Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commision Meeting
September 22, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay, so it's 07:05. We're recording, and so I will call the meeting to order. Next item up on the agenda is roll call and seating of alternates. I see Ann Cremay present, Scott Persson, Steve Nelson, and myself. Leanne Hutchinson will be absent tonight. And Kevin, if I remember correctly, we seated you at the last meeting. So that means we'll seat Anne Blanchard as an alternate for tonight. Anne, you still with us? Anne Blanchard? Yeah. I'm here. Okay. Pretty good. Good luck, Blanchard. Transparency,
Jed. I just got back from my honeymoon yesterday, so I haven't had time to review any of the materials for this. Okay. But I am happy to sit. Say again? I'm happy to be seated. I just, by way of transparency, I haven't had the chance to review everything. Okay. Well, think I think it's going to be fairly
easy tonight, and congratulations on getting back from honeymoon. Thank you. That's a big step. This has been a big year for you, though. It's been a chaotic year.
Okay, so that's that item three is additions or changes to the agenda. I am not aware of any. Anybody have any additions to the agenda that they want to suggest? Hearing none, we'll go on to item four, which is public speak. I see nobody from the public here with us tonight, so we'll close out the public speak. Next item is new business, which I have none, so we'll move on to old business. Jim, were you able to get ahold of Keith Grimaldi?
I spoke to him, I believe. He'll be a few minutes. Can we perhaps move him down the agenda? Yep, we will do that.
Actually, I'll briefly discuss item 6D, the recommendation regarding speed limit on Route 6 at the vicinity of the Lake Road intersection. Jim So and I talked with Eric Anderson last week about way ahead on this and Eric says that the Board of Selectmen is the road speed safety governing body for the town. And so he said, if we were to make a recommendation, you know, I would have to prepare a letter and send it to the Board of Selectmen and if they feel that that's the right thing to do, then that request would get forwarded to
CROG or the DOT and I forget which one Eric told me was was the right person to send it to but
but that's how the process works. Just for. Review, if as you go. Well, checked the signs coming back from Manchester, so just about at Shotty Mill Road, the speed limit goes down to 40. And then it bumps back up to 50 just before you get to the Christmas Tree Farm on Route 6. So when, you know, we were talking to Eric, said it seems like it would make some sense to go Hold the speed limit at 40 until you get to the other side of the Lake Road intersection there and. Then bump it back up to to 50. Eric suggested that it might not do any good at keeping the speeds down, but certainly something to consider. I guess there have been a couple of accidents back serious accidents in the 40 mile an hour zone and he had some statistics that talked about I forget whether it was 85% of the max speed or something was like 80 miles an hour going down Route 6. You know, people are whizzing down there fairly quickly at times, but so obviously lowering the speed limit by 10 miles an hour is not a cure all,
but I think it certainly wouldn't hurt any. I know I have a tendency to go slower in a 40 mile an hour zone than I do a 50, although I may be a touch above the speed limit every now and then. So anyhow, that's I'm sorry that Leanne's not here. This is the item that she's been poking us on for a while, but I would make a motion that the planning and zoning Commission. Recommend reducing the speed limit to 40 miles an hour on Route 6 until you get east of the Lake Road intersection. I'll second that. Okay, thank you Steve. Any other discussion on that particular topic?
I support it. I think it's a good idea, especially with the Dollar General going in there And we did have an accident in front of the mobile station recently, pretty bad one, I think. We did. Yep. So, you know, I don't think it could hurt and I don't think it will inconvenience people all that much for another, what, few 100 yards, maybe a quarter mile?
I agree completely, and I know Lee Ann certainly does. It's not a very excessive amount of distance that we're looking at for lowering the speed limit there. It seems pretty straightforward to me. So any other comments from the Commission on the motion at hand? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. And Anne Creme? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Anne Blanchard? Aye.
And I vote aye as well. The motion passes 500. I see Keith Grimaldi has joined us, as has Amy Knox, our clerk. So at this point we'll go back to old business item 6A, dissolution of previously approved subdivision Rosewood Acres. I did see that Keith took the action that we requested of him. He put in an application. Didn't have an awful lot of information on it like we knew it wouldn't, but at least there's an application for what he wants to do. Keith, do you have any other comments for the Commission at this point on your request? I think it seems fairly straightforward. No, I'm just sorry that I couldn't get on right away. Was having technical difficulties. No, we were all. We've all had some of those tonight. I take full responsibility for that. Jim, you have any comments for us on that particular application?
Not unless anybody, there's anybody that doesn't know the history of it. I mean, it just, in case there is, I mean, was a, I believe a 10 lot, actually 10 lot subdivision back approximately ten years ago. Approved and the applicant hasn't been able to, it just hasn't been a viable development for the applicant. And he would like to sort of start over and just start from scratch. A number of residential lots, meaning lots in zoned residential, and there's also a few that are zoned commercial. The dissolution of subdivision would not affect the underlying zone. That's all I got. Any questions?
To entertain I or direct have a question actually for the commission. Becky?
Yes. I have a question. So Jim and I had this discussion when we were trying to figure out because it's such an unusual request to go backwards. So as as it sits, because I have not I have I have to confess, I have not seen a Andover updated Andover regulation manual or book or whatever you might call it. What is the I I know that the the zoning was changed where in the area that my property sits to what's called R 60, which I believe is an acre and a half per lot. What what is the actual zoning that is on my placed on on my property now so that I can figure out which direction to go and what might be best to come up with a plan to present to the, you know, to the commission that I I may wanna, you know, try to try you know try to develop. Okay so is an actual zone that is on my property right now?
On the residential lots they would all be zoned R60 at this point. Okay, all right. The acre and a half. You should have gotten a little email from Jim that discussed some information pertinent to your particular place there, both from the affordable housing plan, the incentive housing plan, which is a late to be added chapter of the plan of conservation and development, as well as the, you know, I think it's section five of our regulations that discuss the Andover rural design and then there's a section at the back. I'm going to guess and say. I'm not gonna guess I would come up with the wrong number, but it's the mixed use
zoning, which is what you were talking about last month where we could have a mixture of commercial and residential lots combined.
Okay. There is actually something on paper that describes all of this? Yes, there is. Okay. It's chapter 26.
I did send you the link, Keith, that and the affordable housing.
Okay. I must have miscommunication with you. I didn't know how go through Unless it would require a zone change.
The use of chapter 26 would would require a zone change. So we don't wanna do that.
Well, not at this time. It's separate process. You'd have to make application and
don't have to be changed. Well, you know, the the thing that scares me out that is that, you know, initially, when when this all came to, fruition back in 02/1011, I I pretty much, you know, I was dealing with obviously a lot of different people, different regulations, lack of regulations, and, I don't wanna get involved in something that is like, I had to have special permits for everything. That does not seem the way to go. I wanna it seems to be the way to go is to work within the regulations that the town of Andover has in place, not to ask for something that's not there, if that makes any sense.
Well, so the the special permit process. Just provides an extra layer of scrutiny, if you will. It requires that we would go and hold a public hearing and let the town weigh in on it. The way the process works is if something is fairly straightforward, you don't have to do a special permit. There's some confusion, there was some confusion about the fact that if you got a special permit, all the regulations didn't count, I guess I would say. And that's not true. All the regulations remain in effect. It's just that we allow some things that are a little bit more out of the ordinary to be done where we get a little bit more input from the public eye. And so a good example of that is what we just went through with the Dollar General. You know, Dollar General in a commercial or industrial spot, that particular store isn't anything out of the ordinary. So all they had to do is submit a site plan. If they would have wanted something bigger than we allow or not on the list of things that we allow, then it would have to go to special permit and we'd have the public hearing and that sort of thing. Now we held public hearing on Dollar General anyhow because I knew everybody would be interested in what's going on, but special permit shouldn't necessarily scare you, although there are words to the effect in our affordable housing plan that talk about if we want to encourage development, we should change our regulations to make it easier for the developer and make less things require that special permit, just like you're saying. But it's going to be a while before we get around to reviewing
and changing all those regulations to support that. I think your feedback, you got some feedback from the Commission that the Commission's kind of interested in working with you. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the information that I forwarded to Jim to get to you is some information in, I saw something posted on Facebook, I think today, that talked about the Economic Development Commission working closely with a group of students at UConn to help us out in getting development. And I specifically forwarded your property with the kind of things that I thought you might be looking at and saying, I thought that would be a great project to have the UConn students help you come up with something to do. Okay, so Jack I think we're still worried about, I think we're still interested in working with you, not against you. I don't know that we can change the regulations to be a lot easier anytime real soon because it is a slow process. We don't have a down planter to work on that kind of stuff. So it's kind of I do it best I can, and I'm pretty slow. But I do think that we got some ideas for things that we could look at in the affordable housing thing to do that. And so don't count us, Don't don't think that, we don't wanna work with you to help you come up with some good plans. No. I do not think that at the least. And Jim has been, fantastic.
He's been help you know, he's definitely guided me, through some stuff already, and I feel comfortable working with him. And, again, I would rather stay within the parameters of what you have on your books for regulations. The two word special permit, I don't ever wanna hear again after going through what I went through ten years ago. I would rather, you know, bring something to the commission that is looked upon favorably. I mean, let's face it. You know, I I'm going to probably be satisfied with whatever, development I I can come up with that works for everybody. I'm just trying to make a living here, and I've owned this land for a long time. I've paid a lot of taxes for what I can consider to be nothing, and I would like to just try to recoup some of my costs and try to make a, a, you know, a fair profit on on some development. So that's why going forward, I would definitely wanna just work with you guys and girls and and come up with something that works. It doesn't, you know, it it seems like light commercial and and residential is is, you know, a good application for that spot. You know, that's that's pretty much, you know, an overall view. But I don't I just don't wanna this is what I discussed, I think, with with you last month was I would prefer to just come in with some spitball ideas and sit in the crowd at the Zoom I mean, at the planning zoning meeting and throw it against the commission, see what they say,
instead of going out and spending money on engineering and all these other plans if if it's not a viable idea for the town. Jim, did you give did you give Keith suggestions on things that he could do? I know when we rewrote these we were
rewrote the regulations. We made it very easy for developers to to do high density development. And I think that even cluster housing, right?
Can't say that we got down to specifics. I mean, we discussed what could be done there. I didn't make any recommendations. I mean, I could certainly I think that's what he's kind of looking for. Yes, he's got some guidance.
What he could do. And I think that that property was, they said that that property would be ideal for that cluster housing, I believe, when we redid that, all the regulations.
Yes, I agree. And another section of the regulation that I forgot to mention, and it might be in Section five, there's a Plan Development for Older Persons, I think is what it's titled. And it is one of the examples of a denser housing allowance. That's got some density. The incentive housing zone chapter has some increased density. In one of the pieces of information that got pointed out to us, and I'm not smart enough, well it seems pretty easy, but there's a change on common septic systems. I think the size requirement or maximum was 5,000 gallons in the past, and it's gone up to 7,500 gallons. And so my sense is that we would be able to go through and even increase the density some more maybe. But anything you do with that is certainly the first time that I will wrestle with those regulations. And I would say with the exception of maybe Scott, who's been on the commission for a long time, he was probably on the commission when we crafted those regulations before, but it's been a while since he's looked at it to figure out how it goes. So it's going to be a little bit of a challenge, but again, I think the commission is interested in seeing something develop there too. But it's not like putting up a house on a lot. If you wanted to put up, you know, on acre and a half lots, that's, well, you don't want to hear it, but to subdivide that again, it's going to take a public hearing all that, which public hearings kind of special permit,
but that's through our subdivision regulations.
Again, everything within the parameters of what you have, and again, I'll have to go back with Jim and sit down and look at some of these things you're describing that actually are written somewhere that I have not seen. But to stay within the parameters of the affordable housing, plus, I mean, I still have to bring a plan through. It's still gotta be an engineered plan. It's still gotta be I still gotta jump through all hoops. I just don't wanna do it, you know, continuously until I hit upon something. I wanna know that there's a good chance coming in that I'll have had this feedback from you that I'm gonna come in and present a sub a new subdivision, whether it's affordable, whether it's whatever fits within your parameters, that I have a good chance of it passing and I'm not spinning my wheels. An open space subdivision, cluster housing, all those things,
Keith, are in the regulations now. Okay. Yeah. I I would encourage you to just go on the website and just read the published regulations. Right. If you look, you can look at the master subdivision plan and basically read Section seven on and you can go into the planning and zoning regulations and read basically from Section four on and you can get a very good idea what you can and can't do. Now, obviously, there may be some minor tweaks and things that you might have to make along the way, but those are more details. But you can get a very broad idea of, like Scott's saying, what you can and can't do. And you don't have to spend a ton of time, money on engineering. You can just take your own time and, you know, sit down with the regs, do some reading, then you'll know pretty quick, you know, on a gross scale of what you can and can't get done. Okay.
And the whole commission is very open to all of this. We wanna see those regulations used. Okay, that's good to hear.
And I guess one other point while we're on it, if you look at the affordable housing report, I guess, that's online there, there's a development called, I think it's 30J, and I'm just going to take a guess, which is the affordable housing. And if you came in with the developer, and I think you're the developer, but if you came in with a project that had at least 30% deed restricted affordable houses, you are essentially exempt from the zoning regulations. You just have to meet the public health requirements to put in the septic and water systems.
Who designates the the quantitative numbers on affordable housing? Is that a is that an equation used by the state?
Yes, and it's written up in our plan as well. Okay, you know, it's based on what somebody making 80% of the median income has and there's some, you know, and it changes a little bit by the size of the family. That's why, you know, you'd have to take a look at the affordable housing plan. I think there's some information you would find interesting to you in there. Well, sounds like a favorable approach, no? It does. And, you know, there's a lot of folks don't like that because they lose control of the regulation. But I think, you know, again, think we need some affordable housing in Andover. We do. I think it would be a good thing. And again, I think we could make that a win win situation with you regardless.
Yeah, it's semantics, you know, it's like people used to call it low income housing, then they switched to affordable housing. Everyone's like, well, what is affordable housing? Affordable housing just means that, you know, you're, instead of the low being the lowest amount, let's say in today's dollars is $350,000 well it becomes $260,000 or $250,000 or 270,000 and it's all relative. It's not like you're putting up shacks.
Well, the biggest need for affordable housing, at least our plan identified for Andover, is for senior housing thing. We got seniors who are going to have to move out of their houses because they can't afford keep the house up and the taxes and all that stuff. And I think you might find some good demand for affordable that way. So
55 and over, whatever you want to call it, adult active, however you want to describe that, that could be in play also? Yes.
Okay. That's good to know. Alright. Well, I'm getting a lot more options than I realized I had. I guess I Yeah. I needed a ton of options here. I needed to circle back with Jim, I guess, and I didn't do that, to try to get to to to identify some of these options, you know. Any other questions or comments for us, Keith?
Just are we am I how does this proceed with my request to dissolve? Are we good on this? How does this work? So
as soon as we're done talking about it, I'll make a motion and we'll vote on it. All right, I think we're done. Okay. So I'll make a motion and then we can discuss the motion once we've made it. But I'll make a motion to move to approve the dissolution, I guess it is, of subdivision entitled Rosewood Acres approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission and filed at map number ten forty two through ten fifty seven of the Andover land records. The applicant will provide a current boundary survey of the property drawn to A2 standards, shall be endorsed by the Planning and Zoning Commission Chairman
and filed with the town clerk. Is expressly understood that the dissolution of the subdivision removes any responsibility of the owner to comply with the subdivision at the time of approval and makes no changes to the original zoning status as shown on the town zoning map. A second.
Thank you, Scott. Any discussion on that particular item? Hearing none, I will call for a vote. Anne Cromie? Aye. Sky? Aye. Steve? Aye. Anne Blanchard. Aye.
And I vote aye as well. The motion passes 500. So you're back to one big piece of property there, Keith.
Okay. And I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Yes, I appreciate all of your input, help, and your assistance on everything, especially Jim. Thank you again. I'll reach out. But I will now I can now I'm where I want to be and I can start looking, you know, assessing the best way forward, but I definitely have to look at what these options are that that you guys are available to me and and and any of them sound good. So I'm sure we can make something work. Excellent. Very good.
Okay, thank you, Keith. Thank you for your time. Next
item up is the submission of grant application for the purpose purchase of the Ladano property. And I just wanted to give the Commission an update on where we stand on that. I think it was last Monday, a week ago, that before the town meeting, held a special Board of Selectmen meeting where Hank Gruner and I presented the plan to purchase the property to the Board of Selectmen and asked them to pass a motion that one allowed us to submit a grant to the state for funding and two authorized Eric Anderson to go off and negotiate with the property owner and the realtor on behalf of the town. The Board of Selectmen approved both of those motions and I talked to Eric today and he indicated that the town has in fact made an offer. I didn't ask him what the offer was, but he has not heard back from, you know, the realtor on that and he sent him out another little thing today just asking, you know, where are we at on that? If you don't want to accept it, can you make a counteroffer and and that sort of thing. So there's no news yet as far as a successful coming to agreement on a purchase price with that. I know Hank Gruner has been working on the grant application, which is due to the state by September 30. And I think, you know, the way that that grant works, the state will pay anywhere from 50 to 65% of the purchase price. And I think they look at how much money the town has, and if they can make up the difference, you're going between 5065% will get enough to allow us to purchase the property if our grant
is looked favorably upon by the state. One of the things that that is I, you know, talked to a couple of people about trying to make the application a little more favorable for us was the thought that we could have an 08/24 referral already done and it can be put in the application that the Planning and Zoning Commission has acted favorably to support that with the purchase being consistent with the plan of conservation and development. I did draft up a little letter that I was hoping to send out to everybody just to take a peek on before we got to this meeting and we were wrestling through just how to get logged in tonight, so I didn't get a chance to do that. If Jim, if you can allow me to share my screen, there's going to be nothing in that letter that you haven't already seen before. And I've got host disabled participant screen sharing so. Host to host tonight. Amy? No. Jim is hosting. What do I participants, right? Share screen.
Well, it might be allowing you to share it. Somehow there's got to be a way to I'm trying. Try again. Got it this time. Phone.
Add it, Chad. Well, that was that was what I had sent. I'm thinking that I don't have it called up. No, this is not, so I don't have the right letter before you. What it essentially says, and it pulls right from this letter here, I reordered different things that the Planning and Zoning Commission would like to recommend via the 08/24 process that the town of Andover purchased the Ladano property on Shawnee Mill Road. And it starts off with saying that I started this time with the Ladonna properties located in one of the three conservation corridors. We've got, I included the paragraph just as we had in our original letter about, you know, we need another two eighty four acres and this 162 acres would make a significant dent in that, that it would allow us access to a landlocked parcel of land that the people of the town said that they were willing to pay extra taxes for open space and conservation efforts. So given that I can't find the real letter that I was looking for, and because it's the same as what you'd already seen, I will make a motion to approve allowing the planning and zoning chair to submit an 08/24 referral to the Board of Selectmen for the purchase of Ladano property. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on that? And like I did with the last letter that went to the Board of Selectmen, I will include everybody in the Commission on the copy too with that letter so you can see what actually got sent there. That's good. Any discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Anne?
Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five-zero-zero. Okay, everybody should. The next item up is the Planning and Zoning Commission annual report. Is that on your screen? Yes. Yes. Okay. And so I just added some hopefully not too whiny words in here. The first thing I wanted to point out to the Board of Selectmen was that we were going to be asking members of the Commission to attend four hours. Well, we're not asking. It's a requirement from the state that everybody on the commission attend four hours of training every other year. And I think the training that I've gone to, each of the different sessions has been very valuable. I thought it was very good. I just wanted the Board of Selectmen to know that we were finally requiring some training for the people that were going to be on this Commission in doing all that stuff. Then next, you know, I get into once again trying to make a pitch for a town planner. Well, looks like we had, you know, a successful year with what we got done. I wanted to point out there's a growing backlog of work required to enhance growth for our bright sustainable future. You know, as we were talking with Keith Grimaldi, know, there's a bunch of work that was for the Planning and Zoning Commission and the affordable housing plan. And it was not trivial to get through the little zoning changes that we had made on cannabis and signs. So anyhow, there's lots of work for us to do in the affordable housing plan. In the meantime, there was a list of things that I was tracking
with you guys before, whether it's replacing the lot width with frontage, getting the frontage requirement back in, do not building in the flood zone. We had a bunch of things that we were wanting to change and Mark Branch, you know, went through and made a bunch of comments on the entire package. As a result of that, we've got some changes to just about every chapter in our regulations. And again, not particularly hard, but not trivial when you add all those together. And then one of the things that we said we were going to get started on this past year and didn't is the initial throws into figuring out who we're going to get is a consultant working with us to update the handover plan of conservation and development, which isn't due till 2025. So we've got plenty of time to do that, But that's a lot of work without having a down planner. You know, the next paragraph, I was going to include the Halloran Sage land use article that you had all seen back in 2021 when it came out. But it started by saying the 2021 session of Connecticut General Assembly generated more significant land use and zoning proposals heated debate public involvement that have been seen in decades. While the bills that ultimately passed through the House and Senate and received the governor's signature often represented watered down or scaled back version of those that received the most publicity and attention, There are some very important new laws that affect every Connecticut municipality. While Andover is a small town, the administrative overhead to deal with the many regulatory changes is the same as for any other town.
The Commission continues to believe that a town planner is crucial to the success of these efforts. So I didn't want to come right out and say I didn't want to do it, but you know there's certainly more there than I can get to. And for the most part, you know, planning and zoning commission wrestles with things as they come to us as applications in that and going out and changing all the regs and that is a little bit beyond the scope of what I think the Commission should be doing, even though we do have that planning authority in our town charter. So anyhow, I just was looking for feedback. You know, I didn't want it to be all rainbows and sunshine that we send off to the Board of Selectmen. If we got an issue, I wanted to highlight what it was, but I didn't want to be whiny. I just wanted to stick with the fact that there's a lot coming our way. And so I'm interested in any feedback on that particular issue. Aaron Nunn, I will assume that it's perfect in every way, just like Mary Poppins. It is, Jed. Okay, so if the Commission wants, can go through all the other good things that we've done in there, but
I think probably what we didn't do, although it's not spelled out in a lot of detail, is probably the most important thing that we need to let those folks who are guiding the direction of Andover make sure that they're aware of. Because if somebody says, well, why didn't you change these regulations? Know, I just didn't get around to it yet. Got other things we were working on. And I will try and tackle the regulations, you know, on what I come up with, kind of thinking that it's a priority basis, but there's just a lot out there. So with that, are there any questions at all on the annual report?
Jed, did you want to mention recently we approved the town request for the garage on Center Street.
I didn't put that in here because that was done in July, I think. Went back and there was a lot of stuff we're working on. Our list for next year is already off to a good start. But even though July 1 is a while ago, and we're all familiar with those things, that's why that's not in here. Okay.
The other one was, and this was a while ago, I'm not sure exactly when it was, but we had approved that request for the multiuse trail going from the town hall down to the rail trail. I don't know whatever happened with that.
I don't know either, so I didn't think that was a success story yet. That has been in the works for thirty years now. I don't want to declare victory. Guess we could say that we endorsed it. Yeah, we endorsed it. Okay, I can add that.
There's no updates on that? Does anybody know a status?
I just haven't been tracking it. Eric probably knows if anything has been happening there, but I know Eric recognizes how long it takes some of these things. Right now, I think that his priority, at least one of them, is Ladano property, you know, and that is really a big deal. And there's a bunch of folks working hard to try and make that a success. So I think maybe that trail Is waiting for somebody to pick up that ball and run with it, but I think Eric's got a bunch of things that he's tracking and. Sure. And probably that's not highest on his list. It would take somebody like Ed Ceriski, and I'm probably saying his last name incorrectly, who used to be on planning and zoning, but he has been pontoon that trail and he's got to pick up the ball to run with it. I will say that one of the things that has been helpful to me and the Commission, I think, Although it's probably not fair to Eric is that with his background on the planning and zoning Commission chair.
He is able to do a pretty decent job as the town manager of doing town planning with us. Know, so he is really, you know, kind of been, I think, a good orchestrator of trying to get a lot of these town planning kind of issues going on where I think he, you know, probably was working a fair amount on, you know, getting the sidewalks done by the library out to the ball field and that walk light put in across there and all that kind of stuff. So none of this stuff has fallen off his plate. He tells me when I ask him that every now and then the Board of Selectmen have things for him to do too. And so he has to pay attention to those guys a little bit. He can't do everything on the planning front. But I will add a paragraph on endorsing trail routing along 316. I think you were talking about that
place to get people off of 316 riding bikes and walking. We didn't get the funding we needed for the engineering for that, Jed. Okay, yep. That grant didn't go through.
Thanks, Scott. Well, and so I know Eric, you know, he's bringing in a lot of money through grants for the town, But I think if we had a town planner, we could we would easily bring in more grants than it costs us to get the town planner. But
we've I found out today that we did get the grant to reduce the firehouse.
Oh, super, yep. And that's another one that went through after, you know, the July 1. Actually, you know, there's a fair amount of things out there happening, but we've not been able to look ahead and drive the bus on updating the regulations the way we got two free bridges. Yep, I know we did, and that was big dollars there for the town. Yeah, that's great news. Okay, well I will add that, send it out to you guys again. I have not been asked for an annual report yet. I just figured before we completely forget what it was we did last year, I would have the report written up so that when the time comes, it's ready to go. And then I won't vote on that one tonight. I think we've got another month where we'll vote on it to approve it the next month after I make that addition. Okay, that completes old business. Moving on to discussion. And Jim, I think these are your items for the special events and short term rentals.
Okay, these items have come up recently and I just wanted to bring them to the attention of the commission. Special events, I don't know whether people have seen the, there's a tent up on Bunky Hill Road and it's up for three weeks. And the gentleman that proposed it came in to see me, and I looked through our regs and saw nothing that would regulate it. And I'm just curious if that's something that mission might be interested in regulating at some point in the future through just permit process. Not necessarily a special permit process. It have an ordinance in place where they regulate, I believe it's town sponsored events, requires the sign off of somebody from the fire department, the state trooper, and somebody from DOT if Route 6 is down impeded like the Memorial Day parade in that nature. I'm just throwing it out there to see if there's any concern. I mean, there's other there's entities that put up a tent for a weekend, and it's never been. Never been an issue as far as I know. I'm not trying to make it an issue. Just. Make the Commission aware of of. The matter and feedback. Really similarly with short term rentals, get a number of calls from realtors and potential investors
looking at basically Airbnb's. And we have no regulation in place. Some towns do. I I haven't put a lot of effort into seeing who does and and what they regulate. It hasn't been a problem as far as I've gotten no complaints. I just didn't wanna let it go without bringing it up. And this isn't anything that requires action. I just wanna make people aware of this and see if any thoughts, get them back at me at any time.
I thought right this minute, Jim, we have not seen an issue with that, I would not add that to our work list of regulations that we need to go out and develop at this time. If it starts to become a problem, that may go higher up on the list, but I'm not inclined to go out and tackle that one right this minute. Any other thoughts?
And the tent was just a gospel tent, wasn't it? Yes. It was. Yeah. So
I'm not trying to make an issue out of anything. Right. Yeah. It isn't there. I'm just bringing it up.
Usually, they have problems with the air being based up, and there's competition, Hotels and oh, I was thinking more parties, more loud people. Yeah, and loud people. In the vicinity to a college. Right.
But, again, you know, a lot of places do Airbnb. I don't know if they've got regulations on it or not, but we certainly and we don't have a lot of rentals in Andover. And So it's not like there's going to be a big market for that right this minute.
I know that around the lake there are some short term rentals, but I've never seen an issue or heard of a problem.
And it depends on how you define short term rental. I know there's a couple of people that rent for a summer or something. I don't know if there's, I don't know that it's weekly rental stuff. But I'm not aware of any issues with any of those rentals that are going on. Agreed. Okay, enough of that item. I guess next up is the approval of minutes. And the first item up is the special meeting on eightthreetwenty twenty two, 08/03/2022. And my only only comment there is that there's a typo Larson sometimes spelled with an E, but in my case spelled with an O. And so I would like to have it corrected in the minutes. That was the only comment I had on that. Any other comments on the meeting minutes from August 3? In that case, I'll make a motion to approve the minutes of August 3. I'll second that. Thank you, Scott. Any discussion? Hearing none, call for a vote. Anne Cremay? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Anne? I'm going to abstain because I was not present.
And I vote aye as well. The motion passes four zero one with Anne Blanchard abstaining. Moving on to August 15, meeting minutes.
And I'll make a motion to approve the minutes as presented.
And I just had a question on these. In section two, it says seating of alternates and it has both Kevin and I seated. I wasn't sure if you wanted to put any kind of clarification language. I understand it provides that Kevin was seated for Steve, but I wasn't sure if that was confusing.
Oh, a good point, Ann, and I overlooked that. And so actually, Ann Blanchard was not seated at the last meeting. We had one member absent, Steve Nelson, and Kevin was seated for him. The other person missing was Susan England, who is an alternate, and so nobody needed to replace her. So, and thank you for pointing that out in line two. It should be Kevin Arneson for Steve Nelson was seated as alternate. Any other comments on the August 15? Hearing none, I'll make a motion that the minutes from August 15 as amended be approved. I'll second that. Okay,
thank you, Anne Cremay. Any other discussion? Hearing none, call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve? I will abstain since I wasn't there. Anne Blanchard? Aye.
And I vote aye as well. Motion passes four zero one with Steve Nelson abstaining. And I know we customarily, you know, abstain from review of the minutes. When you're not there, there's nothing that that you question or disagree with, I certainly don't have any problem with you voting to approve the minutes that they document what was done. Sometimes you watch the video or whatever, but I don't have any problem with you abstaining in that case either. Either way works for me. Last set of minutes are Wednesday, 08/31/2022. And that was a special meeting. And so I'll make a motion to approve the minutes as presented. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on those minutes? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye. Anne?
I know you just mentioned this, but I'm going to abstain because I wasn't present. Okay.
And I vote aye as well. Motion passes four zero one with Anne Blanchard abstaining. Next item up is the discussion of a letter. And I think I sent this out to everybody to I can't remember if I did or not. Yeah, you said that. You did? Okay. Yeah.
Here's that letter again. Eric Anderson, Jim, and myself met with Carol Barton to discuss the letter that they had sent to me. I think at the end Carol was satisfied that she got to have her say. We discussed the fact that it was very difficult to make the sign regulations fair for all. We talked about things like, you know, why would it be fair to those Andover residents living on state roads where they can't put their sign right up by the road? We talked about people would have the, you know, sharp cliff right next to the road or the big drop off and the guardrail right next to the road and that sort of thing. I think she agreed that everybody agreed that the regulations today are better than the regulations in the past. But they're not going to be fair for everybody no matter what we do. And I asked her if she wanted a written response back and she said that she would appreciate that.
Although, you know, she was looking for something short, so I figured I will by short, keep it to one page, but I wanted to make a couple of points in there. There's probably a couple other points I would have liked to have added to, but that would have made it go over a page. That's the letter that will make a motion that the Commission approve this letter and that I will send it to Catherine Magdalay Lewis and Carol Barton. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on the letter? And I did run this letter through Mark Branch just so he could make sure that, you know, there was nowhere that we were running amok saying something that wasn't true in it and he concurred with the letter.
I think it's pretty straightforward. It's well written. It's concise and hopefully it'll put this issue to bed.
That might be too much to hope for. Science are one of those things that, you know, in the training session I did go attend, there was the all day thing, and Jim, if you remember what it was, I forget, but what was the group that hosted that all day training? It was the
Connecticut Bar Association, the land use component, the land use wing of the We talked
a lot about signs and the issues are, you know, what's a sign and what is artwork? There's an awful lot of things that look like signs that are art and therefore not appropriate. But hopefully, you know, as you say, we'll put this to bed. So any other discussion? You're a good letter writer, Jed. We try, yep. We'll call for a vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Steve? Aye.
Anne? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion passes five zero zero. So I'll send this out to Catherine and Carol tomorrow. Next item up is item 10, the administrative reports from the zoning agent.
Okay, ongoing enforcement 12. Did issue a citation under the blade ordinance. I believe it falls due the September 24, at which point we'll incur fines will will start incurring as is I believe it's 64 Wheeling Road citation on the same date, falling due on the twenty fourth as well. I believe there's been some compliance there. I will recheck on it. I continue to work with Steve Barnett on Route 6 property, and we've seen some progress. 11 Bunker Hill, I did send out a letter and asked for the removal of some mill filing. The extra material roadwork was filed on the property, and the owner moved it at my request. I still have a few other planes to get to, and I hope you do so in your future. Any questions?
I see there's a lot of activity at twelve center. They're down right to the deck now. Yeah. I saw that as well. In the last few days?
Yeah. They've they've done a lot. Yeah. I don't know where they're getting rid of the serial, but I don't know either.
I was over there Friday, and it was, like you said, Scott, right down to the deck.
Yep. Now they're pulling the plywood or the boards up off the framing. And
I do know that the owner was out out of the country for a few weeks, But this has been going on for months, so I mean, I don't really wanna make that decision.
And he has until the twenty fourth to finalize it?
At which point he can appeal. Well, he has to appeal within that before that period. Yeah. Twenty fourth, he's got until the twenty fourth.
And so what what, evidence have you seen at Wheeling Road?
I thought it was pretty cleaned up, pretty much cleaned up. The most of it. Most of the material as of recently. I could be wrong. I I wasn't doing an inspection. I just I'm gonna be driving by. I'll get out there this week. Are you talking about the place with the tractors? No. I said Wheeling. I'm sorry. Long Hill Road. Oh, Long Hill. My mistake.
64 Long Hill. My mistake. Tractors, they haven't made much progress on. Yep. The Long Hill, the Archibald's place?
Yes. The greenhouse, the old greenhouse that was abandoned for thirty years. And he started to clean it up? I think so, yeah, believe so. He hasn't had much site presence there, if you noticed. He was there originally and then he was here. I'll take another look at it. Thanks, Jim. Welcome.
Jim, can you give us an update on what you know about the gravel pit restoration?
Sure. I spoke to Chris Bell today and he indicated that the owner was on vacation and he was waiting for a little wetter weather. But hopefully in the next week or two, there'll be seating. And I did get an updated plan, which is the one that he had shown at the last meeting. Whether or not that was distributed or not is unclear to me. But it does show where the the water drains points in center, which was, we took from our site sidewalk meeting and that to paper.
He hasn't leveled off the property yet though, has he? He's not. Nothing has nothing has changed since we've been there. He's not ready to plant grass. The Thursday is supposed to be a good nice.
Yeah, he's supposed to give me a forty eight hour notice. I mean, that's the time he's gonna go in, grade it, have it inspected and seated. Yep.
I have to go back to the minutes. Was three steps as I recall. Or three inspections that coincided with work schedule. Yep, he was planning to start mid September.
Yeah, he did. Yep. Hopefully he'll start towards the latter part of this week or early probably next.
It would be good if he could get the seed in there so it would germinate before winter.
Absolutely. And there is rain scheduled for this week. Yep.
Thursday is supposed to be a rainy day. Okay. Anything else for Jim? On the Inland Wetlands Watercourse Commission liaison report, I did not attend the wetlands meeting this week. And I'll go back to science. I got a story on science from taking a trip out to Nantucket. But the thing I'll pass along to Agent Halsey is that the Inland's Wetlands Group is working on an application for a driveway across the wetlands at what they refer to as Lot 22 On Lake Road, which is over by Yeoman's property there, if you look at it. And so it looks like they're going be building a house and we need to make sure that we do the appropriate
nutrient allocation compensation for putting in a new house there.
And I did speak to Mark Reynolds, who is engineer on that site. He's aware of that. He is coming up with some calculations and a plan.
Excellent, yep, it looks like they had a pretty good plan on that, so
that's encouraging to hear. And that's the last lot, right? There might be another one.
I would have said that about the last one. Yep. There's the one next to Not very many. There's one next to 436, now it's currently going up. Yep. That's a vacant lot. There's one down by the DM also.
Yep, so there's a couple still. My sign story is out on Nantucket I saw no signs at all. I took the bus tour around the island to see it all and they had no signs. They had some little maybe four inch by four inch signs that talked about all the public property that the land trust had purchased out there. But it was incredibly different. It was nice not seeing signs. It can be done. We didn't go that route, but they obviously did out there. I see nobody from the public for public speak. Next regularly scheduled meeting, October 19. One last question for the Commission. Now that Scott filled us in that the grant is not available for the trail alongside a three sixteen, do we think we should still add that to the annual report? And I can go either way. It's certainly not a highlight if it's not going to get built, although the fact that it's not going to get built today doesn't mean that it won't ever get built. But after Scott brought up the fact that the grant didn't get approved, thought we would just talk about that one more minute.
Maybe it's not a good idea to have it in here, Jeff.
I think it's good to keep visibility on the project. I mean, I think it's an important project for the future and the fact that we endorsed it, know, were actively asked to review it at a meeting and we discussed it and endorsed it.
Okay, Scott. So how about if I put something in there like, you know the Planning and Zoning Commission endorsed it. The grant was not approved at this point in time, but it's still an important project to remain on the plate for some time in the future. That sounds good, Jay. Okay, that's what I'll do. And the next scheduled meeting is October 19? Monday? Isn't it the seventeenth?
Think you're right. I think you're right. Yep. Okay, next scheduled meeting is the seventeenth. Very good, thanks for the backup on the calendar. Any closing comments from anybody? Thank you very much. Get a lot of those loose ends hopefully wrapped up here and we'll get ready to start working on some new things, but I will make a motion to adjourn. Second. Thank you, Steve. Call for vote, Anne. Aye. Scott. Aye. Steve. Aye. Anne. Aye.
And I vote aye as well. Motion to adjourn passes five-zero-zero. Thank you everybody for attending and I appreciate the support and the work on behalf of you to make the meetings go. Night everybody. Good night. Good night.