Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting
February 22, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Kevin, I am going to seat you tonight for Leanne. I see Anne is here now, so that gives us a full board for discussion purposes here. But Kevin, you're seated for Leanne Hutchinson this evening. Okay. And so I see didn't see roll call on here, but I see Scott Persson, myself, Susan England, Kevin Arneson, and Anne Creme in attendance. The next item on the agenda is public participation. I do see that we've got a couple of members of the public here tonight. Anybody want to comment at this point in time? Nothing from me. I'm just here because I'm nosy.
Okay. Very good. Well, you know, I was hoping you would have been at the last meeting where we discussed the late regs. What's that? I thought you're doing that tonight.
No, we we we voted on him a month ago. And so one of the things that we'll do is we'll find out when we get to the zoning agent's report whether he's gotten any comments on it. But we are past the public comment period and those should take effect here on the twenty fifth of this month. So further on this week. So sorry to disappoint you, Diane. That's
what I get for not being everywhere at all times. But if you stick with us, we've got some probably humorous discussions on signs coming out so. I'm always looking for humor. Okay there you go very good. Any other public participation tonight? Okay, very good. I'm gonna move on to addition or changes to the agenda.
I do have a request. An application came in 57 Hendy Road application for special permit from William and Donna Phillips. It's building in the flood prone zone. And I indicated that I would bring it to the attention of the commission. When did it come in Jim? Today.
I spoke to Melissa from one of the applicants or daughter of the applicant late last week and she followed up with a packet today.
I would prefer to not add that to the agenda tonight. Well, I guess the way that probably works is somebody would have to make a motion to put that on the agenda. Then we would vote on that.
Does it have to be like twenty four hours before the meeting or something? The application
I prefer to do is we have a motion to add it so that the way these things go, if we vote on it and don't allow it, it would be affirmative as opposed to if you vote not to put it on and then the motion doesn't pass, then you don't know where you are. The way to handle the situation is to make a motion, then we'll discuss the motion, and then we'll vote on the motion.
I'm not aware of a clear cut regulation. But different commissions have different policies. I got. Okay, thanks a lot. Yeah. I've heard that I mean, with wetlands, for instance, required to accept things up to the to the meeting date. I've heard twenty four hours. I've never actually seen it.
I have seen it. Again, we're getting into we're discussing something that's not on the agenda. The first order of business would be to make a motion to put it on the agenda, and then we can have the discussion on it. If we don't get a motion to put it on the agenda, I guess then that keeps it off as well. But I do have some thoughts on why I would prefer to not discuss that tonight. Okay, well, I haven't got a motion to put it on, so it won't go on the agenda. And it is, from my perspective, the reason I don't want to put it on the agenda tonight is it is a complicated enough issue that I want to be adequately prepared and I literally found out that there was interest in getting it added to the agenda less than fifteen minutes ago. And that does not give me a chance to do my proper preparation so that I am able to address the issue. And what is this? Say again? What is it that we're not talking about? Is that Leanne? Yes.
I heard you weren't going to be here tonight, Leanne. Welcome. What we are not going to be talking about is the property on 57 Hendy Road. Okay. Thanks. Yep.
Leanne, I did seat Kevin in your place before your arrival. And I'm counting the squares here to see if we've got an extra opening still. One, two, three, four, five. Nope, so Leanne, I'm going to leave Kevin seated tonight. And you're welcome to participate in any of the discussions. I don't think we're going to vote on anything anyhow. But since I already seated Kevin, I'm going to leave him in that position.
Okay. I think that's in the bylaws. And I'm sorry I didn't try to sign in a little bit earlier. But just so you know, this has happened before where it asks for a pass there's a pass code and then there's a meeting code and it asks you for one, but it's really asking for the other one. You have to go back in and upload the whole thing and put it back in. So next time I'll try to start before 07:00 or, you know, two minutes of appreciate it. Because it's annoying.
Yes, I understand that. Moving on to the old business, I see where I probably confused Diane. It does stop Excuse me. Yes,
go ahead. Oh, just one more thing. Did respond that I would be here. Oh, okay.
I misread that. Not that I would not. Okay, that was one of those reading the reading the email quickly just before I signed on and and Jim. No, just I misread it and misinformed you. I apologize for the miscommunication Okay, go ahead. Yep.
So the update was on the late regulation amendments. And again, we did go through those at the last meeting and voted to approve those. So I was going to ask Jim if any comments had been received back on the late regs.
I did have communication with Linda Derek. She indicated that there were at least one individual on the other board that she is not on the
Yep, she's on Elma. There's the other board is El
Paula, and they were caught off guard that the regulation had passed. They were they apparently hadn't tracked it. And I expected there might be somebody on the Zoom meeting today to address their issues.
Yeah, I would have been surprised that there was an issue, but I thought everybody from Alcoa and Alma were supportive of it. But if they, and I do know that Mike Burke, is the president of Alcoa did put, I think it was on Facebook that there was, we were having a meeting tonight if anybody wanted to comment on it to show up. I guess good job on us for getting it through quickly. It made it go real quick when there was nobody here to talk about it, but we did have it well advertised that last month was the month on that. Next thing I was going to ask on the lake regs, Jim, was have you received any permits that were affected by it so we could test out the effectiveness?
Have not. I did hear of an inquiry. I didn't actually speak to the individual, but the gentleman that's looking to build on the lake lot that was approved through Wetlands Commission, the former clock property. Yep. I don't know the street number offhand, but but that nothing has come in as of yet. Okay.
And then and so my last comment on the Lake Regs update was that I thought I did the other members of the commission a disservice by, you know, try as hard as I could. It was late breaking news where I got the input from Thad King and I probably I did not give the other commission members the opportunity to receive that input, think on that input, and then before we acted on that input. And I probably pushed a little too fast to get those approved. But I did want to get them effective before a bunch of applications start coming in and then we didn't get a chance to apply that there. But I know that whenever I get myself into wanting to make a decision or something, it's nice to think about it for a little bit. And I recognized after that meeting was done that there's probably some things on the regulations that are not perfect. We will continue to look at those as permits come in and we apply it and learn lessons what could have been done better and we'll have the opportunity to go out and change it if need be. We should have I just wish there would have been a little more time for me to think about it, share it with you guys, you to think about it, and then we act on it there. That's something I've been pushing when I've been over on the Inland Wetlands Commission as well. I like to do my homework ahead of time. And I'd like to give you guys a chance to do your homework ahead of time there too. So feel free to keep me in line when I start pushing those things. But
I do want to make sure that we do the very best job we can in putting out the best product in there. So that was all I had on the lake regulation amendments. The status of the lot determination of Wheeling Road property. And I see that I have a box here. Well, do you want to lead off the discussion on that, Jim? I see we have Mike Sheehan with me here tonight. You said he might show up.
Yes, certainly. Yeah, this property, it's been on the agenda. It's been discussed a number of times. Just to wrap, to kind of give a little background on it. Property was taken by the state for the realignment of Wheeling Road. This is sort of separate than the swath as I call it, but the Route 6 bypass. It was a piece of property taken by the Department of Transportation, Sheeran property, for the realignment of Wheeling Road as part of the Route 6 project. And as we all know, Route 6 never move forward. Property was subsequently gated over to the town. So right now, she ends have a property situated along Wheeling Road with this piece of land owned by the town given by the state between it and the road. Basically, it needs somebody we would need to cross this property to get to the property. And they're looking at basically selling it out, selling it as a building block. It's a fair sized lot. Believe it's four acres or thereabouts. I think the town only and he's it's an acre and a half. I did provide a copy of the quick claim D as well as the plan, which I'm guessing you probably can't read very well. I do want to clear up something in
the minutes of the last meeting. It's apparently in the case that I said that it was for open space. I'm not quite sure where I got that there. There is a notation about non access line on the plan, but it goes up to a point. And there is breaks at a point on the plan and that they do have the email from the state. Hopefully that went out. People got it indicating that their intent in the quick claim it's for highway purposes. Also sent out an opinion from Mark Brantz on that matter and he. I'm sorry. Go ahead Jim.
And Mark Brantz indicated that. He did not have an issue with with the use of that property. So that's kind of where I am with it. I brought it to the Commission because I just didn't feel comfortable, know just something out of the norm. I don't really think of it as a zoning issue personally. So hence I brought it here and and it's it's back before you again. Jim, is it possible you can share all those the maps?
I am home with my my computer is not working. I don't know if anybody else. So
yeah, here's here's what I'd like to do on that piece of property. Jim, is that I spent some time on three different things. And so I'm glad there's one or two Sheehan people online with us tonight because I came to the conclusion was we needed somebody to present the facts to the Commission because I looked at the assessors maps for the town of Andover and I looked at our plan of conservation and development where it has a picture of state owned and town owned property. And then I took a look at the maps and I found inconsistencies amongst them. And when we get to the presentation that I put together coming up soon on frontage requirements, I've got some pictures in there. I did not put specifically
the Sheehan property site plan on there. But we can talk in generalities about the inconsistencies that I found and what I was trying to straighten out. I'm sure the Sheehan's can enlighten us and make that a lot easier. So I would ask the Sheehan's to stick around until we do the frontage requirement thing, which is the first order of new business. With respect to the open space issue, Jim, I know you got that information, at least from me. And I found it and I probably couldn't put my finger on it right this minute. I think it was the map that you had gotten that shows the state turning over that property to the town that talked about it was turned over for open space. But that's I know that I provided that information to you. Okay, thank you. And so did and I didn't have a chance to review the information you sent back from the Department of Transportation guy, but from their perspective, it was okay to put a driveway through there?
Yes. Okay. What what the gentleman said, Conradoy, he said it it. It's on the quick claim it says for highway purposes and he left it. He said, they leave it to the town to interpret that.
Okay. And I'm not prepared to call up the documents in the middle of this. One of the things that I've got to get some help with is when I so here's for you, Jim. When you send out the agenda, if you can have the link in it to the meeting, that helps me because I use two different browsers. And the one that I can access the town stuff on is where I pull up the agenda from our website so that I can log in. And once I'm logged in, I can't get back to the homepage to maneuver it around as a shared thing. And so I haven't learned that trick yet. I'm using my iPad. I'm having trouble with my WiFi and computer. So somewhat limited.
Anyhow, that's why I'm not going go back and try and look that up. I'll let you know tomorrow where I found that open space comment and we can resolve it one way or the other. Another you mentioned, recall you saying it and recall going back and seeing it. Okay. Hi, Jed. Yep. Just a second. Is my Hold hold on. So Scott, you got the floor.
When are we all gonna be able to share the maps and documentation for information for us to look at?
When I understand, so when I understand a picture and what I'm looking for is I want one drawing that shows me the Sheehan property that wants to be sold. Yeah. And it shows the state property on there and it shows the driveway going through. So I'm figuring out what is the footage going through the state property, well the town property now to get in there just because if we set a precedent with them allowing it for one point, is it going to come next request we get is to cross a two acre rectangle lot to provide access to a property. And I want to make sure that whatever we do doesn't that we're all happy with when we take it, we get the next follow on request that asks a little bit more than what we would want to grant for this one. So I can tell you I'll have that drawing next time. I'll put that together in a little packet. But I am not nimble enough to come to a meeting and get all that stuff on the fly. If we did it in paper copy in that, could hold it up in front of the thing and maybe show you, but you wouldn't see the detail. And we've got those. It's just the
picture that shows the Commission what the issues are we're talking about. I wasn't able to put it together on one sheet of paper and that's what I wanted to show and talk through. So did somebody else have a comment that I cut off when I heard a couple of people talking at once? Yeah, Mr. Larson, is Mike Sheehan. Can I address the committee? Yes, go ahead. Okay.
When we began negotiations with the state DOT a few years ago to purchase back the land that was taken, Christina Smith made it crystal clear that it would be unlawful to landlock us from the building lot. There was she couldn't have made that any clearer. That was one of the first things she uttered that it was imperative to get that frontage back connecting to the building lot because, again, it would be unlawful to lock us out of that building lot. I understand.
So I don't understand why this is an ongoing issue.
Because it appears to me anyhow that you are landlocked. So the question comes up, how did we make that when it appears to me that you're landlocked and I haven't been able to come through that issue yet?
So what would be the next step in reviewing this?
Well, since you're here, you can explain to us why you don't think you're landlocked.
Because we were told in no uncertain terms by the state DOT from the get go that it would be unlawful to landlock us from the building lot. It's as simple as that.
Okay. And I understand that thought. So the question that I'm struggling with is how can you not be landlocked when the town owns property between your lot and the road?
Well, assertion would be that we would be entitled to a right of way to put a driveway through to gain access to that property.
And I am coming to understand that conclusion and I apologize for how long it takes me to get there. But when we get to the frontage discussion, I think that thought is maturing in my head. I have to give the other commission members the opportunity to allow it to mature in their head. And we should be pretty close there. That's what we struggled with. And we didn't have anybody here to give us the answer. Because when we looked at it, we said it's a landlocked piece of property. Illegal to make that subdivision that you had done. And we have struggled for months to get answers to those questions.
One of the reasons it's imperative for we would like to see an early decision, we have a contract on the building lot. The closing was scheduled for last week. Obviously it couldn't take place because the potential buyer would like assurances that it's put a house up. We now have another closing date for March 12. What is the likelihood that a decision can be made prior to March 12?
I don't know the answer to that yet because I am if we could come to the conclusion that the issue does not even need to come to the planning and zoning Commission. And that's one of the issues that I'm wrestling with. And you will be able to hear those discussions if we continue on tonight. But that's what I'm trying to wrestle with now is if we were to assume and our lawyer has said we can, that we could allow a right of way through the property to get to your property there, then does it need to come to the Commission? And so I think I've just got to figure out now that it's starting to grow and I understand your time pressure, after we have the discussion on that presentation, maybe we'll be able to give you a better answer of what it takes. I need to get some input from Jim. If we make a decision on it, then Jim does it, how long is all that going to take? And we'll go there. I would think that if it didn't happen at our March meeting, it would happen at the April meeting at the latest, that we would be able to answer you.
I just don't understand, Mr. Larson, why it could take it possibly up until April.
This looks like a pretty straightforward matter to me. Well, if an it application that came to the Commission, we would not be able to act on it at this meeting because we've got to have a fifteen day period where the public's allowed to weigh in on any application. And so then it would put it off to the next meeting. We could probably draw that back a little bit and hold a special meeting. But because of the way the holidays worked out, the next meeting is only three weeks away from this meeting as it is. And so I could and I'd have to wait after
the motion was made or if the application was presented to us, I'd have to wait fifteen days. If there is no application and we are just making a ruling, I don't know the answer as to whether or not I would need to wait fifteen days. And so my comment is that since this is the first night that we've had anybody actually show up to discuss with the Planning and Zoning Commission the piece of property, I think we're doing pretty good. I have busted my butt to try and get ready to have this discussion. And I've been fighting a losing battle. I'll see if I can do better going forward. But there's an awful lot of things that haven't been clear to me to get me to this point.
Okay. That's the first time hearing of it. I thought I was handling it in the proper manner. And
you very well could have. But there's not been an issue that's come before the Planning and Zoning Commission at this point. Now, I think Jim's trying to get some help to make sure he's doing it right. He hasn't been in that job. Know, he and I both got about the same amount of time. He's got an awful lot more prior experience than I do. But I am certainly my background is not in planning and zoning. I'm just trying to make sure I meet the intent of all the requirements when we put it in place. And again, I would ask I will give you an opportunity to speak again after we get done with the next presentation.
But we have been trying to work our way through this issue and get an understanding of what our regulations require. And that is not always, unfortunately, a simple straightforward task.
Jim Hallisey, I have a question for you. Yes. Is the property of the Sheehan's The property to the east of the state's property?
Scott, I have a slide in there that comes from the assessor's map. And that was one of the questions I want to get. You know, I put that map up last meeting and we couldn't tell where the Sheehan property was. Okay, I'm sure the Sheehan's will let us know tonight where where it is on that.
Okay, if if I say something inaccurate, Mike, please let me know. She has had two two separate parcels of land. So we're along the swath of property taken for the Route 6 bypass those essentially between them. The parcel that we're talking here is yes to the east of the bypass of the of the portion that was slated for the bypass. So it's closer to Route 6. It's, I mean, that highway had gone gone through, it would be this portion. It's closer to Route 6.
Okay. That's you're just trying to locate it right? I guess you do. Well, I'm trying to make it relative to that email that I saw tonight. Jim, I think you mean Wheeling Road.
No, I'm just saying it'd be okay. I just meant it's closer to Roots. It's the Route 6 side. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
6 Side. Wheeling Road. Wheeling is the north side of that. So, that would be the that would be the east side. Yes. So, so the parcel that that John and Mike are talking about tonight is to the east of the state parcel. Yes. That's the abutting landowner to the east. No. Yes. Okay.
Other comments on this? And again, I hope to address it better a few minutes from now when we get into the next presentation where I've included a few of those drawings to bring up where I was struggling to find the correct information. Okay. Hearing nothing there, I will move on to old business item C, filling of commission vacancies. Susan, did you by any chance go to sign up to be on the ballot as an alternate by any chance? Yes, I did.
I met with Carol Lee, who told me that the way the process would work because the ballots had already been there had been two caucuses, one for Republicans and one for Democrats, and they had come up with a preliminary ballot and so she then put me in touch with the democratic town chairman Mrs. Lewis and I spoke with her indicated my desire to be an alternate on planning and zoning and stand for the vacant position that was open. And at the meeting of the democrat on Friday evening, I was endorsed as the alternate candidate for planning and zoning. Okay. Excellent.
Kevin, had you given any thought to applying for one of the open commission vacancy?
Yeah, I gave some thought to it. I haven't taken any actions to officially apply for it, But I would be interested in applying for it.
Okay. And so if you are, I would recommend that you call Carol Lee like Susan did and she'll be able to help point you in the right direction with either the Republicans or the Democrats to get on the proper ballot and get all that taken care of. Okay, I can do that. I appreciate you stepping up to do that. Thank you. And that was all that I had for filling of commission vacancies. Anything else on that topic? I'm going to Can move ask a question? Say again.
This is Leanne. Can I ask a question? Yes, Leanne. Kevin, what political party are you? Republican. Okay, thanks.
Okay, I'm going to move on to new business, the frontage requirements. Mindy, I need you to allow me to share.
All right, just made you a co host so you should be able to share. Okay.
And I promised everybody I would dazzle you with my PowerPoint skills. And so here we go. Last meeting, Scott asked me to take a look at the width in frontage requirements from our regulations so that we could have a discussion and make sure that we were all happy with what our regulations had. And if not, maybe we could update them. So I did. So anyhow, the I did find a definition of frontage in our regulations. I think 5.5, point seven, point six is on the rear lots of our zoning regs. And it means frontage on a public street that either exists currently or is proposed as part of a subdivision. And so the thing that I wanted to point out here is if this represents the access to a rear lot, this is not necessarily the width correction, the frontage. The frontage is measured along the road. So in this case, the frontage is a little bit longer than the width of the access to the rear piece of the property. So that was one thing. And we had come through this talking
about the access to a property over on Pine Ridge. So they were a little short here, but along the road gave them the right amount. Oh, you found that in the zoning regulations?
I did. Yep. I was tweaking on this presentation at the last minute because in one of the slides I said the only place that frontage was required is here. And then sure enough, I find it someplace else in there. What was that? 5.576?
Yes. And I think that's under the rear lot thing. So there is a regulation then?
Well, there is a regulation that talks about frontage. On a public street. On a public street. In fact, there's two regulations that talk about it. Isn't five five the open space subdivision section?
That made a liar out of me. So I looked at five point five point seven point six and that's minimum lot frontage yard requirements for ARD development. So I'm a little confused maybe on where that thing actually came from. I have to go back and spiff that up. But I found it. It is either in the rear lot or the two places that talk frontage in our regulations are rear lots and open space subdivision. I think it is Section 49. Okay. What is 49, Kevin?
49 is rear lots four nine dot three So a minimum frontage of 40 feet.
I do see your frontage note there right where you said it was. 5.5.7.6.
Well, I will have to go back. I was using the online version of the regs when I was preparing this and it may be off a little bit from my hard copy one year.
Yeah. But five point five point seven six falls under 5.57, which is open space and development densities. Okay. So it's
Yep. You're right, Jim. So, yeah, you've refreshed my memory there. It was on the open space subdivision where I got the definition for frontage. It was not the rear lot place.
But there is, I mean, then it does speak to, I mean, both in 11 to under the dimensional table. Yep. There's frontage in there, I think that's only or maybe there isn't a Well,
we'll proceed on. Now that you've got that one, let me talk about lot width. And this is in the definition section, 24.3, it talks about what lot width is. And it says a line of measurement of width is perpendicular to the mean direction of the side lots and touches but not in front of the building line. So when I took that to mean, I put a little building here in a lot and I drew a line. It's not really perpendicular to the side of the lot because the lot is not a rectangle. But I think you get the point that this would be where you measure width. And you want to have width so that your neighbor's house isn't right on top of your house. You have adequate separation there and that sort of thing. And so when you're doing most lots are rectangular lots and you'd say, okay, width frontage makes no difference. So I was asking myself, why would our regulations discuss width in that frontage? And the only place that I could come up with where it would make a difference is on a cul de sac. Because on a cul de sac you have a fairly narrow piece of land up on the pavement circle there. And it might not meet that 200 foot frontage where this would be a good definition of ensuring a good side yard on each side of the houses and that. But I don't know. But that's our definition of lighting. And so here, I took a picture of a cul de sac and it shows that yeah, you could have less than 200 foot of frontage there, but still a good lot
and maybe that's why WIP was there. Don't know. But I started asking myself the question, okay, so what is a cul de sac? And again, we've got a definition for that. In a town approved road with only one outlet having the appropriate terminus for safe and convenient reversal of traffic moving. Okay? So that comes into your understanding of what a cul de sac is a little bit. We've got a regulation that says a cul de sac may not serve more than 14 building lots. And so I go back to the previous picture, and I guess that means you count up all these things and it should be less than 14 because that's what's on there. But we've got cul de sacs, Pine Ridge Road, for example, that's got way more than 14 lots on that cul de sac. And so I'm not 100% sure of what that rule is supposed to do, but that is one of our zoning actually, it's a subdivision regulation that talks about the 14 building blocks. It talks about a cul de sac terminate in a turnaround, which has a minimum right of way radius of 60 feet, payment radius of 50 feet. And a length of a cul de sac should be limited to 1,200 feet. And I couldn't measure those roads from the drawings I had to tell if they were in excess of 1,200 feet or not. But again, that comes out to our subdivision range here. There's Pine Ridge. You can see it got way more than 14 lots on it. Don't know the length of the road. My suspicion is it's more than 1,200 feet. That was done before those regulations. And that was
my thought was that was probably the case. So anyhow, that's what the cul de sac is where the width was. Here's where we have on rear lots. And this talks about the definition of a rear lot. And we do have frontage requirement. 40 feet for a conventional subdivision, 25 feet for open space subdivision. So that's one place that does have frontage requirements. Here is under the open space development densities. And again, it's got minimum lot area frontage near requirements. So it's got frontage 50 feet for an open space development. And this is where I had to change it because I was going to say the only place that talked frontage was in the rear lot portion. And nope, found it here. So the only place that doesn't have a frontage requirement is in the Andover rural design, standard straight out property development. And we can ask, is that good, bad or indifferent here coming up? This is the chart that Jim was talking about earlier on and it uses lot width for all of these things where sometimes it's frontage and sometimes it's width. It seems like we were using those terms interchangeably. But they're not really interchangeable. Anyhow, this is this gives us the amount. This is where the 200 foot width comes from. Could we make that 200 feet of frontage? Maybe there's pros and cons to that. We'll get to that in a minute.
So
how did we get on this topic? And it really wasn't the Sheehan property that took us there. It was probably a year ago. So things we've been working on this for a long time. Here's a piece of property on Hendy Road. And we were working with the property owners on this lot. They want to put a house in there. And we all said, can't do it. You don't have the frontage on Indy Road. Because this is a little piece of town owned property here. And the homeowner came back to us and said, well, I've got this house over here and the driveway comes through that piece of property out on the Hendy Road. And we all said, well, I don't know how you got there. It's got no frontage on a road. How can it even be a legal lot? That was our approach. There. Then we start discussing the Sheehan property. And Mark Branch comes back with his opinion that we could treat the town property like the town property of a right of way and extend it in there and do that. So it's possible that this lot with the amount of width
but not the amount of frontage, given Mark Branch's opinion on right of way and driveways, that would be okay. It took me it's taken me a long time to come to that conclusion, But I don't think it's in violation of our zoning regulations. And so I said, if that's okay, and maybe that was done legally, How does that apply to this piece of property and how does that apply to the Sheehan property on Wheeling Road because we need to be consistent and fair in whatever interpretation of the regulations are that we come up with. And so here, this is out of the plan of conservation and development. In the light blue pieces of property here are town owned properties. The dark blue are state owned properties. And so I don't know exactly when the state turned the property over to the town of Andover that abuts the Sheehan's. But on this map, you can see where the Route 6 corridor I think was going to come down through here. And it shows that it's still state property. I don't know if that was a mistake when we put the last plan of conservation development out or not. And so I blow it up a little bit closer to the Sheehan property here. And I'm thinking that the state owned property is this little triangle right here. And I thought I had the assessor's map on here. And I don't. I apologize for that. But when I went to the assessor's map, it shows that this little triangle belongs to the town of Andover, we had gotten from the whole discussion on the Sheehan property. And then it has some Sheehan property
over here, which I think probably abuts up to where the corridor was. But then there's another little sliver of property between the state or the town owned property and the property and it says that it's unknown who that belongs to. And so that's why what would be really helpful to me and I think would be helpful to the commission is if we had a piece of property that showed here's the piece of state owned property. Here's Wheeling Road, you could see go through it. Here's the Sheehan property. We give Jim a to make sure that
that description is not in conflict with our assessor's map that doesn't show that little sliver between the two as being either the town property or the Sheehan property. And that's where I got myself all befuddled trying to make sense out of this today. But given those three pieces, Wheeling Road, the Hendy Road, and then the other lot that was previously on Hendy Road, I came down to some options, trying to wrestle with frontage versus width. And one option is we can keep the regulations the same and understand that the town property can be treated as an extension of the town's right of way to allow access. That would suit the Sheehan's desires. It support the Phillips desire over on Indy Road. And it would be consistent with what was on that previously approved lot on Endy Road next to the property that Phillips are trying to develop. We could keep the regulations the same and allow driveway access to the properties via 824 referral. Same end state, just a little bit harder process. We would have to make our recommendation to the Board of Selectmen. Board of Selectmen would act on it and go that way. We could change the regulation to require frontage instead of width. This could preclude some building lots unless town property were treated as a right of way, in which case it would make no difference.
And there's probably others out there. And so that's where I was kind of trying to get some thought on the commission. As I wrestle with all three of these lots, really am sympathetic to the Sheehan's on the state came in, took some property away, said we were going make the road. They would have made the road. They would have got the frontage on the road and there wouldn't be an issue. They decided, the state decided not to change the road and they didn't give the property back to the Sheehan's and so I embarrassed it, in fact, to their cause. I went back to this map and I tried to ask myself, how many other places is there going to be a situation like this with all this state owned land down here in this court? And the answer is there's not many. Really is a lot of this is land between two different property owners that is open space and does open space very well. These couple of properties here have frontage on these roads. It's really a small number. And so Scott, that's what I was able to determine on frontage versus width. It wasn't what I thought. We had all kind of used width and frontage
to be the same thing. Maybe they're not certainly width does not require you to have frontage on a road, which if you had to have frontage, you would have. Where do we go from here? And I guess the last comment I'll make is I look through Colombia's zoning regulations, Lebanon's zoning regulations to see how they did. And at least Columbia uses both width and frontage and they've got requirements for both of them. Can't remember Lebanon I know has frontage. I can't remember if they had width with it or not. But don't think if we go with attorney branch's conclusion that we can treat the town owned property as a right of way alongside the road to cut through a driveway, that's certainly all very doable. So I'm just trying to get any feedback from the other Commission members on what the thoughts are there. Should we be encouraging people to develop land or should we be discouraging people from developing land? And that's what it boiled down to in my mind in these cases.
Are you looking for our opinions? Yes. Well, my opinion is we should encourage people to develop this land and we should allow them the right of way like you would at any other place like Attorney Brandt said. We all have right of way across town property to reach the street, and in this case, it's just a bit wider. But we should definitely encourage development so that we get more people in town, more tax money available to cover our costs for things, etc.
That's my opinion. Thank you, Anne. Any other thoughts on the matter?
I have a question going back to the Hendee spot. You were talking about that house that had no access and my recall was that there'd been information that Hendee Road was straightened out that at one point it had the access and then there was it was straightened and that's when the town got that property. Am I misremembering you were
exactly right there And so let's see. Trying to find the picture that showed the Hendy Lot good. Here it is. So I think at some point in time Hendy Road came up here, curved ground came back down, went this way. We straightened the road out here and that gave this little triangle of land to the town. It is now owned property.
At that point we essentially made that piece of property
landlocked as well. Well, in this case, and Scott is probably the expert on that, I can't remember if that happened, if subdividing this happened after the town owned this property and we straightened it out. So it created unless we apply Mark Branch's determination, it would have created our entering assumption was that it created a landlocked property, which was unlawfully.
You know that those every, I'm gonna have a different interpretation of what's going on here. I think these two situations that Wheeling Road and this one are completely different. The Sheehan's, the land was taken from them, they had that property as frontage. So, they initially had it, they owned all that property and the state took the property away from them. So, in that case, I would agree to allow that. But in this case, parcel, that Old Hendney Road used to go through and cut across above where that house is now and it used to go it didn't go up the hill went around and came and followed the side of the hill through there. So, that parcel road that almost comes out to Hendy Road, front should frontage should have come out on Hendy Road because that piece was the town's property. At the very minimum it should have got an 824 referral from town.
Okay that house there Scott, is that the old Parkington house? Yes, yeah. Right and so they in there Yeah, so it was subdivided
and they had a ton of frontage on the on Hendy Road, it should have just used the frontage on the Hendy Road, but instead they used it on the town's property which isn't frontage on Hendy Road. Every other house has frontage on Hendy Road, why would this one not have the frontage on Hendy Road? Yeah so when was that subdivision, I mean this is different, but
when when so that subdivision happened when? Do you know? Well,
Parkinson's was put in there in you know '19 in the 40s, think their house was in there. Right and did they subdivide, Parkinson's? I don't think anybody cared that they they that they went through that little piece of town prop. Town used to use that piece of property to dump the sand in there, so they used to use it and their driveway just went through there. Maybe nobody even knew where the boundary lines were.
My question, Scott, and you may or may not know the answer, if the road wasn't straightened out like this but went up here more Right, it did. It went up through there. How did all of this land get turned over to a property owner as opposed
why did the town end up with this little? Well, it could've it could've come back into there at some some point, Chad. I'm not sure where it went. I just know I can you can see where the road that where the road used to go right in there. And I'm not sure where it went after that. But I know that it went through that. I'm just giving you the history of why the piece was cut off the way it was cut. And
I appreciate the history because again, I think all three of these lots have similarities and we need to make sure that we're fair and consistent with
each of them. I'm saying that I'm right. I just have a different opinion about
these things. The lot upon which the former parking can house is currently situated, I think was created in as a free cut. I'm just pointing that out. Yeah, in the not so distant past.
Right, it just happened within the last couple of years. So it was after the road got straightened out? Way after. Oh yeah. Just a couple of years ago, road was, know, it could have been in the 40s or 50s. Yep.
So again and we could only surmise and there's no advantage of us doing that. We could have just brought that lot line down here then we would have had 200 foot of frontage here easy. Exactly and then that would have been to everybody's liking. So, the only liking.
Yep. Would have fit very quiet requirement for the frontage on the road. But right now it has no frontage on the road. It has a frontage on a piece of property and I can understand how you guys can think that that's you know frontage on the road because it's town property and you could look at it that way.
Well, it would make me ask the question, okay, so let's say you've got a landlocked piece of property and it's not town property, it's somebody else's property, like the other side of Pine Ridge where we're accessing this piece of property through an easement through a private property owner's property. So you get to there's all kinds of where this can go, and I want to make sure that we have the proper bounding on the understanding. And if we made the requirement to have frontage, it would get rid of all that inconsistency. I cannot say that this lot was improperly made now with our requirements not having a frontage requirement. I would have liked it to come down there. I think that would have been a whole lot cleaner. But the more I studied it, the more I came to the conclusion of it's acceptable, not the way I would have done it. But I can't find that it's in violation of any of our zoning regulations.
Well, at the very least, should have gotten approval from the Board of Selectmen. Because it had to do with town property. Anything to do with, you know, non property has to go through Board of Select.
That will come up there in a little bit because one of the things that I want to talk about with the Commission tonight is so if we were to say that on the Sheehan property, this town property was treated like a right of way, It's town property treated like a right of way. How it got there is a little bit different, maybe. I don't think there's all that much. But why would that have to go to the Board of Selectmen if we're treating it like a right of way? In Bart Ranch's terms, it's just like any other driveway crossing a right of way going on to a road.
And that's his opinion. Okay, yeah. And we pay good money for that opinion. Right, yeah. So
anyhow, that's And I understand your frustration, Jed. I get it, you know.
But I just want whatever we do on Wheeling Road to be consistently able to apply coming back here on this property because I'm not sure and didn't have a chance to look at what the Phelps want to do here. But that's why we don't have an application. So I think we can talk about it from a conceptual point of view of understanding that it's fair to them whatever we do on Wheeling Road and all that kind of stuff. So that's where I am here. I've heard Ann make the recommendation that we think we should encourage people to develop property here. I haven't heard from we got sidetracked on a couple other questions here about this one. I haven't heard the opinions of any of the other members on how we might want to go forward. I have one more question. Yep.
And I guess this would be for Mr. Sheehan. He had mentioned something to the effect that the state had said that it was illegal to consider that lot landlocked. Was And wondering, did the state give him anything in writing or is that just a comment that was made verbally?
That was a comment when we started the negotiations. Christina Smith was the individual we were dealing with. That is one of the first things she uttered when we met with her at the DOT office in Newington is that no matter how this is resolved, it will be unlawful for us to be landlocked from the building lot. Nothing in writing. I didn't think there was a need for it. Okay. I figured she knows the regulations better than I did if she's telling me it's unlawful I was taking her word at it. And that's because it was the sheen's property prior.
Yep so I got it and I
think that's the overwhelming factor here and Scott thank you very much for bringing that to everyone's attention. This land was basically stolen from us and that's why I just don't see why this is becoming the issue that it's becoming. The state allowed us to purchase some land back giving us access to the upper 48 acres And this I thought was a slam dunk. I realize you're addressing it as best you can. You became educated on this situation, I appreciate that. But it just seems to me the right thing is to allow us access to the lock. It's as simple as that. The land was stolen from us. And
I don't understand I've said enough. Okay. And I wanted to add just one more comment before we figure out the way ahead. In our subdivision regulations, it talks about you might have a cul de sac and then at some point in the future, you would extend the road down to develop more properties. And in our subdivision regulations, it is clear that this extra land here that used to be part of the circle but now is not goes back to the property owners. And you would have thought I would have thought that on the Sheehan property, if the state changed their mind and didn't build it, they would have given it back to the Sheehan's. It would have been nice if why does the town want this little triangle here? It was given back to the property owners. But it wasn't but I am very sympathetic to these little pieces of property, and I don't think there's that many of them that prevent the property owner from doing what's right. I don't disagree with anything that either of the Sheehan's who were speaking on behalf of the subject, they've got to say about it. I was so caught by surprise that on a landlocked piece of property in our assumption that we had to have a frontage requirement and what it did with this other one. And then in my mind, looking at the three together
for consistency, I just want to make sure we're doing the right thing. And so I understand it's going a little bit slow. It's going even slower for the people up on Endy Road there. And I'm not sure that these have to come to the commission. If we were to agree, if we were to make a motion and agree with Attorney Branch, it might be such a case that our zoning agent handles all the issues and we hear nothing more on it. I'm a new guy, very inexperienced, and you don't even know where the chicken or the egg come first as far as giving the Board of Selectmen an opportunity to weigh in on this. Thinking is that need to come up with our proposal. We brief the Board of Selectmen on what we have done. And if they want to appeal it, they got fifteen days to come back and tell us go back and take another look. You thought wrong.
I would hate to see our new zoning agent make a determination without our input, especially since I see what happened with the one at the intersection of Fine Rigginenity.
So, somebody that's got more experience than I do can come out with a way ahead on let's take the Sheehan property because that's the first one and the most urgent and we can have a special meeting if it makes a lot of difference to try and help the Sheehan's out. But I'm struggling to come up with a if if we were to make a motion that we I'll make a motion tonight to
allow the zoning agent to make a determination on the Sheehan property on Wheeling Road.
I don't want it. Well, I so. So let's let's have a does somebody want a second that motion? Dan already did. Okay.
So discussion on that motion. Any discussion on the motion?
Yes, this is Susan, I think that it's critical to say that this is a unique situation, it is cause the state had taken the state itself created the situation, and that we're attempting to remedy the errors of the state. What did I say? Oh, I wouldn't call it the errors, but the ways of the state or the decision of the state.
Right I agree that it seems unique. I would just hate to see pieces where there's designated pieces of town land and people start carving off for your portions of lots and cutting across larger pieces of town land to make building lots. I don't know if you could do something if you want to put a regulation for it if you could do something that says you're only allowed to cross over x number of feet of town or state land. A suggestion or a thought. So
I like the comment there, Kevin. And does somebody here, whether it's Sheehan's or the zoning agent, know how wide the town property is, where on the site plan we had put the driveway across there. I
do. Roughly it's seventy seventy feet 75 feet. Does that sound right Mike. Yeah, it does, Jim. Okay, I mean, you know, in addition, in addition to what I've provided, I do have a copy of the site plan. When I say that it's it's a site it's a site plan that was drawn up with the intent of developing that property was never before the Commission. It's not an approved site plan, but it's, you know, certainly concept, you know, it's it it shows how you could build on that property. That's that's where I'm going with. Measured it. Mean, it's roughly 7,075 feet. I chose not to share that that plan because it just seemed for one thing you know it has it wasn't approved and I just thought I would not wasn't going to clear anything up for any money.
So if we approve this motion, Jim, well, I think before we approve a motion, we ought to specify in the motion the uniqueness of the motion in that the the property was taken from the property owner to develop a road. The decision was made to not develop the road and the property was given to the town and precluded the property from having any frontage on the road. And so we need to have the uniqueness of the situation in the motion because we are going to hear similar motions in the future, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. I don't know how it'll come. I just know that this won't be the last that we hear of this one. So with that in mind, I'm looking for a motion to modify the motion to include the uniqueness of this particular situation. I I so moved, Jed. Okay. I'll start And
And again, for Mindy's benefit, the uniqueness is the property was taken to modify a road. The modification to the road was not made. And because the modification was not made, it eliminated frontage on that property on Wheeling Road.
Would you want to say that we're doing this to remedy the situation, this unique situation?
We could say that we're going to remedy this situation. And I think any case that we get, know, and there may be differences of opinion on other ones. That's why we bring it to the Commission
and we make a vote. So Mindy, can you go over that motion, please?
Yes. So the initial motion is moved to. Allow the zoning agent make a determination of the Willing Road property. And second in and then it was modified that the motion of the property was taken to modify a road. The modification was not made because of this and eliminated the frontage of this lot from Wheeling Road. Are we will remedy this situation. And it's just a unique situation. So It'll sound better once I submit it. You
understand it and we can go over it at next meeting also. Okay. So did we have a second to that motion? Yes, I'll second it. And that was you, Susan? Ann. That's Ann.
Ann. Okay, thank you, Ann. Any other discussion before we vote on the amendment to the motion? Hearing no further discussion, a call for a roll call vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye.
Kevin? Aye. Susan? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five-zero-zero. So Jim, do you understand the way ahead now that we've made this motion and we've tossed the ball back to you? Okay. I can take care of it.
This is Mike Sheehan, just very quickly, thank you. Thank you very much to you and your committee members for doing this, taking care of it. Very much appreciated.
So now I'm looking for any thoughts on is there any reason to take this motion to brief the Board of Selectmen on at this point in time? And I'm looking, you know, there's Scott and Susan have a wealth of experience on this commission. And Kevin and I, not so much. I guess Leanne, you're allowed to weigh in on that. You've got a bunch of experience on these kind of things as well.
I don't see the board of select me can't make that decision about I mean, can they, Jed? Is that what you want to do?
It is within the bounds of the Planning and Zoning Commission to do exactly what we just did. The basis of that is the opinion by the attorney that the town property can be treated just like the right of way on the side of the road. And so we'll have to wrestle with that on other places going forward. But if consider the down property to be right away on the side of the road, I think there's no reason to go to the Board of Selectmen at all on this Well,
whoever the landowner is gets frontage from the town for two homes for free. You can look at it that way, Judd too. Didn't didn't have to use any of their land. They kept frontage. They used the town's plan for the frontage.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I
don't know. It wouldn't be good if it was your land.
Nope. Okay. So I'm planning to go brief the Board of Selectmen on the conclusions we come up with on signs, maybe not immediately, but I will brief him on this when brief him on signs. And I think we're doing the right thing. Yeah, I've studied this thing to death, and I can't come away with any other conclusion. Again, I think the state should have given she hates the property back. That's just me thinking. It probably should have. And there you go. Okay, well anyhow.
Any of the other board members have a position on this other situation? I would really like to hear some other opinions because I, you know, I have one opinion and and I'm open to I I'd like to hear other people's opinions. Maybe I'm missing something here.
I mean, think the one we just talked about is really unique with taking property away from right owner that had originally but artificially like you're basically inflating land value by allowing someone to claim frontage across land that's not really theirs. Is that what you're saying? Yep.
I mean, who knows? I guess we still don't have a real answer to why this triangle, this small triangle is left.
But came down at an angle like that Kevin, because that's how the road came down. It came down at maybe, 20 degrees off of where Henvey is right now. So you can see that the road came down, you know, nearly parallel with the pending now but off, you know, 20 degrees or so. Can see why it's wide right there. And then they just moved when they put all these new houses in here in the mid fifties, they just moved the road over there, straightened everything out, and that little piece was left and it was left to the town.
This seems really strange to me that the town kept that piece of property. They obviously had to take property from somebody else to move the road to get they kept that little piece. The town was all those trucks.
The town always owned that piece of property, it was a road. I'm confused
right now about what we're talking about. So we've left Wheeling Road and we're now We're on to Hendy Road here to talk about this triangle.
And we must have if the road used to go like this, this was not town property that the road exists on now. So we got that from somebody.
Right. It's just was realigning it, you know, whoever owned those piece of property at the time was Hartley insurers owned it at one time. They put in all that they owned all that property and they put into subdivision and all the property on the roads along Andy Road there, houses.
Okay, well, so how it got there is really irrelevant. Did get there with, in both cases, townhome property. And Scott has so I guess your question is, Scott, is it too good a deal to be given the property owners your credit for frontage across the down property there? So So on this corridor, if you had that open space in the back of your property, wouldn't that be a good deal as well? Nobody could ever develop that. In fact, I know there's guys at this meeting tonight that would love to have some nice town owned open space
property behind their lot. Exactly. It would never be developed. So would I. I'm jealous. Yep. I can agree.
Yep. Don't even like to bring the subject up because it's such a beautiful view you have out of your backyard there, Kevin. It is what it is.
But that's a good deal for the people that are there. It didn't cost too many. They've got a little extra buffer between them and their neighbors. But I think allowing people to develop of these, to develop some more property, I think, a good thing. We're not worried about the urban sprawl that we might have been thirty years ago, but coming to Andover. But who knows, with the pandemic, that could all change. But I do think that the action we took tonight is the right action on this circumstance. And we'll treat each one on its individual merit. And that's why we have the wisdom of five votes, not just one vote. And that's where we're at on that.
I just hope to see that people might have chosen lots like that bought up to state owned property for a reason, because they felt that they were protected and if it got you know, taken away or reassigned, then, you know, that's obviously discouraging to people. I understand that we want to develop, increase, you know, revenue for the town. Yep. Oh, well, that's Just a lot to think about. It is. And
I wasn't expecting that we would make a motion and all that tonight, but we did. And I feel good that it's the right answer, it helps the Sheehan's out too. We're in a bit of a time crunch there. I think that's a win all the way around. I hope we have the same wisdom the next time that it comes to us. Jed? Yes.
Hi, this is Leanne. I just wanted to make a comment because Scott was looking for feedback. I think I remembered making asking a question and I just found the minutes from the December meeting about talking about the Wheeling Road property and now we've talked about Hendy Road quite a bit tonight too. And I had asked at the December meeting, if the board was starting a discussion about whether or not we should have a policy or do it case by case and Jed's response was that right now it's case by case and it kind of sounds like maybe that's the best way to go because these properties have some comparisons between them but I think if this happens again
probably there are going to be differences in each set of applicant circumstances or you know each point of view of the commissioner or the town. So it sounds like it's a good idea to do what you just did. You know, and vote and somebody used the word unique regarding the motion for the Wheeling Road property. So Right. Yeah. I think right now, it's just, you know, these are kind of a coincidence right now. And as you said, there's actually not nothing on front of us right now about the Hendi Road piece. But I think for the foreseeable future, taking it case by case looks like a better thing to do. We can still keep in mind the things we discussed tonight about, you know, what we apply so that we're not all over the place. But I think when there are unique characteristics sometimes it's better to do it like it was done tonight.
Thank you, Leigh Ann. It's not a one size fits all thing. It is not, definitely not. And I hope there's not an awful lot of them that we have to go to. There are no. No. Did anybody have an opinion on should we modify our regulations to require frontage? Absolutely Jed. Any other thoughts? When did the frontage get dropped for the regulations? We don't know.
Because I thought we still had frontage when I was on the board before, so I don't know when they got changed. Well, if you would have asked,
I think any of us a year ago, do we have a requirement for frontage? The answer unanimously would have been yes.
So going forward, maybe we should talk about that at this tonight's meeting then Jed about frontage. If we should move forward with and putting it into our regulation.
I, yes, I will, will do that. I, you know, I plan to, at some point we're going to have a public hearing to discuss signs and at that public hearing we will do a frontage change. I think that's a very easy change to the zoning regs. Yeah. I got to I want to go through. And if there are any other obvious problems with the zoning regs that we could fix at the same time, let me know so we can make those changes and talk about it and move those forward with the public hearing we do for science.
You talking about physically having frontage or the use of the word frontage versus the use of the term lot width?
We're we're I think we are talking about having physical frontage on a road for a piece of property. The on on a road on a town road. Yep. On a town road only?
Well, state road too. Okay. Any state road, town road. Yeah. Okay. And I think
we all assumed that that was the regulation. Right, exactly. I wouldn't have said it wasn't in there. Yep.
I was surprised and I was surprised when I found these little spots that had frontage, which made me think we assumed there was frontage everywhere when we put those things in it because we wanted to be consistent and we just didn't know. So now we do. We'll change it. And I'm not going change it tonight.
By putting in the requirement for physical frontage, can still handle a case by case basis, right, for unique situations like this? Yes.
Yeah, we will. We've got the opinion from our attorney. We can consider that. And we'll take a look at each of these things on an individual basis, as we've been discussing. Yeah, I think that's fair.
Okay. I do want to and so I am going to stop this discussion at this point because I do want to spend a few minutes on signs because I need to get some feedback on the way ahead that I go there, too. So I'll stop sharing there. Okay. Look. There you go. Didn't want you to see that picture yet. Okay. Good. Nobody saw that. Sign sign regulations. We're moving on to the next new business thing here, I think. What are we changing and why? Our current guess or the Sheehan still on the line? Nope, they got tired and left. Okay, that's Okay. I just wanted to thank them for their patience. I'm still here, Mr. Larson. Okay. We're not going to discuss yours anymore. I think you got what you wanted.
And I appreciate your patience. And I thank you for your due diligence. Never thought we'd get this resolved this quickly, so thank you so much.
You're welcome. I just hope it doesn't come to act to bite me somehow. It won't. Okay, thank you. Take care. Thank you. So on the sign regulations, our current regulations list restrictions for political signs. And this has been deemed a violation of free speech. Signs can have restrictions, but not with respect to content. And so what do our current regs say? And I'm going to go through those regs here. I don't know and I'm unwilling to try split screening with you folks now. When I work on this, I put both documents on my screen. But if I were to try and do that, something bad would happen. Anyhow, we've got a section of our regulations that say all signs or parts thereof shall be clear of all rights of way and no closer than 15 feet to a lot line. And my assumption is that there must be no zoning regulation that we violate more than that one. Because
every little temporary sign that somebody puts up in their yard gets into town right away right up next to the road. And so the question that most concerns me as I try to revise these things is, is that what we want? Or do we want to follow our regulations and say no signs can be in the town right away? And in fact, if we could make an easy to understand regulation that says they can't be closer than 15 feet to the road because even given a property owner the benefit of the doubt, he's got a lot line that's up there next to the road and it would have to be 15 feet back. And so that is really before we finish tonight, I'm looking for feedback from other members on do we or do we not want signs on the rights of way or on the town property? I know down by town hall and in the school property in the dump, hundreds of signs on election season. So there would probably be an uproar if we started to we would be accused of changing the regs and all we would be really doing is saying no, we're going to go and actually follow them. But anyhow, that's the first thing there. And this is under the section in our regs that says
regulations for all areas. Going down to 23.2.1. Public interest signs shall be allowed throughout the town and do not require a permit. They are subject to the following. And it goes through here. In political signs, in brackets I think after this was political signs, current event signs, a bunch of different. Tag sale signs, all that kind of stuff could be a public interest sign. And where we were criticized prior last fall was they're allowed thirty days prior to the event or activity advertised, she'll be removed within seven days after. Planning and zoning may extend the total allowable time period by ninety days. And so that would have given us the authority to allow signs up ninety days before an election if we wanted to do that. But again, our regs were they have some restrictions specifically for political signs. So signs should not be attacked to trees or telephone poles, no signs directed so as negatively impact. Sight lines, which I think all these signs alongside the road can hinder your ability to see people walking and all that kind of stuff through distraction. No signs will exceed 16 square feet. Political signs may be erected in the town provided the particular candidate is running for office that is listed on the town's election ballot. That's where we specifically talk about the content of the sign and that's where I think we got ourselves into trouble on the content. Not sure, but that was a specific
requirement. It was probably unconstitutional. Anybody can run for office. They don't have to be a Republican or a Democrat and not on the ballot, they can be right in whenever they want. And the ZEO is authorized to remove signs of violation of this section, as it currently says. When it was pointed out to us that our regulations were viewed as unconstitutional, rightly or wrongly, Eric and I got together with the Republican chair, the Democrat chair, we came up with trying to give the most latitude that we could. And we said that on private property, no time limit on when signs can be erected. 15 feet from the edge of the pavement, 32 square feet max for any sign. That's a four by eight sheet of plywood. If there's multiple signs no more than 50 square feet, max height 10 feet from the ground. If we're talking temporary signs and you get back to the little vision of those
things we most commonly see, we may want to put some more restrictions on these. And whatever restrictions we do for all temporary signs, that's fine. That would be okay. We just couldn't say a political sign could be this size, but a tag sale sign could be this size. We also provided the information that signs on town property and rights of way no larger than four square feet. No set time up or taken down and per usual no signage at the Veterans Monument, which shouldn't need to be anything different because that's down property. Our zoning regs say you don't put any signs up there anyhow. So that's what we agreed to. If we were to look at a temporary sign, which I think political signs are all temporary signs, although you're right around and you may come to the conclusion some of them are trying to get to be permanent, A public interest sign, this is the words that we had, signs of temporary nature, sociopolitical, education, civic, religious, similar activity or event, that's what we see now. And we've got these novelty signs, a sign, banner, pendant, valence, or advertising display constructed of cloth, fabric, cardboard,
or other light material intended to be displayed for a short period of time. Those were the two things that I think we could put as explanations on temporary signs and put temporary signs into our regs. So I guess I go back to I was out walking this morning and I saw a temporary sign. And I'm sure the person who posted this sign was well intentioned. They felt sorry for a little gray cat that they saw wandering outside on a cold morning. And so they posted a couple of signs on trees contrary to our regulations. Keep gray cat inside. It's cold this winter. And I just thought that was kind of cute. Was that on town property? Most likely is. Probably in the right of way. Yeah. It's right out there alongside the road. So there you go. So the question, do we want to allow temporary signs on town property, including right of ways? I'm open for feedback. Let me just share. I don't know that in Saturdays maybe it's not Saturday's, recent Hartford Courant. If anybody saw the article about anti Biden obscenities, spark complaints. And so when we were one side of me says, I'm not sure if we're saying that freedom of speech allows anybody to put any content on a sign they want,
I think it is maybe we don't want that on town property. Maybe we don't want that endorsement of this. And so the newspaper article came about just at the right time for this discussion. And it was profane flags directed at president voters hang in Plymouth. And there was so the sign was blank Biden and all you who voted for And so people were complaining about this flag flying on this piece of property. And the conclusion was free speech. The guy can put fly whatever flag he wants. And I said, okay, well, there's been some sign everybody's got their opinion on good signs and bad signs, but I don't want that sign representing our town. And so with that, my thinking was, as unfortunate as it would be to say, yeah, we're just going to follow our current regulations, and you don't put it on the right away.
Can see the benefit to that. But that's just to share my thought with all of you folks and get some of your opinion before I push on with modification. Any thoughts?
Okay, thank you. Sorry. I won't make it too long. Okay, thanks. Bye. Anybody want to tackle that hot potato?
I have a question that just from where slide there as if we allow temporary signs on town property should the restrictions be different from what we allow on public property. What is the difference between town property and public property? I don't know.
I don't know either. In our regulations right now talk about they don't make that well, they do make that distinction. We say what signs are allowed in the Lake District and Andover Rural District. And we've got some rules for them. And we'll take a look at those in a minute. But that's all public property. The question is, do we want to allow those same rules to apply to town property on the right of way or maybe put some different ones like we did? But right now, it just says on property in the residential district. It does not make a distinction, further distinction between town property and the personal property. Again, I wrestle with all kinds of things. Is a flag a sign? I don't know. But certainly where you hang it, got little flags out alongside the road to say Merry Christmas, Happy Valentine's Day, Welcome Spring, all those kind of things.
I didn't consider that to be a sign necessarily. But I do know that if we can put up feather signs at the gas station, those are signs. We're very specific on what a business can put up and it doesn't have that. Anyhow, I think that was Anne asking the question. And
I don't know that I answered it very well, but it's not crystal clear. We can do whatever we want. We could make it specifically different.
A comment about flags. When we had a business in West Hartford years back, we wanted to put out an open sign, a flag that said open. And the town said, no, we could not put out that kind of a sign. They allowed it like within thirty days of a grand opening of a store. But they could not prohibit us from flying the American flag. So that's what we would put out every day to show that we were open. We put out the American flag. Yep and so
as I read through, you one, I was surprised that we had zoning regulations that covered signs. I didn't know that that was our can of worms to enforce. There are probably, I can think of very few occasions I can only think of one occasion where any discussion has come up in a planning and zoning meeting on signs. It was when the gas station down at the end of Lake Road went a little crazy putting up those feather signs out there. They must have had 10 of them alongside the road. And we took issue with that. But I think that it's not very often that somebody comes up with a sign, with the exception of these little temporary signs that everybody routinely puts out in front of their house. When I was talking to Eric about this last fall when we were wrestling with this, know, how long a temporary sign should be up, he made the comment that he thinks the last of the signs in opposition to the gas transfer station down at the Christmas tree farm may not be down yet. That's probably an issue that's two years old. And so some of those temporary signs have been up for a long time. And I think that if we want to have temporary signs and we limit the length, that's all good and well. But again, looking for some feedback. We allow it? The first and biggest issue is do we want those temporary signs on town property or do we want the people to put them 15 feet back from the road on their own property? Property. No and yes. Okay. And I think that was Leanne?
Yes. Okay. Got it. Any other thoughts?
No, I agree with Leanne, but then what happens when you have something like the library that wants to put a sign out that they're having a book sale or some sort of event happening there? Think the library Does that fit into do we allow temporary signs on town property? Well doesn't the library have a permanent sign? They have a permanent sign that says library. Okay.
I would think they would dangle it from that maybe. I don't know. They did have like a whiteboard Yeah. At one
They are in the business district, which is a little different. Okay. But we're talking really, I'm looking for it's a good question. We need to make sure we cover the bases.
And school does the same thing. School sometimes And puts so you have to be careful if you're saying we don't allow temporary signs on town property. They can say, well, the school just put something up for soccer registration.
Yep. They've got the permanent sign where they change the letters and make it reflect whatever they want to say, too. I'm really talking about these little two foot by two foot square things that people poke in the ground. No, I understand.
Unless you're saying no, we're not allowing these temporary things on town property, then someone could bring up, well, you're
not being fair to us. That is the other side of the double edged sword. And we wouldn't even be talking about this if it hadn't been somebody fussed for the fact that we restricting their free speech on political science.
Well, this is Leanne again. This is a two part comment. I see what Susan means. I was thinking in terms when I said no on town property of things like political science, although, like you said, the the having him outside the dump is kind of a time town time honored thing to do. Yep. But, I mean, that's a it gets back to the question of who appears on our ballot. And then, you know, somebody could put up probably, I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud now, about supposedly, I guess, any political candidate could be controversial, not just the last presidential election that we had where if somebody was put up a sign for one major candidate or the other and then other people took offense because they had no intention of voting for the person. But as somebody said, you know, we do I think it was you, Jed. We have many, many signs outside the dump during our local election season. So I think one question brings up another one like, you know, we probably don't wanna restrict signs at the school and the library advertising their auction. And the other thing that brings up is when we started talking, I think your first slide
and this might be jumping around a bit, but I think your first slide about this was about the political signs and somebody challenging somebody in town last fall about the signs went up very early last fall. And I thought Scott said something about something that coming down from the state because of the pandemic and the early voting and, you know, the circumstances were different last year. So I don't know where that came from. Was that one discussion? Because we started talking about political signs about how early the science themselves could go up and then about free speech about that was another topic at the beginning of this discussion about what you can have on the science so we're kind of talking about two or three different things Leanne, do you remember the whole reason we had the comment
about being on the Andover ballot or whatever was because about fifteen or twenty years ago people from Willamantic and other towns posting all their signs to Andover because people drove through Route 6 and they wanted to get the coverage. You'd be driving down Route 6 and you'd be seeing all these election signs for people running in Willamantic or Colchester. And that was part of that was the reason that language was put in there was not against specific political candidates that we all voted for that were on our ballot. It was for people that we would never even be able to vote for. They just were putting the signs there.
Yeah, so one question kind of brings up another question. Is there something Scott, I think you brought this up when I because I questioned the signs last fall. I didn't know why they were going up so early and I thought people were doing it wrong because with this commission enforces it. Then I Scott, I thought you said something came down from the governor's office about, again, with the early voting and the just the whole complexion of the election season being different last year that the town was specifically told that they can go up that much earlier?
Mean, is that correct? It could have been at that time, yeah. I can't remember exact stuff,
but I I think you might be right, Leanne. I think the discussion was that there was a case someplace else in the state, and I don't know where it went to court and the restrictions on a political sign being different than other content sign made the regulations unconstitutional. So the advice we got from our attorney was that, yes, our regulations are currently unconstitutional because they put different requirements on political signs than other signs and a sign is a sign. I do. I mean, I think. Yeah. And when
hate to do away with putting up the little league signs and the big sale signs and there's a lot of good signs out there. And I can be happy with if we were to put and is it within our right on thirty days, sixty days, whatever we want before the event, take it down seven days after, that is all fine and dandy. But that means that that that goes for all those little signs, not just some signs. When somebody puts up a sign we don't like, it is up there for whatever we say. And that is the price we pay to continue to allow the signs to go up that we do want to have up there. Because we can't regulate the content.
Well, I think as long as we can enforce that and nobody says it violates their free speech, that seemed to be one of the questions we started out with. You know? Because otherwise, you're gonna get a lot of visual clutter. Like you said, there's gonna be theoretically, there could be signs everywhere, but I don't know. It it's I like the idea as long as it's enforceable of kind of do what we've been doing with this thirty days for the temporary signs like tag sales and library auctions and steak dinners and free puppies and things like that. Okay. Good. And what's everybody else think?
I have a thought of when we're saying things like allowing the library to put up a sign or the school looking at the sign, that is on even though it's town property it's like the school's putting it on their own piece of property there and the library's putting it on their own. I don't know if that's not being fair to other people because you know they're limiting who can put a sign on that property. The other thought would be could you require people that want to put signs up like that like the library or the school or soccer teams and they ask them to get a permit to get that sign to put that up. I know it would be a bit more work probably to allow them then. You limit the signs by asking them to get a permit every time they want to put one up?
Certainly, if it's going to be a permanent sign, it takes a permit. And I am not aware of any permit applications for signs that have come in a long, long time.
I mean, just to put up a sign saying we're going to have a potluck dinner, you know stay at the church would they then get a permit to put the sign up on their corner there. Yep. But that would prohibit other people from putting up little political signs because they would not be given a permit. Or can't we limit them? Who can we get permits I don't think for these little temporary signs
that people put up, we want to get into the permit business. We can't get Jim bogged down with that. He's going to have his hands full just in force and taken down sides as he goes throughout Dallas after they've been up for a while. Okay. Sorry about that. So
there are signs that we like. It do we think it's reasonable to require them to be 15 feet back from the edge of the road? You know, that would accommodate the library, the school, the dump. People can put the signs in their front yards. I know there's a couple of yards where you don't have a good place close to the road because it's very steep embankment or something. But that's too bad. We can just say that. I guess and I was surprised as I walked around, I saw signs right up next to the other property over here, right up to the boundary line. And I like 15 feet away so we can make sure we know who's expressing the opinion there. And keep it 15 feet from all your property lines.
Any thought on that being good or bad? That sounds like a good I like the 15 foot. You're
never going to I shouldn't say never, but you're rarely gonna obstruct line of sight from a road. Yeah. You don't you don't don't get as much conflict. It's just the the private, you know, the side, the other signs on public property is I have no idea how you address that without
singling out. And I don't know whose property it was, but as you turn on to School Road off of Lake Road around election season, man, there are so many signs out there. It's crazy. I don't know if that's town right away property, town property or private property. But certainly, I think if we kept 15 feet back from the road, that sounds reasonable. 15 feet from a property line also.
Yeah, I kind of like that. If you want to sign, put it right there in front of your house. Be proud of that baby. Exactly.
I still think 15 feet is quite far back if you're going from the pavement. I would think 10 feet would be far enough to keep it away from the street, yet people would still be able to see the sign.
I don't think people are going to go by 15 feet because you can't see the signs many times. I picked 15 feet, one, because that's what our regulation currently says. And two, it's consistent with the side yard. We could change it to 10 feet from any lot line and that's fine as well. I also know that if you're 15 feet back from the road, there's a very good chance that you're not in the town's right of way. And so if we put a sign don't put it in the town's right of way, somebody will say well how big is the right of way? And that's a question that I don't always have the answer to.
Right. Probably different in every road and every section of road. Yep. And so
whatever distance we pick, we ought to just apply it consistently and go from there.
I mean, everyone should be able to meet the 15 feet because nobody can build anything closer than 15 feet to the road anyways, right? Right. So Not always, setbacks are all different.
I've got a stone wall in the middle of my right away, I'm sure. And I don't know how big it is on Lake Road, but right off the road, a stone wall has been there longer than the road has. But there are signs in the right of way. Next month when we get together, I will have pictures of various signs that we can discuss. For instance, the fire department sells signs with your house number on it. And I think most properties have that in the town right away out by the road because you want it very visible. So when the ambulance is trying to find you in the middle of the night, they see the property marker out there. I would think that would be one that we would specifically want to allow. And we can't. I think we're just trying to focus in on these little things that we pop up there. And I particularly did not want to discuss this issue until we got closer to the end of the pandemic because I love all the little signs up there acknowledging the efforts of our frontline workers and the nurses and first responders and all that. And I didn't want to do anything that would be detrimental to that cause.
But I think that by the time we get this done, hopefully that will be history, and we'll be moving forward. I think I got enough input from the group to allow me to go out and tweak on our current regulations. If there's any other issues on any other signs that well, I'll go through the rest of the questions here. I think we've covered them all. Do we want to put time limits on how long a temporary sign could be up? And I think the answer is yes. We can talk about thirty, sixty, ninety days, but it's going be one size fits all, that'll be Okay. What kind of sign restriction should there be on temporary signs? Some of the political signs are a little bigger. Is that okay? Again, I don't think if we allow a bigger sign there, that will necessarily impact the majority of the signs. We'll still be the little stick them in the ground cardboard on two stakes and be there. If we allow temporary signs on town property, should the restrictions be different than what we allow on public property? And I think somebody was discussing that before. The other thing that came up, and I have a specific example, what about a home based business? And as I walk around, there is a permanent sign out. I'll measure how far it is from the road, but it's about a home based business and
very nice sign. But right this minute, we don't have any allowance for anything like that. How far off the road is it, Jed? Well, it's probably 10 to 15 feet. I'll go measure for sure so I know. I would hate to have to have them move them. I guess we could grandfather it. It's Sears landscaping on Lake Road. Probably up on School Road coming down into Lakeside Drive. But very nice sign. We just don't have any regulations that talk about home based businesses. And most of them you probably don't need to. But as I think about sign regulations, I think about all the signs I see as I walk around and say, how is this affected by our Right, yeah.
So is that one out of the right of way?
I think it is. It's probably close. I don't know because I don't know how big the right of way is on that particular road up there. It's between ten and fifteen feet back and it's a reasonable distance back from the road that is good. I'll go measure it and find out what it is.
Great examples are that's a good thing to get examples and then get you thinking about the different signs that we could find.
Okay. And again, this is not anything urgent. I just wanted to get you thinking about it so that when I come forward with something and again, just because I draft it up doesn't mean it's right. It just means an ability to foster a little discussion there. But I'm going to focus on those little temporary signs because I don't think we've had any issues with the bigger signs. Okay, and with it starting to get a little late in the night, I'm going to close that discussion.
This is Leanne. I'm not seated. Could I be excused? You can be excused, yes.
Okay. I'm going to leave the meeting. Thank you. Unless
you want to stick around for the zoning agent's report. But that's up to you. Well, is it let me see. Is it next?
We're going to have a couple of minutes. Let me go into the zoning. Within five minutes, we'll be there.
Okay. I just had a comment about one of the workshops. That was all.
Okay. And I think Jim's going to talk about that, too. So why don't you save that for then, and we'll be there. Okay. I'll hang on. The
next item is approval of the minutes from our last meeting on January 25.
I move approval of the minutes Thank you, Susan. January 26. Looking for a second? I'll second it. Thank you, Scott.
Any comments on the minutes? I just got a couple here, Mindy. On the first page, item two on the second paragraph there, the last sentence, The tan orange color is Zone D. It currently says it is in the Lake District but outside the watershed. It should say it's outside the Lake District but within the watershed. And then going down a couple more paragraphs down on that same section. Jim Hollisley suggested the adoptive date for the regulations be tonight. And the adoptive date would be a month from now. The second adoptive should be effective. Thank you.
On page three, the top sentence there, the proposed amendment will provide the town an additional tool to preserve and it's I crossed it out there. I think it's an or which should be removed. So it just says to preserve the water quality of Andover Lake. And then on that same page under filing of vacancies, the second sentence there, Susan England will not be rerunning. I thought we could just say running.
And also on that, should it be filling of vacancies? Not filing of vacancies?
Yes. Oh, yep. Very good. Thank you. And then on the last page, page four of the second paragraph, Jim Hollisley stated that him and the building official, I think better might be he and the building official. But I'm not an English major, so I could be wrong but it just sounded better to me. And that was all the comments I had. Anybody else have anything on that? In that case, call for a vote on approving those. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Kevin? Aye. Susan? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The minutes are approved, five-zero-zero. Any correspondence, Jim? No correspondence. Okay. We're moving on to the zoning agent's report.
Okay. I have I sent out an email, it was actually from Megan initially on three workshops held by CLEAR out of Yukon. Zoning Atlas went on Long Island Sound and went on JS coordination. And once again, if any members are interested in attending, if there are fees associated with these workshops, we can generally cover them. I'm not sure if the CLEAR ones, the CLEAR workshops, if there's any costs associated with them. There was another one that I sent out on the use of an app on your phone. I don't have the information on that. I apologize, but that should have gone out today. Moving on to enforcement action. 44 Whales Road was somebody using a RV for temporary. I had sent out cease and desist a while back that date came and went, referred matter to the town attorney who sent out a follow-up cease and desist. I got a call today from the owner of the property, Jason Salisbury, who indicated he was having mail delivery issues, didn't get the first one and asked for if he said he's working on resolving the matter and asked if he could have until April 1.
Guess the situation is people aren't living there on a regular basis. I just told him I'd get back to him. I just knew it late afternoon. So I'm bringing it to the commission. Do whatever commission desires. And the second one was following up on a cease and desist of 137 shotty millwork gentleman had put up a utility structure and he is in the process of taking it down and I gave him a little extension. It just is a metal roof and he wasn't able to really access it in the snow. So he indicated he would have that down in thirty days and that should be within roughly two weeks from now. So I have.
So on the 44 Whale Road, when the property owner says he said it would be resolved by the April 1? Yes, he's
told the owners, the folks that are living in this RV to be out by April 1.
Okay. I guess my thought is that if they're out by April 1, if you could give us an update at the March meeting. Sure. There's
nothing we can do legal that would be faster than the April 1.
Okay. Yeah, I guess I do want to check with the county attorney's office and make sure that we did set into motion something that I can't stop, that I have the ability to extend that. Okay. Yeah. And
all I know is I see the way things sometimes drag on a little bit longer than we expect them to. The April 1 is incredibly right around the corner at this point. It's late February already. Leigh Ann, you said you had a comment on one of the training opportunities or something?
Oh, yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Third one says Tuesday two of them have gone by. The third one says Tuesday, February 24. The twenty fourth, excuse me, is a Wednesday. So, Jim, can you find out if it's Tuesday the twenty third or Wednesday the twenty fourth? Yes. Okay.
That was my only question. Okay. Thank you, Leanne. And any other questions for the zoning agent?
Okay. I'm gonna I'm going to go. Thanks. Okay. Yep. Thanks, Leigh Bye.
The Inland Wetlands Water Corners Commission liaison report. There's a couple of applications that I would have expected to see by now. 129 Hebron Road being one that's going to come looking for the accessory apartment and that was the one I was expecting to see and haven't. I was a little surprised that all of a sudden the Hendy Road one showed up. I did see that, reading through minutes from the zoning board of appeals that they approved the request for variance on building in the floodplain over there and that was approved. I know something will be coming our way. I wasn't sure what it was going to be. And so since I didn't know and have a chance to review it at all, I didn't want to talk about that tonight.
And that's it. Moving on to miscellaneous. I'll just share with everybody. We voted on a budget. I submitted the budget. And in the budget, we allotted $5,000 for legal and professional services. And at the time, we thought we had spent $962 Well, it turns out we've really spent 4,000 in something, probably about $4,500 So our budget submission probably wasn't very good. I'm trying to figure out exactly what we've spent the money on but I'm sure that's all spent on good things. The earth will not stop rotating. I talked to Eric about it and he says, if need be, we come ask him for more money and we'll get it. I know money is tight with the town, so we don't want to spend that frivolously. But one of the things that I was surprised to learn, two things I was surprised to learn, That the inland wetlands legal fees and professional services come out of our budget. I didn't know that. And when we have talked about having the applicants pay when we get these professional reviews of applications done and that sort of thing. And the way that the funding currently works is that fees
associated with applications that come in go into a general fund. Those fees wouldn't necessarily go into our legal professional services fund. So we may be bringing money into the town, but it doesn't necessarily come into our budget so we can pay the bills for those services. I think there's a way to change that, But we're in flux a little bit right this minute with the finance stuff. And so now is not the time to go down that. But I'm sure Eric would be willing to help us so that we can make that happen. But his comment was legal advice is normally money well spent. And he said, so don't shortchange yourself when you need legal advice. And I think that's good advice. So that would be that. The budget was just a little different than I was expecting it to come out to and wanted to share that with you. So we're smarter next time around looking at that. Anybody else have anything else for a miscellaneous topic here? Okay, my last comment on that is I appreciate Scott asking us to take a look at the frontage versus width issue. I think that was a good review of what our regulations really do. There's room for improvement on that and we can go out and make that.
But if anybody has thoughts that these things are really, you know, these regulations are really goofed up. We ought to take a look at that. Let me know and we can do that. And with that thought, I'll call for a motion to adjourn. All motion to adjourn.
Thank you, Scott. Second. Thank you, Susan. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Motion carries, five-zero-zero. And thank you everybody for I was hoping we'd be done by nine I'll try to get done there, I certainly don't want to go till ten We'll call it a night there. Appreciate the input and appreciate the help getting through on the Sheehan property. I do think we did the right thing there. And I'm glad that that one's behind us. We'll go forward. Okay. Good night, everybody. Thank you. Good night. Bye.