Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting
October 17, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Your meeting of the Andover Planning and Zoning Commission to order. Marina, are you with us tonight? Eric, did you start the recording? It didn't start it.
I I see start the recording. I just don't know who did that.
Well, it would be whoever's logged in as the moderator.
The town of Andover is logged in as the host. Whoever's on that account. Marina.
I did. It's Marina I see as a note. Okay, so she must be here. She says her mic isn't working. Okay, so that explains that. We had all kinds of serious mysteries going on there for a moment. All of a sudden, I was happy because everything seemed to be working and then it dropped off saying the meeting has ended. So we were scrambling to get back in, and I think that works. First item on the agenda after call to order is roll call. And I see that we've got Anne Creme, Scott Persson. Are there any other commission members here with the exception of alternates at this point? Susan England was here.
Yep. She's an alternate, Scott, and I'll I'll be using her. I see Steve Nelson is is online. Steve? Yep.
Looks So like the only person the only person missing that's a regular member right this minute is Leanne Hutchinson. It looks like she's trying to join, Chad.
Okay. We'll wait just a minute. And, Jim Halsey, have you made it back with us yet? Yes. But I'm Audio. I'm Audio only. Okay. Yes. Jed, while you're waiting, this is Catherine Hutchinson.
Am I logged on? Can you hear me? I can't hear you. I can't see you, but I can hear Thank you loud and you.
And I do see Leanne Hutchinson. Are you with us now? Yes.
Okay. So, have all five regular commission members present. We will not be seating any of the alternates tonight. Next up is changes in additions to the agenda. I have none. Does anybody have any changes or additions to the agenda? Hearing none, yeah, was there somebody commenting there?
Oh, hi, it's Leanne. Are we going to talk about continuing to meet by Zoom? We are going to talk about that tonight, yep.
Okay, I'm sorry, I was away for a couple of days and I haven't looked at the agenda since it came out, so if it's already on there
It is, that's under new business, the last item under new business will be, well, it's setting regular meeting dates. We'll talk about how we're doing it when we talk about those dates going forward. Okay.
Yep. Thanks, Leanne. So hearing no other changes, we'll leave the agenda as it is. Next item up is public speak. And this would be if there's any member of the public that wishes to talk about any of the items that are not on the agenda, now would be a good time for that.
Yet again, this is Kathryn Hutchinson. And any thing that I might wanna say would be part of the gravel pit discussion if I commission would grant me the opportunity to do that if necessary.
I I will do that. You bet. Yep. Thank thank you. Okay. So, moving on down to old business. And first up here is continuing our discussion from the last meeting of the plan of conservation and development. And I'm gonna turn it over to John for that.
Okay. Thanks, Jen. So what I'm going to do, if I'm able, is to ask Marina to allow me to share my screen first. And what we're gonna do is go back to the survey actually, we're gonna look at two documents sort of concurrently. The first being I'll pull this off to the side of the screen also. If I can. Okay. So what I have on the screen is basically the implementation recommendations from the current plan of conservation and development. As you'll recall last month, we went through each of the recommended implementation items and sort of assessed where we were in terms of actually accomplishing them. And that's where you see the symbols over on the right. The star, the orange star, represents something and and this is also then based on the the SurveyMonkey survey that a number of you filled out about those implementation items to assess whether they were essentially well underway or complete,
whether they were no longer relevant, whether they were not complete but still an important priority or some basically, sort of a carry forward goal, or some other some other mixed category. And where we have, the check marks thus far, and, again, this is two pages, is the blue is essentially, either complete or well underway, the blue check. The green what was the green? The green was was that V Zone hernias? I don't remember what the green check was. I think the green was
was an ambiguous thing, and and I looked at what you would just show uncertainty. Yeah. With well, ambiguous but complete. And looking at rezoning areas R40 to R80, we're at R60, so we're complete, but not exactly what the document was
saying we should be doing there. And then the orange stars were not complete or not really underway, but still an important one. And we did about half of these last time. We're going to go through the other half this time. Jed, do you want to start with planning for an older population?
That'll do. Got Kathy Palazzi's here for We've supporting got Hank and Mary Ellen here for the conservation development. And then the last one, Jacinto Place, wasn't necessarily either of those. They can stick around at that point. I just wanted to have the discussion with them early on so they didn't have to wait for a bunch of stuff they might not be interested in before we get to what did interest them. So starting the older population is a good place to start. All right. So again, so my
marking of these is basically based on the input received. So the first one being meet regularly with Commission on Aging and Senior Staff. The majority of folks said, you know, not complete but still important or unsure but still important. So that would be sort of an in progress. And I will I'll sort of go through these and and be not offended at all if someone wants to jump in and add some color or comments to clarify or disagree.
Kathy Palazzi, you should feel free to jump in on each of these. You have a good sense where I didn't necessarily I don't know if we're meeting regularly with the Commission on Aging or the senior center staff. No, no, you're not. And that would be wonderful if we could do that. We would like to meet regularly
with the commission of representing Commission on Aging tonight. And I'm also representing the EDC and we would like very much to have both bodies involved.
At some type of a meeting, Jed. Yep. Okay. And when I first started looking at this particular chapter, my thought was that as a town, we do a great job of taking care of seniors. Yes, we do. And that's primarily a lot of that's got to do with you, Kathy. Oh, thank But I don't know I don't have a lot to compare to. This is the first town where I've actually taken a look at what services are provided to the seniors because I now am one. And I've been happy with what we've been doing. So if there's things that we're struggling with and should do better on, Kathy, you should let us know that. I was finding it hard to take exception to any of those things we were doing because I was pretty happy with all the things that the town is doing for the seniors.
I agree with you, Jed. I think that the Board of Selectmen, our town officials and Eric Anderson are supporting us 100%. We've had an excellent four years. I'm very pleased with the officials.
Okay, so as John goes through here and there's something that you think, no, we're not really doing that very well. But I certainly found nothing to be critical of with what we're doing here taking care of the seniors with the exception of the senior center, and that is going up even as we speak.
Yes. Go ahead, It's switched over now. John is there it is. Thank you, John.
So I actually went over to switch to the next implementation item, which is through zoning amendments, allow for higher density neighborhoods in close proximity to services and activities. Some people said complete or in progress, and I think, Jed, that would reflect, you know, the the conversion from our 80 to our 60. And the number of people said not complete is still important. So I, you know, respectfully, you know, going to a going to a r 60 is not is not particularly high it is technically higher than r 80, but it's not particularly high density. So I kind of listed that one as work in progress, but still important.
Well, do think we have a chapter, I'm not looking it up right now, so I can't remember what the letters stand for. Eric will probably know. But I think it's PRD, and that allows us to do the denser housing for the older 55 folks. Okay. And so I thought that met that one. We just have to do it. We've got the zoning in place for it. We got to do it, though.
I think the that particular section of the zoning regs could be looked at again. You know, that's been on the books for a long time and hasn't really been used. But there are some carve outs there to allow higher density, And there are also carve outs to allow mixed density or mixed use development with the aim of increasing some density near the business and industrial zones.
Okay. So we can keep that as a carry forward, but recognize that some progress has been made. Third is plan for a new senior center, which allows for social interaction and avoids isolation. I think that's a big check mark, obviously. Fourth is as needs grow, expand senior transportation and meals on wheels to accommodate seniors. The majority of people said that that was complete or well in progress. A couple of people did say not complete, but still important. So I would defer to more specific knowledge on this. Kathy, do we have a Meals on Wheels program?
May I just, I wanted to speak on that. We do not have a Meals on Wheels. We have they sort of did away with that program, and now the state has a new program. We're getting involved in that gradually. It's a very slow process for us in Andover, and the senior transportation part of it is that we are expanding our senior transportation rapidly, and we have grown from two day service to five day service and for emergency service only on a six day basis. So we're very pleased with that, Chad, that that part of it. Yep. The the mail on wheels, we are working on that, and I can give you a progress report on that later. Okay. Nope, sounds good. I just wasn't aware of the Meals on Wheels portion.
I think we're doing a great job on the transportation piece. Thank you. Great.
Next is make roads safe and comfortable for seniors with more visible signage, better way finding and reflective materials. The vast majority of people thought that that was a work in progress, not complete, but still very important. And I think that's probably fair.
May I just say, John, that I had not heard that. I don't know where your information I apologize, but I don't know where your information came from. But I have to tell you that the seniors have been, we meet every, other week and, usually twice or three times that week in each other week, bi weekly, bi monthly. And, I will tell you that they are very impressed, the way the roads have been, getting better and more it just seems like things are being, dealt with in a better way, and seniors have mentioned that. So I'm not sure because I see that it says number is that two meaning not good? Is that what two means?
I think that priority or or the year of implementation.
No, that's priority. And so two is well, one is the highest. You can see the zoning amendments there. But two is a very high priority, going down to four being the lowest priority. So that was a high priority for the town making the road safe. Beth, can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you.
I didn't have audio for a minute. I see it says in over twenty fifteen implementation. Is this from the lab plan developed POC right now? Yeah, the current plan.
Okay. And what's the and the numbers the numerals on the left hand side are in in order of priority? Yes. And then what's the bar graph that you periodically have been putting up? Is that something from this POCD also, or is that something you've done in reaction to this?
That was, a survey was sent around to all of sort of the stakeholders in planning and zoning and economic development and conservation and sort of the key municipal entities that would have understanding of how progress was going so far on these implementation items. So people were asked if the implementation items that you see on the screen right now have been done, have not been done, are still a priority, are not a priority. And that's the bar graph that I go to. So this is current opinion of the progress on the existing DOC. Okay.
So this has been collected in the last, what, couple of months? Correct.
And Leigh Ann, did you so I thought I had sent that out a couple of times to all the commission members. Did you not get the opportunity to submit an input?
I don't think so. I will double check my emails. It doesn't look familiar, but unless it was and I don't usually have trouble opening things. Yep. But I'll go back and look because it doesn't sound familiar.
Okay. It would have been a SurveyMonkey poll that would have taken probably SurveyMonkey? Yeah, it would have taken fifteen or twenty minutes. Okay.
And if you didn't get it, Leanne, it's probably my fault. Okay. Did that come from you or John?
John sent it to me, and I sent it out to the commission.
Okay. I'll I'll try to check while we're talking. If not, I'll check right after the meeting. But you've brought me up to speed after I lost the audio for a minute here. So thanks. Okay. Okay.
Jed, could I could I interject and and ask a question? The ongoing, I just wanna say that, I noticed that it says established policies and programs. I wanted to tell you that many of the seniors, we have a list, an actual list of programs that we are going to be starting once we can get into the building, new building. So, I do want to I I see it's ongoing. Of course, it is. But I do want to make that mention that we have a list of things that will be put in place once we move.
Okay. Yep. Now, on that one, I had a different take on it, and I thought that was one that we needed to do much better on. And when I see programs to help seniors age in place, when we had our affordable housing thing. One of the recommendations there was to open have a fund with town money in it that seniors could use to improve their houses, like putting handrails in the bathrooms, ramps, getting up the steps, those kind of things. And then those funds would be repaid when the senior eventually sold their house and had the money that would go back into the fund to help other people modify their housing to stay in their homes. That's excellent.
So yeah, that's one that I would like to see us tackle and do better on because when we did that study, the thought was both people would like to stay in their homes as long as they could. If we can help them, that's a good thing. Right.
Jed, that is a very worthwhile goal. What I would say is that if you're going to ask, because you would need to ask Board of SelectmanFinance for funding for that, that you're going to need to come to them with a fairly well fleshed out proposal of how to do that if you are going to get them to bite. So if you want to sit down and kind of work with me and outline how to do that at some point, I would be happy to do that with you. Okay. Yep.
But I think that's one when we talk about affordable housing and that, that's part of that effort, and we'll get there. I think at the time, the thought was we were going to use some of the COVID money. And I don't remember what the letters were that did that, but I know we spent a lot of that in with the new senior center. But that was what the recommendation was, to use some of that grant money to get that started.
Nice. Okay. Next would be research town's ability to create age restricted housing with restrictions at sunset when baby boom generation ends. And where we were with that is sort of mixed. People thought it wasn't really well underway and sort of unsure about progress or level of current importance. So I'd be happy for I took that as a carryforward, but I'd be happy for comment.
No, I think one of the things that when last time you, Eric, I were talking, Eric said I should ask the Commission, and I will, as we go through this, what would you like to see the town have ten years from now? And certainly, I would like to see some age restricted housing, the small lots, smaller houses, small maintenance burdens, smaller costs in town for the seniors.
That's great. I just can't follow this. I can't see it. It's right here. Right here. Can look for it. Yeah.
So I think it's important. I think we that's one of the big things that we've got to work on going forward.
I'll try to make these a little bit bigger so people can see them a little bit better. The next one is coordinate land use transportation and housing policies and human services to plan for an aging population. And where we are with that is is also primarily not complete but still important. I think that's probably fair. That's that's kind of an ongoing thing. Mhmm.
And then Yeah. I have no idea what that is.
To me, it's it seems a little bit like, know, senior senior programming, you know, senior center senior resource programming. And the last is promote universal design and new developments and public improvements. And, again, generally speaking, people were either unsure but thought it was important or thought it was important and and it hasn't really been underway yet. And, again, you know, new developments looking back over the last, you know, eight years, there there hasn't been all that much to speak of. So so there really hasn't been necessarily that much opportunity to promote universal design. So it's probably a carryforward. Okay. All right. So thank you for your input on that.
We can go to the natural resources one, which I think Kathy, did you have any closing comments you wanted to make on that before we finish the discussion there on our seniors?
No. The only thing I do want to say is that commission on aging will be meeting on Monday, the twenty third, and I will bring all the comments that we discussed this evening to them so that they're right up to speed on it. And we will report back to you, Jed, once we have more information. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks, Kathy. Thank you. Okay.
So now I'm pulling up the protecting our natural resources, which is chapter eight. This is the POC, Deb. This is the conservation area. So conduct a natural resource conduct a natural resource inventory is the first of these. And then looking at the survey, people generally believe that this was complete. And and I'm happy to be told that this is incorrect, but it appears that it's been done.
This is Hank. Let me just weigh in on this. So this is great to go through these, but I would like an opportunity, Mary Anne and I think, after you quickly tick through these, if we could bring the commission up to speed on the planning that we're doing, which revolves around that natural resource inventory, which has been completed, John. But we've been taking a strategic approach to the twenty fifteen plan of the chapter eight, twenty fifteen plan to sort of go through based on that and an assessment, a review of the existing open spaces to really go through a process that will lead to recommendations, you know, for the POCD. So, some of these, you know, may be associated with that, but, you know, I think it's important to see that we're basically doing a full review and move forward from that plan that was in Chapter eight. And I've got a few slides where we can sort of illustrate where we are in that process and where that's leading to.
Okay. That's great. That's taking your role very seriously. That's fantastic. Okay. So the inventory has been done and work is being done with it. So second one is make open space plan easily available to developers and land owners. This was sort of mixed. People were a little bit uncertain, but that some of it was done, maybe still incomplete. I guess, you know, easily available is probably the word that divided people. There's probably it's probably out there, but maybe maybe people felt like it wasn't easily available now. Kathy Palazzi, are you still with us?
I muted her. I just asked her to unmute. Yes, I am right here. Yeah. So
Hank brought up a good item, and I wanted to share with you. So what I would like at some point here, Kathy, is your your commission's assessment, do you still think that the preparing for the older population are we in excellent shape across the board and all done with that? Should that continue to be a piece of our next plan of conservation and development?
I think that I as I said to you before, I want to bring this the attention. I don't need your answer tonight.
I just wanted to put the bug in your ear that I'm looking for your input on this. And at some point, we're going to be trying to develop a questionnaire to go out to the town. And the reason that it rang a bell with me is I know the last long term study plan had the question, are you willing to pay more taxes for open space funding? And so I would expect that to be in the survey again. But if there are questions that we want to ask the public to get their support on, I think, Kathy, the Commission on Aging, I'm all ears and would encourage it to give us
what you think would be good questions to get input from the public on.
Okay. I think that, yes, we do need to have questions out there for them. Yes, absolutely. Because
when we get the answer to questions and the public is behind an initiative, that gives us an awful lot of power, if you will, to go forward and pursue those. If nobody's enthused about it, then that's probably something that we most likely wouldn't be pursuing. But when it came time to discuss where would we build the senior center, the fact that we had an awful lot of input from the public that said we should build it behind town hall, I thought that was a real good thing and certainly swayed you know, carried the day as far as making the decision on where it should go. It was nice to have that data. I agree on that. Okay. Back to you, Hank. Sorry.
I guess to John. Yep. So I think we're, in terms of making the open space plan easily available, I think we can probably conclude that, you know, more could be done to to, you know, sort of promote it, highlight it, make it available to people. Although, obviously, it it is it is available on on town resources. Reference open space plan when reviewing development applications. This would be something that I think probably plan the Planning and Zoning Commission would be able to speak to. Again and again, insofar as there have been development applications, guys can Jed and members of Planning and Zoning and Eric can say Yeah, we really haven't had the
opportunity to do some of the good things that our plan of conservation had talked about there. The only subdivisions we've had are for maybe, you know, a two lot subdivision And or
so, it hasn't really come into play like we would hope it would with the bigger subdivision.
Think we'll be likely. I think we'll let be likely making some recommendations around that, you know, of mechanisms for reviewing various development act applications. Both from the P and Z, but also from the Inland Wetlands Commission's sense based on the natural resource inventory. So that is something I think we'll be addressing in our planning process. Okay. Thanks, Hank. Mhmm.
Okay. Next would be preserve carefully selected parcels to enhance existing open spaces. People felt that was very important, but not done yet. And again, that could be a matter of opportunism that some of these haven't become available or haven't been sort of bubbled up as options.
Still We made a shot for one large parcel based again on results from the Natural Resources Inventory and that was on it came up and we tried to put in a grant to through through the state's open space funding for matching funding. They pay up to 70 some percent or 80%, but unfortunately our we were able to submit an application. We had to pull it because the parcel actually sold.
Oh, that can happen. Yep. Grant grant can be a a slow a slow process. Mhmm. Okay. Permanently preserve additional two eighty four acres as open space. So that's a very specific number. I'd actually be a little bit curious on how that was arrived upon in the open space. I
can That was a number based on generally the state has a goal. I think it's 20. The state of Connecticut is trying to achieve a 21% of state land protected or preserved in open space. So a lot of towns adopt that as a metric, that 21%. If you look at our 2015 plan of conservation development, however, the open space calculations are somewhat at odds. There's two different numbers in there, but that was used to the existing. What they calculated is the existing acreage and open space. They calculated the delta from what it would take to to have 21% of the land preserved. So that's where they came up with the two eighty four. It would have been an additional two eighty four acres to get us to 21%. However, there's that open space analysis we're undertaking this now in the Commission. Depending on what you call open space. There are parcels that are private land that in the old plan were considered to be protected, but which are not necessarily protected. And they are actually mapped in some of the state databases as protected private open space, but they're not necessarily protected. And in fact, one of those parcels
is on the market now. Okay. So we're revisiting the whole open space piece and creating an entire an open space map just dedicated to Andover and actually going through and looking at all of the existing open space and really trying to get a more accurate number of what we really need to do and what our goal should be. Okay.
Yeah. I'd be I'd be curious to I'd be happy to be part of that discussion. I I think I've not to not to get on a tangent here, but I sort of wondered about that number, that 21%. And I obviously, as you said, Hank, a lot of towns take that as, okay. Let's see if we can get 21% in our town. But in a, you know, in a town like East Hartford or Manchester, you know, 21% isn't isn't reasonable. That's where Right. More people are. And so a town like Andover really could do 40% or or something like that or, you know, another town where I work in in Ballantown East. That's all State Forest. It's 75%
State Forest, So, you you know, rural places could, you know, be in excess, but I'd be curious to have those conversations with you. Yeah, I think we really have to look at, what is what's real, what
this is part of that. I think the recommendations and looking at it, part of it is actually really understanding what is true open space and what is not. So that's why we decided to create you know, really revisit that, you know, to deal with those discrepancies and create a dedicated open space and map in GIS for Andover because the existing ones, if you go to the, for example, the Capital Region Council of Governments, they'll still have some of those listed as those private lands as protected open space, and they're not. Some of them may have caveats in their deed restrictions, which we're trying to get at to see if that's true, But we're not sure that that's the case with all the, know, Camp Current, the Hartford Times camp, you know, the Hartford neighborhood centers. There's a number of them that are large parcels in private ownership in Connecticut,
which may or may not be actually permanently protected as open space.
Okay. Next is promote use of chapter four ninety in open space corridors. And for people who are unfamiliar of four ninety, it's a tax abatement program for people who put temporary, essentially a temporary promise to not develop a piece of land over a certain size in farm, forest, or open space. And so it encourages people to not develop because there's an attractive tax benefit because of it. Generally, people didn't know enough about it or thought that it wasn't complete but still important. And I do think, you know, just sort of public education, homeowner education, property owner education is an important component of that. Okay, so we can keep that there. Next is encourage board of selectmen to adopt open space plan, which would make all parcels available or eligible for PA four ninety. Sort of mix between unsure and not finished. And that's I I actually would wanna know a little bit more about that because, well, open well, guess open space there are three categories of PA four ninety, which is farmland, forest land, and open space. And farmland and forest land are pretty strictly defined and have acreage minimums. Mhmm. Open space does not. Open space is locally defined. And that, you know, so if if I I guess all all parcels, I'd be curious what that meant. So if anyone had some history with that,
I'd be curious how that came to be. Yeah, the town of Enfield just adopted an ordinance basically around that that doesn't have that does not have acreage restrictions. Think it's an interesting concept, and I think that and there's I believe is townwide. Think a question for Andover if we wanted to look at that is, you know, do you want to adopt that for just your open space corridors? You know, parcels within your open space corridors. You know, there's there's various permutations that you could have in in the ordinance, you know, is it, you know, adjacencies to existing open spaces, various ways that that I think that's one of the healthy discussions that could could occur, and that's the type of thing I think I'm hoping that in our Commission we'll be able to make some recommendations but you know, once we get to that stage about some of that, you know, we've been looking at various things like one of our Commission members is very familiar with the NRCS programs, which allow landowners to actually earn, you know, make some money off some of the parcels by doing some habitat management and clearing. And there's, you know, there's various restrictions associated with some of those with acreage and so forth.
But there's there's various ways to look at this that would be beneficial to landowners. Some of the question is, is do you know? Do we want to really look at where where those occur within town or do we want to be more more comprehensive? So those discussions I think are common. We'll try to do is sort of outline the opportunities and give some recommendations, but then obviously we'll need input from PNC and variety of folks and yourself, John and and others to sort of weigh in on which way we want to go as a town on those. So we want to sort of put out. Here's our thoughts and here's sort of some of the world that this occur could potentially occur and how it dovetails to the goals of chapter eight, you know, the planet in the planet conservation development. Mhmm. Yeah. No. I think that yeah. That's great.
And, yeah, I think I would I would just wanna dig down and and maybe maybe the phrase that I that I highlighted here is all parcels is the thing you wanna revisit. Because again, I mean, if that truly meant all, and let's say you had a 60,000 square foot lot, which is basically the minimum size for the area, cannot be subdivided at this point, It's essentially done being developed. There's no, it's not open space. It's a house lot. Presumably that one would not be eligible. But as you say, Hank, maybe targeting corridors, maybe targeting sort of type. Yeah, I think we'd need to look at it more strategically.
Great. John, the other thing to keep in mind is that currently the valuation on additional land, I'll give you an example for me, I mean, own a piece of land that's, oh, I don't know, around five acres. So I have a buildable lot and then I have some amount of excess acreage. That excess acreage right now is only assessed at like $1,400 an acre. So, you know, in that range that we're talking about, there's not a really big tax burden on that. There's some, but I'm just not sure how the open space, you know, the PA four ninety, much traction you'd really get with that.
Well, you enrolled in four ninety for your excess land? No.
Oh, so it's just sort of it's essentially granted freely?
No. It's not granted freely. It's just it's the acknowledgment that you know, let's say you have a house on a piece of land. Yeah. I mean, the critical factor of that is that it's a buildable lot and the assessment doesn't change a lot, whether it's a 60,000 square foot or 240,000 square foot parcel, because those lots both sell for roughly the same amount at market value. The way the assessor's office deals with it is you basically get assessed in the building lot and then you get assessed for excess land as part of that, you know, in addition to that. And that assessment is not very high, which makes going to PA four ninety, I mean, if you got 30 acres, it's helpful. But if you got four or five, it's probably not.
Yeah, I think Eric, it's really targeted at the larger land. I mean, really what what you my sense is you probably want to use it for larger. Acreages and more strategically in areas where you're really trying to preserve land. It gives it gives you a way to work with landowners to incentive incentivize open space protection in areas that you really want to target it, And usually that's associated with, you know, larger parcels of land. So I think, yeah, this this one we would probably sort of want to rethink in terms of Yeah. We need to think it through. Yeah. Exactly. And it's part and and it's also part of it has to be part of, there's various other tools, as I mentioned, like the NRCS programs, you know, where there's a variety of ways to sort of look at how do we incentivize open space. Because you're not going to get it all through acquisition. You're not going to get it all through conservation easements. So you have to look at sort of a diverse portfolio of actions to try to preserve it. And I think you have all the more reason to be fairly strategic on where you're trying to do that based on knowledge of the resources that are there, the values that are associated with those properties and this adjacency within the context on the landscape.
Okay. Alright. Let's go on on this one. So the next is purchase development rights for the post farm. That's a pretty straightforward yes or no thing. It seems that it hasn't been done yet, but it's still a priority. I don't know what the status of the post farm is. Is it still in play?
To be honest, I think the owner of the post farm has absolutely zero interest at this point in selling the development rights. So we can consider it a priority all we want, but I don't think it's going to happen.
Okay. But she's also expressed no interest in ever getting rid of that, and I think she's written out a slew of documents to her children, and her children's children,
that nothing is ever gonna happen to that property. He doesn't want to sell the development, right? Well, so then, maybe that, maybe it's, you know, that doesn't need to be a priority for the town to get, to make themselves involved in. See, Scott, that's, I mean, you know Scott, if she
is sort of documented if they're if they're passing this on and legally protecting it through the family through a trust or something where it can't be sold off and developed? Mean, I mean, it may be open. Maybe in essence open space, private open space. I mean, do you think that's the case or not?
Yeah, time I talked to her a lot. I'll ask her that question, Hank. Yeah, because that I mean, that's the that
sometimes happens where you have a family that has no one. You know, they they value the land. They don't want necessarily the town. They have it or a land trust or somebody else they, but they they sort of restrict what the family members can do down the chain. You know that it needs to maintain. You know they can live there. They can have a residence and they can use it for various functions, but it can't really be developed or you know, depending on on the stewardship that they they propose. But that I mean, if that's the case, it's worth knowing that because it takes off our our effort to try to some other way to preserve it and we can actually count it as open space. That could open space. So it would be worth it would be worth knowing that if you could find out more information on how they may be, storing that for future generations, that would be important to know.
I I'll talk to her about it, Hank, next time I talk to Great. Appreciate it.
Okay. Next would be promote access to the Hop River. Generally speaking, people thought it was certainly important, and and most thought or the plurality thought, that it had been undertaken. I'll I'll open that for comment.
Well, from the Conservation Commission standpoint, I mean, you know, that's one of the goals. This is is a good one because one of the things we'll have to look at as we're looking at the conservation of natural resources is where there may be challenges associated with recommendations that we might have. And one of them is going to be around access. There's certain areas, certain places that it makes sense to have public access because it will have a minimal no or minimal impact on the natural resource, But then there's other times when public access may have an impact on the resource. So we want to be careful on I think we want to be careful about statements like broad statements like promote access to the Hop River, where appropriate, you know, things like that. So I think that, you know, and you know, we'll talk a little bit about that in the in our in our recommendations. And there's been some of that, you know, we there was an environmental routine review team review of parcels that were transferred to from a land trust to the town over off of Burnack Brook that were adjacent to some existing town property, and there was a private landowner who also donated some acreage that was contiguous with that, and one of the recommendations in that case was based from the RT team was this is a pretty interior intact system
on a high quality stream, so we don't really recommend doing high level trail development or access use of this heavily. You know this this function of this is value of this is best left in this way versus there might be other areas where you know it's great to have trails through here. There's some, you know, nice features to talk about and will have minimal impact. Good example of that is one that I think is pending with P and with folks is Joshua's trust, which is just taken over a piece over off of Skinner Hill Rd that's adjacent to townland that they're looking at potentially putting some access in a trail where it makes sense. I mean, would increase access. I mean, the resources that are there would be minimally impacted by trails or the development of a small parking lot there. So I mean, I think we have to be careful of making sure that we don't, you know, have what I like to call mandates across purposes. We wanna have the access and the recreation, but we don't wanna have it at the expense of something else.
So we we have to be careful and at some point in our in the plan we're going to need to look at where there's some of these conflicts arise and see how we, you know, as a town decide we want to handle those.
Yeah, I can kind of give him that you know a high mark because of the work that was done over by the Veterans Memorial Park with the trails and the access to the river over that way.
Yeah, and there's some great areas to access on the, you know, there's you know. Absolutely it's a it's a gem of a resource, but there are section that the river is is not a uniform entity. There are sections of it that are more sensitive than other sections, so you know that. So there's there's there's opportunities for both. It's just that we have to be careful, and that's why it's important to know. That's why we do the NRI to sort of know, you know, where these resources are and where there's potential opportunities or potential conflicts.
Yeah, so there's a lot of, obviously, a lot of refinement to be done in
these areas. Yeah, I mean, especially around the Hop River because it's the area that's really, I mean, think about it, for economic development, you know, commercial development, for a lot of things, It's it's a it's basically a magnet for many of the values that we have as a community. We have the rail trail that runs through it, so it's one of those areas that really I think requires a very strategic look to balance those those competing interests because it there's a you know there's multiple values to that location and and and it's it's you know it's position on on Route 6 and it's position along the rail trail and you know other amenities that are already there. But there's also some pretty sensitive ecological resources associated with that system.
Okay. And last one here, we have consider making ARD subdivisions mandatory in open space corridors. And this was sort of across the board a lot of uncertainty, and I would be happy to hear more about this.
So John, on that one, I item would have said consider making ARD open space subdivisions mandatory in open space corridors. I thought our regulations kind of gave planning and zoning authority to almost, you know, put the open space place where it makes the most sense. So I thought we were in good shape there. What's your sense on that, Eric? It is in good shape. I
do agree that right now the way it works is that if you have a reasonably large chunk of land, which is 10 acres and up, that an ARD open space subdivision is the default arrangement. And if you want to do a conventional subdivision, it is by special permit. I mean, you could go all the way and say, it's just we're not even going to consider it for special permit in the open space quarters. That's fine too. But the way it's written is if the commission does a good job of reviewing those applications, that could be considered already done.
Yeah. And again, we haven't had a 10 acre subdivision come before us in the last several years. Yeah.
So we haven't done it, but I think our colleagues are in pretty good right. Okay. Great. Yep.
So I I don't know. Other other last minute thoughts on this before we move on? I'm I'm happy to hear them.
Well, Hank wanted to present just a few slides on the work that's done, and after he's done, we just had a couple of questions on the timeline.
Hank, you should be able to share. Can I share? Yep. All right. Can folks see that? Let me just share. Okay.
So, know, we basically chapter eight is the, you know, from the 2015
plan was protecting natural resources and open space plan. We Frank, I don't think we're seeing that yet. No, we still don't see it. Really? Yeah. All right. And you gave me share capability?
Let's see. Let's try it. Yeah. If you hit share I'm
getting there. Yep. Let's see if we can get it. Just see if this works.
See it now? There we go. It's just started. Yep. There we go. Alright. You
got it? Yep. Yes. Alright. There we go. Alright. So basically, with the commission, we decided to really go back and relook at Chapter eight and realizing that the NRI wasn't done, we decided to undertake the NRI. What is NRI Hank? Natural, I'm sorry, Natural Resource Inventory. Okay, yep. So because that's a key sort of starting point. So what we have done is we the key question is what important natural resources occur in town and where do they occur? So the action we undertook was to complete a natural resource inventory, which has been completed. And just so you know, part of the challenge of doing that was it took us a while to identify a GIS platform that we could use because we didn't have, you know, we're a small town, so we don't have our own internal GIS or, you know, that's kind of a cumbersome thing to maintain. So we're using the free platform available from ArcGIS, which is very good, but it limits sort of calculations, but you can do a lot of really good mapping. And we also created so you're also aware we created some of our own data layers through some joint in one case through a joint initiative with the Conservation Commission and the Inland Wetland Commission to map fertile pools in town. We And actually recruited residents and we trained them to do the biological surveys and we quality controlled that to get some biological data to guide us. And we worked with Yukon to help with the more of the advanced GIS calculations that we needed to do. So that's been done. So the second key piece of the plan is to look at what open space do we have and how well is it protected.
So that gets back to some of the discussion we already were having. So, you know, there were as I said, there were discrepancies in the statistics presented in 2015, and depending on what was considered to be open space and what was not considered to be open space. And we decided to basically start from scratch and go back and create our own map in that GIS layer. Will be completed by December 31. We have, I think, three or four parcels that are private parcels that we're trying to figure out if they actually are protected or not. That's what's kind of holding that up. At the end of this presentation, I'll show you actually a draft map that we have that'll sort of show you what we have. So those two pieces are well at one done and one is nearly complete. Based on those two things, the question is, how do natural resources and existing open space align? So so the action there is to review and revise the open space corridors that were mapped in 2015. They did a pretty good job in 2015 of mapping three open space corridors, so we we went back and revisited those corridors based on the natural resource inventory. And we made some we have made some minor adjustments to the corridors to which you know we'll we'll present as a recommendation to changes to those corridors, but pretty much they follow similar outlines as the previous ones with a few minor adjustments here and there, we'll get into.
The next one is what are the priorities for open space and natural resource conservation? And this is one area where in 2015, the plan focused heavily on open space acquisition and not necessarily there wasn't a full comprehensive NRI done, that's resource inventory done. So the goals were not as clear. They were just pretty much focused on open space. So we have already established, will have been complete by the end of this month, a draft series of goals that we're using to establish clear open space acquisition and natural resource conservation goals, so that those can be used to really guide some decisions. And obviously, those are recommendations that we'll be seeking input on. And that will be done by the end of October, our draft version of that.
And then finally, the next question is how do we move forward to achieve these goals? And those are the recommendations that we'll make based on looking at our town regulations, looking at some of these policies like John was sharing with us, you know, do we do four ninety? Where do we do that? You know, our our Upland review areas around wetlands adequate. You know there's a variety of different things or do. Can we use the NRCS program to promote that to land owners as opportunities to enhance management and forest land that's held by large land owners or agricultural lands? There's a variety of things that we'll look at and
based on the information that we have and the mapping that we've done to make draft recommendations for the plan. As part of that, we've already identified the key stakeholders and a suite of conservation tools that are typically used. So we have that sort of waiting for that process. That is that the completion of that will, I suspect, will take several months because we're just wrapping up. We won't begin that until January. My sense is that we won't be able to complete that and probably until the spring, the end of the spring, but I wanted to get a better. Our Commission needs to get a better sense of the timetable for the the preparation of the plan of conservation development so that we can line up with completion of some of these the narratives and reviews of the drafts and so forth. So we'll need to we'll need to sort of understand that. So that's sort of the process that we're going. We've been doing this for a couple of years now. A lot of the front end was obviously on the natural resource inventory. We're now moving quickly through the goals and and getting into the recommendations phase of it. I have a couple of quick maps just to show you, and these are draft.
This, for example, is the draft open space map that we've created for Andover, and as I mentioned, we felt the need to do that because if you look at the map in Crogg, our regional council governments, or the state DEP map, they include private open space that we don't believe is actually open space. So we're we're you see the ones that are outlined in red with the with the dotted lines around the perimeters. Those are ones that we're evaluating to see if they are in fact open space. We've already removed some that we know are not the old camp current, is up there in the sort of northern section that that's clearly is not protected open space. So this and the corridors you can see are the black outline. So those are the open space corridors that follow pretty similar to what was included in the 2015 with some adjustments. So that's an example of and the sort of tan orange lines underneath it all is the Crogg parcel map. So those are all the town parcels.
Hank, can you take your cursor and just run it through the
various corridors? Because I see Yeah. I can come up with what might be four corridors in there. Okay. Yeah. It's a little dicey. So this one over here is called the Western Or Eastern Highlands Corridor, and basically it's this area here. This big area here. Okay, and that's all Nathan Hale State Forest right here. In the 2015 plan, this quarter went all the way down like through here, which didn't make it. Okay, that's yes. That's why I was confused. Okay, yes, it didn't make ecological sense, Jed, because if you look and we have some data that shows this, this is the Hop River quarter. This narrow one in the middle because this area here along the Hop River is very ecologically different. It's similar right along here. It's very different than the uplands. So we basically took followed the ecological lines for the Hop River and carved that out. So that's what happens there. Okay? So that was pretty much the adjustments there. And I think we swung this one out to catch existing open space that wasn't caught in the previous plan.
We also swung this one out to catch the Skunkamug River, I believe, was part of the adjustment on the Hop River. And then we have over here is the Western Corridor and this section. This is all Bishop Swamp Wildlife Management Area. This is the Camp Coyote. Harper Neighborhood Centers owns that. We try to figure out if that's protected or not. The blue, the light blue, by the way, are town owned parcels. And if you remember, some of since 2015, some previously state owned land is now town owned land. Like, you see this narrow strip? That's an old Route 6 alignment corridor. It's owned by the town now. I believe it was all transferred, if I'm not mistaken. Correct, Eric? All but I think one parcel. That's correct. Yeah. So and then this is this is land trust land. This is the piece that Joshua's trust just picked up. It was several land trusts before that. So the blue ones are all town open space lands. So we tried to catch all of those. So we'll so that's I'll give you an example of and from this, we'll be able to calculate more accurate statistics once we figure out the the other properties. And then just to give you an example, this is a core forest habitat map, which we created using data from the DEP and University of Connecticut. There is an error here, which I cannot figure out for the life of me. This breaks down Core Forest into three categories,
large, medium, and small. I don't know why that disappeared. Here we go. Oh, I see why. Hold on. Sorry. There we go. It breaks them into three categories, large, medium, and small. If you look at this one over here, this is actually large. That's Nathan Hale. It shows up large on the GIS, but when I save it as a map for here, for some reason, it colors it in yellow as a small one. I don't know why. It's just some weird transcription error. So it's actually a large greater than 500 acre one, and the only other one is here, which most of the property is actually over in Bolton. So this is an example of a data set that we use when we and we layer various data sets on to determine where there are important resources and, you know, where they sort of cluster. It helps us prioritize open space. It helps us get a sense of, you know, how we might work with landowners in areas associated with those, how we might build out on some of those areas. So this is just one example of a data set that we've been using, and there are, I would say, at least two dozen different data sets that we've probably three or four that we've created from data, and the rest are available publicly through the DEP or through the University of Connecticut or through
CROP. So that's sort of our process and where we are.
Okay, going back to your question, Hank, on the timeline in that, you are way ahead of the timeline. So that's good news, really great news what the Conservation Commission is doing with respect to ownership of that particular chapter in that. And that's certainly a good news story. We will not issue the plan until 2025. We've got some time to go.
But if you said that is there a set sort of schedule of milestones where it says jeez we need we want to draft the final draft by X. You know a preliminary draft by Y. Know? I'm trying to get a sense of you know where we need because we still have some work. Obviously, so a lot of work to do and I just want to have a sense of don't necessarily need it tonight by the way, but at some point you know know, that will be helpful to our schedule from scheduling standpoint. And we're also very interested in how plans of how we will interface with, you know, the general public? Is there plans to do presentations or put stuff out online? I'm not sure what because obviously we'll need to get public input on various things at some point, as well as other commissions' input. So I'm just trying to get a sense of where we might go on all of that.
And I think you know once. Once the train starts moving. It'll be a fairly defined schedule. Okay. But we're, you know, I think we're trying to light off the boiler here and it's going to take a while to get steam in the boiler to get the train leaving. And so, you know, John and I have been talking about, how is it going to work? I think the hardest part is going to be coming up with questions to ask the public to get support on what to put in the POCD and that sort of thing. I don't know how that part goes. John and I have talked about having a public hearing before we put out the survey to get any feedback on what haven't we asked in the survey that we would like the town people think that we ought to get input on from them. And then after we're done with the survey, we'll have another public meeting to go through the results of the survey. And after we get all that data and we get with the commission, this commission, your commission, Commission on Aging, things are the important aspects of the POCD, if you will, we'll start marrying all those together. And John will whip out a masterpiece
that we all fall in love with and then we'll issue it. Yeah,
and John, I think one piece to me that the one that it's. Somewhat challenging and I see tends to fall through the cracks in a lot of plans that I've seen done is, you know, we have different like we're running down. We're art. You know, we're rolling down the tracks. Know there are other commissions and committees that are rolling down, you know, rolling down the tracks at various levels, but we're all sort of in our silos. So which is good because you gotta wrap your arms, you know, focus and wrap your arms and head around things. But at some point I want to make sure we address the mandates across cross purposes because you know I could see you know if there's a group that's looking at recreational or looking at access or economic development. You know they may be recommending things that are in in areas or locations or in ways or approaches that are counter to, you know that rub up against something that we may be recommending.
And I want to make sure we leave time for, you know, sort of working those challenges out, seeing those and working those out, you know. So you follow where I'm going with that? Yep,
I think there will be. Yeah. It's a point well taken, and that's why we're starting to engage with the different commissions this early on where we're really trying to review where are we with respect to the last one, what's in the last one, so we have a good starting point going forward. And I think those discussions have been good. If nothing more than to arm you with the fact that you you better watch what those planning and zoning guys are up to because you've got your interests
at stake. That's why I check your agenda and the IWWC agenda all the time. Yeah.
Think some of this, you know, will be worked out. It's, you know, I think it's important and proper for conservation to have their priority goals and their priority areas. But, you know, and there will be, you know, probably times where EDC's priority areas may bump up against and I'm thinking particularly the Hot River area, which is, you know, for much of it also, one of the Route 6 corridor. So that's, then that's, you know, that's just a job of balancing, you know, is if you're going to develop it, you know, obviously it's a key resource. And so develop it with some sensitivity, You know, if, like and for instance, I think we were some of the one of the pieces we were talking about is the I don't know if it's called the Andover Plaza, the little commercial strip with And it's what it's called. Which is, you know, right along the Hop River and right along the Hop River Trail. And, you know, a redevelopment of that is obviously important to economic development and to to business growth, but it has a lot of potential as, you know, potentially a trailhead or potentially a, you know, a recreation and open space sort of corridor entry and way. So it's a matter of kind of balancing resources and trying to do things sensitive to the resource that it's proximate to.
Right, exactly. And I think that that's, I mean, you know, I think we can catch things. You know, some of this is best caught at the, you know, the planning stage when the projects are underway, but it's better to have, it's good to have sort of the goals and objectives right up front. And you know you can also build in some of the approaches to that so you could recommend. For example, you could recommend best development practices around vernal pools for see, we already have those mapped now. So we could recommend a suite of best development practices. So if there were development proposed in areas that could be used by the Wetland Commission to guide their review as they're reviewing applications. So the map would trigger, okay, here's where this could this is this is a parcel that has this. Here's the information, and then here's the approaches that we're looking that help guides a sensitive development around that that resource.
Right. And I I know again, I think that's not not incompatible at all, and that's why, you know, having having good mapping to to review, you know, for proposals or or proactively for seeking opportunities is the way to go. So, yeah. I think, you know, obviously, are, as Jed said, you are well ahead of the overall curve of writing this plan, but I think the hope is that it will be relatively easy to just plug it in and then integrate other parts of the plan with it as we go. So wouldn't worry about your pace. I wouldn't slow yourself down artificially. We were No, we're not slowing down. Not
to push the issue of the timeline, but I'm wondering, should there be a separate working group or steering committee that meets other than just in commission meetings? Because it seems like it's a smaller group might go a little quicker and not be mixed in with the regular commission meetings. Have you considered that?
We have considered that. We haven't got far enough. We're just trying to understand where we are, and then we'll figure out where we're going to go. I would appreciate. And at that point, maybe we'll get in there. But I thought for the Planning and Zoning Commission, you know, we each needed to go through what we're doing now. So we're not at the point yet where we should be breaking down into smaller working groups or any of that stuff. Okay. But certainly appreciate the work that the Conservation Commission is doing and thank you both for attending tonight and we will my hope is to keep you actively engaged in the process as we build it going forward. So There. We'll try. Sounds great. Hank Hank,
I I would also like to thank you for all and your all your partners for all your hard work. I was very impressed with all that mapping. I I love maps and mapping. Very good job. Yep. Thank you.
Okay. So let's let's jump back in. We have one more topic to go through, one more set of goals. And actually, Marina, if you could allow me to share my screen again, I'll bring that back up. And that was the planning for a sense of place. Oh, there we go. Okay. Thank you. Alright. So we are here. This is planning creating identity in a sense of place, the last seven items. Can people see that again? Yep.
Great. So above all issues, protect Andover's quality of life. That was partially complete or, you know, some people felt it was complete, but still very important. No doubt about this. Nobody had any questions. It seemed like it was absolutely a continued priority, essentially as an ongoing thing.
So what does that actually mean? The problem is nobody can agree on what are the elements to establishing a good quality of life.
I'll admit not recalling exactly what was in the text of the section that discussed this, if there was any discussion.
Well, think it's the rural character of the town. That's what I keep seeing written up there. That's what brought me to Andover.
And I mean, there are other elements there. So if you look down farther, there's historic resources, there's the Hop River, there's farmland protection, there's scenic vistas, etcetera. I mean, all of those may be, you know, by context wrapped into that. But it's a good point, Eric.
Certainly in the last questionnaire that went out, you know, the people of the town like they like single the family homes, and they like the wide open spaces. They don't like, they don't want to be congested.
Right. So we'll keep that one on the list, but maybe do a better job of fleshing it out. The next being protect historic resources and educate the public about Andover's history. That was felt important, but not complete. I think more work to be done there. I don't know if anyone has a comment on that.
No? I'm not really a big fan of that personally. Say again, Eric? I said I'm not really a big fan of that personally.
Yeah. I mean, we've got our little museum that I think is underutilized.
But I think there's always the question about how much emphasis do you want to put on the historic nature of something, you know, and it's always the question about preservation versus, you know, you go. I think the town has kind of made it fairly clear in the past that they really didn't want to consider a historic, essentially historic district zoning. Although we do have a historic district and we have a number of historic structures. But I also think that, you know, that in some cases impedes what the town really wants and can do with those areas. So it's a question of balancing historical resources with development and with other things that the town and community wants.
I think, you know, as I look at, it's not really quality of life, but Andover, when you drive down Route 6 and you see all these farms there, And Route 6 is where we would have any development if that were to come to be. And so I think when people talk about protecting the quality of life, a lot of folks aren't keen on developing out there where you're going to impact do anything to take away the vistas that are scenic Andover as you're driving down Route 6. And I think that's a conflict. Good conflict.
Okay. The next being improved access to the Hop River, comma, acquire public access easements along the river. Generally speaking, not complete or not sure, but important. Don't know, Eric, you probably have the best sense of progress that's happened along those lines.
I would say one of the town's long term goals is to control as much of the Hop River as possible through either preservation easements or outright ownership of land that is adjacent to the river. Just simply because it is an important natural resource and balancing both the public access with just the natural resource preservation of the Hop. That's how I would put it.
Okay. Next is preserve rural character, promote farmland preservation, be a chapter four ninety taxation, preservation of fields and stone walls, sort of a grab bag of community character stuff. Generally felt to be important, but essentially ongoing or not not complete. That seems, you know, if there's if there's a a conservation end of this to the conservation and development, this is a sort of a a a laundry list of of things to flag. I guess my question in terms of well, no. This is not it's really not just it's not much zoning at all, was gonna say, in terms of of conservation priorities for, you know, development reviews and and protection during during development applications, a lot of this actually wouldn't be zoning, but it it would be a grab bag of tax policy, open space, money set aside, working with the state on farmer preservation is a whole it's a whole grab bag of of different implementation. And I don't know. I I would say this really ought to be broken down into component parts going forward because I think they're probably not all appropriate to be equally emphasized.
Yeah, going back to Hank, you know, on the conservation one where we were talking about doing something with the post farm, the development rights or whatever, there's probably other farms along Route 6 that we feel the same way about. And we almost need to have a battle plan that one of them, sounds like it's not going to be the post farm, but another one of these farms, you know, goes on the market, what do we want to do about it?
Well, yeah, so it's a matter of being ready to be opportunistic when one of these things hits the market, as well as as well as reaching out, as, you know, as as Scott had said he would do for the for the farm, you know, being proactive on some of these targeted properties, certainly. Okay. Next, protect scenic vistas and create gateways into Andover, where we are again, same sort of ongoing, uncertain about progress. I mean, it's really that that kind of rolls into the other one, rural character. And and, I mean, Eric, we are we are working on a gateway sign.
I think all these things are just aspects of the quality of life. Mhmm.
So there's a couple that that were basically considered. The last two are considered a scenic roads ordinance and consider a demolition delay. Some uncertain, not sure that it's still a priority. And the last one, again, not sure where things stand. So I would turn to our resident ordinance expert and Eric and see where we stand with these two things and if they're still relevant.
So we've never really considered seriously adding a demolition delay ordinance. Yeah, state statute does allow you to put a pretty considerable pause and have a more detailed review mechanism. You know, the town has one. Unfortunately, it's called SHPO. For properties that are on the National Register?
Well, for any property that's more than 50 years old. Don't charge those provisions for at least a review, if it's something the municipality is doing. I'm not sure that's really relevant. Just don't know that there's enough. You know, think demolition delay ordinances are important when you have historic areas that are under high development pressure where people are likely to turn down, tear down some old thing, build something new. Right. And I just, I'm not the only entity that I know of that's contemplating tearing down something old to build new is the town. So
I'm just not sure that that's necessary, but maybe that's a consideration you would want to raise with the town's historian.
Yeah, well, think it's an important, I think the job of this commission is to kind of balance those interests. Like you ask a historian, Should we protect historic things? I think the answer is pretty much going to be yes. Just as, you know, if you ask someone from economic development, Should we be encouraging more construction? And the answer is probably yes. But it's a bit of a balancing of interests. If So it's not really a priority, if there's not really something that that you know, there's a limited number of things that the town can do. And if historic properties aren't really threatened, and if it would just create more hassles for, you know, average citizens than than benefits the town, that's something to to to consider. And then that same would go with scenic roads ordinance. I know a number of communities do have them, and and, frankly, a lot of times, public works crews are the are the the biggest opponents because it it tends to hamstring
what what town crews can do to maintain conditions of the road. But I would be happy to get some input on that. I don't think we're gonna put today. Yeah. Okay.
I don't think that's really a priority for the town at this point. Yep. I mean, we have some some very scenic roads? Yes. Cider Mill Road would be the classic example I think of. But are we necessarily gonna look at an ordinance to preserve them? Probably not. No,
I think that's important input that, and, you know, in certain cases, obviously, you know, Cider Mill Road in some parts of it are kind of in rough shape, but you'd wanna be able to have the freedom to obviously maintain sort of the overall nature, development density, you know, shoulders, slopes, that sort of thing, but you don't wanna be hamstrung from making it safe and up to date. Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, that is your list. Okay. And I can circulate that back through everyone with this markup, but I think that's a very good catch up of where we are at right now.
Any comments by any of the other commission members at this point before we go on to the next item?
I've been making some notes here as we go through this. And I see some, probably like a conundrum in that, I know some people like to get homes on larger lots, two, three, four acres, yet that takes up a lot of land. And, if we want open space, you are losing the open space because they have individual lots. If we allowed smaller lots than what we currently allow, You'd have smaller, more compact lots. You'd have more open space available. Yet right now, we don't allow that. And some of the town owned land What do you mean we don't allow that, Ian?
Well, I know that we have to have, what is it, like 1.3 acres to build on?
We were to do an open space subdivision, we can go down maybe half an acre or something to allow the big open space. So that Okay. Because we haven't dealt with that, so I wasn't We familiar have not dealt with that, yes. Unfortunately, there's been no development come in to where we actually get to go out and see how those do. But I think the zoning's there to allow us to keep a big spot of a 10 acre or more partial as open space, and then we allow it to go into smaller lots. But as you say, there are people that like to have the three to five acre lots. And I'm sure the developers we just need to get a developer in here that we can work with to see what it is that they'd want to do. But I do think we have a lot of flexibility built into our regs. We just haven't seen a developer come in and wants to do a development, so we got to see how it played out.
Yeah. And I'm thinking that with the survey questions pointing out in the future, what's the percentage of seniors in this town right now? Is it like 40% or isn't it that high yet? I don't know.
I don't know either. We're significantly above the average for the percentage of seniors. We're one of the older populations. And so that's why I keep thinking that some senior housing with smaller lots with
a big chunk of open space next to it would be ideal. Right.
And that's what an ARD open space subdivision is, Jed. Yep,
but we've got that PRD, and again I don't know what it is, but it's specifically for older residents and that allows significantly more density than even the open space subdivision. I see. Okay, great. Yeah, does that,
you know, it would really be I think PRD stands for planned residential development and there might be for older citizens or something, I don't know.
And just to answer your question, just threw this up on the screen. Oh, okay. All right, so actually I'm gonna back up here. Yeah, this compares Andover to Tollin County and Connecticut as a whole. If you look at the median age in Andover, it's 45.8. It's a full six years older than the state in general. And then if you look at our population breakdown, which is this table over here on the left, or the bar chart Mhmm. The by by plurality, the the actually, the three the two largest demographic groups in Andover are fifty to fifty nine, sixty to sixty nine, and 10% is 70. So you've got ten, twenty five, 37. Basically almost 40% is 50.
So it's getting up there. Anyway, just to answer that question. They
might be their responses of that age group would probably be for having a more manageable housing, smaller size and easier to care for yards and that kind of thing. That's what I keep thinking.
I think there's gotta be a demand here for that kind of stuff. Yeah, downsizing
in in town. In town. Thank thank you Anne. Yeah. Any other comments or questions by the other Commission members? Hearing none, we'll move on to the item, which is an update on the gravel pit. Jim?
Really no progress here. I did contact I attempted to contact Mark Brandts. Didn't hear from eventually, I did hear from his another attorney at the firm, Alan Alan Cortower. And he we spoke at length, I sent him to the website for a lot of information. I was hoping that Mark was gonna continue Mark is probably perhaps easing into retirement a little more and sanding off projects. So Alan's in the process of looking at it, and I have not heard from spoke a week ago, but I haven't heard from him since then. But that's all I got on it. That's it. Okay.
Any questions for Jim? I know we were all hoping for a little bit more engagement by Mark Branch on that issue at this point, but that's where we are. Okay, I'm going to move on to item C.
Sorry, this is Leanne. I had muted myself. Okay, yep. Jim, what exactly does that mean? I mean, Mark was I think it was at our December meeting, Mark was pretty adamant about steps we took then. And now this is October of the following year, and we haven't made much progress with the applicant. And they pretty much seem to don't want to do anything, And that's become our problem. I don't think it should be our problem. In the meantime, the applicant's engineer is also in the process of retiring. So, sounds as if Mark hasn't been very direct about whether or not he actually sees himself coming back to work with us or is you mentioned someone named Alan. Did you give his last name? Alan?
I forget it. It begins with C. Alan Quarto, I think.
You two have been in touch with each other or not?
Yes. Yeah. He when I I'd sent Mark a number of emails and called him and, did not hear from him, which is surprising because he's he's normally very good. And then I did get an email from Alan saying that he was he would be working with me on this. And we went over the the project. I did ask if Mark was would be coming back because I was hoping to deal with Mark because he's he has dealt with this, and he he knows he knows all about the whole project, and he was he was ready to move forward, you know, way back when last year. So that's where I am. I mean, he Mark basically handed it over, and now I'm working with Alan. I think he's just trying to get it
to get things I mean, he I suspect it's not the only thing that he was hand was handed off to him. He's probably just trying to get a handle on everything.
So do you foresee him doing his own site walk or do you think he has enough from the documentation and then, you know, they have been having access to meetings online and things like that?
Well, I personally think he has enough information. I just I'm not sure what direction he's I don't know whether he wants to move forward and call the bond, which I suspect is probably the case or at least indicate that that's where we're going. I mean, it's just just it's a legal strategy that he has to put forward.
I'm sorry? Is there any reason do you think there's any reason why we wouldn't call the bond?
We wouldn't? Are you saying is there any reason we wouldn't or would? Wouldn't. Wouldn't.
No, I think that's how you said it. Go ahead. No, I that's the course of action.
Yeah, I mean, that's certainly an option. I just don't know whether it's the best option.
Yeah. Do you remember when Mark was on on with us last?
I do not. No. And I mean My concern right right now is is he okay? You know? Yeah. I sent him an email this morning and, you know didn't get the out of office thing which when he's normally not in or any response to it and that's not like him. And so my concern at this point is you know how's he doing and I have a way of, figuring that out, informally, and I might go that route here soon.
Well, I think what Leanne was trying to get at was the last time we had Mark at our meeting, I thought that he said, you know, the next day he was going to find out about the bond. And I believe it was, you know, six or eight months ago that he was on.
Yep, I think we did find out about the bond.
Yeah, did provide him a copy of the bond at some point.
So, Jim, do you think did you leave it with Alan, that he's gonna get back to you?
Yes. I actually, I I've I've been out of town. I sort of got stranded out of town without much material here. I hope to get back to town tomorrow, and I'll give him a call then. Okay. He may have emailed me. He may have emailed me in the past day or two. I just I haven't had access to my email.
Okay. Because I I wasn't at the last meeting, but I did listen to it on YouTube. And, apparently, the applicant is not wanting to do much of anything, which isn't really a surprise. So I don't think we need to alter what we're trying to do just because he doesn't want to do much of anything, not the land sold.
Yeah. I mean, he came back you know, I was I was looking to see if he had anything to offer that in the form of a compromise, it it didn't appear that he did. Based on that he did what?
Based on the email that that he sent, he wasn't it didn't look like he had any intent to to move to compromise at all to to move towards compliance with the with the plan. Kind of drew the line in the sand as far as I could tell.
Okay. Well, I think that's our that's basically our issue because I don't think it's something going to compromise because he doesn't want to comply with things that have been talked about for what is now several years. I'm in agreement with that. That's the impression that other people have? Yes. And
I think Jim is trying to go that direction. We just haven't had any response back from Mark for whatever reason and we don't know why not. We got to go figure that part out.
Okay. No, I understand that and I certainly hope he's okay too, especially if he's usually very prompt about this. It's just that, you know, it has gone on for a while, and I don't because this is up in the air between the two attorneys now, you know, I just don't want to see us making any fundamental changes or even maybe even slight changes because we have been at this for so long.
Yes, I think when I heard one of your concerns, Leanne, was the word compromise. And I think if there was probably any room for compromise, it would be if he had a buyer and if they were going to develop the site, they wouldn't need to put topsoil down on the place that they were going to immediately pull the topsoil off of so that they could develop the place or something that might make sense there. And so we were hoping that the property owner would come back with some kind of story that made some kind of sense, but we haven't gotten any of that. And so we've got to take the assumption that the property could be on the market for a while. We need to stabilize it and take action to do that.
Yeah, I guess my point is it's not up to us to help him sell it. Right. And we also don't know if it were sold, what the new person would do with it. And we don't want to go through this again with somebody else who doesn't want to do it either. Absolutely.
Mean, who purchased the property and develops it is going to come before the Commission with this application for a site plan or special permit.
My concern is we already have that. And as I said, it's been going on for several years, as we all know. Now
we're kind of in between two attorneys, and we're hoping that the first attorney is okay. He's just, you know, maybe phasing out his workload or something, and we just haven't been told that in so many words. And at least we have a new contact person, but the fact remains that it's still up in the air and the applicant hasn't made any move that we've heard about Do anymore anymore at all.
I mean, I can say is I hope to have. Know,
feedback from Alan that I can share with the commission at the next meeting.
Okay. Well, that would be ideal. So we're going to leave it for tonight. That's the hope that we're obviously going to have a month for Jim and Alan to make some progress, you know, between the two of them and and, you know, try to move along.
What I can see that happening if they do sell it is the new buyer would just say that that was the previous owner. I didn't need to have to do that.
There is a copy of the letter that talks about having to restore the site in the file so anybody who's buying that should see that it is not where it needs to be and there's an outstanding zoning violation. There's
a notice in the land records, yes, for the very purpose, this very reason.
That was my impression. Think that's one of the things that Mark was acting on, that he was ready to go forward with last winter. And then you know there may have been one or two meetings where we meant to have him and we didn't for some reason. But again I'm just concerned that this has been going on for a long time. Applicant hasn't wanted to do much of anything. So, one, again, it's not up to us to help them sell the property, and if the property is sold to somebody else, I just don't want to start all over again. Yep, you're exactly right, Leanne. And
I think we all share the same thoughts. Nobody's happy with where we are.
Okay, so we're going to leave it for now. Again, we're going to go back to Jim and the new attorney Alan coming up to speed and hopefully moving forward next month? Yes. Okay. All right. Thanks. Anything else on the gravel pit? No. Moving
on to some proposed text amendments to the zoning regs. Marina, if you can let me share my screen. I'm going to start out this is a compilation of changes that were proposed back when we were working on the senior center that we didn't do at that point in time just because I wanted to focus on solely making the change to support the senior center and getting that in. Eric's asked for some modifications to allow lighting that exceeds what our current regulations would allow for recreational facilities over at the soccer field and proposed pickleball courts that would go in over at Andover Veterans Park. There's some changes to the sign regulations that allow the Board of Selectmen to have a little bit more latitude in what they can do with public interest signs.
And then last meeting, talked about some changes that the state was requiring us to make with respect to family daycare centers. And so I kind of put all the pieces together here in a little document, I was going to run through those tonight. I don't expect us to discuss those tonight. My goal is to let the Commission be aware of the changes that are coming and make sure that I have not lost anything that Eric was hoping to get in. After we do that, we'll talk about when we might want to hold a public hearing to discuss the changes.
And then we would deliberate on the changes at the meeting that we hold the public hearing on. So all that being said, the town was asking for a change to section 4.21, which is the lighting regulations. Right now, we're limited to a light pole that can't be any bigger than 35 feet tall and lighting that can't be any stronger than 12 lumens, which is primarily intended for parking lot lighting. So the town's requested a modification to 4.21 may be permitted by the commission by special permit where it can be demonstrated to the commission that compliance is not practical for a public recreational facility. And so that would allow us to go maybe higher than 35 feet if we wanted to allow that. Next month, I'll show a picture of the light pole over in Manchester to make light stronger than 12 lumens. Anyhow, that's what that's about. That's to allow lighting at the town park for recreational facilities. And one of the things that I think that would be helpful and I don't know, Scott, if you're the guy that can bring that to us is what kind of utilization we have over at the soccer field so that if we change the regs to support putting in all these bright lights, are they going to be used? You know, what's the utilization that we're getting out of that because it does degrade the landscape in my mind a little bit when we put up those big landfills. So I think you had access to some of that information, Scott. Is that correct?
Now they use it until around seven, I believe, the soccer field. Okay. Yep. Well, know, that would be I would I would think that'd be part of part of our, new, the modifications to the, to the regs, be, you know, can't be used after a certain time in the evening. The high ones, at least, you know? Yep.
Okay, that's my concern. We put those up. Do we get the bang for the buck out of that? And again, I don't want to deliberate the benefits there, but that's what the town is asking us for. Moving on to section five of the Andover Rural Design District, a bunch of little formatting things here, but we added 5.0.5 family daycare home or group childcare home. The states told us that that's a matter of right in our residential districts, so that's why we added that there. I did add a couple of definitions in the definition section we'll get to in a minute that don't really they refer you back to the state regs in case they change. But right now, a family daycare center is up to six kids, and that would include the owner of the day care's own kids there. So you can have a total of six kids there. And a group child care center is, I think, seven through 12. Might be 14, but they're relatively small group child care centers there. You hear a lot about the fact that we don't have enough day care centers in the state right now. So that would be the addition that we're looking to put in there. Special permits. I included the word ant kennels here. If you remember back when we were talking about Scott Beebe's kennel out on Route 6, we did not hold a public hearing on that. One of the reasons and the words in the chapter are convoluted a little bit, but there was some place that it said for a class A small kennel,
you didn't need a public hearing. For the bigger kennels, you did. I just wanted to require a public hearing for any kennel here. I think if you're going to put a kennel in a residential district, I think the neighbors would like to have their say in that, and I think they should. Some lots are more conducive to having a small kennel than others, and so special permits the way to go there. So that's an ad. One of the things that comes into play here is remaining in here is the word for special permit child care centers. And so what that would be is by special permit, we could still allow a child care center bigger than the 12 people that the state's telling us we have to allow by right. So I left those words in there. We could have taken them out and not had a bigger childcare center permissible, but I think
if we were to have somebody want to put a childcare center in, that might not be a bad thing to have in town. So I left that in there. Now we move into the Lake District. A couple of formatting issues here. But what we did is we put in the end of use, use of right, this is a holdover from last January change where we didn't touch the Lake District. We made the house of worship instead of churches and cemeteries as of right. Then here in the Lake District, we added the family daycare home, group daycare home, the two small ones. I like these lists in the different sections that tell what you can do, what you can do by special permit. We didn't have anything in the Lake section about home occupations. Up in section five, it just had, you know, by site plan review C section 412A, and 412A requires some to be special permits. So down here in the Lake District, while I was changing it, I added home occupations not requiring a special permit. See that section? And then for special permit, those ones that do. And that seems almost redundant and not worth putting in there. Well, we can talk about that when we get there, but I like having something in the list that tells us what we can do and what we can't do. Special permit uses. We added municipal land uses by special permit here consistent with what we had in the ARD. Similar to what we did in the ARD, we put public parks, playgrounds, athletic fields, and beaches. We've got some of those already over with Andover Lake.
And then I put the home occupations requiring special permit. So those were the changes that we were proposing that we make to Section seven, the Lake District. Any questions on any of those changes so far? Down was also asking for a change to the sign regulations and I think we talked about possibly putting some advertising signs over the Andover Memorial Park and or Veterans Memorial Park. Right this minute, our sign chapter says the following signs are prohibited. It says billboard signs, which is any sign bigger than 32 square feet, or that advertise a property off the establishment of the property. So, Andover Plaza can't right now put a sign advertising Andover Plaza any place else but on the property of Andover Plaza. We can talk about that, know, whether we think that's a good deal or not when we deliberate that, but this is the change except when specifically authorized by the Board of Selectmen on town owned property
that would allow putting up advertising in different places. We could either talk about doing that, we could put some restrictions on where that might be, we'll talk about that at the public hearing. We came down to signs permitted in all zones and we had the conversation about the banners over at the school, the size of the sign on the senior center, and that sort of thing. So the town is asking that we allow a quantity of sign to be determined by the Board of Selectmen. In the case of the banners on the school property, they've got lots of banners over there. Not clearly authorized at this point to have a large quantity, so this allows the Board of Selectmen to authorize that. Height, right this minute, we're limited to 10 foot in height. And then they can go larger right this minute. We're limited to 16 square feet. Town's asking that we bump that up to 32 square feet. And then we added in the stipulation that any sign placed at the Andover Elementary School building or ground shall require the approval by the Board of Education before we put those up. We're not going to go hanging signs over to school that the school doesn't want there.
So those were the changes the town requested on signs.
And just so you all know, a lot of those changes came about as a request from Jerry Cremay, who at the time was the chair of the school board, to allow them to do the banners that they wanted, in addition to the Board of Selectmen wanting the ability to put banners down at the Andover Veterans Memorial Fields.
Okay, I forgot to my computer software, when I was cutting and pasting, was giving me fits on being able to cut and paste with the show the markup. So here the town has asked for a change to the lighting from Chapter 23.5, and it says Part B modifications to this sector for public outdoor rec facilities may be permitted by the Commission by special permit. A lighting study shall be required to determine the maximum recommended lighting, fixture height, and maximum lumens per square foot based on the type and intensity of the sport or use and size of the illuminated area. So this is what the town has asked that we put in Section 23 to facilitate putting the higher intensity lighting for the athletic fields. In Chapter 24, the definitions, I added the architectural plans. We've talked about this before when we were talking about the accessory dwelling units. This is the definition that we said we liked so I just put that in the definitions section here. Child care center, these are words that we got from attorney branch And he references back to the sections of the Connecticut general statutes.
His concern was that if they change the numbers then we'd have to change our regs. We just referenced the statute And if we're making a day care center, I'm sure we would check out with the statute what the allowed number are before we approved it. So the three definitions all sort of sound very similar, but they're in our definitions nonetheless and get you to the right place. And then one that's been a long time coming, put in a definition of lot frontage. Haven't changed Section 11 yet that talks about that or the other places, but at least we have definition in here. Our subdivision regs do talk about lot frontage and I wanted to put the definition in the definition section. And what about the flood zone, Jed?
The flood zone. So that is probably not as frustrating as the gravel pit, but certainly is not going on anything quick. I have not followed up recently with Joe Dillon, the town engineer, to see how he's going with that. I know they've been busy with a lot of stuff, wasn't urgent, but I have not heard back from him on changes to the flood zone chapter. And I want to do that whole chapter at one time. And if I can't ever get that busted free to where he's made recommendations for changes to it. We'll make a small change so that we can prohibit somebody from building in there. But I didn't recognize it was going to be that difficult to get the updated chapter out so we could take a look at it.
Planning on a we're planning on setting a public hearing?
I've got one more document to show what I've changed with the accessory dwelling unit thing based on our conversation last month, and then we'll talk about public hearing. Okay, so we have talked to accessory apartments on and off for the last long time. At the last meeting, we talked about a plan that kind of split the difference between deed restricted, not deed restricted. And so, said site plan review accessory apartment that is deed restricted for ten years will be allowed by site plan review. All these words down here are based on the words from what the state recommendation for accessory apartments was with respect to size. One of the things that we did include in here that the state didn't talk about, but we wanted to put a little control in there, was that we would require the owner
to reside in either the principal dwelling or the accessory apartment under common ownership and the owner will reside in one. Not all towns do that. We can talk about that more, but that was the consensus that we would try to do that and Mark Branch agreed. I was going to put in fact, if you look online in what I sent out to you, I had words up here in this paragraph, if it's not deed restricted, it'll require a special permit. I changed my mind on that and said, we ought to be consistent. If we're going to have special permit things, we'll have a special permit paragraph. And I just said, an accessory department that is not deed restricted will be allowed by special permit. All those requirements up above apply, and you got to use the special permit requirement out of Section 23.2. That makes it a little bit harder to do that, but that gives somebody the opportunity to, if they don't want it deed restricted, getting out for whatever reason, like they want to have a family member live in there that doesn't meet the requirements for affordable housing or something like that. So that is all the changes that I was looking to make for this batch of changes. And Eric, I think I covered everything that you wanted in there, plus some stuff from back in January that we didn't cover back then. That's correct.
So at this point, any commission comments? So, timeline, we could go to a public hearing as early as our next meeting on these changes. And then we'd have sixty five days after close of public hearing. I would expect we would close public hearing in one session. And we'd have two meetings to go after that to deliberate and approve, disapprove, change, whatever.
Jed, I don't believe the time constraints are a factor with with the town initiated
change. Okay. Yep. So anyhow, the bottom line is we can go to public hearing in November if we think we're ready to go.
I think we are Yep, it falls thirty five days out, I believe. So the thirty day notification could be handled.
Okay. Looking for what the commission members got. Any thoughts on that? Do you need a motion? Yes.
I do need a motion to hold a public hearing if we think we're ready to do that. What's the date?
The date of our next meeting is going to be September 20. November 20?
November. Whoops. Yeah. That was the minutes. November 21. There we go. I was looking at the minutes we're going to be approving here.
So moved if no one thinks that we need more time. Say again, Leanne.
I just I didn't know if anybody made a motion. Said I said so moved unless anybody wants to speak up that we need more time than the next month. I'll second that.
Mr. Chair? Yes, John. I would just note that, you know, in terms of timing, because this would be a commission application, the standard statutory time limits in terms of keeping the public hearing open and closing it do not apply. You could take all the time you need for this. Okay, that's great. Don't wanna do that. I think
we've been talking about these with the exception of the newest addition, which is the daycare center that the state told us what we got to do. So, any commission members have any concerns about being ready to deliberate and hold public hearing at our November 21 meeting? So then I think the motion on the table is to hold a public hearing at the November 21 meeting. Is that correct, Leanne? Yes.
It was seconded by Scott. So I'll call for a vote. Anne Cremay? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye.
And I vote aye as well. The motion to hold the public hearing on November 21 passes five-zero-zero. Next up is the annual report, and I sent it out again. Any comments on the annual report? Here's a trivia question. Does anybody remember what comments we made on last year's annual report that we changed to add to it? Steve, you're grinning. Well, the answer is we applied for a grant and didn't get it to do the traffic or to do the study on the multi purpose trail going up along 316. And
Eric, why don't you brief us on where we stand on that? Eric, go away. Maybe he left. But anyhow, we got some more grant money that did come in on that. There's a request for proposal out now. I think any bids would be in by, I think it's October 24, and we've got a bunch of money to go out and do the study, the engineering study for doing that. I think there's some other grant money out there that would actually allow us to build it. So I don't think it was our annual report that did that, but at least the comment was recognized as an important thing. Eric's been out there working hard on it with John, and it's moving forward. So I thought that was good news.
News. Anyhow, that's a sidetrack from this year's annual report, but I appreciated the feedback then and I appreciate any feedback on this one now. Okay, must be perfect in every way. I'll make a motion to approve the annual report. I'll second Okay,
we got Scott seconding that. Any discussion? Now call for a vote. Anne? Aye.
Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five-zero-zero. Moving on to new business. Item A, I think we've covered already. That was the text amendments for the accessory dwelling units. Item B, site plan approval to the public safety complex. Eric, are you here? And I'm not sure that he was I am here. Oh, okay. Anything you wanted to say about the Public Safety Complex site plan approval modification?
So, we will be requesting at the next meeting an approval for a site plan review for the addition of two one thousand gallon propane tanks to be located behind the fire department. One will be serving the town hall, and one will be the reserve tank for a proposed switchover of our generator to a propane backup from its current diesel backup. Because the existing generator and tank are both 30 plus years old, a little more, I think, because they've been in since 1990, so 33 years old, and they're due for replacement. So that unfortunately requires wetlands approval, zoning approval, fire marshal, and a few other people. But you will see that before you, hopefully at the next meeting.
Okay. So that's it. Hit on that. Any questions for Eric on the plan modification that we expect to see? Nope. Okay, moving down to new business 6C, setting regular meeting dates for actually, it's the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four fiscal year. No. Actually, it's for calendar year 2024. Before we talk about specific dates, we move from meeting on Monday nights to Tuesday nights. I know for at least one person who has a periodic conflict on Tuesday evenings, One of the things I looked at was should we shift to a Wednesday night? You know, when we were considering the date change, I think Wednesdays were good for most people. I talked to John. Think he said that the first or the fourth Wednesday of the month worked good for him. Does anybody have any thoughts on should we change the dates? Wednesdays? Again, Scott. Wednesdays? Yep.
I travel a lot on business, as you probably know. And so middle of the week makes it a bit challenging. Okay. End of the week is better for me. Monday or Tuesday is is I can try to manage around that. Yep. I got it.
Okay, then at this point, I'm going to keep it on the third Tuesday that is working well, I think, with the exception of one guy, and he attends when he can. The other piece of that, so if we continue on with the and I didn't out a list of dates because I didn't think they were all that meaningful. If I go through the calendar using the third Tuesday, January is the sixteenth, which is the day after Martin Luther King Day. February is the twentieth, which is the day after President's Day. March, no problems. April, no problems. May, no problems. June, no problems. July, no problems. August, no problems. September, no issues. October is the day after Columbus Day. November, no issues. It is not even the week of Thanksgiving anymore. December would be the seventeenth, the week before Christmas. So the third Tuesdays have no impact by any of the holidays, and so it makes scheduling fairly straightforward and routine. So, at that point, I will make a motion that for the year 2024, we continue to hold our meetings on the third Tuesday of the month. I need a second for that. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on that? I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye.
Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. LeeAnne? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion to hold our meetings on the third Tuesday of the month passes five-zero-zero. Last part of the discussion on meeting dates is in person versus hybrid versus virtual. And with the getting dark as early as it does in the winter months upon us, I was thinking that we would shift back to virtual only for the month of starting the month of November. Actually, as it turns out, because the last two months, this one in September, were both virtual only. We actually shifted a little earlier than that. Any discussion on going virtual only for the winter?
I still prefer in person any time of the year, but that's me. I know you do, yep. And
I'm not totally opposed to that. There are several commissions that stuck the hybrid only. Right this minute, we're struggling a little bit with our hybrid version. At least I was struggling with it. And I didn't like that. So at this point, my intention will be to hold virtual only. And we'll revisit that in the springtime to see where we are with our hybrid technology and whether or not we want to go back to in person or stay with the hybrid. Jen? Yep.
I have a question mainly, maybe mainly mostly for Scott. I was asked it last month, and then the previous month's meeting was a hybrid meeting. And the acoustics have never been good in the community room, and they're not getting any better. Were not good at all for anybody, you know, not just myself, but obviously anybody can have the same experience and listen in. So I think it's nice that we're going to meet by Zoom for the rest of the winter and maybe early spring. But, Scott, does the worst one ever talk about, trying to remedy this? Because it's been that way since the addition I
think that we have spoken about it previously, but we came up with There there was no determination about what we were gonna do with it. Everybody just realizes it.
Okay. Well, that's an answer anyway. So Yeah. I will possibly bring it up during the board of selectmen public speak. Occasionally I can't be there at the beginning of the public speak, but if not, perhaps at the end, just to let them know from the point of view of, you know, somebody who had that experience. Right. It is terrible in there. It is going to be, as I said, it's not my opinion. It would be the same reception or lack thereof for anybody. Thanks, Tom.
Okay. Next item up is the adoption of the approval of the minutes from 09/20/2023. And are there any comments on the minutes from September 20? I think it was the nineteenth. The nineteenth, yep, okay. You're right. And that is the date on the minute so it must be my error on the agenda there the September 19. Remember because I couldn't be there so.
Looking through the minutes I thought they were very nicely written and I had no comments to make on that. Anybody else? Hearing none, I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from the Planning and Zoning regular meeting on Tuesday, September 19 as presented. I'll second that. Thank you, Scott. Any comments? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve?
Aye. LeeAnne? Abstain. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes four-zero-one with LeeAnne abstaining. Next up, administrative reports, Jim.
Sure. Let's see. I did get a letter out to the representative from the Buddhist Center regarding the need for a site plan approval. I have not heard back from them as yet. Sent out a blight notice to a gentleman for debris on Long Hill Road. I'm working with the gentleman on on Merrick Valley to get some, a car and a truck off off the road. I had extended time limit till the end of October, so I'll be checking on that. And a letter out to a gentleman from on Times Farm about a business that may or may not be operating out of his home. I'm continuing to work with mister Barnett at 664 Route 6, clean up his property. It's been considerable progress, but there's still ways to go. And that's about it. Any questions for Jim?
Is there any, zoning issues, Jim, down there that have to be resolved?
Okay. I do. I'm not sure what you're speaking of, but I do have a I'm sorry. The zoning board of appeals meeting tomorrow evening for a gentleman that deal with a a structure that was built without a permit over the side jet. Step back line, at 357 Lake Road, Grimaldi. Mhmm. Other than that, I'm I'm I'm drawing a blank. Is there anything particular? Oh, down at Barnett's. Oh, at Barnett's? Yeah. At Barnett's. Yeah. Mean, he's just he's just I mean, he's still a still a blight violation. Continues to be. I'm actually meeting with, Dennis O'Brien on well, I don't know when now. I had an appointment with him tomorrow, and he he canceled. He is promised to put a, a lien on the property, which hasn't been done as yet. Yeah. Follow-up on a notice that was sent back way back when. Thank you. You're welcome.
Any other questions for Jim? We did not hold an Inland Wetlands Watercourse Commission meeting this month, so there's no report on that. Any communications items, Jim? No.
I know we're running late, but then they're miscellaneous very quickly. I was cleaning up the basement. You know, we had some stuff. We got rid of the tag sale. I'm cleaning up the newspaper. And here's the paper from 05/20/2018. Homes still a tough sell. Long slow recovery for prices since 2007. My how things have changed in the last couple of years. That's no longer a problem. So I thought that was interesting. Seems like only yesterday. Any other comments from anybody on miscellaneous topics at this point? Okay. Next regularly scheduled meeting is on Tuesday, November 21, and that will be a public hearing as well. Anybody left from the public that wants to discuss anything at all? Hearing none, I move that we adjourn. Second.
Thank you, Leanne. Any opposed? The motion passes, five-zero-zero. Good night, everybody. Thank you for attending. Thank you for your participation. See you next month.