Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting
April 18, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Do we? So I'd like to call the public hearing to order. It is 07:00. The purpose of the public hearing is to discuss application number 2302, property of Robert Fiadamo Junior 43 Aspinall Road in Andover. Application for a special permit to allow for the construction of a detached accessory apartment in accordance with section 4.11 in section 23 of the Andover zoning regulations. I don't recognize the three of you. I got the you was the property owner last time. Yes, sir. That's my wife, Janine. His wife, Janine. Okay. It's not in that contract. And very good. And and so
Okay. So it's the iPad that was muted. I'll let him come back in here. You can get down. Okay.
So anyhow, I saw that we had, you know, posted online some new information, and, if the contractor can give us an update of what you, you provided to us since the last meeting, I'd appreciate that. And then we'll we'll add the questions. I I don't think there is anybody in attendance here tonight outside of the commission that is looking to comment on your application. So Okay. Given that, we'll we'll just proceed
with the with your presentation. Okay. Hello, everyone. My name is Nicholas Slulik. My company is Woodcraft Designs Inc. I'm a builder at Hayman, Connecticut here to represent the BMI for the application that I've been for you. What I've updated since the last meeting was the central stewardship exemption application, the approval that I received from that. That came. Yeah. And I improved the prints. There was some confusion about dimensions, and there were things that needed to be handled, like the heating and cooling system, with the finished ceiling height of the building. And just in-depth dimensional and the elevation, so that it was just a little more clear for everyone. The other thing we did also is we added the missing information on the second hand. So we we killed I have two paper copies. I know my PDF is too. Yeah. I
think good. I will, you know, try and get the the drawings up here so you can this changes a little bit easier. Let's let's start at the bottom and we'll work well second from the bottom the same plan revised. Yes.
Okay. So the some of the information that was missing the last time was how we were gonna provide power, how we were gonna safeguard the waste, and how we were gonna supply water to the building. So that's shown, and it's identified. We also needed to show some parking, some additional parking. So we were building four parking spaces and they wanted to or you wanted to show exactly where the tank was and how the system is laid out. We didn't have any information on the fields per day. The file is not complete, so there's no hassle for the fields, but the fields are beyond the septic tank, as you can see on the print. And I think that was that was all. Okay.
Here's a quick recap of that, and then we'll go to the updated drawings. Yeah. Yeah. I've got that.
Yes, so I think the only thing you added here with the the heat pump on the outside. Yeah, I showed that I showed the
finished ceiling height at eight feet and I gave you the correct dimensions the exterior the outside dimension, which is 12 by 29. The little mudrooms on close numbering is six by six that gives us the total square footage of three seventy six. And. I believe that was all that was at. What color do we plan to have the
You can right now, it's a it's it's kind of a baby. You can say it's a We're not baby. We're not altering anything.
Yeah. One of the few things we we have to ensure is the compatibility with the naval guidelines, you know, didn't want it to share truths through. But we don't need that. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Very good. And then, is is Steve had said the the approval from the sanatorian is in there, and, I wasn't gonna bring that up unless somebody wanted to see that. I have everything. Is there anything else you wanted to present to the commission for with respect to tonight?
On the application. I bet I'd be happy to fill in some questions if if anyone has any questions.
Okay. At at this point, I guess, to the property owners, have anything that you'd like to add at this point?
No. I mean, we're just taking the existing. We're not showing off or, you know, we're blocking any move. They gotta hear you. So, we're doing this for our daughter. I mean, it's not rental property. I mean, she's only giving me money, but that's different. Yeah. Yeah.
But, you know, it's just, it's just something original. Okay. Great. Jim, I saw that you added the checklist, online this afternoon. In your mind, is the application complete, and does it meet our requirements there?
I believe it is yes. The only thing that I didn't address, I didn't go back to this is lighting. We did speak. I did speak briefly about it with the applicant on and what we've done in the past is just had a condition that any any lighting being accordance with the with the zoning rinks. Don't recall it being any lighting added to the plan. No, no.
But on the front door, and that's it. That's another set on my part. The front door gets a light every exterior. Door has to have a light by code so you know we'll probably have an overhead light in the mudroom will have a wall light going into the the front door and possibly. A floodlight as you come up the driveway, a motion floodlight. I need to discuss that with the owners left. We thought it was happening. So just Because the part of the garage is not gonna be the door inside on the grass properties with the door. Okay. Yeah.
As you're coming up the driveway, you're gonna be looking at the leftover.
Sizes are three o by five six, so that means cigarettes. I had to run that. Somebody's saying that they're by the the billing inspector. Any questions with him? I know he doesn't get this till after all this is done, they get that far. So none more cash.
Any other questions from the commissioner? Okay. I have no other questions too. So at this point, do any of the commission members feel there is a need to hold the public hearing open any longer? Or are we ready to close the public hearing? I don't know if it's a public hearing.
We ever determine whether the weather needed to be conditioned space or what in terms of power of rent? Our our regs don't really address that. You may have seen if you had a chance to read the the graph change, goes like, what what what is an architectural plan? And that's when after we left the last meeting, I went out and and worked on that a little bit because that seemed to be the key to what what we had to specify that in our particular plan. And all the definitions that I found were very vague. And so I thought most of those issues would probably go back to meeting the the building official, you know, to make sure that it's done to code. So I did not I looked at it that there was nothing in our regulations that required it to be conditioned. If I were to build this thing, I probably wouldn't condition the mudroom either. I have one that's not conditioned right now. And so I said, that's okay with me. That's how I came through that particular question.
And it means to square footage. It just bear With the with the mushroom. And again, the the we're we're kind of getting into the deliberation a little bit, but if we're we're trying to make figure out whether or not we can close the hearing, the two things came into play. The we have a square footage requirement in our regulations today, which he needs. Our our regulation doesn't specify whether it's needs to be net square footage or gross square footage, and it might make a difference if we did, but we didn't specify that. We just said square footage. And I think I'm pretty confident that, the minimum square footage requirement is no longer legal anyhow. And so if this plan would have initially, I thought I was gonna have to go out and change the regulation before we get out of this hearing because I wanna get rid of that. But they added the mudroom on there. They got it up to the current conditions or regulations as they stand today. And so we need that. But certainly, if we disapproved it because of the size, they would have, you know, they'd have the ability to go appeal it and win that. And so I was happy that the square footage met our requirement. I didn't have to hurry through and change the regulations before they got there. I think my group's a nice addition to it. I think that worked out well.
And and that's how I came through this work footage. Yeah.
I usually plan came in before before the application is two forty square feet because they're working with a 10 by 24 foot building, pointing out the two fifty requirement. If you look at section 23, the definitions, they give you a few hints on how to bump that up or cover for instance. And they did this for two reasons. I think one is to meet regulations, but also they wanted to go to space to everyone to decide each other for one particular or a cat entry. Any
other questions from any of the commission members? Thanks, Kevin. Any other questions or comments from the commission? Do any of the Commission members have any concerns about closing the public hearing at this time? Hearing none, I'll close the public hearing. It's time 07:15. And at 07:15, we will open the regular meeting with Planning and Zoning Commission. The roll call and seating of alternates. Leanne, are you with us? Yes.
Okay. So I will I will seat you as a regular member. You can see the screen? Yes okay very good
well I discovered just excuse me in the course of getting ready for the meeting that there was a link shown and this obviously is what I called in on so I was prepared to go out the door if I couldn't get through. But I can hear you and I can see the material that's being put on the screen.
Good. So you're welcome to give us your feedback on on how it works from your end and we'll go from there. So we have full regular commission tonight. Anne Gourmet, Scott Persaud, Steve Nelson, Leanne Hutchinson, and myself. So none of the alternates, although all three alternates are present, none of them will be seated. Additions and changes to the agenda, I, I would like to propose two changes to the agenda, and I'd like to add new item, new business 5B, a pre application conference for the senior community center. And then under old business, I would like to change old business to fifth b, which is an update on the senior community center. I wanted to get that up so that we got it earlier in the program so people didn't have to stick around any longer than they wanted to with that, to have a discussion on the draft accessory dwelling unit changes. And then we'll renumber the current, new business five b, the, boundary agreement item, that'll now be five c. So I make a motion to,
approve those three changes. Thank you, Scott. Any discussion on that? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne for May? Scott. Steve. Aye. Leanne. Aye.
And I vote aye as well so that motion passes five zero zero. Any members of the public have any comments before we, we start the discussion tonight on the verdadis? Seeing none, we'll go on to, the first item of new business, application 23Dash02, the application of Robert Yamato 43 Aspinall Drive, seeking a special permit to allow detached accessories in accordance with section four. 11 to the annual resuming regulations. At this point, our zoning agent said that that about the application was complete and met the requirements. We had a couple of items of discussion in the public hearing but any other questions or comments on the application at this point? Hearing none, I'll make a motion to approve application 2302 for accessory dwelling unit. Second. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Ian for me. Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leanne? Aye.
And I vote aye as well? The motion passes five zero zero. You're all set. Thank you very much. We appreciate it, and the town's done to us so far. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Next up is, item five b, the senior community center pre application conference. Okay,
folks. Most of you probably know me, I would hope, by now. I only made about 10 of these, so all of you will have to share my I apologize for not giving the mapping to the clinician earlier. Got this from the surveyor today at about four. And I had a quick set of notes. Also, the second sheet is regarding the town to parking regulations. So I think that's one of the things we're gonna kinda focus on. Alrighty. So real quick. We're, the town will probably be a month or so away from a full blown application for the community center. But there are a few questions that I would like to discuss with the commission because I wanna make sure we're on the same, you know, page regarding the application
prior to. So let me just bring up the. Okay, so the first item I want to talk about is parking because that's been one of the things that's been pretty contentious. This is an aerial shot that shows the fire department, the existing town hall in the Andover Elementary School. So there's a couple things right now currently designated for fire department only there are 12 spots. The town hall has 38 spots and over elementary school has 102 in the lower parking lot and 38 in the upper parking lot. So between those three entities there's 191 spaces. I've been watching, you know, during most daytime operations, you know, we tend to be running, you know, at most 50 cars collectively between the town and fire department in the school. So we're at less than a third of the normal capacity
for parking. So today I took a snapshot at 10AM. There were 39 cars parked in the AES parking lot, 12 total at Town Hall, one car for Fire Department. And and so again 51 today, which is about a 26% utilization rate. So your parking regulations are section 12. And there's going to be a couple things we need to to talk about. The first is you the regulations have a matrix that allows for minimum and maximum level of parking by type of usage. Unfortunately, lot of the types of usage we have don't really match up to what's in your regulations. So what I attempted to do is, you know, pick the category that is closest to what is required. So I also wanted to talk a little bit about usage patterns. The annual volunteer fire department has about 35 active members. When you look at their parking utilization, generally their heaviest parking utilization is Wednesday night for their their drills and their crane inspectors. And there's been up to 20 cards here for Wednesday nights. Usually there's a few less than that, but assume roughly 20 cards during the peak fire department time. The town hall or ordinary conditions are typically up to eight employees working here at any given time,
and one to five members of the public. So our load on this building, you know, tends to be 15 vehicles or less. There's also senior transportation vehicle store and we have three vehicles for senior transportation. And at any given time there may be a driver that just showed up and parked her own. You can say on average right now you can anticipate up to four vehicles parking here for senior transportation. So if you look at what we're going to want to do is consider this overall as a shared parking situation, because the reality is the town hall and the bar department shared parking and the town hall and the school shared parking. And when there's big events at one versus the other, we all use our cross parking. So we are effectively now we have shared parking, so we're not planning on. You know, changing that. So when we look at the regulations and how they specify each each use. There's no real use in your in the regs for establishing parking for fire department. So I assumed one spot for every two members. Okay, which would be 17 total spark parking spots for the fire department. In the town hall, the closest category in the list would be as far as I could tell would be a professional office building,
which is two to five spaces per 1,000 square feet, nets out somewhere between thirteen and thirty one vehicles for the town hall. The community center. Again, the closest thing I could find in there would be an indoor recreational facility, which is two to 10 per 1,000 square feet. So, the size of the community center that requires between five and twenty five spaces. There's no category for public schools, but there is for private schools. And if you look in that is based on the max capacity for the building in terms of students. So if you look at the max capacity that says the school should have somewhere between fifty four and one hundred and seven parking spots. So currently they have 141. So the school has quite a bit in excess of what your regulations allow for maximum parking. In other words, if they were building that today,
you would have required them to put in a much smaller law. And that kind of makes sense because I've looked a few times. And on average, there's less than 40 cars in that lot out of 141. So it's definitely underutilized. So where are we in terms of total parking? If you look at the combined uses in your regulations for the fire department, the town hall, the community center and the school, you come up with a minimum if you take the minimum for each of those categories of 69 spots and a maximum of 180. And since you have 191 available, I think to me there's a pretty good evidence that there's sufficient parking and that that should be a non issue. And the second question that was raised is can Town Hall qualify for parking without you know you said the school was something completely separate. So the answer is, if you take the requirements for the fire department and the town hall in the school and you accept the minimum levels. The minimum required for those three occupations would be 35 spots and between the town hall and the fire department, there are either 50 or 51 depending on how you. So, regardless of whether you include the school parking or not, we should still qualify minimum parking levels. If we include the school, we're actually over the maximum parking. So my suggestion would be that the Commission allow the application to go through without any additional parking, because we've got plenty of parking combined between the three. So that's the first one is parking. And then what I'd like to do is take you all through the then. So obviously you can see that. Leanne, I assume you cannot see that, correct?
I don't think so.
Hey, Eric. If you just click on the screen and say share, it'll show share if you click on the screen, or you click on the individual and say share.
So go to the share itself? The screen itself? That screen you're on before. The Zoom screen.
These buttons down the bottom for the share. Alright. The blue.
Right, but the problem is that the oh, that is the one that I wanted to share. Okay, I'll shut up now. Thank you. So am I looking at the right one? No, but we'll start with this one. Okay. So this one is not the full survey, which is what I want to start with. So let's see if I You know what? Script. Let's talk about that one. This one is the details of the basic plan for the community center. So to orient you right now, we are sitting right here in the Andover Town Hall in the community room. So the proposed building location is directly behind this building and turned in about a 45 degree angle. And the angle of the building is determined by essentially optimizing it for Solar South. So the main access of the building faces Solar South. So what you see is the intention to use the main entrance as the town hall as the entrance also to the community center,
a turning circle that is large enough to take emergency vehicles. You can see the driveway right here that goes to the existing Andover Elementary School garage, And this also feeds to a semi established dirt or gravel path that is the access way to the lower playgrounds for the school and also at location to at least one of the oil tanks for the school. So that will be maintained during construction. Okay, if you look up here where I'm indicating right here, that is the current leach field. This is a combined leach field for the town hall and for the fire department. Currently, the Community Center will be added to this building. If you can see there's this is a this trench goes both directions. And then there's a second trench line here with the second distribution box. So the intention is to just
fit out the fourth leg of this. So the the septic, the additional capacity capacity for for the the septic system will go there. And then directly behind that is enough room for reserve system. If it turns out, you know, some point future, we have an issue with the existing system that gives you a reserve or repair area system. So about two weeks ago, the the engineer along with Eastern Highlands Health District and the town crew dug an EPIC test there. The modeling level was more than four feet deep, and they went down seven feet without hitting lynch and no sign of active water. So that was very positive. And the was also two perk tests. Then I take it back one perk test compete completed. And it matched exactly the values that they got in 1990, which is saying the soil conditions haven't really changed. So the system should be approved as designed. Talking to sanitary and he was pretty convinced that there wasn't going be any problems with that. We do show on the map a future pickleball court. That was a request from several individuals that pickleball is going to be a thing and you better anticipate being able to book the courts back there. So this is a location
of what could go in the future. Just saying that there's technically room there to put into courts without interfering with the septic system. We're not intending to put them in right now. The reason they're shown as separate and not combined courts is because of the grade there. The one court will be have to be about three and a half feet lower than the other court. So each one of them will need its own individual fencing, a little more expensive way to build it. But it's a lot cheaper than bringing in a lot of gravel. The community garden will be located between the shed here and the edge of the pickleball court, right about where I'm indicating right there. That way they can use rainwater off of both sheds. And it's still approximate to the parking area. So it's easy to get at. That will public works will bring in additional bill, but it won't interfere with the existing system because you know we're not getting close enough to to the actual leach field that we need to worry about bringing septic sand or anything like that. So before
I go any further, does anybody here have any questions about this portion and or the parking?
Are there going be any changes based on handicap parking requirements?
So. There's going to be a few things if you notice right here. There's two additional spots for handicapped parking that will be installed right in there. And then we also had one request for somebody who has is is not in wheelchair, but only has the ability to walk very short distances. So we did put in one additional van accessible handicap spot, you know, basically as close to the door as it was humanly possible. So there'll be one super close parking, handicap spot, and then two more additional ones just for the community center, which is what's what's code required. What's not on this map, which will be added is your regulations do require us to make accommodations for bicycle parking, which is a wonderful thing in the Community Center anyway. So we have to figure out how many spots we need. We do have four at the front of the town hall, But I would anticipate as part of this and we have more spots at the school, but I would anticipate we'll put additional bicycle parking somewhere right by the front door to the community center to meet section 12.7 of your regs. The one, one of the things I wanted to ask the commission is for relief for the section in your regulations that requires a for you don't have community uses directly listed out in your regulations. But
most industrial business and things of that nature require dedicated loading spot. And I would ask whether the Commission would consider waiving that for this application. So in the reason is the the main floor only has one main door. There is a side door here, but it's not really great for loading. So most things that come in here that require loading would come around the circle park right there, and then have direct sidewalk access into the front. So what I would propose is that US Commission allow us to get away with not having a dedicated loading spot. Because if we we have sufficient parking that we could do it, you know, it's not an issue, but there's no clean place on this map to designate a spot for parking without taking up one of the two handicapped parking spots down there, which I would very much like not to do. So when we come to the application, I don't know whether it and I don't expect her. You know, a definitive answer tonight. But does anybody on the commission? Would anybody be opposed to us submitting a waiver for the requirement for a loading space?
Would there be some semi net temporary stopping there for loading and unloading kind of thing? Because that's a spot where you would not tend to have it, like, parked. It's temporary type of thing. Yeah. I mean,
you know, The that that's obviously going to be where the you know, like when senior transportation drops off the seniors, they'll park right along that sidewalk so they can have direct access down to the sidewalk. But that's not going to be straight for parking in any way, shape or form. In fact, we probably want to, I mean, we really don't want anybody parking there for any kind of duration because that will be the fire lane access to that facility also. Yeah. That that makes total sense. Yeah. Yep. That's perfect. Yeah.
There's a car south there, bus. Lori, I'm gonna be able to get through in that circle. Is there enough room? I can't tell. A car. Yes.
Yeah, it's not a width issue. It's a long vehicle requires a much greater turning radius there than, you know, even even a large bus school bus certainly wouldn't get through there if somebody was parked there. We would need to put that road in the loading past the center point so that as somebody comes around, they have an upgrade to reset. Right. If it's too early in the circle, nobody get one. That's what we see in pushing past. Concur. Other questions regarding that? Does anybody in the commission have any general questions on the application? What they're seeing? What their concerns are?
In the setbacks for requirements, they're all met by the location of the building on there.
Yeah, the the reality is the town owns all the properties. So I mean, that was a question I asked Mark branch directly, and he essentially said that the you know, as a town, you can set those property boundaries anywhere you want, because technically it is all all towns property. So yeah, there's nothing there's the closest anything comes to that would be a true property line would be the the easement for the gas line and nothing we're doing is other than the other than the pickleball court and that's far enough away that I don't think that's an issue either. So no, there should not be any issues with side yard setbacks. The one that the town would consider and again, it depends on how the commission feels. This piece of property right here there is I'm going show you the other screen. There's an existing bead line that's right here. This parcel that the town hall was on was originally cut out at exactly one acre. Well, not even one acre was cut out in exactly
40,000 square feet because that was the minimum allowed under zoning regs in the back area, which was deeded to the town at the same time was technically a separate parcel. So the the question that we struggled with is does that back parcel. It does not touch any town road. Therefore, is it, you know, is it a legal parcel? So I mean we can get rid of that deep line. We just file a new deep description with these two parcels merge. If that's a concern by the Commission. Again, you know Mark Grant said you can essentially ignore it because it's all pound property and you can set the line any way you want, but I recognize that depending on how you read the regs, that may not be the interpretation you get to, and we would be happy to file this with a new deep line that shows that removed in the two parts partial moved. Now the other thing we have been considering and this isn't something that has a. You know, a final decision is, you know, presumably will still will end up being the talking point between the town and the school is one of the concerns was was to make it cleaner to clean separate what is town property and under town authority and what is school property and under school authority. So one of the things we are talking about doing is essentially drawing the boundary line, moving it over by dropping a single pin.
This would move about point one acres of land and transfer it between the school and the town, essentially, but that would give that would basically put the entire proposed driveway in the town portion and leave everything else in the school so it it does not affect any of the school parking. It doesn't affect any of that doesn't affect any your egress. You know, it's we're talking about somewhere just under 4,000 square feet of land. So we're talking about a pretty small piece. That's not final. That's, but that is one, you know, one option. You know, I think we can clearly do this and apply without it. But I do think that makes things cleaner and makes it easier to understand who's responsible for what. We had also talked for a while about officially merging the school and fire department properties. Initially, the surveyor had some concerns because the septic system for the fire department was not on the prop parcel attached to that. So we asked that question to the zoning attorney also. And he said it doesn't really matter as far as the law. You know, if by virtue of the fact that this parcel has contains the septic fields for this building, this building, the proposed building and the school is de facto emerged partial anyway. So he said we can safely ignore that. You know, so given that there's no reason to to kind of merge these two parcels might might as well just keeping keep it simple so we don't have to write any more deep descriptions than we have to.
Although there are on the same particle there are separate zones, and you could stop there. Right? There are two septic systems on the property. There is a large system that is located right here. That is the school system. And there's an additional portion to that. And that is right here. At one point, the last two sets of trenches had filled in and stopped functioning. So they built an additional capacity off to the side here. But the last time that got dug up when we looked in the in the distribution boxes, there was no evidence that any affluent had ever flown in with it. So this portion of the system for the school as does not appear to have ever been been used, even though it's physically there and around. The town's combined system is right here. And this is fed already from two different spots. The town has a septic tank right here that feeds into the first distribution box here, and then gets split to the second distribution box. And the fire department system actually enters the field on this end of the first trench, because their capacity. So they were allowed at the time to just instead of trenching all the way over and putting everything in in the central distribution box. So this part's not going to change this part's not going to change. What will change is there will be an additional septic tank for the town hall for correction, the community center, and that will go into the central D box. And then this leg, the fourth leg will be completed, And that should be the septic system for this. Because the septic system will now cover three separate buildings with three different uses.
This does require not just these Eastern Highlands Health District approval, but it does require state approval also, which I talked to our Senator in fact, he thought that was not an issue that he didn't have any concerns with that and thought the state would not also. But just so that you know that that will take both those approvals before we're allowed to build it.
Which the little lead line that said, you know, the dotted thing that goes through the boardroom school there. Alright, so
this gets back to when Endover Elementary School was first built here in the late 40s. This was the original boundary right here of the school property that land was deeded to the town from a previous first selectman, a guy named Percy Cook, who if you walk back there you might notice the trails named after him. So he initially needed this in like '46. The school was built in 1947. And then the town needed the land back to Percy Cook. And then Percy Cook, then deeded the town a bigger outline and deeded them more land so this outer boundary right there was the second version of him giving land to the town, And it increased this from, you know, like 5.8 acres to, to somewhere around 10 acres. And that all occurred at, you know, basically in one shot. It was a little weird because you see all the stuff in the town, basically, quick claiming it back to Percy. And then Percy quick claim the different deep description back to the town all at one time. So it took a while to get that. But does that answer your question? Okay. And this is what I would have preferred to have shown first, but couldn't find it. So this is the overall boundary survey, which goes all the parcels. This is the fire complex right here. This is the town hall complex right here. And this is all of the Andover Elementary School. And this again shows that initial survey boundary by person put, you can pretty much ignore this one. This is just on there because it's
a bunch of things in the past referred to it. So we have surveyor showed that on the map. So the reason I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about this is this is something that will prior to us filing this will require us to do an 08/24 application with the zoning commission. And the reason why is that if you look at the boundary between the school and the Hawes property, are surveyor thinks the last surveyor that did this got the boundary wrong. Not a lot in this area right here. It's off somewhere around five feet. And then there's this has been drawn this little triangle there or square. You know, it was also identified as there's a difference between the written feed and the actual survey data from the last surveyor. So what would have to happen is the surveyor basically said there's enough difference between those points, they can't do something to a two level of accuracy, because there's there's too many conflicting, you know, prior survey and boundary, you know, boundaries there. So their suggestion is that we do a boundary line agreement with the Hawes family.
In this area right there, we're talking, you know, a pretty small amount, you know, 200 feet times about five feet wide. So, you know, something about 1,000 square feet of difference between there. And then this little triangle right there, which is, you know, give or take 4,000 square feet. So there's somewhere about 5,000 square feet. You know, 1.3 acres difference between the two surveys. So, so but it's not anything that affects school or school operations. So in the interest of having a clean survey, I would recommend that we you know, at some point, we'll officially do an 08/24 application. You know, and if you guys approve it, then we would go ahead and file this. I did tell the superintendent that this was coming, but I didn't have the mapping. I will share the mapping with them. And you know, Gary, if you guys have any feedback on that, you know, feel free. But I don't believe this in any way affects your operations.
And obviously, we had to get the Hawes family to agree to that also. But it just makes it you know, once the boundary line agreement is in place, then forevermore, you know, it's pending, you know where it is. So that's, that's where we are regarding the survey. Is it currently pending? Far as I know, it is not.
You're done with the question. I didn't hear that. Is that is it currently pending?
No. I don't don't think so. At least the mapping doesn't show it. So it's going to open in there.
Yeah, rebar fence line there. So in when you look at the old maps, old mapping, sometimes has this drawn here, and sometimes has drawn there. You know, I don't think there's any, you know, that that's one of the unfortunate things surveyors have to do is wait through all the old stuff and try to figure out what the original intention was. And, you know, in the original mapping for this was pretty crude that the same was done. Other questions at this point, or comments or concerns by the commission? Anybody in the audience have questions or comments or concerns?
The neighbors have their lot surveyed? Did the people that are next to fill that boundary question and they had their property surveyed that ever match up?
There is a survey for the Hawes property. And that does not match completely the anchor engineering survey. I think this survey matches closer to what the survey and the deep description for that property was. There is apparently an existing easement to drain from the school property on to the Hawes property, But that will not be affected or changed by this application. I don't think they're going to complain they're going to get a few 1,000 square feet more land, they're not going to get anything that's practical usable, but but it should not negatively affect them in any way. So I don't see any reason why they would. I have not talked to both of them. Have not shown the mapping yet. But I have had a verbal discussion with Kim Hawes, and said that, you know, the town will be coming even some point to do this. So questions.
I think so the drawing shows the gazebo is on the school property. Has there been any feedback from the school on whether they would like to get rid of that or they're happy with that one way or the other? I think that was a little bit of a surprise.
It actually wasn't that much of a surprise because if if you looked at the old GIS data, that's kind of what it showed all along. I know everybody I talked to told me they were sure that the line went straight down the gazebo, half on school property and half on town property. You know, but when we actually surveyed, that's clearly not the case. I mean, obviously, the town has been maintaining a placebo and the electrical outlets and power for the gazebo comes from the town hall, not the school. As long as the school doesn't have any objection to that, you know, that can that can stay. You know, I know the school board was offered a possibility of adjusting the lot line, which would have put that under town control, not school control. And I think the school board wasn't overly excited about that proposal. Okay, so that's not incorporated in this. Other questions? Alright, a little luck. We'll see a full blown application next month. I will be doing that presentation. That'll be the engineers from BSC. Thank you, Eric. No problem.
Did the people that are, here from the public get the opportunity to sign a little sign in sheet so we know for our minutes who's here would be very good. Thank you. That concludes item five bravo. The next item up is just for a very preliminary run through discussion regarding a different boundary agreement and possible eight twenty four referral for purchase of the property owned by Stephen King on Burnett Brook Road. It's probably better. Was gonna bring up the GIS map, which we know we're wrong. But
Let me see if I could share this. And so what you're looking at right here is the the town owns a large piece of property which the transfer station is on the town has access to it up at several locations. But one of the sides of that property abuts a property owned by mister King, and that's another one of those cases where there seems to be kind of pretty complete disagreement as to between the deeds and the the mapping that would file as to where the boundary lines are. So that's another case for the town. At some point, it's going to have to do a lot line agreement with the homeowner on where the boundaries are. So I'm going to show you a portion of the property to orient you this line in the way in 20 my my cursor down that is Burnett Brook. This road right here is Burnett Brook. So in this part of the survey up to here, there's pretty good agreement about where the boundary based on of the deed descriptions and there are new survey newer surveys for subdivision in this area. So this point right there is fairly well established. And then if you look at the other end of this survey, Which is right here. So to orient you, this is the Hop River Rail Trail.
And right here where the road is, is where that little gravel parking area is at Burnett Park. Now that parking area is partially on DEEP property. And it is partially privately owned by the owner that has this whole parcel. So what the town would like to do is the town would like to acquire that section of Burnett Brook, the frontage to that along the road. And the reason is that that probably one of the prettiest spots in town along the Hop River Rail Trail. It's that big rapid section. It's also encompasses the stone bridge where the rail trail goes under. And there's also a walking path that leads down the water. And it's something that you know people are commonly using even though it's not private property. So what I had told the homeowner in to go back many years, I negotiated a couple of times with the previous owner of this property to see whether he would either sell or grant the town easement do that. Because I think this is this is nice enough that and that's really kind of one of the landmarks along the trail of the town should really own them. Now the homeowner is amenable to giving back to the town as part of a boundary line, you know, agreement, in part because he doesn't want the liability to it, because there's an awful lot of, you know, members of the public dropping over what's currently his property. But he doesn't really want to put up signs or restrict it either. So by putting that under town control, you know, essentially alleviates any liability portion from him. So he's happy to do that. And then the question is where this boundary goes. I spent a couple hours this afternoon looking through all the mapping.
And he's right, I certainly can't figure it out. So their surveyor, Rob Hellstrom made a so this this portion here is bounded by the road. So that one's fairly obvious. This portion here, there's good survey data from the old railroad. So this is well established. And based on the deep descriptions this distance matches what's in the deep description this distance matches what's in the deep description, and so does this distance. But what doesn't match is the angles they report don't really match. You know, so this angle is probably off. And it doesn't match between the respective feeds and previous surveys, none of which were really a two surveys, they were all, you know, pretty low resolution surveys. So at some point, there's going to need to be a boundary line agreement between the town and the owner of this property to establish where that is because it looks like right now there's not enough. There's not enough good data to definitively say where they intended to put that.
So this will also require an eight twenty four as well the acquisition of this property. So when our surveyor reviews this and get back to us, it will probably go to the zoning attorney for review. And then at some point, will come back to you as a commission for the coming for You know, referral. Now, you might ask why do we care? The Burnout Brook is one of one of only a couple of cold water streams in the town of Andover. And because of that, there's a 200 foot upland review area along the stream instead of just 100 feet like for a normal for a lot of other things. So the reality is the land that's in question that we're debating about is it all in the upper review area, it's probably not billable anyway. So regardless of whether we own it or the town owns it, it's probably not going to have to deal with any development pressure. So essentially, all we're trying to do is get the boundary about where it should be.
Questions on that? I don't think I don't know exactly how the property owner got started on trying to figure out where the property was the first time he brought it in, at least to the best of his ability, understanding where the property line went was right through the pasture that he had behind his house fenced in area. So he had fenced in spot that's, you know, pointed out to just as you get to the bend there and the property line went right through that little fenced in area and he was trying to sort out. What's really there. And and he came, you know, forward to them in a very positive manner. He's done a lot of work trying to sort out where the property line really is.
But he certainly had his fenced in pasture on the wrong side of the line for many, many years now, and and he's trying to make it right. And and so I think it's one of these cases where there could be a win win answer for both the property and where it would come.
Yeah. And if you read through the actual documentation of this, even if this went straight here, that would not match the descriptions anyway. So the descriptions don't match anything existing on the ground right now. So it's I think the only practical way to sort this out is to come up with some kind of agreement between the two of us. And whether that agreement is a straight line that goes from here, or whether you know that it comes to some point here. You know, that's that I don't think anybody's we're not at the point where we're we're there yet. I mean, he would prefer not to go straight because that cuts off part of his pasture. You know, out of the Stockgate area.
And I looked at the GIS line drawing today, and it's shows the property line a lot closer to the road than than any of these discussions do. They get the property lines almost entirely on the roadside of the river and so. That's probably not accurate either. That didn't match anything so right. The important thing is that we, you know, come to an agreement on where the property line should be and then make it so. And Eric's trying to figure out the most cost effective way of right going out and doing is that northern and south line here. Is that on any need? This line area down on a deed anywhere?
No, actually, if you read the deed description from this corner, or from wherever this establishes, you know, they don't match one of them actually has it going northwest 160 feet to some point there and going, which would put basically this entire parcel on town property. But it also has this parcel, this property extending way over on the other side of the road and them owning a whole batch of land back here, which isn't correct either. So I mean, hard to tell what the original.
So the reason that American South line is on this is what what reason is that there? Mean, this line right here. Yeah.
So when they this boundary runs straight in this direction, and there's a random iron in there. So they picked that and said, Okay, if we ran it straight there, that would avoid it going through there. Is that correct? Maybe not. I mean, I'm not sure we're ever going to piece together what the original intention and where the quote unquote true boundaries are. You know, I mean, like, if you think back to the parcel that got sold, that the town granted the easement to Upper Riverside. When they went in actually surveyed that property after they bought it, I mean, that property went from 76 acres down to 52 after they actually surveyed it. You know, when they pursued and finally got a boundary line agreement. So, you know, we're only talking an acre, not a few acres. So it's not a huge disagreement. But but I don't know that we'll ever get an exact
That North South Line is established by those residences to live with.
Question. All those are residences. Right? This is the town line.
These are various different. These are lots. This was a subdivision from around 1990. And these properties extended all the way back to Wales Road. So yeah, I think these are this probably accurate enough, modern enough survey mapping to say this portion is correct. You know, in this line is correct. It's just the question where this boundary intercepts that line that is not really set in stone at this point. At this point, that's that's the recommendation of the property owner, isn't it? That's where he would, you know, he's recommending he set the boundary there. Right. Yeah. Yep. And the town could very easily, you know, say, okay, we don't think that's correct. Well, you know, we think that's correct. But I mean, remember to we're getting, you know, even if we are giving up a few acres of its land, what we're getting out of it is the most scenic section of Burnett Brook, and we're getting that under town control. So from my perspective, there's a lot to be gained by that. You know, and we're not giving up anything that's buildable. Because I mean, as many of you know, this, this, that interior portion of this property was one of the ones that that has always historically been under consideration for higher density housing, or you know, housing in some form or another. But again, I don't think this would limit that because nothing we're talking about is outside the 200 foot, you know, upland review area.
So the way I check tonight, we just wanted to show you what's coming down the plate and they're out there trying to make the property line better. Yep. Whenever we start looking at property lines, it's always the can of worms. Into the town benefits by having a well liked property line out there if you ever do anything on that.
Yeah, and we have to accept the fact that the town property is not surveyed either. So there is some ambiguity of what the town actually owns there. And the good news from my perspective is the northern most edge of that property is well defined by the the old railroad. So that's easy. The part to the east because there's all been subsequent development. The town boundary along that whole side along Johnny Mills well established by the individual subdivisions lots that are cut out. So this is the last portion of that that's really not defined. So even if we don't survey the property ourselves, we will with the with the boundary line agreement on that portion, we will have basically, you know, enclosed all four sides of that property. So we should know pretty accurately where everything is.
Okay. That completes new business. Well, okay. One more. I didn't renumber it, but, it now is five delta, discussion on monumentation and subdivision monuments. And we had a discussion at the last meeting about some some pins and monuments that were missing over in the Pine Ridge Drive subdivision. And so I went back and and we looked at it's in the subdivision regs, which this was a subdivision, but it would apply to any site plan because our regulations provide that latitude. But it talks about, you know, iron pins shall be installed in all live corners. The Commission shall require the installation of such monuments, iron pins is a condition of approval of the subdivision or resubdivision. The building permit shall not be issued until required by invitation to corner pins are in place. So, you know, I talked to to Jim about that a little bit. We we should have had those bins in place out there before they got a building permit. I don't know that there's been, you know, as, as much as I would like coordination between the the building official and the zoning enforcement officer, but we're gonna try and improve that a little bit so that that we can, you know, get that kind of stuff taken care of and get that put in part of the process.
Now the other thing that that I discovered, you know, reading through here is in in, I'll let Jim tell me where I run amok here, but it it talks about, you know, on section 21 dash four under enforcement for the building permits, No building permit shall be issued for any activity which is not in conformance with provision of these regulations. So how does the building official know whether or not he's in conformance with our regulations here? It says no such permit shall be issued until the zoning enforcement officer is issued a certificate of zoning compliance indicating that the plan submitted to the building official conform to these regulations. So that's I think how the process goes.
Jim, correct me if I'm wrong. No, you're right. It's function of the zoning. So the that process hasn't been going on. I don't know if every building permit takes a certificate of zoning compliance or not. Certainly what I'm looking for, you know, help on in this case is for those those cases where a nutrient allocation worksheet would be required around Andover Lake or something like that, you know, that the building official shouldn't be issuing a building permit until he checks with Jim and Jim can say, oh, that takes a nutrient allocation worksheet and provides that backup or any other conditions of approval that we might put into our approval there that that provides that link. So that's something we've got to work on to strengthen up a little bit there. But but our process, as it's written in the book, seems to work pretty well. We just haven't been as maybe good as we should have been on a follow-up.
Historically, a lot of kids were installed after prior to at the time that the accident was done. But as you pointed out to me, that way the regulations way the regulations read, and I will make sure that that's compliance. So in the past,
the zoning agent has all often weaved and allowed them to pin it after as a condition of getting a CO, not as a condition of issuing the building permit. And the reason is on a small loft, you're doing site work. It's very easy to run over and wreck the pins, you know, and then nobody ever goes in and puts them back. So it's better to force the surveyor to come back out after, you know, do as folks who's building correctly pin the lock, and then give you a map and a set of ad books. That's what's done.
Doesn't have to be done. Well, makes sense. I got no background in any of this stuff. So all I do is read her her regs and check what I found by doing it. We'll we'll try and get the ends in it better unless there's a good reason not to, you know, come back and do that. And and I still there's still a fair amount of frustration that we we put out a plan, and then we don't actually follow the plan all that well. And and that's something that I'll continue to try and get better. So that's that's all I want to say on my invitation unless anybody else had any questions on that one. Okay, we're gonna move on to old business, and first up is an update on the gravel pit. Jim, you got that? Sure.
I believe that the gravel paid a slate for hanging seating this week and planting on the South Side. We're we're along the Hutchinson property, which is a concern of banks, very tripping with respect to the turtles. Also, some of the silt fence is coming down to allow turtles to move more freely. I did go out there with weatherization and tank with some concerns about the ability of that site to hold hold seat given the the vastness of it, the wind and perhaps water migration. And I hope to meet with the owner this week, sent him a letter and call him up. Hopefully, we'll be meeting this week and going over detail. It's also an issue that was raised. Catherine Hutchinson has probably all recall, has repeatedly expressed concern about water going into her property. So the final plan I say the final plan, the Asheville, KA. It's not particularly legible on on the on the website. And some reason, you can't blow it up. Yeah. Whatever. So there is a small portion of the property that does drain towards the what I call the hollow, which is the road along between the properties, and that that road is is in order to to regrade there, that would be filling in floodplain. So something that's not gonna happen.
I'm gonna have to revisit that whole issue because it will come back the matter will come back to the commission after May meeting, and I'd like to have that resolved and resolved being understand why why the owner did not grade it all towards the back. We would have to take another look at the plan and have another conversation with him. That's all I really have. Was there any top soil on that side? It's lacking in the back. That's been pointed out to lacking towards the towards the the towards the hill that was carved out. That's pointed out to him. Gonna be able it has to be able to take seed. The rest of the top soil that's that was on-site was was spread on the on the front portion. And, actually, if you walk the site, make sure you have you can you literally can feel the the difference. You don't even have to to look at it. It's it's a sand on the back. So we'll see how that he's he's aware that we'll have to see have to have to support and see if it does or not.
So one of the things that I felt I didn't do very well in this particular case is that we repeatedly and I guess Jim shared something you'll be here with me, but we repeatedly asked for a restoration plan And we kept not getting anything in writing from the property owner or the engineer. And so Jim had sent several letters that way nothing comes back and so. Pinning down the property owner is what he actually agreed to has been very difficult. And so we need to do better on that going forward to make sure that we actually get a written plan so that we can go back to it and say that you didn't do this. Because as we already said, even if we have a written plan, the chances of the the first two of them weren't actually following it, we don't always hit hit what we should do. So those those are a couple of things. I don't like being in a position where we put out a good plan and then we ignore it and nobody follows it and all that kind of stuff. That frustrates all of us a little bit on that.
If you go back and review the recordings for the meetings, if you were presented
as a restoration plan? Well, I I just, you know, got the we probably could. It's not really easy to do. Takes takes a lot of time. And we're all limited on the amount of time. I thought we were gonna get and and we're not far off, but, you know, I thought we were gonna come out with a good conclusion at the end. It was probably still well. But the the lesson learned is when we tell somebody to submit us a plan, it's gotta be a the plan has gotta be in writing, so you go back and look at it. So that's that's we'll do better. You know? That's that's a process issue in one of the things that we as a commission need to do when we have when we approve something, and I thought hard about this with the accessory dwelling today tonight, what conditions of approval can we go?
We're always in a hurry to get done with the thing. It what we need to do is develop the discipline that when before we leave a topic, we say, okay, here are all the conditions of approval. Make sure that they're in the minutes so we could go back to the minutes. So that's our okay. What we should have done last meeting on the accessory apartment was we had a bunch of actions. They were all over the counter. We should have taken ten minutes at the end of that and said, okay. Let's go get the actions out here. Now my notes from the last agenda where I've written them write them down, I think they they did, in fact, cover everything that you were looking for, but we we need to work so that the minutes are are bread and butter as far as what we expect other people to do. And then we just get the minutes out notice if you do this. Yes or no? Yeah. That saves us all a lot of working longer. So that's what I'm gonna mean, and I am always in a new trying to get done on dying, all that stuff. We gotta take a little bit more to make life easier later on. I did wanna spend just a couple of minutes on the Grad Accessory Rolling Unit changes. Eric, do you think you could
go to our website? And Jim, did you get those posted under the They should be right with the application. I'm here somewhere. I
would have thought I think it was the second or third.
Apartments. This guy? Yes. Okay. There we go. I didn't actually see it. I
I was kind enough to post it. Leanne, are you able to see that? What is this that you're trying to show now? Okay. I'm trying to show the draft change to the accessory unit accessory apartment regulations. I
had a question on the, gravel pit before you moved on.
Okay have you got the accessory apartment you're seeing it now?
Yes I am. Can I still ask a question about the gravel pit? Oh go ahead yeah. Yes. Based on what you said tonight, and, you know, we all know this has been going on for a very long time, can we have something in place, you know, this does seem to be stagnating, can we have something in place from the land use attorney if nothing has changed by our meeting next month? And also, it doesn't seem reasonable to think that any grass would have grown in the timeframe that they planted it over what was our winter. So, I think that just kind of adds to it. So, can we have something in place or maybe have the, if we don't have the land use attorney maybe present at the next meeting?
We will try. I can't guarantee that we will have, somebody here. I'm you know, if I would like to get the the property owner and the engineer both here. We have been unsuccessful in doing that and not making that a big enough issue. And if I get them here, I would like to have attorney grants here as well. So we're we're shooting to try to do that for the next meeting to wrap that up.
Yes. That's what I was getting at. Okay. Good. Thanks. Okay.
Hope a lot changes for the better between now and then.
Yes. And and I will try so and I will try to have the next meeting to be the hybrid variety because I know Mark Branch doesn't like going out after dark and he just assumed log in from home and that sort of thing too. So we'll try to make that for the next meeting here.
Okay, I think that would help us make some progress that has really stalled. Then yes, thank you. And then to move on, yes, I can see what you posted about the accessory apartments.
Okay, I'm going to go through this quickly. There's only one thing that I changed since we talked about this before. But again, back, you know, in the in the intent thing there, if you provide for the needs of the elderly, we cross that out because, while that was the intention when we first put these regs in here, you know, it it's now the intention to this be an affordable housing solution for people that are just starting out. So we just got rid of those words. Moving down to, paragraph four eleven dash point two. The intent here was to make everything by site plan review. So I had to refer the dash principal dwelling in there because that follows the guidance from the state. Know, we saw from all the public. Interest in the accessory department for tonight, I think that's going to be the case with most of them, and we should just try to make that easier and go do site plan review. The next one, looking down just a little bit there, we we talked about yeah. Here it go. You're gonna have to scroll down. Is it probably down there? My finger works out of mouse, not on the pad very well. Okay. Thank you. That'll be good. So, We had an accessory apartment that didn't meet the size of the lock requirement of our, you know, section 11.2, and we did not allow that. Based on, you know, the knowledge now that we we cannot make a minimum size on a house and also that The state wanted us to have. Having a matter of right that anybody could put an accessory apartment on any lot.
I got rid of what I did is I set the setback requirements of section 11.2 are satisfied, and so you know we should still meet the setback requirements, but if the lot is smaller than 60,000 square feet got rid of that requirement. Moving down to the beat we talked about the net floor area no larger than 1,000 square feet consistent with the state and no larger than 33% of the groups or the net floor area of the single family dwelling. Net floor area is defined in section 24. And that all lines us up with what the state would say in there. They have no minimum. They have no minimum. Correct.
There's technically a minimum imposed by the state building code. Because there is a minimal habitable area for sleeping area. So there's not no minimum, but it's pretty small. It's, you know, in order of 120 square feet, something like that. So just to let you know, okay,
the change that I made that you hadn't seen before is in item D here. And I put, you know, the the principal dwelling in Century Park and show remain under common ownership. And I added the words in the owner shall reside in either the principal dwelling or the accessory apartment. And when we first put these regulations into effect, you know, we were talking about having the the person in the accessory apartment had to be a family member. And we said, well, what happens when that person dies? You know, we spent all this money making this thing. When we get in, so we made it so that it could it could be rented out for, you know, affordable housing and that kind of thing. And in that we lost maybe the the thought that we liked having the owner reside on the property, if we're putting you know two two dwellings now on a single lot, having the owner live there probably adds a level of oversight before it gets to the town's business, maybe keeping things under control. And so I put those words in there. That's a little different. Jim thinks we had talked about that one time before. I couldn't remember if we had or not, but I was interested in any feedback if you think we're going too much. That is not in the example that the state gave us for doing. They don't say anything about that, but I do think that it's nice to have, you know, you're not having one person owning two rental properties on a on a single lot. It it helps keep
the good neighbors good. Any anybody got any thoughts on that one way or the other? I agree with it. I mean, if you have two rental properties on the same property, you're essentially an apartment complex at that point, right? Yeah. And and the town is going to be the receiver of all the Complaints, you know, it would be nice to have the property owner put his degree of, you know, he's trying to maintain some semblance of decorum and doing that. So Okay. I leave that in there. That doesn't mean it's a done deal. You know, we're at some point. You know, after tonight, I plan to send these over to Mark Ranch, let him take a cut on it, and then we'll we'll see what is coming up next. He's pulled that over here. Yeah.
We'll get that reviewed by him. Good. Good. Good. I got that. I just question whether that's the default. Not that I disagree with.
Okay, that's good. So again, we had some discussion last meeting about, you know, what what should the architectural plans require? You know, should we we talk about the electric? Should we talk about insulate and all those kind of stuff? And I and I thought about that a lot. I said that's really building officials thing. It's gotta be made to code, you know, and so. We'll we'll check with the building official on that to see where where he comes down on that, but I can't imagine it not having to be built to code if somebody's gonna be living in it. But, and I took the words from the, the detached well and put it up here. It says the architectural plan shall be submitted as part of the site plan review, this is from our existing regs, to determine that the proposed structure is consistent and apparent from the character of the surrounding buildings.
It does not detract from the rural characteristics of the area. So that's really all we're trying, In my mind, that's what we're trying to do from the architectural volumes is make sure that, you know, it's not some funky looking building that doesn't tie in and the rest of the neighborhood, that sort of thing.
Can I make one point though? Yep. This is under site plan view. So you can ask for architectural plans again, but unless you have some kind of design standard, you can't reject them because you don't like their architectural plans. He put if it was a special permit. But how do you reject a site plan if it needs code? Or if it needs?
What one would look at would be architectural elevations to determine compliance if it if it's performance with the neighborhood, and it blends with the neighbors. But there are some section there are a few requirements in regulations that would that do require a floor plan. We yeah. I understand. Yeah. Certainly. We've got a kitchen and a bathroom. Right. And a living space.
Yes. So in that, that's listed in there. It's in one of those things and thoughts about that. They just got a living area, sanitary and kitchen.
But I guess my point is that if you're talking about if you're set a detached structure now is only site plan review, yet you think you're going to review their architectural and reject something just because you don't like their architectural. Yeah, you don't have a good leg to stand on. Okay.
No, that's true. For a site plan review. I'll consider that. Yeah. I good point. Thank you. Because we've got it down there. It's such a good point that we made it twice. It's in f and I as well, not consistent with the character. It's all through our our, zooming rates. Right. Yeah. So we can try. Anyhow, there you go. And it got I think that gets to the end there. But I did wanna put a definition in our definition section about what architectural drawings would be. You scroll down here to the bottom of the the three definitions. It says, yeah,
a little more because it says proposed architectural plan definition for our regs. We'll keep scrolling now. Yep. We got a little bit there. That's good. That's good. Architectural plans in architectural building engineering and floor plan is a technical drawing with scale showing a view from above the relationship between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of the structure. Conventions are usually drawn between the walls to specify room sizes and all lengths. Floor plans may also include details of the features like sinks, water meters, furnaces, etc. Floor plans may include notes for construction specified finishes,
construction methods, or symbols or electrical items. So that's, you know, taking a look at a couple. I I know I put a couple of the things I thought we were looking for, and so that would be my recommendation for what we would define in our architectural plan to put that into our section on deputy meetings. I think that definitely is fine for the floor plan that Jim mentioned elevations. We're gonna review the aesthetics. So anyhow, that's it. That's all I wanted to go through tonight on the accessory apartment regulation. Anybody have any other comments on on those, Leanne? I see it crossed off four point eleven point three, that whole section. What was the reason for that? Because we're not doing special permits in the That is correct. Yeah. The the goal was to eliminate any requirement to have a special permit for effective dwelling. And so outside of the lake area, it's a it's a matter of right for for anybody to to have a good one. What about for any patient? Bargain spaces, the it's still in there. You got you got two for the main home and one for the accessory apartment. Yeah. What is the principal plumbing? Like, 3,000 square feet, maybe 1,000 square foot house and three bedrooms. One space still good enough? It is. Yeah. They might wanna put two, but it's gotta have at least one. That's that's for That
is. Yeah. Matter of fact, they reduced the number of burner spaces when they put out their guidance two years ago. There used to be two for the accessory department. They ordered it to one. Yes. You're talking oh, okay. In fact, that was they just said you can't ask for more than that. And they say you put it in, but we can't we can't specify between the target that notice. It's more than three.
You guys had a debate about whether you require permanent foundations for this structure?
We have not had that debate in in one of the things that, you know, I Well, it I just want to check that. I gotta get a hold of the building guy to see does a house need to be on a foundation and You know, so we we said this is more like a house than a shed and and I'm sure Potter Farms is going to be big time as well as a bunch of other people into making sheds that get turned into accessory work. And so my my thought was is you get ready for the the meeting tonight. So when somebody comes and and they have a shed put on the the the gravel rock biome, is that okay? And I didn't know the answer to that yet. And I don't I don't like it. You know, I think we need to require a foundation, but I gotta find out if that's something the building official was or we need to put it in. Yeah. Yeah. This is a chicken flag that Verizon is approved there. It is on its own. Yeah. No. Excuse me? Is there anything else in the garage? We forgot about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Talk about it. That's why I don't agree with it. You can turn the garage into a house. There's no frost protection.
It's fairly common to have a garage area made into a part of the house, so I've seen that on many. So
Yep. And I'm not smart enough to say, yeah, I don't know what the fraud protections. The differences are. My conclusion was that we need a foundation, whatever that is, and I don't know how you define a foundation. I've lived in lots of places where they had houses on slash. It just wasn't here in New England, so I don't know. Some of these tiny homes are built on trailers? Well, in in that's yes. So that's the technical detail I need to come through with the accessory department on the on the rock band. We're on wheels. We're on wheels. Right? They can be. Yeah.
This guy's a boat on it for you. $30. Yep. Yeah, I know there. It's a complex issue. And obviously, every state deals with it differently. I mean, there are a lot of pre manufactured what they call granny pods or menu pods that you can buy and put on fully assembled.
You know, the question becomes how is that different than somebody wants to park in your street trailer? And you're somebody live there? They wanted their usage of the one of their usage on that? Don't know. I got more homework to do on that. That would just, you know, because I was thinking about the, you know, the nice shed get pulled in and upgraded in the comment there. And I got smart enough on the foundation requirements here. My thought was building official should require a foundation. If not, we'll go ahead.
Well, but do you consider I mean, there's a lot of possibilities. I mean, one, you could just do a slab and they do thickened. So they take down both feet on the edge and they pour on, you know, a model for 12 hunched wall, right? Bunch of different names for but basically essentially get to your your frost wall built into the slab. Yeah, you can also do a slab that sits on top of a sufficiently thick stack of foam and do an insulated slab without going down four feet. There's a lot of and I don't know how the Connecticut building codes, like a lot of northern areas, you know, it's more common to use the insulated air slap on grade foundations. You have to see what what was allowed, but I would be you know, the good thing about it is the smaller the house gets, the less critical because, you know, if you have a really big building settling in one side versus the other shows up and causes you a lot of problems. If you have a 12 by 20 structure, little settling on one side, we don't do that big a deal. Can be double. That's my thoughts. Okay.
Anyhow, that's where we are on that. I want to go through those because we dealt with the excessive use today. Next item up is the approval of the minutes from 03/20/2024. And I'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from 03/20/2020. Second. The applicant's name is Byron and five eighty. Okay.
There's a couple of misspellings that I've given to Maria. But it requires just for reference.
Any other comments, from anybody there? The only other comment, that I had was on page three just before we got to correspondence. That has four zero one Steve Nelson obtained. We need to say the motion passed. Any comments? Okay. Hearing none, a call to approve the minutes as amended. Ian? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Leanne? Aye.
I vote aye as well. Vote in passing right zero. Correspondence here. None. Okay. That's good. Zoning agents enforcement action pending applications.
664 Route 6 Barnett Property, long standing flight violation, joke violation, and the habitation of a habitation of an RV. I've been working spent a lot of time with well, with town attorney on this. And, hopefully, we're well, hopefully, we'll be filing leads liens against the property to reflect. Fires have been levied for both well, for the for the blight as well as as pending zoning violation. I'm working with Mark Grant on the zoning violation that has yet to be pursued. Zoning violation specifically on the, for junk on the property. In addition to, like, a long time, very time consuming project. See some some progress from an enforcement standpoint. Progress meaning actual orders issued and such fines being levied. There's been some progress in charge, junk removal, but it's eliminated. And the the was the health department did shut down the house, which being the house is no longer being occupied. It has to be resolved. Their issues have to resolve before it is occupied. Motorhome, as far as I know, is still being used. I'm working on that again with Mark Brantz. 243 long held will let property have back from the road, the roof that they bought from it, get on the market. I have not pursued it because I didn't know too much about it. I it has not sold. I'm going to issue an order to an outstayed owner on that, And, hopefully, we'll it's there's a working on that. 3446 Mills Property next to the library, which is the fence that's been in disarray for the price of time. I have been in contact with the owner. He has assured me he's purchased material. And we'll be working on this hopefully,
any day now. Maybe he can take care of it in April. I have heard from fairly recently. He's on the case. 27 Hendy Road. This is a lot of blight. It's a house under construction. Been under construction for a long time. I have mentioned it to the owner, not issuing an order, waiting for him to be looking for a CO. I more recently, I have contacted him, tried to put some issues out to him. But right now, I have Permissions from the CLVS to address. There's some flight conditions there. 43 times far. I have a an RV that's being resided in, has been for a long time.
The owner has assured me that as soon as campgrounds open, the RV will be moved off-site. I have not gone back to take a look at that in the last few weeks. That's all I have. I'm happy to answer any questions.
That the new house I'm handing, did they put pins in there, Jim?
Pins? When you do the CL, you're gonna inspect. I will. Yeah. I did not that I did not issue. I did not don't it's not not here when that started starting back in 2019 or in 2018, 2018. I don't I don't know the status of that as far as I mean, that wasn't a subdivision. She had last been there for a long time. But, nonetheless, yeah, I will I verify that.
They cleaned up the property on Long Hill, Jack The Cross. Oh, I have I forgot that one. I
actually haven't seen it. I saw the dumpster on-site. Yeah. Which depends on what you just like the scene of the days. A lot better than it was. They might have They told the whole dumpster.
It was a project that was undertaken by by a partnership and which has since been dissolved or or at least killed. There's so there's one owner that I think will be focusing on that. And hopefully, he'll he will be on-site. You know, he will have a presence there. Hopefully, it's not gonna same thing is gonna happen. I didn't know that you had I think it became a little more of a problem than the the state of the country. And slow down and walk up and and, hopefully, they'll be back.
Any other questions for Jim? Inland Wetlands Watercourse Commission liaison we had no meeting this month so nothing to report. If somebody on the planning and zoning commission wants to be the liaison within the province, I would be happy to entertain shifting to their responsibility here. You need to be a voting member all the time in the wetlands application. And it can be an alternate. And it can be an alternate. That's how I started out over there as an alternate. And so if you're interested, let me know. Item 10 public comment. Any any public comments at this point?
Just do we? The next time 27 Not yet. Don't know. Small house. Small house is obviously lifted. I've seen the car here.
Yeah. Yeah. I was assured it wasn't done. I I don't doubt that it is. I I was also told that the the owner purchased a piece of commercial property and moved a lot of this equipment outside. We're hopeful that but I'll I'll follow-up on that on that.
Yep. There's there's, like, one or two sheds. They're like a king or something like a like, a building, but it's just very, very small. It's a new three home occupation application for Merrick Valley Road. I
have been in contact with the gentleman who hasn't been in. Okay. So I'll chase her down. Yeah.
We owe it to his neighbor to get that adjudicated. Okay. Any other comments from public? Okay. I've been here with you. Next
meeting, the agenda says May 15. I was gonna be out of town then, so we moved it. It's on the it's on the schedule for May 22.
And It is? It's on the regular meeting schedule? Yes. But it wasn't worth that, I think, which is fine.
Now my, question, for the commission here is looking ahead to the July meeting, it'll probably start shifting to that third Tuesday, like we had discussed, because it's the start of the new year. The, the June meeting is, currently scheduled Monday, the twenty sixth. I guess I'm inclined to leave it there. We can we can shift that to the third Tuesday and start that earlier if anybody hear significantly one way or the other. But if not, we'll just stick with the schedule until July and then shift to, the the third Tuesday. Okay. Hearing none. Stay with the schedule as it currently is. Miscellaneous. Marina is here tonight doing her minutes. Carol Ann, since the last meeting, resigned. And so Marina is gonna be helping us out with the minutes Any
other missile media topics that we should talk about? Leanne, how did it work from your end up there?
Quite well. Thank you for, sharing the screen a couple times when I apparently wouldn't otherwise have been able to see it.
Were you able to hear everybody? I know a couple of the people sitting in the back of the room weren't always talking as loud as I would hope. Did you make it out okay?
Yes, sometimes that room, even when for those of you there in person, the acoustics have never been good, and it's been known for that for years, but I feel like I was able to do quite well over the phone.
Okay. Thank you, Leanne. Any other miscellaneous time? Last item is adjourned. We make the motion we adjourn. I'll second. Got a second. Any opposed? It's unanimous. Five zero zero. Thank you all for the