Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning- Regular Meeting
July 21, 2026 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay. Your wife will let me know. Yes. All
right, I think we're ready to start. You're all set. Are we on line set? All right, we're gonna begin the 07/21/2026 meeting of Andover, Connecticut planning and zoning meeting. And we're gonna start with our, all right. Okay, well, I guess we'll, our guest tonight is,
can hear Yes, Mr. Good evening. My name is Michael Healy. I'm with the BSC Group representing Eden Contractors on the special permit for an accessories structure at 12 Center Street Andover Rural Design District. It's assessed as Parcel Map 33, Block 29, Parcel 3. It contains about 0.644 acres in size. It's found on the North Side Of Connecticut, the rail trail south by Michael Miller and Cassandra Lee Temple. It's west by Yvonne Bane and south on Center Street. So it's across the street from the old firehouse. This is a site that he had a contractor's purchase I think around 1922 maybe, there was an old alkali weighted house that was about 11 feet from a property line near right near the existing home of Design Bane and it's about 22 feet from the side of the road so the contractors obtained the variance to a rear yard and a front yard setback so that they could build, tear down that house and put up a new structure. It did take quite some time to tear down the old house. I think they took it took it down piece by piece and salvaged I think whatever they could out of that for lumber and then they got a permit and the permit was submitted at the time I think he always intended to have an in law apartment in this but at the time the zoning regs
were a little bit unclear as to how to move forward with that And since the zoning reg change, I think in 2023, I think it was, it became more clear as to how to approach that. It was initially submitted as a five bedroom design. He restructured the house plans to a three bedroom with a one bedroom in all. The house is the structure exists. It's already there, there's absolutely no changes to the structure being proposed, there's no changes to the site being proposed, other than what's been already previously approved. The net difference is that you know, it falls in that category without one bedroom with a kitchen and a separate bathroom that falls in that category
as an accessory ADU. So we're therefore here for you over the special permit with site plan review. We've submitted the house plans and the site plan. As I stated, that there's literally no changes whatsoever. I changed the notes on the design criteria for the septic system
and went to the health department for review. They've approved it.
I don't know if you're gonna ever have somewhat supportive application than this. It's pretty basic I think. With that I'll leave it with any questions. Thank you. I don't have much to say. All the health department, the checklists, the elevations. Looking back at what was originally submitted, it was originally submitted with an accessory apartment that was taken out And turned into a sort of a four bedroom with accessory apartment. It was five bedroom. Now it's going back. It's it's the exact same elevation, exact same floor plan, except over the garage is now devoted to an accessory apartment. The site plan is essentially the same as what it was required for this. Not much in the technical details has changed, really, except the the stairs doing such a apartment. I did do a walk through and there's a yeah. There's stairs on the inside from the apartment and what's through the what's what's proposed to the embodiment. Inside the inside of the garage, correct?
That's correct. Yeah. And two car garage. And both that exterior of the accessory apartment also opens to the front side. You can see it on the elevations there, the people board next to the garage. You're most likely cleaned up and graded. Looks a lot nicer now than it did a couple months ago. So weeds are down, chunk is gone. So emergency egresses of the back?
I honestly don't know what the building code standards are for that. I I couldn't tell you. It is typical with a dimensional from the door. Like, for instance, like, I I renovated a a little colonial, and they specifically were looking for the distance to the nearest exit as as a little bit needed a secondary thing, and it turned out they didn't need it. Okay. So okay. So I but that's not my area of expertise. So I was gonna ask that too.
We have an emergency egress for an apartment like this? What the regs are? You mean two exits? Yeah, do we need two exits on this?
That would be a building department requirement wouldn't necessarily be a zoning requirement. I can tell you I have an accessory apartment in my house and there's only one exit. What used to be an accessory apartment, Pallet Master Suite. It was the accessory apartment when I bought it. The legal one. Yeah. Right. The unit I was talking about is much larger from a 2nd Floor perspective. Has a matter of fact, means to be gross. Matter of fact, the the access the accessory department that was in my place is is very similar to this. It had a people door to the outside and a door from the garage into that same stairwell. Stairs are gone. Don't need them. Yeah, they typically need like egress windows, I think. That's for basement, like basement room. Right? Or I'm not sure, like, the size of the window. We typically need a certain size and most most windows in the house that does comply with that. Yeah. Okay.
When does building reg get a chance to look at it? Did they already assess the plans and
approve it? Oh, I've got it. The building department has only seen, as far as I know, Well, building department, no. They wouldn't have seen this yet. At the accessory part, building department has seen with a bedroom. Yeah. Okay. Right. And the same set of stairwells and the same everything. Right. Yeah. John
or Wayne, do do you know if I know that that house, the septic in the well has not been used in, you know, twenty five years. Is there any reason or regulation that says that they need to get those inspected to make sure that they're clean and This
would be a they would be required to file a B100A change of use permit through the health district. And so the health district would determine if they needed to do any testing or clean out of the system. Would be a public health code matter. Forgive me. No, this is new construction. Oh, I'm sorry. Thought that you were
has a the the site plan has a proposed septic system and a proposed well. We're not not reusing anything from from the original. Right. The health department signed off. The b 100 a has been issued. So So we're still not sure if there's any
I see. I if if there is if if there is that problem that is brought up with the building inspector, then I would expect Michael here is gonna give us a new floor plan to accommodate that. Right. So right. The builder will have to comply if he if he wants to see out. And, you know, if it has an effect on the site plan and then which I don't think it would, but it you know, that's something that could be modified.
And is the building as it exists now have the sanitary
and the kitchen facilities in it? No. This it's only it's only framed. There's no plumbing in there Okay. At all. Yep. As long as it is it's just framed. No roof, plumbing, no no electric, nothing. So
when were you were you talking about what we were talking about another set of another way of egress?
If you remember back to Hearst there was only one access to to that too. And that was internal?
No it was external. This is this is is both.
Okay. I thought you were saying it wasn't necessarily both.
Yeah. It is. If you look at the the elevations here. Yep. I just want make door this sure. Door goes directly to a stairwell that goes up the accessory apartment.
Okay. I thought I thought we were saying that there wasn't necessarily one. But there is. Exterior. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Okay. That's why I thought we got started talking about the building at Fresh River. Okay. In what unit was the property owner get occupied? The May House. What's that answer Jed? I couldn't hear that. He's gonna occupy the May House.
And if you'd like, can you just let the board know why the owners not here tonight? Yeah, the owner is a pastor and he has frequent evening gatherings. And so he's making a presentation tonight, and he told me he's gonna be tied up until 9PM tonight. So
I think that we need to make it clear to all the people that are building all these market rate apartments that they own. It's they need to be owner owner occupied. I don't think that that's clear to everyone.
That could be a condition on the special permit or reiterated. Certainly very clear with the regulation. Right. But that could be incorporated into Yeah. Conditions if if the commission sees fit. And I re we remind the commission that that that whole Center Street is a lot of them are all rental units for what that's worth. Duplexes and more. Yeah. It's not out of character for that section of town, let's put it that way. Any other The regulation does say what it says. Sorry. Any other questions? Hearing none,
don't know if the neighbor wants to say Oh, I'm sorry. Mister Miller? Yes.
Would you like to say anything? Nope. No questions here. Just very interesting seeing this whole process.
Okay. Fair enough. And I think that's it. No other questions being heard. Our public hearing is now closed. There was no written statements, right, Wayne? No. Fair enough. No, no, no, nothing. All right, thank you very much. Any public, any written
was no comments for the record. Written comments and there's no one else online and no one here. So I think we're good to close the public hearing and move on to our regular agenda. So thank you very much for the presentation and we'll be voting. You're welcome to stay. We take, there'll be
possibly considering this at the regular meeting, which is coming up right now. They can, the commission can push it off or they can take it on today. Generally, that's what they do. How about your agenda? Great.
All right. So we'll start the regular planning and zoning meeting at 07:17. We're gonna have a roll call, Brendan, myself, Patrick Dougherty, Leanne Hutchison, Jed Larson, Jay Kamins and Scott Persson, and also presidents are Tom Planner, John Kuskowski, and Wayne. Do you spell Osacek. Osacek. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda?
Under commission discussion. Yes. I would like to add another item and that's feedback from the recent Alcoa meeting. Call that item C8C,
Alcoa discussion. And I would like to add item D, which is find another alternate. Any other additions? Hearing none, moving on to public speak. Anyone from the public? I think Mr. Miller. Anyone have anything to talk about other than what's on the agenda? Moving right along, that's old business. Oh,
discussion. I'll make a motion to approve the application. Second. Any conditions, Jeff?
It might be redundant, but I guess I would add the condition that the owner must occupy one of the one of the dwellings
first for our regulations. I can add that for if the slip attrition moves.
You are seconded, Theo? Yes. Okay. I'll agree if I need to, to the condition. Do you wanna amend that to the condition? Okay. Yes.
My question is, don't know, is it of limited time on that or is it
just our regulation as it stands, correct? That's our regulation as it stands. We might talk about that a little bit when we get into the Alcoa discussion, but Ah, okay. There's a segue from that, but Okay.
How about consider this free motion that that police we just state as a condition that the owner must occupy and well, I don't know the exact number of regulation, but per handover regulation, blah blah blah, as amended from time to time. That way if it goes away, doesn't if that regulation goes away or gets changed in any way, it would still be applicable, I guess. Wait, hold on.
I just wanna clarify what, we may wanna take a look at the specific regulation that Wayne is referencing. The question at issue here is whether or not there'd be a requirement for the owner to occupy either the principal or accessory unit. Is that the question? Right. So I don't think you can bind a person against future changes to the regulation.
Exactly, no, you can't, no. Right, okay, okay. I was worried that that's what you were saying, sorry. No, that's not what I was saying. I was trying to find a way of saying it that if that regulation changed, then whatever changes are made would be applicable.
Okay, yeah, I don't, that's good, I'm glad I misheard that, but I don't think that that's a condition you necessarily need to add to the motion. Okay, then just making a suggestion. Ready to vote. Naree? I have a motion. We have a second. Second. With the reinforcement of the occupation. Okay. Jed? Aye. Leanne? Aye.
Jay? Scott? Your audio is not coming through, but I saw the waving And in an I for myself, motion passes five zero zero.
You're welcome. Thanks. So, Michael, it doesn't become effective until it's until the special permit is filed. You'll be getting some court you well, you and not you. We'll be getting the correspondence and and and inviting you to come to the town clerk's office and file it. Alright? Thank you. Take care. Take care. Thank you.
The business. I have any listed. There is no new business. Alrighty. No, there's nothing on the docket as far as special permits or anything like that that need to come up. Great.
All right, we'll move right along to correspondence. Would you like to go first lane?
I know I often say there is no correspondence because a lot of the correspondence is junk. Why don't bring it up? I don't I no. I don't have any any correspondence that I can think of. Do we have any correspondence from John?
I have nothing for the commission's review at this point. Thank you. All right,
moving on to commission discussion. Agenda item number eight. Okay, let's go right into it. John, would you like to take it from here with item A?
Sure. So I'm putting up on the screen. Hopefully you guys can see it. Wayne was good enough to do an excerpt. I had done a markup of the full set of zoning regulations. I previewed this a little bit at the June meeting last month. So as you know, the state passed public act 20 five-one in November of last year that mandated that all municipalities make certain changes to their zoning regulations relative to multifamily parking and what's referred to as middle housing, which is housing units that are between two and nine units, specifically in commercial or mixed use zones. And those mandated changes took effect as of July 1, and so all municipalities are strongly recommended to adjust their regulations to reflect these changes. So I'm gonna go briefly through just the portions of the regulations that I propose
Andover change as a result. I'll be happy to answer any questions or discuss this, but I think ultimately what we would look to at the end of this discussion would be a decision for the commission to move forward with a public hearing and a formal public hearing process to consider adopting these amendments or something like them into its zoning regulations. So these are the proposed amendments per 25.1. First in the table of contents, we'd be proposing to add one new section called middle housing, new section 4.23, and we'll get to there. So this would be section 4.23, which would be a specific set of standards and requirements for middle housing. And again, this would be just those housing, multifamily housing, small scale, two through nine units that would be allowable via site plan in the business district, which is portions of Route 6 in town. And so these would be the standards and based on the way the town regulates other both residential and commercial uses, we rely principally on bulk and loading standards,
which is setbacks, height, lot coverage. We don't do a lot with design standards. So this is an effort to comply with the site plan requirement of the state statute, but reflect the relatively light touch when it comes to the towns concerning itself with design. So I would propose that there would be minimum structural setbacks for these, again, would be middle housing developments, which could be, again, two through nine units, it could be a duplex, it could be a cottage cluster, it could be townhouses, the statute is clear that it could be any one of those forms. So just applying a front yard setback of 50 foot minimum, side yard of 25 foot minimum, rear yard of 50 foot minimum. If there's going to be multiple structures in the same development, say you're gonna do six units total and over three duplexes, there would need to be a 25 foot separation in between structures. Similar to most commercial or multifamily or residential structures, the maximum height would be two and a half stories or 35 feet. Impervious coverage on lots should be 50%, which is basically echoing commercial development standards.
I did add a minimum landscape buffer with evergreen plantings, a minimum of five feet tall, and minimum thickness of the planting of five feet in width along the side and rear property lines, or a fence to create a year round visual buffer between properties. So to create a little bit of separation between commercial uses and residential uses, and then going into maximum building size and architectural design elements, which the town already has in its regulations. So I designed this to be a very simple, very efficient set of regulations that basically reflect the established commercial development pattern on Route 6 and make reference to existing regulations relative to architectural design elements. So basically, I tried to keep it simple, not overthink it. And we can come back to this in a bit, but I just wanna go through the rest of the regs, the proposed regs. Then we get into the parking table.
So this is under section shoot, I don't remember what the section number is for parking. But it's a parking table, the number of mandatory spaces for any given use hotel, you need 1.2 per guest room. We have a minimum and a maximum. So the new state regulation, the new state statute eliminates the mandatory minimum parking, on-site parking for residential developments under 16 units. So single family, two family, and small multifamily cannot require mandatory minimum on street parking, or off street parking, I should say. So I changed the single family residence from two to zero, two family residence from four to zero, and accessory apartments from one to zero. And hopefully we will not be alarmed by this, particularly in a community such as Andover, which is entirely dependent on single family, driver vehicles, we don't really have transit, we don't have a train station, we don't have a lot of bus lines, the market is going to provide for parking. You know, if you're building an apartment, if you're building a house, you are going to provide a parking spot for yourself. So I don't think this is something we need to worry about, Therefore, it is also not something that we need to worry about eliminating per the state statute. Similarly, in multifamily residences, condos, apartments, townhouses, etcetera, as well as middle housing, which is the new category we're adding. I reflected the state standard, which is no minimum for 16 residential units or fewer. For more than that, there'll be a requirement of one parking space per studio or one bedroom apartment,
or two parking spaces for a two plus bedroom unit for developments over 16, plus commercial parking standards. So there could be obviously, if you have a mixed use, you need some parking for residential, some parking for the commercial. So this is basically, this is what the state tells us we have to do relative to parking. So we can discuss it, but there's not a lot of leeway here. Then when we get into the specifics of the parking, there is also a state provision that if we require a certain number of parking, let's say it's a 20 unit apartment building, two bedrooms in each one, that's 40 bedrooms. So we would require 40 unit or 40 parking spots minimally. The state also provided the ability of a developer to make an argument that they need to provide actually fewer. And perhaps there is a bus line in the area, perhaps it is, you know, right adjacent to some other municipal parking facility, and so it is a waste of space to provide on-site parking for certain reasons. This allows a developer to submit what's called a parking needs assessment, which can basically make the case. It's a needs assessment that'll be prepared by a
qualified traffic engineer to basically make the case why they could have their parking numbers reduced. And then it allows for the process of the commission to reduce those parking numbers. And that's, again, this is also basically taken from the state law. So that's a change that we basically have to make. Next into Section 24, Definitions. Again, these are from the state law. There's something called a conservation and traffic mitigation district, which is an area of town designated where the municipality can, if they so designate, can require parking spaces for under 16 unit facilities. So this is something that the town could consider, the town of Andover could consider, but right now, and that would be an area that's particularly parking constrained.
And broadly speaking, if you think of an area like that, I tend to think of like Downtown Mystic, Connecticut, where you've got buildings right on top of each other, on street parking is taken up all the time. This is a place where you really wouldn't be able to add new housing without adding new on street or off street parking. Andover really doesn't have an area like that, that I can picture, because there is the only place that this middle housing would be allowed, this multifamily housing would be allowed is in the business district on Route 6. So it's not particularly a parking constrained area, but the town could, if they wished apply one of those. So I wanted to include it per the state statute. I noted that we did not have definitions for multifamily, single family, or two family. So just to make things clear, I added multifamily, single family, and two family. Multifamily basically defined as three or more, and the others self explanatory. And then we added definitions for middle housing, again, based on the state statutory definition, two through nine dwellings, either attached or detached on a single parcel, and then mixed use, which is again,
self explanatory, a mix of uses and complimentary uses. So residential and retail, eating and drinking establishments, manufacturing office, and that sort of thing in a compact village design. So middle housing can be both a standalone residential, or it could be part of a mixed use development. You could have you know, an office building with, you know, four or five, six units above. So that's just definitional. Finally, under definitions, added a summary review, which basically is the term of art that the state statute is using that the commission must apply to considering one of these middle housing developments in the commercial district, which is again, a standalone middle housing development or as part of a mixed use district, it basically tracks a site plan process, which is to say it is a commission decision, but it is nondiscretionary, it is not a public hearing process, it is not a special permit process,
and it does not require a public hearing. So I basically added the definition but equated it to a site plan review process. And I believe that is it. So again, the changes are basically surrounding parking numbers and requirements and the allowance for adding a small multifamily called middle housing in the business district only. And I'll shut up there and answer any questions the commission may have. So the state mandated the business district?
They said, is there any business or mixed use zone? So the town the town of Andover does have a mixed use allowance, but it's a floating zone. It doesn't actually exist anywhere, so that doesn't need to apply. So it's just in the business district, not in residential and not in industrial. If the town wishes to go above and beyond and you wish to allow multifamily in a residential zone or an industrial zone, that's your business. In this case, the state is only mandating in in commercial or or mixed use districts. That's good to know.
So, John, I I think, you know, and I didn't bring my Rick with me, but if you look at the business district section it has a prohibition about putting housing in there unless that is deemed to be the most effective use of the property because we want to keep business Right. Property for business purposes. Should we need to eliminate that?
Could, although, the fact that you essentially give yourself an out clause, opens the possibility of that, of the possibility of residential use. And then, the state requirements would just march in and say it's easier to do, but yeah, I mean, it would be cleaner. So you don't have to sort of go through that process of determining whether or not it's absolutely necessary. We could propose to eliminate that clause also. I don't think it's critical, but I think it's cleaner.
Right now, section eight four, which is business district, the only place where residential housing is allowed is what's called a restricted tract, not which is that cannot a tract that cannot be expanded because of developed boundaries or a small tract reported in the land records not to exceed one acre may be developed for a single family residence. Commission may have construction of single family residences on restricted tracks. So I guess,
and that would remain for single family residents, what we're talking about here Bill Housing.
Right, actually that, yeah, in that case, yeah, if someone wanted to do just a single family, you would want them to have a pretty high bar to clear to allow that. Yeah. So that could probably remain. Also specifically a single family residence.
Right. In the state requires that we go down to you know a duplex in this middle housing.
It's two, yeah, two through nine. So yeah, as small as two units.
Not a fan of that. You know, we try to go through and figure out where we want to put the businesses because we've got so limited space in town, then put a duplex on that property. Yeah. Doesn't make any sense to me, but. No,
the other thing that, yeah, I agree and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me for the state to mandate this to happen now before municipalities even get a chance to write their new housing growth plans, which really should be more of a locally directed process for how and where we wanna place this new housing. So I'm with you on that Jed. You know, if the town were looking to avoid encouragement of this type of housing in the business district would be to take a look at the properties that are zoned business and maybe reconsider if we want to rezone those as more industrial or light industrial, which would be exempt from this middle housing. So the Does the industrial
say any usage allowed in the business? Or is it the other way around? Yeah. Industrial
does say that. It says any any use that's allowed in the business district
is allowed in in the industrial. So then we would probably wanna change that to accept middle housing. Okay. I gotcha. That's just the industrial
Industrial is by industrial land is industrially zoned land is exempt from this middle housing requirement per the per the statute. Unless, I mean, unless the commission chooses to add it.
So Route 6 for, but it's the commission's fault, obviously.
John, is that Business District is the entire 6 District? I mean, we No, are
we can Wayne, I don't know if you happen to have a copy of the zoning map handy. I could I could find one with Prague. Do we have the business district?
Yeah. I can hang on. Let me let me me see if I can pull up Crogg's. You have control. So
Yeah. It's basically, you know, all of Route 6 is split. There's some areas that are still residential, and then the rest is fairly evenly split between commercial and industrial. Let me let me pull this up here. Quick maps. Mutual zoning.
Yeah. There's everything along on 6. Industrial business and residential.
Yeah. All right, let me bring up the This is the Crog parcel viewer. There may be a couple of errors in this, but it gives you the general idea. Oh, it just went away. Okay. It's coming back. Can you guys see it on the screen? No. Not yet. Right, wait, I'm gonna stop and start it again. There we go. Okay.
So I believe the yellow is basically our residential agricultural district. Purple is industrial and red is commercial. So it would really just be the area North Of 6 close to Bolton or close to the Coventry Bolton line. South Of Route 6, there's a pint Christmas tree farm over there. And over here is Lake Street near Dollar General on the opposite side of the street where the Extramart is. That's industrial. And then over here near those at Lindholm Corners. Yeah. That's where it's not right now.
Right, and then and then that's really it. So those would be the areas that would that would be. Subject to the middle housing. The purple would not.
Got it. And can I ask you a question on the parking? Yes. Page 103, just got a little confused because at first in the table that you have for a middle housing, it says no minimum and then semicolon and then we talk about what sounds like a minimum to me. Is it like minimum requirement is is old and we're getting rid of that in favor of this kind of like ratio, one parking space per
So, yeah. No. So it's it would be no if it's under 16 units or 16 or fewer, no minimum would be required. If you look at the end of that next clause over 16 units, if you're more than 16, then the ratios of one space per studio or one bedroom or two spaces per two or more bedrooms would apply to those developments over 16 units.
Okay. And your reasoning for that is that you think that's residential for under 16 units, then they're gonna build parking in for themselves.
My reasoning for that is because that is what the state law dictates. Oh, okay.
And interestingly, is a side note. The first law that was passed, they fixed this, in this legislative session in June, but it actually had under 16 and over 16 were the break points. So if you built a development of exactly 16, there was actually no regulation for that whatsoever. Created a hole in the donut, but they fixed that. So it's now 16 or fewer. So technically it's possible to build a 16 unit development with no parking. That is correct. You'd park out on-site. Well,
yeah, I mean, but so the interesting thing is, I mean, the state and the town, there is no corresponding regulation or law about how a municipality regulates its on street parking. A municipality say no overnight parking on street, and the state could I don't think you can park on six. The state wouldn't let you. So if someone is going to build 16 units, the town isn't going let them park on the street, the state isn't going let them park on the street. From a market standpoint, they really have no choice but to provide their tenants on-site parking. So it's a pretty no brainer market solution, so it's not something we need to worry about too much. But in your developed areas, in your Downtown Hartford, Downtown New Haven, Norwich, something like that, someone could put in a 16 unit apartment and and not provide any parking whatsoever. That is allowed now.
But the way the way we've got the chart now, and I don't know which columns I think the left hand is the maximum, the right hand is the minimum. The That's
maximum parking spot are none and the minimum parking spots are none. So you can't put our regulations don't allow you to put any parking spots in there.
No, there's no maximum. So you can put as many as you want.
No. We have these two columns, one's a maximum, one's a minimum. And if it says none in both columns?
So there's no minimum but no minimum maximum are opposite things so none means a different thing if you're talking about a maximum or a minimum. If there's no maximum it means you put as many as you want That's that's and but you're not required to put in any, that's the no minimum.
But so what are the two columns mean? I see up on professional buildings, it's got five and two, I think the minimum is two, the maximum is five. So we don't want you to
overbuild parking in those commercial areas, the maximum will be five. So we're not allowing you to build six because we don't want you to overbuild your parking. In the case of residential, people can park as much as they want.
Then we ought to eliminate it from that chart or put
as many as you want or something. So that's what that's what no maximum means? I don't see no maximum. See none. What
what's the maximum? The maximum is none. Oh, I see what you're saying. I could yeah. So we may wanna rephrase that to no maximum. Okay. I guess not applicable and a Yeah. That would
be better. Yeah. Not applicable. Actually, first column is maximum. Second column is minimum. Right. Okay. So if the maximum is none
So it should say it should say no maximum. It should say no maximum rather. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Yeah. That that's that's how I was interpreting that. But you're you're correct about the phrasing, Jed. That's for middle house.
That's for any residential. So we'll propose to change the zeros under maximum parking in single family residence, two family residence, accessory apartment. Actually, accessory apartment, we can leave. But a single family, two family, and maybe perhaps, yeah, a single family, two family will replace the none with the phrase no maximum.
Okay, yeah. A fan of that either because I know there's one house on Plate Grove that doesn't have any parking and they're always on the road and it's always hard to get around them. And it's just it's Yeah, that's great situation. Parking ordinance. Yeah,
I think that I mean, the town could certainly put in place a no on street overnight parking ordinance to address some of those issues. But that's that's outside the realm of planning and zoning.
I got a question, John. The minimum lot size in the business district is 20,000 square feet. Mhmm. So does that mean?
To anticipate your question, this does not replace any building fire or health code. So if you can physically not get nine units or eight apartment units on a half an acre because of the septic system, then you can't do it. But that's not a zoning thing, that's a public health thing.
Right. I I I understand that. So you'd only be constrained by what you can get through the health department in the
Correct, what you can physically get on the site. You'll be constrained by health and safety standards. Correct, correct.
And I mean, the commission could, again, if you're concerned about density of development, you could also change your minimum acreage for the business zone. Yeah.
But again, I think my sense is, and I mean, you guys know better than I do, that things don't happen too quickly in Andover. We haven't been bowled over by development applications in the last, let's say, few decades. So if you get an application or two that adds some multifamily in the business zone and you don't like the way it's going, you don't like the way it's turned out, we can look at tweaking some of those regulations. This is not, you know, this is we have to do some changes because of the state law, but this is not our only shot at ever looking at these regs. So Mr. Chair, would say if there are no other questions, then again, I'm happy to answer further questions. Would suggest that you consider a motion to place these regulations on a public hearing agenda for consideration at an upcoming meeting.
Thank you for your recommendation. I think so too. What does the commission think? Public hearing sounds good? Yeah.
But you have to. Yeah. It just has to go through the formal regulation making process, which includes a public hearing. Fair enough. This is just discussion right now.
So it'd be it would be a formal application with a public hearing.
Well, if there's, any other edits or questions about the proposed regulation changes, now's the time.
And I'll give Wayne, because we're making a couple of additional changes there. Obviously, we're gonna change the nones to a no maximum, and we may, and we'll probably take out the language in industrial zones that allow all uses from commercial zones. We'll add it except for middle housing into that, But otherwise it will be basically what you saw on the screen today.
Right, and now become the draft for the public hearing discussion. Thank you.
You still might make a motion to do that. I don't think there was a motion. Not yet.
I make a motion to schedule a public hearing. Second. What date next month next month? We don't have anything on the docket yet. The August 10.
There might be a concept coming, you know, concept discussion. Other than that, there's nothing on the agenda for August. Something substantive or people rephrase it.
So I'd like to schedule it for August. Our next meeting date in August is '18. '18. '18. Second. Julia,
day second. Day second is very good. Thank you. Okay, it's okay. All right, let's take a vote. Jed, aye. Scott? Aye. He's got an aye. Julian?
Aye. Jed? Aye. And I vote aye. Motion passes five zero zero. We'll have a public hearing next meeting. Thank you. Thank you.
I did send you this trial. Yes. Mhmm. But so it's gonna be a certain point of time. Okay. You, sir. So as you recall, this is something that came out in some back and forth they had with attorney Grant's about the ability to compel the NACA camp to pay fees or reimburse the town for professional services that the zoning commission may need for complex applications. And Also, the fact that the state law says that we're supposed to have, we're supposed to adopt fees for, well, application fees and whatnot. And the only application fee that we've adopted is $140 for a special permit. We don't have any orally adopted fees for other applications that we won't receive. But we have been charging those fees. So I took what fees we're charging right now, put it into a proposed ordinance for the board of selected to consider with the if the commission would like to move ahead. Do you have that to share, Wayne? I sent it to you in an email. I saw that, but
Wayne, if there's something if there's one of the specific things you want me to put up on the screen, I can do it. K. You you have it too, don't you? I got all the emails you sent. Which which one the the zoning fee ordinance draft, is that the one? There you I mean, you sent a, you know, like It be dated 06/24.
Okay. Yeah. The the the zoning fee ordinance draft, 06/24? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Give me a second. Wayne, did you write all of this? Yeah. I have a question. Go ahead.
I was looking at this today. On page three, under new proposed language below, the first this the first section in red where it says the language of ordinance 70 dash zero one, etcetera. Yeah. Actually, that is my question. Includes a very unwieldy method parenthesis, chairman of the board of finance, the first selectman, and the chairman of planning and zoning commission will are hereby authorized and empowered to establish this schedule of fees. Why would we it goes on to say this proposal eliminates that process and vests that authority in the Board of Why would we want to vest all the authority in the Board of Selection?
Because I don't know how we set fees using this method. Can we just mogul them and say, yep, you're good? Yeah. Well, you you have or some of the there are some fees in the zoning regulations. Yeah. But the fee for a cycling application, the the fee for subdivision application, the the fee for text amendment application, mean,
that's not in the zoning regulations. It doesn't exist anywhere. Why couldn't we as Planning and Zoning Commission just vote on this whole list that you have here? Would that be the end of it?
That is you need enabling you need an enabling ordinance to do it. The way that the statute says that the town has to have an ordinance enabling establishing fees.
And we can't. Sorry. So the ordinance could be changed to specifically empower planning and zoning to make those changes more easily and on the fly. But you have to you have to change the ordinance first.
That's a good question. I can see living out the chairman of the board of finance. I mean, I don't know why they'd want it. I don't know why they'd even want to to do this. But No. They wouldn't. I
like the idea of what John just said about that the ordinance as far as I know, we can't pass ordinance, board selector has to But do what John just said is the ordinance itself would be
that we do the voting. And John is correct, John. You could just ask the board of selectmen to consider an ordinance empowering the Planning and Zoning Commission to set application fees. And if that's how the Commission wants to go, can whip something up and have that for the commission's consideration. I would just It also depends if this is a major or a minor ordinance.
Right. I was just following the I mean, the existing ordinance seventy zero one. Well, there's a there's a building department fee ordinance. Oh, three zero three. Be it ordained at the town of Andover that the building department shall charge a $140 permit fee and a $10 state tax fee for all applications for variance appeal of decision of the zoning agent, special permit, site manager, and zone changes. But we're not doing that. We're charging more than that. And I think I know how that happened, but it didn't happen by anybody changing this ordinance.
You think, I mean, you think you know how the fees got to be higher? Yeah. Okay. Is there anything you wanna share now? I think it's it's speculation. Mean, just going with inflation, they should be higher. There should be, yeah. I mean, and then If
interpreting 70 dash one correctly, as long as the chairman of the board of finance, the first selectman and the chair chairman of planning zoning get together and say, okay, we're gonna have a new fee structure, then we have a new fee structure. That's the way I read that. Has it ever happened? Well, it could, but with the, I mean I didn't read that right. Yeah, the chairman
first second and chairman Okay. So the chairman had a piece for the finance committee had a piece structure.
Well They can do their thing. I did read. Oh. Chairman of Planning and Zoning could has been empowered. I would I would like that as well that I agree. I mean, the way it's written as is That means I'd have to have a special meeting with the chairman board of finance and the first lap and then That's the way I read it. Okay. The three have
to somehow come together and come up with scheduled fees, which is certainly possible. Yeah. That's not anything that But to my knowledge, I I don't think that's ever been done. And then and then and then but then there's a separate ordinance o three zero three, which is on the second page that sets the $140 permit fee. So I don't know that those three override. It's conflicting. It conflicts the two conflict. Yeah.
But I agree with Leanne. I don't see why we should have to rely on a board of select and every time we wanna change the rates, but that's the way I'm interpreting it. This is this is for discussion. Yes. So Yeah. Yeah.
So so Wayne, is that the only language that you have written for a fee schedule for extra engineering help?
Well, the the language for engineering comes in it's next, let's see. I should have numbered these pages. One, two, page four. Subsection B. Additional expenses for complex applications. And I pretty much plagiarized that from when I did Bolton. And that that gives I'm trying to give or asking the selectman or somebody to have an ordinance that the PZNC and ZBA may require payment for services performed by third party consultants. If we have to have something reviewed by engineers or whatever, lawyers it costs the town a lot of money. Those towns already have this. Yes, towns have this. Yes. Absolutely.
Yeah. I I wrote an ordinance similar to this with the town of Essex probably fifteen years ago. They've been have had it since then.
So I can come back to you guys with another draft that gives that asks for, or that empowers Planning and Zoning Commission to set fees for applications, for various applications, and include the language for third party consultants.
I think that would be helpful and I know you said there's four or five other towns for comparison so I'd kind of like to have another month to look at it anyway.
I don't think we're in a huge time crunch for it, but given what has transpired recently That's what why it's needed. Yeah.
And in some cases, they were very close to the other towns and there were a couple where there was a bit of discrepancy.
Yeah. It's hard to it was hard for me. I I did try to put in a spreadsheet for you guys. It was hard for me to try and get apples compared to apples. Mhmm. Yeah. Very hard.
I thought you put together a good list of suggested fees. I think they're great question is how do we go back in the Right. I tried I tried to get that training
But not in a way that was not out of line with the towns that surround us. And they're not exorbitant and unreasonable either compared to our neighbors, right?
Well, So. I'm trying to get them in line with our neighbors. Yes, gotcha.
And again, point of this, of memorializing this is to protect the town in case somebody says, there's no statute that says I have to pay this fee, so I'm not gonna pay it.
Yeah. Correct. Exactly. Where does it say that you can charge that for this? Right. Right now it says $140 and that's not what we're doing. Right. That shouldn't be public for it. Is.
So in the case that that happens, hypothetically, then we have to we end up paying for this out of town budget?
Right now, lawyer's fees come out of town, comes out of town budget, yeah. Like the lawyer, if we need an engineer, if we need the town engineer, let's say a road is proposed to a subdivision. That needs to be reviewed by an engineer. That needs to be inspected by an engineer. So it meets the the standards that are in our regulations. I can't. I'm not qualified to to pass judgment on that type of stuff.
Even the stuff as small as when you have Hank Gruener go down and check like the bridge. He's down there, you know, once a week. I think that the applicants should be paying those fees.
Methods does have that power already. I believe I believe weapons, but I'm not sure. No. I I
know we we wrote it into the plan for the one that you get paid. Yeah.
Yeah. I guess the applicant agreed with it. And we'd have to be paid by the town and then reimbursed. Or the town reimbursed.
So John, can you work with Wayne and get this done cleaner and expedite this whole thing?
Well, I'll it from there. Yeah, I'm sure Wayne can get it. I'm happy to take a look. This isn't that hard. It isn't. Mean, it looks more think I made it more complicated than I needed to. I think the hardest part is deciphering who actually has the authority to
authorize the fee structure, right? Mean, that's to me, my biggest question is, am I do I have the authority or do I need to just get into a meeting with the
chair of finance and the first electorate to do that? I think you just email them the thing and say, we've already been approved. I think that's what we should do then.
Otherwise, you might have to go to a town meeting. Oh my goodness.
We already have an ordinance that allows us to do that to schedule them, set these.
So as long as we're changing them and updating them. I I don't know what it means adopted by the town of Vanderbilt. That was approved in all of it. Okay, yeah.
So that means at that time, an ordinance can only be approved by the board of selectmen, board of selectmen approve this word. Yeah, okay. That's the only way I'm reading it would be wrong. Right. I could get corrected. The existing building department fee
was a creature of the board of selectmen. It it did not it did not go to a town meeting.
30 or three was Oh, that's that's the second part. Yeah. Was Board of Selectmen is gonna be in favor of any
fees that we can get that the town doesn't have to pay for with taxpayers dollars. So Okay. Makes sense. Alright. Go
ahead. Sorry, Wayne. Nothing. So I I don't just leave seventy o one there. I don't think it does anything. I don't know what it does. I'm
only working on the theory that if one of our interpretations is correct and Leanne did say that well, it does say those three chairs get to set the fee from 70 dash $0.01, and we don't really need to get approval of the full board of selection or public hearing or public meeting or public vote or anything the way that ordinance is written. Sounds better to me.
Just so I'm clear. Would you like to leave it that way? That that's I would what? On stage two?
Unless they the board of selectmen would like to amend that and let out the planning and zoning set them together. That's
where I thought you guys were going. That you would rather the boards that if possible, yeah. These two ordinances basically go away with a simple boom. The planning and zoning commission shall set
fees for whatever. That would be great. Period. But my second best.
But importantly, is what we got. 70 o one since that was created at a town meeting probably Oh, that's voted it. Only being appealed at a town meeting. Right? So they they might not be able to amend that either. Right. The board of selectmen might not be able to touch 7001. The building department fee ordinance o three zero three, that is a creature of the board of selectmen. So they obviously can change that, repeal it,
modify it. I guess someone would have to check the charter to see at the time in 1970, they might not, they might have needed a town meeting vote in order to approve an ordinance at that time. That may not be the fact anymore.
Right, so this would happen to O'Brien anyway. Okay. Yeah, you would have to go to attorney O'Brien. Sound good? So, okay. I'll have it for you then see.
Thank you, sir. Any other discussion questions on the fee structure, requests ordinance? Yeah. A
good idea Wayne and John to be doing that. That's long. Yeah. We needed this a long time ago.
Moving on to 8C, Alcoa discussion. What's going on there? Well,
I attended the semi annual Alcoa meeting last month I guess and one of the is we were you having everybody got out there saying one of the topics came up was the growing number of Airbnbs on the lake and we had kind of we'd had a little discussion about this several years ago and chose at the time not to do anything about it because there were no problems. It wasn't a big thing back then. But the thought by at least some of the people there was that were going from a community of neighbors to a community of short term rental people and that that's different if not universally but so one of the people who was there said that, know, I think other towns have some regulations on how to limit this or that. And we said, well, if you can find an example for us to use as a model we might be willing to consider that and I haven't heard anything back on that. I don't know if John's had any experience with anything like that Verdi? Yeah.
Broad strokes, I strongly recommend that if the town is interested in putting something like this in place, it should be an ordinance, not a zoning regulation. If for no other reason, I mean, has a little bit more weight and it also eliminates the issue of preexisting grandfathered uses. So anybody that had operated an Airbnb prior to a zoning regulation going into place would be able to continue indefinitely. An ordinance would eliminate that. It gives a little more control. I would be happy to forward you a copy of the town of Essex's Airbnb ordinance, which passed about three years ago. They worked on it for probably two, three years through several iterations, and it's decent. I mean, reads largely like a zoning regulation, but it is the form of an ordinance.
Okay, yeah, I'd be interested at least take a look at it. Does it require registering with the town?
It does indeed. Yes. And that requires, an initial, inspection by the, building official and fire marshal. That's a good thing. Jed, how how prevalent is this Jed?
Not sure. I know there's there's a couple. You know, I'm aware of at least three.
I mean, three altogether or three that are sort of becoming unofficial short term rentals? Well three that are are short term rentals. Yeah. Now,
you know, know and that house right across the street from me was bought by a realtor to rent out and I think that's going to be a long term that the goal is long term rental and other houses over there recently changed hands no matter what the plan is there but you know the the flavor of the community over there might be changing a little bit, not necessarily for the better. And I know when we were talking about the accessory units, when we first put that regulation in there, we started having a conversation about maybe so you let your mom rent out the accessory apartment and then we asked the question what happens when mom dies? Can't And use it for anybody outside your family and we decided to do that. My concern now goes beyond that to where somebody says I'm going to have a accessory apartment and the reason we wanted the owner to live there was because maintain some quality control supervision over the tenants and that sort of thing. We don't have a system in place that kind of
monitors the long term somebody can say oh yeah I'm going to live here and then next thing you know they're not living there and we've got a couple of rental things that who knows what is there. But you know, one of the things that I thought was made handover a very nice place to live was the fact that we were a very high percentage of owner occupied housing. If we start to do things that change that, I don't know that that's a change for the better. And so I just wanted to bring that to our attention. I don't know what we can do about that yet, but I think, you know, I I kinda like the way Andover's been, you know,
brings to have that change. How does it work with, say somebody has an Airbnb on the lake? Does that mean that the people who rent it have lake access or they need to get a permit?
No, they would have lake access. Put it this way, they do have lake access whether they should or not, but you know, that's that's a different thing. But they can bring the boat. Yeah. They bring the boats in here and all that kind of stuff, which has you know the problem of bringing boats in there have been other places in you know puts the liability for the invasive plants in but you know I have heard that on one of the new Airbnbs, you know, it's kind of a routing crowd that gets in there time to time and and not you know, neighbors aren't necessarily happy with it. Yeah. So
Jed are these year round homes and where is the families or the people that live there year round and are these how's that working?
Well so the newest one you know, was a fellow passed away. Somebody else bought it, and and they bought it with the intention of being an Airbnb because, you know, people are paying big bucks to come spend a week on the lake.
Or apparently longer in some cases. Well The short term rentals.
Oh, well, you know, and I've looked at the prices. I mean, wow. I was shocked at how much we did for a week on the on the lake. It's pretty sky high, but but that's the most recent one that I know of another case where a guy in town bought bought the house and and he's using it for an Airbnb. And then another person, know, I guess they go live someplace else now and then because they can get lots of money renting the house down. So those those are the couple that I'm aware of, but that discussion is growing that maybe this isn't good for us. And I want to bring the attention of the commissioner. Interesting. It is.
And then why be a point of, you know, the Center Street 1, you know, is the applicant planning to live there? And, know, he says he is, but nothing. We have no way of knowing that he stays there we have no way of following up on that and there's a lot of regulations we don't have a way of following up on just a question that's what we want to put down or not. What does Alcoa think?
They thought that that was a town issue, and I sort of agreed with them. Well, if they're not concerned about it, then
they didn't say they weren't concerned about it. They said they had no way of conviction.
Of regulating that. They regulate what's going on on the private house, it just happens. We want a lake. They control the lake. They don't control anything about the housing. That's why when we created the nutrient allocation, they asked us to we tried to get them to do it. They said, we can't do that. That's a down issue.
Right. So so it is something that Alcoa would like brought up to be regulated. Would support regulating it. I think that's the question.
The discussion didn't go any further than that. Was just that's not a matter of our purview that would have to be something for the town to consider. And that was the end. Yeah, there was a question there. Yeah, that probably wouldn't have to go to the law. Mean, I like John just
did that as an ordinance. Yeah. Yeah. And then and we've got that ordinance, we get a fine thing. I guess we got planning zoning regs as well as ordinances that you know if somebody's not in compliance with it we can find them. We enforce the ordinance that's that's the zoning.
Scott, did you have a question for me? Yeah. So is there a way to make an ordinance that says that we can't allow people to rent their homes?
Yeah. Of course. I I mean, the the have to add some very specific definitions that distinguishes a single family residence or year round dwelling purposes. But I mean, you get into all kinds of problems there. I start by saying you can do it, but the question is how thin are you slicing that baloney? Like, are you allowing someone to own two houses and rent one of them on a twelve month, you know, year round lease to someone else? If the answer is yes, then would you allow a six month lease? If the answer is yes, would you allow a three month lease? And so, you know, then you get very closely to, you know, a day by day lease, which is an Airbnb. You know, the answer is yes, but you've got to be real careful about how you do your definitions, which is, you know, and then you run into, you know, people, well, I mean, how the federal government just passed the law that prohibits corporations from owning over X number of single family residences. So there are ways to do these sorts of laws, but you gotta proceed carefully.
Well, looking at it from the economic side, if people can rent out their house for few thousand dollars a week and they can make some money. It's been used as a it's been used as an excuse to not have allow hotels in our town because, oh, we have Airbnb's, they can go do that. So I I'm kind of conflicted here because somebody has enough money to buy a lake on the house and then want to rent it out. I I think that it's nice to have people visit our town and wanna come visit our town.
Unless you have specific definitions, town doesn't usually regulate land ownership. The town regulates land use. So if you have a group of people living there and treating a single family residence as a single family residence, there's only one unit of people there at a time, who are we to say who they are? Correct.
But in the same breath, I I don't want if I had Jed's house on the lake and the next door neighbor had a Airbnb and you got to listen to a different party once a week, I don't think that I would would like that at all. Even if it was just for the summer, I mean, it would ruin your summer. So I can see where Jed's going with that.
Well then couldn't the board of selecting put a noise ordinance on the lake at 10:00PM on weeknights and then eleven and twelve on the weekends is there. Would that help?
I I don't think it should be 09:00. Your sister, doing that. Well, 09:00 especially weekend, weeknights. I don't know. But again,
that's a performance standard that should apply to any property, not just a rental property. And we should have a noise ordinance. A property can be a problem property just as easily if it's rented or owned. Someone be a bad neighbor regardless. Right. We
can't legislate that really. Would be clear. During the summer you would have, whatever, 12 different bad neighbors for the whole summer, right? 12 different weeks probably. The
prevalence is higher, but yeah, you're really talking about performance rather than you're talking about who specifically is there. And
I mean, towns that do have ordinances can restrict and do restrict the number of occupants per bedroom capacity of a house. So if you had a four bedroom house, you can't have more than eight people, for instance, like there's rules like that.
I like the idea of seeing what's out there. You don't reinvent the wheel.
Yeah, maybe you could send us the SX model, John. Yep, I will do that. Thank you.
Any other discussion on Alcoa? Nope, hearing none, moving on to item D. I was informed by Wayne we did not get a letter of intent for an alternate was, it was posted in the paper. And I checked with the town clerk that there was also no application submitted there. Should we put out, we'll put it back in the paper?
We could. Technically, believe that the town charter says it now goes to the board of selectmen and they appoint somebody. That sounds good to me. They're not gonna do that.
We've had so right now in the one month has three vacancies that have been there for at least five years. What? How could that be? I think
we should we should try and see if we can get up there. I don't know where else we can I mean, putting a a thing in the River East, how much interest is that? We we got a better job of broadcasting it. I don't know that we use social media
and stuff. I was hoping that we were gonna get one and only one. I thought we were gonna get one too, but
we didn't. Yeah. The person that was also trying to get a position same time mine was, they didn't they weren't interested in being an alternate. We reached out to them. Don't know. I got a verbal
that that person was interested, but they never put it in writing submitted it. No.
Well And they know that I can assure you that person knows that that alternate position was available. Yeah. Okay. Well, we can Let let's let's re amortize it and Okay. See if we can get some bites.
There's a Mr. Miller on the Zoom that he's no longer with us. The board's definitely there and he's growing down. All right, moving on. Administrative reports. Mr. Zoning, you?
We have a new single family residence, so that was the only permit we'll issue for 92 of them. I'm losing my mind. Brotherhood that bitch is on. Shoddy Mill? Doctor. Finro. No. Bunker Hill? Bunker Hill. 92 Bunker Hill. But this is what I wanted the commission to see. This came in today. They're not they haven't done anything for me. There's a proposal to rebrand the extra mark as a honey farm. Okay. What's that one? A honey farm. So this is that's existing. That's that's that's the existing this week beside, and this is the proposed facade. There's really nothing no different company. Is that a brand?
The rebranding was the store. Oh, they're gonna paint too.
Have some What is it called? Architectural features, but the main we're passing that. Amazing. Almost like a chain. Here. Just another. Okay. That's always nice. They're not
gonna make any changes to the size, construction, they just wanna rebrand the store. Okay.
How did you how did it come to be that the other gas station got rid of you're blocking all the windows with signs and all that stuff? You got a good zoning agent. I get well, I can't that for granted. But did you reach out to him? And Yes. Decided to clean the windows one day. Yep. Nice. Good job.
To go back to Bummerville for a second, you said it's 92?
Yeah. That's that's the number it's gonna be. A single family home? Single family. Yeah. Where is that across from what was the Zimmermans?
Yeah. Across from the farm. Okay. The triangular piece? The triangle piece. Yeah. Okay. Where you see there were there's been some work on it. Okay. They had to do some work to get it to pass for the septic system. Okay, thanks.
And this, the only thing is it's gonna be a name change?
Yeah. So there's not any No. Not ownership change or anything like that. It's spruce and So there's no no additions? No. No. Expansion?
Right. I don't see any I don't see any particular issue with it. I just thought I'd bring it bring it to you guys attention so that if and when it happens, you don't say what's going on at the extra part. And and I thought it was the new owners of
auto parts. No. They were gonna rebrand and put new signage up. Was And for the commission's information It's kind of not to scale.
They over auto the junkyard has been has changed hands. It's been sold to a global auto global auto something LLC based in Manchester, Connecticut. Okay. I have heard nothing from them. Nothing's that doesn't look like there's been any activity there. But they didn't buy the gravel pit. They did not buy the gravel pit. Oh, thank you. I need some space in the back. Yeah. The Yeah. Station. In the back. I have no idea what their intentions are. I don't even think they oh, yeah. They they just fly up the deep. That's how I I learned of that. Sounds good. Well, that's all I have. Thank you.
Anything else? Okay, going on to Inland's Wetlands. Nothing to report. Okay. The bridge was approved. Was that the bridge, it was approved. Go ahead, Mr. Brown Planner.
So just a couple of recent meetings and proposed meetings regarding potential housing development, two separate nonprofits, the Center for Housing Equity and Opportunity and a nonprofit housing developer, both reached out over the last couple of weeks, looking to just meet more town officials become a little bit more active in this part of East Central Connecticut. So I will be meeting with folks from the Connecticut Center for Housing Opportunity later this week and folks from the housing development nonprofit next week may or may not be joined by town administrator Streeter, depending on if he participates in the Zooms. Also had a meeting earlier this week with the Capital Region Council of Governments, CROG and their housing development consultant, Gohman and York. The town had back probably a year and a half ago, back during Eric Anderson's administration, participated in a basically request for analysis on town properties
around the region that might be suitable for supporting additional housing. And so at the time Eric submitted basically the town owned property that is behind the town campus, behind the community center and town hall and fire station, that large piece that goes all the way up over the hill to the Hop River, or to the Hop River Trail. And so met with some of these consultants earlier this week just to talk about the types of housing that if the town were to be a partner in housing development, what they would like to see. And we talked mostly about, especially because we're talking basically behind this building. If you, Mr. Chair, if you look to your right, that's like where we're talking about. It would be, of approximate scale and density of the Riverside apartments on the other side of the river by the recreation fields, that housing authority property. And so they're gonna sort of look at the general feasibility of maybe adding a little bit of a community back there, just on a conceptual basis. But that was sort of a legacy project that Eric had pursued. Again, obligations, no nothing, just they're gonna kinda sketch some stuff out and see what it looks like. And then lastly, did have some follow-up discussions with the folks that are looking to develop the Lynn Home Corner area to just talk through some of the zoning changes that they would need to make. They were under an odd assumption that the town would be taking the lead on making some of these zoning changes. And I said, no, absolutely not. Know, Wayne and I would be happy to review their proposals and make sure that it fit with
the intent of the zoning regulations and also achieved the sort of development approach and density that they were looking for. We're happy to review, but we're definitely not taking the lead on proposing those zoning changes. So just having those conversations with them. So hopefully they're sharpening their pencils and come up with a proposal sooner than later. What
was this, John, about, they're talking about the town building the roads or something?
Well, there was a question of whether or not if the internal driveways or access ways to access the various townhouse phases or townhouse units would be, if it would be like a traditional residential development, that it would essentially be town streets or whether they would be essentially private drives, apartment driveways. And I don't think that issue is resolved. And it depends on how you define frontage and whether these things need to have direct frontage on a municipal street, if that is necessary for bus access. There are some of those questions that I think are still need to be resolved in their design process. Fire trucks, buses. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a commercial driveway, commercial residential driveway should have no problem accommodating emergency vehicles as well as buses. But there's also probably a municipal policy about buses not going up private driveways. So if there were kids in the apartment complexes off of Shottie Mill, does a bus go up that driveway? Probably not. They'd probably just pick them up intersection with the road. Right? The end of their driveway. That so those are those are considerations they'd have to figure out.
And and also after review, the Whispering Hills is privately maintained and so is the ones down by the ball fields. Those are all Yeah. And that's well, that's maintained by a by a management company. Yeah. So I think the precedent's there that because I think it'd be unfair to the town for us to have to maintain their roads.
Well, I mean, if there it's, you know, it's sort of your subdivision process. If you build a new road to town road standard Again, that's then it would have to be it'd have to be approved by either, I don't know, either the selectman or town meeting depending on how your charter goes. You but yeah. Like the main roads called Rosewood, whatever it is,
Right, but the And they also had put on their proposals, their planning ideas that the town would be maintaining their fire cons and such as well, which I also think would fall on the property owner.
Yeah, there's lot of details that need to be worked out there. There's
a lot to be resolved. But to the road issue, there are standards for road construction in the subdivision regulations that they would have to meet which is different than the ideas presented so far
because they Well, they they didn't resent any idea. They they just had a black line. Right. Right. But but the subdivision regulations specify with the fill compacted, all that technical stuff. Far as how you build a road, right. Anyway, that's all I have Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, sir. All right. Moving on to public speaking. Any other topics? It's certain it's not on the agenda that we didn't get.
Just a quick question. Does anyone know if the White's Tavern sold or was it taken off the market?
Across all of the the historic house. I don't know if it was taking well, the signs going. Yeah. I don't know. Somebody another individual from the temple was in asking questions about potentially using the existing house now for housing the monks. Which I said, yeah. You know, you could do that. You just kinda, you know, do their renovation, and then you could you could probably do that. That that shouldn't be a problem.
Do you see monks? Yeah. Monks in time? Yeah. Well,
not residing currently, but No. They just have a They come visit. Yeah. They have a they have a Buddha there and every now and then you'll see a gathering there. I
thought we were told a while ago that there was gonna be one person living in the house. That's not particularly recent. I mean To my understanding, the house is really not livable right now. That's really a shame because I noticed when it was if anybody saw it posted online, there were no pictures of the interior. Inside of it. No? No.
That's that's a shame. I've never been in it, but my great grandparents used to own it. And it's obviously a very old Right. House. And if it's that bad inside
The questions that I got revolved around is that historical that needs it, you know, does the town has the town designated that as historical and then therefore you have to comply with a whole series of regulations regarding historical property. We don't have any historical district or anything like that. Even though that was that house, Rochambeau
Cabinet? Historical it's on a historical society's site. Yeah. It's definitely on that. The register. The register. Right. We don't have any regulations that specify
No. But they do. They do? I would say that the the register has some kind of things about, you know, what they wanted to tear it down or what if they can live in it. I'm sure the busks were living in it for many years. I
was just curious, maybe we'll hear something between now and next month.
Hey, one other thing, how about the Rosewood the state, did they do an assessment on the aquifer level if it could take that much water usage?
That's something that, well I don't know if I'm speaking out of turn, but, I mean, isn't that something there again that goes to my third party consult you know? We we can ask that they do that study and present it to us. That they provide us that information.
Well, if I may, they did state that they were going to be having the land tested and I did observe testing company over at the property. So in order for them to pass health code for what they wanna do, would have to get all that stuff done ahead of time. And if it doesn't meet the Eastern Highlands Health District requirements, they won't be able to go as big as they want or whatever though. They'll have to scale it accordingly.
Does that assessment include water usage? Because I think Yes. Yeah, the neighbors might be pretty upset if they Well,
to my understanding, if I'm not mistaken, all the Vandover is on one ginormous aquifer, but I could be wrong. That's what was explained to me a long time ago. But
like I said, I could be wrong. Mean, but there's something I have to do. They have a tremendous amount of engineering that they have to go through. Correct. Yes. Tremendous.
But to your point, that's why we would ask for these fees to pay an outside We're valuing all that stuff. But it also wouldn't be in their best interest to build a whole bunch of apartments and then six year round of run out of water, then their investment will, you know, they won't be able to rent really.
Assuming that they're gonna hold on to it. Right, right, right. Well,
yes. So we're speculating right now. Yes, are. And we really shouldn't be doing that.
It's a part of the discussion. We're not making limitations or requirements because we don't, like you said, this is speculation. I would just hate to say that
someone said that the commission was pre judging there. Oh yeah. And we're not, we're just brainstorming. Correct. Thank you for clarifying. That's a good word, brainstorming. Alrighty, let's go to the minutes.
Page two, we're on Parsons Miner's comment that say that we would encourage to learn towards and lean towards more studio and wood bedroom units there.
Yep, and I just I don't know if you knew where motion is, I just had two small things. One is on the first page under number five, it says e h h d, and then I think it appears somewhere else. I don't if it's under the same topic or not, but I assume that's Eastern Highlands Health District. If we could just spell that out just because if you're reading this I mean, I had to read it several times to figure it out, and I'm kinda used to it. So just if somebody was reading it for reference who didn't know that, I mean, that that comes into play. What's the proper way of doing it is to spell it out, you know, abbreviate it later. Yeah. Just that's that's what I mean. Just it's so when somebody comes across it again, they can say, oh, I see that that's what that means. And then under number six b, the next to the last sentence, it says, schedule public hearing for the special permit application for July 8. Yeah. I think it's meant to say today's date. Yep. Take a look at this photo from Granby. Was there a motion on the minutes yet?
I'll move to approve the minutes with the corrections that have been suggested. Second. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes five zero zero. Alright.
Thank you very much everybody and, the next regular scheduled meeting is August 18. And thank you very much for all of your hard work. And all in favor of adjournment. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.