Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting
November 15, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay. So the recorder is going. It's 07:00. And I will call the planning and zoning meeting to order. The roll call and seating of alternates, I see all regular members and all alternates are present tonight. So we definitely have a forum there. No alternates will be seated. But the alternates are certainly welcome to ask questions of any of the applications as we go through there. The item three, additions and changes to the agenda. What I would like to do is put the new business ahead of the old business so the applicants this evening don't have to sit through us going through sign regulations. I know that's going to be painful enough for each of us. They don't need to sit through that as well. So if there are no objections to that, I will move all of the new business up ahead of the old business. Are there any objections? Okay, hearing none, we'll go on to item four, which is public comment. I don't see anybody here that I think isn't associated with one of the applications. Does anybody have a comment for the Commission outside of the applications that you're here for this evening? Hearing none, I will go I'll move on to the new business. And the first item up is the application for a two lot subdivision at 580 Lake Road.
MR. Mr. Chairman, this is Matt Bruton from BL Companies. You just saw me on video and I proceeded to lose my internet connection, but you can still hear me via phone. I can't Trying to re I I'm I'm trying to reconnect right now, but my Internet has other ideas. I I appreciate you putting me ahead of your sign regulations. Any chance you could do that while figure out what's going on here? While
you're working on that, I will jump down to new business item B. Appreciate it. Request for modification of the sand and gravel permit at 497 Route 6. And so, Chris Bell, I will turn that topic over to you. I'm
trying to get back to the meeting. Let me figure out how to get back here. Looks like you're here.
Well, you're here. What do you mean try to get back to the meeting? I can't find the screen again. I I went to see what oh, here we are. Sorry. Okay. I apologize. I went to see the agenda. I didn't know I was gonna be on next. Yep. Yes. Gentlemen, ladies of commissioners. We finally got somebody to start taking the gravel out. We we lost our guy. Actually, he wasn't doing a very good job. You know, we had to throw him off the side. He was taking gravel without paying for it, and he wasn't, he was only removing it when nobody was watching. And anyway, we had the original guy that started the work on the gravel pit way last year, who got the site ready, and he has a site to bring the gravel to and he's been taking out gravel as it started last week. He's taken out 30 loads which it took us forever to get the other guy to even take some out. As you remember, most of the meeting letters that we had reports, there were no activity in the gravel pit, but now we have quite a bit and we're gonna be moving as fast as we can to get the gravel out. And as part of this removal, we have talked to the adjacent property owner, which at the time of our original application a couple years ago was not all that friendly towards the owner. We couldn't get his approval to
extend our operation all the way up to the property line as we would want to make a nice clean level site except obviously for the back. But have a nice and level all the way across which is really the goal of the owner. It's not really to take gravel out and sell it. It's really to get a nice sight. And the owner, Marshall Martin, gladly signed on to let Bill Genovese approach the property line with the removal. He said it's, you know, it's good for his side also. He can be able to see his site better. And that's why we submitted an application to remove it up to his property line.
Apparently, what we understand and he had Mr. Martin had a problem with the owner that ran the site, the owner's brother, and now that he's not there anymore, he gets along with William Genovese very well. And he gave him approval last week to go ahead and do that. He he signed a letter of his approval that you have with the application. This adds another removal amount of approximately 1,800 yards to the gravel pit operation. And because basically we just started, and I talked to Jim Halsey about this, you know, we never intended to go beyond this December date. We thought we'd had plenty of time to get the gravel out, but we had so much trouble with the other person. There was one of them sand and gravel.
And of course, they started taking too much out and we ended up in deceased and desist. And, everything stopped and actually they stopped too. They never really came back until they felt like it and took material when without telling people and accounting for it. But we always thought that we'd have everything taken out in plenty of time but this whole period between June and up until last week, not very much was taken out except for the sand pile that was sifted out, which was about 600 yards and that was on the plan. If with the chairman's permission, I like to put the two different plans up so he could see exactly what we're looking at.
Yes, Amy, go ahead and allow Chris Bell to share screen. I just gave you permission. Can also screen share if you prefer as well.
Okay. Let me get that on here. What happened? It's not right.
I have all your application materials here if you if it'd be easier for me to You have it? My screen. Yep. I can pull up the page that has all three applications.
Do you see the, this was the former application where this one, does everybody see it?
Does everybody see the Yeah, I see the listing of all the materials that are on the website.
We want to go to the most recent. The one prior to
the one supposed to plan in June 21 that we submitted for the extension in the restoration plan. Do we have that up on? You see that on my screen?
Yep, this one that I'm showing is the most recent one.
This is 06/21. The most recent one was November that what we submitted with the application. Oh, I see. Okay.
The one dated, November 9 is the the one we just submitted. This is the former one in June. Yep. Okay. Hold on. You got that? Yep. Should be it should be dated 06/2121. Actually, 06/21/2019. I'm sorry. But it says restoration plan.
I'm sorry. Do you want the twenty nineteen one or the 2021? It says restoration plan six-twenty one-nineteen. That's what the PDF says? This PDF is the 1.
Yeah, that's the one I just submitted last week. I'll just start with the history first just to show what we had approved in June. Okay. Actually, the original approval was with the restoration plan on top of it. Okay. Can you say that date one more time?
It says restoration plan 06/21/2019, but, I mean, it's it's on my screen. It's not showing up.
No. I did not see anything like that listed on our website when I was preparing for the meeting. Yeah, I don't know. It's
the one that that you approved actually in the June meeting, the restoration plan. That's the one I was bringing up. Sorry if that's
Okay, I don't know that that that ever made it here. Abby, go to the second one from the top. Go scroll up to the top of this whole thing. Well, I saw restoration plans there down here.
You might be lumped in with something else from 06/21.
Okay, yeah, go look if there's I don't see it.
And if I put it on my screen, you don't see it either? Who's talking? Is that I'm sorry, this is Chris Bell.
Okay, yeah, we'd have to go back to you, Sharon. Right now we're looking at Abby's screen.
Yep, so you should be able to screen share. I gave you permission to do so.
All right, I've got it up on my screen. Can anyone see it? Yep. Share. Is it? Yes? I cannot see it.
Within the Zoom window, you'll want to click on the green screen share option that will be on the bottom of the screen. Yeah, I clicked that.
Then you got to click on the file itself, you're probably aware of that.
Yeah, and then, well, I got to take it out and go back to it again. Okay. I clicked on it. I have it. You see it? No. I guess I can wing it without it. Well, so
Abby, go back to you sharing the screen and I'd like to look at the second folder from the top on the gravel pit site details 3619. Okay.
And if everybody All right, that'll work. And so, yeah, over at the upper right hand side there's a bunch of yeah, if you can blow that up a little bit, Abby, I'm just looking for those five Cross section.
Cross section. Okay, that's looking good. So this is what we were talking about originally as far as the restoration plan.
Correct. Right here is the area that we were leaving because we're approaching the property line. So we slope up to,
this is the 50 foot mark here. And now which section are you talking about now? This section it's not blown up enough for me to see it. I think that's
one. Station one right here. Yep. Okay. This is where we start sloping up because actually it's on a skew a little bit. That's why this is 50 feet. But we have to stop at grading, 50 feet from the property line. So we can grade beef you know, after 50 feet, but once we hit 50 feet, which is actually over in here, have to stop grading. And his property line is is actually in in here somewhere. This is this is where his property line is, so that's why 50 feet back is is back here. His property line is I probably should have showed his property line in section, but I didn't because it wasn't my line is where it's zero? No. No. The property line is at the baseline, which if you go back to the plan, you'll see the baseline is is way off from the property line.
The baseline is is back is back here And when we look at, I'm sorry, that's the property line. And this plan doesn't show the baseline, which is way over here. That's that section should have shown at Station 1 that the the property line is is is in from where the baseline is. The bay the baseline is back here. If you had you could see the other plan plan, the one at 619 restoration plan, you'd see that. But this is the whole area, this hill that we wanna take down. This is the 50 foot line here. And right here is 50 feet from the property line. Right here, this line, 50 feet. This is the grading up to that loan. I'm not following you, Chris. Oh, I'm sorry. If you had the other plan, you could see it. This is the top of the hill.
This is way above grade by fifteen, eighteen feet above down here. This is at, around two thirty down and down here, you're
Which section are you talking about? 0, Chris. Start at 0. 0 is is by the road. Okay? Understand where you are.
You got no. 0, we have no s this is Station 0. There's no excavation occurring at 0. That's why we Go to the next one then. The next one is 1. K. This is Station 1. Now we go right through the middle of that big giant mound area. These are contours going down in this direction, and we meet the proposed grade about 294. We go up here to 96, 298, 30320. Up in, let's see. Now blow this up two ninety four, to 96, to 98, 300, 302304. So we're about 10 feet above grade here with this peak up here. This is going uphill. And this is the 50 foot mark right there, 50 feet from the property line. And that was that that was where you were you couldn't remove it before, you're saying? Correct. We could not touch this area. And the reason why this goes on a radius is because the property line ends here for Mr. Marshall and it goes across here. So we're going 50 feet from his pin there, 50 feet from that pin. You know, we have to stay 50 feet away. So this whole area, well, right from zero here, Station 0, this whole area we wanna take down to elevation 2 ninety four, two ninety four and a half, which will be the same as the rest of the entire lot.
Okay. And is is that gonna be level with because you guys never put 294 out there, so we could tell where it was, but but where is it gonna be in relation to Marshall's
know, slightly above it because he is he's at at this is the 2 94 Contour right here. I'm sorry? In 92. Basement right now.
292 is right here. The floodplain, if you had the other section, runs across here. The floodplain is at 295, then it goes further back and goes down to 294. So almost the entire existing yard, the junkyard is in the floodplain. It only gets out of the floodplain as you start coming up into Marshall's property. We're this end. This is all floodplain because it's down below two ninety five. Okay. This is 292 right here. It says something. 292 ties into the existing contour. That's 292. So we are going to be the intention is for the entire property that we're working on is to be above the floodplain. We don't wanna be in the floodplain when we're taking the material out. Right now, he's in the neighborhood of 295 back here, which is good. It's above the floodplain. We said we were never going down below 294 And A Half. That's where the absolute bottom of where we're excavating, and we're above that. We're at 290, five around here. Could be 295 and a half, you know, plus or minus. It's it's a little it's not dead flat. Chris, just But the intention is a question? Yes, sir.
Where is Marshall Martin's pavement? What, at what elevation?
He is at the property line and he's at 292. Okay. He's three feet below the floodplain in his property, at the property line. I don't have elevations out here, but I have a couple near the street. All your property's gonna be at least two feet above his. Yes, that's correct. Probably probably more. It's a better chance for it to be more than it's not gonna be less. That's for sure. But it's our intention to be at least level with what's back here, which is two ninety five. We'll be at least two ninety five. We could be higher because the intention is when he runs out of time, material is on-site is just gonna get leveled off
for whatever's left. And he's not he's not gonna ask for anything more. We're asking for the extension because we just got started, as as aggressive as they are, they've only gotten about 10 feet into the bank. They're trying to take, you know, a a lot of yards out per day, but it would be good if we could get a ninety day extension to not only get the rest of the material out, but also this. And in ninety days, he should be able to be well enough done because they have a pretty active project that they're taking material out every day.
Okay. So this would be an additional ninety days beyond the end of this year. So that would take you to the end of March.
I believe that would be correct, yeah. Well, the six months we got, I believe, was right to approximately the planning and zoning date in December. I believe that was like the seventeenth or something like that. I'm not sure the exact date. Think you approved it in June 17, so I would just assume that was December 17. Okay, no, understand. That's it. Obviously, fill is going to include, as we get near the end, the detention basin will be filled, as we discussed in the June meeting, and the site will be 100% restored. We're monitoring it a weekly basis of how much is getting disturbed, so we make sure we don't run into that problem again of having too much disturbed without placing topsoil and seed. And at this point when he runs over, and when he gets to the point where he's like a phase and a half, we'll topsoil. I don't know if we'll seed or not because the seed's not gonna cup in the winter but we'll definitely have it hayed. We'll protect it from erosion. And it'll it'll be covered up as we go.
Because right now we have, well, if you can wanna put up the the plan that I submitted last week, you can probably see that better. Yeah, the second from the bottom there. Yeah,
second from the bottom right there. And then blow it up over here. Maybe, there we go. Now, again, this is the 50 foot mark. I left it on there so you'd have a reference. And right now, I I clipped off from the plan that you approved in June. About this much has been taken off as of date. They've gone in about 10 feet, but this will be picking up as time goes. This is a higher elevation here, and this is a high elevation. Soon as the higher elevations get knocked out
Chris, can you tell us where you're talking about when you and what section at least when you're going when you're talking about the different elevations, could you tell us what section you're talking about? Yeah, right
here we're at the station about 02:50. That's where we had stopped during the cease and desist. We were right about here, 275, I'm sorry, 275. This is 2, this is 3, about 275. We were, we had, if you scroll down a little bit more, please. Sorry, scroll it up. Got my directions wrong. Sorry. Get up towards this way more. Yeah, this was the sand pile. There was enough room for a truck to get through here in a little bit more space. Right now the sand pile is gone, and this was the former area. They took that little tip-off, and they're heading towards this direction. So right now we're just above Station 250. And I would think by the time they got to maybe closer to two, we would have to restore it. Because none of this has been restored because they had traffic going around through here, and the Commission said that was okay. As long as you were taking this pile out, we didn't want to restore right up to the pile. So now that this pile's gone, it won't be too long before we're going to have to start restoring this whole area as it gets closer to two. Like I said, we monitor it now every week and the excavator is reporting to us how far he's going in. So we're looking at it every week. Once again, once we get down to pretty close to two,
we'll have to restore this area. And that is gonna include filling in this channel, which is there now, because once it gets restored, you don't really need the channel, or we could leave it there. I guess we could talk about that. Because we're not planting grass here, I guess it'd be a good idea to leave the channel there. Is not going to grow even if we plant it. So we'll leave the channel in probably right until the last and I think it actually would be best just to leave it there until March and have the one of the last things to go is the channel. Cause we're going to make sure we got grass growing with the channel there.
Okay, so I'd like to stop for just a minute, Chris. One of the things that's making it difficult for us to follow your story tonight we're not seeing your cursor. So when you're, you might be moving your cursor around your screen, but we're not seeing it and so it's very
difficult for us to We don't understand a thing that you're saying, Chris. Yeah, I'm sorry. Let
me continue for a minute. I think there's, when I went over to look, know, we still got this big mound that's in either section one or section two or the combination. Correct. At the end of the day, that's all going to be leveled out to two ninety four or two ninety five? That's correct. Okay, so I think what I would the way ahead that I would like to go tonight was for the next meeting, I would like to have a very you know, is a very busy drawing that we're looking at here. I would like to be able to have just a drawing that you can come in and run us through what the end state is going to be. And I would have said on December 17, but now it'll be like March 17. And we can discuss a motion that gives you the extra thirty or the ninety days extension tonight. That would be one issue. The other issue that I would like to at least get before the Commission and before I do that, I would like to hear discussion from the Commission. Right now, our plan has limited the ability to excavate within 50 feet of the property line. That's because that's what our regulations say. There won't be any excavation within 50 feet of the property line. I went over looked at this area today and I think that it would benefit the town to have that ugly mound leveled off as part of the restoration process and not have that ugly hill between the two lots over there.
I'm looking for some feedback from the Commission on do they agree with that thought? Or does anybody disagree with that thought and thinks we should retain that 50 the elevated hills within 50 feet of the property line there.
I believe the same thing that you're saying, Jed. It's gonna look a lot nicer, all leveled off.
Okay. Any other thoughts from any of the other commission members?
I think it's a good idea as long as the adjacent property owners are okay with that.
And they are. We do have a letter in our file there that says that they are. Now, I want to go back because one of the things that when I initially started looking at this, our regulations say no excavation within 50 feet of the property line. Doesn't say anything about what the other property owners concurrence or anything. So he said, well, that's a problem. Then I went and I said, let me go look at what the definition of excavation is. And the definition of excavation, at least when I looked it up online, talks about to make hollow by removing the inner part, make a hole or cavity in. I know that we used the right section to go through this whole process of coming
up with a plan for this, but the section of our regulation is gravel pit. And we certainly don't have a gravel pit. We've got a gravel mound. I can see where if we were digging a pit, we wouldn't want that pit to be any closer than 50 feet from the property line. But since we're trying to smooth off and restore and make ready for potential sale, I think that's a win for the adjacent property owner, the property owner of the sand gravel pit, and it's a win for the town. You know, that's a good deal all the way around. So why I feel I don't want to be doing anything that would be contrary to our regulation because we're sworn to uphold those. I do think that in this particular case, given the latitude that the adjacent property owner is thinking that he is okay with that, and if we look at what the definition of excavation is, I think that's probably when they wrote our regulations, they intended to be, you know, when you're digging a hole, not removing a mound. One of the ways we could proceed here, because we all, I think, think that's a good idea,
is to say, Chris Bell, come to us next month and show us the restoration plan. And it has the restoration plan making that lot sort of smooth. And you said there's going to be a two or three foot discontinuity between the convenience store and the edge there, but that's a heck of a lot better than the 10 or 20 foot little mound of debris that we've got over there now.
Mr. Chairman, can I say something? Yes. Okay, hopefully, know everyone's positive about this, hopefully I don't say something that'll snatch their feet from the jaws of victory. I do show the elevation there and the restoration plan, not on this, but on the landscaping shows that we have trees planted along the border also. I mean, those are still gonna be there. And I think now that we're gonna make it level, I wouldn't wanna ask permission from the adjacent landowner if he wants those trees there because he may not. Before, it was a mound there and it wouldn't matter because he's gonna see the mound. Now, the trees are gonna grow and probably start blocking his the view of his station, which he may not like. And I didn't think about that until just now. But in other gravel sites that I've been involved with, they normally have from 50 to 200 feet from the property line. It varies with town. And that is exactly the intention. They expect to see a hole in the ground and they don't want the hole in the ground to come right up to the property loan. And when we've had adjacent property owners that said it was okay to grade my lot too, or up to my lot, that property owner, if we had his approval way back when two years ago,
how we would normally handle that is have him sign the application as a co applicant. And that way we can go up to his line because he's one of the applicants. And there wouldn't be that 50 feet because he's agreeing that as a co applicant, he's agreeing the grading will go right up to his property line and into if he so desired. And that those are just a couple of things I wanted to mention. I didn't know how the commission would feel about him becoming a co applicant or not, so I I just left it off for now. Thought that might confuse the issue at this point. Don't know what
they would think. I
think it would confuse the issue. Least it would confuse me. I'm happy with the letter you got from the owner over there saying that he's good with leveling that little mound. Yeah. Would your applicant, is there enough work to keep him busy between now and our December meeting so that we could come approve a restoration plan that has that leveled off and not have it be a done deal before we get to our next meeting? Well, the
plan I gave you could be called a I didn't call it the restoration plan, that's what I called it last time in June. But this has everything on it, the soap fence, the elevations, and everything else that we're intending to do, and bring it down to elevation 295. On the plan, if you want. Well,
yeah, I did not see anything posted online and didn't see, you know, that restoration plan that we were talking about there, and you weren't able to bring it up tonight. Yeah, I don't know why it's not on So, I'm reluctant to take action on the 50 foot plan without presenting to the commission the detailed plan that you've got. Now, my question to you is, can the property owner, does he have enough work to keep him busy for another month if we grant you a I three month
mean, he's got a lot of work before he gets to that 50 foot line. Was my thinking. Yeah, oh, he's plenty of work, yeah. But he's not gonna get anywhere near that property 50 foot buffer by the middle of December, basically another month. He's not going still be anywhere near. Okay, so an acceptable way ahead here for tonight
is if we were to make a motion to grant a three month extension, you would be happy and then come back next month with the ability to go us through the detailed restoration plan. Personally, I don't care whether the trees are in there after we get done with it or not. Know, that should be you come brief the Commission at the December meeting on the restoration plan and whether or not you want the trees in there or not. If the Commissioners decide we need to have the trees in there, we could tell you put the trees back in. But I don't know that anybody's going to give a hoot once we get a nice level lot there whether those trees are in it or not. Just don't want to the restoration plan when we can't, we don't have the latest and greatest available to us and we can't, we need to have you with your cursor point us through because it was, I could not
you know, keep up with where you were going when you were trying apologize to
for that. I, that plan does show how we want to restore it, but I was afraid to take too much off of that plan, but it sounds like the more I take off it, the better you'll understand it. Guess a lot of the old notes. We just, yeah, we want to, I want to see what it's going to look like at the end of the day so that
we're happy. I think there's a couple of high elevations at the back by the river, my assumption is those are going to stay there. We have to. Yes. Okay. That's the wetland buffer. Yep, And I got I just want to be able to show the Commission the plan and allow us to ask and have you answer after we've had a chance to look at the plan because none of us have seen it. So, you know,
we need to have a chance to review it before the next meeting and then we'll talk about that piece. Right and Chris also add that channel whatever the channel is that you're talking about. Still there, yeah. Right, make sure that that's on that final. The plan
that I had in front of you tonight that is dated 11/09/2021, that's, I didn't call it a restoration plan, but that's like the current site plan, I called it the site plan, but I took off all the proposed contours that are not going to be there anymore, except right up at the property line. I'll enhance that more so it'll be more understood. And I'll take a lot of the old notes off that no longer need to be there.
And I'll submit another plan for next month. Okay. And so with that in mind, I'd like to make a motion that we grant the applicant the three month extension to his sand and gravel operation. I'll second that. Okay. Any discussion on that particular motion? Yes, this is Leanne. Yep, go ahead Leanne.
Hi. To be clear, if your motion is to grant beginning tonight a three month extension, does that include because what we're talking about now as we know is the 50 foot area and Marshall Martin etcetera. Does the three month extension mean that the end of three months that the entire site is going to be remediated along in accordance with all of the conditions that were put on it in the beginning of the application, not just this 50 foot discussion?
Well, my expectation is that all of the conditions that we put on at the start, with the exception of that basin that we decided since then to not fill in and to level within 50 feet of the property line by the extramar over there, would remain in effect. But the applicant is not going to touch that 50 foot buffer zone for the next month until we have a chance to discuss that in detail at the next meeting. We're just gonna allow him to keep operating beyond his current extension, expires here the middle of December.
Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question and a comment to that? Go ahead. We understand that at the end of the permit, in other words, say if it ended December 17, that is the last day he can do removal and he no longer has a gravel remover permit And he has, from that time on, to finish restoring the site, whatever it takes. That's the way we understood the operation, because he would have to stop the operation almost, you know, weeks before the end of the permit to have everything completely done. I mean, you end the permit of removal, and then he has from that time on reasonable time to finish his restoration, make sure all the plants here. We can't plant even if like say it ended in December, say it ended in December, we can't plant until spring. So, you know, we assume the restoration would go on for a time limit because you still have the bomb for two phases.
Yep, I understand And your I had, you know, that question was a little fuzzy in my mind when we're actually done. And so it would be nice to have a definitive date by which the entire project is complete and restoration is done. So if we need to extend that extension by another month or two, I am happy to do that with the understanding that at the end of the extension, the remediation will be complete and we don't have that dragging on forever. Correct. I mean, normally
there is a time period after the gravel pit operation ends that they have a time to restore in reasonable time, not unreasonable, you know, matter of, it usually has to do with the growing season and things like that. You know, we would hope that we would have some time to wrap things up. You know, I think that's important. You know, we're not trying to say we want to go on a year or after. He wants to get this thing done. Believe me. I understand. So, I mean, would love that entertainment saying, okay, after your extension, you've got sixty days to totally restore the site or thirty days. I mean, you could include that. And I actually, personally, I would like to see that because I that would, you know, force the issue of restoration.
Who? Is the contractor that's removing the material now the one that's gonna do the restoration?
Yeah. That's correct. He's much more responsible and, you know we trust him totally to restore the site as needed.
Jim Halsey, do you have any input on whether the best way would be to do a five month extension or a condition of approval being that the remediation is done within sixty days of the expiration of the permit that make any difference? The latter is more reasonable, yes.
There's no reason that the restoration has to be done within the actual permit. So we could put a condition on that we have to be complete within sixty days following expiration of the permit. Yeah. I do have a couple of issues I just wanna touch upon. One is I have had a conversation with the property owner, Catherine Hutchinson, the property owner to the right as you look at it. Think that'd be the South, and she's keeping an eye on the project and just wanted you to know that she's very much concerned about anything, you know, how this wraps up, if she's following it. And I just wanted to make sure we have some controls in place for this, the two forty five.
Are you monitoring this at this point, Chris? 295? I'm talking about finished grade there.
Yeah, finished grade. Well, I know the grade they have out there right now that is the part that's restored and the part that's still bare is approximately $2.95 plus. Alright? I know it's I know it's over two ninety four. I know. Because the last times I was checking it, it was it was just over two ninety five and I told them, you know, get the top soil on there which probably added another four or five inches. They haven't gone into let me back up a second, when all the grade around the sand fire was all two ninety five. So with the pile gone, I know everything is two ninety five and they've just started excavating. So we will, you know, we will be monitoring as they
go into that, that bluff. And, you know, you can see pretty much by eye if it's if it's level or if they're, you know, they don't want to go down lower than 2 95. So I just wanted to verify that the kind of the site worker, the site contractor is is on board in this whole process. Oh yeah. Yeah, he actually has a plan There's been a disconnect there. Other guy didn't Doesn't happen again. No, no, that won't happen. Thank you. I have a question about. I
would just want to. Did you Jim you have any other questions or are you all done?
I was a little confused about the vegetation along the property. Vegetation appeared on the map earlier. I'm talking about between Marshall Martin's property. I was confused as to whose property that's on. Whether that's on Marshall Martin's and it was part of the site work, his site plan for Extramart or whether it was proposed as part of the gravel pit.
There's nothing proposed on Marshall Martin's property at all. We're stopping before we get to the property loan. What
I was seeing earlier was that existing perhaps? The other was a plan that was posted prior to this that showed vegetation along that property line.
That was the one that was the second from the top, Abby. Okay. So those are clearly on your property.
All the grading is on the owner's property. That has not changed. Nothing is gonna be done on Marshall Martin's property. No, I'm talking about this vegetation. The trees.
On the trees? Yeah, they're on the owner's property, yep. Okay, thank you. Again, I
like to talk to the Marshal Martin to see if he wants those trees there or not, or we can do other landscaping besides trees.
He may not want the trees there. And maybe you could have that conversation with Marshall Martin before the next meeting. Oh, absolutely. Yes, sir. Yeah. Anne, did you have a question? Yes.
I'm just thinking this three month extension we're talking about is going right into the majority of the winter, January, February, where it's very cold and the ground can freeze quite far down, is that gonna impede your ability to move anything?
No, you're right, the ground does freeze, but it's only gonna freeze if we get like a lot of rain and then an instant freeze after that. This material is is a type a material. It's very free draining. It doesn't hold on to water at all. I don't know how far down the groundwater table is because we never went deeper than a couple of feet below two ninety four, two ninety five just to see what was there. And the mistake that they made to go down deeper, they were down to two ninety two. We made them put it back. We we did not hit groundwater. But no they operations like this continue right through the winter. There's there's no freeze. Again there could be a crust on it if it if it rains and then we get an instant freeze. You know.
Which happens a lot in January. Yeah, we could get frozen, but it's not going to be very thick. It's, you know, just knock it off and continue going. You'll never get a deep freeze on this material. Thank you. Any other commission members have any other questions?
This is Leanne again. If I can just restate it just so I'm clear. The motion on the floor is about the three month extension so that Mr. Bell can come back with maybe a map that I don't know what the word that was used. I don't want to say less clear because I don't think we want it to be less clear. More comprehensible. Yes. That's a good word. More understandable. We're going to get back at our December meeting for that. So a three month extension for this topic of the 50 foot discussion is a completely separate action from the completion of the project. Because I understand Mr. Belva say after the work is done in the 50 foot area, they have other remediation to do. So I just want to be completely clear that these are two separate steps.
Yes, we are going to vote on authorizing the three month extension. And the property owner will not go into that 50 foot section near the Extramark property until after we approve him doing so at the next meeting. Or I guess we could not approve it. But I think we all agree that that is better. We just want to agree on what the final product is going to look like before we authorize that. Okay.
We want to be more clear on what the entire restored lot looks like. We're doing a good job of getting rid of material. Now it's time to focus on what the end state is going to look like. And that's what we will discuss at the next meeting. Mr. Chairman, maybe clear
just say that he can only do the work that's on the approved plan. He has no approvals for anything else. That's correct. And that's what he's aware of now. Okay.
Any other questions? Hearing none, I will call for a roll call vote on the three month extension. Anne? Aye.
Scott? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye. Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The motion carries 500. Thank you very much. You've got your three month extension. With the plan that we come next month, we'll talk about, you know, a time limit for authorization of the remediation after the completion of the gravel and sand removal.
I'd just like to tell the commission just before your next meeting, I'm getting a hip replacement surgery, so if you call for a field meeting, I'm not gonna be there. I'll be at the Zoom meeting. Okay, very good. Thank you, Chris. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thanks, Chris.
Okay, Matt, we're gonna move back up to you now. We gave you plenty of time to review. I saw that you came back on just a sense we went to the gravel pit. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I apologize. I've been doing this for two years remotely and never lost my connection five seconds before I was supposed to start. I appreciate the accommodation. So for the record, my name is Matthew Bruton. I'm a professional engineer from BL companies. I'm located at 100 Constitution Plaza in Hartford, Connecticut. If the commission doesn't mind, I'll share my screen to just give a five minute overview of the project.
Sounds good. Abi, go ahead and allow him to share his screen. You should have permission.
Okay. Great. So the applicant here is proposing, as mentioned, a two lot subdivision. The current address is at 580 Lake Road. So for orientation for everybody, Lake Road, if you follow my cursor, I'll just draw on yellow here, is on the left hand side of the screen with Route 6, across the bottom. This is an existing lot that has a, a commercial plumbing business. I'm just gonna switch over to Google Street View real quick. So I'm on Route 6 right now. Lake Ave is in the foreground where my mouse is. This entire parcel building in the back and grass in the front is the existing lot. Approximately 2.6 acres in the industrial zone. In general everything, it looks flat from this angle here but in general everything pitches from the existing commercial building, down to a low spot in this corner here. Under the proposed, application, the applicant is looking to subdivide this into two parcels. One would be in red, which I've kind of highlighted here on the top of the page. This would, encompass the existing plumbing business, what they're building associated parking utilities, all of those things. And then the second newly created parcel would be circled here in blue. That's approximately 1.2 acres. There's currently as you saw really nothing on this besides an existing business sign. Most of it is manicured lawn. There is there are no wetland particularly on either of these parcels,
but there is an upland review associated with the wetlands that are across the street and adjacent to Cheney Brook, which is over here on the left hand side of the screen where my hand is hovering now. Prior to coming to your board, we did go to the Inland Wetlands Commission to explain this two lot subdivision, and we did receive approval from them to move the subdivision application to your board. Since that time, we have also done some soil testing on-site with the Eastern Highlands Health District, which is your health department. Soils perked out very well, eight minutes per inch. Groundwater was quite low and we didn't run into any bedrock or any impermeable layer that would cause this issue. The health district is currently reviewing our plans. So when we come back to you guys, hope to have an official approval letter in hand. I will show you the next thing just for your education. As you guys know, we're just trying to at this point create a two lot subdivision. I know or the applicant is aware that we need to go back to Inland Wetlands and this board for site plan approval. They want to do that after the subdivision is is finalized. But in general, just to give you guys an idea of what we're doing, this is the existing, site again, Route 6 on the bottom, Lake Ave on the left hand side. The goal would be to split off this lot to create a second lot for proposed,
retail developments, in the front. You can see in yellow, I highlighted roughly where that upland review line was, and this building obviously stays untouched towards the rear. So that's kind of a quick five minute high level overview for you guys. I'm happy to answer any questions. I know, I've talked to your zoning enforcement officer Jim Halsey quite a bit. He'd let me know, and I saw at the last meeting, obviously, we're aware of you a project that you guys have across the street, some parking enhancements and picnic areas for, the trail that you guys have associated along Cheney Brook. So we've obviously, gonna take that into consideration when we finalize design plans for site plan approval. And I know this obviously subdivision needs to go to public hearing, but I figured, it'd be good for you guys to see and hear from me prior to setting that public hearing. Hearing.
Mr. Chairman, I'll leave it at that. If you guys have any questions, happy to answer tonight.
Okay. First question would be, when you drew the Upland review area line, was that 100 feet or 200 feet?
I believe what we drew was, let me just double check real quick. I can't see that. We haven't
shown at 100 feet. But now that you're saying that, I'm thinking it's 200. Yeah. It should be 200. Okay.
So I have a plan with showing a 200 foot review area. Say again, I read somewhere that it was 200. Yeah.
Want to make sure that we're all in sync on it being 200 feet. I don't know that that will have any great shakes on what we do, but it would be nice to have the drawing be correct. Any other commission members have any questions or comments at this point? What's the elevation of that lot?
Mister mister questioner, the the lot varies. I'll I'll just share my screen again just so I can show you visually. So let me see here. This plan. So in this corner here is roughly the highest point here around February. And when you get to a low spot in this corner, it's two ninety two. It's about seven foot drop from here to here. If you look at the street view, kind of imperceptible, but in general, it flows from this corner down to this corner. There's a culvert flared end section in this area where water from the lot crosses under the highway. Are are you are you planning on sharing driveway?
No. I'll I'll bring that up again too so you can see that. So this is this is our preliminary plan. Has not been submitted to you guys yet. So, but obviously, I know from a curiosity standpoint, you wanna see in the future. So what we're proposing to do would be, to have a a driveway on Route 6, which would be controlled by DOT. We need an encroachment permit for that one. So we have one here. We also do show a connection to Lake Road here. This is the plumbing driveway that would remain in place. So we are not planning on sharing any driveways with Thea butter. What retail are you proposing?
At the moment right now, the applicant be at this hearing tonight. He was traveling. He will be at the next meeting. At this time, they do not have assigned tenants for the structured speculative. But I'm assuming by the time I come back to you, they will have a name and business that they can share. But at this time, they don't have anybody.
Is all the parking area that you show on that an impervious surface?
Great question, Mr. Chairman. We do show a mixture, or we plan to show when we submit for site plan approval, a mix of pervious and impervious parking.
Okay. I know you were you said in your letter 49.9% coverage and it looked a lot more than that just looking at your picture there.
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Great. Yes. So we did do soil testing on the property. There's some good infiltration rates. So that's a benefit and good use for pervious pavement. But also to your point, we need to make sure we comply with your regulations and you guys do have a 50% impervious coverage rate and to make sure we comply with that, we've had a blend of both.
Any other Commission members have comments or questions at this point? I do have a couple for you then, Matt. Know on the picture we're looking at right now, it has zoning information and you've got the little chart with all the zoning requirements there. If on the plan that we look at, it could show also Lot 1 and Lot 2, just where we're at so we could see all that concisely on there, that would be helpful. No problem.
So that would be as required by the regulations as well as what you provide.
So there's another comment. I can make two more columns in this chart that show the requirements and then each of the lots hitting those requirements. Got it.
I guess, Jim, I jumped over you. We should have given you a chance to speak to the application.
No, Matt covered it very well. He's been at this for quite a while. Okay.
So one of the questions that I had, and I know Matt you had asked for a couple of waivers in the letter that you sent over to the Inland's group. And I was wondering, Jim, shouldn't we expect to see our checklist for site plan approval?
Not at this time. Is that seeking site plan approval? Okay, I thought this was labeled a site plan.
No. Well, maybe labeled a site plan, but we don't have a site plan application. All he's looking to do is subdivide the property at this time. Yep. Okay.
Mr. Chairman, when I come back for site plan approval, I will definitely make sure I have a full complete package with that checklist for you. No, I understand. I'm just trying to
when we get through I guess I'm going to use the checklist to go through and make sure that all those things that are applicable to the subdivision that we talk about. And I thought that was a helpful tool. Certainly the things that you would want a waiver from, I wouldn't expect to be needing a waiver. I would expect it to be that you and Jim talked about it, it wouldn't be applicable at this stage that we just put NA there and go on and that sort of thing. But it might not be required until we get to the site plan approval. Just think the checklist is a helpful tool. I like it. Couldn't agree with more. Yep.
You said that you were waiting for a report from the Thad King. And so we would expect to have that as required by our subdivision regs before we approve the subdivision? Absolutely,
yep. And then you were, if I look on the application that you submitted for that, I think it talks about the topographic plan, which if it's not on what you asked for, it's required by our section 5.7 of the regs. And while the topography looks almost level there, there was a couple other things about where the septic system could go and all that stuff that I think, you know, it might be in Thad King's report, but we need to make sure we cover all that stuff there. Absolutely, absolutely, yep.
Jim, are there any issues with the subdivision as far as open space or fee in lieu of open space for the subdivision? And it wasn't clear to me as I was trying to go through the regulations on that particular issue.
I believe it's applicable at the discretion of Commission. I don't believe the regs distinguish between residential and
commercial properties. They don't in but they all this wire.
The whole open space. Requirements are all at the discretion of it's up to 10% of the value such, you know, uses language of that nature. Yeah. Some counts don't impose it on industrial commercial property. Can look into that a little further. Okay.
Well, I know all the subdivisions we've done so far, we've had open space subdivision allocated as part of the subdivision process as opposed to the fee. I don't think that would be the way to go here. The question I was trying to find my way through is, is there a fee associated with this? I would always be happy to have a little money go into our open space fund.
Just for the record, the fee that's listed on the applicant's checklist is outdated. And he was made aware of it and Kim kind of promptly kind of checked and provided
it. The next comment I had, Matt, is I know we require some kind of monumentation at the new property line that you're proposing there? And it doesn't show that on the drawing we were looking at tonight.
Sure. That's an easy change to make, And Mr. Yeah, obviously, if it was approved, we're happy to install any that's appropriate.
Okay. On the drawing that you were showing us, it shows the billboard sign from Franklin Plumbing on the different lot. Correct. What would be the plan for that sign upon subdivision?
Yes. So I actually was speaking with Jim about that earlier today. Our interpretation of your current sign regs seem to show that that would not be allowed to stay because it would be an off-site premise sign. So we would have to remove it. Jim did let me know that you guys are in the process of revising regulations. So it's possible in the future that something may exist to allow it to stay. But I think at this current time, we'd have to remove that sign. Yeah. And I don't think any of the changes we're looking at would change that specific
issue. So And then I would suggest that you don't call it a billboard sign because billboards aren't allowed in Andover anyhow.
Yeah, that is a faux pas by our surveying group. I will change the more appropriate name. And
then I guess the last and probably the subtlest of issues on the lot is, and if you can put the photo, not the photo, your drawing up again. So I see where on the frontage along Route 6, you've reduced it from that you've reduced it to 65 feet is allowed by our regulations. My question is that you show the front of the building oriented toward Lake Road, at least I think I saw something on there. And I don't know that you have the required frontage on Lake Road. And my thought was that the frontage ought to be on the front. Now certainly you've got lots of frontage on two sides there. But it just seems to me that the front of the building should face the side of the lot that has the required amount of frontage? You're on mute, Matt.
Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Yeah, Mr. Chairman, thanks for the question. I can definitely look into that and get back to you. I know you do have stipulations in your regs to reduce the frontage as it relates to, I believe, the orientation of the building. But it being a corner lot, we do obviously have frontage on on two two roads and not one. So I can definitely double check regs and and and cross t's and dot i's, make sure I come back with a clear chart and and and plan showing that it complies. Very good.
And then I guess my last comment is that you show the setback off of Lake Road going to the center line, where I think you're showing the setback from the side going to the edge of the pavement. I don't know which of those are I correct right this just noticed they were different.
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question, Mr. Chairman. And I actually looked that one up again myself just to refresh my memory. You do have stipulations in your zoning code that say it should be from the center of the road except for when it's along Route 6 and then it's from the edge of pavement.
That's an aspect on section 11.2, where all the dimensional requirements, there's some exceptions listed Very below
good. I believe that is correct, Mr. Chairman, but I can come back and show you that section code just to confirm with Jim that it's appropriate. Okay.
But that was all the questions that I had for you. And I'll ask again, do any of the other Commission members, regular members, alternates have any other questions or comments that they'd like to address at this point? Okay, hearing none, let's talk about the way ahead a little bit. The next step would normally be for us to do a site walk. I don't know that there's a lot of information other than what we saw by driving by it. It kind of looks like an open lot at this point. Do the Commission members think we should be doing a sidewalk? Or are we happy with the information that we've gotten tonight? I'm pretty satisfied.
I don't think there's much more to see. It's a pretty Okay. Level
That was my thought too. But that was the next step that we would do. And so with where we are tonight with the information, should we schedule a public hearing for December or should we review the information in December and schedule the public hearing for January? Matt, I'd ask you before we have that discussion, how time sensitive is the stuff for your applicant?
Thanks, Mr. Chairman. The applicant would obviously prefer to keep the timeline moving as fast as possible so they prefer December. Given that you guys asked for stuff tonight and I'm still waiting for a final sign off from health, I would say if we could do December tentatively with the fact that I can get you stuff in a timely manner, I'd love to hold that date. And obviously, if I if I can't return everything you needed expeditiously, then I'd obviously, January would be a second option.
Okay. So I'm looking, our next meeting is December 21. That's a Monday. Would you expect it reasonable to think that we would get all the information to support the public hearing a week ahead of time by Monday prior to that so we have a week to review it? Don't think that's a problem, Mr. Chairman. I guess,
Jim, I'll go back to you because you have to get the notifications out. What's our timeline for notification? Is it two weeks?
Yes. It's ten days to neighbors. You get it in the paper. It's a little trickier because the way that it falls, but some twenty first is fine. I mean, can meet that. Okay. So
guess is it the twenty first? Is it sorry, is it the second? Third. Third. Third. Third Monday would be the twentieth, correct? Not the twenty first. I have a feeling you must be right. Well
I just want someone to double check me. I'm looking I'm just trying to find my calendar here. Twentieth. Okay. So meeting would be the twentieth. I need to get something back to you by the thirteenth. And then, Jim, we need to notify
the week prior, ten days before. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's signs sign requirement. I will get that information to you regardless of what the date is.
So Jim, if you can touch base with Matt, two weeks ahead of time on about the sixth, make sure everything looks like it's fallen into place. We won't post the public hearing if we don't think we're going to be able to add materials. But it seems like everything we were talking about tonight we should be able to have by then. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So
with that, I'll make a motion to schedule a public hearing for the application at 580 Lake Road for December 20. Second that. Second that, Ian. Thank you. Any discussion? Hearing none, I don't know what it's called, but we're going to start out if there's anybody opposed. I think it's unanimous consent. And if anybody's opposed, raise your hand or say I'm opposed. Okay, hearing none, we will say the motion passed unanimously, five-zero-zero. And I think that's all we've got for you tonight, Matt. You got any questions for us before we head on with our agenda?
No, I'm great. Thank you guys so much for your time tonight. I'll coordinate with Jim prior to coming back here. So thank you so much. I appreciate the patience with the technology.
Okay. Well, we've all been there and better you than me. Couldn't agree. Thanks.
Bye. Thanks, Matt. Yep. Okay. Back to our agenda here. The next item up is zone change of property at 329 Route 6. Anybody on the call to address that topic with the Commission.
Chairman, I did not. Chair contact. Chair The owner of the property. To let him know that it would be on the agenda for discussion. Didn't hear back from Mark Branson until very recently. It wasn't. Nope, I'm fine with that.
I mean, it's not an application and I'm not sure there was any reason for him to be on, but nonetheless, I could have let her know and I didn't.
Okay, so I guess, and I can't remember with the commission if we spoke to this item at the last meeting or not. The question came up, what is the zoning status of this particular lot? There's some kind of like the BB kennel, there's some correspondence that suggests that it's zone changed to business. There's some other things that suggest that it wasn't, it wasn't really clear. Our attorney Mark Branch at this point was suggesting that the most straightforward and best way to proceed is to have another application for zoning change. But they were still looking into other options there. And so that's what the topic is about. But we won't discuss any more on that one tonight. We'll put that off to the next meeting as well. Okay, that completes new business. I guess I will go down to old business at this point. And the first item is the sign regs. And I will start out by saying, I think most of you here probably with the exception of Steve, we spent some time going over signs and sign regs early this year and I kind of gave up in frustration. Attorney Mark Branch offered to take a cut at it that I've been mulling over for the last month or so, and I'm still not real happy with it. It comes down to an issue of political signs. Apparently, we have to allow political signs to be as big as any other sign that we have in our regulations. And we can put no restrictions on them as far as how many or how long they're up, and all that kind of stuff.
And it just doesn't seem right to me that we should be able to put a political sign as big as a sign that we would have in a shopping mall or something like that. And so I'm still trying to wrestle with are there any lines of demarcation there? Anyhow, Abby, if you've got me allowed to share my screen.
There you go. You should be able to know. Okay.
And I'm going to try to go through with the commission because it's, you know, we're not late. I was hoping we would be and it would give me a good excuse to not do this. But we'll start working our way through some of the things that I do think we can talk about and get that out of the way so we get down to the more meaty issues after I've had another opportunity to discuss it with Mark Branch and maybe we'd have him come to a meeting to help answer questions and that sort of thing. But if I start from the top here, on intent, we just added the comment, while ensuring constitutional right of free speech is protected, I guess we got to get rid of, we got two welfares in a row there, that's a typo and we get rid of that. But that's what we're trying to do is make sure that we do not infringe on anybody's constitutional right of free speech. What that really means is that the sign is a sign, we can regulate what the size of the sign is, but we can't regulate what goes on the sign. Moving down to sign functions, you know,
we were looking at sign functions before we had a multitude of different kinds of signs. I couldn't tell the difference between several of the signs and I went out and I would look at a sign and say, well, what bucket does this sign fit in? And I couldn't figure that out either. And so we've combined the sign functions into three different ones for our definition. And the first one's identification. And you can read the words there, I'm not going to read them out loud, but does anybody have any comments on those specific words? I think those words are probably okay and that covers a bunch of our signs identifying what the business commodity or service is. That's what that one does. That's one of the three buckets that we're gonna end up talking about. The next one is the billboard. We didn't want to prohibit it in the definition, we'll prohibit that later on, but we're saying a billboard would be a sign with a face in excess of 32 square feet. And again, 32 square feet is your basic four by eight sheet of plywood, which I thought,
there's a lot of signs that go up that are made out of a sheet of plywood and anything bigger than that's a billboard, then that's the definition of that. So that's only up there so that we can prohibit it later on. The second category is a temporary sign. And again, the words all look good. This is where we do talk about a political sign being in the temporary sign bucket. And I guess at the end of the day, my thought would be a temporary sign doesn't need a permit, a permanent sign does need a permit. It could be just that easy, but I haven't figured out how to make it that easy in the writing of the regs yet, but that's where I'm trying to go. All these things, know, tag sale, steak fry at the firehouse, political signs, and a political sign includes those signs that say unmask our kids, Black Lives Matter, all those kinds of things that have a political slant to them are the political signs where we can't really put too much restriction on. And so one of the things I need to come through with Markbratz is, are you telling me that the sign at the Extramart looks to me to be higher than 10 feet and bigger than 32 feet, and that's what our regulations require. And you know, how can that be? Something's not in sync with our regulations at that point yet, I'm trying to figure that out. But we all know what a temporary sign is, that's what you bang onto the tree, you put in the ground announcing your tag sale,
announcing your political candidates, all that kind of stuff, the bake sale at the school, you name it, that's a temporary sign. We got rid of a bunch more public interest sign. This is what I thought, you know, going through it used, I thought this was anything that was of interest to the public. But these are the signs that the town or the state or the federal government posts. And they, you know, speed limit signs, no passing signs. We've got signs that, you know, at the corner of 316 and School Road that show this, the firehouse, the school, town hall. We've got signs for Hearst Farm that the town has put up. All those kinds of things are public interest signs. And that's the third bucket that we'd be in. And so I think public interest signs are permanent, identification signs are permanent, and temporary signs are temporary.
And it was going to be just that easy. So anybody have any comments on that little bit?
I have a question for you on that. Have other towns used this three bucket approach or would this be unique to Andover?
It's unique to Andover. I have looked at a couple of other towns and I've not been happy with theirs either. This recent thing about free speech and signs is, I haven't seen a good example out there that I was happy with and wanted to use. And if you get The Hartford Courant, there was a copy of, well, there was a story, I think it was on the front page, where the ribbons around trees in some town in the Northwest side of the state was the big political to do. Somebody for Veterans Day wanted to put yellow ribbons around the trees for honoring the veterans.
The town said no, because, you know, if we allow that, then we'd have to allow all these different colors of ribbons around trees and they weren't going there. So everybody's wrestling with the political ramifications of this, but I haven't seen anything I like better than what we're trying to do. And we're trying to build on the lessons learned from other towns because Mark Branch writes a lot of other town regulations so he's trying to go there, but it just hasn't all sunk into me yet. But it's getting a little closer. I just hope that Mark Branch doesn't grow frustrated with me as I try to make this understandable.
Conceptually, like idea of three buckets. It makes it easy to understand and I think would be fairly easy to enforce as well as you go further on. And I was just wondering about other places We having done might become the model for other places. We could, yep. And
that'd be okay too. So going back to those temporary signs, I would like to have a limit for how long those signs can be up. But if political signs go in there, you know, you kinda, that takes all that out the window. And there's gotta be a way to do that, I just haven't figured out what it is yet. So that's what I'm struggling with is how to put limits on these temporary signs that don't infringe on free speech and get us in trouble. And that's at the end of the day where we're at. Next part goes on sign construction definitions and I guess canopy, you know, flat freestanding, those are all kind of straightforward. I wrestled with mechanical signs. Right this minute, it says in Andover, we don't have any mechanical signs. And I'm looking for some feedback from the Commission on do we want the little blow up sign that you see at the tax preparer guy has gone crazy or I see him at car lots and all that stuff. I don't know that I would see it any place other than the gas stations in town. But right this minute, my thinking is we probably don't need those at Ando. And so I would include that in the definition of mechanical science here, say we're not going to do the forced air things that have the blow up guide going around. Those are kind of popular. Anybody think we ought to
have those?
I think you should have a provision for it, because at some point it will come up, right?
Well, might, it could. The other thing that Mark and I were talking about as we were going through this, and there's a lot of signs that have scrolling letters and that kind of thing. My thought was we could have those inside is what you put on the inside window of your restaurant the sign? And yes, it is. It is a sign. Would we expect somebody to put, you know, I've seen the flashing open signs. Okay, that's pretty good. I don't know that I got heartburn with that. I don't want it out on the road because I think it distracts drivers. But if you have it back there in the window saying you're open and you want to get somebody's attention, I may be okay with that. Looking for other thoughts of the commission as well on that.
I think the definition is okay, but calling it mechanical as a description, really covers more than mechanical, right? It doesn't have to be mechanical. It's really, what you're talking about is a dynamic display or an active display sign. I think that would be more descriptive for a definition.
So say that again, I was getting ready to take a note and my brain Yeah, mechanical,
if you read the definition of mechanical, it really doesn't necessarily have to have any moving mechanical parts, right? Yeah, it can be electronically moving. Yeah, so I would propose we call it active display or dynamic display, something of that nature. Yeah, I like that. Okay. Very good.
Go back to the temporary Jed. There's no time limit on that?
Well, we're not down. We'll get there in a few minutes, but there's inconsistencies. I don't know how we'll get there. We're sneaking in on that, but the basic answer is no, no time limits. At least I think that if you're gonna, your attorney branch is very reluctant to put restrictions on here, anything that says here are the rules for political science, because he says that's a red flag for anybody who wants to go challenge it. Why are you putting restrictions on my science? But if we include them with other bunch of temporary science, how can we say you can do all this for the political one, but you can't do it for the others. So I haven't come through the answer to that. We thought we had some things, but it didn't work out and we'll talk about those in a couple of minutes. The projecting roof, we added something about a sky sign, any sign suspended by means of balloon or other than lighter than air device. I was concerned about, you know, somebody's going to have a signed angler from a drone, but I think that's probably cost prohibitive. I can see you putting the little hot air balloon or something to hold something up there. We certainly can't restrict somebody from flying a banner behind an airplane over the town if they were going do that. So I didn't put anything about the drones in there, but we did put in that we're going to have a definition of a sky sign and that's what that is. And then we added one for the window too, and this is where we could include something about the
size of a window sign if we wanted. I think I'm kind of open to, I don't like to put a lot of restrictions on people any more than we have to, and I'm okay with if it's in the window being the scrolling marquee kind of thing or the flashing open and that kind of thing. We'd have to work on some of our definitions to include that. I'm going to go down to sign lighting right now. Right now we've got two different kinds of lighting. We've got natural lighting, which is sunlight, and we've got artificial, which is you shine a light on it. And it does talk about, you know, like at a gas station, they have the price of gas being lit up and that sort of thing. So that's where we are there. I'm still working on do we need to expand on that at all and go from there. I'll probably add to that. Nothing for you guys to consider on that tonight. General regulations. I thought the first one deals with how big the sign is measuring it. And I thought this should be pretty easy if you used a four by eight sheet of plywood to build the sign, it was a 32 square foot sign. That's not what our regulation said. You know, it talks about logos, characters, you've got an area that's enclosing all these characters and symbols and Mark was trying to make it a little clearer where you draw a rectangle, triangle, or semicircle around the lettering and go it from there. And his reason for that was we know how to calculate all those things fairly easily. And so I agree with doing that. I'll talk to him about why it can't be just the face of the sign. You know, if it's a four by four sheet of plywood, it's 16 square feet, if it's four by eight, it's 32, you go from that.
Seems easier and better to me. I don't know what the downside is, but I've got to do some more talking to Mark on that.
I agree with you Jed, because by this definition, if the characters are all within a four by eight or 32 square foot section, the rest of the sign could be Yeah, cuboid size,
and that's not what we're looking for. And so I want to make sure we contain it to that four by eight sheet. So that's that. The next one going down is essentially no change, but we certainly haven't been enforcing it. This is where it talks about all signs for birth there shall be clear of all rights of way. Now, I changed that to be street rights of way just because what I was really trying to prohibit was all the signs that line up right along the edge of the road. I wanted to get them back away. And I don't know, know, when I was talking to Mark Branch, we had initially thought 15 feet, that may be a little excessive, maybe 10 feet is better. I see Mark avoided the issue, didn't put it in here. But my thought is we shouldn't have all these signs right up along the side of the road. They're distracting,
they hinder the sight lines as you're going around corners, and just don't like them. So I was going to, I made it less restrictive than it used to be by just putting it as a street right of way. And I also left it no closer than 15 feet to the lot line. So as I walk around, I see signs that are just about on the lot line. Nope, if you want a sign out there, it ought to be in the middle of your yard. So everybody knows that's your sign, not the neighbor's sign. Maybe the neighbor doesn't want it right up to his property line. So that's really no change, loosened it up a little bit, but I thought that was, I liked it. Okay, the next part, no big deal there. So here's where we put in something mechanical signs, sky signs, billboards are prohibited. It goes back to, I think we need to expound on the mechanical signs or to use Steve's word, the dynamic sign. There's probably some room in there that we do want that. Right now with the update, we were just going to prohibit them, and that's pretty much same as it was in the past. We're trying to loosen that up because there are a lot of places that use the electronic signs now. And I think they're very popular, and we don't want to be too extreme on our sign restrictions. I like to give people latitude the weekend.
I feel that we should allow at least some of these, find a way to allow some because people want to be able to advertise their business or something and this is quite limiting and I think we need to offer some way that they can do it.
Really, you know, having been on the commission for a couple of years now, Scott and Leanne and Susan probably got, you know, the longer experience based on that. The only sign discussion I'm aware of in the time that I've been on the commission was when the Extramark, they put about 20 of those big feather signs along Route 6. And we decided that was excessive and we went over and asked them to remove them and they did. Now I see there's a couple of those feather signs out there now. It's not excessive and that's probably a totally different, that's a different, what bucket do those go with? Are those temporary signs? Are those identification signs? Not exactly sure. But I agree with Ann. We do want to allow people to advertise their business, but we don't want it to look like the Las Vegas Strip either. And so trying to come up with something
that is protecting the interests of the people of Andover, trying to understand what that is as best we can to what they're looking for and they like our rural character. I think when you put a bunch of signs up that distracts from that. But that's why we got a public hearing before we're all done on this to get feedback from the public once we take our cut on that. So yes, we will work on that a little more and I share your sentiment. We don't want to be we want to encourage people to come to Andover. We don't want to be making it so that nobody wants to come here.
Jen? Yep.
Isn't that covered by the size of their sign restriction? It is not covered in that we don't want people having multiple signs for the same business on the same property, which is along the lines of I think it was the subway or the Extramart. It might have been the subway who put out those feather signs. Doesn't matter if it was them or Extramart because the property is the same. But I think you would think anyway that some of the concern about having multiple signs if that's what Anne's worried about making sure people have at least one sign that if they have a sign that's an adequate size then they you know they probably don't want to have more than one sign either.
I wasn't going so much on the number of signs as I think we shouldn't allow some of what had been called mechanical signs. Something maybe that you know it says you don't, there are things that scroll or alternate or move or screens or projections. I think some of those things are good. It adds to their sign, even if it's still a certain size, but it will get people's attention more. And that's what signs are for. They're advertising and they're trying to get people to come to their business. And we want people to come to businesses in town. We shouldn't be limiting them too much.
And if you could find an example of a mechanical sign, I've been out looking and I haven't found one yet. Because I don't you know, I just haven't seen it. But if you can find an example that we can talk about. I'll keep my eye out this And
anybody else as well. If you think here's a sign that somebody's got, most places they don't have the mechanical signs. They've got sort of, and we'll talk in a minute when we get into what kind of signs can Andover Plaza have and that sort of thing. But I've not seen a lot of heartburn on any of that. It's always been these temporary ones. And again, I think the feather signs probably exceeded the 10 foot in height thing. It might have been a square footage thing. I don't even know anymore. But I don't want to be having Jim spending a lot of his day tracking down sign stuff.
It would seem like for the mechanical signs and I read this I read this that Mark submitted and there's so many little fine lines. There's a lot to keep track of. But it would seem to me that that would get into another area of discussion which is addressed in here which has to do with lighting. Yep.
So I'm sure we're going to get to that on its own, too.
Well, we talked about the definitions here. And we're going you know, right this minute, our regs, some signs you can only have natural illumination and some signs say that you can have a light shining on them. That's what we've got now. So I've got to work on creating some flexibility to allow these different signs that you're talking about because I do think that's where we are now. We're all on electronic displays. So we got to be able to do that. So that's what we had so far, Leanne, was that little bit of definition. And we'll get into the actual regs there some more in a minute. As you can see, we did the mechanical signs, sky signs, billboards are prohibited. That was just a combination of this one here we added the sky signs too. Okay, and we're in general requirements again. So no sign permitted which directly or indirectly creates a traffic hazard or may shine on the adjacent adjoining property. I guess there was some discussion at one point in time. I didn't think it was too bad about the lights on the signs on Andover Plaza. Are they a distraction to the drivers or not? I didn't think they bothered me too much. My eyes are as sensitive as anybody's.
There's certainly some, if you look over at the plaza, you can see some light shining on the signs. But if you're driving down the road, it wasn't distracting to me after dark. So I guess that was the other comment that I've heard discussed at the meeting was those lights. And that was when we were coming up with our lighting regs, that conversation took place.
It's important Yeah. To have enough illumination so you can see if you get into a business. Up You on 4 in Coventry
cut out, Ann. I see your lips moving. Don't hear you anymore.
Anne, we did not hear your last comment. Sorry. I know I have missed the driveway at night because it's not illuminated. Yep, understand. It is important.
Well, but that's an issue of parking lot lighting, which is a different thing. That's not necessarily the sign. We've got to have sufficient lighting in the parking lot so you can see to get in there and get around safely. Here's a this is 15.4.6 is the paragraph where we tried to put some time limits in here. And this is where I really got wrapped around the axle. So we're trying to say no temporary signs shall be displayed for a time period longer than thirty days prior to the event than seven days after the event. Or eighteen months.
Well, and so, you know, we know if you're going to have a tag sale, certainly thirty days prior to the event is plenty of time. Seven days after it would be nice to make sure that the sign is taken down. So I asked Mark, what are we talking about? How do we jump from thirty days to eighteen months? That's a bit of a leap. He said, well, if you've a piece of property that's for sale and the for sale sign is a temporary sign, you've got to leave that up until the property is sold. And I agree with that. Maybe so that's where the eighteen months came from. And that was in our regs before he didn't add that.
Chad, what about the signs that aren't necessarily tied to an event? Like, you know, you mentioned earlier, Black Lives Matter sign or the masking signs. We're considering them under the definition of temporary signs but they're not tied to a specific event necessarily. Yes,
correct. And that's where I'm working with Mark now because thirty days doesn't do it, eighteen months doesn't do it. Right. But it's not a permanent sign. Now, I'd be happy if you want one of those signs up and you want to stay up, go get a permit. That would discourage anybody from doing it. But the next thing that's going to happen is as soon as we make a requirement, somebody's let's say we say a sign could be up for three months. And the head of the Democratic Party and the head of the Republican Party are happy with three months putting up the signs before an election. It used to be thirty days. They didn't like that because most people had already voted thirty days before the election last time. Needs to be longer. They're happy with that. But if we wanted something more, well, you get into the game of, okay, I've got my sign up for three months, I'll take it down for a day, and then I'll put it back up again. Exactly.
And then I just, I don't like that. Would be nice to come up with something that made sense and people in general could live with. But I just don't see that happening, you know, with all the funny stuff going on with signs and the vulgarity on some signs and all that stuff in the free speech thing. All you're going to do is annoy somebody and then they're going to put up a sign that you don't like just to spite you. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. So this is that whole temporary sign thing is the place where I got the most heartburn on there right now. We don't know of another town that's figured it out.
Well, so the and I forget the town that Mark Branch said I should look at because they were in pretty good shape. They said you could have two signs for sixty days. So it was two signs for a given number of days per quarter. And you know, that's problematic with only two signs. You know, you go into the election and people want to put five signs up. So this whole, the temporary sign thing in one, one thought I had is I just don't discuss temporary signs at all, take them out, because we're not going do anything with them. We certainly don't pay any attention to how long the no trespassing signs up. You know, there's we buy houses signs. I see them banged on trees around down. In fact, you know, the one coming down Erdoni Road, it's so faded off, can't see anything on the sign anymore at all. So this whole thing about temporary signs, I'm just not happy with yet. But if we can agree on most of the other stuff,
and then I'll go back and look at dynamic signs, sign lighting, and try to do something with temporary signs. Even if we don't put any restrictions on those at all, except for the temporary sign can't be any bigger than the, can't be any smaller than the biggest sign that we allow elsewhere. And again, I got heartburn with that too, because Andover Plaza should be able to have a bigger sign than your tag sale sign. So that's where I'm at. And I don't have, if anybody's got good words to send me that they think tackles that one, I'd happy to get it, but that's where I get stuck. The next part, I'm a little questioning on to the signs requiring review by the Commission under Section 23 of the regulations. I didn't see where signs needed Commission review as part of a site plan. I'll go back and check some work. But you know, the sign regs ought to be the sign regs. It ought to be you apply for a permit and Jim deals with it. I just don't know. Again, that's why I wish we would run out of time tonight and I didn't have to show, share all the things I don't know yet about going through this. In non compliance, you'll be construed as zoning violation, you know, we'll do that. We took out the words that the zoning enforcement officer could run around and get rid of all those signs. Legally, that had just too much risk to it and he said we don't want to go there. That's all for general signs everywhere, not perfect. Then we get into signs permitted in all zones.
The first two are about your towns. Well, the directional sign, we got rid of the thing there, But as I go through, you know, it seems to me I can reduce these to one item because they're all public interest signs. And then, you know, maybe we want that to be limited to 16 square feet instead of 32 square feet. I haven't seen any of these town signs bigger than 16 square feet, but at some point somebody's going to come talk to us about a welcome to Andover sign might be a little bigger than that, I don't know. But Mark Grants is trying to push me to reduce the size of the signs and I think we don't allow for big enough signs in some cases. Right now, 32 feet, I think, is more than adequate. And again, we're going to allow political sign that big then. I figured the town could do that. Here we got rid of all these confusing words that made me think about public interest signs were things like tag sales and all that, and we got rid of that.
So that's signs permitted in all zones. It really talks about the signs that the town can put up or the state or the federal government for that matter. Now let's talk about signs permitted in the ARD or Andover Lake District. This is where Right now it says temporary signs for construction. The guy's doing a construction project, building a little housing development, he wants to put up a sign. And so we've allowed him to be 32 square feet. 32 is a consistent number we use all over here. We used to, we were talking about each subcontractor could put up a sign and pretty soon you get a bunch of signs. Mark's recommendation was we limit it to 32 square feet. They could put one for the overall project and divvy up the remaining square feet to all the contractors there, but we don't want any signs greater than 32 square feet. Height not exceed 10 feet from the ground. That's pretty standard as we go through here. Illumination shall be all natural. You know, we don't have the spotlights on it. A permit for the zoning agent is required. So I said, well, why for a temporary sign do we want a permit? And so I'm still working with Mark on that. And then he refers us back to 15.4. Identification signs, we limited to 16 square feet. That's like, you know, the name of the apartment complex or something if we were to ever get one of those. Again, smaller than 32, no more than 10 feet above the ground.
And if we had more than one sign, we were eliminating each sign that's 16 square feet, no more than 32 square feet total. Here's where we did temporary signs for real estate. And we're going through this with Mark, he was saying, you know, we probably combined the temporary signs for real estate and construction into one. And that's when I started going through saying, maybe it should all be just the one there. All temporary signs, just temporary signs. And we're getting rid of the roadside, wayside fruit market things because we don't have a lot of those. And it's 906, So I think that's where I've droned on enough about science for now, got a little bit of feedback, but you understand why I'm not done with science yet. And haven't been happy with the product that I can bring to you to say, yep, this is ready to go.
And Jed, one thing I noticed in every section, we've limited it to 32 square feet or less, right? Yep. So why do we need to have a definition of billboard If we've already limited all the signs to 32 square feet or less. Do you know that billboard includes off-site signage. But, yep, I don't know every sign we've defined,
we've said it's 32 square feet or less. So, by definition you can't have anything larger than that. So we really don't need a definition of billboard.
And Steve, I'm gonna let everybody think about that. I'm gonna take a five minute break because I got too much water running through me. I'll be right back. Okay, so I'm back. Lose anybody else there? Everybody else still with us? What I was really doing, Steve, was I was going out to gather my thoughts on why we don't want to billboard. Okay.
And billboards, certainly not temporary signs, not identification signs. They are advertising for something else, and it didn't fall into any of our buckets. And we just wanted to make sure that nobody got the idea that we should be putting a billboard in Andover Long Route 6.
Yeah, I'm not disputing the fact that we don't want billboards. I just thought that the three buckets we identified were captured everything. And because they were all limited to four by eight or 32 square feet, then it, you know, by definition you couldn't put a sign up that was bigger than that. But it sounds like you're saying there are some areas where we haven't defined.
I will go back and look at that And I didn't really look at it from the perspective of why does it need to be here. Just recognized we didn't want billboards, and so I didn't do any more thinking on it than that. I was thinking on how do I limit these temporary signs?
Yeah, I'm just thinking it's kind of a belt and suspenders approach. If we limit all signs to 32 square feet or less, then by definition, we've covered it. You can't have a billboard then.
That goes back, I've got to go with Mark Branch on, does the Planning and Zoning Commission have any, you know, I don't, we never have the authority to ignore regulations. So I don't think that there's anything that we can do that would say, okay, you can have one that's 80 square feet. But I'll check with him because it seems to me, and again, we don't have a lot of commercial businesses, but I think looking at the sign on the Extramart, it looks to me that it's higher than 10 feet and it looks to me that it's bigger than 32 square feet. And Mark keeps trying to push me to make the sign smaller, there are places where I think maybe they should be a little bit bigger.
And so, I'm still wrestling with trying to come to grips on something that I'd be happy to take to a public hearing and defend. And not there yet, and go take another think on the billboard sign if that's actually necessary. All we're doing is somebody the bright idea that they might want to say, well, that's unconstitutional. I want to put up a billboard.
I agree with you. If there's cases where we have a business identification sign that is allowed to be larger than 32 square feet, then we would need a definition of a billboard sign, right? Yep.
I guess I will, we got one more block before we get into the business district. And it's, And so up here, these are identification signs for uses on other than single family dwellings. And so we went through that, Okay. So I asked Mark, so what are the rules for the temporary signs on a single family dwelling? Don't we need something there? And he was saying, well, what kind of sign are you talking about? You know, tag sale sign, that kind of thing? I said, yeah, any of those things that somebody posts out front. And so we added something here, and I don't know if this is right or not yet, identification signs for single family dwellings, no more than one flat sign not to exceed two square feet. And if I could get more of those temporary signs into this, know, and this is really a temporary sign for single family dwelling. So again, it's kind of, this is not your street address number, which we all kind of say, don't need a sign for to put that out there. Anyhow, I want to bucket in here for the single family dwellings, telling somebody what they can do, Because it would be my hope that if somebody said, oh, I want to put up the sign. What do our regulations say about that? You would be able to find something in the regulations that address the issue that the majority of people would be falling under. Granted, most people would never dream of the fact that there's a regulation saying about putting that sign out in their front yard.
So we don't have too many people that would be scrolling through our regs trying to find out whether they could put their tag seal sign out. But if they did, I'd like our regs to encompass that. And that's what I'm trying to do. And maybe it'll go back to, I just want to leave it out because I don't want to regulate those signs because it's too hard. And so I'm not happy with either answer yet. And probably it'll end up being which answer does the Commission like the least that you know, that offends us the least that we'll end up with. But I'm not ready to tell you that I'm sold on any particular item there. And that I think is probably more than enough on signs. If nothing else, you understand why it's easy, and it's really frustrating because it's not something that anybody's going look at anyhow. If they did, I'm not sure we're going to spend the time regulating. But we don't want to have unconstitutionality into our regs, which we do right now, so we got to get rid of that. We'll make them hopefully a little bit better. I've given up on perfect. I'm shooting for good enough, and that's where that will be. So thank you for listening. I've got a couple of hints from you to go back and look at, and that's all, that's more than enough on science. So I will stop sharing. Phew, look at that. Next item in the old business was affordable housing plan. Bill Warner's out actually working on it. You know, he's been working with the town, getting listing
of all our houses and property transactions and all that stuff. I'm planning to have him come to the December meeting and just give a little introduction, who he is so you all know him, and go from there. And that's all I'm going to say about the affordable housing plan at this point. We actually are working. Next item on the agenda is approval of minutes. And
I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from the October 18 planning and zoning meeting. Second.
Thank you, Steve. Any discussion on the minutes? And I had no comments on them. Other than Abby did a good job on trying to get all these names on the various attendees in there. Hearing no comments, do a roll call vote. Anne? Aye. Scott? Aye. Leigh Ann? Aye.
Steve? Aye. And I vote aye as well. The minutes are approved five-zero-zero. Next item up is correspondence. Jim, got any of that for us? No. Okay, getting on a roll. Administrative reports or enforcement actions?
Been extremely busy. A lot of activity construction wise. A lot of people doing, looking into lots, determining whether lots are actually buildable, very time consuming. Are start new individual strikes in the building office tomorrow. Lynn Warner twenty hours a week, and she will be trained by a woman that has been there temporarily who worked for the town twenty years and retired, came back to help out. As far as the property, the blight ordinance, the revised blight ordinance, I I am working with a couple property owners, but I can't issue any citations until such time as we have a hearing officer. And as far as I know, that hasn't occurred. Trying to monitor that. Center Street property is one. I did meet with 12th Center Street, the owner of 12th Center, with the intent of closing it up, and he indicated he would demo it. And I have to get back to him on that. I have not heard from, he's gonna demo it with the intent of building another home on that, but it would address the blade ordinance issues. Other than that, I can't think of anything, but I'm happy to answer any questions.
Okay. But just because we don't have a hearing officer doesn't mean that can talk to the people about deficiencies and hopefully they would
want to correct it. I'm making people aware of the ordinance. Okay, yep.
And the issue and the fact that they are in violation of it.
Yes, because we would hope that we would never have to issue a violation that they would have fixed. Okay. Commission discussion and miscellaneous. Anybody got anything at all pertaining to the Commission that we should be talking about? Okay, I will make this commitment to the Commission that at the next meeting, will have proposed changes to support our cannabis regs. And I think that's a little two paragraph thing in our regs now on liquor stores. And we'll add cannabis to that, and I'll have something for you to take a look at at the next meeting just so that we stay ahead of the curve on making sure we put whatever restrictions we want in there. And that's it. Okay, moving on to public comment. I'm sure after all that talk about design, there's nobody from the public left now. Okay. Jim, we tried and failed. I wanted to add the next meeting date to the agenda. And we did add it, it just wasn't right. That was on me. Well, we'll do better next time. But I wanted to at least announce the date of the next meeting before we adjourn there. And the only other thing that I wanted to announce before we adjourn is we've all got Thanksgiving coming up, and so I wish each of you and your families a very happy Thanksgiving and hope you have a great holiday with those that you want to share that with. Thank you. You too, Jed. Thank you. Thanks.
Having done that, important task, we'll move on to adjournment. I'll make a motion that we adjourn. Second, Leanne.
Okay, thank you, Leanne. And anybody opposed, raise your hand. By unanimous consent, the motion passes five-zero-zero. Thank you everybody for hanging in with the sign thing. Those sign rigs are tough ones. Think if we get through that, we got it made. But thanks for hanging in. Appreciate you all showing up. Great attendance tonight. And keep it up. Thanks. Good night, everybody. Good night. Good night, everyone.