Meeting transcript
Zoning Board of Appeals - Special Meeting
August 26, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
The chair this evening. Just for background, you know, we've lost the chair, we've lost Dennis Williams. So it's down to three, you three folks and Peterson, who's not on tonight. And we have a problem. We have a problem that we have. We need members, obviously. So really, tonight's meeting is an organizational meeting to do two things. Elect officers, which I believe would be if that doesn't happen today, that's fine. Know, we continue
to function as is. But elect officers, that's fine too. But most importantly, what has to happen is we have to appoint someone has to appoint Mr. Monroe. Was on earlier. I don't know if he's still listening. I had is everybody can people hear me? I can hear you. I can hear you. Yes, Bill DeRozan.
Bill. And there's nobody's picture. So I feel like I'm talking to myself, but you're out there listening. So the primary focus of tonight's meeting is to fill a slot. Now, just want to just a very background. We we being the town did go through a process. It's in the paper because notice goes to the town committees, etcetera. There's been an effort. And Mr. Monroe was good enough to submit a letter. Now, the letter I sent out indicated he was interested in wetlands and he submitted two letters, one for ZBA and one for wetlands. The wrong letter would send out.
Nonetheless, I did speak to him is interested in zoning board of appeals. And here we are. Oh, I got a shot up. I'll turn this matter over to Roger, Chairman Roger.
So is this Mr. Monroe on the call or not?
I do not see him. No. Much earlier. Don't know what happened.
Okay. That's too bad because it's nice to hear from him tonight. So again, stepping in last second here as the vice chair. Do we need to vote on his application? Can we vote on his application or what would be the normal thing to do right now, Jim? Yes. First, you need to call the order.
Call the order roll call. So we want to call to order right now. So we call an order meeting 704. And we're going call the order the meeting to order. Okay. Roll call is
And we have roll call. We have Jim. We have Walter. We have Kathleen. And we have myself. Mr. Peterson's not on tonight. Yes. Okay. Now you have the agenda up. What public speak? I the
agenda in front of me. Yes. Okay. Is there any public there? There is no public. Thank you. Are we at the new business now?
I believe we're on the new business. So the election of officers and the filling of vacancies. So should we reverse that a little bit and see if we can fill the vacancy first and then elect officers or It's your call, Bill. That's fine. No problem with that.
Well, even if you even if is Linda. If you fill the vacancy and the person was on the line, he wouldn't be able to vote or anything because he hasn't been sworn in.
That's right. Okay. So guess at this point, I've read the wrong letter. Is there more information involved, I guess, Jim, in the letter that he submitted for this particular position? Would we learn anything new from that that we need to review or that would help us make a decision?
It was very similar to the latter. Just that he lived in town. He's interested in serving on a board, providing some service, and that's it.
Okay. And again, I'm not used to running meetings. My apologies. Is this something that we can ask for somebody to make a motion to accept Mr. Monroe's application and elect and go from there. So do I hear a motion?
Before you make the motion, this is Linda again, your You have to
You have to make sure that you have party representation.
So, has to be on one of the two parties, either the Democrat or Republican Party?
No, he has to be elector. So he can be registered either as a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or another party.
So he has to be a registered voter in town to be on the board. Right. And so we don't know that tonight. Right.
I I don't know that. No. But what we've done on other boards is is make a motion with that condition and then check that.
Okay, so we can make the emotion if someone wants to to work this correctly to accept Mr. Monroe's application pending on verification of voter registration.
Correct. Yes. And somebody want to address a Go ahead. Address Linda's second part of that. I know Bill, you're a Republican. All commissions have to have what's called minority representation, which basically means they need one Democrat and one Republican. I believe, Bill, mister Derozier, you you fill the Republican slot. Correct? Yes.
Okay. And I'm guessing there's a there's a Democrat on the line. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm I'm a little little disgusted with it, but, yeah, I am a registered Democrat. Let's let's stay after the let's not discuss.
Exactly that, Walter. Yep. I'm glad to hear you say that, Walter.
Tell you. What a will. I did that after Watergate, and Kelly Felps loved it. My mother was superb.
But Okay. So we do So we fit that board. We fit that requirement?
We do. We have members of each of our wonderful parties. Yes. Beautiful.
Okay. So at this point, can somebody make a motion to vote on making Mr. Monroe a member of the Board of Zoning Board of Appeals pending verification of his Board of Registration? Yeah, I'll make the motion. Who is this? Motion by Walter. Okay.
Thank you. Okay. Is there any other discussion before we take the vote? I guess I'm sorry. We need a second. I'm sorry. Who was that the second bit? Kathleen. Seconds the motion.
Thank you very much, Kathleen. Okay. Now are we open to any further discussion? I'll take that as a no. Okay. Can we hear all those in favor? Please say aye.
Aye. Mr. DeRosier, Mr. DeRosier, this is Linda again, just another, Robert's rule because we're on by roll call vote. Each member. Very good. That makes sense. Okay. So Walter. Yes.
That's a aye. Kathleen. Aye. Bill DeRoziers? Aye. So I believe the ayes have it. It's unanimous. There are no nays.
Okay. This is Jim Halsey. What what I intend to do is verify his registration, assuming that that is legitimate, have a letter go out, comes from the town clerk, Typically, the letter will say, you know, you need to stop in and get sworn in. Yeah. At which time I will provide him a copy of his zoning regs and some background material, minutes, etcetera. He's also a little uncomfortable with with the technology. Many of us the advanced years are, and I told him that we would we'd provide him we'd help him out on that. It's something we're gonna have to use to it.
Right. Right. At least for the time being because we have no idea when we'll be actually meeting in person again. Right? This is Kathleen,
and I'm just on my phone. I'm sure he has a phone, so he can just call in and be on his phone. Right. Right. You don't have to do the video part of his ID.
Yeah. I he has he's got an iPad, and we kinda walk kind of discussed it. He was on for briefly the TV. I mean, I saw his face on the screen.
I don't know what had you. Yeah, this is Linda again. It would be beneficial that if you just send him paper copies of everything before the meeting. So at least he has something in front of him. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, as as you all know, transition to the Zoom has not been seamless. Yeah.
No. We've done a good job. I mean everybody involved has done a great job.
Right. So we'll need to get Mr. Monroe's email. Yes. I do have it. Very good. We can give that to Kathleen. Would you be the one to I'm sorry, or Linda. I'm not sure who would be sending that out to him, you know, future well, Jim, you said you might be actually be able to send him paper copies. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I
I I think that's my job to make sure that he's as you know, the information he needs to adopt. I will take care of it.
I think I'm thinking back to the very first meeting that that I went to. I I think we had a couple of new people. And, at the time, we were given quite a bit of an education, by, what's his name, Pat? Yeah, John Valente. And he brought in another speaker too at the time that kind of talked about the legalities of it, but also kind of the standpoint that, I guess over time, the way, he ran things, the way John ran things was that our job was to actually help people, if you will. Wasn't to be a roadblock to people getting zoning
approvals. It was more to review the case, make sure that there were no issues or problems or people didn't have objections, but you know his stance was always to be as helpful as possible to those people. Submitting applications for approval so I'm not sure john if he went to the gym if he went to that with you, But at some point, it'd probably be a good refresher for the entire board just to kind of, I guess, go through the legalities of the position and our responsibilities and our overall know. What you're doing things and our goals as part of this part of being on this board.
And I will, I will do what I can to to bring that resource. Connecticut Bar Association Planning and Zoning Bay is very active in that and will be do provide speaker. And they did, and they're great. Yeah. And what we've done is involve other towns around Columbia, Cabernet, even whatever. It's because, you know, they sent out three attorneys the last time, you know. Wow. They're all very knowledgeable. It's all pro bono. I mean, make it, they make a real serious effort to keep town. Okay. Mean, in court, it's their, I mean, it's their role as it was actually Howard and Sage, who is our land use counsel. Think all the attorneys from there. And, you know, part of their job is to keep us out of court really, you know, it's to make things run smoothly. It's, it's, it's better to, land use is better to take a proactive approach than a reactive approach. That's what they do with their outreach.
Right. Okay. So we have under new business the filling of vacancies, we just did. John Jim I'm sorry do we have to fill another position or is that one, the only application, we have, and we still have one open is that.
Yeah actually you know, in retrospect, the ocean that was made that's fine whether it was a regular or alternate Member. And, quite frankly, if you only have. Historically, you might want to reach out to Mr. Peterson and see if he wants to be a regular member versus an alternate.
So he's the alternate right now, so I can reach out to Mr. Peterson?
Okay. But nonetheless, even if he were to be choose to be a regular member and board chooses to nominate him, there's still a slot. So you can certainly put Mr. Monroe in as a regular or an alternate, that's your call. I think you'd have to modify that motion though. Linda, does that make sense to you?
Yeah, I mean, had written the motion as appointing him as a regular member. Okay,
I guess I didn't make the differentiation at the time. Okay. Well, it's clear. So we can move on.
Yes. Because his letter indicated, Jim, and you read the letter that he was looking to be on the board, not as an alternate. He didn't he didn't state as an alternate, right?
I mean, typically people come up very often people come on as an alternate because because the alternates move up as as you know. Most of the time. Okay. Yeah. But okay, just to take one more minute. So committee is still looking for members and we're just taking an approach of reaching out to anybody who might want to do it.
Okay. Is that something where we would normally take out an ad in the newspaper or under No. You look into No. We do.
It's not an ad, but it's a notice. And it's kind of regularly run-in the Upper East. Yes. Which is very effective, to be honest, personal outreach. Hey, you call somebody that you think might be interested. I would You might not take a thought doing it. Yeah,
I was thinking myself, there's anybody I know. I'll give that some thought this week and see if there's anybody else.
What they would do is submit a letter to the town clerk. Okay. And she distributes it, I think. Seems to be she distributes it to the town committees and what have you. And I I would get a copy of some and distribute it.
Who who would be responsible for putting that notice in the paper? She'll do it. She does it regularly. Okay, got you. The website, believe,
I'm sure has volunteer opportunities. But I don't think a lot of people wouldn't really respond to that. Whereas sometimes a personal phone call or whatever is. Reach out to somebody Okay. Okay.
So I guess as a point of going forward, if anybody on this committee would think about that over the next couple of weeks and wants to reach out to people, please do so. I will think about the same thing. I just want to be clear going back to the position that we just selected Mr. Monroe to. It is a full position as far as this board is considered. Not an alternate. Perfect. And I will talk to Mr. Peterson. Does somebody can Brenda, can you send me Mr. Peterson's email or phone information? Sure. You have my email address? Think I think I do. Yeah. I
a current list of the membership. And if the membership is amenable, that can be shared with group so that you have everybody's phone name and phone number note, you know, reference. I can send it you. Will send it to you. You must have gotten it from Amanda, right? Yeah. I do have it. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. So if that goes out, then you'll have everyone's now, as long as we're on the subject, does anybody need a copy of a paper copy of the zoning regulations? Yes. Okay. Well Did we did
Yeah. I would I would get this too. Think I might have had some, but I'm not a 100% sure. So. Okay. I don't think Kathleen, are you all set or
Did we get one when we came to that meeting? I
don't know. You're talking about the meeting with the attorneys? Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't recall distributing the copies. No. Mail them out. That would be good.
Yeah. That'd be great. So I guess the next thing is is that I would do I need to call Mr. Monroe or Mr. Peterson or does somebody else call him and let him know that Mr. Monroe has been elected to the board? Do I do that or how is he notified? The account clerk will notify him, assuming he's a registered voter. Okay, perfect. Okay. I did bring that up. I'm
sorry. Then it's just a matter of me contacting Mr. Peterson to see if he wants to come on as a full time member. Right. Okay. Very good. So the next
order of business was election of officers. You just somebody just remind me of what positions are are open? So we we need a chairman. We need a chairman vice chairman, I believe. I believe that's it. And
and we're keeping our clerk that we have, right? It's Kathleen. Is that correct?
You're asking if are we keeping the clerk? Yeah. Linda is the clerk, though. Linda is the clerk. I'm the
not the clerk. I'm just on the board. Okay. So the two positions we have are chair and vice chair. Do we have anyone that wants to make a nomination for either one of those positions? Would you be willing to be the Chairman, Bill?
I wasn't planning on it. So if there's anybody else that would like to do it, I would put that out there first. The reason I volunteer as vice chair is because when this COVID thing changes, which looks like for me as my job goes, when I go back to traveling like I normally do, I travel extensively. And if you were on the Board for the last year or two that I have been on this Board, you would know that sometimes I am not able to be there only because I do travel. So I feel that vice chair is a good place for me. And I would think that somebody that could be a full time chair would be better suited for that job. Okay. Who is Jerry? What is his last name? Peterson. Peterson. Jerry Peterson. Okay. He's an alternate?
Right now he's an alternate. We're going to ask him if he wants to and if he's eligible to come full time oh he's a pretty sharp cookie
he might be good for being a chair if he would be willing to do it I don't I don't know you know it's kind of sad but okay I
I will continue on in the vice chair role for now. Can we postpone? Yeah, we'll just throw it over. Absolutely.
If I can just say that, we'll postpone election of the chair until after we get mister Peterson's and mister Monroe on board. Can take up the election of officers and come at that time. Absolutely. There's no there's no real urgency to it.
Perfect. Now we have commission open discussion. I can open that up or I could bring up something that's on my mind. Guess I'll open it up to the board first, if there is any other open discussion. No. What time do you mind?
Well, I got the email, I guess, from Linda or Amanda. Am not sure about the report that's due by September 17 that discusses, you know, the various boards and committees, what they've done, what their goals, what their objectives are, any major milestones. I guess that report needs to be completed in the next few weeks. And again, I probably would need to take a look at last year's so that I could get an understanding of what's there and see how we would want to alternate or change it or keep it the same. And I guess the only other thing that has to go into that report is, you know, any any any zoning board of approval that we've seen, that anybody that has come before the board that was either approved or rejected, we'd have to state everybody that's become
We need a mission statement for this board. Oh, we need a mission statement. Yeah. So they can design that tonight, and then you can add it to last year's report. Well, don't we have a mission statement already?
So let me take a look and see if I can get that. It must be in last year's report. Is that something that Linda, is that something that
I think the current annual report is on the town's website.
It's on the website? Okay. I'll go to the website.
If not, would reach out to Amanda and she will email it to you.
Okay. Very good. Alright. I'll get a copy of that and take a look at that and see how it may need to be modified or updated or if you just wanna basically keep it as it is. And then at our next meeting, we can we can, I guess, vote on that? The problem with that is it's due to seventeenth. So we would have to have another meeting coming up, I guess, next week. I'll be on vacation the week after that. So is everybody on this board available to have another Zoom meeting next week? Certainly, same night, and then that way they're all have that
and maybe everybody would have a chance to take a look at last year's mission statement last year's report. And then we can vote on it next week if that's possible. Mr. Derozier, this is Linda again. Yes, Linda. I
would suggest that you also add to that agenda developing your meeting schedule for next year, just in the event that you might not meet till the end of the year and that something that has to be into the town clerk before the end of the year. I'm sorry, develop the what again? Your meeting schedule for next year, the next calendar. Have to submit a meeting schedule to the town clerk for 2021. Got you. Okay.
Commissioner DeRosier, I'd be happy to put together a proposed meeting schedule. Mean, it's simply, you know, I'll go to the whenever you meet the third Wednesday of the month see if there's any conflicts. You know, reduce the dates, you know, paper and and people Yeah, we'll exclude her. Let's change the state.
I'll do that. It's simple. Okay, great. So is everybody pretty much comfortable on the phone tonight with skipping with Wednesday evenings at seven Is that what most people? Sure. Yep. That's fine by me.
Okay, great. Alright. Thank you, Jim. I appreciate that. Okay. So, then, can we schedule our next meeting for next Wednesday at seven to discuss the mission statement. And our annual report that is due by the seventeenth, and we can get that hammered out next week. Okay. So that would be September second, Wednesday Yes. 07:00? Yes.
And the same Zoom. Do we have some a different passcode or numb or just the same as it was tonight?
It I believe they change every meeting for whatever reason. I will have to get one, and I will get it I will put it in the agenda. Perfect. Thank you. Agenda will go out.
Alright. So that we'll get that through the email that would give us number the ID. Yeah. Okay. No.
I'm gonna send it out to the right email. Okay.
Okay. You're gonna send me the list of contact information and the report so I can or we just make sure that everybody gets a copy of last year's report. So we'll be able to look at it next Wednesday and all, know, everybody's eyes are on it. We can move forward from there. Okay. Jim Hallows here with a question.
Somebody offer to send out their report or am I doing that? Yes, I thought you said Jim, I'd be happy to do that.
You could send out to everybody, email us to everybody, that'd be great. Yes.
So Mr. DeRosier, an actual motion to schedule your special meeting.
Thank you very much. Okay. So would anybody make a motion? I make a motion. Jim, to have a special meeting on September 2 at 07:00 to You could just say special Special
meeting. Okay, very good. And have motion by Walter. Does anybody want to second that motion? I second it. Okay, thank you, Kathleen. You're welcome.
Very good. Okay, Now we need to hear the person by person. So can I start with Walter first? Is that a yay or nay on the motion? Yes. Okay. Kathleen? Yay.
Will the rosers? Yay. So the yeas have it. Right. Very good. Is there any other discussion to come before this Commission tonight? I see number seven is the administrative report from the zoning agent. Jim, is that you? Yes. I have Okay. I do anticipate You need to go to the other board?
I do anticipate an application coming forward, and it will be interesting. It will be involves a issue. I'll provide all the background at such time as I get an application and exactly what. Very good. It would require a little reading.
And so right now, we don't have any other applications before us. Right?
Right. What I would like to do is is keep on the agenda, on the same two, filling of vacancies, election of officers, until such time as there we don't need to. I would just roll it forward. If you don't, if you wanted to let officers next week do it, you know, don't. It'll be on the agenda, too.
Yeah. So why would we leave it on the agenda? And if we can fit that in next week, great. If we have to postpone it again to get the other work done, we can always make that decision next week. Sounds like a plan. Yep. Okay.
Okay. Do we need to approve the minutes of April? You can. We don't have the minutes in front of us.
I think Jim said he emailed him to every meeting.
Well, I don't have I don't get email, but I'll approve it. And I'm just gonna need I'm gonna I'm gonna need the code to get in next week. So, Jim, send me a packet or I'll come and see you and get it just with a phone number. You can table that to next week if you wish. Yeah. That's that's a contracting issue.
Okay, great. We'll take that next week and hopefully everybody will have the minutes in front of them next week. That'd be great. Okay. Okay. So there is nobody from the public on right now. So we don't have anything there is, I guess the next thing is anybody like to make a motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn.
As Walter, would anybody like to second the motion to adjourn?
Kathleen will make a motion to second it. Thank you so much, Kathleen.
All those in favor of adjourning I'm sorry, can't do it that way. Walter, you say yay or nay. Yay. Kathleen. Yay.
Build the rosers. Yay. Well, I just want to say thank you to everybody for being on tonight. As we rebuild our board, we will get better at this. I know it was tough because we had a lot of people drop off the board. I know it's tough because we're doing it via Zoom. And for most people, it's not even Zoom, it's just phone. So I know it's a little clunky. I know we'll get better as time goes on. And I look forward to working with all of you going forward. Thank you for your time tonight and I look forward to speaking to everybody next Wednesday night.