the next item is the update on preparation of affordable housing plan as required by the Connecticut General Statutes. And I briefed last time that I was getting together with Bill Warner to come up with a plan. Fortunately, maybe we didn't get funding from the finance committee. They wanted to talk to me. And I've been waffling with how to go with all the consternation on affordable housing as of late. It turns out that tomorrow morning there is a online seminar from the small town councils of Connecticut, that's not the right name, but something like that on preparing the affordable housing plans. And so I'm looking to get a little bit of enlightenment on that on what should be our way ahead. But I don't know how many of you read the the Hartford Courant.
Two weeks ago, this was the front page on Sunday. And it, you know, a flashpoint in the racial equity debate and it's about a house over in I think it's Woodbridge that they want to change into a four apartment dwelling, I guess. It's not the planning and zoning rules don't support that and they're in a lot of heat. So that was two weeks ago. A week ago in the Sunday paper again, there was an article, The Tragedy of Segregation at Woodbridge Echoes a Pattern of Silence Across Connecticut. And so I looked at all that and I said, well, this is certainly I don't want this to be Jed's plan. I want this to be something that this has got to be the Andover plan. And so I'm looking forward to seeing how the other small towns are dealing with this thing. And so I've not moved the ball any further down the line on that one either other than to know that that is a current hot issue. And we do have a requirement to have a plan by the June 2022. Item, unless there's any questions on that one.
Next item is returning to in person planning and zoning commission meetings. And there's things I like about meeting on Zoom and there's things I like about meeting in person. And I was just trying to get a feel for the commission members' thoughts given where we are and we're expecting that on Wednesday of this week, Connecticut takes significant steps towards being fully open on our thoughts about returning to town hall for in person meetings. Anybody got any thoughts one way or the other? I
would prefer to be meeting in person. I mean, it's nice not to have to leave your house, but I feel like trying to really have discussions and really see the materials and that kind of thing it's a lot better to be in person so I would rather be in person okay any other thoughts
this is Leanne yeah I guess I have mixed feelings. I I agree that it would be nice to meet again in person. I have mixed feelings for several reasons. I think the I like these Zoom meetings. I'm comfortable with them, but I understand what Anne means. There's a different element when you can see each other and see the plans are being presented instead of trying to see them on a small screen. I think this whole the whole time we've had this COVID pandemic things literally change every day. So now you have things like, as you said, a lot of opening up going up on Wednesday and then people
what age 16 or over can be vaccinated now and things like that. So another one of my questions is I'm just wondering out loud if we would let's say we started next month meeting in person, would we still have social distancing? Would we still wear masks? Maybe that's part of your question to us now, Jed. And one thing that occurred to me tonight is if we because my desktop doesn't have a camera or audio and we're But that's a able questions. That's my contribution. Question. I My
think sense is that we would continue to social distance. I don't know the answer to the mask question. I think the current guidance is that they are saying if you are fully vaccinated, you don't have to wear a mask. If you are not fully vaccinated, you probably ought to wear a mask. I'm thinking that with the social distancing in people who for whatever reason may be at risk. I saw a report watching Meet the Press over the weekend, Chuck Todd asked the head of the C. Well, what if you're immunocompromised and vaccine? What should you do? And she said, well, you should discuss that with your doctor. And I think those people and my wife is in that category. She is going to be having to wear a mask for a while longer. We're still to the point where we've only got one third of the people fully vaccinated. So we're not ready to say that we can go sit right next to each other and all that.
But we'll do what we have to make the attendees comfortable. And if that's everybody wear a mask, I'm okay with that. But I do like sitting on Zoom where you can see the facial expressions and that sort of thing. So I would hope that maybe we wouldn't have to, but that's still a work in progress. First cut is do we think we should? There's a time for both. The summer months nice and warm. We can have ventilation there and all that. Maybe it'd be nice to try meeting in person. The
board of ed that my husband is on has been meeting in person for about four or five months now in the school cafeteria and they still do a zoom for the public but they have been meeting in person each person at a table so they are over six feet apart and they have not had to use masks I think one person who has not been vaccinated wears the mask but the rest are able to just sit far enough apart and they still have a big TV set up with the zoom so that the public can be there for zoom so the public isn't all there when they have public comment and things like that. It's been working fine for them. Okay, yep. I think that's a good model. That sounds
sort of reasonable. Okay, well first step is we have to open town hall. And when we cross that bridge, maybe I'll look at doing the next one in person. I would like to do the public hearing for the Pine Ridge Road where we can the drawings up and see those and all that kind of stuff. I think the crowd that we get at our meetings is much smaller than they probably get at the Board of Ed. We can probably putting some extra people in there. We've never had more than three or four extra people show up at a meeting and we can fit that in there safely. More to follow on that. But I am looking at trying as long as the numbers all keep heading in the right direction to start meeting in person again.
Not having been to a meeting in person, do you typically bring laptops to the meeting to work off of?
We typically do not. Now that doesn't mean that you can't. And one of the most significant issues that I will have is I use a desktop computer and I don't have a laptop. And so I'm comfortable being able to pull stuff up on the screen here. I don't know I would not have that ability to do that in town hall and I need a little assistance to do that. And I think Mindy has always done a pretty good job if I've fumbled the ball on getting that up and I'm sure she might be there as long as she was willing to go and meet in public.
Okay, yeah, I mean, just as long as it's an option, I just think it's really convenient to be able to use find keys and everything to
go through the document. Absolutely run laps around me going through my book. No doubt about that.
Jed, this is Leanne again. Yep, go ahead. It almost sounds like we might want to go another month meeting on Zoom. And I think you or someone mentioned about the whole town hall itself being open or not. And I listened to the last Board of Selectmen's meeting. And maybe if anybody else was on it, they can correct me if I'm wrong. But they had a discussion about it. And it seems to me that under the Governor's current executive orders, they ended up leaving it or I think Eric Anderson said that it could be left up to Jeff Maguire as the CEO or something, as to whether or the town hall would be open.
I don't know. I don't even know what the if there were any conditions or if it's just if they're going to be open, open. And if so, what date it was? That's my understanding of how it was left with them.
Maybe couldn't come up with it with an agreement. No.
Oh, that's I'm sorry, Scott. That's that's right. You're you were two hats here.
Right. We could we couldn't come up with an agreement. We just dropped it in Jeff's lap.
Okay. So it's basically up to Jeff McGuire to decide what's going on.
Okay, I will see what happens come Wednesday. We've got five weeks between now and the next meeting. I'll let everybody know in plenty of time. If we hold off another month, not the end of the world, that will work fine, too. But I do think that it would be nice to meet in person a little bit. And then nobody can hide with the camera off. I can see you all. Okay. Somehow maybe I shifted into new business here. Old business. I guess it's just oh, yeah, okay. Now we are shifting into new business. And it's got the application of Adam somebody, 128 Wheeling Road. Is Adam still on the line? Yep. I think he gave up. So I'm not going spend any time on that today. I think it's very similar to the application we just talked about on Whale Road. And we'll start the clock on that. It does not require a public hearing. So we'll
talk about that at the next meeting. Then the next one that had a lot of stuff coming in late is the application of Scott BB 241 Route 6 discussion of previously granted special permit for kennel operation. And I need to discuss that in more detail with Jim so that I can have an understanding of where we've been and what we need to do there. Essentially, I think Scott Beebe has been running a, well why don't you tell us your nickels worth on that, Jim, just so Well, everybody
apparently he was issued a special permit allowing for a kennel operation on part of the Post Farm. It involved the construction of a facility off Of Timestarm Road. Apparently there was a lot of litigation involved. He never built the facility. The special department did appear to refer to two parcels of the Post Farm, which comprised most of the farm. And he's been operating on there for about thirteen years, I believe. And he ran into a situation where he needs a sign off, a certificate from the zoning official on a state form to allow him continue to operate. Question arose as to whether I could sign that, whether that's there is an issue. He never did file the special permit that was provided, but that could be done at any time. There's no real there's no time frame for that. The question is as to whether his approval that was granted would cover what he's currently doing. It's it's difficult to ascertain that given what I can pull out of the file. I just wanted to bring it to the commission for discussion.
I know a little bit about it, Jed. Okay, what do you know, Scott? I know that it went to court. Scott spent all the money that he had for his kennel, approved him to build a whole facility up on the Old State Road and you know in the end after he went to court he spent all the money that he had on court fees he didn't then he didn't have the money to build the facility and he won the court case because you know clearly says that you can build a kennel on town of Andover. Scott, you referred to the Old State Road, what road does that mean? Well, Hutchinson Road was called the Old State Road then it turned into Hudson Road. Farm, I meant Hudson's right. Okay,
well, yep. I don't know. It sounds like the commission needs to take some sort of action. He didn't comply with what the special permit was that was granted a bunch of years ago, 2011 or whatever it was. And so he's continuing to operate this business out there. We've got very specific regulations. I don't know if we had them then, but we got them now on kennel operations. And so I think we need to see something that shows that he's in compliance with our regulations now. You know, it's another case where we headed off to do something, didn't do what we said we were going to do, and who knows where we're at. So I'll get with Jim, more to follow, but that's just the introduction of something else that we will get to deal with.
This is Leanne again. Jim, do you know what it is that he needed a sign off from you for the state that you didn't have enough information on?
Yeah. It's a certificate of zoning compliance. I think it's by the Department of, I assume it's, I believe it's the Department of Agriculture. I think I posted it. It's just so that the state agency that oversees kennels, They just want to know that kennel is in compliance with local regulations. So it's something that the state does for a variety of activities. So occasionally I'll float a certificate in front of me requiring zoning compliance. And this happened to be one of them. What happened is he apparently bought out a partner in the business. So it triggered a new certificate. You mean fairly recently? I think so. Yeah, it was not too long ago.
Okay. And that's how this came up. I was wondering, I was gonna ask you or Jed before the meeting and I didn't how this came up in the first place. Okay. So what's the next step?
Next step is for Jim and I to sort that out.
And Jim, did you say you had trouble finding the meeting minutes?
No, just the information in the file. I can go back and get the minutes. I just haven't because yet.
Well, the minutes, you sent that to me just before this meeting, Jim, I thought. There's very little information other than the fact that it was approved. Right. I couldn't find much information. That's all I remember. We're trying to find out what was approved.
Yeah. So I'm not I'm not quite understanding. If you don't have trouble finding the minutes, it it sounds like it's a big problem that something wasn't filed or several things weren't filed in the building office.
No. I know. The the what wasn't filed was filed in the in the clerk's office. When a special permit is issued that what what where?
In the in the clerk's office. The the notice that is supposed to be filed on the land records wasn't filed. And that's that's on the on the applicant. There's no question about that. And he was apparently provided a copy and chose not to for whatever reason. That that doesn't fall in the building department by any commission.
Okay. Well, I'm not I don't wanna say too much, but I'll say two quick things. One, my recollection differs a little bit from Scott's. And two, this was a very involved application. So anything that we can do to go back and revisit it would be useful. Very involved. Okay. I'm older than you, Leanne. Yes, you are, slightly. Just slightly.
Okay. So that's the discussion on that. Approval of minutes, I would like to put off until the next meeting. I did have several comments on there and it's just getting too late in the evening. So, item eight correspondence. Jim, do we have anything in that category? No, I have none. Okay. Administrative reports?
Just that there's a tremendous amount of building activity going on. Trying to stay on top of it. That's all I have. Okay.
And again, we you were going to take a look at the taco stand place down by Parker Bridge Road or whatever it is? I
do have that on my things to do. Yes. Okay. I would what I wanna do is pull up the special permits that have been have been approved for that property and contact the owner and discuss how it can be cleaned up. I I just wanna know exactly what was approved. And I suspect it's going take some time and I'm short, we have very limited staff in the building office currently.
Okay, I understand. Yep. Under Commission discussion miscellaneous, I heard via Jim from Eric, there was some thought that we should use open space funds to build a park. I know very little
specifics on that. What Eric was looking for at this time is a consensus as to whether the Commission was comfortable providing some open space funds, meaning the dedicated open space funding for design purposes for a parking area at Parking. Parking area at the trailhead
I thought this was a park like merry-go-rounds and seesaws and that kind of stuff.
No, no. Mean, there could be a picnic table there or something of that nature, but very limited amenities. And actually, I believe it may have come to the commission when at such time as it was purchased. This land was purchased.
Well, we had a discussion there. My thoughts is that I keep seeing Diane Greniers looking for ideas to go out with these community grants, this program that she's trying to give money away on. And my thinking is, why wouldn't this be right up that alley? Perfect, perfect place for the usage of that money. Yeah, because we have not been contributing to the Open Space Fund. And I'm still a little disappointed but not as disappointed as Scott that we didn't purchase this piece of property down on Merritt Valley for the town with maybe open space funding. So I'd like to build the open space funding up and if there's a way to get parking stuff paid for by this other grant,
obviously that's a little more work on somebody's part but think that we should be taking advantage of that opportunity. Eric
did plan on attending the meeting but he was I understand. Out of town for And I just wanted to approach that subject with everybody to know what request might be coming our way. I thought we did purchase land on Merritt Valley Road. We purchased
the land on East Side. Yeah. A year ago, we were looking at the purchase of the land right next to the school property that 30 some acres or something was for sale over that way. Is that who that was, Scott?
Yeah. Oh, yeah, that one, that one, yeah. Okay, great. Clock property. Yep.
So I'm thinking we need to build up the open space fund and go out and get some more open space. Anybody else have any comments or miscellaneous items to discuss here? Hearing none, move right on to final public comment. I see nobody left for that. So I will looking for a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.
Okay. Any second? Second. Leanne, second. Scott made the motion. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, well we made it before 10:00. Sorry to keep everybody here so long but we did have a lot of business going on tonight. It was important we got through as much of it as we did. Appreciate And everybody hanging in
we'll see everybody on June 5 over at Did you skip over the approval of the minutes for the last meeting?
I did skip over that and I intend to because there are several things that I had comments on and I don't know the answers to them necessarily. And it was going to be a fairly lengthy discussion, I thought. And I want to get us out of here by 10:00. Thank you.
Meetings adjourned. Thank you everybody for attending and we'll see you on June 5 or the sixth, whatever that Saturday is. Good night everybody. Good night. Night. Good night.