Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Public Hearing & Regular Meeting
June 21, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay. I apologize for being just a minute late here. I'm looking to see what commission members I've got. And I see Scott. I see Susan. I see Anne. Leanne, is that you on the phone? Yes.
And I see Anne Creme is joining us. So one, two. So it looks like we've got the full commission here. And it's 701, so I'll call the public hearing to order. This is for the application PZC 20 One-three, property known as 26 Old Farms Road. Applicants seeking a special permit for two rear lots in accordance with section 4.9 of the Andover zoning regulations and a two lot open space cluster re subdivision in accordance with section 5.5 of the Andover zoning regulations in the Andover subdivision regulations. As proposed, this subdivision consists of one lot with that. The easement and one lot off Pine Ridge Drive at the end of the cul de sac. With that in mind, all heard that we are recording. So everything we say is on the record. Although I do not expect to see alternate Anne Blanchard because we do have a full commission, all commission members are entitled to ask questions during the public hearing. But when we go to the deliberation, the only those seated members that will be acting on the application will be able to discuss at that point. The last thing I'd like to say before we start on the application is due to a family emergency. Our zoning agent Jim Hallisey is not with us tonight. And so I think that will probably make a little bit of a difference as we go through the business. Think it's important that we hear from Jim. I did talk to him a couple of times today
about various things, but I know that he was still reviewing some materials, especially with respect to the Old Farms Road. So we my thought is that we most likely will not deliberate on that tonight, but I do want to get through the public hearing on that. With that in mind, I'll let George or Eric or whoever they want to have talk to the application do so, walk us through that. And for George and Eric, please be sensitive to the fact that while you have given this presentation several times through the Inland Wetlands Agency, this is the public hearing for planning and zoning and so your discussions what provide the public record for us to make our decision on going forward. After that's done, I would normally have Jim Halsey give us his perspective on the application. He's not here tonight so we'll afford the commission members an opportunity to ask questions and following that any members of the public that might be here in support of that application can provide their input to us as well. Any questions before we begin? Hearing none, George or Eric, who is gonna lead off for us tonight?
I think I can do that. Is it okay if I share my screen and display the plans?
It is, let me just, yep, our board clerk is here. She's going to be controlling that. Thank you, Mindy. Yeah, So Mindy, if you allow Eric to share his screen, I'd appreciate it. Okay, just can everybody see the document I'm sharing? Yeah.
Okay. So I'm Eric Liteska. George Correa is on here soon and I think maybe George, you know, please chime in here and there if I'm if you feel like I'm leaving anything out that's material for the public to hear. I mean, to the commission members and hello to the members of the community that, have jumped on the call. So, Jed is right. We have, we have kind of gone through this a number of times, and for, in front of the wetlands, Inlands, Wetlands and Water Courses Commission, and also a public hearing there. I, I would say we're pretty practiced at pointing things out that the Wetlands Commission are mostly concerned with and less practice, with the Planning and Zoning Commission. So, you know, to answer questions once we get to the other side of just kind of marching through the plans. What I've got up here is what's posted on the town website. There are a couple of drafts that may be posted, but this is the six fourteen, it's our latest and greatest. And it's a total of about six pages. The last few are really devoted to the crossing over some wetlands, which we can look at a little bit, but I think I'll be probably focusing on the first few pages. The very first page here I think will help to orientate, orient you as to where the property is located. If you're familiar with the area, this is Route 6 over here, Hendy Road, and then Pine Ridge, first right off of Hendy, well, right off of Hendy after Route 6, then Old Farms property is located. It's currently a rear lot,
addressed up at Old Farms Road. Access to this this lot, which is about 14 acres in total, it's through Old Farms Road, but the frontage of the property, is actually on the Pine Ridge cul de sac. You'll see a little later here, this is a re subdivision application. We're looking to take the 14 acres, divide it into two lots, one a little, more than eight, one a little less than six, and access to the second lot, would be, would now be introduced from Pine Ridge Road, and that is where the wetlands, significant wetlands activity came from and why we started, with wetlands, before we got here. So I'm going to zoom out here. This page, is the boundary plan just, without a lot of the detail of the topography, and the building areas. Just these are where the lot the the lines the proposed lines have been drawn so far. The property boundary goes around here at the existing property boundary with the little, part that goes out to Pine Ridge. The proposed subdivision line goes right through the middle of the little part that sticks out to Pine Ridge, and then goes through here up until the, one of the corners of the, of the, the lot, the way that it's shaped. This is, we're applying for open space rear lot subdivision,
lots. So with that comes requirements for land conservation. The boundaries for area that will be conserved are located here. There will be easements filed with both deeds ensuring the, that this land will just not be developed or impacted with some of our activity, during, during construction and after it's permanent. The area on the other lot is a little larger. I think that's because it's composed of a lot more wetlands and there's some specific regulations when there's a lot of wetlands in the area. There are setbacks kind of noted on this, as well and then you can see wetlands delineated with the crossing through, the crossing over here where a driveway will, will end up. Zoom in and see if there's anything else here I want to point out on this drawing. No, I think that's it here. George, is there anything else you want to point out here before we move to the next one? Nope, you explained it pretty good.
So the next drawing here, is pretty dense, I think it's mostly because there's a pretty steep grade on one side of the property, the part coming from Old Farms on the East side. But here you can see, just give me a moment while that loads, A, on the drawing is a driveway which actually is already existing. The owners of the property, prior to us actually went so far as to install a driveway, but that's pretty much the extent of their, their construction on the site. For the most part, we have basically adopted their, their plan for development on this side of the property. So our drive, the driveway on this side, modeled exactly like theirs, the, the, the site where the home would be built is in the same exact place, of a previously approved application. The, you know, there's been soil testing percolation rates assessed, and a couple of sites noted for septic systems on both sides of the property. Those are here and here, here and here, and then you can see a square, a buildable square where the one family, single family dwelling on both sides would be constructed. On this side you can see, you know, there's a utility easement. Utilities, though we haven't exactly figured this out with Eversource yet, they kind of need us to get through the subdivision process before, they'll come in and design their system. We know that there's going to be a needed utility easement to bring,
utilities into this lot. It'll run through, the driveway, which because we, the driveway or the area right here, because we're on both, one lot is half of it and the other lot is the other, there's an easement needed for the utilities to come through here. There's a well location shown on both of them, 75 foot radiuses. And I think, you know, there's a lot of detail on this, on this page and as well as the next one about grading and then erosion and sedimentation control.
Eric, can I get you to point out the, I see you added the extent of clearing to this version and can you point that out because it doesn't jump right out at you when you're looking Yes, at at it? Thanks, Jed. This
border right here and then it intersects or ends at the silt fencing or hay bales around here on this side, goes up to here and then the perimeter, you know kind of follows up the the contour of the driveway on this side. I don't know if we've got an area on there but you know just our intent really is not to clear a great deal of land. We purchased rural lands, you know, in the woods because we, you know, we think it's natural, you know, it's naturally beautiful. We don't really want to, you know, clear a bunch of land and I think the extent of the clearing reflects that. And that's true on both sides. So here's the other area. It does go out to here for the easement, but stops here and then, obviously most of this area where the driveway would come through is pretty much clear at this point. It was mostly clear before we, got there and then, a few trees have actually fallen or needed to be removed because of their state since we purchased the land in July last year. I
think that's that's it for this, at least what I wanted to mention. George, anything else on this one? No, I'm okay. So
this is the, a close-up of the area where the driveway would cross over two wetland streams that kind of merge just immediately south of the, of the crossing. The design here involves, well, there's actually, let me go to this page first just to give you the cross sectional view. So if you're looking up at the crossing, say from here up in this direction, and if you were standing sort of in the middle of it, you'd find yourself pretty low in a low lying corridor where the water flows through. So the design involves a little bit of grading, to to flatten out the grade here just because, we're trying not to have it be so steep that the driveway requires paving. So it gets graded through here at the the ridge if you will or the edge of the hill. And then we actually will construct using interlocking concrete blocks, basically an area that we would fill inside the middle of, so two rows of it, I think it's about 12 feet, wide, to cross, the area and then it would meet up with the bank of the channel on the other side,
which will also get some grading to make sure that it's just not too steep. There's grading that would occur on both sides to sort of make the slope a little natural rather than having these cuts. Those areas would get seated, and while construction's going on stabilized so there's not unnecessary erosion. And then the, as far as the passage of water through the, through the, crossing, there will be two, culverts, two styles of culverts installed on the western side closer to Pine Ridge. That is going to be a three foot by eight foot concrete box culvert that will be embedded into the ground, 25%. I think it will be buried about nine inches. On the other side would be a, round culvert pipe, probably what most people are accustomed to seeing. It would be three foot in diameter. On both sides we would have what's called riprap, installed to, manage the rate of the flow of water, re disperse it into a more natural, pattern of flow with the way that the water flows today and, this system has been engineered,
to pass the one hundred year storm, meaning there's a 1% or less, 1% or less chance of the event happening, in any given year. It's designed to pass it with very, very little, effects to the surface elevation of the water, as compared to the crossing not being there at all. In fact, if you go not a very long way up 50 to 100 feet, this, a really rare rainstorm event would, you would only see water levels increase about nine inches, I believe is what the engineer's report said, which by the way is a, is something that's posted on the website if you wanted to read both some of the engineering calculations and the report from the engineer. And if you look at the elevations behind the houses on Pine Ridge, you know, nine inches is just well below any, any elevation that would affect any, any of the houses, north of here, where the crossing is. We also, this also happens to be an area that, the national, it's listed with the national diversity database as potentially having some endangered,
I don't know exactly what the word is, but listed species, think is the term that they use doesn't necessarily mean it's a rare species of anything that's, that's totally endangered, but, the box turtle, which has a habitat on the banks, on the Hop River, may from time to time pass sort of wander up in this area, which by the way is, has pretty much been determined to be an intermittent stream as opposed to just wetlands. If you ever find yourself in this, in this area around the time not long after a storm or really in the height of the wet season, could find standing flowing water. But in the, in the dry seasons, we've, you know, we've definitely seen this be totally bone dry. It's even hard to tell that it's wetlands unless you're trained to look for, for wetlands. So the, the, the turtle is, is something that, you know, some of the design kind of accommodates in particular that, that box culvert meets, a requirement both by the, the state regulatory authority as well as the army, the U. Army corps of engineers for what they call an openness ratio, which more or less makes it, you know, makes the crossing look like less of an obstruction and something that an animal like a turtle would just want to cross through, as opposed to, you know, a smaller opening might actually discourage them and, and cut off access to some of their natural habitat. So,
there's been a, you know, lots and lots of engineering, great deal of, work with the wetlands commission. On May 27 we got approval for, for this design and you know have sort of proceeded now with planning and zoning as a result of that approval and the permit I believe is posted on the town's website. I think that's all I have George. Is there something else you'd like to point out? Nope, I'm okay.
Okay. So I I maybe I guess to the members of the commission, if I left anything you feel like is important to mention to the, or or show to the members of the public, I can do that now.
Okay, thanks, Eric. Do any of the other commission members have any questions of the applicants? And I guess if you can stop screen sharing for the time being, that way I can see the other commission members and I might be able to figure out if anybody's trying to ask a question here or not. Susan, did you have any questions?
No. No, I found that the presentation was very helpful and it tied, I attended the sidewalk a couple of weeks ago and it really tied everything together. So I really don't have any questions. Okay, Scott. Scott Person, any questions?
Right, on that area that we were just talking about, the applicant was just talking about, there's two seventy feet of disturbance and I don't see any downstream erosion control at all on this map. The biggest amount of disturbance on the whole site right here and I see upstream and downstream on the actual driveway, but I don't see downstream from the actual work that's going to be done. You're going to be cutting you know, a 100 feet on both sides of the upper review area and working in the wetlands and there's no erosion control listed on this portion of the map.
If you were to review the drawings, are the silt fence. That's downstream. And there's hay bales. And also that that are on the banks.
I see them in the driveway right away, the actual driveway right away, but I don't see any. The
on the downstream side, the silt fence would be along the property line. That listed on this map. I
don't have the drawings in front of me, but I did see it on one of the drawings. It's what it's on one of Can I share again? Yeah. Yeah.
Yep right there. And if you look at those like horse shoeed little, yeah, that's all silt fence. Right, that's not on my map.
614 is that the version you're looking at? Actually this is a this particular one's been the same since March 10. That's not on my map. What is the date on your revision? 03/10. The last one was 03/1021. Yeah, this drawing is 03/10, right, Eric? Andrew
has this, Mr. Bushnell has this dated as 03/10. I mean, the most of the modifications in the 06/14 version, if not all of them were on the E and S and grading plan. So I don't think he touched this. Think this has been like this since March 10. Scott,
I am looking at my drawings dated 03/10 and I do see those emails on there. I see what he's pointing out both on the 03/10 version and the June version. I see what it
is there Jed but it's not on this one, that's weird. Are you on the same page? Yep.
One page doesn't show it, the other page does. It's true. Was looking at a cheat four of six.
Yeah, I see it on this next page, it is here. Okay. Another question I had was this is an eight to survey, correct? Yes. That's on the Yeah. That'll be listed on the notes. Yeah, it's in the notes of
Right, that's on survey notes number one. You see that it's listed, conforming to A2, but I don't see a single boundary pin on this map. Is there a reason for that?
I do not have an answer for that. Yeah, I'm not sure. It would be something we need Andrew Bushnell to answer. He's, I believe he's away tonight. There's no pins on the whole property located here. Okay.
And another question I have was the wetlands, it says on the map references number one right here that they were done in 1988 for the wetlands. That's thirty three years ago.
Right, these, the area where the crossing was done was resurveyed or redone by John Ianni.
And he's not a, is he still around? When did he do those? George,
when was that? I mean, was. It would have been last fall, he walked around And he he read delineated the wetlands in the crossing area. Those are all the the orange and blue flags that we saw that were tied together. Area.
And I think it was in June that John and he did the map is dated the 11/12/2020 by that man.
But the other map says that wetlands were delineated in '88. Must have been just the rest of the property.
Yeah, it is the rest of the property and I believe that's the original like woodland subdivision. Yeah. Odette, do you know anything about that?
I don't know. Well, everything that's been said so far has been true with respect to the wetlands. You know, applicants used a map that was done in 1988 for the general portion. They've had recent wetlands delineation and the wetlands are flagged down there on the driveway crossing which was not part of the initial survey. And
based on the approval of the Wetlands Commission, I was satisfied with the wetlands work that was done in preparing the application. Yeah, don't expect that the wetlands would have changed an awful lot over the last thirty years. Yep, probably not. And so I was okay with that. Yep,
just wondering if you knew if there was any timetable on delineation of the wetlands.
I'm not aware of any. And I would ask you Scott, it would make sense to me on these boundary pins that there's probably some of those that should be noted on the drawings now. I do know there's a bunch of additional monuments that have to be posted. And as far as I could tell from our regulations in the notes and the drawings, it just says that the monuments have to be in place prior to signing off on the house there. Right. And I know we require pins.
Yep, I think it makes sense that there probably needs to be a couple, but I couldn't cite you chapter and verse on where that is right this minute. So I've got that up as a lookup for me. If Jim were here, he'd probably be able to provide the answer, but he's not. So we can come back to you, Scott. Did you have any other questions If for the applicants to address not, I was going to go on to Anne Cremay.
I don't really have any questions. Looks very good to me, the plans and everything. Okay. Leanne, any questions? No. Okay. Anne Blanchard.
I don't have any questions either. I think they did a great job explaining everything and the site walk last week or a few weeks ago helped.
Okay. And of course, I did come with a couple of questions. And the first one is, you know, the driveway itself, do Eric or George, do you know what the design weight limit for that driveway is? Because I know we're expecting to bring the emergency vehicles down into the property.
I don't know the actual weight rating, but the design is for eight inches of compacted gravel. But we can find that out. I don't know exactly what the weight rating is. Okay.
I would like to have that because there is a specification in our regulations that talks to that. And I'd just like to make sure we've got that in there. The other thing that as I was doing my research on driveways that I'm interested in, and I did not get to it before tonight, is it asks us to have the town engineer look at the construction of materials used in the driveway. And I don't think that would take him a long period of time. But I were to go look at paragraph 4.16 Bravo, Does the sub base and or base materials per review and approval by the town engineer. And I know that we don't have that at this point. And so one of the thoughts I had was, I could have either made that a condition of approval or whatever. And so that's an outstanding thing that we need to do to get through that. Oh, Jeff I know it talks about driveways and that for the various lots. Jeff And I was curious if you had come through, what are the addresses of the two lots going to be? Are they both going to be on Pine Ridge Drive or one is on
Oak Farms and one on Pine Ridge, the mailboxes are going to be in that sort of thing.
Yeah, what I thought we would keep the 20 for Lot 1 and we would address a new address for the Lot 2 off of Pine Ridge.
Okay, and that makes sense. Just, you know, I don't know where that gets documented, but we're just trying to get know my expectations before we approve the plan and head on there. If I looked at the sequence of construction on the property, it talked about first clearing the trees and then putting in the driveway. And my question is only because I got smarter because I got surprised on a different lot was how are you going to get the trees out on the other side of the wetlands before you put the driveway in? We're going to stockpile.
Okay, so would you be doing anything to get the equipment that you need to do to cut the trees down or what I saw on another property that I wasn't fond of and it had a culvert going across the driveway just like you and they had the sequence of construction just like yours. And what they actually did is they went in, they filled in the wetlands to drive the equipment across it. And then after they were all done, they hauled all that material out of the wetlands and put the culvert in. And I didn't think that was what we were expecting to have happen. So
We will not be doing that. The plan is to, can do some stockpiling. As far as getting a piece of equipment in. We can bring a machine in from Old Farms roadside and drive it down through the woods if need be, but the, the idea is to, is to start from the Pine Ridge side and work our way in. Okay. But
if you're starting on the Pine Ridge side and working your way in that takes you across the wetlands then yeah we will be in well this isn't a wetlands meeting but the wetlands are a little wetter right now than yeah no we don't we will not be crossing the wetlands with equipment until
until it's in until the Until the process is completed, you know, or in progress yep.
Doctor. Now, the general notes on sheet six, general note five says that the proposed driveway would not exceed a 15% slope. And I think that should say a 10% slope and that would be consistent with what your drawings have.
It's my understanding that 15% is the maximum from 10 to 15% the driveway needs to be paved right anything gravel.
Correct. I would expect your note to say less than 10% because you're expecting to leave a gravel driveway.
Yeah. That is certainly our intent. I mean, I think we can talk to Andrew and maybe that's just a may have just installed the maximum, we'll
have that change. Yeah. Okay. Yep. I got it. And as you look through the general notes and you talk to Andrew, I think there's a couple of numbering errors as you go down your list there. And then you repeatedly refer to the town of Coventry in the notes. So we just ask you to take a look at that. Of course.
And again, those aren't earth shattering things. So my biggest concern at this point really concerns the driveway and the management of that. I had a couple of comments on your conservation easement. Certainly you've made me smarter. This is the first time I've seen a conservation easement so I'm a lot smarter than I was before. It did not talk anything that I could find about your planned removal of the invasive plants. You you're going to get rid of the Burberry and you're going to plant some other stuff in there. And I don't know if that area where you were going to remove the Burberry was in the conservation easement, but you had an awful lot of the wetlands in the conservation easement. I thought maybe it might be. It might be. And so if I could just ask you to take a look at that.
I mean if that were the case, I mean is the expectation still that we would not do anything in the conserved area even though this is removing invasive species of plants and replanting something native? Mean is that
No, actually I would prefer that you do do that. Now I might be off on that but that was my thought is I would like to grant in the easement the authority for you to go in and do what you were talking about doing and not have that open up to an issue. I know, again, item number 10 there talks about before commencement of site work, easement boundaries are to be marked with oak stakes and red flags and it will remain in place until the boundary markers installed. So again, that's more monumentation. Jim's not here tonight. My question was really going to be who's responsible for putting those monuments into place to outline the conservation area? And I'll touch base with him to see if that's you or if that's the town that has to go in and do that. Also looking at your notes, and again this is to head off a problem, we've got the area to be cleared put on your dry now. And I like what I saw. I see that's consistent with your desire to keep the amount of trees cut down
to a minimum. It also requires before anybody starts clearing that you go in and you survey and post the extent of clearing so that the guys come in and clear. Don't take any more than that. And again, we've had in recent past where we had a very good drawing of what we were expecting to get cleared. And then you go back and it seemed like the people who were actually clearing the trees didn't have any idea of what the limitations on that work. And I'd like to see you maintain the area like you had discussed that you wanted that to be. And that's all I had. Now, as several other people commented, your plan was certainly robust, had a lot of good information. Eric, you did a great job walking us through that. I think we're getting close to the end. I feel a little uncomfortable deliberating on the application tonight without the zoning agent here to participate in that. So my question is, with all that you've gone through, if we were to put off the deliberation until the next meeting, which I don't have the date in front of me, but the
third Monday in July, whatever that is, is that an undue hardship to you folks at this point? Say no, it's not. No. We're okay. Okay,
then with that in mind, I will probably put off that deliberation. But that's all the questions that I had. I did see there was, I think one of your neighbors that was on earlier. I didn't know if anybody from the public had any comments that they wanted to make at this point.
Hi, this is Okay. Can you hear me? Yep. Okay. Hi, Eric and George. Good to see you. Hi. Thank you for your explanation so far and to the committee members. We just had a couple of questions about the construction process with the driveways being built as far as Bringing in the materials for each lot will will the driveway be built for Pine Ridge before and will you be bringing in materials for that for the second house that way, as opposed to, you know, bringing everything in our, our side. During construction. It's one of our questions and The concrete. Yeah, Bob was concerned about like the concrete and all that heavy materials coming in through our, our driveway since it's already been, you know, cracked a little bit. Yeah, we had a little damage, you know that. Yeah. Mean, it's no big deal at this point, but just as far as all those vehicles coming,
you know, in and out. We were wondering about that. And also just wanted to make sure that, you know, if the the your permit does go through for the subdividing, that the driveways won't be connected at all. Right? So that we won't be you know, we'll be assured that we're only gonna have traffic for one house coming our way. Those are our questions.
Okay, Eric or George, would you like to respond to those?
Yes. So as far as we understand that your driveway is probably not rated to have a concrete truck rolling over it. We do plan. And Eric and I have been talking we have been talking about. We're going to do the crossing and we're going to bring as much of the heavy stuff in from the other side to keep the trucks off of your driveway. That's our plan. Thank you. Appreciate that.
And as far as interconnecting the driveways, there might be a walking path or, you know, but that's really it. Okay.
Well, like the driveway has already been scarred at the top and you guys explained here explained we'll fix that later because the materials coming in. But what if it just start to get destroyed? I mean, you know, like the wetlands guy told me, he said, It's not your problem, Bob. If they destroy it, they gotta fix it. And I know now that we're on screen, I'd like everyone to know that because if I come down the driveway one day and my driveway's just gone, I won't flip out. I'll know you're gonna fix it. CLMP even said, if someone destroyed your driveway, they fix it, not you. But this driveway is kind of long and I love it because it's nice and flat. Winter's coming. I don't know when you guys are building I'm just concerned with that because it's really nice that I can plow it. If it starts to get ripped up, I won't be able to plow it. I won't be able to snowball it. I'll be stuck in the woods. I know it's gonna start happening, okay. I just, it's being recorded. I just hope you guys would just understand that you know it's been like that for twenty years and now it might just start to crumble. Know, I know the oil trucks come down here. I have trucks come down here. They don't destroy it. But I know if you bring in cement blocks, I know the biggest one is gonna be the septic. That is a huge truck and it's a huge crane and it's a lot of weight. So I don't know if they can come in the other way.
You know, like you said, the bridge has to handle that weight.
Damn, we do plan to come in from the other side. Okay.
All right. I'm not, you know, not not giving me a hard time. Just want you to understand our concerns. I mean, we're gonna work with you guys all the way. We love it that you're coming in. Got no complaints. You guys are great. Okay. Alright. Thanks, George. Thanks, guys. No worries.
And thank you for your comments and your questions. Thank you. I certainly would not have come up with those questions without your input. Appreciate that. No problem. Any other questions or comments of the applicant?
How much of the trees on the driveway are gonna be removed? Does it, does it, you guys have any idea?
The driveway needs to be 16 feet wide, and that's the extent of our clearing. So basically eight feet from the center line left and right. Unless the fire marshal has something else to say. Right. Says clear trees that's required. Okay, that's good.
I know this afternoon Jim heard back from the fire marshal who said he was satisfied, again, not being able to talk to Jim. My question was I would have expected that the fire marshal would have wanted a circular turnaround so that he could just drive the truck around. The requirement is he doesn't have to back out. So I was going to just push back on him a little bit to make sure that they were satisfied with that. I know you guys have worked very hard to try and pursue that matter of getting an answer from the fire marshal. And so I'll share with you what we got verbally from him today. I do need to have a letter in the file
saying that in actually, that's I guess that another question is just coming to me right now is that I don't know if the Dubies Driveway needs to be rated to the same rating. It would seem that it is because it's got to get the emergency trucks down to the other house that you're building. So anyhow, I need to follow-up with the fire marshal. He was a little late getting back to us. I suspect that we'll be able to get through all of his concerns, the driveway from a planning and zoning point of view of making sure that we had everything done right seemed to be one of the more difficult issues that I wanted to make sure we were
taken care of. On a driveway longer than 400 feet, Jed, I think that you have to have a fire truck pull off. The one that's coming off of Pine Ridge isn't over 400, but the other one it could be.
Well, it just says that on the rear lot, the fire marshal needs to approve. I know you're right on a couple of the lengths for a pull off, but it does say he needs to be able to turn around his emergency equipment so he doesn't need to back it out.
Scott, on the long driveway, they are two turnouts. Yeah, I saw that. There's two there. And if you look at the drawings, the way that the driveways are shaped down by the houses, they're shaped that way so that the truck can do a K turn there turn around and not back out. Okay,
very good. Thank you. So for the last time, I'll ask any further comments before we wrap up the comment section in the question section.
Hi there. This is Ken Van Carra and I live up on Chester Brooks Road and I just had a couple of questions that I'd like to ask. I apologize I wasn't able to be at the you know the last meeting where we talked about this and so I just want to make sure that we cover a couple of things.
What did you say your address was? I missed the road. What road were you on? Chester Brooks. Thank you. Which is right up above Pine Ridge. Okay, go ahead.
So I wanted to start by saying I'm, I'm in favor of, you know making lands available in a responsible manner. Think that's good for Andover. I think that's good for us all. But I want to make sure that you know that makes sense here. It's incumbent upon us to make sure that environmentally this makes sense and it seems a little bit complex. So I've got a couple of questions. You know, first of all, are we comfortable about the wetlands and what gets constructed and whether whether there's any risk of flooding etc to existing properties?
I guess I will respond to that question and say that planning and zoning perspective, I am comfortable because it was approved by the Inland Wetlands Commission. I and Jim Hallisey are also members of the Inland Wetlands Commission, so we had a chance to weigh in on that. And as we were working through the application, one of the neighbors expressed a concern that during certain times of the year, the water gets fairly deep backed up into his yard. And we had a specific engineering study done by the town's engineer who concluded that this driveway should have no detrimental effects on what we have seen. That also means that we would have to make sure that the culverts don't get blocked up with other materials and that sort of thing. But that is going to be in the approval, is that the owners have to maintain those culverts clear so that we don't get that sort of back up. So I read the studies
and I saw that. And what is the guarantee to folks who currently have property there?
The only guarantee is we've had an engineering assessment done who, know, they concluded that, well, we've had more than one engineering assessment done. The applicant's engineers went out and studied it and showed that that would not be a problem. And I was uncomfortable with that. And so I asked that we have our own engineer go out and evaluate the data. He requested some data from the applicants and concluded the same thing. I would also say that after the most recent, we had a couple of not twenty five year rain events, but we had a couple of pretty heavy rains recently that I went out to take a look at the amount of water running through the wetlands. And I was surprised how small the amount was after what was a fairly heavy rain. So I take my own going out to monitor the best I could as opposed to our wetland sidewalk, which was done last August when it was pretty dry out there. I wanted to go out and do a little other investigating, and I did. And my conclusion was that that should not be an issue. Of course, in life is absolute. And so I can't say that there's not a case that we could, but I do think that we did our due diligence to the best of our ability
and we have exceeded what the requirements are. It was checked out by the Army Corps of Engineers and they agreed with it. So I thought that we had done all that we could to assure that the neighboring property owners
weren't hindered by the application that we were looking at. So I appreciate that. So we had a review in the dry season and one in one year on the wet season and a twenty five year review that says by the Army Corps of Engineers that this is unlikely to be a problem. Is that, am I getting it fundamentally right?
Yes, but I think the data was driven by what is the amount of rainfall you would expect to get in a one hundred year storm, not what we saw during the heavy rains in the spring. Because if I'm going back from memory, the requirement was it had to be designed for a twenty five year flood. The applicants designed it for a hundred year flood without any significant backup. So I'm not exactly sure what is causing the backup that is seen, but I'm not convinced it's due to putting in a driveway for this particular application. And I don't know if that's difference in topography, you know, going off into different lots or whatever.
Well you know I know this has been discussed before but it's fairly wet down there and when the rain comes it builds up you know I'm not in the army corps of engineers but I play one on TV so I just had to ask about it because it seems challenging. Know it's currently woods it's the home to you know barred owls that we have right behind our home that are fairly rare. It's got fisher cats, bears, coyotes. You know I'm concerned about whether we know what we're doing to the environment.
And that would have been a question better asked of the Inland Wetlands Commission. Understood. And do they have a report that's available?
If you go to the town website, all the information from the public hearing that we did on that is available. I think you probably looked at most of it based on your discussion here tonight.
I would also add there's some reports that were submitted by individual named George Logan. His outfit is called REMA, REMA. He's an ecologist, certified wetlands scientist. He did an assessment of specifically the area where the crossing is. I think the thing that, that the reason his focus was down there was really about, the observation from the one of the consultants hired by the town, Mr. Hank Kruner, that, you know, there are listed species down there, and according to his, analysis, that really is just because of the box turtle, and certainly there's other wildlife on the property. You know, I think, our philosophy here with tree clearing is consistent with this. We're just trying to minimal, be minimal in our impact to the environment, or the habitat where wildlife lives and then be extra care being extra careful where, with respect to listed species. Listed species? Yeah, that that would be the box turtle.
So I just have one more question, which is when the buyers of the property bought the property, you know, were they aware of the challenges, Eric, that environmentally they might face given that it's you know between a bunch of houses and in you know land that is currently sort of undisturbed?
I mean I would say not everything, the crossing, the impact there, the wood turtle kind of was a bit unexpected for us. But by and large, you know, we bought some land that had already been approved like the, the, the northern half of the, the, the lot, which I think it's lot one after, after subdivision. It's the same exact design that was approved by the, the Planning and Zoning Commission, I think in 2004. So, you know, we, we kept that and then I think the, you know, subdividing and then developing on the other side of the property, I wouldn't say we knew everything that was coming, but, but we, you know, we had an idea that this was, you know, we, we actually kind of met with the Planning and Zoning Commission on a pre application basis, as well as the Wetlands Commission to get an idea of the outlook of, of whether or not something like this would work and, you know, that was just, you know, just trying to be, to do some due diligence beforehand before we invested in the property and started working on constructing so.
Right and you can't sort of get the, the town rendering on that until you've started the process. Right. Right.
Okay I've got my questions answered. I think it's a little challenging. It's going to be challenging to work in. You know my know question to a town is how do we make sure that what we do here doesn't negatively impact other folks that you know have property along that basin. What's the responsibility of the town back to individuals?
I don't know the answer to that other than to say that I understood the question before we approved it through the wetlands and that's why I wanted to make sure that we had the engineering assessment of the impact on that. And there can be a lot of different things that result in the water backing up upstream of that property, if you will. And I don't know what all those are, but I'm pretty sure that putting the driveway in isn't going to exacerbate it any based on the studying that we've done. Because I knew that that would be the issue. You know, if I were a neighbor and I saw water coming up before you put something in to restrict the water, I would have concerns. And I wanted to do what I could do to make sure that we weren't endangering any of those neighbors. Now, if time comes out and we see that it comes out differently than that, one of the things I like to do is go back, you know, with all the applications and see did we get what we thought we were going to get. And I'm sure that the neighbors will come point out to us if
there's a change in what we're seeing.
Have you had an instance where that's come to fruition where you assessed it and later on neighbors were unhappy about it?
Not where neighbors were unhappy, but I have had conditions where I was not happy. And that's why I don't know when you signed into the The meeting tonight. But when we were talking about things like how do you get the trees removed and through the wetlands before you put the driveway in that was because of follow-up on a previous lot that I didn't like what I was seeing happen. And I wanted to make sure we took action to preclude that from happening again.
Well, I'm sure that everybody's intention is positive here. I really do. And it's a beautiful place to live. It's why we love it. We want to take care of it. It's very hard for me to assess. I just wanted to ask some questions about you know whether this works environmentally. And I'm not, I can't say I'm entirely comfortable. Don't think the intents are wrong here, but it's a, you know, it's a nice little piece of woods and it's a beautiful spot and I just worry that you know sometimes we make the and I said I'm in favor of development for the town but I sometimes worry that we do things that get ahead of ourselves relative to the environment And it's hard to tell with this one because it's complicated.
It is. And I think there's members sitting on this commission that had those same concerns. I'm one of them. There's members of the Inland Wetlands Commission that had those same concerns. But the state statutes that we work to don't allow us to not approve an application because there are some concerns. We have to be able to connect the dots to show a detriment, and that can be the grounds for not approving it. And we were not able to do that until we approved it.
I understand and I agree. And the surveys that were done are available online.
I don't know that every survey that was done, I think most of them are in the package. There's certainly a wealth of information that's posted online with the engineers reports and a couple other people that the applicants had as well as our own people and we came to the conclusion that it may not be perfect. There are still some concerns, but we couldn't connect the dots and say this isn't going to work because of this. The applicant in an earlier session said that the driveway ended up costing three times what they had budgeted for because of the changes that they did have to make to accommodate all the environmental concerns. I think they've done a good job of doing that.
Great, so I will try to look up those studies and I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions and Eric I'm sorry I know it's a challenging thing to, to get this done. I just, want to make sure that we're doing it the right way from a town perspective.
Yeah, no issues Mr. Vankere. I think the questions are are okay and you know all of the studies that we we had done by our consulting folks they're included on the in this application materials on the planning and zoning page and then I think a lot of the things that the town had consulting done for you'd need to go to the wetlands commission page to find.
I wrote that down and I will check it out and I appreciate your time and the time of the group as well because I know you spend a lot of time listening to me talk so. Well Mr. Van Kure, what was your first name just so I can get it for our minutes? It's Ken. Ken, okay. And I appreciate your questions. They always make us better. So thank you. I hope so, but maybe not.
Okay, one more shot if anybody else has any other comments before we end the discussion with public hearing tonight. Hearing none, Mindy, I can't remember exactly what the words are that we will continue the public hearing at the next meeting only because if our zoning agent has any information that he wants to get on the record, I want to be able to give him the opportunity to include that in the public record before we start deliberation. So at 08:13 we will conclude the public hearing for tonight. We will continue it at the next meeting that we have in July. And so at 08:14, I will open the regular meeting. I've got to find my We are called to order roll call of seating of alternates. We had already gone through the roll call. We have got Scott Persaud, Leanne Hutchinson, Susan England, Ann Cremay and myself. So our alternates will not be seated tonight. Additions or changes to the agenda? I'm looking at the agenda trying to I think it's in there somewhere. Eric Anderson, did we have you on the agenda? I know you're here to speak to a couple of things that we were planning on having. But I don't oh, it's
I would like to move old business item F up to the head so we can let Eric speak for a couple of minutes and then finish up with that if you're still with us, Eric. And is Eric Anderson still present? Okay, given that he's not, I won't make any changes to the agenda.
Anybody else have any changes? It looks like he's on but his video is just off and he's muted so I don't know if he's like actually here. Okay,
well, I was trying to accommodate him, get him out early and there you go. Any other changes or additions to the agenda? Hearing none, I'll move on to public comment. Anybody in the public have a comment for our regular meeting this evening on any other topic than what we had the public hearing on? Hearing none, I'll move on to old business. Old business 5A is the application of George Correa and Eric Liteska. And as we mentioned earlier, because the zoning agent is not here, I will defer that item to the July meeting. Next item is the extension of existing special permit to operate a sand gravel pit at 517 Route 6 Is engineer Chris Bell on the call tonight? Yes, I am, Mr. Chairman. Okay. Can you give us an update of where we were, where we are, and where we want to go?
Yes, sir. My name is Chris Bell. I'm a professional engineer from Pagan. I'm representing the applicant. I sent in a report to zoning CEO Jim Hallisey this afternoon. He said he'd sent that on to the individual members. I don't know if you've got that report. Along with that was a revised restoration plan showing what we had done, and also some pictures. Can, with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I can share the screen and open up that letter and just briefly go through it.
Yes, I would appreciate that. And while I do know that it showed up in my inbox this afternoon, I did not get a chance to review it before the meeting tonight. So if you can walk us through that. I don't know if anybody else had a chance to, but please help me. Okay,
let me see if I can do this. Share the screen. Can everybody see my letter? Yes. Okay, good. Okay, I've listed here several items that I'm reporting on, and I'll briefly just go through them. We completed the restoration on Friday afternoon with all the seating done, all the grading and seating done for the disturbed area. And we had a inspection this morning by the town engineer. And he gave a report to Jim Halsey this afternoon. And what I am going to do is just briefly go through what we've done since the last meeting. Number one, the stumps at the southeast corner of the gravel pit have been completely removed from the wetland buffer, and there is a very small pile that we could not get off the site, and we're storing those on the West Side near Station 2 Plus 0 near the parking lot. I don't have a date when we're going to get those out, but it's basically about a half a truckload, mostly just not stumps, but more tree trunks and some logs. The final grading, number two, final grading between Station 2 Plus 50 on the West Side and Station 3 Plus 75 on the East Side, going all the way back to Station 565, the end of the project has been completed. We had inspection a week before last for the grading with the town engineer, Jim Hallisey, Joe Wagner from Wetlands and also from Hank Gruner. We've, they approved the grading, and once that was approved, we topsoil, seeded and mulched the entire area, except for the existing topsoil pile that's there, because that's going to be used to topsoil the rest of the project. And also, we did not topsoil the degraded sand pile, which is about 600 cubic yards
near Station 250 East. We could not get that off the site before the cease and desist, so that still remains. We did also install the, let me see, number three, we had a couple of meetings with Hank Rune around on the site. He looked at the turtle nesting area that we have in back of Station 5 that goes from 5 to Station 565, it's about 25 feet wide. He wanted to be all sand so that the turtle nesting would be easy for the turtles and have a slight slope to it, And he approved that last week as far as the grading goes, and we also discussed the seating for that area, which he has decided that the best thing to use is the little blue stem Connecticut Echo type. It's like a blue flower type grass, and he wants a 50% coverage in that area. He's going to actually point that out when we do get the seed and cover it, but at this point we
covered the area with a seedless fiber mix to prevent any erosion between now and when we seed it. We can seed it at any time from a couple weeks and out to a time when we, if the Commission does approve our extension, can, the next time we restore a phase, can seed it at that time, and also we can seed it in the fall again, in case areas are not covered. The number four, the conveyance swale was installed between Station 4 and the detention pond with a soap fence at the end near the pond inlet to prevent any sediment from going into the pond. We're going to be watching the swale during rain events to see if we need any additional self fence barriers along the way. I don't expect to see a lot of water in the swale, or there should be some, but I think the swale is very, very much oversized to handle the flow without a problem. Number five, if the Commission grants the applicant the extension, we anticipate that the first thing to be removed is the graded sand pile, approximately 600 yards, and the operation of removal can proceed from Station 250 to about Station 190. This would complete a phase, and at that point we should restore the whole area from Station 210 all the way back, including the area where the
graded sandpie will be removed. There's a difference in 20 feet here from 190 to 210, so it's about 20 feet, so we can start the next operation without disturbing the topsoil and see that, you know, we had just put down, we have a small area that we can get in and out with the trucks and operate. I think this is actually going to go pretty fast, but I'm going to be conservative and say this should be completed in about two months. Once the restoration for this area, the second, this first area, after the extension is granted, once this first restoration is completed,
we'll have an inspection and with the town approval and town engineer approval, we can proceed to the final phase, which is what'll be about something less than two phases going from 190 all the way to the front of the project, which will include all the grading to the east and the west. I attached a site plan, which I can show showing the restored areas. Let me move to that. I'm going to take this letter off. Okay, sounds good. Can everyone see my plan? Yes. Okay. What I've done is taken out some of the notes for the cease and desist, and I've added in this, the areas that we restored. The sloped area I show here is a little bit larger than what was proposed. It being larger that the slope is not as steep, we left a lot of material over here for the slope, and we added material down in here to bring it up past the two ninety four elevation, which is the flood zone elevation, we fill in some pockets that were sitting around here. So we left about 2,000 yards that we didn't take out. We added in here because we couldn't remove it. We figured we might as just add it in for the grading to make the grading a little bit higher, which is higher is okay. As I've stated probably in previous meetings, it's not the goal of the owner to remove as much material out here as possible.
His goal is to get a nice looking site so he can develop it or sell it. So this area that I show with the grass hatch is the entire area that's been grassed. The small area over here is the turtle nesting area. It's about 70 feet long by about 25 to 30 feet wide. That's the area that Hank Gruner has approved for the slope that's there now, and it's also been covered with a fiber to prevent erosion for now. It's put in seedless because we don't want to add any extraneous seeds or weeds or anything else except for the exact mix that we want for the turtles.
With that, this is the pile that was left of graded sand. It still is there, and this white area has not been restored because it's going to be run over by the trucks when we start the next phase. As soon as we get past this point here with this removal, we can restore this entire area before we do the finish removal of here, shown here to the east of the gas station property and to the west of the detention pond. The amount of cubic yards I'd have had more chance to estimate what has been removed from the site and what remains. It seems to be about two thirds of the, less than two thirds of the available material has been removed. The original estimate of 32,000 yards of removal was a conservative estimate. We of that 32,000, we left 2,000 on-site for this grading, and that 32,000 actually included about 1,800 yards, 2,000 yards of topsoil, which was never intended to leave the site. So what's actually left is about, it's about 8,000 yards in this total hatched area that's here. It's about 8,000. Minus, this area had about 500 cubic yards that was removed from the site,
and that is included in that two thirds I told you about. So at this point, you know, about 16,000, 16,000 to 18,000 has been removed, and there's about 8,000 left. At this point, that's about all I have to say. We believe that we've covered all the areas that have been disturbed. I did get a report from Jim Allison late today, pretty late today, that I guess when you're up in a higher elevation and you're looking down at this project, there is a little walled spot at the top of this ridge, which I did not see, and apparently none of the inspection had seen because we didn't climb to the top of the ridge. Were basically shooting the grass from all this area here, and no one ever climbed to the top of the ridge. But if there is a bald spot up there, which I believe, I believe them, we will make sure we get that thing covered as soon as possible. I don't think it's that big, you can see it, I guess, from a higher elevation on one of the higher roads. That's about all I have to present at this point. I think we've taken care of all the concerns. We have the release from the cease and desist from wetlands we received today in an email.
And I I believe we can entertain any questions the commission has regarding the application.
Okay, thanks, Chris. Do any of the Commission members have any questions on the application for extension of the permit?
I can show you some of the pictures that we have at the same time here. Is a, have you only seen the picture? This is a picture looking at the slope. No, we're not, I don't see the pictures. Still got the site plan showing. Oops, I'm sorry. I guess you got to push that every time. Can we see the picture? Yes. Okay, good. This was taken Friday after we finished blowing the seed on the slope area. The slope areas we have a heavy concentration of the seed mix because know, to get a very good coverage because of the possibility of erosion.
The flatter areas have a lighter coverage, but that's one of the
So that is not the hill with the bald spot? That is the hill with bald spot. Yes, I it was gonna say it looks like you could see just the hint of it right at the top of that picture. Oh. It does look like that, kid.
Let's see. I'm sorry I have to get that back up again. Oh, right up on top here. Yep.
Yep. And we're not seeing the picture right this minute. Oh, I'm not to hit the share again.
What I heard from Jim was if you look at that hill from the lake roadside, you'll be able to see it much better. Had not been out there to look at that since I talked to him. Yeah,
I did not personally see this picture Friday afternoon. Wasn't able to get out there. Now that they say it's bald up there, I can see that. I would hope that's pretty small. We can take care of that.
Chris, do you know what the elevation is where you finished spreading that 2,000 yards of material?
I wasn't there when it was finally graded. I know it was, I mean, walked on it when it was lower, and it's definitely about three feet higher than it was. It was around elevation 93 or so. And I know it's over 95 now. I did not take the elevation, but by sight, it was definitely three feet higher because I took some elevations around it that was the proper elevation and it's all level now. So it's got to be a good 95 plus. That's two ninety five then, right? I'm sorry, two ninety five, yes sir. And the access road at the time of our first grading inspection had a little bit too much material on it. And basically they took some of that back down to the original grade as it's supposed to be around about February or so plus or minus. The access road, if you recall, when it was not untouched, it went up and down in elevation about six to 10 inches as you went through the site. And basically what they did is they took the high spots off and they filled in the low spots. It ends up being around two ninety to two ninety one through most of the
most of the site, pretty flat. And the flood level is two ninety four, right? The flood level at Station 3 To 4 is two ninety four. That's correct. So those are all going to be raised above
flood level. Yes. And the building, any building that going would automatically go a foot above flood elevation anyway, but you know, we're already above the flood elevation now. And we would continue that elevation throughout the rest of the phases, whatever that is. It's at 295, 295 And A Half, we'll continue that all the way to station of zero plus fifty.
Right. And the turtle nesting area, how is that going to be protected in the future? So nobody runs at Bossier or one of those loaders through there? It marked out now? Is it staked? Is there going to be some protection rocks maybe put around this That's
a good idea. We didn't think about protecting it. I mean, there's no intention to, you know, have the access way gravel or anything else, but we could certainly block that area off. We could do that, sure.
I would think that if Hank decided that that's where he wants to put a sterile nesting area that probably rocks around the thing to keep it protected in perpetuity, that would be a good idea.
I would say that's a very good idea. We did a lot of work to get to that point, we don't want to have anybody ruin it. And again, the area is going to be 50% grassy once, 50% bare area, and 50% of this blue stem grass. So it could easily be misinterpreted as, you know, something else if the barriers start getting other types of grass in it. We want to make sure it's sectioned off. So yeah, we could, we would definitely like to block that. So that could be added Jed to the Yeah, restoration I agree. Anything else Scott? No. Anybody else have any questions?
Hi, this is Leigh Ann Hutchison. Can you hear me? Yes, Leigh Ann. Hi, I have two or three quick questions for Mr. Bell. In our last meeting last month, we the subject of a cease and desist order from both the Planning and Planning Commission and the Wetlands Commission came up. And I think mister Bell, when he started to conclude his remarks, made a reference to both. So just for the record, were did both of those commissions issue a cease and desist and this remediation type work has been done under that? Or did one commission issue issue one and not the other? Or what officially happened?
The Wetlands Commission ordered a cease and desist, and as of today they sent us an email saying that the cease and desist has been lifted because we met all the requirements that were in the cease and desist to be handled, and you know, Joe Wagner has been to every site meeting, just about every site meeting, just about everyone, except one where he could make, to make sure that we've been following his guidelines and making sure we did everything that the commission wanted. Again, the cease and desist lifting letter that we received, I could pull that up if you want to see that. I know that was sent out to the commission this morning.
Is that something that's part of the Inland Wetlands and Water Courses record so that if somebody was looking at this they would see it?
I believe it would be now because he that was posted before, it was sent to the zoning office before 02:30, and I would assume that Amanda posted it. I didn't check to see if it was posted, but it should be posted. My letter is the only thing that didn't, my site plan did not get posted because I was late getting the letter from the town engineer.
Okay, and maybe for you or Jed, is the cease and desist that was issued by the Planning and Zoning Commission, is there a record of that that we can include in the meeting minutes?
I don't think we didn't get a cease and desist from Planning and Zoning, Mr. Chairman, did we? I didn't get one. I only got one from wetlands. Mean, were under the order to get everything and all the ducks lined up and get it done. Otherwise, we weren't gonna get the extension, But I
don't think we got a cease and desist. I was under the impression you did get one from Planting and Zoning, but I could be wrong and I don't recall seeing it. And you know, we normally go through those things at the meeting under the agent's report. And I guess, so I can follow-up on the paperwork there. But I do know from sitting through the last Inland Wetlands Commission meeting and talking to Agent Halsey today that it seems like the restoration has been a very good news story in that everybody from agent Halsey to agent Wagner to Hank Gruner to our engineer satisfied with the actions that were taken. Nobody was satisfied in the actions that got us to that point but as of today all the entities are satisfied with what we have done to remediate those past sins.
Okay, well that's good. If we could just make a note and I'll try to remember to ask next month and make sure that that was referenced somehow since we know we're without our zoning agent tonight. Yes, yep. Appreciate it. Thank you, Lee Ann. Yep. And my last question for Chris Bell is I had asked last month if there was somebody on-site who was doing any supervising. I know with COVID and winter, there wasn't as much going on as you might have been at another time. And you said there was somebody named Pat. I think you weren't sure of the person's last name. And in your letter to Jim Halsey from today, it mentions a Bill Young.
Is that somebody who's on-site at the and over auto parts, or is that somebody who's part of this project or is he just I think you call him a contact person. Is that somebody new or just somebody who's abreast of what's going on?
Yeah. What had happened the day after I gave you the name of Pat, the next day he was fired for some other reasons. And immediately that day we got Bill Young on board. He is the supervisor of operations for the Manchester gravel, who is in charge of the people on-site. He was not necessarily there every day since the last meeting, because the men weren't there every day. But he would be there in the morning to make sure they were directed to do correctly what had to be done. And I basically have been also staying in touch with every operator that was there, Bill Young and also the two operators that were running the excavator and the bulldozer, I talked to on a daily basis. I also talked to the hydroseed man on a daily basis to make sure everything was going according to plan. Bill Young and I were both contacting people to make sure they were done.
We were alternate visiting the sites. I was there a couple times a week, and he was there a lot more. But there, besides the people that are on-site, the workers there in the auto parts place, they picked up anywhere where if there was no one else on-site for communication, they made sure it got done. The owner's nephew runs the operation there, Mike, and he, you know, got things done immediately when we asked. So it's been more than one person really. We kind of had to have more than one person on-site in order to make sure things got done in this time frame, because basically we only had thirty days to get this thing wrapped up. Okay, that's a pretty thorough answer. Thank you. Any other questions?
In the future Jed, what's the town's who's going to be overseeing that and how often are they going to be down there?
Well, a question I had for Chris is I know on the original plan that was approved, we had a requirement that a report be submitted to the town. I don't know, I don't recall exactly who in the town for the completion of each phase before proceeding to the next phase.
Yeah, that was my responsibility after each phase. And as I said, when I got on-site, I had no idea they were removing this much material. Otherwise, I would have gotten involved a lot earlier and would have prevented a lot of problems. I was not told they had proceeded this far, but in hindsight, I'll be much more on top of this and we'll have more than one person watching over these people to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do and they don't exceed the limits of what they're allowed to do.
But what kind of written reporting should we expect to get from you as we head over the next two months, say, to completion of the project?
Well, I'm going to be talking to the person on-site and also the owner. Actually, I talk to him three to four times a week on other projects, and it's not going to be difficult for me to stay on top of this. As I said, I didn't do anything between January and April on it. I didn't know they were taking that much material out, but I'll be talking to him on a bi weekly basis, if not three or four times a week. And I'll check-in with Bill Young, who actually has his finger right on the operation, the daily operation of it. We'll know where we are at any given point. And I think I should send a report at this point because I think it's going to go pretty fast. I think you should have a report the Thursday before each planning and zoning meeting
to make sure you're kept abreast of what's going on. Is it possible to get just to send Jed reports weekly?
We prefer those get sent to agent Halsey. Well, yeah, normally I would have to send them to Jim because we Jim and I talk quite a bit. And that's the I'm supposed to be sending them to Jim, and then he sends them to you. But I mean, I could send you to both if they want.
I would be satisfied if you would send those to the agent. Then he distributes them to everybody. Yes. Yeah. Put it on the website.
Yeah, I can do that. I'll have it sent before the end of every week. Okay. I better write that down.
We'll help you out with that because I think that'll be one of our conditions. Okay, very good. And the stones jet could be a condition also. Correct, yep.
That should be done right away before people get in there with those big machines and disturb Well, that
it's already so fenced off, which I know isn't a great physical barrier, but know there's no intention for anything to go back there except the hydro machine to seed the nesting area when we get to seed. But yeah, we'll get the stones back there. And if we have a problem finding stones, can send them to my property. Only 50% of that's gonna be
hydro seated? That's what Mr. Brenner has requested. He wants the other half to be bare. That means spots. In other words, just want spotty areas.
Now when we say stones around this area, what kind of stones are we talking?
Well I mean I'm thinking like boulders like you know. Okay that was what I had in mind. Something you can't drive over. Something you know maybe two feet in diameter, weigh a couple thousand pounds.
And when would you expect to be able to get those stones in place to protect it? I know that's not going to be like a tomorrow thing.
That's a good question. First we got to find them. Now, if my truck wasn't getting, my dump truck wasn't getting fixed today, I'd have them loaded on tomorrow to bring them up the next day, but we gotta get a place locally, guess to get something. And I would hope within, well, we're going to want to have them done within like two weeks because that's when we want to hydro seed, that's when the seeds coming in. So I'd say at the end of two weeks, I think would be reasonable. We don't need that many stones. I think a half a dozen do for that area. It's only 30 feet wide. Okay. I need to make a comment to Commissioner Person, please. I did talk to the town engineer about our plans going forward and restoring everything. And I said the commission has one of the conditions of approval to keep the siltation detention basin there. And he says he disagrees with that.
He said he thinks it should be covered up and handled during development of the site because he said that's probably not the most ideal place to put a detention basin. And at this point with some of the prospects for the property, people looking at it, would think that parking lot's probably going to be better there than the Saltation Basin or Detention Basin. But the town engineer did disagree with that. I don't have it in writing, sir, but he said when that comes up, we'd be happy to talk about that. I don't know if the Commission's dead set on keeping it there or not, but you know, it's a topic of discussion that we probably want to talk about before the end of the project.
All I know is the approved plan had maintaining that detention basin once it was complete. Yes. I will put that as another potential condition for approval is that at the next meeting we would have a wrap up from Agent Halsey on what you, he and the town engineer concluded was the right best answer for the detention basin. We can
consider that at that point. We must have had it on the print to stay to remain there for a reason. Yep.
Yeah, we thought it was a good idea. That's what John Valenti suggested. And, you know, I wasn't against it at the time, but now I'm getting different opinions on it and some flack from the owner, so do we really need to keep it there? And since the whole area is going to be grassed and restored, there really isn't a need for it. So, you know, let's have a discussion about it, I guess. I don't want to drop it out. But now it's going to be maintained until the end. Anything else, Chris? No, that's all I wanted to bring up.
Okay. And how long did you want the extension for? Six months. So because I was taking some notes there, I'll be bold and make the following motion is to approve the extension of the existing special permit to operate a sand gravel pit 517 Route 6 for six months with the following conditions. One, within two weeks seed the bald spot at the top of the hill. Two, within two weeks place boulder stones to protect the turtle nesting area. Three, submit weekly reports to the planning and zoning agent on the status of the project and four, resolve with the zoning agent and the town engineer prior to next meeting whether or not the detention basin should be retained. I
would think that that would be part of our next meeting, wouldn't it? They come to some conclusion, I think that they should probably tell us why they're going to Yeah, you're saying hold on it correctly. I
would expect that and we could take action with respect to modifying the plan at that point. I just want to get the condition for going forward at this point that we're going to get with the agent and our engineer to resolve the best way. And that's I guess more for us to do than Chris Bell. All other things being equal, we would be obligated to follow the currently approved plan. But if our engineer thinks we should do something different, we should certainly be willing to listen to that and change if appropriate.
We can do that at the next meeting. Yeah, and I think we can even say that we can leave the swale that's along the side and let that go towards the existing level spreader. Mean, there's a lot of things we can do to mediate the situation that still will enhance the site without having a need for the basin. But again, we'll discuss that. Thank Do I have a second to that motion? I'll second.
That was you, Scott? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, I will call for a vote. Anne Cremay? Aye.
Say again. Aye. Thank you. Scott? Aye. Leanne? Aye. Susan? Aye. And I vote aye as well. Motion passes five zero zero. Thank you very much.
Have a good evening, Commissioners. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Thank you for all the hard work getting that taken care of, Chris. Well, thought it was like pulling teeth. I'm glad it's over. Thank you.
The next item is the application of Adam Delbenthal, 128 Wheeling Road. Hi, yes, I'm present.
Okay. Why don't you walk us through your proposal there, Adam?
Okay. Pretty much it's a it's a 30 by 38 garage, three car garage with a apartment above it that I guess is abating by the planning and and zoning guidelines there. I forget exactly what section, but it's below the 800 square foot. It has the driveway access. It has the stairs and going up the entrance to go upstairs. And I think that was all that was called for kitchen, bathroom.
Adam, can you show us on your drawing and if you can't call it up, I will give it a shot. I had a hard time finding the dimensions of the accessory apartment. I think it was smaller than the three car garage.
I I sent an email to Jim with the actual blueprints. I don't know if I don't think that got published online yet. That actually the email for sure pulled up that way. Okay. And I did not see that.
It be like if I could just tell you the dimensions, is that like sufficient?
Well, don't you pull up the print? Is it on the print?
It's probably on the ones that's published on the town website that there's a I'm pretty sure there's a drawing. You should be able to get the the the measurements.
Okay, Adam, I just went to look at website and I saw nothing new added there.
Okay. It's definitely in Jim's email. I wish I could kind of share it here. I don't think I can do it from my phone. The dimensions upstairs are 30 by 26. That's technically the apartment room, which would be seven eighty square feet. Okay.
On the drawing of the garage, it shows a little bump out. Is that the breezeway that connects to your house? Yes, correct. That's the breezeway mudroom, correct, yep. Okay.
And where you show the driveway on that drawing, is that where your current driveway is?
Correct, yep. There will be no alterations needed. Jim was concerned about that as well. I replied to him that the driveway is wide enough you could fit it four cars wide as it is now to park. So you consider you've got the required three parking spots here on that driveway? Correct, yep.
And I didn't see from your drawing, is it possible that you can call up that drawing that we do have that is posted online just so we can talk from your site plan?
I don't think I can share it off of my phone. There any way yeah. Maybe you could share it. I can walk you through it. Yep. Let me see
if I can. And Mindy, have you allowed me to screen share? You should be able to. Okay.
Now, one of the things I noticed, Adam, is we had the same thing many times on this. Is that a goof up on our end or a goof up on you sending that to us?
I think I read copies. So I just submitted a copy of everything. And I guess that would be a goof up on my end that I submitted duplicate. Yeah, that would be the floor plan that one. Yeah. And then
Yeah. We're getting close. Here's here's the drawing that I was Yep. Okay. I could not tell from this drawing how the septic system hooked up to your accessory apartment.
When I had talked to the Eastern Health District, the one that applied for it was that it would connect into the existing septic. And they approved that.
Okay, so you're planning on running another pipe from the accessory apartment over to your existing septic? Correct. I guess, yeah, I didn't draw it. Yep. In
the letter Jed, the acceptance letter from Eastern Thailand is in this application.
It's somewhere in there. I think it's down at the bottom. If you go all the way down at the bottom. Plan you had there. Right there. Yep. Right there.
Okay. Yeah, now it was not clear to me when I read that letter that that's what they meant. But it could be. And I just didn't see any, you know, I was expecting to see a pipe running from that over into the existing septic tank. It was clear to me that you weren't installing a separate one. Okay. Now the Bold compliant
area for a future has been identified on the property.
Where is that at Adam? The future repair spot? The reserve
system area. Says that you're going to add a bedroom?
Yeah, for the apartment. It would be a one bedroom and then I guess it wouldn't be a tub, it would be a stand up shower, a toilet, and a vanity sink, obviously. Did you have a question on that, Scott?
It says that addition of an apartment upstairs but then it says code compliant area for future septic repair which is reserve system for three bedroom house has been identified on the property. Now it's a three bedroom house plus another bedroom, right?
No, two bedroom plus this one would be the third bedroom. Your house is two bedrooms right now? Yep, two bedroom. Listed as two bedroom. Okay, that's good then.
Okay, and here was the one real sticky point that I had. And it was based on the size of the lot. Size of the what? Of your lot for
supporting what do our regulations say about the size of a lot to have an accessory apartment? About coverage?
Well, I'm not sure. It says that the lot needs to comply with section 11.2, which is this graph right here. And so the question I have when this graph here and I'm looking for my regulation so I can see what that thing actually says. So it says that for the ARD, the lot area square foot is a minimum of 60,000 square feet, where the applicant's lot is on the order of 50,000 square feet. And so for our commission, now Jim, I mentioned this to Jim today and he thinks there's some words that might get around that but he wasn't able to look them up before this meeting. But I know when we put the accessory apartment regulations into our zoning regulations, our concern was, our expectation was that we would have fairly good sized lots. And so I don't know if it would be for the Commission to decide is whether or not he meets this. This would be an issue that would need to go to the zoning board of appeals where this is an issue that there's some wording someplace else that would say
because this was a previously authorized lot and we've changed the regulations do these accessory apartment regulations that came in after we made that change affect it or not? And I haven't been able to tackle that issue today, but that was the one that I couldn't work my way through.
How do you get 50,000 square? Because on that site map, I'm pretty sure that showed the minimum and my the property is outside that minimum requirement box.
I got that 50,000 square feet off the town appraisal card for your lot. I also think that when your application says your lot is a little over one acre, I take, I use my rounding math. I go by about 40,000 square feet to the acre. Okay.
And so you have to be I think it's a little over an acre and a half to get you up to the 60,000 square feet. So that was my concern. I like the thought of the accessory apartment and that. I'm just not sure that right this minute that complies with what our regulations require. Ted, I think 4.11 mentions the size requirement. Does. Kevin, doesn't that just reference us over to that chart? No, it gives a size. Let me go back to it here.
I know it does for the Lake District. It says in the Lake District, the lot has to be 120,000 square feet. Okay. Yeah, that's what I was reading. Yep. The first thing under 4.11.2, the site plan review and standards, the requirements of Section 11.2 space requirements are satisfied. And I couldn't convince myself that that were true.
It seems like if the house was there you ought to be able to do small adjustment like building an accessory apartment.
Well, this isn't a small adjustment. This is really like when the discussion we had on accessory apartments is not building a shed, it's building a house. And I would say that he is more than doubling the size of the footprint on his lot by adding them. Yeah, that's true.
And again, so what I would like to do, Adam, is defer the further discussion on this to our next meeting where I can talk to the zoning agent because we didn't get a chance to talk about what our regulations require today and see if there's something that he was aware of that would allow us to get through this or if the right way would be to go to the zoning board of appeals and request a variance to our regulation. So does that make sense, Adam? Does that make any significant hardship as we go forward? Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So with that, does anybody have any other questions about the accessory apartment here? And I think we all like accessory apartments. We just got to make sure follow our regulations as set out. Okay, well I appreciate the discussion tonight, Adam. That'll help us come through this in a timely fashion when we get together at our next meeting in July.
Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate your time everyone. Thank you, Adam. Okay. So
the next item on the old business is previously approved special permit for a kennel operation at 241 Route 6. Is Scott Beebe online? Yes, I am. Okay.
Thank you, Scott. And so how about you're just walking the commission through what it is you've got and what it is you would like to do. I have, at this point, not seen a copy of the special permit that was previously approved. So I don't know what that's asking for in So
I'll walk you through a little bit. So I've been training dogs at the Post farm for the last twenty three years. To train dogs in your neighbor's field, you don't need any permits. So I was doing that for a long time in 2011 I came to the town to build a commercial kennel after a long battle with the town I actually won but that being said all the money to build the building was gone So I continued to train dogs in the field at the post farm. Then this year I bought out my partner actually last year, it'd be a year ago. And the state requires me now because I lease land at the post farm to have approval from planning and zoning to do what I'm doing at the post farm, train dogs and have my daycare dogs there.
Is this post farm, is that in our business commercial?
Yeah, so I was already approved. All that's already been approved on the post farm for me to train the dogs and do everything that I'm doing there. The only thing I didn't do was build the building.
And are you looking to build a building now or you just want to continue doing Right what you're
now I just want to continue to do what I'm doing and pay my kids college loans. And,
I have talked to Serenity about building a smaller kennel on this side of the property in the future, but right now I just need to continue running my business. Okay.
And so I've been paying taxes to the town of Andover on all my dog training equipment that's there since 2011 too. I'm also the dog warden in town or animal control officer in town. And that whole part of for the town is run out of there, to be honest with you. My business runs the control.
Now, do you have a copy of the previously approved special permit?
I don't, but there is one at the town hall because they pulled up a bunch of stuff when I was there. The problem is it was never signed by Bob Burbank. That's where we are today. It's so all there. It's in the meeting minutes.
I meeting saw minutes and the meeting minutes said the special permit was approved. And so I said, well, Jim, show me a copy of this special permit. Yeah, it was never signed by Bob. Okay, well, and I didn't know that was the rub. All I know is I have not yet seen the previous special permit. And so at this point, I guess I would defer this until the next meeting as well where we can see what your special permit is. As I look through the kennel regulations, I'm not sure that the kennel regulations even apply to what it is that you're looking to do. So they do apply because of the state.
So the state has nowhere to put daycare. So that goes under boarding of dogs now. Okay. Anytime you house a dog over five hours, then you need a kennel license.
And how many dogs are you boarding, so to speak?
So it depends on the day. I mean, have a town permit for 12 of my own dogs there. And then I have up to twelve fifteen other dogs at any given time. Okay. So it's on 200 acres there. I mean all the town regulations. I can tell you this because of the long battle in the past. I'm
sure that you can. And if you've been doing this for twenty three years, I'm thinking that one more month where we get the documentation correct to support what you're trying to do probably is not the end of the world either. We can
that in the record, something that we can review what was approved. But when I first heard what you were asking for, I cut those interesting articles out of the River East that apply to planning and zoning and one was about the doggy daycare in Colchester. And that was in a residential area and that caused a big taboo. You don't seem to have that issue here. And so No, we've I mean, we've been there a long time with no complaints. Yep. Okay. And I mean,
Jim's been there. One of my nearest neighbors is on the board. So, I mean, he obviously there's complaints he would hear them. But yeah, whatever you want me to do. Okay.
Jim will let you know and we'll deal with this at the next meeting. And now that the Commission has an understanding of what it is that it was all we knew something was coming. We had no idea what it was. Okay. It enlightened us tonight. That's very helpful. And now we'll get together and work on how do we conclude this satisfactorily to meet everybody's needs here. I don't think it'll be too hard but now that I understand it we'll go from there. Right. Does that make sense, Scott? Yep. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Good night.
Good night. Next item is your return to live commission meetings. And I see town hall is open now. I've wrestled with myself as to what I kind of like showing up at the last minute and getting on Zoom and doing that. But I also kind of like getting together and meeting with everybody. So my thought is we should get together for an in person meeting in July, see how it goes, and if we don't like it, we can go back to Zoom. But if we do like it, we can continue. But at this point, it's been so long since we've had an in person meeting, we don't have that basis for comparison
anymore. And so I was just wondering what everybody thought about that. If anybody had any concerns about that, I guess.
Hi, this is Leanne. I have a question and a comment. LEONNE go ahead, Leanne. Leanne Hutchinson. I'm fully vaccinated, and we're all under a giant honor system about who is and who isn't and, who's wearing a mask and who isn't. So I don't have any underlying conditions. I would be willing to meet in person. I would like, I think, to see maybe some distancing. I don't know if six feet or not, but those are my thoughts. But I would defer to anybody who doesn't want to go back to in person meetings. And my other thought is if we were to go to in person meetings, would there be some sort of a feed or what have you where if a commission member or a member of the public could participate if the rest of us are meeting in person?
Okay. So the first comment is on a little bit of distancing. And I think we would do a little bit more than what we did in the past as far as distancing. I don't know that we part of it would be limited by I don't know how many tables are over there in the community room. But if we had five tables, we could set those up so that everybody had a table. And I think that would be okay. And that would be in excess of the current requirements over for town hall right now, which are no social distancing requirements, only if you are not vaccinated, wear a mask.
I was in the town office building today. I wore a mask. Not everybody was. People were kind of interacting. There were some plexiglass up, but some people were walking out from behind it. So again, I'll leave it up to other people. I'd be comfortable either way.
Okay. And I'm not going to ask everybody on the commission if they've been vaccinated. I don't know if that's a allowed question or not. I will only ask if there's anybody who is uncomfortable getting together given those constraints where if you are vaccinated, you are not expected to wear a mask. If you are not vaccinated, you would be expected to wear a mask. I see more people wearing masks now than were wearing masks when they had to just because they didn't like being told that they had to wear a mask. And then the second one is, I don't think we're technically ready yet to go with the providing a feed for other people. I would expect, you know, we don't often get a lot of extra people to show up at our meetings. And so my expectation right now would be to have everybody show up in person and not provide the extra fee. But we might get smarter than over at town hall. I don't know. Didn't tune into a board of education meeting and they had a very good setup where the
members of the public that they were expected to come in on Zoom and it worked out very well. So we might get there, but I'm not sure that we're set up for that at the town hall quite yet. In fact, I'm a little concerned about, you know, the setup with the big screen and all that. We might be taping up drawings and that sort of thing. One of the things I like about Zoom is the ability to share screen and everybody gets to see up close what we're looking at. I'm not sure we can duplicate that over in down hall. And that would be one of the things that might cause us to go back and say, no, we like Zoom meetings. I don't know. But I'd like to try it and see how it goes.
I have a thought and that is that community room is really quite large. And even if we were at one end of the room, even somewhat distance somebody who wants doesn't feel comfortable being that close to be at the other side of the room and speak and you'd be still very far away. Yes, that is true. I'm so personally so comfortable with this. I'm vaccinated. I'll be right next to somebody else. I don't even feel like a need for distancing but if other people do, okay. Nope, I
agree with you. But there are people with compromised immune systems and that and we want them to feel comfortable as well. But I do think that we can if there's a person with a concern and wants to sit a little bit more distance, that is a big room. The other downside to that room is the acoustics aren't all that great. This microphone. Is Yep, so this seems to work out pretty good there. Anyhow, anybody else have any thoughts, concerns or whatever on meeting in public in person? Okay, would somebody like to make a motion that the next meeting be in person in the town hall?
I'll make a motion that the next meeting in July be in person at the town hall. Okay, thank you, Anne. Scott, will you second that?
Sure. Okay, Scott Bergson seconded the motion. Any other discussion on that? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. All
opposed? Any abstaining? Okay, the motion carries five-zero-zero. Next up is the parking and picnic area. Did Eric rejoin us? Looks like he's there.
Okay. Well, I'm going to move on well, to let me just talk about the parking and the picnic area. I know Eric had a couple of there were a couple of ideas. One was to do something to improve the parking along Lake Road at the new property we owned out there from Merritt Valley to Route 6 where everybody parks. And then we talked at the time we went off to purchase that property by putting a little picnic table in out there. And I thought those were both good ideas. I asked Eric if he would at least investigate. You know, Diane Greiner's got this grant money that can be used for a lot of different things and he was going to go look at that. And then I know the town has some money coming from the federal government for COVID stuff. And we're not exactly sure how to spend that, but that might be a idea. But if neither of those options occurred, I wouldn't be opposed to having the Commission consider and if somebody was willing to make a motion vote that at that point in time. And he was looking, I forget the exact number, but I think they were looking for less than $1,000 And while I don't think we're building up our open space fund very robustly yet,
dollars 1,000 and that might have been for something, he had some idea over there at the ball fields to do something different over there. I can't remember what it was. Maybe some exercise equipment or something. I can't recall. They were all good ideas, all things that would be good for the town. But if there's no Eric here, I don't know where we are, so nothing further on that item for tonight. Moving on to the affordable housing plan. And so, I think at the last meeting I told everybody the next day I was going to go attend a webinar
on affordable housing. I did that and we were going to go use some of our money that's set aside for the plan of conservation and development to come up with an affordable housing plan. But last week, maybe it was the week before, I guess it was the week before, the state put out new, they had more grant money. They had another $500,000 that they were going to give out to towns, up to $15,000 per town to develop affordable housing plans. So Eric and I submitted a grant request for that. And we're just waiting to hear back, but since our request was to do exactly what the state wants us to do and we got it in fairly quickly after the notification came out on it, I would expect that that would be approved and we go forward on that. But nothing new
on that until we find out that our grant is approved. And I have nothing new on the signed regulations. And the cost from Bill Warner was less than?
The cost from Bill Warner was I think $6,900 We put in the grant for $9,600 which was still only two thirds of what the maximum was. And I think I would hope that if we got Bill Warner or some other planner, maybe they could help us update our regulations. We got a bunch of taskers from the state on changes to our regulations. And none of those are urgent. I think there's nothing more urgent than the state affordable housing plan, is June 2022. But by sometime in 2023, there's a bunch of changes that slightly modify a bunch of stuff with respect to the wording in there. And it's almost like
making the affordable or the accessory apartments a right instead of a request. And so you know, I'll work my way through all those things, but I'm not prepared to talk about the content of that, only that we got a bunch of tasking from the state on changes that we have to make to our planning and zoning regs. So anyhow, we put in a grant request and I expect that grant request to be approved and then we'll go back to see if we can get Bill Warren to help us out on a plan. New business was the previously approved kennel operation. We already talked about that. Oh, next one. Election of officers. I thought that the election of officers would take place after the start of the fiscal year when we had our new members in and any retiring members no longer here. But I reviewed our bylaws and they say that it will be done the first meeting after the election, which was our last meeting. And it said if it's not done at the first meeting after the election, it will be done at the second meeting after the election. So here we are. And I will open the floor for nominations for Planning and Zoning Commission Chairman. I nominate you. I second.
Thank you, Susan. Who is the second? Is that Leanne? Leanne. Leanne. Okay, very good. Any other nominations? And I know there are folks out there who could do a better job than I could. I don't think so, Jed. Okay.
So hearing none, we have any further discussion on let's see. Yet we had a motion and seconded. So with that in mind, all in favor?
Yes, just quickly, Jed, this is Leanne. You mentioned further discussion. So I've been on the commission for quite a while. And I have never wanted to be the chairman. It's a big job. And I think you do an excellent job. And I'm glad that you're willing to continue.
Thank you, Leanne. I try. Not always successful, but we keep on trying. But it is a big job. Quite It's certainly not one that I felt ready to take on when I did, but there you go. And I'll continue to make a go on it if I, by some chance, happen to be elected. You do a better and better job. Constantly
getting better. Yeah, well, I like to think that I can learn a little bit still. I do know there are some great candidates sitting in the wings. And one of these days, they'll be ready to step up. I don't think it would be fair to expect that of them right this minute. So that's that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And I will abstain. I didn't think it was right to vote for myself. So the motion passes four-zero one. I'll now take nominations for Vice Chair. And I would nominate Anne Creme. I would second.
Thank you, Susan. Any other nominations? Any discussion? Maybe next year, Ann, I would have to let you take a crack, but that would be it running one of these meetings. But it takes a while to get up to speed. I do remember your first one is where you had to chair, I think, a public hearing that I said I never wanted to do that to you.
I did argue for about three months at that point I think.
That I said that wasn't right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? I guess I abstain.
The motion carries four-zero-one with Vice Chairman Cremay abstain. Thank you very much, Anne, and thank you for that. You're welcome. Next up is the approval of our minutes. And we'll start out I'll make a motion to approve the April 19 public hearing meeting minutes. I second. Thank you, Susan. Any discussion? And I do have a I have a couple of things. I know under members absent it says Kevin was not there any whats. And I will read for the record, Mindy, but if you need me to go back and send you an email of my changes to the verbiage, let me know. But on page two, the last sentence of the first paragraph, says 57 Hendy Road currently an acre and it's proposed to be four acres. The other lot will become one acre and it should actually be an acre and a because it takes an acre and a half to get the 60,000 square feet minimum size of a lot today. In the fourth paragraph down, the second line there, it says, and currently the building line is 500 feet from the center Of Hendy Road. That should be 50 feet. And then in the next to the last line on that same paragraph it says,
this is where Jay Larson is struggling. It is easy to get the perpendicular lines and to get the width measured from the building line. It should say if we look at the existing lot, It is easy to get the perpendicular line and get the width measured from the building line. It is not easy to get the perpendicular lines and to get the width measured from the building line, 50 feet from the center line Of Endy Road. So let do that again, Mindy, so maybe you have a fighting chance now that I figured out what my notes say here. The last sentence should be, if we look at the existing lot, it is not easy to get the perpendicular lines and to get the width measured from the building line, which is taken from the 50 foot centerline vending room. Okay, and in the next paragraph, the last sentence says he also explained another option would be to with another option that would comply although it is not favorable
cross out the word favorable and say he is not fond of but met the regulations is to use the existing lot lines width to the west. And then under that section, the third paragraph up from the bottom, the last sentence says flood elevation is 323.5 feet, so the house will be raised up to, it says three twenty five feet, it should be 325.5 feet. Any other comments on the public hearing? Okay. Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Motion carries five-zero-zero. Now we'll move on to the regular meeting on April 19. Do I have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from the regular meeting on April 19? So move. Thank you, Susan. Looking for a second. Second. Thank you, Anne. Any discussion? Once again, Kevin was present. As I recall, he asked some very good questions there. And I had no comments on the regular meeting minutes. Anybody else have any? Hearing none, we'll call for a vote. All in favor, aye. All
opposed? All abstaining? Motion carries five zero zero. We will move on to the public hearing and regular meeting minutes on May 17. First we'll do looking for a motion to approve the public hearing meeting minutes.
I move to accept the public hearing meeting minutes. Thank you, Anne. Second?
A second. Thank you, Scott. Any comments? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstaining? I abstain because that was not present.
Okay. The motion passes four-one-zero with Commissioner England abstaining. Moving on to the regular meeting minutes. Looking for a motion to approve.
This is Leanne. I'll move to approve. Thank you, Leanne. Looking for a second. Second.
Thank you, Anne. Any discussion on the meeting minutes? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? I abstain. The motion carries four-zero-one. Commissioner England abstaining. Last but not least is the planning and zoning special meeting site walk on Saturday, June 5. I move approval of the minutes. Thank you, Susan.
Second? I'll second. Thank you, Scott. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstaining? Leigh Ann Hutchinson, I was not there. Okay.
The motion passes four zero one with Commissioner Hutchinson abstaining. Moving on to item eight correspondence. We have none of that for tonight. Administrative reports have none of that for tonight. Commission discussion miscellaneous. Anybody have anything they want to bring up?
I would like to talk about a couple of things Jed. Okay, go ahead. I know that the road, the road frontage thing I know we can't work on that right now because there's some pending applications. I want to put those things and also the building and the floodplains. I want to change those things like we talked about in the so there's no residential building into floodplains. And I know that the perpendicular thing is in there, but I want to change the frontage on the town road also so it's more clear. Okay. I just want to put that, I just want to get it into the work so we don't forget forget that. Okay, yep, I won't forget it. I'm just trying to
get through, well, if I have to change the regs for some other legal things I'd like to do all at once and I want to make sure that we get the housing plan going but I agree that those are two things that need to be done. I'm not as concerned about the frontage, but I do think that was probably an oversight that we didn't have frontage in there. I just jimmy: Was satisfied with the outcome of the discussion on with and I don't know if there's any unintended consequences of changing it to frontage. Don't think there are, but you never can tell but that's in there. You got me on the hook for that so it might just not be quick. Any other comments? Kevin, are you still with us here tonight? Yeah, I'm still with us. Yep. What time did you get here just so we could get it in the minutes and not have you show up as absent? I think the official time was 07:02 when I checked, but you had Okay. Just No, I know. Yeah, I knew you showed up very shortly right after we got going there and I didn't, just wanted to make sure. Okay, very good. And with that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. All moved. Thank you, Scott. Any second? Seconded.
Thank you, Anne. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, thank you very much, everybody. And thank you, Anne, for your willingness to stay on there as vice chair. And we'll keep giving it a go. Thank you, everybody. Bye. See you all next month. Good night. Good night.